What I find interesting is that most people that SWIM knew in the past that had direct connection to a few LSD chemists in San Francisco would say that LSD on nearly all blotter paper usually has strychnine added to it in various amounts, and yet tests done by various agencies show it’s extremely rare to find strychnine in acid.

It’s hard to know who to believe: the people with direct connections to the LSD chemists, or the agencies doing the testing. This “rumor”, if it is a “rumor”, is so widespread that nearly everyone has heard it and even big time LSD distributors tell you this “rumor”.

SWIM knows for sure that he's had acid with strychnine on it before. He's had pure strychnine before and knows what it feels like. It's not that common for it to appear on acid in levels SWIM can detect, but it happens. Actually, the acid that obviously had strychnine on it was quite nice, and SWIM actually preferred it.

A very tiny blotter can easily contain a pleasant 500 microgram stimulant dose of strychnine, as well as a 100 microgram dose of LSD with plenty of space to spare.

When I see people trying to “debunk” this strychnine in acid “myth”, they always mention that strychnine isn’t active at doses that would fit on a blotter. This is most definitely a lie. I get suspicious when I read such lies and it doesn’t help to substantiate this as a “myth” when they use lies to back up their strychnine myth debunking.

The DEA only normally tests for what they are looking for. If they get acid, they test for LSD. If they don’t find LSD, then they test for the known RCs. They don’t test for strychnine. So the fact that the DEA doesn’t find it, doesn’t mean it’s not there. The DEA doesn’t find all the impurities present on acid and nearly all acid has impurities or breakdown products left behind from the synthesis. They don’t find the impurities or breakdown products because they don’t test for them.

SWIM happens to know that when combined with acid, strychnine can be felt in doses of 100 micrograms. On it's own, strychnine is easily felt at 500 micrograms. When it’s combined with acid it makes the acid more euphoric, more visual, and more auditory. Strychnine in small doses (500-2000 micrograms) increases your sense of smell, touch, sight, and sound. This effect is fantastic when combined with psychedelics.

Another thing people say who are trying to “debunk” this “myth” is that strychinine is too pricey and that adding it would have no financial benefit so why would people add it. This is also another lie! Strychnine is VERY CHEAP. It’s one of the cheapest drugs you can get. You can buy 1000 nux vomica seeds for about $50 if you know where to get it. Each seed contains about 25 mg of strychnine, so 1000 seeds contain about 25 grams of strychnine. So cost wise you could extract strychnine from nux vomica seeds for about $2 per gram. 1 gram comes to 2000 500 microgram doses. That’s dirt cheap. So for $2, you could extract enough strychnine to put 500 micrograms on 20 whole sheets of acid!

Think about the numbers there. Strychnine is dirt cheap. The cost per hit is $0.001. Plus it’s easy to get and it’s easy to extract. Any good LSD chemist could easily grow their own nux vomica tree and extract it from the seeds themselves for free. Plus strychnine enhances the LSD experience in a very positive way. It’s not the cause of the nausea or cramping people get from badly made acid. The impurities left behind from a bad synthesis cause those effects. The most strychnine a large thick blotter could contain is about 3000 micrograms. That’s not enough for unpleasant side effects.

There was a time when strychnine was a very popular stimulant sold at the local pharmacy over the counter and people often took 500-3000 microgram doses on a daily basis.

Anyway, it bothers me that most of the people “debunking” this “myth” are themselves spreading lies.

In the end, no one knows what’s on their acid except the manufacturer. Contrary to what the “debunkers” out there would have you believe, it actually makes sense to add strychnine in small doses to LSD for the pure enhancement effect it has on nearly all psychedelics. It’s dirt cheap. And it fits on blotter paper in highly active doses.

I’m not saying that all acid has strychnine on it. I have no idea and neither does anyone else. Only a very small percentage of acid has ever been actually tested for strychnine. The DEA doesn’t test for it. There are tests you can perform at home that can be done on acid if you suspect your acid has strychnine on it.

One good simple test you can easily perform at home is to dissolve 1 hit of LSD in a cup of chlorinated tap water. Let it sit for a weak in the SUN. The chlorine in the water and the rays from the sun light will destroy the LSD. After 1 weak there should be no more LSD present. It should be inactive. Drink it. If it still works, it’s an RC and not even LSD. If it’s no longer hallucinogenic, but very simulating, it’s likely got strychnine in it.

Besides, it enhances all those aspects of LSD, that set's LSD apart from the other psychedelic's. It will make your LSD more LSD-like!
The only side effect i've noticed is that it will shorten your attention span somewhat. You will be less able to focus on one thing because you will be more easily distracted by all the visual and other sensations happening in and around you, then with just plain LSD.

LSD is very instable and easily breaks down into various different products. By the time most people get blotter acid, quite a bit of it has already broken down into other products. How it breaks down depends on many factors. The differences noticed between sheets of LSD often have to do with the age of the sheet of acid, and how it was handled, and the impurities that were initially present when it was made, all of these things affect the types of impurities and breakdown products present. It’s extremely unlikely that anyone will ever encounter a sheet of acid with 100% pure LSD on it. It’s not stable enough to survive on paper for extended periods of time unless kept frozen, away from light and away from oxygen.

Also another important factor is that impurities from the synthesis are commonly present and some are very difficult to remove. Most of these are various lysergamides, related to LSD, and known to affect the trip. Because of this, even fresh batches of LSD differ from one to another. The impurities present vary. It’s extremely difficult to produce 100% pure LSD, from what I know about it. There are almost always other impurities present that affect the trip.

Strychnine very rarely ever appears on blotter paper according to most sources. When it does though, it can be tasted. Strychnine is an extremely bitter compound. It’s one of the bitterest substances in the world. You can easily taste 1 part of strychnine in 700,000 parts of water! That means that even as little as 1 microgram of strychnine on blotter paper can be tasted. It tastes bitter, and the bitterness lingers in the mouth for a few minutes.

SWIM has some strychnine he recently extracted from 1 strychnos nux vomica seed. Most of the strychnine in the world is extracted from nux vomica. His solution is so dilute than 1 drop of his extract contains only 20 micrograms of strychnine. Even 1 drop can be tasted and is very bitter from the 20 micrograms of strychnine in it. 1 drop of water weighs about 80,000 micrograms. So imagine how small 20 micrograms of strychnine is! Only 0.025% of that drop of water is strychnine acetate!

Acid with strychnine in it must taste bitter.

If you suspect that your acid contains strychnine, taste it. If it doesn’t taste bitter, it doesn’t contain strychnine. I’ll bet most of the acid people complain has “strychnine” in it is simply LSD plus a little bit of lysergamide breakdown products and lysergamide impurities left behind from the synthesis.

I think this bit of information is important to add to this thread. This is from ESCOP monographs: the scientific foundation for herbal medicinal products By Escop, page 371 (ISBN 1588902331, 9781588902337)



At 2 mg/kg of strychnine they found convulsions were treated with kavain at 75 mg/kg, dihydrokavain at 122 mg/kg, methysticin at 16 mg/kg, and dihydromethysticin at 18 mg/kg.

The LD50 of strychnine is 1.45 mg/kg in mice. By giving the mice kavalactones they were able to completely survive doses many times higher than the LD50 with NO convulsions at all. Note that a water extract of Kava kava is less effective because it has less kavalactones.

It’s a good idea to have some kavalactones in your medicine cabinet. They are great anticonvulsants.

I wish I knew the dosages of kavalactones required in man to help with strychnine poisoning. Does anyone out there know?

Swim relies on Ron for fun facts Sorry wish I could help...

Here's a bit of a "fun fact" few people know. Strychnine is a proven nootropic! Small doses of strychnine have been shown in many tests to improve learning in man, mice and rats.



I’ve got to mention that SWIM noticed this effect from his nux vomica extract! He can remember everything on the days he used the nux vomica extract more clearly than the days he didn’t use it. I find that fascinating. SWIM only needs about 250 micrograms of strychnine for this effect to be noticed.

The more I research this, the more interesting it gets. I can see that strychnine actually has a lot of fantastic uses in low doses. The problem is that doses of 5-10 mg and up start becoming a little toxic and much more and it becomes fatal and so it’s not something the average person should be using. During its heyday, active “safe” adult doses of strychnine were normally considered to be 1-3.2 mg. If you had 1 mg pills of strychnine (which used to be very common) for use as a stimulant and took a little too many, you’d easily start getting toxic effects. It’s definitely not something that the average person should have access to. The difference between a highly beneficial dose and a toxic dose is too small (but when used with kava it's much less toxic).

Are there negative effects from taking it daily? Swims memory is in need of a boost, he finds that spice has made him feel smarter (swim is probably going on wishful thinking).... but yea, something to make you smarter that you can take daily or as needed with no negatives would be amazing, almost too good to be true, whats the catch??

I don't think taking it everyday would be a good idea unless the doses were kept at about 1 mg or less. I’ve read that it can build up to toxic levels if large doses are used everyday. But I also read that you develop tolerance to its toxic effects the more you take it. So there’s a mixed bag of information in this area. I would be very cautious and not use it everyday.

Keep in mind that strychnine overdose, even if it doesn’t kill you, is one of the most unpleasant experiences you can have. It’s extremely painful. If you’ve ever had a muscle cramp up on you and know how painful that is, imagine all of your muscles cramping up at the same time all over your body! That’s what it feels like. What a horrible way to die.

It’s extremely dangerous to extract strychnine from nux vomica seeds. Just 1 seed contains enough to kill most people. If you were to powderize it and accidentally breathe in too much powder, you could die in as little as 5 minutes. It’s dangerous because it’s so potent and the seeds contain a large amount of it (up to 2.65% strychnine). Just one 2 gram seed can contain up to 53 mg of strychnine. That’s enough to kill most people if ingested, and enough to kill many people if inhaled as powder. People have been known to die while powderizing nux vomica in the process of making herbal tinctures. Scary.

I can’t find nux vomica tinctures anymore other than the worthless homeopathic ones. They’ve lost popularity and in some places are banned.

SWIM has a safe extraction procedure that he uses. There’s no chance of ever creating a cloud of powdered nux vomica dust with his procedure. He dilutes his nux vomica extract so that 1 ml only contains about 250 micrograms of strychnine acetate. This allows safe doses to be easily measured. And the good thing about strychnine acetate is that it won’t precipitate out of solution over time. Some forms are known to precipitate out of solution slowly, and so after a few months there’s a pile of concentrated strychnine in the bottom of the tincture. These are details a lot of people don’t know about. If a tincture is not made properly, and strychnine collects at the bottom of the tincture, then all the doses will be weak until the last few doses in which a few huge doses of strychnine will be had and the result can be disastrous!

Really, this is not something the average person should be trying. I want to make that very clear. The extraction and use of strychnine can be very dangerous because it’s so potent.

The lowest adult dose reported to be fatal is 5 mg. But I can’t find information to back up that claim. It’s likely to be misinformation. The LD50 for humans according to Okangan University is 1mg/kg which comes to 50 mg for a 50 kg (110 pound) adult. Most reliable references state that the minimum lethal adult dose of strychnine is 30 to 120 mg and that non-fatal toxic effects can start at 5-10 mg. Some sources state it’s lethal in adults at 15-30 mg. Some sources state the LD50 is 25 mg for adults. It may be that the lower LD50 values are for injection, but they unfortunately don’t state the route of administration used to determine their lethal dose figures. It’s far more potent by inject than by the oral route.

There is no report of an adult death by 4 mg orally that I could find. At any rate, to be safe, don’t take any more than 1.5 mg orally. 3.2 mg orally is considered a moderate dose, and 6.4 mg is considered a full dose, but since there’s that one unverifiable death reported at 5 mg (probably by injection, but who knows), I don’t think it’s a good idea to take any more than 1.5 mg orally.

The most SWIM has ever taken sublingually was about 243 micrograms, and orally was 500 micrograms. The 243 microgram dose taken sublingually was much stronger than the 500 microgram dose taken orally. To SWIM’s surprise 243 micrograms taken sublingually produced quite noticeable LSD-like effects in 20 minutes, not quite psychedelic, but still very much like LSD (increased color perception, increase auditory perception, increase awareness, stimulation, mild euphoria, etc.).

I would consider only the microgram range to be truly safe in adults. Milligram doses are really pushing it.

Yea, strychnine seems alittle too dangerous for the average swim to be messing around with... maybe if there was a legit supplier that would hand swim his individual doses thatd be a different story.

I think ive only heard of this stuff as poison, do they sell it in doses for human consumption still?

You can still get nux vomica extracts for human use in places like India and China. Steer clear of the homeopathic tinctures, they are worthless.

You can also still get strychnine tablets for human use, but in most countries that requires a prescription, and in some countries it is banned for human use, but still legal to purchase.

It's not a scheduled drug in any country that I am aware of so importing it should probably be legal in most countries.

It's sold over the counter as poison for many pests in many countries but that is not a good source. I wish they would ban it as a pesticide. It's a very cruel way to kill animals. They suffer immensely from it before dying.

If you can't get it for human use, its better to get the Nux Vomica seeds and extract the strychnine from them. That way you know it's 100% natural and doesn't have any toxins in it like lead that would cause long term damage to you.

Strychnine in microgram doses is quite safe for adults and can actually be very beneficial. In safe doses it improves memory and complex learning of new skills, acts as a stimulant and improves eyesight, hearing, and your sense of touch. It's only dangerous when too much is taken. It's beneficial dosage range and it's toxic dosage are too close for it to be suitable for the general public.

With strychnine, accurate dosage is incredibly important. There's almost no room for error. This is why it lost popularity. Imagine if you could get it at the local drug store OTC. Some kids here and there would be using it to get high, eating a few too many tablets in one sitting and end up suffering from convulsions, or even end up dead. Elderly with poor memory might forget they took a pill, take several more over and over and then end up dead.

When it was popular to prescribe it, smart doctors would start with 1-2 mg, and then move their patients up from there very slowly up until about 6.4 mg was given. As soon as any stiffness in the neck or jaw was noticed, or any muscle twitches were noticed, they'd drop the dosage back down and not go any higher. They found individual sensitivity to its toxic effect varied a lot from person to person. Some people would be fine at 4 mg and then 5 mg would cause slight toxic effects. Other people could take up to 25 mg with no toxic reaction at all, while some people would be killed by 25 mg.

It's very likely that diet plays a big role in strychnine toxicity variances from person to person. People with little vitamin C intake are much more susceptible to strychnine poisoning. Vitamin C helps protect people from strychnine poisoning.

it's weird that, while it apparently has nootropic effects, i found that if taken with LSD, it becomes incredibly hard to stay focussed on anything.

Even strychnine alone has negative effects on concentration if too much is taken. In all the tests performed they found that the lower end doses of strychnine were specifically nootropic, but the higher end doses impaired mental functioning slightly. And if way too much is taken, the slightest sound, touch, flash of light, etc., can trigger a convulsion. As with most nootropics, there's a proper dose, and if that dose is exceeded, it's nootropic effects are lost and the opposite occurs.

Both strychnine and LSD increase your awareness. Strychnine and LSD work in completely different ways so that their awareness increasing effects are amplified when taken together. With an overly sensitive awareness, you would surely tend to get too easily distracted by things in your environment. You would be sort of like someone suffering from ADD.

The combination of LSD and strychnine would likely be nootropic if the doses of each were extremely small because they amplify each other's awareness boosting properties and stimulant properties. I would imagine that 25 micrograms of LSD + 250 micrograms of strychnine would be more nootropic than strychnine taken alone and that much more than that would have opposite effects because it would lead to an overly sensitive awareness.

Here are some interesting quotes from another forum talking about “tinctura nucis vomicae” (nux vomica tincture) which is a tincture with strychnine as the main active alkaloid.



The tincture being referred to contains approximately 65 micrograms of strychnine per drop. This guy is stating that noticeable enhancement of other psychedelics occurs with as little as 65 micrograms. Up to 195 micrograms were used with good effect and no unpleasant effects. I find this very fascinating. It confirms SWIM’s own experience.

I wish I could find that tincture, but I can't. I think it’s made in Russia.

Yeah, that's exactly what happened: every little thing just drew my attention away. I couldn't stay focussed on something very long. It's a very nice combination, still.

Every aspect of it that sets LSD apart from the other entheogens, get's amplified.

Doesn't datura seeds compensate some of the side effects of it?

Now if the above quote is honest and 65 micrograms of strychnine is enough to enhance the effects of other psychedelics, then 1 hit of acid could contain 65 micrograms of strychnine and 100 micrograms of LSD, and a person could take 10 hits of said acid and only get 650 micrograms of strychnine. That would be a very safe dose of strychnine. A whole sheet of such acid would contain 6.5 mg of strychnine. That dose is safe for most adults. I’ve only heard of one unverifiable death occurring from a dose as low as 5 mg, and it’s probably either misinformation or a death by injection of strychnine (strychnine being much more potent by injection).

Hmmm...this is starting to look very interesting. How much of a "myth" is this anyway? I'm starting to get very suspicious about this being "myth" at all. SWIM has had quite a few blotters that tasted bitter like strychnine which had the effects of LSD and not DOM or some other bitter tasting RC. The taste was that of strychnine. It could have been something other than strychnine, but the taste was just like strychnine. This is really bothering me. At one hand we have tests which say acid with strychnine is extremely rare, and then we have most people saying its commonplace. And then we have SWIM, and a few others who've tried strychnine with other psychedelics and found the combination to be great. I don't know.

This is not comforting. I'm beginning to seriously doubt the accuracy of those reports that say strychnine in acid is rare. At least 5% of the acid SWIM had tasted like strychnine. Strychnine can be tasted in blotter with as little as 1 microgram being present. It doesn’t take much to taste it. It has a specific taste. It’s bitter and the bitterness is lasting. Anyone who’s tasted strychnine or a nux vomica extract knows what strychnine tastes like. The phenethylamines taste sort of like mescaline, and that is bitter but that tastes nothing like strychnine.

I don’t know. That’s a good question. SWIM has had LSD with hyoscyamine in it before. This kind of acid makes your face a little red if it has too much, is more colorful and has a distinct body feel to it caused by the hyoscyamine.

In reading old medical work, atropine (hyoscyamine was often mistakenly called atropine in old work) and strychnine were commonly used together. I’m not sure why. I couldn’t find the reason for it.

1 hit if blotter acid could easily contain 100 micrograms of LSD, 65 micrograms of strychnine and 100 micrograms of hyoscyamine. All of these substances are active at those doses and they are all super cheap. It would cost you less than 1 cent to put them on 1 hit of acid.

>> atropine (hyoscyamine was often mistakenly called atropine in old work)

Perhaps because atropine is the racemic version of hyoscyamine. A mixture of hyoscyamine and dextro-hyoscyamine = atropine.

About 3 1/2 hours ago SWIM took 480 micrograms of strychnine extracted from Strychnos nux vomica. This was taken orally in a glass of water. This time he took notes of the onset, peak and overall duration of effects.

Onset: effects were felt after 20 minutes and came on quite suddenly. This included a "butterflies" excited feeling in the stomach reminiscent of LSD. A pleasant almost tingling sensation was felt in the whole body, also reminiscent of LSD. It was extremely pleasurable to touch things like fabrics, people, etc. You could feel much more detail in the textures of things and touching SWIM's wife was more pleasurable than it normally is. Another effect noted at this point was that vision was very sharp, very well defined, especially in bright rooms. Things were seen with more detail and more contrast. Blacks were darker, and light objects were lighter, as if the whole array of possible shades seen by the eye were somehow expanded. All of SWIM's senses were sharper and he felt a mild euphoria.

Peak: the effects seemed to peak at about 30 minutes in and slowly faded from there.

Duration: It's been 3 1/2 hours and SWIM still feels very nice, but the sensations are weaker, about 1/2 as strong and slowly fading away.

It's late. SWIM is about to go to sleep. The more SWIM experiments with this, the more he sees just how similar strychnine is to LSD and mescaline (but to a lesser degree). It's like strychnine is almost on the verge of being psychedelic, but doesn't quite get there. SWIM would describe strychnine as being LSD without the hallucinogenic and "mind fuck" effects. The feel of strychnine is very LSD-ish. It's almost like the effect you get from a very small non-psychedelic hit of acid. You get that "butterflies" excited feeling. Your awareness is expanded. Your senses are magnified. You feel energized. Your mood is enhanced. SWIM has tried many stimulants, and this is really the only stimulant that feels like LSD does to SWIM.

I have not personally met many people with experience with strychnine and I doubt I ever will. This drug has lost popularity and has been shunned by the medical community. However, at one time in the past strychnine was considered the most valuable medical drug doctors had at their command. The tables have seriously turned since then. A few too many overdoses of this extremely potent stimulant caused the tables to turn against its favor. Now it's unfortunately seen as a poison.

I give it 4 thumbs up as being one of the nicest stimulants SWIM has ever tried. I'm glad SWIM found a safe extraction procedure for nux vomica. He has missed using this stimulant for many years until just the past two weeks. Prior to this, the last time he used strychnine about 20 years ago. He's forgotten just how nice it is.

It's unfortunate that the dosage curve is so steep. It's easy for strychnine overdoses to occur in people who don't know what they're doing.

I wonder if there's a stimulant with the same pleasant effects of strychnine that's much safer?

Does Swiy know of something that gives a memory boost the way that strychnine does? This stuff seems too dangerous for the average swimmer to be extracting....

No shit. It's dangerous stuff and I highly discourage the average person from even thinking about extracting it. People have died from breathing in just the dust from grinding nux vomica. SWIM’s tech avoids that problem though. There are safe ways to extract it, but with all the people out there who can’t even do a mimosa extraction properly, it’s scary to think of people attempting to extract nux vomica at home.

I wish I could buy professionally isolated strychnine diluted for human use but its no where to be found these days where SWIM lives. As long as doses are kept within known safe ranges, it’s a fantastic stimulant, but overdo it a little and it becomes toxic.

There are other nootropics out there. Most of the good ones are next to impossible to get though. There are many “claimed” nootropics out there that haven’t really been proven to be nootropics. Strychnine is clearly a nootropic. Thoughts come with extreme ease while on a safe stimulant dose of it, and memory is clearly enhanced.

I’d like to know if there’s a safer substitute for strychnine that has the same beneficial effects. I’ve been researching this and have yet to run across any.