Sorry that only spanish speakers will be able to get it, but my friend recorded a recent talk from Jonathan Ott about opiates. Its very interesting stuff, I uploaded it here:

https://rapidshare.com/f...natan_Ott__ALA.avi?bin=1

Its around 2 hours and 1.5gb.

Damn. Don't have the space on my computer to download it or I would. Any highlights you care to share endless?

YEah ENdy, plz tell us a synthetic version of what he articulates mainly in this speech.

i will watch it again this week and take notes, and will post here

SWEET !!!

the pony.

Looking forward to your notes

Notes for the first hour of talk:

Entheogen is not a chemical classification, rather regarding context of ingestion

Jonathan Ott consumes opiates for 30 years basically every day and sometimes several times a day. It helps him work. Ott doesnt consider himself an abuser, rather a pharmacophile. He doesnt abuse, he loves different substances and uses them intelligently.

One needs to be intelligent/smart/witty to deal with these drugs and the illicit market.

It is hard to consume opiates in a healthy and economical way, but they can be. In a free market opiates would be one of the cheapest substances available.

Opiates = substances from papaver somniferum. Opioids = synthetic analogues.

Opium is the dried latex of immature capsules of papaver somniferum. The main alkaloid is morphine.

The optimum point to reap the latex is one to two weeks after the petals have fallen. Traditionally one scrapes the immature capsules. The white latex dries and fastly oxidizes into a darker brown color. Nowadays thats not how its done. Nowadays for they reap the whole capsule + the stem, at least around 10cm, and extract from it

Many people associate opium with the east but it is actually more western, from europe, and of a higher quality in colder areas. It was alexander the great who brought it to india, but it is of a “lower quality”. The oldest archeological evidence for opium use dates 5000 years ago in Switzerland.

Papaver somniferum is the only plant known to produce morphine. Morphine was the first secondary compound alkaloid to be extracted/ isolated in 1805-6 in northern germany by a pharmaceutical student.

Dried opium is about 10% morphine, so 1g = 0.1g morphine. Codeine (methyl ester of morphine) is also present in smaller amount (only 3% of the total alkaloid content) the only two natural compounds that have this opiate effect in the plant. It is a mu receptor agonist.

1500tons of opiates for medicinal industry are produced yearly. ONU chooses which countries can produce. Spain is one of the countries that produces. Out of the 1500tons, half of it is consumed in USA (the supposed anti-narcotics country, but rather its the paradise for pharmaceutical opioids/opiates). More than 90% of morphine from opium is converted into codeine which is 3 to 5x less potent than morphine, supposedly to avoid drug abuse because of its lower strenght, and also because codeine is more cerebral and less bodily. This is an absurd in Ott's opinion to turn it into a weaker compound. It goes against what usually pharmaceutical companies search for, which is to increase potency, for monetary as well as health issues (needing less substance). Ott thinks its an abuse of drugs to do this conversion.

In colombia there is a tincture of 30ml with 30mg per ml of morphine, costs less than an euro.


In USA in earlier times in the 19th century, morphine/codeine was sold in products called “patent medicine” (not due to actual patents, they didnt have to tell the content, just was about the brand name control)

Before USA had developed road, post office was already spreading out these patent medicine all over the country. Also companies such as Sears would sell such things. This is the precursor of pharmaceutical industry, it began with selling colors for textile industry, then these patent medicine.

Entering the 20th century, in 1906 it was established the Food and Drug Act, which wasnt to prohibit but rather that all food and drugs had to have the content published. For many people they became surprised a lot of syrups and patent medicine had cocaine and manitol, or morphine, or THC extracts. In this time, the pharmaceutical industry was not really searching for new pharmaceutical companies because they were happy with the basic substances from coke, opium and weed.

Then there was the alcohol prohibition, and a lot of the medicines were made with alcohol, so they also were prohibited when in 1906 they had to put the ingredients, and many people stopped taking these medicines.

Coca cola was invented by a morphine fanatic pharmaceutic, in Atlanta Georgia , John Steith Pemberton (sp?). He had started to make a coca-infused wine to immitate a french wine Van Mariani (sp?), that was a very good wine with coca infusion. But 1 year after when he had already gathered many adepts of his wine, Atlanta made a municipal law against alcohol, so he invented coca-cola, a soft drink (the name 'soft' is a commercial code comes because it doesnt have alcohol).

The original coca cola had cola nut (Cola nitida, from africa, which has cafeine) + coca extract. It was in a bottle of 6.5 fluid oz (170ml). The calculation was made on 1 fluid oz of the coca cola syrup which would be mixed with carbonated water. 1 original bottle contained 25mg cocaine, an “acceptable” dose, except for the more fanatics which needed more. The more 'fanatic' would put 4 fluid oz of the syrup in their drink instead. Nowadays coca cola even denies they ever had cocaine in their drink.

Coca cola had removed cocaine 3 years before the FDA law voluntarily. But the government sued the company because they didnt have cocaine anymore when the law came (process the government of USA VS coca cola), so then coca-cola started putting cocaine again in 1917. Now they still import coca leafs from bolivia and peru, and they extract the alkaloids and make the syrup with cocaine-less leafs. But now nobody knows what they make with the tens of tons of cocaine extracted from the leaves (which is way greater amount then the medicinal use for cocaine).

So nowadays they mix the “coca cola powder”, the extract from these plants, which only 2 employees have access to, with other ingredients. These 2 employees travel separately. They add 45mg of caffeine, which is bought from the decafeinizing process for decaf coffee.

1915 harrison narcotics act, first modern law to control drugs. Anticonstitutional federal power to control cocaine and morphine, still no control over THC, heroin etc.

Back to opiates:

Artificial and synthetic are often mentioned as synonims but arent necessarily. A natural product could be synthetically made. Artificial means thus far it wasnt found in the natural world. Sometimes it happens that a supposed artificial substance suddenly is found to be natural

Heroin = diacetylmorphine, never been foud naturally, its synthetically made (which doesnt mean it wont ever be found)

In 1874 heroin was synthed for first time in england, no pharmaceutical studies (easy reaction from morphine, adding two acetyl groups). Then 20 years later re-synthed in germany in the same study group that did the aspirin synthesis (acetylsalicilic acid), from what would become Bayer. It is 1.4x more potent than morphine by weight.

heroin is a brand name from Bayer, Hero, from the word Hero, strong.

Pharmaceuts had to buy a license of 1 dollar a year to be able to administer heroin.

The invention of hypodermic syringe, in mid 1900's made the raise of heroin use increase greatly.

People did not realize morphine (and then heroin) was addictive because they had no reason to stop use. Thomas dequincy's book “confessions of an opium eater” started some awareness to it, but it wasnt until quite later people acquired knowledge of withdrawal symptoms and actual physical addiction.

Nowadays its the same with caffeine, it is physically addictive, but people dont realize it because they see no reason to stop it


In his early history, Ott never really knew about opiates. He started stealing cigarretes and alcohol at 7 years of age. Later in school he started finding about about weed and LSD, but in pensylvania it was very hard to find.

When he finished his chemistry studies in 1975, he went to san francisco to publish his book, Hallucinogenic plants in North America. There he met a friend who injected heroin, and was the first time he had access to opiates, but he wasnt really interested in it. So he first tried some pills which had aspirin and codeine. You have to pay 100 bucks for a medical consultation, to get some pills which cost 1 dolar each of 30mg codeine phosphate (a fourth or fifth of a real active dose), but it was poisoned with 10x content of aspirin or even worse, paracetamol, which are much more toxic. But he saw it was somehow interesting. At this time he was a cannabis fanatic but it made him too “numbed” and had bad effects for his work, so he started moving away from cannabis.

In 1975 he started learning spanish, and went to live for 2 years in Mexico to work for the mexican pharmacodependency studies center. In this time he was studying psilocybe mushrooms, LSA containing seeds, salvia divinorum, and other shamanic plants in Chiapas, Veracruz, Oaxaca. He was still not very interested in opiates.

Later in 1976 he went back to USA, in washington state, close to canada in west coast, you could buy cough syrups with 250mg codeine phosphate (and had some chloroform mixed, which is the habit of pharmaceutical industry to poison substances to prevent people from abusing). You could buy it without prescription, but could only buy one every 48 hours and had to give your ID. So he had to get friends and relatives of friends to buy. At this point he really started liking opiates.

The he started going to Canada, BC, 300km from his home, because you could buy something called AC&C, which is Aspirin, Caffeine and Codeine. This you can buy without prescription. For 4 dollars you could buy a pack of pills, each which had8mg codeine phosphate + 325mg aspirin + 30mg caffeine. Caffeine synergizes with codeine, but he had to take 12 or 16 of these to get his dose, and you dont want to take 12 or 16x that aspirin amount. So he invented a way to separate codeine from aspirin. Looking at Merck Index, he saw that aspirin wasnt very water soluble, while codeine phosphate is very. So he mashed the pills, used minimal amount of cold water, filtered, and with this you removed the aspirin. He bought 20 of these packs and was able to maintain his habits for around 20 cents a day. It was only later that he saw the physical dependency of opiates. There is definite physical dependency but the psychological aspect is the hardest to deal with in the longer run

Some years later some friends appeared in his house with 2kg of opium which they got as credit from chicago mafia, they were gonna pay 25000 dollars for it. They asked him to isolate morphine and synthesize heroin from it. These people had been cocaine smugglers during vietnam war, taking it with one-engine cessna airplanes going small distances from airplane strip to airplane strip from colombia to USA. But then with the whole war with the nicaraguan's contra, the american CIA working in conjunction with Pablo Escobar industrialized the whole business, and put these small people out of jobs, and they were looking for a new way into business, and there was Ott. He knew they were gonna rip him off, and so they did, but he anyways wanted to work with it. So he isolated 200g morphine, and he started inhaling morphine freebase, which is the strongest way of ingesting opiates. This turned into around 200g of heroin. These people dissapeared with nearly all the 200g of heroin (and ott found out they did not pay the mafia). Ott just kept some of the morphine rests, and he was using it 2 or 3x a day.

After only 1 week of 2 or 3x a day inhalating morphine (and before that, codeine every 2 days), he went traveling and did not take anything with him and was the first time he saw what the withdrawal symptom is. But he felt William Burrough's description was highly exagerated. After that he went back to daily use of codeine phosphate + caffeine.

That's a crazy and thorough summary endless. Thanks for taking the time to write this up.



I never thought of it like that. It's a pretty underhanded way for the pharmaceutical industry to increase sales, and then again it makes sense that Ott who was at least at some points addicted to opiates would start thinking of how it's really the industry's fault for reducing his high. I am leaning towards agreeing with Ott though, and I have no stake in the state of opiates other than the safety of my friends who indulge.

I also never realized that not only was coca-cola originally to be a drink with cocaine, but an alcoholic drink with cocaine. It's sounds like the super cracked-out version of drinks like Joose or Sparks.

Waow ! I had no idea Ott was an opiophile...

The last part:

Another interesting fact which happened in his life was a year when he lived in India, in Orissa, a traditional state in the Bengala bay. Very archaic part of india, with their own language, over 100 million speakers of that language.

He lived 1 year total but in 2 years period because his ex-wife was learning traditional dance there but had to ocasionally be back in europe due to his chemical business in washington. In pharmacies there, they sold 15mg phosphate codeine, pure, without paracetamol (which again he mentiones its horrible stuff, very toxic), for very cheap. He realized that in Puri, the traditional capital (not medieval like europe traditional, its neolithic), there is a pre-vedic shamanic god called jaganath mandi (sp?), black, no arms, where next to this main statue there was a government shop called “government ganja and opium store”. He was amazed with the existence of this. This was legal, you could get tolla of ganja or charas (10.5g) for 10 rupees, which is around 70 dollar cents. And 10g opium for around 2 dollars.

Traditionally opium isnt smoked. This happened because the portuguese introduced tobacco through hongkong together with the spreading of opium. It was rather taken orally, where it is twice as potent. Opium is a very good medicine against diarrhea, common to have in india. At the same time he was also chewing betel nut, which is the seed from the palm of Areca Catechu, which you wrap around the leaves of Piper betel, plus some calcium hydroxide and sometimes tobacco, which is a good anti-parasitical medicine. So Ott was using opium and betel as a medicine against the bad sanitary conditions of India and never had any problem.

So he maintained himself this year or two as he lived in india, but every time he returned to USA he had to quit use because he did not want to have problems bringing stuff with customs. So every time he had withdrawal symptoms, so he knows about it more than anybody. But there is a trick for diminishign nearly completely withdrawal symptoms which I posted in another thread in the healht and safety section.

So he went back to codeine use whenever he went back to USA. He would go to Canada again with a friend, to get the codeine, and he started making business with it. He could get it for 4 canadian dollars (nowadays its 10 canadian dollars, around 7euro) the pills with 1.6g of codeine phosphate, which is around 1.2g codeine freebase. Then he would isolate codeine, and react with BBr3, boron tribromide (which is very reactive), in acetone bath with dry ice to cool it, you can make codeine into morphine with 80% yield, which is very good because morphine is around 5x more potent ,and then would turn it into heroin. So from 1.2g codeine base, he would obtain 1g pure heroin. His friend who did it with him was using one of the highest heroin uses he ever seen, his friend at the peak was using 1g pure heroin a day, which is an absurdly high amount. This friend ended up going for methadone clinic in tacoma.

So Ott was trying pure heroin for first time, and he did it maybe 30-40 times in his whole life, he isnt fanatic about it. The same people who had ripped him off the first time with the heroin synth also came with some dirty cocaine they didnt know how to clean up, which he did, and he was injecting both together few times, something called “speedball (bomb?)”, but it wasnt really his thing. But he tried few times because he likes to experiment new things. To him, vaporizing freebase morphine is more impressive. But you cant smoke the salt because it has high boiling point and breaks down. Similar with cocaine, you could smoke cocaine hcl but will be very innefective. Inhaling cocaine is 10x more potent than injecting cocaine. With injecting morphine its not so different than inhaling the freebase in terms of potency.

But Ott saw that injecting heroin was not good, it is too “grabbing” and demanding, cant really live a working life, and feels like a pharmacological extreme sport/roller coaster, and he preffers endurance sports. For the same reason he doesnt like vaporizing DMT, 5-MeO-DMT, or Bufotenine, he preffers snorting them, as instead of 10 mins it lasts 1 hour. So he stopped using it.


Then he went to leave in southeast mexico where his second wife was from, where he has been living since 1987, in a small town in Vera Cruz state, at 1500m altitude, in a zone with very tall trees, where there are plenty of psilocybe (cearulescens) . When he went he was happy he would finally be able to get his opiates easily but then the yankee paranoia affected mexico, and then it also became much harder to find codeine or other opiates. The only formulation available was tylexCD (sp?), only with prescription, paying more than 10e for 0.9g codeine, mixed with paracetamol, which is very toxic for the liver. Paracetamol also has a horrible taste, and its very gooey so it blocks filter papers.

So everything dissapeared in Mexico after that. Except Neopercodan, which was very available, which is a synthetic opioid, Propoxyphene. There are other synthetic opioids used in pharmacy, like oxycodone, one of the very common ones used to control opiates. USA consumes 50% of world opiates, with only 5% of the world's population, so 10x more than its quota, while having a huge opiod pharmacopeia. Another one used is dihydromorphinone, a very potent simple derivate of morphine, twice the potency of morphine. There are other derivates that are as potent as LSD in terms of weight (microgram doses), with an opioid action. These are not morphine derivates, but derivates of thebaine, a secondary alkaloid which does not have opioid actions. With one extra carbon, morphine turns into codeine, and yet another carbon, it turns into thebaine. Thebaine can be turned into many things.


Bentley in england in the 50s made compounds such as etorphine, or M99, which is 5000x more potent than morphine. The blackmarket synthesized other alkaloids such as parafluorofenthanyl or alphamethylfenthanyl that the pharmaceutical industry didnt use, which are also thousands of times more potent than morphine. There are other alkaloids of this kind which chemically arent opioids. Like methadone, or dolophine, from Eli Lilly. Eli Lilly has always been the “fast cook” of poisons for CIA, involved in many shady business. George Bush father, ex-CIA boss, ex vice president and puppet of reagan, and then president and then puppet of clinton, before becoming vice president, he became head of Eli Lilly.

So Ott tried basically every one of these compounds he could get his hands on. But generally he preffers the compounds that are derivates of morphine or thebaine or cocaine.

Sometimes people say China White as heroin, but actually its Fentanyl derivates. Fentanyl is completely artificial, it has nothing to do with morphine or thebaine structurally. You can see its not heroin, it doesnt have the typical smell of heroin. It is active in microgram doses, like 100micrograms. Ott thinks, those such as alphamethylfentanyl is a better experience than heroin and is longer acting. Pharmaceutical companies use some short acting fentanyl patches for medical anaesthetic effects. There are also fentanyl patches which can last 72 hours.

One time Ott was in USA for some short time, (where he feels its like a concentration camp so he never goes there). Someone gave him these fentanyl patches for 72 hours, and he put 2 thinking he would get a decent dosage, but then it was way too strong, and after a few hours he had to take out the patches, he couldnt breathe, he had to snort cocaine all night to maintain awake and breathing.

Every once in a while pharmaceutical companies invent a new opioid and say “At last, a perfect one to get people rid of opioids, that isnt addictive”, but soon enough its seen to be addictive and have problems, and then soon enough they bring a new one. Same thing with benzodiazepines.


Oxycontin, which in USA it was sometimes called hillbilly heroin, is made and packeted in mexico but its very hard to find it being sold there. Now in mexico there is tramadol. but it doesnt give a good high like morphine, but its equally anaesthetic. Often there is a drug tourism from old people in USA that go to mexico border or to canada border because some things are much cheaper or more available.

Then ott started taking diphenoxylate (nomotyl) after propoxyphene was removed from market in mexico, but then after 8 years or so this was also taken off the market, or actually the same medicine changed the content, which he only found one day taking plenty of it and not getting the desired effects.

Now he has found a different source for codeine and is using that.


The Q&A section one dude asks about 5-MeO-DMT. He says he snorts the freebase, insted of smoking, at dosages, around 5mg. If one adds 4 or 5mg of harmine or harmaline mixed with the 5-MeO-DMT, it doubles the potency, so 5mg snorted would be like 10mg. He says 5-MeO-DMT can be taken at 30mg without harmalas, and with harmalas (around 100mg) one could take only 10mg as it triples the potency

Thanks alot for 'translating' the key bits Endlessness-I for one do certainly appreciate it.

I find it accurate that Ott is not that enamoured with pure heroin; on a site that Im sure many Nexians are aware of pertaining to this class of compound Ive read threads where opiophiles discuss which is the 'most pleasant' opiate, and the consensus seems to be heroin (with a few favoring hydromorphone), and they describe fentanyl as being like heroin without the 'soul'.Very few people would have tried pure heroin and the 'soul' that people describe is, IME, more to do with adulterants and incomplete conversion of morphine (and other alkaloid) base to heroin.Pharm grade diamorphine/heroin gives less 'wild rush' than God knows what is in the street tackle.

Fentanyl is stupidly potent and should be avoided at all costs unless very experienced and knowledgeable.I wonder how strong ie mcg/h the 2 patches he applied were?

Lastly, I wonder if Ott has haemorrhoids?

thanks so much for the rundown!

That was a nice read, really. my hands got a little sweaty.

Endlessness, thank you so much for summarizing that talk. There's a lot of interesting stuff in there.

I can certainly appreciate Ott's characterization of paracetamol as a poison. They add it to many opiate-containing pills with the stated intention of deterring abuse... but it would only deter abuse by people who know enough to avoid eating too much paracetamol. And any opiate user who knows that they shouldn't eat too much paracetamol also knows how to get rid of it with a cold water extraction. So really all this accomplishes is poisoning or killing the less-informed opiate users. It is fair to say, without hyperbole, that this is nothing short of pharmacological eugenics.

Wow, very interesting stuff. Thank you very much Endlessness for translating that for us.

I really look forward to the day when governments and corporations start acting with compassion and common sense instead of greed and ill intentions. We have a long way to go in our evolution but I believe that we are slowly getting there.

Entro - That's quite an insight about paracetamol. So after a little research, it seems that paracetamol is also acetaminophen? After a little more digging, I found a government website that lists all of the medications this is in and it's really quite astonishing considering how bad it is for you.

Yes, paracetamol is acetominophen, most popularly known in the US as tylenol. And, surprise surprise, it kills hundreds of people per year, and probably causes significant liver damage in a whole lot more.

I've been looking for an English translation of this lecture for some time. Almost got to the point of buckling down and sharpening my Spanish chops, until I saw this thread. Very much appreciated endlessness, good job.