had a quick look at this sub-forum; pretty packed for such a new section!

loving the idea.

heres a question for you scientists, i know you can get test kits to check is LSD is in fact lSD. my question is, is there a way (besides sending off to a lab in the netherlands) to test or figure out the mics of LSD in blotter form.

it'd be interesting to find out real mic levels on those wide spread blotters. Just to know how far off the claim some of these guys are. i think itd be pretty cool to figure out a way to test, of corse, dealing with such miniscule amounts of a substance i have a sneking suspicion figuring out active dosage levels is pretty unlikely.

still, a boy can dream.

Any ideas guys?

damn, i wish i payed more attention in chemistry class!

yes it would be cool to know exactly how much you are dosing, but I doubt that there is a way for mortals like you and I to find out without an excessive lab test. I mean calculating the amount of acid on a tiny piece of paper, in micrograms, is just something you can't do in the average kitchen.
But since I am not a scientist maybe, hopefully someone can prove me wrong

If you have around 5 thousand bucks to spare, you can buy a UV-Vis spectrophotometer and quantify the LSD yourself. It is very easy to use it, you dont need to be a chemist at all... I've been working with Jenway 6405

No.

*or buying the equipment yourself, like end suggested.

Even with UV-VIZ you would have to have a sample that you knew the amount of to start with for calibration as I understand it....

Literature has pretty reliable values for this.. I think it varies way less than, say, TLC, where the temperature affects a lot how the solubility of the substance will change in a given temperature/airpressure/etc, or the thickness of silica plates will change Rfs, or so on. But in a UV-Vis, what would these variables change, since you are not trying to separate the substance?

Just use pure methanol and make a base line with the methanol without the substance, then do a few readings and do an average, the reading shouldnt change much..

For LSD what we do:

First do baseline with pure methanol in UV-Vis. Then take a blotter (or half), and put it in glass container with a certain known amount of a dosage (say a blotter or half a blotter), and add a known amount of methanol (say 10 or 5ml). Close well the container, wrap in alu foil, let soak/agitate for some minutes/hour or so, repeat this a second time. Then add part of your LSD methanol dilution to UV-Vis, take reading and look at readings at 308 and 238nm...

Then do:

Absorbance@238 / 737 x 10000 = mg/ml of LSD in your methanol solution

Absorbance@308 / 296.1 x 10000 = mg/ml of LSD

(multiply total by two if you used half a blotter to know how much is in a full blotter)

If you average those out you get a value that has at most, in our experience 10% error with the mentioned equipment, confirmed with GC-MS quantification (using a known standard).

not very accurate, DAD gives a more accurate determination than VWD.

I got a LKB Ultrospec II for $68.
the quartz cuvette cost about a third of that

How accurate are they, when compared to some more accurate method? How did you validate the method?

CheckIt* uses "HPLC systems equipped with DAD/UV-Vis Spectrometers (DAD=Diode Array Detector) and autosamplers".
DIMS** uses GC-MS.

*drug testing organization from Austria
**Dutch testing system





To put that statement into context, click here.

eBay skills to kill baby

methods get validated by QA (I'm QC), and variability in a typical assay using DAD is <5%.
I've isolated ergovine, and would use that as a standard, if I were to test.

awesome stuff.

haha, had a sneaking suspicion this would quickly get over my head.

hats off to you guys (benzyme and endlessness in particular)

who knows, maybe one day ill get myself some heavy duty equipment. till then, i guess ill just stick to comparative analysis...guessing doses

I think there's a bit of history of determining the potency of LSD via quantitative TLC.

For example, the Pharmchem data that can be found on Erowid was generated via TLC.

There's also this reference.

Studies on Quantitative in situ fluorometry of lysergic acid diethylamide (lsd) on thin-layer chromatograms

Tetsukichi Niwaguchi, Takako Inoue
Journal of Chromatography A
Volume 59, Issue 1, 1971, Pages 127–133

What makes you think PharmaChem used TLC for quantification?

I have that paper somewhere and it's not as pretty as it seems.

A few reasons.

The data was generated in the era up to 1973. This would have been quite early in the history of HPLC. It wasn't till later in the 70's that HPLC really took off as a technique.

Up until that time TLC was the leading technique. For example, look at the papers published by Genest and Der Marderosian on morning glory and HBWR. TLC densitometry was a well established technique for analysis of these type of compounds.

Plus the data smacks of being semi-quantitative in that it's listed with a resolution of 5 micrograms. I think this is typical for the densitometry they were using.

Quantitative TLC is still an excellent technique for this type of analysis. It can approach an %rsd of just a few percent depending on the details of the technique and the equipment used. The downside is TLC takes more skill to do well than HPLC.