here is the story... in 70s moskow there was a legendary group of philosophers, writers, mystics, alchemists and bona fide magicians (magickians?) known rougly translated in english as "the schizoid circle" extremely dark, nihilistic, in their own words "anti-humanistic", immensely fascinating...

i have been reading a lot about them and by them lately. there was an estonian dude who now lives in london, associated with "the schizoid circle". very smart dude, and his books are very very readable. so he recounts that in the 70s the main psychedlic, bona fide entheogen of choice was a dry cleaning solvent (?) known as "sopals" (in estonian?). russian is not my native language, and i don't claim any 70s ussr cultural knowledge at all, in russian it's "piatnovyvoditel sopals". the trips as described are extremely graphic and also extremely funny.

it seems to me that "sopals"' main ingredient could have been tetrachlorethylene... but i am not a chemist, far from it, very very far. nor a have any experience with breathing solvents, glue, etc. never ever even considered it's worth doing...

and yet the descriptions of "sopals" trips in the book are extraordinary to say the least. given that many many other details in the book are true to reality, documentary style true, in my mind, it's very probable that the multiple "sopals" trips described are also true to reality. if so, the implications for research...

apparently the secrets of the holy grail of soviet era folk physedelics called "sopals" are lost in the sands of time... forever?

anybody having experience with tetrachlorethylene? or similar?

here is the book (in russian). a fascinating read.
https://archive.is/4dyW3#selection-4605.7-4605.15

I wouldn't touch the stuff. It's toxic as shit.
This 'sopals' stuff was probably just ether (diethyl ether). Ether has been used recreationally all over the world and is a well-known anastheatic.

People in the soviet Union also experimented with ketamine or ketamine analogues.

A bunch of dark, nihilistic magickians huffing dry cleaning solvent? Sounds like trouble!

For me, there is another 'psychoactives in the USSR' enigma. I was once leafing through a volume of chemical abstracts and stumbled across an entry concerning a group of pyrimidine derivatives that some Soviet scientists had found to have psychedelic properties. Astonished by this information, I dropped the book without having copied the details and never managed to find that specific entry again. The volume number of Chemical Abstracts also escapes me, and if recorded anywhere it's deeply buried in my notes as this happened decades ago. The publication year might have been 1967.

If anyone can shed any more light on these pyrimidine derivatives I'd be deeply grateful.