And anecdotally, I can say that administering a number of drops from a vial of dissolved LSD did not give me anything remotely approaching a trip.
I don't doubt that LSD could survive for some period of time on a natural surface but to provide a big "trip" after it was on a surface like a Synth seems a stretch.
I'd love to find out the half life of LSD in an open atmosphere like a Synth, I imagine it wouldn't be very long at all.
It can be and of course you can always touch your mouth, eyes, etc if you have it and you don't know it.
Not to mention - there are several varieties of LSD (liquid, crystal form, etc), and it can be soaked, have stabilisers added, etc.
>And anecdotally, I can say that administering a number of drops from a vial of dissolved LSD did not give me anything remotely approaching a trip.
Could it be the dealer duped you?
A "a number of drops from a vial of dissolved LSD" will very much give you a trip (100% so if administering means "orally").
>Another fact: I've made LSD in my lab on many occasions for research purposes, possibly in not so meticulous a manner as Albert Hofmann. Nothing ever happened. I had several graduate students who made LSD as an intermediate for projects. No accidental ingestion of LSD ever occurred. A technician in my lab makes it routinely because we use it as a drug to train our rats. He's learned by experience that he never gets high, nothing ever happens. And yesterday I was talking to Nick Sand, and Nick said, "I made a solution of LSD in DMSO…" -- DMSO (dimethyl sulfoxide) is a chemical that greatly enhances absorption of other chemicals through the skin -- he says, "…I painted it on my skin. Nothing happened." A concentrated solution and nothing happened! How did this very meticulous Swiss chemist get the LSD into his body? I don't know.
https://erowid.org/general/conferences/conference_mindstates...
It doesn't seem too far-fetched that he would do a licked finger dip taste test to help identify what he had found, nor does it seem too far-fetched that he wouldn't want to admit his curiosity.
I would have assumed it were a bit of long lost cocaine, nobody expects to have much of a reaction from a little taste test. But LSD is pretty unique in that regard.
If there were an accidental dosing, I suspect the original dosage would have been quite high.
Anecdotally, I can say that taking a thin sheet smaller than the end of a pencil eraser I tripped for a solid 4-5 hours. LSD dosage and purity varies greatly, but where it used to be cheap and strong from what I understand it's quite difficult to find "good" LSD now.
This indicates to me that it was not LSD. I too have administered drops in a casual fasion (first time) on a 'number of drops' (one should suffice) scale. And it wasnt about does this work it was about will this ever end.
But image just puddles of then dried lsd residue .. and this guy hour + after working on those surfaces certainly ate lunch etc. great times.
> administering a number of drops from a vial of dissolved LSD did not give me anything remotely approaching a trip
What do you mean by "administering"? And what did you dissolve it in? Chlorine will destroy LSD so if you used tap water that might be the reason. Alcohol or distilled water is fine as a storage medium.
We have plenty of evidence that people's hand hygiene is often pretty poor, so licking his contaminated fingers isn't surprising to me.
> And yesterday I was talking to Nick Sand, and Nick said, "I made a solution of LSD in DMSO…" -- DMSO (dimethyl sulfoxide) is a chemical that greatly enhances absorption of other chemicals through the skin -- he says, "…I painted it on my skin. Nothing happened." A concentrated solution and nothing happened! How did this very meticulous Swiss chemist get the LSD into his body? I don't know.
Testosterone ester crystals? Not bioavailable at all, but put it in some DMSO and lather on and you're in business. It works for, astoundingly, most anything.
And if there's any man you're to trust on the pharmacokinetics of psychedelics, it would be Nichols, our co-founding father of all modern phenethylamine, tryptamine and lysergamide knowledge.
Complete hoopla I say.
Similarly, the "thumbprint" urban legends are mostly that...legends.
https://www.erowid.org/references/refs_view.php?ID=8647
As to the transdermal activity IIRC Hofmann himself said that it isn't really active and his own trip was probably caused by him getting some on his hands and then rubbing it into a mucous membrane (eyes, nose, mouth).