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Comment by craigmcnamara | Hacker News Reader

You can absolutely trip from a transdermal dose. The kind of prying and jimmying required to disassemble a vintage synth unit could easily spread any film or sludge all over a significant part of a person's hands without gloves. Then all it takes is a bit of sweat or touching your face and you'll be unintentionally tripping.

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The way you’ve phrased this reminds me of a guy I once worked with— who was fooling around with his girlfriend while they both tripped on acid— and they started pouring liquid Tide laundry detergent all over each other, ostensibly believing it was an appropriate choice of sensual massage oil.

The hardest part for me to believe isn't the transdermal application. I've definitely known of people who who handled LSD and learned to wear gloves the hard way. What is difficult to understand is how a molecule that unstable was able to survive for... over half a century?

What makes you think it's unstable? UV light, heat, chlorine, (and perhaps some other things) degrade the molecule. In the absence of those it should be stable for a long time, in salt form (as it's usually made).

I've had tabs of acid sitting in a fridge which is naturally light and heat controlled, in a sealed container (within the fridge) be absolutely benign when consumed after being left for over a few months. The only way I've managed to keep LSD protected/improve shelf life is to keep it in it's liquid form and store it in a dropper.

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.

and I've had tabs of acid wrapped in tinfoil inside a small ziploc inside a filing cabinet with questionable temperature stability work just fine after several years. Some of that acid, if I remember right, was taken into a rave, lived in my pocket for a few hours inside... foil or a ziploc, I forget, and then came home to rest in that filing cabinet.

Fair enough! Maybe the LSD I'm referring to was always shit/weak. :)

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