Everything Else

If so, have you tried any of PIHKAL/TIHKAL to manage yourself?

I've seen that game before...

I spent some time as a chemical engineer with a specialization in organic chemistry but I switched to electrical engineering.

Ah, what a nice "Everything Else" topic!

I'm a synthetic organic chemist.

Question I have is why do you need to be a chemist to manage yourself using Ps or Ts?

Cool this sounds a lot more exotic than the usual society destroying compounds I pick up from the local projects o.0

robespierre wrote: I've seen that game before...

God bless mindless violence.

Hakimoto wrote: Question I have is why do you need to be a chemist to manage yourself using Ps or Ts?

Call me a coward - but as a non-chemist, I'd not dare to try my hands on any of Shulgin's recipes at all [the Kindle edition makes fascinating entertainment when riding the subway, though]. Besides, reading Iversen's book on amphetamines is more than enough to keep me away from such stuff forever. Actually, I'd meant to ask whether you chemists had tried to make any of PIHKAL/TIHKAL on your own. Sorry for my bad.

Nah! The vast majority of cooking in those books is illegal in most jurisdictions as you're setting out to make a (with a high likelihood) controlled substance with the intent of human consumption.

When I was in high school (way back when), we extracted nutmeg in a project and showed by an analytical technique called gas chromatography that there were different substances in the extract, including myristicine, which is psychoactive. But, of course, we're talking microgramme quantities here and it's not like anyone stood at the exhaust of the GC machine to inhale what came out!

As for the chemistry, "psychoactive drug chemistry" is no more or less dangerous than other organic chemistry. If you do it right, it'll work out just fine and you don't blow yourself up in the process. If you don't, well... .

In fact workplace nonchalance is probably the largest danger in my field. You'd be surprised how much energy is contained in seemingly small amounts of substances that are incompatible with each other.

Hakimoto wrote: In fact workplace nonchalance is probably the largest danger in my field. You'd be surprised how much energy is contained in seemingly small amounts of substances that are incompatible with each other.

I very strongly agree about that! Familiarity, expressed as nonchalance, is not at all the same thing as safety, but it often seems to be mistaken for it, whether in the lab or in other areas where potentially dangerous materials or equipment are used. I used to work for a global corporation that was large enough and in enough dangerous areas of operation that it was unusual to go a year without an industrial accident somewhere in the world resulting in one or more fatalities. The company rather sincerely wanted to do something about that, and it invested considerably in the design and rollout of a global safety program.

As we became better at collecting and analyzing comprehensive safety data, it quickly became obvious that the vast majority of incidents did not involve new/inexperienced staff, fatigued staff, or other commonly expected factors. Instead, most incidents involved experienced staff having otherwise good days who had allowed routine and experience to desensitize themselves to the inherent dangers of the materials and equipment they were using. At the time, a lot of people rolled their eyes at the safety initiative, especially those who didn't work in obviously life-threatening areas, but I am convinced we ended up saving lives, limbs, and eyes throughout the company because of these insights.

Hakimoto wrote: :lol: Nah! The vast majority of cooking in those books is illegal in most jurisdictions as you're setting out to make a (with a high likelihood) controlled substance with the intent of human consumption.

When I was in high school (way back when), we extracted nutmeg in a project and showed by an analytical technique called gas chromatography that there were different substances in the extract, including myristicine, which is psychoactive. But, of course, we're talking microgramme quantities here and it's not like anyone stood at the exhaust of the GC machine to inhale what came out!

As for the chemistry, "psychoactive drug chemistry" is no more or less dangerous than other organic chemistry. If you do it right, it'll work out just fine and you don't blow yourself up in the process. If you don't, well... .

I'm reminded of a few blog posts by one of my former coworkers, Derek Lowe, who now is a medicinal chemist at a Boston-area pharma company:

• Chemistry sets - http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/ar ... istry_sets
• A whole series of "Things I Won't Work With" - http://search.sciencemag.org/?q=things% ... ork%20with

For anyone who is interested in the "real world" of drug discovery, especially through a chemist's eyes, his blog is a superb resource and is very well written.

PS. While I am not a practicing chemist, I hold degrees in biochemistry and biophysics, and I still maintain my membership in the computational division of the American Chemical Society and other societies. Over time, however, my career has moved more and more to the "bio" and informatics sides of things, though it looks like I'll be undertaking a substantial cheminformatics project this summer.

I think that the word chemist in this context is a bit misleading since i think the OP means creating Pharmaceutical compounds by regular chemistry master students (of which i happen to be one). Or do Americans/Brits use the word "chemist" to designate "pharmaceutist"?

I never came close to creating something fit for human consumption. The laboratory simply is off-limits for anything human consumable. Well, except for perhaps my synthesis of Cinnamon acid assignment. All the folks at the laboratory were sniffing at me and my cabinet.

dexter1 wrote: I think that the word chemist in this context is a bit misleading since i think the OP means creating Pharmaceutical compounds by regular chemistry master students (of which i happen to be one). Or do Americans/Brits use the word "chemist" to designate "pharmaceutist"?

I never came close to creating something fit for human consumption. The laboratory simply is off-limits for anything human consumable. Well, except for perhaps my synthesis of Cinnamon acid assignment. All the folks at the laboratory were sniffing at me and my cabinet.

Good point. I had the same thought when I read Oskar's original post, but then I got caught up in the subsequent discussion.

American English uses the word "chemist" to refer to someone with a chemistry degree or someone who works in a chemistry lab, in a chemicals production facility, or perhaps in a chemical education setting. British English speakers additionally use "chemist" to refer to a person whom American English speakers would call a "pharmacist" or to a business they would call a "drugstore." A modern American English speaker would never use "chemist" to refer to a pharmacist or a drugstore and probably would not be aware that there is an additional meaning to the word in British English unless they had traveled to countries where that usage is common. Also, although "pharmaceutist" can be found in American dictionaries as a synonym for "pharmacist," I've never actually heard an American use "pharmaceutist" in conversation. "Apothecary" would be the most likely (but relatively rare) alternative in American English, in the same sense as the Germanic "apotheker."

From a technical perspective, it's pretty clear that a careful, competent chemist with proper equipment can make many compounds that are fit for human consumption without too much difficulty, at least in small quantities. The trick is consistency, especially when scaling up to produce larger amounts of a compound. Many people, including professional chemists who have not worked in the area, vastly underestimate the difficulties involved in compound scale-up and formulation. A major cost component of many pharmaceutical R&D projects is figuring out why a reaction that works great in a 10 mL test tube doesn't even start or only produces miscellaneous brown goo when you try to carry it out in a 10 L reaction vessel, never mind a 10,000 L tank. Worse, you might figure out how to scale a process to large volume, but for some reason, it only works on Tuesdays.

The one thing you absolutely cannot do is reuse lab equipment that has been in contact with potentially toxic compounds. This means you need a segregated set of glassware, stir bars, etc for a pharmaceutical lab.

I've refined precious medals and made nitroglycerin and guncotton before but that was all for personal education reasons.

dexter1 wrote: I think that the word chemist in this context is a bit misleading since i think the OP means creating Pharmaceutical compounds by regular chemistry master students (of which i happen to be one). Or do Americans/Brits use the word "chemist" to designate "pharmaceutist"?

DUNNO. Actually, in PIHKAL, Shulgin refers to himself as a 'chemist' [but not meaning a regular chemistry master student, though]. If you felt misled, I deeply regret…

Wikipedia wrote: Alexander Theodore "Sasha" Shulgin (June 17, 1925 – June 2, 2014) was an American medicinal chemist, biochemist, organic chemist, pharmacologist, psychopharmacologist, and author.

(1)

I think Oskar clearly meant chemist in the sense of a practitioner of chemistry. To me this use is correct and is the one that should be encouraged. After all a trained chemist (in this sense) can make any type of compound, disregardless of their pharmacological activity.

The use of chemist as "dealer in medicinal drugs" (2) only appears about two hundred years after the use of the word chemist in the first sense became common. This is, unfortunately, British English usage and quite common. People will speak about going down to the chemist's to buy some paracetamol etc.

And I think, dexter1, that what you meant with "pharmaceutist" is, simply, the "pharmacist" in English (British, American or otherwise), the guy or gal who runs the pharmacy that people (wrongly) call chemist's. Again, mileage may differ, but when I read your "pharmaceutist" the first thing I had to think of was a pharmaceutical chemist and not a pharmacist.

An unfortunate confusion, that. I wish people would call things by their proper names instead!

So, for the record, I'm a chemist. Shulgin was, too. Technically, dexter1 is a chemist, too, but non-practicing. Chemists can make just about everything. And the chemists are "almost always correct"(3).

Pharmacists do not make drugs, at best they prepare formulations. That's quite different. PiHKAL and TiHKAL are synthesis books (well, with an pseudo-autobiographical part before) and as such firmly within the domain of chemistry.

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Shulgin
(2) http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=chemist&allowed_in_frame=0
(3) https://www.chemistryworld.com/opinion/speaking-of-chemistry/9085.article

people throw the organic peroxides around at work all the time and i tell them DON'T do that, but no one cares

we commit something like 2.4 million dollars worth of fineable offenses every 6 hours or so and my managers absolutely don't care because ' surveilance equipment isn't allowed here, we can't be caught '

great........