Research chemicals are newly-synthesized drugs that have not yet been scheduled by the FDA, making them very easy to order online under the guise of “not for human consumption.” Every year, teams of shadowy scientists from all around the globe create oodles of new chemical compounds that are relatively similar to drugs people already take recreationally, but completely different chemically speaking. This is super dangerous because minute differences in chemical composition could mean the difference between a killer high and a high that kills you, as Cal Poly Humboldt Chemistry professor Joshua Smith reminded me.
“The most infamous drug you should learn about is thalidomide,” Smith said. “One version of it was an anti-nausea drug for pregnant women. One very small change to it created horrible birth defects.”
That’s a very succinct way of saying just because a drug is similar to another drug in terms of chemical composition, it should not be considered safe to take by any stretch of the imagination. 25i is a well-known example of this. It gained popularity as a cheap replacement to LSD for a while until people started overdosing and dying because it was much more toxic than LSD and very poorly understood. Many of the thousands of different novel compounds available for purchase online have never been tested on humans but are still sold under catchy names like “Dr Buzz pellets” or “Mitsubishi capsules,” leading one to assume that there are people taking gross advantage of this legal loophole to lure addicts and dealers into buying knockoff drugs.
A screenshot taken from a website that sells research chemicals. The name of the website has been omitted to prevent anyone from seeking out the website in question, though it is admittedly very easy to find.I posted something on my personal social …
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Author: Patrick Maravelias / High Times
