When you see videos of interviews of clandestine chemistry, and it mentions the Hive, the first of the clandestine chemist's forums online almost certainly, and this one I was watching, an interview with an MDMA chemist, who awfully sadly, got busted when he had just the chemicals left to make and shift another 30 pounds of pure MDMA, after which, he was going to retire and live for the rest of his life, well off, wanting for nothing, with his wife, living comfortably, yet modestly in a home in the mountains, with just his needs, and those things to make him happy like his chemistry equipment and reagents.
Something, bust aside, which I myself aspire to and would love like nothing else, save only my love I still feel for my former fiancee, Cazzie (the astonishingly beautiful 14yo Kanner's woman who slammed me into a tree and shoved her tongue down my neck by way of making her 'introduction' then claimed me as her property)
I'd really, truly, want nothing more in my life, than to make my fortune through the artistry of the clandestine chemist, not to be ostentatious with the money, but so I could live forever in comfort, coming totally tax-free, no worries about bills, no worries about food or drink, no worries about accomodation. Just money to buy food, drink, chemicals and glassware, equipment.
And, if I ever could find one worthy of the love I have to give, if I could track Cazzie down, and make things together with her again, then live my life with her, with the money from much hard work put in as a.....chemist who operates within the margins of the chemistry faculties of the world..to earn enough that my daily bread is forever paid for, and I could raise kids with the love of my life...
But I know I'm getting old, when I saw that video, and was filled with a deep nostalgia, for the days of the hive, and for how over the counter chemical supplies used to extend to nitric acid, aniline, and (he listed these specifically in the interview), acetic anhydride, the way he said 'acetic anhydride' it was almost with a pain in his voice, nostalgic, wistful, sore. And these at any chemist along with the aspirin, even when he was just a kid, he could walk in and just ask for some phosphorus, hand over the money, and be given his phosphorus.
NOW? whilst I myself can buy it (red or white, I could only buy tiny samples of black phosphorus in sealed vials as an element collector's sample, its hard as hell to make, rare, and commands an immensely high price, requiring extremes of pressure and high temperatures to make), many, if not MOST chemists, whether they be involved in clandestine ops, or otherwise, they just cannot buy elemental phosphorus for love nor money, not for any price.
If most chemists wish to get any phosphorus at all, they either are limited to such tiny scraps from a pauper's table as come by scraping the striker pads of safety match books. Or they have to build a furnace and roast a mixture of phosphates and carbon to over a thousand degrees, and lead the exit gases into a series of tanks containing ice-cold salted-ice water, to condense the vapours as white phosphorus.
Or else they have to go without this incredibly valuable reagent (or set of them, whites, red, blacks, vitreous grey, violet (violet and Hittorf's alpha-metallic phosphorus) and Schlenk's scarlet phosphorus)
I have 2 kilos of red phosphorus and a little white, can make more white if I want to, and can make scarlet phosphorus without too much difficulty, make violet/Hittorf's alpha-metallic type violet phosphorus with considerable effort, taking at least a week of heating in a sealed vessel or in molten lead, keeping the temperature gradient carefully within 20 degrees, at a total temperature of several hundred degrees 'C
But that video, showing the front page of The Hive, showing snapshots of threads, so much nostalgia, and it made me aware that damned if I am not part of the old guard.
Will always mourn for the downfall of The Hive, it was a terrific place, and with 'the couch' subforum, for when we winged brother Bees weren't talking shop, just to kick our shoes off, and shoot the shit. It was great. And oh me oh MY!, the techniques and science that the true masters of pill-defucking were capable of (in the US it seems legal to include ingredients not listed on the inactives list in OTC meds, disgusting or what? they at least need to be forced to declare every ingredient used, be it a dye, a bulking agent, a polymer or anything else, if not for the clandestine chemist, then for those with allergies)
There were specialists in stripping out both the gaaks and the sometimes included 'fake', which would extract with, and resemble pseudoephedrine or ephedrine but which would reduce to fuck all of value, and possibly deceive the chemist to throw away the 'slops', thinking they had their ephedrine or PSE when in fact, they had something intended to lie to them and make them do just that.
Disgusting or WHAT? but these guys, they were true masters who had it not only a science but a true art, removing even multiple stacks of different gaaks with each gaak having different properties, with solvent combinations, distillation under vacuum, steam-distillation, tricks like turpentine boils, the tetra-trap, all sorts of other tricks and wonderous machinery constructed specifically for beating these vile gaaks. Compared to them, at pill defucking, I am, but a greenhorn rankest of amateurs. Not like these guys, they were more GODS than men at de-gaaking.
I am a competent chemist alright, but at pseudoephedrine tablet degaaking, I have NOTHING on these true masters. I am to them, what an amoeba is to me by comparison.
But yes, I am one of the old, old, old guard of such chemists. That brings both nostalgia, and not a little sorrow, sorrow not just for the lack of so rich a variety of over the counter chemicals and glassware, but for the kids, for their children and their children's children; and those in every generation who feel that irresistible pull towards discovery, to manipulate their environment with the very basic building blocks of molecules like most NT kids would just play with lego.
Because I've a hunch that most if not all Bees and those clandestine chemists driven not by mere hunger for money, but for the love of the subject, love of their work, have a strong streak of autism in them.
