Hammilton's pharmacopia-A Clandestine chemist's tale
Interviewing an MDMA chemist, that got busted, just when he had made enough to make life comfortable for himself and his wife, guy had enough chemicals left for about another 30 pouds of MDMA, then the filth busted him. Absolutely tragic, and the way he went back and told of the days where one could walk into any pharmacy and buy say, nitric acid, aniline, acetic anhydride, its tragic,
Things have been vanishing from OTC sources even in my day. Its shitty, although the internet has been freeing us chemists big time, with the willingness of the chinese economy and the polish to fill the wishes of anyone who asks.
Shows an MDMA chemist performing a vacuum distillation of sassafrass oil, isolating safrole, before isomerizing it using KOH to isosafrole, vac distillation and finally running a buffered performic acid oxidation, making MDP2P and then an Al/Hg amalgam reduction
And OMG! It features Strike and The Hive! that was really back in the day, strike had a chemical supply company, and at the same time, Ran The Hive, probably the very first clandestine chemist online forum resources. Really brings back memories, after of course starting out in chemistry as a kid, and finally earning my wings at The Hive. Too few oldschool bees around now though. We just lost another winged brother from the old blood, cancer, IIRC
So many good memories, yet tempered with a sadness at what has come, and what is still coming. The young and upcoming generations now being denied easy access to supplies to learn chemistry where they wish to go further than schools show.
And funny anecdotes about throwing lumps of white phosphorus, tossing sodium and potassium metal into water and having a blast, literally. Makes me think that deliberately violently pyrophoric fuckabouts with potassium/sodium and phosphorus are a rite of passage for all chemistry hobbtists.
