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                     Can Little Fester Come Out and Play?

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Posted by Forest Gump on February 21, 1998 at 19:39:04:

Well, can he?

The following is a past post of mine which can be found in the post archive
12/19/97-12/25/97, in the post "Re: LSD Synth" under the heder "Lysergica":

: Well, I understand that Uncle Fester wrote a book entirely on LSD
manufacture, and I have heard that it is pretty good, although I have never
read it.

The book that you refer to "Practical LSD Manufacture" by Uncle Fester, now
in its 2nd Ed. isn't completely about LSD, although from the title one could
get that impression. The first edition contianed 115 pages, of which only
about 70 pages actually had anything to do with LSD synthesis, the rest
mostly about Fester's pet project: TMA-2 synthesis. The second edition
contains 142 pages, almost all the extra pages going to his pet project --
which now consumes about halve the book -- while the LSD portion remains
virtually unchanged (all the errors and mistakes of the first edition were
remarkably well preserved into the second). A naive person could be forgiven
for mistakenly thinking the book of being just a vehicle for his pet project
-- but of course we know better.

Before I list just some of those errors let me preface it with this: it is
obvious that not only does Fester not have any practical experience with
Lysergic chemistry, but that he is also confused by it.

1.) Isomer Confusion. In chapter 4 Fester makes repeated mistakes as to
chirality. On page 24, in reference to the anhydrous hydrazine degradation
method, he tells us that this procedure produces very little iso- compound,
when in fact it produces predominately iso- material. On page 25 he informs
us of the importance of maintaining anhydrous conditions to avoid getting
racemic product -- on further reading it is obvious that by "racemic" he
means iso/normal mixtures, as nowhere is there to be found any reference to
the l (levo) compound.

The older hydrazine hydrate method produced a 1/1 mixture of d and l
compounds; the l compounds are inactive and represent a total loss, as there
is no convenient method to convert them into the desired d compound. The
anhydrous hydrazine method is a newer improvement upon this which avoids the
l compound, but it still gives about 2/3 of the iso- compound which is also
inactive; 2/3 inactive product sounds real bad, but it's not nearly as bad
as the older method because the iso- compound is easily isomerized into the
active compound in about 2/3 yield. When Hofmann refers to this new method
as not producing any "racemic" material what he means is that it doesn't
produce any of the useless l compound, not that it doesn't produce iso-
compound.

Also, the amidation procedure he gives in the same chapter produces some
iso- compound, although nowhere does he mention that. Indeed, from reading
the purifacation procedure, he seems to think that this amidation method
also preserves chirality.

2.) Continuum Error. The first paragraph on page 27 (i.e., "Both of these
choices are really very poor, ...") picks up from nowhere, and we're left to
wonder what he's refering to. Chalk this one upto bad proofreading (this is
Loompanics we're talking about after all).

3.) Outdated Methods. The four amidation methods in the book have long since
been superseded by the phosphorus oxychloride in chloroform method, which is
not in the book.

4.) Method X. In the book a big deal is made about his erroneous discovery
of a "superior" LSD method which he calls "method x". I'll spare you all the
convoluted details and inane logic of how he came about this "discovery"
except for this one statement of his: "Note that propionic anhydride is a
listed chemical under the Chemical Diversion Act, with a reporting threshold
of 1 gram. There is only one substance in the field of clandestine drug
manufacture where 1 gram is a significant amount -- LSD"

I'm sure not a few DEA chemists must have laughed there ass off after having
read that. Propionic anhydride is used to make fentanyl and its analogues.
Some fentanyl analogues are 10 times more potent than LSD!!!!

And that is just some of the errors contained within that book. And with
that I'll leave you, hopefully a little bit more knowlegable.

-- Forest Gump

[end]

How doth thou answer thine charges leveled against thee, Sir Fester?

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Posted by Uncle Fester on February 22, 1998 at 22:53:18:

In Reply to: Can Little Fester Come Out and Play? posted by Forest Gump on
February 21, 1998 at 19:39:04:

"I'm sure more than a few DEA chemists laughed their ass off on that one"
Whew, that is good. You know I'm still yanking material out of my books I
took from their liturature. The biggest mistake I ever made was to read
their Journals.
Enough whining about that second ed of LSD Manufacture. Just the recipe
on how to properly use industrial grade formamide to make large amounts of
amphetamine or MDA was worth way more than the selling price of the book.