Psychedelic Abstracts
Search Results for: growing ergot
GRINSPOON, LESTER; BAKALAR, JAMES B
Purity of street LSD
'Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered'; 1979
According to data compiled by the PharmChem Research Foundation, a California organization, the only psychedelic drugs now generally available on the street are LSD, PCP, and to a lesser extent MDA. Almost no one takes the trouble to manufacture mescaline or psilocybin, because their effects resemble those of LSD and the much larger amounts required make the expense too great. Mescaline is available only in the form of peyote buttons and psilocybin only in the form of psychedelic mushrooms, which have been discovered growing all over the United States; they are increasingly sought after in the wild (see Pollock 1975 a; Weil 1977 a) and, with difficulty, can also be cultivated (see Oss and Oeric 1976). (Many 'psilocybin mushrooms,' incidentally, are just commercial mushrooms laced with LSD.) Anything labeled as pure or synthetic mescaline, psilocybin, or THC is almost certainly either LSD or PCP, or else contains no drug. Some chemicals closely related to LSD have been synthesized to sidestep the law; the one most often available is the acetylated variant, ALD-52, which is almost as potent as LSD itself. As for the quality of illicit LSD, adulterants and substitutes must be distinguished from products of improper synthesis. Since the variable physical and psychological effects of LSD sometimes resemble those of strychnine, belladonna, or amphetamine, there are rumors that illicit LSD often contains these substances. But laboratory analysis, especially the work of PharmChem Research Foundation, shows that illicit LSD rarely contains adulterants, although the advertised dose is usually two to five times the actual one. The major problem is imputities that are by-products of careless or inadequate synthesis. In the manufacturing process, ergotamine or other ergot alkaloids are reduced to lysergic acid (d-lysergic acid monohydrate), which is then converted to LSD. The whole procedure, and especially the last stage, in which LSD is separated from iso-LSD by chromatography, is rather delicate; it requires skill and good equipment. The government has tried to cut off the supply of chemical precursors; but illicit chemists are usually able to obtain enough, because several ergot derivatives are used as medicines and the quantities needed are small: by on estimate, 70 kg of ergotamine tartrate is enough to supply the American LSD market for a year (McGlothlin 1974 b). The only impurity regularly found by the PharmChem Laboratory, aside from occasional traces of ergotamine, is iso-LSD: it is very similar to LSD in chemical structure (the same atoms in a slightly different arrangement) but pharmacologically inactive. It is rarely present in a proportion of more than 15 percent and appears to have no effect on the drug action. So street LSD seems to be reasonably pure.
CLAY, KEITH
"Trespassers Will Be Poisoned"
Natural History, September 1989
[fragments of article from sketchy hand-written notes]
Tall Fescue Grass, Kentucky-31
from farm of W.M.Suiter in Menifee County, KY in the 1930s
Cattle develop syndrome resembling ergotism
in mid 1970s fungus in fescue discovered at University of Georgia.
Ascomycete fungus: Acremonium coenophialum
network of hyphae in intercellular spaces
mutualistic endophyte
non-infectious.
Fungus reproduces vegetatively, inhabits grass seeds. cannot produce spores.
Hundreds of other grasses known to harbor similar fungi.
Grasses are otherwise remarkably free of toxic alkaliods.
Grass related to 'sleepy grass' in Kulu valley in India.
Claviceps purpurea, ignis sacer "holy fire".
"...native people in the Amazon use an endophyte-infected sedge for obstetric purposes and in magical/religious ceremonies, the effects of which suggest the presence of ergot alkaloids."
"after discovering the endophyte growing inside toxic tall fescue ... scientists were able to grow it in pure cultures in the laboratory and show that it produced ergot alkaloids"
Keith Clay is assistant professor of biology at Indiana University, Bloomington.
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