Good ol' Chloral Hydrate - a blast from the past.

[theSWPK]

I've been wanting to get my hands on chloral hydrate for years. I've tried all kinds if drugs for sleep any nothing really seems to do the trick for me. Benzos get close,  but no cigar. I'd love to have something that would give me lights out, just make me pass out for a set amount of time. It'd be awesome just to have for passing time waiting on cash deposits or the dboy.

[Esoteric Anhydride]

How difficult would chloral hydrate be to synthesize at home? For some reason i seem to recall that it's not that hard.

Chloral Hydrate is pretty easy to make, but I think it's just a little harder than Chlorobutanol, which is so easy it's silly and basically the same thing. The "hardest" part is coming up with the Chloroform, and you do need a simple distillation  setup - if not for the final step, you'd want to at least distill your chloroform if you're making it.

Note: I'm NOT supplying specific measurements here, if you want to do this, go research it yourself. Dope chem != baking recipes and you should be doing your own math.

In short: Get a bottle of fresh (bleach gets old and degrades) and known quantity bleach and make sure there's enough room left in the bottle for the Alcohol or Acetone, now freeze that bottle or get it as cold as you can. Doesn't hurt to get the acetone (either acetone or alcohol can be used, I recommend the former) cold too. After maybe 12hrs when the bleach is COLD, crack the bottle, add in your measured acetone, and then put the bottle in a bucket and keep an eye on it and pray it doesn't boil over - if it boils, your CHCl3 is gone, so get the shit cold cos this reaction produces A LOT of heat (exothermic).

So now after a bit you have a small amount of chloroform in a large amount of water/naoh/chlorine, the chloroform is heavier and will be on the bottom of the bottle. Seperate them somehow. Once you sep the CHCl3 you'll notice it's shiny and purty and smells kinda neat. At this point, you should distill your chloroform, it has a very low boiling point and it isn't hard to do. After you do that, distill some acetone too; again, super low boiling point - it's very easy to distill.

Next, measure out the acetone you're gonna use and put it in the freezer with the CHCl3 you're gonna use. You want the shit COLD. When it's REALLY FUCKING COLD; mix the chcl3 into the acetone and add in a catalytic amount of NaOH. Apparently Potassium Hydroxide dissolves MUCH easier, the lye is hard to dissolve and this part can be a little tricky, but it will go in, just be patient and keep stirring it while keeping it cold. Keep the shit stirring until you can't see the lye anymore, couple hours probably. It should be a milky yellow by this point.

Now just distill (or boil off) the acetone and re-x what's left (the yellow stuff) in some DH20. The shit makes really pretty long needle like crystals when you re-crystallize it and the re-x is super easy and does a good job of cleaning it up.

The effect is apparently identical to Chloral Hydrate, they're very closely related. For me 1.5g or so would knock me out for 4ish hours, really very much like GHB. Fun way to kill a weekend but IME the novelty wore off fast.

To make actual Chloral Hydrate is I think just 1 or 2 more steps, but I think you need sulfuric acid for it. This method is safer and easier and gets you basically to the same place.

**If you make chloroform as described above, DO NOT pour the spent bleach down the drain. Chloroform in the sewage system is a big problem. Just let the spent liquid sit inside the bottle for 3-4weeks and then pour it in the dirt. After sitting for a month, the leftover CHCl3 will almost completely degrade.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorobutanol

I think Rhodium has a pretty complete write up on this.

[Chip]

@Esoteric Anhydride, your advice about disposal of environmentally damaging chemicals is really good to see.

I wish that meth. cooks were as concerned as you are about hazardous chemicals.

environmental HR ! 

[Guts]

When I was 15 or 16, I worked in my father's lab working the HPLC machine one summer. I stole some chloroform. Huffed it from a rag... it smells sweet. Fun to do a couple times here and there just for the hell of it but there's probably a reason you don't hear about formheads.

[Roman Totale]

What interests me is that people used to drink chloroform in any number of patent medicines, not just inhale it from rags as in popular memory.  I wonder if the effects differ significantly (not just in speed/intensity of effect) -- I guess oral chloroform to oral chloral hydrate is a pretty logical step, really.

[Snout]

From the little research I e done, drinking chloroform can be very dangerous. Drinking ether on the other hand, can be fun!

[Roman Totale]

Since we're getting into history a bit, did any of you ever read about the "ether epidemic" (as we'd call it today) in Southwest Poland and Czechoslovakia during the 20s and 30s? I think it was the result of some ill-conceived prohibition attempt (surprise) or else it was just much cheaper, but it became the recreational drug of choice above alcohol for a few years in some places.  Just an ether fa )ctoid.

[Snout]

Since we're getting into history a bit, did any of you ever read about the "ether epidemic" (as we'd call it today) in Southwest Poland and Czechoslovakia during the 20s and 30s? I think it was the result of some ill-conceived prohibition attempt (surprise) or else it was just much cheaper, but it became the recreational drug of choice above alcohol for a few years in some places.  Just an ether fa )ctoid.

I've read about these ether epidemics that followed alcohol prohibitions. I think it's in the book "licit and illicit drugs" (All my books are in storage right now) that they talk about how people would be arrested for public intoxication but would be sober by the time they got to the police station due to the short duration of the ether buzz. I really like drinking ether personally. I've not had much luck inhaling it, but ice cold, mixed 50/50 with bourbon, chased with ice water, good times. This wAs real ether, synthed from everclear and sulfuric acid, not starting fluid ( which I guess is real ether also but maybe with some hydrocarbons added ?)

[Roman Totale]

@Snout  Yeah yeah, exactly, I remember reading the same thing about the ether drunks being sober in the police stations.  All my books are in storage too, and I got really into pre-WW2 drug history.  There was a great opiophile thread laying out all the good reads - from Courtwright to memoirs from 1910 - sadly lost to our own history.  Chloral was also a very well-known suicide drug, iirc, especially among prostitutes and other "fallen women" in the human interest tabloid stories in the newspapers of the 19th century.

[shoybs]

Interesting, see I've never even heard of chlorobutanol before. Hey maybe I'll do a little more research sometime and investigate it though.

Ether on the other hand... That I've experienced. Well, starter fluid huffed from a rag. Few summers ago it was my DOC for trying to fight off dope withdrawals. At least until i realized that people could smell it on my breath, and for some reason the come-up always made me paranoid.

Question for people that have tried straight up "real" ether before (as in, not starter fluid) - Does this sound familiar? "BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ"

Also, one of the funniest things I've ever seen - I had introduced my gf at the time to huffing starter fluid, and I didn't realize she got waaay more into it than I did. I texted her one day to pick me up when I was out for a walk. When she got to where I was she fucking completely missed the driveway she tried to pull into and parked in the middle of the lawn in front of this random house i was just walking by. I was like "what the fuck!?" and when i got in the car it REEKED of starter fluid and she held a rag up to her face and took a deep breath. What's even more fucked up is that I was in the BACK seat because a friend of ours was in the car with her.

I was like "Jesus Christ why the fuck did you let her drive!?"

"What? She's fine!"

"She fucking drove up the curb and parked on a lawn!"

And while the entire car reeked and she's spraying starter fluid inside the car with all the windows rolled up, they're both in there smoking. So needless to say, i was like "Get the fuck out of the driver's seat and put the goddamn cigs out before you fucking kill all of us!"

So she huffed more and more until we got to our other friend's house. And that's when the goddamn magic happened. She was so wasted it was beautiful. Virtually no balance at all, barely comprehensible speech, and the best part - oh god the best part - was when she tried to walk. She'd take 3-4 steps and then *BAM!* her legs would just completely give out and she'd drop like a sack of potatoes. It happened SO suddenly I almost died laughing every time, and she must've done that like 10 times. And every time she'd lay on the floor giggling until her legs worked again and she could get back up, only to do it again a minute later.

If you asked me "What's the most fucked up you've ever seen someone?" My ex-girlfriend on ether/starter fluid would be a top contender for sure.

[Chip]

do we need a NO huffing rule ?

scary.

[Esoteric Anhydride]

That story is hilarious!

Huffing ether in a car with burning cigarettes - definite candidates for Darwin Awards.

The problem with starter fluid is that it's full of hexanes, which is probably a toxic hydrocarbon. The ether isn't so hard on your system, but I wouldn't be surprised if the hexanes are carcinogenic.

I've read you can wash the bad shit out of starting fluid with water, but both ether and hexanes are immiscible with water, so you're wasting your time -- the water can't wash either chemical out, neither will dissolve in water in anything more than tiny portions.

The good news is: Hexane and Ether are very easy to distill and separate. The boiling point of ether is less than your body temperature, hexane is like 120c I think. So, if you put some starting fluid that's known to have ether in it, in a like a beer bottle, and then seal some pipe (use PTFE tape to seal) that won't be affected by the ether and run it into another bottle that's much colder (I'd use ice); the ether will boil off if you get it around body temp (get creative), but the hexanes and other crap should stay in the orininal bottle, you shouldn't be able to get hexane hot enough to boil with just body temperature. You'll know it's done when the OG bottle stops boiling with only body temp.

This rc benzo I'm taking is making me stoopid so I hope that's clear. I keep catching really dumb spelling errors and shit. PM if you want explanation on something that isn't clear.

Vinyl tubing *might* be ok to use with ether, I'm not sure. PTFE is probably fine, but it's rigid as far as I know.

WARNINGS:Ether is probably more volatile than gasoline - if you can smell it, and you light a square or smoke or a bowl, expect time in the burn unit and bigass hospital bills. Fucking with ether demands respect, so wear safety goggles and double check every safety precaution. A tip I read somewhere is when fuxin' with flammable chems: ALWAYS keep a wet towel around to throw on a fire if needed (doesn't negate having a fire extinguisher).

Also if you make some and don't use it all, don't leave it for more than a few short weeks in the a brown or green bottle  - it can form explosive peroxides that can detonate simply by mild shock or saying stupid shit. During heavy ether use, after EtOH prohibitions, shit blows up and people die left and right - the shit is really no joke, so if you mess with it, PLEASE be careful!

There's something you can add to the ether to stabalize it against peroxides, but offhand I don't know what it is. Maybe Dizzle does?

[DeadCat]

They want $150 for shipping 100g of the stuff to me, via FedEx  . Isn't that a little bit high - even coming all the way from China? So, I won't be able to do it. I was hoping like $40-50. $150 is too much.

If the "usual dose" is 1-1.5g you would be getting approximately 75 doses for about $2/dose. In those terms is it worth it to you? Perhaps someone you know would split that minimum order with you?

[Snout]

That story is hilarious!

Huffing ether in a car with burning cigarettes - definite candidates for Darwin Awards.

The problem with starter fluid is that it's full of hexanes, which is probably a toxic hydrocarbon. The ether isn't so hard on your system, but I wouldn't be surprised if the hexanes are carcinogenic.

I've read you can wash the bad shit out of starting fluid with water, but both ether and hexanes are immiscible with water, so you're wasting your time -- the water can't wash either chemical out, neither will dissolve in water in anything more than tiny portions.

The good news is: Hexane and Ether are very easy to distill and separate. The boiling point of ether is less than your body temperature, hexane is like 120c I think. So, if you put some starting fluid that's known to have ether in it, in a like a beer bottle, and then seal some pipe (use PTFE tape to seal) that won't be affected by the ether and run it into another bottle that's much colder (I'd use ice); the ether will boil off if you get it around body temp (get creative), but the hexanes and other crap should stay in the orininal bottle, you shouldn't be able to get hexane hot enough to boil with just body temperature. You'll know it's done when the OG bottle stops boiling with only body temp.

This rc benzo I'm taking is making me stoopid so I hope that's clear. I keep catching really dumb spelling errors and shit. PM if you want explanation on something that isn't clear.

Vinyl tubing *might* be ok to use with ether, I'm not sure. PTFE is probably fine, but it's rigid as far as I know.

WARNINGS:Ether is probably more volatile than gasoline - if you can smell it, and you light a square or smoke or a bowl, expect time in the burn unit and bigass hospital bills. Fucking with ether demands respect, so wear safety goggles and double check every safety precaution. A tip I read somewhere is when fuxin' with flammable chems: ALWAYS keep a wet towel around to throw on a fire if needed (doesn't negate having a fire extinguisher).

Also if you make some and don't use it all, don't leave it for more than a few short weeks in the a brown or green bottle  - it can form explosive peroxides that can detonate simply by mild shock or saying stupid shit. During heavy ether use, after EtOH prohibitions, shit blows up and people die left and right - the shit is really no joke, so if you mess with it, PLEASE be careful!

There's something you can add to the ether to stabalize it against peroxides, but offhand I don't know what it is. Maybe Dizzle does?

I think ether can be stabilized with copper wire in the bottle. I think.