Research chemicals

Research chemicals (also called experimental chemicals or unresearched chemicals) are psychoactive substances which have undergone little to no human or animal medical research or investigation. It is for these reasons that the use of research chemicals may be more risky than the use of more well-studied drugs such as MDMA, or cannabis. Most information about research chemicals are based on first-hand experiences and anecdotal evidence. More than one hundred research chemicals were discovered by Alexander Shulgin and written about in his books PiHKAL and TiHKAL.

Research chemicals have similar effects to many illegal drugs and are often invented in order to bypass current drug laws or improve upon existing substances. For example, MXE was invented to be "a stress-free version of ketamine" and the "perfect dissociative."

There is currently a very large market for the production, sale and use of research chemicals, driven by their implicit legality; vendors and users alike pursue research chemicals to avoid legal troubles encountered from being involved with the more traditional chemicals. Governments tend to ban research chemicals a short while after they become popular, and this in turn leads to more being discovered and sold. Some legal systems, such as that of the USA, have moved against research chemicals with acts of law implicitly banning analogues of drugs which are already banned.

Harm potential and toxicity

The safety profile of research chemicals is questionable because they have not been studied in a medical context on humans or animals. There is little to no information on the toxicity, health risks, long-term side effects, or lethal dosage of these chemicals, which make their use more risky than the use of more common substances.

• Additionally, the reliability of many sources of these products can be questionable. Mislabeling, misidentification, issues of purity, adulteration, and misrepresentation (substitution) are unfortunately a common problem with research chemicals. https://www.erowid.org/psychoactives/research_chems/

• Some are very new, while others may have been around for years but haven't had adequate enough medical investigation to quantify health risks, have not been consumed by many people over a long period, or had much data accumulated about their use. Little is known about them, and a good deal of what is known is based only on first-hand psychonautical reports. Scant to no research has been completed on the toxicology or human pharmacology of these drugs. Few, if any, formal human or animal studies have been done. Because of this, some have suggested that they would more appropriately be called "unresearched chemicals". Another term for them is "experimental chemicals", and this may better communicate the unknown risks associated with ingesting these drugs.