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, including 2C-E and DOM, 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."

Harm potential and toxicity

The safety profile of research chemicals is unknown 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 like LSD or MDMA.

In terms of risk factors, Erowid states that "mislabeling, misidentification, issues of purity, adulteration, and misrepresentation (substitution) are unfortunately a common problem with research chemicals." It is recommended that one avoid branded products or blends if the active psychoactive compounds are not listed on the labelling. Combining research chemicals also presents an unknown risk due to the lack of research.

Caution should be used when dosing because not much is known about the dose range and lethal dosages. Research chemicals which have caused death at high doses include 25I-NBOMe, 25B-NBOMe, 25C-NBOMe, AMT,

Dosing

As these chemicals are generally very new, and little information exists as to their effect on humans, there is also a lack of information about recommended doses. Often, speculative doses can be found on the Internet. When a new research chemical is released, the first results can often be found on forums such as Bluelight or drugs-forum. These consist of anecdotal trip reports, and cannot be trusted very much since in the early days of a drug's release, vendors will often sell other drugs under the newer name. After a time, and once some verifiable reports about the drug have been collected, tiered summaries are compiled by resources such as TripSit Factsheets and Erowid, which can provide more conclusive dosage guidelines. However, even when speculative doses are published, they should not be fully trusted due to the lack of long-term testing a drug has received at this point. Drugs which do not have much reliable information pertaining to their dose will generally be tagged.

With a chemical that has never been tested in vivo (animal subjects) for most substances you would want to start around 25ug's and titrate your dosage up to 50ug's in increments of 25ug's Leaving a week minimum between the 25ug test and 50ug, and work your way up. But this isn't needed for every chemical, such as BK-2C-I. You can use BK-2C-B as a "reference" of sorts, of it being 10x weaker than the parent compound(BK-2C-B). It is much safer to start at a lower dose than what would be an active dose to see if your body can handle the drug.Some might say that you can gauge an activity with just SAR's (Structure-Activity relationship) which in the most part true, yet in cases such as Lophophine and IRIS, there is a very good reason why it should be active, yet it isn't. That can also go in the other way, as IRIS is one of the "Ten Classic Ladies" or the ten possible homologues of DOM. While DOM is active around 3mg's, yet IRIS is inactive.

Therefor, because of the importance of using sub-threshold tester-doses, and since many of these new chemicals are highly potent anyways it is imperative that one has a reliable way to accurately measure chemicals in low doses.

It is not safe to assume any consumer-grade scale will be reliably accurate <50mg, however there is a way to measure accurately low doses of chemicals using a method known as 'volumetric dosing', Quick guide to volumetric dosing. While this technique is not particularly difficult it does require some planning and precision.

If you intend to employ volumetric measuring techniques, or when working with new chemicals (or any chemicals for that matter) it is important to be sure to use the most accurate scale available on a consumer level. Unfortunately, there are no scales that are reliably accurate for weights under approximately 25 mg that are readily available to the average consumer. That being said, there are some scales for sale for under $100, which if used correctly, can be safely used to prepare a solution for volumetric dosing of a substance. For more information on how to correctly use a scale, and sources for reasonably reliable scales to buy, check Scales.

• 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.