Urban legend?

[satanslawyer]

Everyone’s heard the stories of someone dealing acid and having to (for some reason or another) hide his/her sheet of acid against their skin and the sweat ends up absorbing all the acid into their system and they end up becoming “Perma-Fried.”

Has their ever been a DOCUMENTED case of this?

[toadspittle]

Hmm. I thought it was pretty well established that you couldn’t absorb LSD through your skin like that. I’ll see if I can find a cite.

[toadspittle]

Hmm. Snopes sez:

http://www.snopes2.com/horrors/mayhem/payphon2.htm

(The effectiveness of this scheme [gang members putting a mixture of strychnine and LSD on payphone buttons to kill unsuspecting phone users] is dubious as well – if the victim didn’t come along immediately after the application of the deadly mixture, he’d probably have to have sweaty hands or hold his finger to a button for several minutes, since momentary contact with the dried product would likely have no effect. This would also be one heck of an expensive prank.)

Snopes then deals with the classic Blue Star Acid hoax, and points to a FAQ:

http://users.lycaeum.org/~sputnik/tattoo/facts.html

Can LSD be absorbed through the skin?

Yes, but in the circumstances described in the warning flyers - casual handling of blotter acid, or “tattoos” - this is extremely unlikely.

But then, the father of LSD, Albert Hoffman, indicates that it CAN be absorbed through the skin–that’s how he discovered what he had:

http://www.a1b2c3.com/drugs/lsd01.htm

But this led to another question: how had I managed to absorb this material? Because of the known toxicity of ergot substances, I always maintained meticulously neat work habits. Possibly a bit of the LSD solution had contacted my fingertips during crystallization, and a trace of the substance was absorbed through the skin.

So… it’s POSSIBLE that such a freak-out could occur (which I didn’t think was the case). Whether or not one ever has… best to have someone with access search MedLine.

[capybara]

I thought that this was why people would occasionally mix acid and the solvent DMSO, to make it skin-permeable? (this could be more hippie-era UL, along with smoking nutmeg or baby Hawaiian woodrose, etc) I doubt that this could happen with blotter-style acid, though, while Hoffmann was likely working with heavily concentrated liquids.

[redtail23]

I’ve never heard of a documented case. However, I have spoken to someone who says that he experienced this problem once when he was dealing. He’d gotten an incredibly huge batch of acid somehow and was divvying it up into individual doses for sale. He apparently absorbed enough through his hands to feel an effect, although not a tremendous one (well, for him, anyway ;)). He said he always wore gloves after that, if he had large quantities to handle at once.

FTR, I don’t think he was talking blotter, I think he was working with microdot. It’s been a long time ago, though…