One of my dear readers out there wrote to me “I don't own a scale and I understand I have to measure this s**t out in mg.” Thus we introduce to the world today: Alpha Meme’s Divide and Join Portioning (DJP©).

I do not promote anything, but the fact of the matter is, there are ever more designer chemicals that work in the 10 to 200 milligram (mg) range and people explore them no matter what you tell them they should or should not do. As they are at it anyway, and after all, these are often perfectly legal substances mostly without any addiction potential whatsoever, we better help making it safer instead of preaching against the wind. This is called Harm Reduction. Thank you for the applause, appreciated.

(BTW: Prohibition ensures that just having a milligram scale at home can already get you into trouble - so we should not look down upon those that are afraid of chemical scales - there are reasons.)

The new arrival is Methoxetamine [2-(3-methoxyphenyl)-2-(ethylamino)-cyclohexanone], which works quite similar to Ketamine [2-(2-chlorophenyl)-2-(methylamino)-cyclohexanone], or “Special-K”.

Arylcyclohexylamine

So here is the dilemma: You ordered one gram from a reputable online source. Without a good chemical scale accurate to milligrams (mg), how are you going to take say 20 mg out of it, given the fact that the bag might be mislabeled and contain a substance you did not order?

One gram, according to the label, of something you ordered, put in there by somebody who maybe shouldn’t even be allowed to vote. What now?

Firstly some Warnings: Note well!

1) Do not use my method with anything that is dangerous if you go just three or so mg too far. Fentanyl, 5-Meo-AMT, all that is beyond the method! Methoxetamine or K however is pretty safe in that respect.

Methoxetamine

2) If you ever want to accurately go any further down without a scale, you need to dissolve in say 100 milliliter alcohol and then take out the desired amount via a syringe that shows tenths of milliliters. This is the best method anyways, even better than trusting a chemical scale. However, the lay-man will very likely, via cheap or wrong solvent, allowing too much air (oxidation), metallic spoons or beakers, too little patience, heat during evaporation, and several other issues, degrade and often also discard (ups, there it goes into the carpet while I bumped it with the bong) the substance, and that would be really sad, wouldn’t it.

3) Yes, clever people add other precautions, use other methods safely. But many semi educated people even on a science website overestimate their own abilities – not you of course. For example, intravenous (IV) injection is safer than ingestion, because you can ‘titrate’ very slowly and know immediately if there is something even slightly going wrong. Once you ingested 50 mg too much and it is already being absorbed, there is no way to puke it out anymore! Hold on for the ride to hell. Injection does not pose this problem. If you start feeling too woozy after having depressed the syringe plunger just a tenths of the way it was supposed to go, just stop and wait or pull the needle out, and the other nine tenths cannot do no harm no more.

This is the best method for substances like 5-Meo-AMT if you have no access to a scale. Some administer like this even after employing a super-expensive microgram scale. Why? There is no better way to safely re-dose. It allows you to actively ride the trip rather than being taken for a ride. Afterward you can write “proactive” on your job application.

However, lay-people seldom understand which substances in what solvents can be administered IV and having a needle in your forearm for half an hour or so, well, you need a fair dose of whatever makes a good natural sciences researcher.

4) Do not and under no circumstances mistake the method for “eyeballing”. Do not think you can just remember how big the resulting little heap was the last time and take it directly out of your big stash. Eyeballing is how even very experienced people ride to hell and often don’t come back! Yes, seriously, more experienced than you and still going to hell, happens all the time.

Let us get to the meat:

You ordered one gram for example. You should check somehow, maybe on some cheap kitchen scale somewhere in a supermarket or however else, that it is indeed about one gram, and not two grams instead or so. Reputable online sellers mostly give you a little more than what you asked for, just to keep people with badly calibrated scales from complaining that they were cheated. Now you checked it and you are sure that there are indeed about 950 to maybe 1100 mg (this means that you should at least use a cheap scale with 0.1 gram accuracy, not the one in the supermarket used to weight potatoes). How to proceed?

Take a clean glass or marble plate or bathroom mirror or some such, two razor blades, and do not forget paper, pen, and maybe even a calculator to divide by 2 repeatedly. For the Spaghetti Monster’s sake, write down and check every step you are doing, record how much you removed from the big stash, write down anything you can.

Divide your stash into two heaps of equal size, as accurately as you can do by eye. Rotate the plate and split them each again into equal halves resulting in a total of 4 heaps. These are now heaps of very roughly 1000 mg / 4 = 250 mg.

Repeat the four-split on every of the four little piles. Now there are 16 heaps of very roughly [(250 mg/2)/2] = (125 mg/2)= 62.5 mg.

Alpha Meme’s Divide and Join Portioning (DJP©) after the two four-splits: I did everything very roughly (without a glass plate that can be rotated), on a cramped marble windowsill in order to simulate your ten thumps.

The heaps are now too many and you already clearly see that the biggest of the 16 heaps is larger than the smallest. But that is OK, because now comes the most important aspect: JOIN the biggest heap with the smallest. Then again with the remaining 14 heaps, join the biggest of them with the smallest you can find, and so on, until you are back to eight heaps.

DJP after joining, starting with the heaps that look off.

The point here is to decrease the errors by letting upwards errors cancel downwards errors. Join all small heaps into eight resulting piles instead of just selecting the ones that look kind of medium size. This reduces the bias as you get a much better feel for the relative sizes while shaping, selecting, and joining the heaps. The human visual system’s neural networks absolutely suck if it comes to estimating absolute sizes. NEVER just eyeball. But our brains are very powerful indeed when it comes to relative comparisons, and this is why such methods are real science IF YOU DO NOT WALK SHORTCUTS. In the words of guys writing in a peer reviewed article in a well respected journal (me about a different but related subject):

“This method takes advantage of the strength of fuzzy neural network computations via the human hunter-gatherer's visual system's evolved superiority…”

I put the heaps into bags (cut off glove fingers) in order to weight them. Notice TWO razor blades. To get a pile from the surface, use two blades. Clean one blade with the other (None of your sweaty thumbs ever touch the powder!).

Now take the heap closest to average size and put all the others back into the bag or keep them in different bags if they all look the same. I did the latter to weight the heaps. The result was an average of 125 mg with a standard deviation of 12 mg, the largest pile having been 146 mg and the smallest 104 mg instead of the expected (1000 mg / 16)*2 = 125 mg.

Now repeat the above with the selected heap.

The about 100 to 150 mg pile nicely shaped to repeat the procedure. With care, I could have been more accurate, but I did really fast in order to – you know – be closer to reality.

Anyway, with care and making short lines instead of round heaps if uncertain, you can go down to 16 piles again and then join to get eight pretty accurate ~ (125 mg/16)*2 ~ 16 mg heaps.

Divide

Divide and Join Portioning: After joining smallest with biggest iteratively again.

These tiny piles now pose no danger. Even if you accidentally inhale one, you will be fine. There is no problem now to take a third of it for roughly 5 mg and be fine no matter what (after allergy testing and so on, see below). Put the heaps into separate bags or gel caps and keep them in a well labeled jar.

When comparing/joining, do shift the piles around, reshape them. The accuracy comes from your neural networks and those need input. Do not merely look at the heaps while in a hurry – NEVER be in a hurry! Do not just leave the heaps where ever they are on the plate, because it may well be that those in the center look smaller than those near the rim, lines to the top left may seem longer to you, … .

Divide and Join Portioning:

Once you have your roughly “16mg” piles, or say a roughly (2*16mg) = 32mg one by joining two of those again, this further joining reducing the random error further, you are safe with dividing without joining and even eyeballing.

More Caution

First of course you must take a tiny amount (about 1 mg) in order to see whether you are allergic or whether there is anything seriously wrong with the substance. Even reputable distributors have mislabeled for example “Bromo-Dragonfly”, with deadly consequences! By the way, this exact same caution applies to any medicine, for example penicillin. Allergies you have but do not know about are seldom, but they can have serious consequences.

After completed allergy/big-mess-up testing, you still need to see how your own body reacts. Then you probably should first just apply about 5 mg, next day 10 mg, if that is ok, next time 20 mg (these examples would be typical for Methoxetamine), after that you know best yourself. Methoxetamine should also be good injected intra muscularly (IM), just like K. Oral or under the tongue are not so good. IV injection does not work with Ketamine or Methoxetamine (unless you used a huge drip).

And yet more Caution

This method divides reasonably accurately without access to a scale. This is here in order to warn you NOT TO JUST EYEBALL, as is very often done in haste before a party or whatever. Eyeballing is dangerous. If you at all can, do use a trustworthy chemical scale! Also: this article cannot cover many other aspects. Educate yourself about all aspects of what you are about to do. For example, do not come to me crying after measuring out as described, being a fat hulk dropping stuff always on a huge pizza eaten before, then being convinced that “this much is fine”, and subsequently having killed your petite anorexic girlfriend who is on three different psycho meds. Know yourself – if you are a moron, this measuring method is not going to help you avoid being a moron.

Is Divide and Join Partitioning right for Me?

If you buy another bag, even from the same distributor, do all of it again; the kitchen scale, the allergy testing with a tiny dose, the looking what your “experienced” body does with a low dose. If you stick with that, a bunching of coincidences cannot harm you. What is a bunching of coincidences? For example: The first time there being only 900 mg in the bag and the supermarket scale showing more than a gram and you selecting a 90 mg heap by chance (instead of the expected 1100 mg/8=137 mg) in order to divide further, then testing with a 10 mg one instead of the nominal 1100 mg/64 = 17 mg and throwing the rest away by accident. Now you buy another bag, but this time there are actually 1100 mg and a different supermarket scale shows less than a gram, you select a large 160 mg heap by chance, then end up with a 160 mg/8 = 20 mg one instead of the expected 900 mg/64 = 14 mg. If you do not test again but instead think “well last time the 17 mg (actually only 10) were too weak so now I take two of the smaller 14 mg ones (that are actually 2*20 mg = 40 mg)” you may well get into serious trouble! If you did not understand this paragraph and cannot be bothered to read it carefully again, Divide and Join Partitioning and research chemicals generally are not for you!

If you understood the last paragraph, you will likely understand that as long as you go no shortcuts with the method, the variations in the weights are no more severe than the usual variations due to the time of day, your previous food intake, whether you had a coffee or not, ate something very sour instead of cookies prepared with baking soda (acidity), had grapefruit juice (liver enzyme reduction), have your period, and so on.

Some people say that science education is so bad that practically all people are too silly and we should refrain from active harm reduction, as harm reduction may just give a feeling of false security to those who will mess up nevertheless. Well, this is a science site and there are plenty of responsible people out there reading. Education is what we need, and we are not going to put on a helmet every time we walk up stairs or avoid stairs altogether just because there will always be people who fall down stairs.

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Enjoyed this post? If so, let me have a personal one on one here with you (everybody else just skip): Sometimes I wish I had a time machine, go back, buy perfectly legal, cheap medicines, bury a ton sealed in a good location, and then come back. Well, time travel is impossible, so now is probably the time to get your shovels out, because the FDA is going to kill this baby. I am in a bad situation here, but one day I will be roaming the planet again, and maybe you my friend have buried something ready to be explored together under the guidance of the traveling master?

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