I was thinking about all the earliest times I’ve been around or seen lab related activities, scenes, stuff etc. Someone out there has a deeper and more inspiring example than the following:
Dr. Doak (from Goldeneye on the 64) - First time seeing a laboratory (like walk around and stuff, pretty crude lol)
I first expressed interest in chemistry after not understanding what was eating the blue hippy van in our Cres-tucky backyard (news flash it was rust!)
Where and when did you get inspired?
I remember combining random chemicals/foods into Tupperware containers and placing it on my heat register to warm/react as a child just to see what would happen.
If I’d’ve written it down I guess it technically would’ve been a legit experiment.
Parents hated finding a lukewarm container of bleach, Windex and ketchup around the house. But I thought it was pretty cool.
Experiments mixing the chemicals under the kitchen sink when I was 4 was amazing . wish the internet was around then would have saved my eyes xD.
Prison hooching from when you were knee high to tree high!
I’m pretty sure I was hooked when I realized I could actually blow shit up putting dry ice and water or vinegar and baking soda in 2L bottles!
Chemistry was my favorite class in highschool. My teacher was badass and it was one of the only classes I stayed focused on (from interest).
I definitely had a habit of creating concoctions and finding an appreciation for fire and smoke. When I was younger.
Flash forward to making rosin presses and I wanted to learn about the equipment that produces more in labs. Traveled from Texas to Portland Oregon and got my first steps running rotos and learning short path and ethanol extraction. Was brief due to bm instability with the original owner having a mutany of sorts but got me pushing to learn more. Where I found TerpTek and learning more about the equipment and companies like Summit (we sold). It’s been wild all the journeys but that being in a lab and learning hands on really put me in this lane.
My high school physical science teacher tossed a chunk of solid sodium into a bucket of water and I was sold.
Then the same year I saw Carl Sagan give a live lecture on nuclear winter and learned how full of shit America was with respect to the cold war, nuclear weapons, and the “Star Wars” con.
I got expelled from high school for selling weed. I went to an “alternative school” in another town after, and the teacher made a weather balloon with us, we made hydrogen with lye, tin foil, and water. I knew then science was for me.
Mine was more of a question from my dad. In my teen years, I had lots of trim and would toss it in the compost pile. My dad asked me why I was throwing all my “oil” away? He told me about him and his friends making honey oil from their whole plants in the 60s and early 70s. Living 5 mins from Mexican border so etoh was cheap. He taught me a rudimentary soak method at 16 years old. He then told me if you want to know more then read a fucking book. The end.
My dad was a safety manager for a liquid nitrogen plant. We used to go as children to freeze bananas and use them as hammers. Freeze things til they explode. Etc. Made me think about what different chemicals do. Ever since then I paid more attention in my science classes.
I was on the corner of haight and cole street late on night in 92 or 93 and I told someone I wanted to learn to do what they did.
They told me how east it was to clean up shitty LSD with activated charcoal and methanol as to get PiHKAL if I wanted to learn…(PiHKAL doesn’t describe LSD but TiHKAL wasn’t out yet)
I saw it at the next show, shoreline, and I read it but it made no sense. Good story.
Then after my arrest Someone gave me a pamphlet on making MDMA, but there was instructions on refluxing, and each reaction was described.
Then I got a ton of books over the next 15 years.
Right before I got out I got a pamphlet on mimosa hostillis and how to do it
Got out and did it
In 2010 a glassblower-dude showed me how to open blast and it’s been a nice education
When Jerry died in 95, I went back to school. Had my BS in 2000, MS in 02, and PhD in 09.
Dead tour, you could say, fomented my intents with respect to chemistry.
For me it was jump117 and @Graywolf having a back and forth back in the day on ICMAG. Wanna say it was like 2009 and they were brainstorming on using fresh frozen material and ethanol. IMO the birth of live resin came from those forums. I wanted to learn why the water would or would not interact with the solvent. This was the inroads to me falling in love with organic chemistry.
I was at most shoreline shows in 92 and early 93 before I got snatched up at Cal Expo in May…stayed at the Sacto Hotel downtown for 5 months…fun times to be a deadhead and wanted by the feds.
Wow. What a show.
It was fucking free too. I tried to take my kids to Neil Degrass Tyson but tickets were $100 each. Fuck that shit.
I was five years old, a bee stung my leg while i was burying star wars action figures in a dirt pile next to our garden, my mother gave me a shot of benadryl to ease the swelling, i fell asleep and had intense dreams, when i woke up i thought it was strange that everyone was awake so early, 7am was still easily two hours before everyone in my family was up and dressed, i realized that i had only slept for two hours but it had felt like many more.
I climbed to the top shelf in the kitchen where mom had pulled the benadryl from, far from where a child might be able to get into… but i was an excellent shelf climber.
The cough syrups were many, and i began experimenting with each one- orange flavor, grape flavor, i only weighed a few dozen pounds at that point so a few shots got me real jacked and i would play with my trains in total disassociation- i combined them to various extents- the benadryl trips were ofc absolutely horrifying experiences but that didnt stop me from returning again and again to that medicine cabinet.
Reminds me of my friends who would robo trip lol.
Not my cup of tea
I grew up in labs and the pharmaceutical industry. Total black sheep of my family.
I wasn’t really into chem till later in my life tbh.
Yeah…
That checks out 
