The Outlaw Chemist Teaching People How to Make Drugs From Scratch
A masked online educator known as 'Myco' has been producing videos demonstrating how to synthesize psychedelic substances like LSD and psilocybin. Following an inquiry by Wired, YouTube removed the channel for violating terms of service regarding the promotion of illegal acts.
Why it matters
The story explores the tension between the democratization of scientific knowledge and the regulation of dangerous or illegal content on social media platforms.
Wearing a baseball cap that said “Mycelium Familia” over his shaved head with his brown beard peeking out from beneath his mask, he declares his tutorial on synthesizing the psychedelic over the course of three days to be the “world’s first.”
“It has been a dream of mine to record this process so everybody has the scientific knowledge they need,” says Myco, which is short for mycologist, a scientist who studies fungi, in the video. (He doesn’t share his real last name, and he spoke to WIRED on the condition we wouldn’t use his last name due to the illegal nature of some of his work.)
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