Ah yes, it was 2 years ago from this week that I pulled off possibly my ballsiest, most illegal harm reduction initiative to date. I literally flew into Chicago in the middle of my work day (in case anyone’s confused, I don’t get paid to do any of this. I worked in tech full time to pay my bills) to pick up an FTIR spectrometer, brought it back to NYC, and ran a drug checking lab all week from my living room.

I also flew in someone from California who has experience with the equipment to assist (she is from NYC so it doubled as a vacation to see her family) and we took turns (mostly the night of the House of Yes Halloween party) testing substances that were brought to my apartment, as well as her occasionally swinging by the venue to pick up samples people left with me to have tested for them.

This was the best compromise we could make to make testing work for House of Yes, since we were unsure of how to pull strings to test at the event itself (just FYI it’s usually an issue of law enforcement collaboration, the Department of Health is always on board, but doesn’t get to make these types of authoritative decisions).

I also had the help of Sam in Vancouver (BCCSU) and Guy in London (@theloop_uk) helping me calibrate the spectrometer and cross testing a few samples because the heroin tests in particular are very tricky. There are only like a dozen of these spectrometers being used GLOBALLY specifically for harm reduction. Some of you who have attended events like Hulaween and EDC have probably seen one and I don’t think that’s acceptable.

I actually preferred this setup as I got to test street drugs that were brought to me from neighborhoods with high overdose rates, and not just be testing the drugs of party-goers who can afford [expensive] event tickets where you could also get a legit tattoo and not by some rando who is probably high on the same methamphetamine you are high on.

I set up chairs for a waiting area (like they have in Brussels, Belgium) and informed people to come bring their stuff by. Collectively we ran ‰ˆ100 tests, I did 70 of them. It costs about $60,000 to buy an IR spec, but I would absolutely keep doing this if I could.