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Preface - Dangerous things!

Please keep in mind that this is experimentation on my part due to desperation of the medical industry failing me. In no way is this a recommendation to follow suite, nor is this a scientific submission to be taken as gospel. It’s something I was willing to risk my health over and, it appears, that I came out alive on the other end. My goal is to share the experience so that if anyone else considers trying this, they may just read the last paragraph and know that it is fruitless.

Part 1 - the why.

I have IBS-D which results in a lot of diarrhea and pretty much a bland rice and meat diet. Since I live in the northern part of the world, vitamin D is something that I’ve had to supplement, but it just didn’t seem to absorb (my IBS symptoms got worse during winter and better during summer and much better when I actively tanned). I even paid for a KDAE vitamin panel and found out I was low on KDA. So I came up with a solution - I purchased those 3 vitamins in powdered form, weighed out a week’s dose (I have read about doctors injecting multi-month doses of vitamin D into patients who were deficient and needed to keep coming back for it), dissolved it in 30ml of pure liquor store ethanol and diluted it to 30%. Once a week I’d drink this. I got a vitamin D test to verify and it was VERY high (which was expected as, if I recall correctly, I took a month’s dose prior to that specific test just be sure it comes up).

So this method worked and gave me an excuse to get hammered once a week (for health reasons, clearly…), as I normally don’t drink. But I also have low blood pressure and alcohol does exacerbate that. So next day after the vitamin cocktail is extra lethargic. But it is what it is… not like there are other organic solvents that people can drink, right? right…?

Part 2 - enter acetone.

Since my diet was already “sustenance only”, it was more of a bother than a pleasure. I’ve always been intrigued by powdered meals (think Soylent) for their simplicity, but the ingredient list was always beyond what my IBS could handle. I’ve also seen enough promotional material on YT about how great keto/carnivore diet is due to its single ingredient meals and how inflammatory carb diets are that I figured what the hell, might as well give it a try as food already sucks for me.
When I switched to keto, there was a period of reading up on it. Some specialists were talking how humans can’t survive without some glucose intake, while others were talking about gluconeogenesis and that that was enough. However, the science was solid on what happens to fat when it is time to turn belly fat into energy - the liver slices up fats into ketone bodies that it then releases into the bloodstream to be used by the body. No matter what fat you consumed or burned, the ketone bodies are always the same 3 - BHB, acetoacetate and… acetone… Wait… our bodies PRODUCE acetone? Yup. The science is not 100% on whether acetone is a form of energy transfer or just a waste byproduct of catabolizing acetoacetate, but it is certain, that it is something that every single human will have in their bloodstream while they temporarily fast while they sleep (that’s why the first meal of the day is called break-fast).

I finally had another contender for an organic solvent that humans… might be able to drink? Now, I’ve seen exogenous BHB (the other of 3 ketone bodies) sold as salts for human consumption (something about inducing the state of ketosis, though that makes little sense to me), but I could not find any info of people drinking acetone to boost blood acetone levels for similar reasons. So I dug deeper into research papers on animal studies, ketoacidotic diabetics, acetone catabolism and even suicide attempts with acetone and concluded that, technically, it should be safe. One article indirectly gave a limit of 80 ml to be a lethal dose, so that gave me some sense of what to stay away from.

I got hold of some 99.9% pure acetone. Out of curiosity, tasted the concentrated stuff - horrid, but on par with tasting pure ethanol. Then I tried diluting it down to 30% - still has a burning sensation, but, yet again, on par with 30% booze (think slightly diluted vodka). Diluted it down to 10% which was tolerable - has a specific taste - kind of peppermint-y, but with a chemical flavor to it as well that is very reminiscent of what acetone actually smells like.

So I started with 10ml equivalent (10 ml of acetone diluted with water up to 100ml to make a 10% solution) and gave it an hour. People likely imagine being hunched over in excruciating pain or something as the acetone eats at your insides… Nope, nothing like that. Actually, once the taste clears out of your mouth, it’s business as usual. Very similar progress as with just taking a shot of booze - over the hour I noticed getting slightly drunk (which was expected based on the research papers). After the hour had passed, I followed that with another 10ml equivalent. Yup, same reaction - more drunk. Another hour passed, felt stable, so followed with a third 10ml equivalent. Same result, but at that point, decided that it would be enough.

Result? The state of drunkenness mostly faded in about 4 hours ( I drank A LOT of water before and after to make sure my body had a way of clean up), but a certain aura remained - a slight sense of intoxication. Research read that acetone takes 24-36h to get catabolized and excreted via breath and urine, so after a while, that aura got kind of tiresome. I also read that there appears to be a certain threshold of acetone in your blood, where your body starts dumping the excess overboard (breath and urine) and anything below it actually catabolizes it. My suspicion is that when it got rid of the excess, that was the aura I was feeling. On the bright side, unlike ethanol, acetone does not get turned into formaldehyde in your body (the cause of hangovers), so eventually the narcotic effect faded out without any sort of punishment.

If I wanted to do it again, I would probably just go with a straight shot of 20ml acetone diluted to 200ml with water and ride it out. That’s for my 80kg body though.

The whole goal of my experiment was to see if acetone could replace ethanol with a less intoxicating and less carcinogenic substance (yes, ethanol is grouped together with asbestos and smoking as a carcinogen), but I would rate acetone as 20% harder hitting than ethanol for the same volume consumed. Also, my ibs REALLY didn’t like acetone and evacuated my bowels, whereas it is kind of tolerant to a single shot of 30ml ethanol diluted to 100ml with water. Both substances have the effect of decreasing blood pressure for a day or two after the main buzz is gone. Maybe to some that is a perk, but quite an annoyance to me and one of the reasons I was looking to ditch ethanol.

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I was hoping you were going to tie this into benefits of acetone while on keto.

I’ve been on keto and IF for 2 months and today I broke my best streak yet and currently high as a kite on sugar. Feel like my heart is going to explode. The reason is because even though I’ve been in ketosis for 2 months (dropped nearly 15 lbs) I have virtually zero executive function. It has greatly exacerbated my ADD and inability to concentrate on anything that isn’t interesting (like work tasks). It’s taken me 2 weeks to do something that should have been done in a day due to my complete lack of ability to put a coherent thought together on the topic.

Sorry, didn’t mean to hijack. Interesting experiment.

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Maaaaan, such a bummer… That’s exactly the perk of keto/carnivore I was expecting :frowning: I was also hoping that acetone could be what sugar is to carbs - a quick energy boost, but… not at all…

On the bright side, even though I did not sleep well today and my stomach was slow on digesting the previous day’s old cow, I just opted to not consume anything during the day and it was no burden, my body completely didn’t mind. On carbs, I’d be itching and aching as lunch would be approaching just for my daily dose of rice and ground beef.

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This is probably the crux of why you’re getting banned. Doing experiments on your own body without proper medical sign-off is one thing, but posting your exploits done in such a way as to tout the results as positive or even curative is a whole different thing. In effect you’re encouraging others to try your “crackpot schemes” and basically giving instructions. This is a huge liability for not just you but the sites hosting your “information” should someone be harmed because of it.

I’m all too familiar with the liability risks of such things.

Seeing sentences like “I read about doctors” followed immediately by “dissolved it in 30ml of pure liquor store ethanol and diluted it to 30%. Once a week I’d drink this. I got a vitamin D test to verify and it was VERY high” is just launching red flags left and right.. but then you go on to say “if I recall correctly, I took a month’s dose prior to that specific test just be sure it comes up”.. which explodes those red flags into giant starburst warning signs..

  1. if you recall correctly? excuse my french but fuck man if you want to play scientist at least write shit down.. document what you’re doing, otherwise you’re just fucking around and gambling with your health.

  2. took a month’s dose all at once? dosing is a whole thing for a reason, and it seems like you just said “eh fuck it, i’ll take a 30 day see what the test says”.

I mean I could go on, but this is not citizen science.. science has rigor.. this is just fucking around while waiting for the find out portion to drop.

This is 100% why your posts were deleted. The way you’re going about it is wreckless, which is fine if it’s just you doing it privately.. but by sharing it in this way, others are encouraged. You start your post not with “Don’t do this at home” or “This is my own experiment, it’s dangerous, don’t try” you instead start with “My posts are being deleted so I’m going to keep trying to get my story of self-experimentation out there”.

Posting your citations here would go a long way to making this sort of post less offensive to my sensibilities.

Ethanol is a promiscuous but specific drug. It binds identifiable pockets on identifiable proteins, including the ones that run the reward system. Acetone is much closer to a classical nonspecific solvent narcotic. It depresses the brain the way ether or chloroform does, without engaging reward circuitry at all. The concerning thing is that the “intoxication” effect of acetone kicks in around 4-6mM (~250-350mg/L) and grand stupor / coma kicks in around 9-10mM (~500-600mg/L) which is not a big stretch, especially considering acetone clears very slowly and effects accumulate over long periods of time.

Someone could really be hurt by this rather easily.

I am very tempted to follow suit and just delete this post, but at this point I’ll simply ask you edit the top of your post to remove the complaints about banning and replace it with a sturdy warning to others who may read this post that there are huge risks not discussed in the post and to basically not do this kind of thing without a doctor’s approval / advisement.

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You are correct in every regard except one - my intention was never to write a scientific how to. I believe in individual freedom and I wrote the kind of post I would have wanted to find before I ever embarked on this journey. If a simple google search of “drinking acetone” would have returned this post, I would have never done what I did.

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totally fair.. though it reads as such, with details like “So I started with 10ml equivalent (10 ml of acetone diluted with water up to 100ml to make a 10% solution) and gave it an hour.”

Thanks for updating the introduction.

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I’d say it’s a habit of being a chemist.

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