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Rougemillenial

Well-known member
Joined
Dec 15, 2016
Messages
87
So about me. I’m currently a freshman in college who’s studying chemistry. Science has always been my life with nothing else to get in the way. However due to legal issues surrounding amateur science, I wasn’t really able to start a chemistry lab until I was 15 which is when I needed a work area as a coping mechanism after being hospitalized for an extremely acute catatonic episode that almost claimed my life.

That spring I had a severe psychotic episode which caused me to essentially loose all touch and the only reason I remember is due to video that was captured by a schoolmate who was understandably horrified to see usually peaceful and normalish me seizing up then becoming so dissociated as to giggle while looking as if I was legitimately dead as I wasn’t breathing normally a minute later and my heart rate went way down.


Don’t ask me what exactly happened as I only have theories. It’s most likely that the stress I had that year along with having undiagnosed mental illnesses like disorganized schizophrenia and bipolar disorder caused me to go into full on CNS collapse which is most likely as this has happened before and I’m pretty much certain it won’t be the last. Which of course my already existing physical defects like a severely underdeveloped nervous system and lack of propioceptive nerves or sense of balance doesn’t help one bit.

Long story short I was in the ICU for well over a week under heavy medication and constant watch before being transferred to the recovery ward where I spent a good month recovering. So back to gold recovery. Because of my illness and it’s extremely severe consequence of not having proper coping mechanisms in place, my parents allowed me to setup a lab in the garage under one condition. School comes first and I won’t drop out as a result of the episode which was actually a very real possibility.

Once I set up the lab and looked through all the rules and ideas, I realized my original plan was DOA due to lack of space and the explicit illegality of amateur chemistry at least in the tristate area. Other areas may be more or less forgiving. So for a couple years I just took apart electronics until tenth grade when shock horror, I had another episode due to increased stress which again put me in the hospital. Especially considering that starting at 8th grade I was experiencing suicidal ideation and depression episodes so severe that I wouldn’t wake up in the morning and at times would sleep for a week for a time but other times I wouldn’t be able to sleep for over a month.

my parents were and still am extremely concerned about my well being and have kept close watch on my mood swings and medication regiment. However due to how controversial and contridictory the idea of allowing a mentally Ill person to practice a potentially dangerous field of research to help prevent further harm, everything from death threats to support came my way depending on political position and knowledge about my rare condition.

So after the 2nd episode, I had to start doing chemistry experiments while keeping my identity as well as the operation itself under extremely heavy wraps to prevent a SWAT team breaking down my door and potentially leading to me being yet another statistic as three friends who did the exact same thing faced.

Because some of the chemicals needed were inaccessible, I made my own process experimenting with everything from acids, bases, cyanide, heat, bonfire, hot sulfuric, nitration mix, to high explosives to find the best process to process my E-waste which was several tons of material that I researched every component as thoroughly as humanly possible with the limited resources available as this is before I heard of BitTorrent and SciHub as well as the deep web. As you may expect considering I’ve done this without any prior lab experience, most of these ‘experiments were either semi successful, or full blown apocalypse now style failures eg entire apparatus blows up leading to catastrophic cascading failure of hundreds of dollars of equipment. One time I had a vacuum flask blow up with hot sulfuric on a work table that granted I knew wouldn’t work, and it seemed into the electrical outlet leading to a massive electrical fire and a temporary power outage of the house as I had to shut off the main breaker and detach the wires connecting the outlet directly to the breaker. Other than that, I figured out that I’m the human equivalent of a super capacitor so that’s nice. Better to be a little disabled, as this ability is directly linked to my possibly unique condition, than a little dead from 300A of mains electricity.


So as for my recovery of gold, I got three ounces over five years of work. Which BTW is a three percent recovery on a good day assuming a ten ton scale. One ton containing 300-400g of gold. I have the remaining concentrates plus material I’m collecting for my real attempt as I’m calling it in a secret location for the foreseeable future assuming I survive long enough to be able to get back to it which considering the circumstances, seems like quite a coin toss probability
 
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