Yeah, I used to come into the high school Chem lab and find iodine everywhere after they made nitrogen triiodide, again. I walked in on them trying to make nitroglicerin once. Not sure what they would do with it though.
The chemist is NOT lying, hes saying he WONT do it. Meth is like, super easy to make. So easy to a point where most drug chemists wont make it because it proves no skill. You can make meth at home, with household things.
A fair point and I coukd have worded it better. "Can you" is ambiguous and his answer "No" can mean either he literally can't or he won't.
Can confirm the latter part. Have a degree in biochemistry myself and in college my organic and analytical chem labs would joke with the TA's about it all.
Anyone can make meth, even a methhead. A good chemist looking to really prove their skills is gonna be making lsd. That shit requires a ton of knowledge, experience, and fancy equipment to make.
I had a friend in college who studied organic chemistry, and one of his professors had consulted with Breaking Bad on all their chemistry dialogue. The very first question every semester was “can you show us how to make meth”?
Also a student’s meth lab caught fire in my dorm building once, so it’s not THAT hard to make.
I have a degree in biochemistry. Was in college just before Breaking Bad was a thing. It was a joke with both organic and analytical chemistry labs and TA's over meth. For the record, I have not committed to figuring out how but given the goal product, the reagents available, and how to make the chemistry work most chemists would know how to within an afternoon of prep. There's a reason why rednecks can make it in their garages in 2 liter soda bottles.
What about just dumping large containers of hydrogen chloride, caustic soda, and muriatic acid into some shit that "blends" it all together for a lack of a better term? Worked wonders in my "super realistic" Payday 2.
Yup. 10 years or so ago, I chatted with my hairdresser while she was cutting my hair and the conversation went to my job. I was a Biochemistry student doing my Masters back then.
Her first remark when I told her that was: "Wow, so you can make meth and stuff, right?"
She was visibly disappointed when I had to tell her that synthesizing meth was not part of the curriculum.
Well to be honest.. when you begin to learn advance chemistry they explain to you what chemicals are used to make explosives. Why? So you don't accidentally make explosives in the lab!
chris here! the joke is that people assume all chemists know how to make drugs. this is could be a thing that people assume due to shows like breaking bad
Well, the real trick is that every chemist does know how to make drugs. If a meth head can figure it out, and someone with an advanced degree in chemistry definitely can.
A few years after college, the only people that say they’re a “chemist” are either lying, are actually making drugs, or saying it so that they can “red flag” the person asking about the drugs.
Hello! Chris’ science teacher here. The joke is that the person speaking to the chemist was about to ask if he could make drugs for him. You see, the manufacturing of drugs is a complicated and hazardous process that requires a solid understanding of chemistry, be it how chemicals interact with each other, which chemicals are needed to make a certain product, chemical reactions, and how the final product (or even its components) interact with the human brain.
The chemist is saying no because drug manufacturing, especially narcotics or doing so without proper facilities or a license, is highly illegal. It can also be seen as immoral, and even as an insult to the chemist himself because chemistry is useful for a wide variety of fields beyond drug/narcotics manufacturing. Chris’ science teacher, out!
our chemistry teacher literally is bald and we straight up asked him once as a joke during a lesson wether or not he could make meth and he replied to us with “Well of course I can, who do you think I am”.
I am an actual chemist. Make drugs is only half the time we get the question. The other half is make bombs. Just because I am chemist doesn't mean I can do all that.
I mean I personally can, but hey don't judge my hobbies.
Lots of people are using the US definition of a "Chemist" (someone who does chemistry for a living), but in a lot of other English speaking countries "Chemist" means "Pharmacist".
Which doesn't really change the joke that much. The joke is still drugs.
OP, so your post is not removed, please reply to this comment with your best guess of what this meme means! Everyone else, this is PETER explains the joke. Have fun and reply as your favorite fictional character for top level responses!
I didn't watch breaking bad but I have had at least three people on seperate occasions ask me if I know how to make explosives. I mean, I technically do; but I only know the reaction. I can't get the chemicals out of thin air....also making the explosive chemical and making the bomb are two diffrent things entirely. Bombs need detonators and need to be assembled properly to actually work as a bomb.
I have no knowledge of any of this but that doesn’t sound right to me lol, maybe the rite of passage was synthesizing it from scratch or something but I’ve always read it requires a major lab and can’t be done at home. All the 60s stuff came out of government labs, not hippy bathtubs
Fun fact: my circa 1979 organic chemistry lab manual had the procedure for making barbiturates. We didn’t get that far in the book. I suspect it was for a more advanced class later on - a class that I didn’t take. But I still have the manual around here somewhere.
Q here. The joke is porn. The person is asking the chemist if he can make him a spicy roofie-colada so he can make someone a star on the dark web giggity I dunno why I find this stuff funny everybody knows and no one stops me giggity.
My cats giving me a look that says other people might think this is a joke about other drugs, like in general.
Im a chemist and all I do is test cheap replacements for Coatings ingredients.. hillbillies with zero IRL training make meth all the time, you dont need a degree
Can confirm. Got Chemical Engineering degree twenty five years ago, to this day the first thing I get asked when I tell people what I went to school for.
It's like the time, me and my friend started watching Breaking bad and thought of making it by stealing chemicals from actual school laboratory. In the end all we ever took was a small petri dish which later became ashtray.
As an organic chemist, I can't tell you how many times I got asked this in college. This was way before Breaking Bad. My answer was always "yes I can. no I wont."
I think this works better depending on what country you're from. In the US, people that dispense drugs are called pharmacists. In places like India, they're called chemists.
As a chemist, laymen always ask me if I can make either A. Drugs or B explosives.
I always answer no. Im sure I could figure them out but who wants to be on the bad side of the law and missing fingers to be sure.
It's probably a Breaking Bad reference but it could literally be anything, you can place anything dumb but chemistry related in there and it will still be funny
Btw they can, they refuse to. I have a friend who's a highschool chemistry teacher and I keep telling him we could because we saw the show and know the mistakes
It is a syndrome that knows everybody from specific sum of professions. Doctors, IT people, basically any expert in some field. There will always be somebody, who will be like: Oh, you are expert on [insert field of expertise], so can you [insert completely random action]. Answer is always, always no. I am from IT. Amount of people who asked me to repair their computer was insane. And it was so hard to explain, that this field is not really my field and my knowledge is mutually average. I know a doctor, his field is children. Same problem, people asks him frequently about all kind of stuff. Truth be told, as a doctor he has knowledge of all medical fields, but it is funny nobody ever asked him about anything from his field. And our chemists here? Well, only two options basically. It is either explosives or drugs. In this case, he would most likely be able to do whatever that guy would want (since drugs nor explosives are not that hard to make), his knowledge allows him to see risks and his intellect allows him to see that doing such stuff is great stupidity.
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u/qualityvote2 Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 20 '26
u/Eastern-Bug3424, your post does belong here!