The second runner-up for the most expensive liquid is…
According to Beyond Type 1, the third most expensive liquid in the world is something your great grandfather warned your grandfather about when he was giving the lecture about the evils of recreational narcotics. The liquid in question is called lysergic acid diethylamide, popularly known as LSD. LSD was invented by a Swiss scientist named Albert Hoffman in 1938. It was actually used to treat some mental health disorders in the late 1940s. The Central Intelligence Agency experimented with acid (as it was called) in the 1950s as a mind-control substance.
Thanks to the teachings of a psychologist named Timothy Leary, a number of people in the youth counterculture in the 1960s experimented with LSD for its mind expanding properties. However, its tendency to cause people to experience horrific visions, to occasionally go insane, and even kill themselves led to LSD’s banning. Some of the side effects include:
- Hallucinations
- Suggestibility
- Panic attacks
- Mental breakdowns
- Flashbacks
- The possibility of physical ill effects due to overdoses.
Acid is out of favor among drug abusers, though some of the less careful but more driven techies in Silicon Valley are taking micro doses to boost their performance. LSD comes in as costing $123,000 a gallon, enough to send 55,000 people on the trip of a lifetime.
The first runner up for the most expensive liquid is...
If you thought that LSD was problematic, then king cobra venom would seem to be something to avoid altogether. The king cobra is the most poisonous snake on the planet. One bite, it is said, can bring down a full-grown elephant. The snake is a great reason to avoid its habitat, the forests of India and Southeast Asia.
However, as deadly as king cobra venom is, it does contain a protein called ohanin, which serves as a painkiller that is 20 times more effective than morphine. Furthermore, researchers believe that king cobra venom may have a great many medicinal properties, which makes the snake, in a strange way, “the deadliest healer.” The venom costs $153,000 a gallon.
And the winner is…
If king cobra snakes are best to be avoided, scorpions are creatures that one should be wary of as well. However, scorpion venom has a protein that can treat the pain experienced by sufferers of multiple sclerosis, a degenerative nerve disease that can rob people of their capacity to see, to move, and ultimately to take their next breath. It can also help people with inflammatory bowel disease and rheumatoid arthritis. Scorpion venom has another, unique medical use according to the Smithsonian Magazine, finding cancerous tissue:
A team of scientists... are using a unique approach to solving this problem: fluorescent molecules, attached to scorpion venom, that attach to the cancers and light them up.
This "venom paint" attaches to tumors and hopefully will allow doctors to easily identify the location of cancer cells. These runway lights don't come without a cost, however:
Scorpion venom comes in at a cool $39 million a gallon, making it the most expensive liquid on the planet. So get out there and start milking scorpions for their venom! Please don't tell our legal department we just wrote that.