Hello everyone. Throwaway for obvious reasons.
I tried LSD a few weeks ago and it was really awesome. I'd like to try it again, but I don't know of anyone I can buy it from. Being relatively tech savvy I know of dark net markets but I just want to verify that I am doing everything right before I place the order.
I have downloaded Tor on my Mac and I have a VPN, PIA to be exact. I have heard that other VPNs are better now that CISA has passed, so if I need to make the switch I will.
I have about ~$250 in Bitcoin, which is about what I'd like to spend as I don't want to be buying drugs online very often.
I have browsed the sites as well, but I'm not sure which sites are the best / have been up the longest.
Is there anything else that I should be aware of before I do this?
VPNs don't really do much for you in this game. Some people disagree with me strongly on that point, but I stand by it. You can think of Tor (kind of) like a "triple VPN," with the added bonus that each hop in the circuit isn't nearly as easy to locate and subpoena/coerce as a corporate, established VPN service that's required to adhere to their jurisdiction's laws. On top of that, a VPN can make some kinds of timing and confirmation attacks easier, theoretically. At one time I had some good links about this stuff, but right now I'll just have to tell you to research it yourself, if you want. It's good to understand how Tor and VPNs work, anyway, and once you do, you'll probably see what I mean (if you're sharp, which you seem to be). The Tails developers have said some interesting and relevant things on the matter.
Much, much more beneficial to your security than using any VPN, would be using something that hardens your endpoint security instead of "hardens" your network anonymity. The simplest way to do this is to use a system like Tails, or potentially Whonix, which has a little more of a learning curve (but, theoretically, can defend against some exceptional threats that Tails cannot - note that these are almost certainly outside your threat model, in this case, so don't worry too much). At the very, very least, use a Free, Libre operating system like GNU/Linux instead of OSX. But honestly, using Tails is going to be way easier than setting up an OS (and hardening it to anywhere nearly equivalent to the way Tails is, out of the box).
For markets, you can always check out Superlist, but to get opinions on which are the best, you'll probably just want to read through the recent posts on this sub.
Most of all, read and ask lots of questions on /r/DarkNetMarketsNoobs