There's a lot of stir lately about the benzaldehyde/methyl ethyl ketone aldol condensation procedure to get to amphetamines. Could we use indole-3-acetaldehyde as a replacement for the traditional benzaldehyde so we can get the indole group in there? Indole-3-acetaldehyde + mek + hcl --> usual work up to indole-p2p which could be reductively aminated with say dimethylamine to DMT, or whatnot. SWIM says this because SWIM looked up the indole-3-acetone procedure and thought it looked a bit ugly, and this could help yeilds (as aldol is pretty good yeilding now.)

Also, I have UTFSE'd and stuff so plz don't flame, but does anyone out there have a book with some nice synths for the more exotic amines? So that once we have our I-P2P we could synth up some diisopropylamine (or whatever) to get DIPT or something.

Indole-3-acetaldehyde + mek + hcl --> usual work up to indole-p2p which could be reductively aminated with say dimethylamine to DMT, or whatnot

Indole-3-acetaldehyde : 3-indolyl-CH2-CHO
edit: I quickly need a pair of glasses myself   , thanks Nicodem!  
Indole-3-carboxaldehyde : 3-indolyl-CHO

Indoles are far more difficult to work with than plain benzaldehyde.

And "indole-P2P" or 3-indolylacetone, do you really think you can get DMT from that by reductive amination??

And you should study a lot more first anyway.