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Not-such-better-living through chemistry

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Re: Not-such-better-living through chemistry

#121
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> an alarming trend of young people reading “harm reduction” material online and assuming they know the full picture of the risks of drug use Is anyone attempting to harm-reductively try meth?

Methamphetamine has a bad rep, but taken orally in small quantities it is not much more dangerous than adderall, and has pretty much the same side effects. It can be legally prescribed for ADHD (brand name Desoxyn).

Meth is significantly different than regular amphetamine. Consider that simple changes in isomers can elicit radically different effects. A great example is levmetamfetamine (or l-meth), which is sold over the counter as a decongestant (as opposed to d-meth, the “fun” kind).

Now, if the difference between a “left-handed” and “right-handed” meth molecule can be so great, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that adding a methyl group to regular amphetamine will change its effects considerably.

This can be seen in the different receptor binding profiles (which receptors, where in the brain, and how strong or long the modulation is).

Meth’s increased addictive and neurotoxic effects are owed to this difference in receptor binding.

Re: Not-such-better-living through chemistry

#122

I have a friend who, fortunately, escaped the drug world and is happily recovered now. One of the many interesting things I learned through talking to him and his friends is the pervasive idea among addicted that street drugs were always better in the past. Everyone vividly remembers their drug being much better when they first got into drugs, with steadily declining effects over the years. Many of them had elaborate…

[deleted]

Re: Not-such-better-living through chemistry

#123

I have a friend who, fortunately, escaped the drug world and is happily recovered now. One of the many interesting things I learned through talking to him and his friends is the pervasive idea among addicted that street drugs were always better in the past. Everyone vividly remembers their drug being much better when they first got into drugs, with steadily declining effects over the years. Many of them had elaborate…

> an alarming trend of young people reading “harm reduction” material online and assuming they know the full picture of the risks of drug use Is anyone attempting to harm-reductively try meth?

Probably not, but this is an artifact of the audience of "harm reduction" material. If there were things aimed at students and professionals who take prescription stimulants informing them that there's an alternative prescription stimulant that is comparably very highly reviewed by patients[0] for boring reasons like "it helps me live my life and has fewer annoying side effects" then that probably wouldn't be "harm reduction" material.

[0]: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/know-your-amphetamines

Re: Not-such-better-living through chemistry

#124

Loved the author’s writing style. He strikes a nearly perfect balance of casual and humorous with precise domain jargon.

Read his other pieces... he's been writing for 20 years now...

https://www.science.org/blogs/pipeline?AfterYear=2003&AfterM...

His 'Things I won't work with' posts are classics.

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-wor...

Re: Not-such-better-living through chemistry

#125

The optical resolution of racemic amphetamine/methamphetamine has been known for years. https://erowid.org/archive/rhodium/chemistry/amphetamine.res... What has surprised me is how infrequently it seems to be carried out, given the materials required for it. This is all you need: - D-Tartaric Acid (You can buy it from import sites in bulk for $30-60/kg) - Lye/Sodrium Hydroxide - Ethanol/Everclear (if you're convertin…

Agreed the process is very simple. The innovation that makes the resolution worth it is (as Derek also mentioned in the blog post) an efficient way to re-racemize the L-meth to DL-meth, which can then be resolved again. With steady state production and pooling this means it can be done using just one batch size (and not ever smaller "brsm" style bathces). If these steps are efficient enough you definitely get much more bang for your buck. Here is one such method[0] which probably inspired these drug manufacturers (as they use thioglycol and AIBN, which has been found in clandestine lab seizures).

[0] https://sci-hub.se/10.1021/jo061033l (published in JOC in 2006 - so only a mere 2 decades behind the curve)

Re: Not-such-better-living through chemistry

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What negative consequences are there to doing MDMA or LSD a couple times a year? Especially when comparing with the negative consequences of doing alcohol. The argument that any drug use is bad is pretty blown out of proportion.

> Especially when comparing with the negative consequences of doing alcohol. This sentiment is confusing to me. I get that alcohol is bad. But how is that relevant to whether or not MDMA or LSD are bad? I see it come up in these conversations pretty regularly, so there's probably a point there I'm missing. But I can't help but read it as "this thing I like to do isn't bad because other people do a different bad thing…

The majority of the population accepts the risk associated with alcohol. So touting risks of other drugs as if they where somehow greater than that already by most accepted risk feels dishonest.

Now you can say, well I don’t drink alcohol either, but that’s not the reality of most people.

Re: Not-such-better-living through chemistry

#127
Chirality is an interesting topic, and controlled chiral synthesis is pretty cutting-edge chemistry. The real masters of this art are biological enzymes, i.e. the proteins that catalyze all chemical reactions. A lot of the modern catalysts used in chiral synthesis are themselves chiral, which is essentially mimicing the biochemical approach.

For this to work, however, the starting molecule needs to be what called pro-chiral. For illustration, imagine a flat triangular sheet of paper with three different elements at the points. How could you only label one side of that sheet? Well, if you take a copy of that triangle and glue one side to a table, then there's only one orientation in which all three points of the other triangle will make a one-to-one correspondence. This corresponds to the enzyme (glued to the table) specifically binding the pro-chiral molecule (i.e. a carbon atom with three different substituents) and then the free surface of the triangle is where the reaction takes place.

I suppose someone could develop such a system for amphetamine synthesis and it would qualify as 'green chemistry' (which really just means producing the desired product without generating a waste stream via a closed-loop process), and this might even be how it's done in the legal pharmaceutical world today (methamphetamine is sold as Desoxyn for ADHD treatment). There are better things for chemists to put their time and energy towards, in my opinion.

As far as the legality and safety of drugs, it seems pretty clear that criminalization just fills prisons while generating large profits for organized crime cartels, with many associated problems (i.e. violent crime), while not reducing the population of drug addicts. A public health approach based on educating people about the very negative health and social effects of drug and alcohol addiction seems like the more reasonable approach. Bans on advertising and promotion of drugs might be wise as well, as has happened with tobacco and alcohol to some extent.

Re: Not-such-better-living through chemistry

#128

> But a human-designed synthetic process can always be human-redesigned. It happens constantly in the drug industry - the production of such a common drug as ibuprofen changed completely in the early 1990s, for example (a story for another time). For an illegal drug, that means that law enforcement will always be a step or two behind as new methods come on line. And it means that stopping the supply of such a drug wi…

You can read about the development of this new route and its advantages here [0]. Ctrl+F for ibuprofen or go to p.54.

https://sci-hub.se/10.1016/B978-0-12-804190-1.00004-5

Re: Not-such-better-living through chemistry

#129

I have a friend who, fortunately, escaped the drug world and is happily recovered now. One of the many interesting things I learned through talking to him and his friends is the pervasive idea among addicted that street drugs were always better in the past. Everyone vividly remembers their drug being much better when they first got into drugs, with steadily declining effects over the years. Many of them had elaborate…

This well-known video explains what you describe in graphical form, in case anyone has not seen it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUngLgGRJpo

Re: Not-such-better-living through chemistry

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gotcha. I guess I don't understand why you'd expect that behavior to become more common as a result of drug legalization. All that would still be very illegal (I imagine injecting someone with even a completely safe saline solution without their consent would be considered assault in most jurisdictions). The type of people that are comfortable doing that clearly don't care about the law. I just don't see drugs being…

Safe saline is the least of the victims worries, water quality isn’t that important to the extent that many safe injection packs no longer include it. Tap water is usually fine, puddle water is usually fine. In medical settings the law of large numbers mean that usually isn’t good enough but for one offs it’s ‘usually’ ok. It’s the action of adding chemicals to your brain that can and likely do have harmful long term…

The whole point of bringing up saline solutions was to point out that what you're describing is already illegal even for much less serious offenses. I'm not a lawyer so don't know what all crimes would be involved with injecting drugs into someone against their will but I'm willing to bet money it is breaking several.

As for illegal drug sales persisting despite legalization, how many people are still buying illegal moonshine? It does exist, I've seen it, but it's not nearly the problem it was during prohibition.

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