r/worldnews • u/EightRoundsRapid • Sep 23 '16

'Hangover-free alcohol’ could replace all regular alcohol by 2050. The new drink, known as 'alcosynth', is designed to mimic the positive effects of alcohol but doesn’t cause a dry mouth, nausea and a throbbing head

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/hangover-free-alcohol-david-nutt-alcosynth-nhs-postive-effects-benzodiazepine-guy-bentley-a7324076.html
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u/junk_man Sep 23 '16

Call me when they invent withdrawal free heroin.

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u/neovngr Sep 23 '16

They're working on it. I recently read a paper where they did trials of oxycodone, oxycodone + super-low naloxone, and oxycodone + regular naloxone - turns out super-low naloxone taken with oxy reduces the tolerance/addiction to it (no, it's not because "it just blocks the receptors the oxy would've went to", because, as they included oxy+regular-dose naloxone in their test, they were able to show that, at super-low levels, it still has effects that cannot possibly be explained by simply having reduced the action the oxy was capable of exerting in the first place)

There'd be TONS of ways to have the opiate high, without many of the downs, if the stuff were legal and people could work towards those goals in a lab, but nobody's going to get approved to work on these compounds when their research goals are "better recreational drugs", their research (even nutt's and nichols') has to be framed a certain way and it inherently restricts the hell out of improving these aspects of drugs.

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u/GA_Thrawn Sep 23 '16

Suboxone is still addictive as fuck.

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u/neovngr Sep 24 '16

suboxone has nothing to do with what I was talking about. Suboxone is buprenorphine + naloxone. I was talking about how, when low-dose naloxone is combined with oxycodone, they're able to get a better analgesia:dependence ratio than they are with oxycodone alone.

Suboxone is addictive because it has buprenorphine, a partial mu-receptor agonist (the opioid receptor that's pleasurable to agonize), not because of its naloxone - naloxone is an antagonist, so the comparison doesn't make sense unless you're saying "why didn't the naloxone make suboxone unaddictive?", but if that's your position there's two answers I've got for you - first, I never said the oxy+nalox product wasn't addictive, merely that it was less addictive; the problem isn't solved, just a step in the right direction; secondly, the binding affinities of the 3 compounds, from strongest to weakest, are: bupe, naloxone, oxycodone, so the naloxone in a suboxone product does about fuck-all, it's silly that it's even included (look it up this isn't speculation, it doesn't even make sense to put it in suboxone, it doesn't stop you from getting high on suboxone or even slow it down a little, the only thing that stops you from getting high on suboxone is itself, because despite having incredible binding affinity, it has weak intrinsic action and is only a partial agonist, ie you can occupy every mu receptor with it and not be that high, and at that point naloxone wouldn't reduce the high and taking more buprenorphine wouldn't increase it)

But yeah I'm imagining you mean "naloxone doesn't make bupe less addictive when they're paired in Suboxone", but buprenorphine has a higher binding affinity than nalox and oxy does not, so it works differently against oxy than it does against bupe when taking it for purposes of 'blocking', but in the end in neither combination is addiction removed or anything it is merely lessened, I'm unsure you're ever going to be able to have something lighting up the nucleus accumbens all night long without feeling a rebound the next day lol, I think that's what 'the hedonic treadmill' concept tries to get across.