Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Designer mood drugs

I've always wondered what would happen if someone invented a pill that gave you nice euphoric effects with no side effects and could be instantly reversed so you could drive home if you needed to. I wonder if our society would allow such openly hedonistic pleasures to flourish or if politicians would try and score some cheap votes by denouncing it as evil and the end of the world as we know it. I have no pharma experience so i've always just sort of wondered about it philisophically wrt certain recreational drugs that seem to be blazing a path for hedonism regardless of acceptance.
This story in NS indicates that it's not only possible, but probable that these drugs, let me propose Euphorics as the generic term, are out there now, they just aren't recognised as recreational.
I particularly liked this paragraph;
In fact such "partial agonists" of GABA-A receptors already exist in the form of bretazenil and pagoclone, which were developed as anti-anxiety drugs but never commercialised. These molecules also have the advantage of being instantly reversible by the drug flumazenil, which is used as an antidote to overdoses of tranquillisers such as Valium.
Cool.

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