BuzzFeed has a profile on the work of Dr. Stanley Glick, formerly of Albany Medical College. Dr. Glick has developed an experimental drug for curing addiction to recreational substances including narcotics, alcohol, and nicotine. Glick's drug, 18-MC (short for 18-methoxycoronaridine), resulted from his investigation of the alleged ability of ibogaine (a powder extracted from the roots of certain Central African plants) to cure addiction. The tip came from an ex-junkie (now deceased) who swore that ibogaine cured his addiction. To Glick's surprise, ibogaine did seem to be effective in curing substance addiction in rats. However, the US National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) halted investigation into ibogaine as an over-the-counter medication long ago because of severe documented side effects, including fatal cardiac arrest. Glick and chemist Martin Kuehne tested various compounds to tweak ibogaine in an attempt to retain the anti-addictive power without the side effects; the result was 18-MC.
In simple terms — which Glick often has trouble using — 18-MC blocks the pleasurable effects of cocaine by “dampening the response” to dopamine. Glick pulls up several graphs that show the cocaine intake of addicted rats dropping precipitously after they receive 18-MC.
“What the rat is telling you here is, ‘The drug is getting in, I feel it, but it’s not giving me the kick that it used to,’” Glick says. “That’s really the essence of how we think 18-MC works. … No matter what dose of the addictive drug you take, it’s just not giving you the buzz it used to.”
After the successful experiments with rats, Glick entered a partnership with the pharmaceutical company Savant HWP, which has just begun human safety trials of the drug. However, the road to approval by the US Federal Drug Administration (FDA) will be long and arduous at best; for example, 18-MC could turn out to have the same difficulties with side effects as ibogaine.
The article also briefly sketches two competitors to 18-MC: a dopamine-regulator drug from Dr. Juan Canales of New Zealand in partnership with the Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche, and a cocaine vaccine from Dr. Ronald Crystal of Weill Cornell Medical College.
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Paul Armentano of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) blogs:
Testimony regarding the constitutionality of the federal statute designating marijuana as a Schedule I Controlled Substance will be taken on Monday, October 27 in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California in the case of United States v. Pickard, et. al., No. 2:11-CR-0449-KJM.
Members of Congress initially categorized cannabis as a Schedule I substance, the most restrictive classification available, in 1970. Under this categorization, the plant is defined as possessing "a high potential for abuse, ... no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, ... [and lacking] accepted safety for ... use ... under medical supervision."
Expert witnesses for the defense--including Drs. Carl Hart, Associate Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry and Psychology at Columbia University in New York City, retired physician Phillip Denny, and Greg Carter, Medical Director of St. Luke's Rehabilitation Institute in Spokane, Washington--will testify that the accepted science is inconsistent with the notion that cannabis meets these Schedule I criteria.
"It is my considered opinion that including marijuana in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act is counter to all the scientific evidence in a society that uses and values empirical evidence," Dr. Hart declared. "After two decades of intense scientific inquiry in this area, it has become apparent the current scheduling of cannabis has no footing in the realities of science and neurobiology."
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 13 2014, @04:28PM
Left-wingers are typically the ones who scream for more and more and more regulation.
To appease them, the regulation is put in place.
This has the obvious effect of impacting the efficiency of anybody, any organization and any process that needs to now deal with this regulation.
This slows down development, and retards economic development.
Then the left-wingers cry and scream about how the inefficiency they caused through regulation is a problem.
And what do they propose to combat this regulation-induced inefficiency? Why, it's more regulation, of course!
(Score: 4, Funny) by M. Baranczak on Monday October 13 2014, @04:36PM
Any chance you could work systemd into your diatribe?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 13 2014, @04:38PM
Are you the person who keeps bringing systemd into every discussion here?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 13 2014, @07:36PM
No, I am.
-AC
(Score: 2) by jcross on Monday October 13 2014, @09:27PM
Maybe try comparing it with Substance D from "A Scanner Darkly"?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 13 2014, @05:09PM
Mod the parent up! The -1, Troll downmod actually proves his point. When libs don't like what somebody is saying, they regulate (aka censor) without remorse!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 13 2014, @05:13PM
When people say something stupid they get down-modded. When an ignorant conservative says something stupid, as is their nature, it's all the fault of those tricksy libs.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 13 2014, @06:05PM
Reality has a well-known liberal bias. Conservatives are just doing the best they can in a world biased against them. Living in a world where everyone is biased against you will drive anyone insane.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 13 2014, @07:58PM
Reality has a well-known liberal bias.
What a load of tripe... [citation needed]
If anything I would argue the opposite. People want to hide things. I would bet even you have a few 'thoughts' you would rather keep to yourself.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday October 13 2014, @05:11PM
No.
Elixir sulfanilamide [wikipedia.org]
Thalidomide [wikipedia.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 13 2014, @05:29PM
Regulation is good.
It puts into effect a framework everyone can work in.
What you are railing against is poor oversight and poor regulation.
At both ends of the 'spectrum' you have communism and capitalism (which really are not a spectrum but two different methodologies).
Both in their 'pure' forms ignore the douchebag out for himself factor. If everyone helped out in communism it would work and there is no need for regulation. But instead you have people who figure out they can be lazy bums and do nothing and get the same reward. Then you need regulation to make them work. In capitalism people quickly figure out you can buy thugs to make sure only your goods are sold. Then you need regulation to make sure people are not take advantage of.
Without regulation both systems degenerate into less work being done.
Where it goes badly is people buy regulation to suppress their opponents. You can do this in *any* system. Either with political capital or money.
Without regulation we would still have tons of guys selling basically poison as health aids. As is they only have to prove they are 'better' than a placebo and not the current best.
Also do not mistake me for some sort of 'left loony'. I think most of our regulation in our country is done to suppress people. But every once and awhile they actually get it right. Erroring on the side of safety is the right thing to do. But your way is 'screw em the market will sort it out that people die'. Yeah thats what I need hearsay driving my medical decisions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 13 2014, @06:09PM
Well said. Regulation is critical to making markets free. Too much of anything is bad; like with everything else, it needs to be applied only enough to obtain an optimal situation.
(Score: 2) by tathra on Monday October 13 2014, @04:31PM
from my understanding, ibogaine helps to cure addiction the same way every psychedelic does - exactly as Bill (co-founder of AA) stated after trying LSD [theguardian.com], it perfectly fit the "spiritual awakening" part of the 12 steps and even worked better than the 12 steps.
ibogaine doesn't "cure" addiction by blocking it, the powerful spiritual experience given by any psychedelic is what does it. they've been trying to create near-permanent drug blockers ("drug vaccines") for years, and this sounds like they're just trying to use ibogaine's success as a marketing tool.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 13 2014, @04:31PM
I can guess. We don't know how ibogaine made people more susceptible to heart attack, so we don't know if this 18-MC is any better (which is the point of 18-MC).
(Score: 4, Funny) by VLM on Monday October 13 2014, @04:45PM
They listed the most profitable addictions, but I'd wonder about its effects on TV addiction, pro sports, TV news shows, texting/social media, systemd, organized religion, soylent news, you know, the really dangerous stuff.
(Score: 3, Funny) by skullz on Monday October 13 2014, @05:04PM
Snark aside, I don't think this would help a psychological addiction, just physiological.
And I can quit SN whenever I want.
(Score: 2) by ilPapa on Monday October 13 2014, @05:59PM
I wish I knew how to quit SN.
http://youtu.be/jwlYo8EYTWI?t=6s [youtu.be]
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 13 2014, @05:05PM
You laugh, but there are people out there attempting to recover from pornography addiction that will be interested to know if this would give them any benefit.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 13 2014, @05:11PM
Maybe they should treat their religion addiction instead.
(Score: 3, Funny) by VLM on Monday October 13 2014, @05:15PM
Well AC the only anecdote I can relate on that particular topic is my wife was addicted to sex but there's something in wedding cake that cures that, thank you for coming to stand up comedy night here on SN, thank you for your applause, etc etc.
Whenever I hear about psychological addiction I always think of the "normies" who are not in any treatment at all but watch sports 12 hrs a day on weekend or watch 12 hrs of fox news on a boring Saturday and I'm just not seeing it. The closest I ever came to carpal tunnel was 16-ish hour games of Civilization a long time ago when the graphics sucked but the game was fun, and the pain in fingers/wrist helped self limit quite effectively.
(Score: 3, Funny) by LoRdTAW on Monday October 13 2014, @07:35PM
Damn right. systemd killed my dog and made me turn to prostituting myself as a human toilet for meth :(
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 16 2014, @05:10PM
Its highly likely it could help with any psychological addiction since the reward system and the way its modified in addiction patient (even if the addiction is to something other than a psychotropic substance) is extremely similar between various addictions to various substances. The way Cocaine effects your CNS and causes dependance and tolerance growth is much different from the way morphine does those same things. However this drug is successful in reducing usage in mice to a significant degree. This suggests that ibogaine and its analogs don't act by reversing the specific changes caused by the drug but rather they make changes in the reward system that seems to have secondary effects on those systems effected by the drug use. So cocaine and morphine both effect your reward system by different mechanisms so ibogaine can fix both addictions by going after the reward system itself.
What I find really interesting is the lack of NMDA-antagonism in this drug and other derivatives. When you look back at other drugs that have claimed to reduce tolerance or dependence to opioids they have traditionally been NMDA-antagonists. Dextromethorphan, Ketamine, and Methoxetamine have all been implicated in prevention of tolerance growth and reduction in overall tolerance to morphine and other opioids. Ibogaine itself also acts as an NMDA-antagonist which seemed to fit the picture of how tolerance was reversed. But these new compounds seem to function the same without the need for the NMDA receptor at all. That surprised me. Although this might mean 18-MC won't have the hallucinogenic properties of its parent compound (although that was partly mediated through 5-HT2A/2B).
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 13 2014, @04:49PM
...I spend dhe lasd few years building up an immunidy do ibogaine powder.
(Score: 2) by Covalent on Tuesday October 14 2014, @02:16AM
LOL I came here just to say that.
You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 13 2014, @05:05PM
Great, you get to ditch coke/H/whatever but will be a life-long customer of anti-depressants.
FTS ' "dampening the response” to dopamine'
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Zinho on Monday October 13 2014, @05:19PM
Glick says …
No matter what dose of the addictive drug you take, it’s just not giving you the buzz it used to.
So, how is this not going to create a rash of overdoses among the addicts it's administered to? The logical outcome of this is that the addicts will either increase their dosage until it's fatal or switch to another addiction. It's not like being unable to get high will somehow fix the addicts' other life problems that the cocaine was buffering.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
(Score: 3, Insightful) by goodie on Monday October 13 2014, @05:58PM
Was thinking the exact same thing... When trying to get more buzz again and again, an addict in a state of withdrawal may simply overdose by trying to get that high and saying "screw the 18-MC, I just want to get high now!" Maybe it'll only be useful or used under strict hospital supervision?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 13 2014, @08:02PM
This does happen today. With methadone/opiates.
People start taking it and then cant get the buzz and start mixing in other drugs to get the buzz again. They end up dead.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday October 14 2014, @03:05PM
From what I understand, most fatal overdoses occur in recovering patients. There is a natural tolerance built up, and when they go through drug treatment they lose that tolerance. Then when they relapse, they take their old normal dose and it kills them.
It's the same with alcohol. A six pack downed in an hour won't even give an alcoholic a buzz, it would probably land me in the hospital. An alcoholic friend of mine once walked to the emergency room with a BAC of .4, twice as high as would kill most people.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday October 13 2014, @06:03PM
So, how is this not going to create a rash of overdoses among the addicts it's administered to? The logical outcome of this is that the addicts will either increase their dosage until it's fatal or switch to another addiction.
I think the answer to your question is obvious when you phrase it as "administered to".
Force feeding this isn't going to cure addiction, when the high is exactly what the addict wants, and they know this will block it.
For those that want to get off drugs, it might be a solution they can take while they not under the influence to help them through those times of depression or temptation.
(Although TFS says nothing about the craving).
If it sounds like I'm guessing, its because I am. I've had a built in fear of addiction my whole life from watching my mom cough her lungs out each morning while reaching for another cigarette.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday October 13 2014, @07:20PM
30 yrs ago nobody would ever believe that all jobs require pee testing and all the crazy BS CYA security theater we have today.
I say 50:50 odds within 5 years of FDA approval this is legally required to be added to at least one of the following if not all of the following:
1) School lunches and prison food (if there's any diff between prison and school, at least in poor neighborhoods)
2) Church soup lines and the like for homeless/poor people
3) All WIC Women Infants Children approved food store products (so blocks of cheese and bags of beans and stuff for poor people)
4) All food sold at public gatherings "BS-fest and fairs and the like"
5) Food at work gatherings like the stereotypical carrot cake in the break room
And I may as well quote from the future press release announcing the new policy
"... because elimination of drug addicts reduces costs"
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday October 13 2014, @07:28PM
"... because elimination of drug addicts reduces costs"
And
"Won't somebody please think of the children".
Wonder if they will require it in Pot stores in Washington and Colorado.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday October 14 2014, @03:21PM
Wonder if they will require it in Pot stores in Washington and Colorado.
Why would they? Arrests for drugs like cocaine and heroin have dropped like a rock in Colorado since they legalized pot. Marijuana doesn't lead to hard drugs, the laws against it do.
"Sold my last bag an hour ago, man. Want some coke?"
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday October 13 2014, @07:42PM
How else am I going to sell my war machines to police departments? Time to call my whor..... er senator and my golf buddies at the cable news outlets.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday October 13 2014, @08:32PM
Just how expensive a bullet has become? Maybe a knife through the carotid would be cheaper?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday October 13 2014, @08:58PM
The real reason is controlling what people are allowed to think, to be docile sheep led where the .gov says to lead them, elimination of alternative viewpoints by othering the users as the root of all evil.
If the .gov stopped demonizing drugs they'd have to maintain power by demonizing something else. You're not getting rid of the two minutes hate but you might redirect it. I worry they'd pick muslims or arabs or gays or SJWs or some other foolish target. Hate the player not the game, I guess.
If we stopped indoctrinating kids to "just say no" and cops are always nice and helpful and heroic and a person's choice of recreational pharmaceuticals determines their worth as a person, then they'd just start spewing BS about something else, so to some extent fixing the hold of propaganda is more important than making them slightly modify their control technique to something new.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday October 14 2014, @04:13PM
Just how expensive a bullet has become?
And how cheap a human life has become! From Mars, Ho concerning the drug-addicted prostitutes:
You don't cure cancer by shooting the patient, and drug abuse is no less a disease.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday October 14 2014, @09:08PM
Agreed. I only wanted to thicken the lines of the drawing made in the post I replied to: mockingly agreeing with the "problem" and showing that the addition of a dangerous drug to cure (or prevent addiction) is an expensive mode of state mandated homicide.
Because I believe the righteous bastards who climb in govt are totally capable of this, it wouldn't be a first [slate.com].
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday October 14 2014, @03:16PM
That's a little over the top, I think. Where is it legal to force people to take a drug? Especially one with so many bad side effects?
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday October 14 2014, @03:30PM
I suspect it would be marketed as "enriched for your health" like salt having iodine or tap water being fluoridated.
Also I wonder about playing games with subclinical dosages. So if 100 mg "cures" 100% of patients in a clinic, maybe they'd only add 25 mg to each bag of Doritos. People who smoke pot and get the munchies would self correct, sorta.
And other than the prison food, nobody would be "forced". Just don't eat at school, or have a job, or
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday October 15 2014, @02:48PM
Number 3 already requires FDA approval directly.
1, 2, 4 and 5 will generally require it indirectly (unless you own the farm that produced that food, and prepared it all yourself...in which case I think it's still technically their job to regulate it, they just won't be there to do it.)
You realize the 'F' in FDA is for 'Food', right? Nearly all food is already regulated by the FDA, except perhaps some of the meats and things that are generally handled by the USDA instead...
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday October 16 2014, @02:11PM
requires FDA approval
Yeah good point, if our government and corporations merged and were run by lunatics we'd really be in big trouble, so as you point out, luckily this won't be an issue (LOL).
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday October 16 2014, @02:47PM
Ah my mistake, I misread your post. I read it as "within 5 years FDA approval will be required for..." rather than "FDA will require this to be added to..."
I definitely was not saying that there will necessarily be safe because they require FDA approval. Just look at their past statements on GMOs -- not that I'm against ALL GMOs, but at one point the FDA was saying Monsanto was responsible for ensuring they were safe, while Monsanto was saying the FDA was responsible for ensuing they were safe. So there's clearly a pretty huge gap there...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 13 2014, @06:30PM
this is A/C because of the story i am going to tell.
I was very good at programming and they had to fuse my spine...twice and the messed up so i am in constant pain. they had me on oxyxotin(before oxyproblems), opana, morphine. i was very much addicted and told my doctor. they would stop and blamed me saying i could just not fill the prescriptions. eventually i stopped the doc and moved to Heroin. that took me very fast. after running hard in the streets and doing things that make me shutter now i went to seek help. methadone/suboxone clinic. i traded one drug dealer for a legal one. eventually my stubbornness kicked in and i went to another city and sweated it out the hard way. never went back. i did flirt with cocaine but nothing like what i did before. you want to quit...sweat it out. it won't kill you and depending on you it will last about a week. it is a long wrong and you will be tempted but i am proof you can come out on the other side and i am back to programming and happily married. i don't like the idea of one medicine curing another.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 13 2014, @08:02PM
Crikey! I never want to get as good at programming as you...
Glad you hear your life is on track.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 13 2014, @10:13PM
It takes a hard man to program in Ruby.
(Score: 2) by fnj on Monday October 13 2014, @09:35PM
What kind of ignoramus would suppose that this would REDUCE the craving? It's perfectly obvious it would INCREASE it. After all, COCAINE itself "blocks the pleasurable effects" of cocaine. The same with heroin. It's called tolerance, it's part of the definition of addiction, and is a large part of what makes drugs dangerous. The more you use cocaine or heroin, the higher the dose you require to produce the same desired effect. All that means is that addicts increase their dosage, taking more and more dangerous amounts. That's what would happen if you dosed an addict with this 18-MC crap.
(Score: 1) by Techlectica on Tuesday October 14 2014, @05:52AM
It's a good thing I don't have an addiction to a recreational drug. You see I misread this one book and then spent a year building immunity to Ibogaine powder.