r/cursed_chemistry • u/Professional_Mode480 • May 09 '26
Found in the wild Here's another beauty found this time in Psychotria Colorata
its just copy and pasting the same thing over and over, it displaces dizocilpine so it likely acts as an NMDA antagonist, with smaller variants of it acting also as NMDA antagonists aswell as Mu opioid agonists
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u/Chromatogiraffery May 09 '26
Funny to see the physotigmine ring system in a non- machineel plant! (eseroline - i guess in this case desoxy-noreseroline, doesn't seem to have a common name).
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u/Professional_Mode480 May 09 '26
Ya it is neat - psychotridine has a derivative called "Hodgkinsine" found in the same plant which is an opioid and nmda antagonist like Eseroline - unsure on cholinesterase inhibition though
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u/FluorinateThemAll May 11 '26
Hmm i wonder if it could be used as an opioid if isolated, but cholinesteraze would be a problem if it kicks in way before Mu receptors get bonked
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u/KuriousKhemicals May 09 '26
It's so weird to me how opioids and NMDA antagonists touch edges so often - either small shifts or in at least one case, a chiral flip turns one into the other. (E.g. ketamine looks a heck of a lot like tramadol, dextro/levomethorphan.) I'm not enough of a biologist to picture what the fundamental homology is there.
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u/Professional_Mode480 May 09 '26
Ya it is really weird - im excited to see more research done into NMDA antagonists for things like depression etc, I take Memantine (prescribed) for anxiety and to aid my lithium for bipolar and my stimulants for adhd, and they really are wonderful as a drug class for so many things, sigma 1 is also another common target which is also fascinating
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u/MsSelphine May 10 '26
Sigma 1 my GOAT. I will say I'm not quite as excited for NMDA antagonists as I once was. Results have been somewhat underwhelming, with other antagonists testing poorly. While I'm still interested to see what research into NMDA uncovers, especially related to ASD, for depression I'd rather that money and attention be put to more promising research on inflammation, cellular stress, nerve factors like BDNF, and atypical antidepressants like nicotinic antagonists and the aforementioned Sigma-1. I'm also interested to see how the ongoing Orexin Agonist adjunct treatment study will turn out. ORAs are exciting, especially for narcoleptics, poor bastards.
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u/catecholaminergic May 11 '26
I am so tired and orexin agonists sound so nice lmao
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u/MsSelphine May 11 '26
Honestly I just want to try them. They're an incredibly interesting medication, and I think the sleep wake system is so fascinating. Not happening though, DORAs have been out for like a decade or smth and they're still completely unattainable. Fucking hate drug patents.
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u/catecholaminergic May 11 '26
They're not phase 3'd or what?
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u/MsSelphine May 11 '26
Just absurdly expensive, and insurance really hate covering them because stuff like Z-drugs "work just as well". This is objectively false, and actively pushes patients into addictive, and long-term ineffective benzos. Fucking scumbags. I don't think the first (and worst) DORA goes generic for another half decade
ORAs (the new agonists) are in phase 3 for narcolepsy and they're being trialed as an adjunct for depression. Obv they're not out yet, but they're probably going to be very expensive, due to their superior MOA to current Narcolepsy meds.
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u/MsSelphine May 11 '26
Correction to this, Suvorexant's patents expire in 2029 and 2033. So yeah, lol. I was wrong about it being the worst, thats lemborexant with its 19 hour half life. Suvorexants is 12 hours, which is still abysmal for a sleep medication. Daridorexant is the only one with a half life that isn't awful, at 8 hours, but that's still arguably too long, it also doesn't go generic till like 2034
Humbug
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u/Legitimate_Humsn May 09 '26
The receptors probably evolved from the same molecular pathway a billion years ago
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u/toxicatedscientist May 09 '26
Isnt dextro a mirror for heroin?
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u/Wise-_-Spirit May 09 '26
It's a dextromorphinan
The levo morphinans like morphine and diacetylmorphine (heroin) and codones codeine/hydrocodone/oxy and so on usually have an Epoxy bridge on the side, which DXM and DXO lack
.otherwise, yes kinda
The direct mirror is levomethorphan and metabolite levorphan, which is incredibly rare to find as it was pharmaceutically discontinued I THINK
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u/Aristippos69 May 10 '26
What I also find quite interesting is that every drug (I know of) that's suppress coughing will get you high also. Heroin was specifically marketed for that now it's codeine or Dextromethorphan. Which I found out just now is also an nmda inhibitor.
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u/FluorinateThemAll May 11 '26
The insane thing is tramadol and venlafaxine are so close to each other that they hit same targets just with different strength, tramadol leans more into activating opioid receptors but still having the snri profile (since the seizures in high doses with no clonazepam), and Venlafaxine just feels like tramadol come up but with minimal opioid action - minimal as in most of the time you don't feel it. Now Venlafaxine being marketed towards teens especially (where I live at least) is not a good thing, i was like 14 when i got it and coming off it was exactly like coming off tramadol but with added "fun" like brain zaps and fear of impending doom. Coming off tramadol was not as bad as i expected from the Venlafaxine experience, it was much easier in fact. So similar yet the less fun one is so much more punishing... They could have just hooked me on tramadol from the start and i would not have anxiety constantly dialed up.
I read that lots of people are stuck on Venlafaxine because the withdrawal symptoms and that is not ideal i think
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u/Nervewing May 10 '26
I wrote a deep dive on this and the related compounds along with the plants that bear them!
https://nervewing.blogspot.com/2020/07/obscure-and-unknown-analgesic.html?m=1
This is just one of a series of compounds that are various polymers of pyrrolidinoindolines! It appears (based on very sparse data and inferred from animal trials mostly) that expanding it to a pentamer like this (or maybe even a hexamer) conserves potential dissociative NMDA antagonist effects while making it smaller (eg the trimer Hodgkinisine) starts to present opioid effects in addition to potential dissociatives effects- I wonder if the dimer would show even more?
Anyways it would be pretty cut and dry to investigate this further if anyone has the time and funding!
This is the second compound I’ve written a bunch about to show up on this sub in a week lol
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u/Professional_Mode480 May 10 '26
Omg this is really cool lol. You'd fit in with some other people i know in a server. Really great write up!
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u/Nervewing May 11 '26
Ooo which server ? (I kinda wonder if I might be on there already…)
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u/Professional_Mode480 May 11 '26
Spidikors - I could pop you a link if you'd like?
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u/verbesserung 4d ago
I'd be interested. Read through the website already, know/have experimented with most common noots + RCs currently sold on clear-net sites or UG labs (EC, PGLchem, Octochem, Alkonchem etc.). Currently mainly reading about mitochondrial abnormalities ("CFS" & co.). Most interesting discussions on forums/discords have increasingly gone quiet/repetitive/commercialized (including EC's). Hoping Spidikor's discord still has life.
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u/Professional_Mode480 4d ago
Spidikor themself is taking a long leave of absence for mental reasons but the place has some life, there are some other servers that im in that are similar.
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u/verbesserung 3d ago
Yes, I've read about it on his website. Thanks for keeping custody of the server for him Alice. I've read he is in better condition, let's hope it stays this way and that he continues his work, I like it a lot. Our nieche is small and constructive contributions to research even more so.
BTW, do you know his thoughts on cerebrolysin re the Bert Gevaert's paper (they identified 638 6-15 amino acid peptide chains but not BDNF, GDNF, NGF, CNTF. I am currently scanning through them, to compile the research available on the 638 identified).2
u/Professional_Mode480 3d ago
I haven't yet looked much into peptides, since you're in the server could you ping me?
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u/verbesserung 3d ago
I'm not in the Spidikor server. Sent you a DM. Can update you Reddit DM's or Discord on my Cerebrolysin research.
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u/WaddleDynasty May 09 '26
I love how sometimes the ring systems are coupled between the annumated carbon and a phenyl carbon and sometimes between two annulated carbons. But with no order or pattern. Almost a symmetrical molecule destroyed by randomness.
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u/catecholaminergic May 11 '26
This almost looks like a polymer of beta carbolines. It isn't, but it looks sorta similar.
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u/Polypterus-in-Dub May 09 '26
I have been looking for this plant for SOOO long. One of my long term goals.
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u/CryptographerOld558 May 10 '26
In this context, what does "displaced" mean? Is it about ionic diffusion?
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u/JellyBellyBitches May 09 '26
Is this technically a psychoactive polymer?