interesting drugs
A list by wait · 13 items
cool mechanisms!
- MDMA
wait's latest · 2026-11-04★★★harm reduction is so important! watch out for serotonin syndrome! dont take if you are on ssris! however imo one of the coolest drugs because we still don't fully understand the mechanism. acts as a stimulant and a hallucinogen because it binds to 5HT2A serotonin receptor (also other serotonin receptors) and also has a similar mechanism to amphetamines (im definitely about to explain this wrong) where it like POPS the little containers in the cell open that hold dopamine (also other neurotransmitters i think) and releases them so that a bunch of them bind. but has less active compounds than other amphetamines that break down so it doesn't make you high for like 24-72 hours!! nice! it definitely also does other weird shit in your brain after reading the wikipedia article to make sure i wasn't too too wrong
- LSD
wait's latest · 2026-11-04★★★★★one time i was told that the reason it binds so long is because the binding pocket has like a lid that covers it and then the acid is trapped and i don't know if that is true but i do think its really cool
- Cannabis (drug)
wait's latest · 2026-11-04★★★i have complicated personal feelings about her but the cannabinoid receptor is fascinating and understudied and weed is one of the safest drugs if not the safest drug <333 did you know that your cannabinoid receptors are on the pre-synaptic cell meaning that they function as like regulatory receptors ????? like normally when receptors are in that placement it is to pick up extra compound that was doing too much and the cell didn't need all of that so what are those guys doing there!
- MPP+
wait's latest · 2026-11-04★★★★★i used APP+ which is almost this drug to make my cells light up bc its fluorescent (so is this one) but the way i first learned about this drug was that my boss told me someone in a lab took this because it binds to your dopamine / serotonin / norepinephrine transporters so they thought they would get high but actually they gave themselves like basically the drug version of parkinsons and died :( i know thats not funny at all but i do think it is a little bit funny but sorry to that graduate student </3
- Botulinum toxin
wait's latest · 2026-11-04★★★★★efficient drug! most potent toxin known to man and also makes your face look younger and also can get rid of migranes! probably also other cool medical uses i don't know about! shes so cool!!!!
- Yoda1
wait's latest · 2026-11-04★★★★★i like this one because it binds to Piezo1 which is normally only activated (at least so far as we know i guess) by the membrane moving but this guy binds to a different place and just makes the channel open anyways. you go yoda1
- Disulfiram
wait's latest · 2026-11-04★★★★★also known as antabuse i think this one is interesting because it highlights the difficultly of creating medicines to treat addiction. it makes you really sick basically if you drink alcohol but it isn't a very good medication -- not because it doesn't work from a pharmacology pov but because you have to take it everyday and if you want to get drunk of course you're not going to take the drug that makes you feel really bad. even more interesting because methadone (which works very differently but still you won't be able to get high) DOES work to help people not take opioids and a lot of people take it
- Nitrous oxide (medication)
wait's latest · 2026-11-04★i am very afraid of recreational use of this drug (whippets) for personal reasons and because the reason you get high is literally due to you starving your brain of oxygen. diva ... there are better ways to enjoy your time!
- Alcohol (drug)
wait's latest · 2026-11-04★★★★as a drug to do i rate this one like a 3 but as a drug to learn about i rate this one like one million its so interesting dude. super tiny and super promiscuous it binds to everything!!!!! i always want to add it to my experiments to see how it fucks up the proteins. and the reason why you can time other drugs out differently than you time out alcohol (for ex. weed will make you high for like 2 hours if you smoke it and you have a tolerance / mileage may vary) is because we have one enzyme in the body (aldehyde dehydrogenase) which slows down the metabolism of alcohol significantly because we don't have very much of it and THAT is why alcohol is essentially 0 order kinetics for metabolism in the body and we process like one standard drink / hour instead of it being like no matter how much of this drug you took all of it will be metabolized within this time period (that is how like any other drug I can think of works). i have been to some seminars last year where they were fear mongering me extremely (but i do think that this is true) and i have been told that any amount of alcohol contributes to your cancer risk. do i still drink? well i am an american after all!
- Naloxone
wait's latest · 2026-11-04★★★★★coolest drug everrrrrrrr. in case you don't know this drug binds to the opioid receptor and blocks activity so it reverses opioid overdoses. has saved so many lives and coolest part is its not dangerous if you give it to someone and you don't know if they're overdosing from opioids or another drug (it probably won't help them if they didn't take opioids though). very important for people to know that if someone is overdosing and you give them narcan you still need to take them to a hospital because the drug only lasts like 30 mins or something and then after that the person can start overdosing again because the opioids are still in their bloodstream!! also if you give someone 1 narcan and it doesn't work you might need to give them 2!!
- Methadone
wait's latest · 2026-11-04★★★★★it works as an opioid that binds to your receptor but doesn't do the same downstream signaling to make you high. so it makes you go into much less of a withdrawal (supposedly) which is awesome because opioid withdrawal can be extremely painful both emotionally and physically. when you withdraw from a drug it just has the opposite effect as if you took the drug so imagine the opposite of euphoria i guess. as someone who has never used methadone but has known a handful of people who have i have mixed feelings. very cool and extremely important that we have a drug that can make the opioid withdrawals less terrible and we can make recovery easier <3. on the other hand fuck a methadone clinic that doesn't help people wean off of the drug and takes advantage of their client base which already has a complex relationship with the healthcare system. not taking stars off of methadone for that because its methadones fault fr. but we need to support our folks in addiction and recovery <3
- Nicotine
wait's latest · 2026-11-04★★★★★on one hand, and i love smoking </33333 when i start smoking again life gets bad but i wish it did not. on the other hand, if i had not developed a relationship with miss nicotine i may not have found my deep and immense love of science and research so . whatever life is weird. at least when i crash out i look cool doing it
- Cocaine
wait's latest · 2026-11-04★★probably i know the least about how this drug works which is sad because i did actually work with it in the lab before but to the best of my understanding it does a bunch of shit with dopamine and serotonin and other neurotransmitters and we don't know what part of that shit is important and what part of that shit we havent discovered yet but i guess the parts we have discovered already we don't know like ... why its relevant. idk. did you know theres no known pharmacologicaly treatment for stimulant abuse other than like ... different stimulants? also this drug is used for optical surgeries because its a local anesthetic. cool! that gets it an extra star i think. recreationally? i have never done it but i have only heard bad things
2 comments
I like the logs for each of these, very cool indeed
thank you <3
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