Slashdot Mirror
Star Trek's Synthehol Now Possible?
[TheBORG] writes "Professor David Nutt, a psychopharmacologist at the University of Bristol in the UK, believes that there is no scientific reason why 'synthehol' (a science-fictional substitute for alcohol that appears in Star Trek:The Next Generation television series) cannot be created now. It will allow drinkers to experience all of the enjoyable, intoxicating effects of alcohol without unpleasant side-effects like hangovers." Of course, there's still the real deal, Romulan Ale, for when you want a splitting headache in the morning.
Actually Sinthehole just had the taste and none of the side-effects (like feeling happy, having impaired judgement, etc).
Alcohol *is* easily produced synthetically - Ethanol. Simply add it to your favorite soft drink (diet if you want something close to completely synthetic) to create a completely synthetic alcoholic beverage.
it already exists and it is illegal, ghb produces effects very similar to alcohol,
with much smaller dosage and few side effects. it works on gaba receptors like
alcohol does.
Hangovers in my experience are caused by 2 things: 1: bad alchool, since methanol really frags up your body and makes you sick, being broken up in formic acid and formaldehyde, which also makes you blind destroying your optic nerve. 2: dehydratation, since alchool, well, makes you go to the loo way too much. It's a killer when combined with dancing because you also sweat a lot. My solution? Drink good quality vodka (low methanol) mixed with soda and lemon juice (good for fighting dehydratation). Unless I mix with some strange stuff I get offered from mates the next day I'm perfectly fine for a saturday morning of coding.
From Wikipedia:
...exhilaration and lasting euphoria, which in no way differs from the normal euphoria of the healthy person...You perceive an increase of self-control and possess more vitality and capacity for work...This result is enjoyed without any of the unpleasant after-effects that follow exhilaration brought about by alcohol....Absolutely no craving for the further use of cocaine appears after the first, or even after repeated taking of the drug...
[I]n 1884 [...] Sigmund Freud published his work Über Coca, in which he wrote that cocaine causes:
Free Manning, jail Obama.
You touch on Brand New World but I want to make it a bit obvious: in that book, Huxely describes soma, which is a bit like alcohol but without the hang-over (therefore pre-dating Synthehol by decades). And although I don't know anything about Star Trek, in Huxley's book drinking soma is usually accompanied by orgies. So there's that.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
It's probably entirely pointless to debate this here, but what the hell. I'm bored.
No darling, it's an order of magnitude 'stronger' (higher THC) then a generation ago.
False. There is no proof that marijuana on the market today is, on average, stronger than that in the mid or early 80's, or even 70's/60's. You're buying the B.S. that the U.S. Gov'ts failing drug czar's office wants you to buy. If you look at the figures they use to try and promote this myth, you will realize a few things. First of all, the method used to determine the concentration of THC way-back-when was inconsistent, it was not always used on fresh stashes, but rather very stale stashes (THC breaks down over time) and even on feral hemp, which containts hardly any THC. So on average, they claim that marijuana of the past had less than 1% THC content. There's a problem with this though. You can't get stoned on 1% or less THC. You're brain doesn't notice it. So either the hippies of the past were hallucinating the effects of marijuana (which I wouldn't entirely rule out considering the high use of acid...), or else, you got it, there was more THC in marijuana back then than the officials want you to think there was.
Second of all, there are anectdotal researches that show that with older age, lower doses of THC have higher effects on the brain. That is one reason why people that were hippies back in the 60's find todays marijuana to be stronger. It's not really stronger, they're just getting a much better ROI thanks to their aging.
And finally, lets just pretend for a moment that marijuana IS much stronger today. Say, 10 times stronger. It still wouldn't matter. Unlike alcohol, where drunk people consume more and more and next thing you know they're wasted, marijuana does not have these effects. Users stop smoking after a certain level of intoxication is achieved. Individual users will have different requirements. Some would want to get a mild buzz, others may want to get stoned off their ass. Either way they'll stop smoking after they achieve that level. The total intake is the same. So what you may be able to say is that high THC varieties are SAFER than old, low THC varieties, as the total amount of smoke ingested is LESS.
With that in mind do you think comparing what is on the market today with that of 40 years ago is particularly accurate?
Again, no I wouldn't, if your comparison involves logical falacies and down right illogical thinking. The basic FUD spread by the drug czar is that:
Today's marijuana has more THC, so it is more dangerous than previous hippy generations had it.
The problem here is that the underlying assumption is that THC and marijuana in general is dangerous. This has not been proven. At all. Not in the slightest. There have been no fatalities from recreational use of marijuana. Smoking and driving, while undesirable, does not have the same effect as drinking and driving. Traffic accidents involving parties that were ONLY smoking pot are actually less likely than totally sober traffic accidents. Taking a sample of traffic accident fatality victims that had traces of THC in their blood (I'll skip the fact that the sampling method is inacurate), the majority of these people also had some other intoxicating agent present, alcohol being at the top of the list.
Wouldn't you be just a bit concerned about any neuropharmacological agent that was delivered in a random dose, from implicitly suspect sources, that had been bred up so quickly with such little good research?
There is more than enough anectdotal and scientific proof that marijuana is not dangerous. However, you have a point. Black market marijuana may not be terribly safe, due to the nature of it being entirely un-regulated in it's final sales form. There could be plenty of insecticides used on it, or, like there have been a few (very few) reports of angel dust laced marijuana. That angel dust will REALLY fuck with you.
What you put into y
ugh. I hate when people bring this one up. Yes smoking a pack or marijuana is worse than smoking a pack of cigarettes. Luckily a 'pack' of joints is an unbelievable amount of substance. Where a smoker could easily smoke a pack a day, if one smokes good pot the dosage is MUUUCH smaller. I can get quite intoxicated every night, including sharing a couple nights with my girlfriend for a week and only use 1 gram/week.
Basically what I'm getting at, is how long does one gram of tobacco satisfy an average smoker?
Robert: "Your synthehol...never leaves you out of control, isn't that so?"
Picard: "That is so."
Robert: "This will. Now there's something I'd like to see."
Picard: "What's that?"
Robert: "I venture you've probably never been drunk in your entire life."
The episode you're remembering is Relics. Data does claim that synthehol, "simulates the appearance, smell, and taste of alcohol, but the intoxicating effects can be easily dismissed." I suppose you could interpret "easily dismissed" as "easily shaken off" but given the evidence from other episodes, I interpret it as him saying that the intoxicating effects are so low that they can be dismissed as inexistent.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
No, but a major effect of alcohol is disinhibition. That's what it does, heck, that's a major reason for drinking it ("dutch courage" and all that"). So it makes people more prone to say what they think.
And thus we have -- "Alcohol, the cause of and the solution to all of life's problems."
much like a Cuban cigar - it's the law that makes them taste so damned good
:-P
But I'm Canadian you insensitive clod!
We can buy them legally. Hence why every convenience store in Niagara Falls, Ontario has gigantic signs saying "CUBAN CIGARS" for all the nice American tourists.
Right; and tobacco doesn't cause lung cancer, people who were going to get lung cancer anyway are probably drawn to/self-medicating with tobacco.
When people get hallucinations long after taking LSD ('flashbacks') that's not the LSD, people who get random hallucinations are drawn to/self-medicating with LSD.
There are vastly higher rates of disorder A amongst people who take drug B. There can only be one explanation; people with disorder A are drawn to drug B. Honestly..
If you want to smoke it then fine, but please don't spread rubbish like this for kids to read and get the impression that it's harmless.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
In star trek synthahol was non-alcoholic drinks, except in the star trek universe they tasted good, or just like the original would. so the synthahol equivalent of whisky would taste exactly like whisky but without the effects like getting drunk and having a hang over. It didnt just show up in next generation either, it was alive and well in the 60's show as well. they even mentioned at some point that it doesnt get you drunk, thats why scotty kept a secret stash of scotch under one of the armor helmets in his quarters. I believe McCoy kept a stash too for "special occasions".
Even in TNG they mention that synthahol is non-alcoholic. after picard gets turned into a borg and back again he goes home to see his brother, they get together and statrt to drink some real wine, picard's brother says to him that this is the real deal, you might loose control. Not like that synthahol garbage the military makes you drink.
so technically we already have a synthahol type equivalent, so drink up your o'doules (sp?)!
-ManJerk
-Boycot shampoo! demand real poo!