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Morphine Relief Without Addiction?
Roland Piquepaille writes "Morphine has been used as a painkiller for decades, if not centuries. Unfortunately for patients, morphine is also an addictive substance. Now, Brigham Young University (BYU) chemists are using a vine plant that grows in Australia to develop a new painkilling molecule, but with fewer side effects. The Deseret Morning News reports that the BYU chemists hope to ease pain with hasubanonine, the synthetic compound they created and which has a similar molecular structure as morphine. Still, more tests need to be done before this natural drug can replace morphine."
Dr. Freud recommends cocaine as morphine relief.
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
If I recall correctly, Heroin was originally designed the same way, or at least to help people get off of a morphine addiction.
Oops! It turned out to be even more addictive, oh well, let's try again. hehe
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
http://yardbird.com/william_s_burroughs_deposition .htm
Painkillers (opioid painkillers, specifically) are addictive precisely because of their analgesic effects. Addiction and analgesia are not separate traits, but rather two aspects of the same action. Anything that provides strong central pain relief (as opposed to peripheral analgesia as in NSAIDs) has at least some risk of causing psychological or physical dependence.
To avoid the addictive problems of morphine, we invented heroin. Oops.
as someone who was recently in hospital and had morphine (and as a person who has done just about every drug there is) i can say it doesnt actually _stop_ the pain it just makes you not care about it, but it was still there even when wasted out of my skull it just makes you not care
now a painkiller that would actually take away pain would iam sure be welcomed
There are several companies out there with similar meds in trials. Pain Therapeutics, Inc. http://www.paintrials.com/ is doing this.
Morphine without high. Non-alcholic beers. Mono (.NET on Linux). All things trainspotters laugh at.
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but after reading the summary, do I see the contradiction they claimn that the synthetic compound they invented is "natural"?
Painkillers without side-effects?
Welcome, to a A Brave New World!
Oh wait, there's already a drug marketed under the name of Soma? Damn!
Ryan Fenton
Heroin, the non-addictive replacement for morphine, worked out so well on the non-addictive side...
Morphine Administered ...anyone else remember that from Half Life?
It is an impressive job that's been done by an undergrad student nonetheless. Not an expert in the area. Not sure how they can prove it is "non-addictive" though, not sure why that's even brought up in the article. Doesn't addiction depend on the release of things like dopamine in the brain?
Digg?
Despite being banned in the USA, Herion (diamorphine) is used in palliative care here in the UK where addiction is not a problem.
Morphine is also used, and again, addiction is not a problem, but for different reasons. If the right dose is used, so it goes, the physiological changes in the brain that cause addiction do not happen (mind you, the New Scientist is hardly a reputable source of knowlege).
So, the war on opiates continues...
Stick Men
Actually both morphine and diamorphine (aka heroin) are excellent painkillers. There's no risk of addiction if they're used properly. Another victim of the war on drugs: the uncounted millions who die in unneccessary agony.
How is a drug derived from a vine any more/less natural than a drug derived from a flower?
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
I love how all the low number slashdot users all appear to be addicts/former addicts.
How can a 'synthetic compound' be a 'natural drug'?
When you live with a terminally ill person, the idea of addiction quickly becomes asinine. Yet, they still won't prescribe it for addiction reasons. Lo, let this comment get relegated to the depths of un-moderation. And you Slashdot libertarians can wait until your family member has chronic pain - so you can wonder why republicans don't want them addicted. Ooo, I know, blame it on democrats.
I am an Anesthesiologist. I give people morhine and fentanyl on a daily basis.
Morphine is a natural drug, it comes from a plant. Cocaine, digitalis, aspirin and many other drugs are also natural.
If the new drug is related to morphine I take that to mean it will work on the same receptors in the brain.
If it does, it will have a similar side effect profile: constipation, nausea, respiratory depression and probably addictive potential.
To me, this is just a "me too" drug like Tagamet/Zantac/Pepcid that all work the same way on the same receptors.
Interestingly, there is no profit margin in simple morphine. The cost to the hospital for an ampule that would relieve severe pain is on the order of $1.
The DEA paperwork is a bigger cost to a hospital!
The biggest long term problem for people who take morhine (or heroin in the UK or oxycontin or any drug in this class) is constipation.
Cancer patients don't have to worry about addiction.
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Boy, am I glad that tribal Australians will be reimbursed for all the R&D they invested in breeding that vine for thousands of years. That their prior art will prevent some pharmaco from patenting the vine, that the pharmaco lobbyists won't be able to prevent Australians from using the cheap original plant.
--
make install -not war
There once was a medicine developed to replace morphine and opium, having the same reliefing effect while avoiding - and even curing - addiction to those powerful drugs. The product was so successful that it was used for many applications, even for cough suppressants. However, it was later discovered that this marvellous medicine had similar side effects as the drugs it was intended to replace. This once "non-addictive" medicine was called Heroin.
Life is just nature's way of keeping meat fresh.
In the next to last sentence: "the synthetic compound they created".
In the last sentence: "this natural drug".
Ummm, those two phrases are the complete opposite of each other...
From the F'ing article:
Mirror image of the "natural one". Sounds like a "synthetic compound" to me...
> Still, more tests need to be done before this natural drug can replace morphine.
Oh, I don't know - some guy just declared the AIDS problem solved thanks to a test on 49 people. Why not tick the `100% effective pain killer` box and move straight on to world peace?
How fortunate that tribal Africans spent thousands of years breeding ibogaine for an opiate withdrawal/detox remedy.
--
make install -not war
Why not try Heroin ??
Is this going to become another example of the USA stealing the biological wealth of an indigenous people, like they did in India? This is genetic piracy!
"Morphine Relief Without Addiction?"
... they shot themself in the arm ... err ... foot.
That is exactly what they said about heroin when they first discovered it
Mmhmmm... Soma... soooommmmmaaaa....
the synthetic compound they created and which has a similar molecular structure as morphine. Still, more tests need to be done before this natural drug can replace morphine
Talk about self contradiction...
The following statement is true
The preceding statement is false
i thought it was impossible to get "high" on paracetamol but 2 years agoI was snowboarding and I cracked a filling. The pain became so bad that I was bedridden and I was also unable to get anything stronger than paracetamol as there were no doctors until Thursday (this was monday). I know full well the dangers of paracetamol but I was so delerious i just kept munching them and eventually i lost consciousness from either the drugs or the pain. The moral of the story is: paracetamol is really bad. If i can have a non-addictive painkiller then yes please. Oh yeah, God bless the UK NHS, you may be bloated with middle management but you're still great.
synthetic compound != natural drug
If you read TFA instead of the completely misleading summary, you'll note that...
(1) The BYU chemists don't know if the compound has painkilling properties at all. It's the mirror image of another molecule which is known not to be a painkiller. The mirror image is similar to morphine, so they hope it might have the painkilling properties of morphine. But it's painkilling properties are at this point entirely theoretical.
(2) They have no clue whatsoever whether, if it has painkilling properties, it is less addictive than morphine. It just as easily be more addictive. All they know is, while it looks like morphine, it isn't exactly morphine, so it will probably have slightly different properties.
(3) And of course, they have no idea whether the new molecule would have other, less desirable differences from morphine -- like being a deadly poison to the kidneys. Whether the stuff could even be safely taken by humans is still unknown.
In short, the summary on this article wildly exaggerates its content.
who wants to make bets on how many more times this will be repeated?
I would like to suggest that Roland Piquepailles submissions be placed in a seperate blog.
/. to get real news and facts, and see discussions from people with insight.
I read
Roland Piquepailles submissions are usually vague quasiscience or fiction.
It seems this last one "Morphine Relief Without Addiction?", is just some graduate students learning to synthsize a compound with no empirical data it is any more useful than sand. I quote: "The *idea* is that we *can* send it to NIH to test to see if it kills pain"
You should mod this up if you agree or mod away as flamebait/offtopic/troll if you dont agree, but at least mod it.
"Fix it"
this reads just like the university's press releases i'd read during grad school about the fantastic results of some academic's basic science research. if this were tech-related all of the /. weenies would be whining about how the claims couldn't be true or how there aren't enough details or whatever. and... they'd be right. this is irrelevant unless you're a chemist. it sure won't affect you and me for years and years.
i rock.
The vast majority of people who must use morphine for medical reasons, even those requiring long term use, don't become morphine "addicts" as we normally use the term. Most users wean themselves off the drug relatively easily when the pain they used the morphine to suppress goes away. Many drugs, with and without neurological effects, are physically addictive in that suddenly stopping the intake of the drug causes illness yet no one speaks of "beta blocker addicts."
Addiction to psychoactive drugs arises from the psychological instead of the physiological effects of the drugs. New drugs that offer the the same psychological effects as traditional drugs will present most of the same addiction issues.
ok!
-- Roland Piquepaille
Interesting that neither the summary nor the article links to the page at BYU's NewsNet page. It has a few more details, links to other sources, a video, and pictures related to the research.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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This compound hasn't even been tested to determine whether it relieves pain yet... this article is way, way preliminary. Its just a neat synthesis so far, not even a candidate drug.
...the National Institutes of Health ... will check to see if it does, indeed, have painkilling properties, as [the researchers] suspect.
/. ran an article on every promising drug candidate this early in development, we'd probably be getting a dozen a day.
So it hasn't even been demonstrated to be effective, yet alone safe, non-addictive and economic.
If
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Depends where you're from... in some places, "sarcasm" is just saying one thing, and then calling it "sarcasm" when somebody corrects you...
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
Which moron modded parent a troll? If you are that troll-sensitive, GP looks more like a troll than P. At least the parent used a smiley. Somebody catch this in metamod.
I didn't RTFA but in the description it says its a SYNTHETIC drug and at the end it says its a NATURAL drug...... Last time I checked most of our drugs are derived from opium, a naturaly occuring substance (from the poppy seed), so what is so much more "natural" about this?
The submission, as well as TFA, refer to this compound's potential for pain relief without the "addictive" properties of morphine. The article does not, however, discuss the differences between the psychological condition of "addiction" versus the physical condition of "dependance". Any drug with the ability to relieve pain, cause sedation, or change neurotranmitter levels are potentially addictive. Hopefully this new drug does not create the physical syndrome of dependance created by older, more traditional, opiates.
That said, such a drug is already on the market, Tramadol. Tramadol delivers on it's promise of pain relief without dependance, however, it does not have the potency. Tramadol only exhibits about 10% of the analgesic effect of morphine.
If this new drug offers relief from moderate to severe pain without the physical issues caused by opiate agonists, it would be a welcome breakthrough. Many chronic pain sufferers (myself included) spend their lives dependant on medications that cause awful side effects if abruptly discontinued. A pain reliever that does not create this problem would certainly be useful in treating legitimate pain.
But, I suspect the title of this posting and TFA itself, are somewhat misleading - there is nothing that can alleviate the psychological problem of addiction in those seeking to abuse medications.
"Adventure? Excitement? A Jedi craves not these things."
..once you understand that the highest levels of government and finance are in the "illegal" drugs business. They make way too much money and can garner outrageous amounts of socio/political control by running those businesses and by keeping a huge variety of drugs "illegal". They profit immensely more by forcing people into the underground.Tthey make money legitimately by the bucketful with "legal" drugs, then they just plain clean up on the illegal side. It is the mother of all cash cows and it has lead directly to the police state they so much love and enjoy. Double plus good for crooked globalist "government", or should I say "rule by terror".
There is a small fraction of the population that doesn't get hooked on morphine and its derivatives.
This is misleading. Actually, the vast majority of individuals who use opioids do not develop addiction. Everyone develops physical dependence and it's important to understand the difference. While physical dependence requires that long term opiate users taper thier dose of a long period of time, addiction (psychological dependence) occurs in only a few percent of opiate users.
Opiate addiction is similar to alcoholism. The vast majority of alcohol users will never experience addiction disorder.
For two years I took 60mg of time release morphine (Avinza) for fibromyalgia. Personally, it was much more difficult to quit drinking coffee than it was to taper off morphine (using oxycodone to taper).
Yes please.
Property is theft.
As somebody who has taken morphine (Avinza 60mg) long term (two years) for fibromyalgia pain, I can attest it most certainly does control pain. The "high" associated with opioid medications can, additionally, allow you to dissociate yourself from the pain.
In the chronic use of morphine for pain control, side effects such as constipation, sleepiness, and the "high" usually subside after a matter of days. The analgesia remains. If it actually interfered to the point that patients just didn't care about the pain, it would likely be difficult to drive a car, go to work, etc. This is not the case. There are many many people that use opioid medications for pain control any you wouldn't even know by looking at them. Over time, there are no more psychic side effects than there are with taking an Advil. It just controls the pain.
Obviously I've been out of the loop for a while, but what happened with the mixed agonist/antagonist compounds that were supposed to essentially eliminate dose escalation (read: abuse, a major problem with pain management). I always thought that it (at least in theory) sounded like an interesting solution, with potential applications beyond pain medication (would MDMA be a viable treatment for depression if escalation and the euphoric 'high' was taken out of the equation?).
I was also wondering about novel alkaloid 7-hydroxymitragynine which was also purported to have opioid like effects with a somewhat different dependency profile, but it looks like I found my answer.
Quack, quack.
As a chronic disease and pain sufferer, I've tried many different pain meds - morphine, oxycodone, hydrocodone, Demerol, Dilaudid, so I can confidently say that much of this anti-opioid mentality on this board and in American society in general is unwarranted. And I know the vast majority of people out there, especially on generic medical websites like Mayo's or whatever, and people who don't use narcotics, will disagree with me. But once you talk to an addict or recovering addict, you might find this strikingly similar. So bear that in mind before reading further. Larger doses don't put you more at risk for addiction, and the analgesic effect is not addictive, and there is no magical process that causes addiction. If you're taking it recreationally, you just want the euphoria and you want to escape reality. Like another user said, he didn't feel pain relief from morphine, he just didn't care anymore. Though honestly a strong enough dose will get rid of a lot of pain, it won't get rid of it all. So therein lies the reason why some people become addicts and others don't - you've either come to terms that you want to live in reality or you want to live in your own private world where nothing else matters except yourself, and opioids/opiates help take away displeasing thoughts and replace them with euphoria. It gives you a sense of security. You develop a craving for it but it doesn't have to take over your life and that craving wanes as you get on with your normal life. I also read a few instances here where people mixed up the definitions for addiction, tolerance, and dependence. If you continually take an opioid, you will develop a tolerance and will have to take larger amounts of the same drug to obtain the same amount of pain relief. This is why it is wrong to look down upon large doses of opioids. If you continue even further you will likely develop a dependence and if you stop suddenly, you will go through withdrawal. Addiction is psychological and not tied to how long you take a drug. Neither is it tied to how much you take. You still have the power to stop it from controlling you.
Someone I cared about died of cancer, and I've never been able to figure out what the big deal would be about providing heroin (or whatever it took) to people who are not expected to live in any case and whose last days are, quite frankly, very bad. Why do we have to worry about addicting them to drugs when their days are numbered? My understanding is that in the UK, and other places, a "cocktail" of drugs is administered that can include heroin and that provides some comfort to people in those final days.
In my own experience, the approach to administering opiates and various other "strong" drugs in hosptals here in the U.S. has changed over the past ten or twelve years. I had a rather painful illness and surgery about a dozen years ago and found myself pleading with assorted nurses for pain relief. The post-operative interval was spent in a haze of incoherent pain. Two years ago I had another illness and hospitalization, and they hooked me up to a pump which allowed me to administer the drugs to myself as I felt I needed them. My recovery was much more rapid, I was up and moving much sooner, and I regained strength and normality much faster. I also didn't require anything for pain after I was released from the hospital.
Our "war on drugs" seems to me to be full of misplaced zealotry. I guess ill and dying people are stationary targets, easier to control than the flood of illegal stuff that sometimes threatens to overwhelm us.
"Here's what's happening. You're starting to drive like your Dad..." - Red Green
You may be overcome with the urge purchase a bicyle and a dark suit and knock on complete strangers' doors. :)
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Finally, a substitute. I'm tired of worrying about whether man-made and therefore harsh and addictive chemicals like morphine are going to turn me into an addict. Bring on nature's own!
Actually, morphine is not addictive, IF the dosage is matched to the pain relief requirement.
A friend of mine, a nurse, was trained in hospice protocol. When another friend was hospitalized for near-terminal cancer, and placed on IV morphine, I asked him about it. My concern was that the hospital was running large doses, basically not worrying about addiction. He explained to me that it was not addictive, if the patient really needed it for pain control.
Some years later, I got to confirm this for myself. I've had both hips replaced, and the initial pain control was with intravenous morphine. Switching off of it to pain pills, then tapering the pain pills, was not a problem.
>even (especially) by self-administration
While recovering from the surgery that bought her a couple of extra years of life, my mother had a patient-controlled Demerol pump. The fascinating thing about those is not that the patients get (duh) better pain control but that their total narcotic consumption is actually lower than when the medical people decide how and when to dose.
n/t
This isn't looking for any medical advice, just satisfying my curiosity.
... you're going to be really out of it tonight, so make sure someone can find you some food and generally supervise you, you won't remember a thing. When I came to in the recovery room, a nurse there gave me a couple morphine injections. I was far too out of it to remember dosage, I just remember that she did it many, many times. Suffice it to say, I was feeling pretty mellow. Went home, made myself some food, watched The Usual Suspects. Mental state was entirely clear, no problems at all, I remember everything. There was no numbness or anything, I was pleasantly surprised. It felt just like normal.
I also want to preface this by saying that I've never abused painkillers, I've only ever used them once before, briefly, after wisdom teeth extraction, and that was only Tylenol 3, hardly anything serious.
I had shoulder surgery a couple months back, sewing my rotator cuff back on. I remember from their little pre-surgery pep talk the nurses saying something along the lines of
Next morning I wake up, and Jesus Christ it hurts. Luckily the hospital had seen fit to give me a Dilaudid prescription... I seem to recall they were the generic 2mg pills, I imagine they weren't 4mg given what happened next.
I took one, and waited.
Nothing.
Took another, nothing. Took two more, nothing.
I've heard that morphine isn't generally given orally because it's metabolized before it has a chance to do anything. I gather that's less of a problem with the more potent opiates, but I would think that 8mg of hydromorphone would be enough to feel something. I've also read that there are people who fast-metabolize morphine, but I would think that would have meant I wouldn't have felt any effect from the morphine either.
So I guess my question is... er... how? why? what? What could make that happen, and would it apply to all opiates, or only those that are similar to morphine?
That must be one smart plant.
Chemists at BYU are playing with morphine-like drugs?
TOO many jokes!
"No elder Bob, I NEVER inhaled". They're on a mission to replace morphine.
Oh, I'm going to burn for that.
I used to the the webmaster for the BYU Chemistry Department. I just had a few thoughts. First, you really should read the official press release from BYU about this if you want more information or if you want high resolution photos. One of the things that makes this particular story more interesting than others I've dealt with is that the primary researcher is an undergraduate student. I'm told that it is fairly uncommon for undergraduates to be involved so deeply with this type of research. Oh, and by the way, the BYU Chemistry Department is a big supporter of open source software.
The idea that addiction in the case of chronical pain would not be a problem for more than one reason. The chronical pain can disappear. Then you're "just" addicted to morphine. Great! An addiction will probably lead you to want more of a drug and have larger doses. See how smokers just "letting it loose" smoke many packs a day?
+1 Agree -1 Disagree
I skipped most of the comments just to write this.
There is a BIG difference between so called "addiction" and dependance. I take morphine 60mg daily for rhumatoid arthritis and will for the rest of my life...which being 22 will hopefully be a long time. People that take opiates for pain management do not get the euphoric feelings outside when a dose increases. Yes my body is physically dependant on it now, but I have no mental craving to take it. It's the euphoria that "addicts" crave. It's like that with any other substance that causes euphoria. Addiction is what happens when people are irresponsibe and can not control their habits.
There should be no argument over opiates being bad. Used properly and responsibly they allow millions of Americans to work and enjoy a quality of life that someone with out a life long condition does.
Get over the drug monger propaganda. Alchohol is much worse then ANY drug available.
I had always thought the addicting property of opiates was integral with the pain-relieving property. As I understand it it, it works something like this:
Morphine {and that includes derivatives such as heroin} basically binds to the same receptors as endorphins, the body's natural pain-relievers {and feelgood chemicals: a dose of endorphins is your body's usual reward for behaviour deemed to be of evolutionary benefit}. Your body produces extra endorphins in times of trauma; but there is usually some level of endorphins in your system, keeping you from feeling the ends of your bones scraping against one another or the pressure of the blood in your arteries. Some people -- especially kids -- deliberately inflict pain on themselves to crank up their endorphin production.
Introducing artificial substances interferes with the body's self-regulatory systems, leading to less endorphin production. Therefore, when you come down off morphine / heroin / methadone, your background endorphin level is lower than it should be -- and as a consequence, you begin to feel the sensations of your body working normally -- which would normally be masked by endorphins -- as pain. Your joints are painful, the movement of food through your digestive system {which has just started up again} is painful, your blood flow is painful, the increasing pressure in your bladder is painful.
Most people can't wait long enough for their endorphin production to get back to normal levels, and instead take another dose just to get rid of the pain of existence. This, of course, is liable to undo the work of restarting endorphin production -- and that is why morphine is addictive.
So how does this new stuff work? If it's got a similar enough structure to morphine that it binds to endorphin receptors, then surely it will slow or block endorphin production just as much as any other flavour of junk? The only way I can see it possibly working is if its pain-relieving property wears off at exactly the same rate that the body naturally begins producing endorphins from scratch. But isn't that a person-to-person variable?
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Heroin is legal for prescription here in the UK, as it's an astoundingly effective treatment for pain. But doctors are less likely to prescribe it now since the conviction of Harold Shipman, a general practitioner who murdered over 200 victims with overdoses of opiates. Doses which are technically considered harmful are commonly prescribed in cases where the reduction in lifespan is less significant than the reduction in suffering. This practice has reduced somewhat as doctors are understandably keen not to be accused of murder.
While I think this if faulty thinking, at least it's better than a religious reason... that's right up there with Jehova's Witnesses refusing blood transfusions.
Tramadol does cause dependence, but it does so very very slowly. I took tramal (400mg/day) for about 4 years. During one of my periodic "holidays" when the nerve blocks were working I'd stop taking tramal to see where my dependence was. For two nights I wouldn't sleep, and I'd have restless legs.
Last Friday I got some nerve blocks, and took a break from my oxycontin. The symptoms of withdrawal are essentially the same, except more intense. I'm taking 20mg of oxy tonight so I'll sleep, and I'll be back to my 40s by thursday. but the break is good, as I'll have had the chance to pooh properly by then. Then it's another 6 weeks until my next nerve blocks.
Note that I'm talking about dependence here, btw. You are of course exactly right about the difference between dependency and addiction. Addiction is a behaviour.
Note that Tramal has it's own risks btw, not the least being seretonin syndrome and seizures. I developed seretonin syndrome due to a clueless doctor suggesting I take 600mg a day. I nearly died - it was terribly scary, and I've had low level chest pains ever since.
Mod them up - this person is a real expert as they speak from experience.
Millions of people get theraputic doses every year and don't get addicted-- reason being they associate morphine with PAIN and bad times, not fun times.
So the basic premise behind this research seems a bit misguided.
Substances are addicting, people are addictive.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
"Natural" is hard to pin down. This drug would be an enantiomer (Enantiomer: (stereo)isomers that are mirror images of each other) of the molecule occuring naturally in the plant -- but what supernatural process happens in the lab, again?
Same sort of thing: l-dopa is a psychoactive drug. Its mirror image, d-dopa, isn't. Same composition and number of atoms, differently-shaped molecule -- they're isomers, and the mirror images are enantiomers of each other. The "l-" version fits a receptor in the brain, the d- version doesn't.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Oh wait, that's not a company...
"Still, more tests need to be done before this natural drug can replace morphine."
Morphine is a natural drug. "Natural" appears to be the new way to sell ice to eskimos.
No, I'm not going to spout religion or philosophy at you, nor am I going to try to sell you something. What I'm going to describe is strongly backed up by scientific evidence, although it's heavily resisted by those who would normally be responsible for telling you about it because it would largely put them out of business.
Opiates in general work because they are similar to endorphins. Endorphins are a chemical in our system that provides a pleasurable sensation when we're doing something that is contrary to energy efficiency, and yet is beneficial to either individual or genetic survival. Exercise, sex, and "thrilling" activities are the primary examples of this, being called "runner's high" "afterglow" for the first two.
Any time we perform a behavior and it results in us having opioids in our system (endorpin, morphine, whatever), the neural links that were recently fired get stronger -- take less effort to fire. This isn't just a matter of "hey, that felt good, I think I'll do it again", it's a matter of reinforcing the neural linkage that recently occured, and this makes us consider those paths to be more favorable when examining our options in the future. This results in opioid addiction, and is also largely responsible for alcoholism. Alcoholics are mostly people whose system produces an abundance of endorphins.
If you don't have a medical background the cure may seem a little anti-intuitive, but medical experts that I describe it to generally nod their head and say "yea, that makes sense". When we perform a behavior and get flushed with opioids, the connections get stronger. When we perform a behavor and DON'T get flushed with opioids, the connections get weaker, returning to their normal state. What this means about a cure is against a lot of people's grain. First, you take something that blocks your opioid uptake. Endorphin antagonists are commonly sold under the names of ReVia, naltrexone, noloxone and nalphemene. They're generally used to ease opiate withdrawl symptoms and to treat alcoholism. Then you feed your addiction.
In case you missed it, I'll say it again. If you perform the behavior (smoking opium, shooting up heroin, get drunk, whatever) and your body doesn't get the opioid flush, then your body unlearns the addiction. For alcoholism, most patients regain the upper hand on their urges after two or three weeks, and can drink socially without fear of overdrinking or going on a binge after about three months. For this to occur, however, the person MUST perform their addictive behavior, and it works best if they perform their habits when and where they normally do.
There is a lot of information about this. If you're interested, the best place to start is probably the Wikipedia entry on the Sinclair Method.
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
I used a morphine derivative for eight days after an auto-accident and did not become addicted. In fact, I wanted off, because it made me too sleepy.
I agree with what you said.
However, this doesn't seem right to me:
"It would have been nice if having a president who's a former alcoholic could have led to some honest dialog..."
George W. Bush is not a former alcoholic. Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. His behavior is exactly what can be expected from an alcoholic: He is dishonest, violent (Iraq war), avoids being analytical, and is often disrespectful and anti-social (as in calling Russian President Vladimir Putin "Pooty-poot").
Tramadol based on my recreational experience can be a very effective drug. It should be noted however that I have never used doses in excess of 100mg. I also use many nootropic (racetam) related drugs that are effective at preventing seizures. In fact some studies suggest that racetam drugs can prevent narcotic addiction. It's certainly more week than other narcotics (if you can even call it a narcotic) suggesting the link between euforia and effectivness. It's OCT in many countries.
Tramadol binds to the mu and kappa opioid receptors, so it's definately a narcotic. It is a racemic mixture, and the non-analgesic stereoisomer is an anti-depressant, which is why it can cause serotonin syndrome. The seizures from tramadol are almost certain if you take imodium with it - that might give you a clue as to how that side effect works.