Slashdot Mirror
Real-World Synthehol In Development
Ada_Rules writes "Researchers at the Imperial College London have announced development of an alcohol substitute that has many of the same properties as the Synthehol from the series Star Trek, in that one will get a buzz from it but will not end up with a hangover. In addition you will have the option of getting immediately sober if you so desire it. Let's hope this is not the typical vaporware. It is not that I really want a drink of Synthehol, but with its release I assume Romulan Ale won't be far behind."
What junk are you drinking? Smirnoff?
It isn't the alcohol which gives you a headache. It's the alcohol in combination with the rest of the crap in the beverage.
Either buy decent quality and/or drink a glass of water for each drink and take two paracetamol before you go to bed.
Deleted
you will have the option of getting immediately sober if you so desire it
Can I get drunk again later that night?
We're (apparently) close to the first, time to start making some serious progress towards the second.
Having the option of getting immediately sober is rather missing the point of drinking alcohol ... it is the assured descent into a carefree state with no possibility of reversal that is one of the last few pleasures left in life. ... the perfect end to a usually cold, wet and crappy day in the so-called western-civilisation.
Throwing the car keys onto the dining table, pulling a bottle of vodka from the freezer and taking a few shots
How about Synthcrack, or Synthheroin?
So if some drunk is being obnoxious at the bar you can now slip the antidote in his drink?
Prof Nutt and his team are concentrating their efforts on benzodiazepines, of which diazepam, the chief ingredient of Valium is one. Thousands of candidate benzos are already known to science. He said it is just a matter of identifying the closest match.
From my benzo experience, I doubt any benzo will replace alcohol. Alcohol effects a whole range of neurotransmitters, not just GABA.
And this is the "we can just turn it off" part:
“I’ve been in experiments where I’ve taken benzos,” said Professor Nutt. “One minute I was sedated and nearly asleep, five minutes later I was giving a lecture.
Since good old valium, benzos have been getting shorter and shorter acting with faster and faster clearances, but you can get such short actions that to get any sort off effect you have to shovel the stuff in IV just to keep up with the clearance. I don't know of any oral approach than can be turned off like a switch.
And doesn't someone already have an "off-switch" type pill for good old ethanol. It doesn't turn off the liver processing or clear the acetylaldehyde souring your stomach, but it would clear your head enough to drive.
Let's read between the lines here...
From TFA:
In this one sentence we see: (a), an appeal to the neo-prohibitionist/nanny-stater lobby to spin this story into a positive, and (b), because you can't make this stuff at home, a pharmaceutical company is going to get a cut. Alcohol's easy to make - take some yeast and just about any form of sugar (or starch that can be converted via enzymatic action into sugar) - and you've got yourself the foundations of beer, wine, and distilled spirits. Synthetic valium, not so much.
Net effect here is that we all wind up hooked on benzos as depressants, rather than alcohol. Hey, that's fine if valium's his depressant of choice, but it's not one of mine. What's next, a move to replace the caffeine in coffee (my stimulant of choice :) with slightly-modified speed?
From the TFsummary:
As cool as it sounds, that's not a feature, that's a bug.
Allow me to nerd out for a bit: When Synthehol was invented, Romulan Ale (which presumably contained real alcohol) became illegal.
And if you go back and re-read TFA, you'll see that's pretty much where this is goin. This guy's not interested in an alternative to alcohol, he's looking for a substitute for alcohol. Even if he is working in good faith, his efforts will be used to help the neo-prohibitionists. And I can't get down with that. Because I like real ale, Romulan or not. (Homebrewing is like turning half the basement into a mad scientist's chemistry lab for a day, and it's all the more fun because you get to consume the product of your experiment when it's done!)
Around this time of year, I usually say "A drink? No thanks, I'm driving." But on this one, I'm gonna have to say "Benzos? No thanks, I'm drinking."
Who cares about getting sober instantly ? I'd rather get instantly wasted. I'll take a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster over romulan ale any day!
"I've been in experiments where I've taken benzos," said Professor Nutt. "One minute I was sedated and nearly asleep, five minutes later I was giving a lecture."
But the students couldn't figure out why he insisted on being called Mr. Hyde. Or why he kept throwing chairs.
But Bones, you know that stuff's illegal!
"Prof Nutt and his team are concentrating their efforts on benzodiazepines, of which diazepam, the chief ingredient of Valium is one."
In other words, let's invent another Happy Pill that will make big profit for Big Pharmco. And we'll call it an "alcohol substitute" because alcohol is well-known as the active ingredient in alcoholism, and you're in favor of a cure for alcoholism, right?
Good thing they're not calling it a "Valium analog", what with Valium's well-known and deserved reputation for causing addiction, tolerance, and withdrawal.
-kgj
Romulan Ale is alcoholic, not sythoholic and a cocktail recipes are available at that link to those with no sense of self-preservation.
If it is ingested orally, then it will be metabolized in the liver. What about its toxicity? If it's the same or higher than alcohol, then the illusion of safety may in the end be detrimental to the health of the user.
End anonymous moderation and posting on
The article says that alcohol has only been around for 3,000 years. This implies that leavened bread has only been around for that long. Wonder what the yeasts were producing before and why so many animals have the enzyme alcohol dehydroginase.
Nate
This would make it clear that the degree of correlation between scientific assertion and journalistic conclusion in the article might not be actually be high enough to support any conclusion of statistical significance, let alone causality.
Or the Catholics. If you're going to have fun, the punishment must be built-in.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Can I blame my mistakes on my friends and a case of synthehol? Can I drink a girl pretty with synthehol? Will this help ugly people get laid? These are the important questions!
Professor Nutt got sacked.
You know the first thing I'm gonna fucking do, is mix this shit in my rum and cokes while chewing some nicotine gum and smoking a fat joint.
And I know I'm not the only one.
Liberty.
To avoid a hangover with the real stuff, just stay hydrated. Not difficult.
It seems that the head researcher on this project is David Nutt, who was sacked by the British government over his "controversial" views on drugs like THC and ecstasy. What a bunch of blowhards; but then I'm not one to talk, since the teabaggers here hold the same rigid views.
The guy is awesome. Having been sacked in a purely political manoeuvre by Jacqui Smith (spit) it sounds like he now leads an Alexander Shulgin-like life of synthesising new chemicals and trying them out faster than the government can ban or control them. Sadly the same reasons for him being sacked will probably mean that this project doesn't gain any traction. Politics trump science and reason...
I'll just stick with Saurian Brandy.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
It better be vaporware.
I love the aroma of a good glass of real wine. If the synthetic stuff doesn't measure up then what's the point?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Don't forget to sell it in Transparent Aluminum cans.
I have always found GHB and/or GBL to be excellent alcohol substitutes. They wear off in a few hours and leave you with no hangover. Unless you mix it with other depressants (alcohol, I'm looking at YOU!) or otherwise overdose you are fine the next day. Not sure about the sobering up-pill though, I don't know enough about the selectivity of their action on GABA. My guess is that it's similar to bensodiazepines.
If you take the antidote without consuming the synthehol, will you become excessively sober?
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
The antidote for being drunk or the antidote for being obnoxious?
Yeah, right. Like society is going to suddenly get over their prejudices about "drugs" and it's going to be acceptable to consume this, take an antidote and drive or go to work or other drinking taboo. In societies where they still criminally prosecute and jail people for the mere possession of marijuana. (which to an established, regular user is relatively harmless)
Clearly Wikipedia is the font of all knowledge (that was sarcasm (for the Americans)). You haven't had your brain replaced by a parrot brain have you?
Huh, clearly you're not illiterate, yet you apparently didn't even read the article I posted, which explicitly mentioned cogeners as exacerbating hangover symptoms.
Meanwhile, nowhere in the article you linked to do I see text which suggests that "It isn't the alcohol which gives you a headache"... probably because that's completely false.
We already have alcohol substitutes ( read: recreational drugs ) that are safer than alcohol. Only problem is, they're illegal.
You can't handle the truth. Dr. David Nutt, the British government scientist that was recently fired, did an exhaustive study of the real impact of recreational drugs. Herion was 8.32, alcohol 5.54, Cannabis 4.00, LSD 3.68 and Ecstacy 3.27. A higher score is worse.( Many other drugs were in the study).
So we already have several safer alternatives to alcohol.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
from a bottle of very old Scotch whiskey!
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
but I know someone who is. They would advise all slashdotters (and anyone else for that matter) that it is an incredibly bad idea to take any paracetamol when you have been drinking alcohol http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracetamol.
It is very toxic to your liver. Better to drink responsibly, consume quality products and remember that a reasonable consumption of water only protects you from the effects of hydration but has no real effect on the contaminants that cause the headache and nausea. Wait until the alcohol has been metabolised (2 hours per unit) and then take the lowest dose possible or some other analgesic.
Posts, MyBio or Sig, may contain satire, sarcasm, bolded nouns be sardonic or even witty & be Church of SD
Capt Kirk did it, so now I can too.
no comment
...that in the real world, alcohol making you drunk is the whole point! We certainly don’t drink it because of the bitter, burning taste. ^^
If this had any chance of being a success, then people would already prefer non-alcoholic cocktails and brews for a looong time.
And I don’t see that being the case, or ever happening.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
If you read the article, they are using substances that are related to the same family or compounds that you find in Valium and other depressants. You very well might see them succeed, but I can't imagine drinking beer that has a warning label to not mix with (real)alcohol.
I'm sorry, where did I misread? Your initial post flat out state that alcohol plays no role in hangovers. Your subsequent post was to cite an article which does nothing to support that claim, instead identifying an additional factor (cogeners) which plays a role in the product of hangovers. And your last post was entirely content-free.
So, please, enlighten me. What did I miss?
Ah, yes, I see, you seem to believe that the statement:
"It isn't the alcohol which gives you a headache. It's the alcohol in combination with the rest of the crap in the beverage."
Is more accurate than simply:
"It isn't the alcohol which gives you a headache."
Of course, it's not. Both are false, and for the exact same reason: They both imply that alcohol, alone, doesn't play a causative role in the production of hangovers, which is silly, given that it's the dehydration caused by alcohol which creates headaches, and the metabolites of alcohol which create many of the other symptoms.
That’s simple to explain: Good alcohol has little fusel alcohols. Which are a product of incomplete transformation to alcohol. Or of adding sugar to it. And whiskey simply has more of them, as the strongly distilled vodka.
The sugar (and cheap alcoholic products) inside is why cocktails can be even worse.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
What's this stuff?
It is... [pause] [sniff] It is green.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Three words: Wedding at Cana.
This many comments, and not a single /. nerd has corrected the article's total misunderstanding of Synthehol from Star Trek?
Synthehol is what Starfleet crews can drink while on duty because it tastes like the real thing but DOESN'T give you a buzz or get you drunk.
Somehow, the chemists in my lab have been making benzodiazapines for years without ever once mentioning that they're good for getting drunk off of.
I suppose its the part where they make about a gram of it in a month that kills the temptation to drink it.
Synthehol is so next century. Wake me up when someone can import real Pan-Galactic Gargle-Blasters to Earth.
Cogeners have a stronger impact than metabolites when it comes to hangovers.
Xavier Rabourdin for president 2012
Why bother with creating synthehol when legalizing marijuana would have the same effect -- plus, we know marijuana won't destroy your body. Who knows what this synthehol will do to you in 10 years?
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
Most people attribute the headaches from red wines to the oak, but I'm pretty sure nobody has quite nailed down the problem..
When we save lives of people who are on the path to self-implosion, we also preserve the attached mouths that will need feeding and the "private bits" that will need fucking. Does it actually cure them of self-implosive behavior? Guess who ultimately loses in the end from that bit of philanthropy?
n/t
1. Hangover cure - B vitamin complex and 2 aspirin before bed. Next morning you're good to go. 2. Recipe for Romulan Ale: 2 quarts of Kool-Aid Berry Blue and grain alcohol (or vodka) to your taste. For hangovers, see item 1.
Nitewing '98
Everything works...in theory.
It...it...it....it is green!
Okay, so let me get this straight:
it's a chemical,
that's meant to be ingested, (and thus a drug)
and that has no medical use,
and (presumably, like alcohol) is likely to be abused,
and that (presumably) can cause damage or death if abused.
By US law at present, this should be Schedule I and banned immediately.
Why is is acceptable for scientists to produce synthetic alcohol, whne in the same week the FDA have just banned another set of synthetic / natural marijuana substitutes ?
Alcohol is well known to cause aggression and does untold damage to the liver. Whereas most soft drugs make you passive and give you the munchies, yet there is little proven research on the long term effects to the body.
Could it be that if we actually applied some common sense (i.e. ignored the Americans), there'd be one less "war on [topic]" for them to fuck up ? Prohibition didn't work in the 20's, you'd think they'd have learnt SOMETHING from that ?
"Less talk, more synthehol!"
This ain't rocket surgery.
I move to add this title as a tag.
But seriously, I'm curious. How much of this synthehol can you drink before overdosing? And what about the effects of mixing it with REAL alcohol? There isn't anything you can't consume too much of, even water.
The alcoholic in me says I'm gonna try some as soon as it comes out.
Basically, Dr. Nutt is proposing that we legalize one or two benzodiazepenes as a sort of replacement for alcohol (which could then, he suggests, be gradually marginalized and outlawed). Benzodiazepenes are a class of fast-acting drugs which includes Klonopin, Valium, Xanax, and Ativan (also a number of less-used ones like Librium and Tranxene).
And the problem with that is it's just not going to work. Leaving aside the fact that benzos don't feel the quite the same as alcohol (most people would find them overly sedating-- not really the thing you want to take before a night of clubbing), you have the problem that benzos are themselves very addictive. Ask any doctor. (They've all had to deal with the benzo-seeking patient who "lost his prescription" for the third time this month). I guess you could speculate that benzos taken ad libitum might prove to be somewhat *less* addicting than alcohol, relatively speaking, but there's no data to support that happy hypothesis, and good luck trying to design a study to prove it.
The rest of the article is full of irrelevancy and hand-waving. Dr. Nutt states that you can "sober up immediately" from a benzo, I guess by taking flumazenil-- and so what? Heroin addicts can sober up immediately with Narcan. That doesn't make heroin particularly safe.
He also says that his team is going to "identify the closest match to alcohol" from among "thousands" of benzos. The closest in what sense? Time of onset? Half-life? Xanax is close enough already. Receptor-binding profile? Not going to work, since no benzo will duplicate the multiple actions of alcohol on the neuron(which IIRC include effects on membrane fluidity). Anyway Dr. Nutt says that he wants his drug to be more "focused in its effects" than alcohol, so he wouldn't want a close analog even if he could find one.
In short: TFA is politically-motivated bullshit which might win Dr. Nutt some publicity and funding but will never produce anything useful. A previous poster got it right. If you want a safer alternative to alcohol, legalize pot. We already fucking *know* it's less addictive (and have the studies to prove it).
But its also a concern that if synthehol was produced, how would we know if it was safe of not, it would take usage by milliions over they adult lifetime, before we genuinely know weather the chemical was safe.
But good luck to Prof, Knut, who will probably have some very wild parties testing outs his candiate benzodiazepines.
---
Drug Addiction Feed @ Feed Distiller
I actually recently found a quite interesting technique to avoid a hangover. It basically involves taking cysteine with vitamin C to neutralize acetaldehyde, while drinking. I already did some experimenting and I think there might be something to this.
The guy was a couple of days ago on a Google Tech Talk in which he discussed about other nutrients for the mind too.
Ethanol is converted to acetaldehyde by the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase, and then from acetaldehyde to acetic acid by the enzyme acetaldehyde dehydrogenase.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zidiWe9yq88
I get up early when the sleeping pill wakes me
I take a wake up pill and fill with energy
I power on hard and I check my messages
But I don't have any messages
I take a driving pill and head to my car
I drive around a bit cuz work isn't very far
I call my phone and I check my messages
But I don't have any messages
All I know is driving on drugs feels better when they're prescription
All I know is the world looks beautiful, the world looks so damn beautiful
And I feel fantastic
And I never felt as good as how I do right now
Except for maybe when I think of how I felt that day
When I felt the way that I do right now, right now, right now.
And I feel fantastic
And I never felt as good as how I do right now
Except for maybe when I think of how I felt that day
When I felt the way that I do right now, right now, right now.
Work is anything but quiet these days
I try to medicate my concentration haze
I can feel the day unfold in front of me
So I take the stairs and hit the gym
The phone is ringing when I get to my desk
What was a stinging's now a sharp pain in my chest
So I take a Calminex and just chill
And then it's time for lunch again
All I know is work is easy when you don't stress out about deadlines
All I know is I take my medicine I always take my medicine
And I feel fantastic
And I never felt as good as how I do right now
Except for maybe when I think of how I felt that day
When I felt the way that I do right now, right now, right now.
And I feel fantastic
And I never felt as good as how I do right now
Except for maybe when I think of how I felt that day
When I felt the way that I do right now, right now, right now.
Sometimes I'd like to slow things down
Enjoy the moment
But when I look the moment's gone
Work is over but I can't stay to work late
Got to leave and get ready for my second date
With a pretty girl that I met at the pharmacy
Right in the prescription line
I take a pill for my social anxiety
I get a table and a nice bottle of chablis
Now it's getting late and there's still no sign of her
I have another glass of wine
All I know is the wine lasts longer when you don't gotta share it with someone
All I know is my steak tastes better when I take my steak tastes better pill
And I feel fantastic
And I never felt as good as how I do right now
Except for maybe when I think of how I felt that day
When I felt the way that I do right now, right now, right now.
And I feel fantastic
And I never felt as good as how I do right now
Except for maybe when I think of how I felt that day
When I felt the way that I do right now, right now, right now.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
I'm surprised that cannabis did only marginally better than alcohol and that the gap between heroin and alcohol was so large.
I've never known anyone to fight or commit vandalism after smoking pot and while I'd agree its inadvisable, I think stoned drivers are less risky than drunk ones, especially at the low end of drunkenness/stonedness. Pot also is much easier on your body and does not produce a physical dependence or illness to the same magnitude that alcohol does (even if you factor in high cholesterol from snacking).
Heroin addiction I can see being destructive, but much of that seems to be a result of legal sanction, not the inherent danger of the drug (interaction with criminal enterprise, impure/uncertain quality, high prices leading to theft, etc). True it is addictive and many addicts chase the "rush" of injection (as opposed to the high itself) which ends up resulting in overdoses, the opiates are not corrosive to the body and in fact are tolerated very well for long periods of time.
I suspect these "scores" factor in maleable social and legal circumstances as constant factors and do not weight the actual pharmacological properties enough.
Don't drink shit and replace the water you piss out. A pint of water just before bed will stop virtually all headaches.
I'm not completely sure, but I think the parent here was insulting the British government, not Dr. Nutt.
As bizarre as it sounds, the drug laws are so batshit and inconsistent in many countries that it wouldn't surprise me that it's actually the new synthehol that gets banned, whilst alcohol remains legal! This is commonly the case with any new chemical (e.g., the recent UK's criminalisation on "legal highs"). All it takes is single death that can be indirectly related to it, a scaremongering campaign by a grieving mother, and it'll be banned.
Indeed, from TFA:
"No ones ever tried targeting this before, possibly because it will be so hard to get it past the regulators. Most of the benzos are controlled under the Medicines Act. The law gives a privileged position to alcohol, which has been around for 3,000 years. But why not use advances in pharmacology to find something safer and better?"
Also note that Professor Nutt, who is quoted, was recently sacked as a Government advisor, because the factual scientific evidence he presented was deemed incompatible with the Government's views on drugs.