In 2012, as the cause of deaths related to the opioid crisis began to shift from prescription pills to heroin, Laura Bohn was tasked with finding safer medications to manage pain.
Funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, she and other scientists revealed in 2017 in the scientific journal Cell that several compounds, including a particularly promising one called SR-17018, could relieve pain in mice without causing respiratory depression. This is a big problem, because respiratory depression is usually the cause of stopping breathing and death in people using opioids.
Bohn, senior associate vice president for research at the University of South Florida, says her team has filed a patent on SR-17018. They then discovered that mice using this chemical did not develop a high tolerance and that mice already addicted to morphine – a powerful opioid – could consume SR-17018 to reset their tolerance without suffering painful withdrawal symptoms.
It’s no longer just mice that use the SR-17018.
On Reddit and Discord, drug users frequently view the compound as a godsend that helped them stop using opioids they are addicted to. Until recently, the drug, although not regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, was relatively easy to purchase online because it was not a federally controlled substance. Bohn, meanwhile, is in the process of attempting to conduct clinical trials on humans, something that has never been done.
But all that stopped when the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration emergency classified SR-17018 as a Schedule I controlled substance in late August, placing it in the same category as heroin with “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.”
For Bohn, the move will make it much more difficult to carry out the research she plans. “It’s really complicated,” she tells WIRED. “Right now, I’d like to get it tested for additional safety studies, but I can’t get it made, I can’t ship it, I can’t touch it. There’s nothing I can do.”
For drug users hoping to use it to wean themselves off opioids – despite the lack of clinical evidence of the drug’s effectiveness in humans – it represents the removal of a potential escape route from their addictions.
Jim Bates has been addicted to various opioids, including prescription drugs, heroin, and fentanyl, since he was 25 years old. About two years ago, the 53-year-old chef from Duncan, Oklahoma, became addicted to 7-OH, a concentrated compound found in kratom that activates the brain’s opioid receptors. “That shit made my head explode,” he says, noting that he discovered it at a vape store. “It was a bit like heroin.”
Gn Health
