My son takes Focalin XR for his ADHD. It works great, but today at the pharmacy I started thinking where do the chemical compounds in this come from? Like I’m sure my pharmacy buys from a compound pharmacy. But where does the compound pharmacy by the methyl and phenyl from?
And how are these extracted from their sources? Is it mined? Does it come from corn? Animals?
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Most chemicals used in medicine aren’t isolated as-is from natural sources, but are chemically manufactured by mixing compounds together and causing them to react if it doesn’t happen spontaneously (sometimes with heat, other times with catalysts).
In the case of ritalin (which is a similar molecule to the one used in focalin), they mix a specific amino acid (α-phenyl-α-(2-piperidinyl)acetic acid) with methanol.
Most chemicals start out in the ground, so they’re mined and then combined in various ways to make different chemicals.
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