Why can’t they create a drug like cocaine or heroin that retains only the positive effects (euphoria, relaxation, etc.) without causing harm and danger to health?
In: Chemistry
The euphoria is the harmful property of the drug. It upsets a balance of chemicals in the brain, and the brain likes that better than “normal”. This is one mechanism for addiction.
The short answer is that the drugs themselves aren’t really the problem. It’s the body’s natural response to what those drugs do. Literally anything that causes the feelgoods can activate the body’s natural “gimmemore” response… and reinforcing that is what causes addiction.
To ELI5 drug addictions.
Do you remember the last time you tried a new dessert or cookie that you just really liked (or chips if you love savory treats). You might have had trouble saying no to another bite, or maybe you polished off the whole bag without thinking about it.
Drugs are like that, times a million. And once you have had that experience it is hard to forget that it’s out there. The comparison between that and normal life, completely eclipses normal life and makes it feel not worth living. It is very hard to find things to motivate you outside of drugs once you have that hanging over your head.
The positive effects are the danger. Cocaine, for example, blocks dopamine transporters that reuptake dopamine after it’s released. When you do something good that should be rewarded, neurons in your brain release dopamine. That dopamine has to go away, though, or else it would just sit there forever which kind of defeats the purpose of a reward. Proteins in the membrane of the neurons sort of vacuum up the dopamine so it can get reused. Cocaine blocks those proteins so the dopamine just sits there, continuing to trigger that reward feeling, and neurons keep releasing more dopamine so the feeling keeps getting better.
Except…your neurons don’t have infinity dopamine. They will run out eventually, and they can’t manufacture it fast enough to keep up with your normal brain needs. When the cocaine stops working, all of your neurons vacuum up all that dopamine and you crash. Now, your neurons are “tired” and having a hard time producing dopamine until they can recycle all the dopamine that got used up during the high. Now, there’s a deficiency of dopamine, leading to a depressive episode where nothing feels good and doing normally rewarding activities doesn’t feel rewarding.
Dopamine is involved in a lot of other functions in your brain, too, like helping to regulate your sleep and help you form memories. It needs to remain in balance. If you continually flood your brain with excess dopamine, those other functions stop working correctly. To prevent this, your brain thinks, “There’s always too much dopamine, so we should produce less of it. Also, we don’t have enough dopamine receptors so we should make more of those.” Over time, your brain expects more dopamine but makes less of it. Instead of just feeling a crash after you come down from the high, you feel that crash *all the time* because having cocaine feels normal to your brain. You need cocaine to feel normal and more to feel good. This vicious cycle continues until your brain chemistry just does not function properly at all – you have sleep problems, memory problems, constant feelings of depression, and you spend increasingly absurd amounts of money on greater and greater doses of coke.
This cycle can happen with healthy things, too, but…they’re *healthy*. Like, if you get a dopamine rush every time you go exercise you might get “addicted” to exercising, but for most people that’s self-limiting because you can’t just be constantly running. All the rest of your body will stop you. And for most people…you’re exercising, which means better heart health and better lung health and not getting fat. With drugs like cocaine, the only limit is “Do you have some in front of you right now?” There is no other limit, which allows the cycle to runaway until you run out of money and seek out cheaper and more dangerous alternatives.
Heroin mimics endorphins, which causes a similar problem. All opioids and opiates do. That *can* be useful – we use them as pain killers because they make your brain just stop caring that it’s supposed to be feeling pain. But we do that in controlled ways and only when necessary to (hopefully) avoid starting that vicious cycle of addiction.
EDIT: **Other Drugs** – I don’t know much about drugs, I just did some quick research on cocaine’s method of action. Different drugs act on different receptors in your brain. Some mimic natural neurotransmitters (like cannabis mimicking cannabinoids or opioids mimicking endorphins), others block neurotransmitter receptors (like caffeine blocking adenosine receptors), others stop reuptake (like cocaine), others trigger your body to produce other neurotransmitters…It’s all pretty complicated and I am not a chemist or medical professional. Anything I know comes from Google, although I’m admittedly pretty good at explaining stuff.
I am no expert on this, but there are other choices to cocaine/heroin, possibly better choices which are preferable (health wise). This study lists mushrooms at the top. Have a look at the chart.
[link](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/may/23/study-hallucinogenic-mushrooms-safest-recreational-drug-lsd)
You’re meant to go get your euphoria and relaxation from working out, sex, and food. If you have a substance that gives you way more euphoria than those other things ever could, then you will focus way more on the substance.
a drug with the euphoria and pain releif capabilities of heroin, but without the harm/danger of overdose/likelihood of addiction is almost exactly how drug companies marketed oxycodone. spoiler alert: it had all those effects, it just gave certain people a smug attitude that they were taking a prescription instead of “drugs”
ELI5:
The “good parts” of drugs are normal good things your body makes, cranked up 5000%.
But if you stay at 5000%, your body adjusts to that as your new normal.
Now you need 10,000% to feel as good.
But what if you want to go back to normal? Well, you are at 5000% for so long that going back to normal now hurts, and depending on what drug, it can hurt real bad for a long time.
For some its drugs, others its sex or fast cars or jumping out of a plane – whatever makes you tingle more than your everyday 9-5 and we are wired that way.
Its probably an evolutionary trait that is benificial for us until its not. It takes us to the moon and the bottom of the sea, and sometimes it kills us for flying just a little too close to the sun.
IMHO that’s basically, psilocybin which is produced by certain fungi. The euphoria isn’t as drastic as opiates or cocaine. I’d say it on the level of wrapping a blanket around yourself, sitting on your parent’s lap as a kid and watching cartoons.
Don’t gwt me wrong, it can have negative effects. You can have a bad trip if you take a large dose and can have lingering flashbacks for years. Bad trips can be seriously traumatic. This is usually because people don’t have proper respect for it, and don’t create a positive setting with some friends who are prepared to talk you down if you start acting distressed. Also if you abuse at chronically you definitely can lose touch with what’s real.
Physiologically the side effects and toxicity are low. It can cause stomach and intestinal irritation in some people.
Dependence is very unlikely. If you take another dose the next day, even a larger dose, it will have much less effect. You have to wait several days for the tolerance to wear off.
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