Snake Venom Use as a Substitute for Opioids: A Case Report and Review | Hacker News Reader

Snake Venom Use as a Substitute for Opioids: A Case Report and Review

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

The first ACE inhibitor added to western pharmacology for hypertension was the molecule captopril. This was isolated as the active ingredient in pit viper venom which causes the snake's victim to calm down, and was used as a traditional medicine by some Brazilian indian tribes. It also functions as an anxiolytic, though is not prescribed for that in western medicine.

The drug doesn't use the paralysis agent or toxin from the snake, which the raw venom still contains and thus has certain notable side effects.

Remaining side effects of captopril were removed by testing alterations to the molecule and the altered result, called lisinopril, is now the primary treatment for hypertension.

It's not clear if the venom from east indian snakes used medically contains the same ACE inhibitor captopril as west indian snakes, but it may be a related molecule.

In any case articles and some discussions of east indian snake treatments seem to often position venom as some sort of illicit narcotic that is being used and abused, and candidates for criminalization/regulation, as opposed to what it likely really is: a natural medicine which not only works to treat anxiety, hypertension, and addiction, but best practice modern pharmacological solutions were inspired by and directly developed from these natural medicines. People don't call captopril a narcotic or heroin substitute, which is interesting.

> Initially, with the help of the nomadic snake charmers, he subjected himself to the snake bite (possibly cobra, but patient was not sure) over his tip of the tongue. The snake bite was associated with jerky movements of the body, blurring of vision, and unresponsiveness, i.e. “blackout” as per the patient for 1 h. However, after waking up he experienced a heightened arousal and sense of well-being, which lasted for 3–4 weeks, which according to the patient was more intense that the state of high experienced till that time with any dose of alcohol or opioids.

I am... surprised that this does not permanently damage your tongue.

I read that and wondered if it might really mean 'drop of venom on the tongue' instead of 'bite into the flesh of the tongue that injected venom'.

Kind of. The snake handler holds the snake just below the head. The devotee sticks out his tongue. The handler rubs the snake head back and forth across the tongue, causing some light biting by the snake. The snake can't do the striking motion that results in much venom being injected, but small amounts of venom do come out. You would get different results if you some how arrange to have the snake actually strike your tongue. Sometimes the snake is allowed to dangle out of the mouth after having latched on, but again without the striking motion the snake is not injecting as much venom. The handlers will also sometimes have the snake first bite into a bundle of herbs of some kind. It's not clear what that is for.

Fascinating article.

>puppy husk

This was mentioned at least twice as something the example snake bite recipient used to use. I'm pretty sure they meant 'poppy husk', unless puppy husk is another novel analgesic. This puts the quality of the journal's peer review in doubt.

It's an Indian journal, I assume it's an issue with translation.

It's clear to all readers they mean opium products, this isn't what peer review would focus on.

Also seems like a commonly used translation in India:

https://www.htsyndication.com/united-news-of-india/article/4...

That's the thing that really made me wonder. Peer review implies reviewed by multiple people, a review committee. Between the authors and the committee, multiple people read this and said it was ok.

Thanks for the link. If thats the commonly used translation there, then that makes much more sense, and I see why they went with it. Learned something new today.

Some people get high on big frogs in Arizona. Or so said the urban legend. And then a few weeks ago Youtube suggested me a video (Joe Rogan maybe ?) where the differences between ayahuasca DMT and frog DMT were discussed. In the comments someone said. "It happened to my chihuhua ! I was walking my dog (I'm from Arizona) when that huge frog squirted his venom at her. The poor animal convulsed for 30 minutes."

Amazing.

You are referring to Bufotoxin / Bufotenin which is produced by some toads (of the Bufo family).

You can read more on Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River_toad

That venom in it's raw form is poisonous to everything . It's highly dangerous but when smoked it's converted to 5-meo-dmt which isn't poisionous

there's an old vice video about a guy doing this for 20 years:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8q_m-rDUNw0

and related reading:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/feb/11/poison-p...

If nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (NAChR) agonists were true substitutes for opioids, wouldn't that imply that nicotine could be useful in kicking opiates? I'm a little fuzzy on the neuroscience, but iirc one of the distinguishing features of opioids are that they induce both happiness and wanting. When simple dopamine agonism is used (for example, electrical stimulation of the basal ganglia), patients report wanting the stimulation, but not enjoying it (a little like "tomacco" from that Simpson's episode.)

I'm sure snake venom contains more psychoactive constituents than an a NAChR agonist, and I'd love to know what else is in that juice.

Seems similar to Kambo. South American frog poison.

This isn't new. I remember seeing infomercials from the government in the early 90's asking people not to do the snake bite on tongue method to get a high. I really doubt it was a king cobra though. That would kill the person for sure. (You could argue they deserve it).

Could you explain in more detail why people who want to get high deserve to die?

> Could you explain in more detail why people who want to get high deserve to die?

They don't deserve to die — but it brought to mind when one of my (intolerant) relatives once described comparable behavior as "flunking the too-stupid-to-live test."

Which in turn brings to mind that the Darwin Awards don't seem to get much publicity these days; perhaps it's to avoid encouraging daredevil idiocy? I guess the awards are still a thing: https://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2018.html

Not people who just want to get high. Heck, I do that myself. Just seems extreme folly to have poisonous snakes bite you on the tongue. Right near the brain.

I would argue its a combination of miserable life circumstances and lack of availability of better options. Have you ever heard of the drug Krocodile? It's most prevalent in Russia, a cocktail of horrible chemicals cooked down with a little codeine. It's a death sentence if you use it for a year, and not a nice death either (consider this a massive understatement). Even the people who use it know this, they just lost the will somewhere along the way to care.

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