New drug to treat meth addiction receives major NIH grant | Hacker News Reader

New drug to treat meth addiction receives major NIH grant

pharmamanufacturing.com

35 pointsstelza2612 comments

This was an interesting meth related article that came up on HN the other day: https://dynomight.net/p2p-meth/

The chemical structure has changed over time and that has made people more 'crazy'. I really hope that research like this works to help people.

That article is saying that's there's just more and cheaper meth, with the same chemical structure as always but less of the non-psychoactive enantiomer. That the "chemical structure changed" was in another bullshit article that popped up here a few days before and it's just not what's going on with the meth supply chain.

Cool, thanks for the info!

> and it's just not what's going on with the meth supply chain.

I'm curious, can you elaborate?

The article you link is debunking the "new meth" theory being pushed by https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/11/the-new...

And probably rightfully so. The Atlantic article did not have any information about anyone having done any research uncovering a "new type of meth" and was basing that conclusion only on the reporter's leading questions to uninformed people.

There seems to be a tendency for reporters to make a fuss about supposedly new, more dangerous versions of common drugs, like the "skunk" hysteria of the 2000's. Probably gets more clicks than just writing about how drug addiction is still a problem just as it has been for thousands of years.

Addiction is complicated. There's the drug and then there's the (mental) illness and/or pain the (eventual) addict is trying to cure. And finally, there's context. That is, being in an environment where drugs are available makes saying no difficult.

Dealing with the drug part of the equation is certainly a positive. But there's still the individual and her/his demons, as well as the environmental factors. Without "cures" for the latter two, the former (drugs) isn't going to get as far as conventional wisdom likely expects.

What’s the point? Meth isn’t a huge European issue is it? They’re usually dealing with impure amphetamine pastes.

They already can block it with antipsychotics which block dopamine. Since addiction to stimulants is much faster to recover from, they can even just induce sleep for 3 days and all physical withdrawal will be gone and the dopamine receptors will recover.

Is the monoclonal antibodies treatment just an artifact of the COVID one like how mRNA treatments will probably also be in the pipeline from research?

I've watched hundreds of meth/"meth" addicts get clean over the past couple of decades. And though the withdrawal period may be short, the amount of time after physical withdrawal until they can exhibit any kind of cohesive and structured thought is generally about 12 months. We call it the "Spin Cycle" in the circles I frequent.

"reduce the euphoric rush associated with the drug and help prevent overdose"

Doesn't mention reducing cravings. I wonder how effective it would be then. Things like naltrexone and buprenorphine both reduce the euphoric rush and reduce cravings for opiates. And even with both effects, those don't have phenomenal success rates.

Wouldn't reducing the high that users get from the same dose lead to addicts taking more, and eventually overdosing? A kind of reverse scenario where someone who has been clean for a while takes way too much and ODs anyway.

fighting drug addiction with antibodies, sounds like scifi

Would this work against other types of addiction?

Like this one? https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naltrexone

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