MAN WANTS NO PAIN

1816 and Serturner

In 1816, the German pharmacist Friedrich Sertürner isolated a substance from opium that he named "morphium", later known as morphine. This discovery marked a significant advancement in pain management, as morphine became the first effective analgesic for severe pain relief. Sertürner's work laid the foundation for the development of modern painkillers and revolutionized medical treatment for patients suffering from acute and chronic pain. He isolated the molecule of morphine, which we can safely qualify as one of the major pharmacochemistry discoveries, one that would have the utmost impact on medecine. But morphine wasn't enough. It felt good, but it made you addicted. It was also found to be dangerous on its own as a respiratory depressant. A century passed by and we can pick up the works of Eisleb and Schauman, 1939 as an exemple, because they discovered pethidine. Pethidine was synthetic, easy to synthesize, and effective (although its primary reason for development was for a spasmolytic usage). The same pattern happened when ketobemidone was discovered by Kirchoff, 1948, also as a spamolytic.

Heroin and morphine derivatives

Those were here to stay, as morphine, heroin, and overall structurally related morphinics (i.e. hydrocodone, oxycodone, hydromophone, oxymorphone, buprenorphine, éthylmorphine... the list goes on) were established as drugs both as medicine and controlled substances of abuse. Their name became smiles on the faces of those who dipped a toe. The withdrawals were bad, but it was actually possible to get off. That wasn't enough. In the 1960s, we saw the rise of fentanyl, and that will be the introduction to the next paragraph.

THE MODERN AGE OF CHEMISTRY

Synthesizing from the archives

Fentanyl was first synthesized by Paul Janssen in 1960. It was designed to be a potent analgesic with a rapid onset and short duration of action, making it suitable for surgical anesthesia and pain management. Fentanyl's potency is approximately 100 times that of morphine, which allows for effective pain relief at much lower doses. This characteristic made fentanyl particularly useful in clinical settings where precise control over pain management is essential. But of course why wouldn't it be? Fentanyl was considerably cheaper than morphine. It had all the initial effects that clinicians were trying to avoid (if that ever was really the case), Much much harder, much stronger, a powder that should and oughta be handle carefully. Fast forward a couple things in the medical field and we've got tramadol, dextromethorphan, levorphanol, carfentanyl, ohmefentanyl, remifentanyl, acetylfentanyl, then fentalogues took over and everyone started not to care no more about the name. It was just... "dope". A few hundred thousand people dead forward: the black market is flooded with anything but heroin. Heroin has vanished. "Dope" was still there. Ah... it makes me remember the good days ! Etazene, Isotonitazene, U-47700, MT45, nortilidine, hydroxymytragynine, etonitazepyne, dipipanone, IC-36, dipyanone, butylfentanyl, flutonitazene, protonitazepyne, AM-221, I can't even...
The pain is gone. And hell has settled. It's here to stay too. And we keep blowing the same doors. We keep feeding ourselves pethidine, ketobemidone, etorphine, spirochlorphine, dextropopoxyphene, codeine, and all the common legal hemisynthetic opioids you could name. There is a reason why opiates are in top two classes of psychoative drugs sold over the world. They are the best.

Do and repeat

Now I would suppose I should get into stimulants ? Not today.