In case you didn’t know, someone has claimed to invent an alcohol substitute with none of the deleterious side effects. In the advanced age we live in, I guess it was inevitable. Here is the website, if you want to read more. As you can see, the inventor calls it ‘alcarelle’. And it does sound a lot like the alcohol substitute ‘synthehol’ of the fictional Star Trek universe (here, if you want to read more about that).
My question: Is it safe? And has it been tested? And while we’re at it, just what in the heck is it, anyways? And when will it be available in the US? And should we try it (which I guess was implied anyways, but what I just asked)?
Ethanol works by acting at a receptor; it’s not the only thing that could act at the receptor, many things could, and it seems that’s pretty much what Alcarelle is. As you’ll see from the totality of the linked article, the “inventor” is a controversial figure.
As for Alcarelle itself… here’s the EU definition of a medicinal product:
Something that gets you euphoric by acting at a receptor …I can’t see why it wouldn’t meet this definition, and therefore fall within the definition of a medicinal product and would have to be legislated as such. But as we apparently don’t know exactly what Alcarelle is, we can’t be certain.
For the US I’m not an expert, but
So my guess is the same sort of thing would apply.
j
PS: ethanol itself (in its recreational use) is exempted by effectively being grandfathered in.
Thinking a little further about this, I suppose there’s a discussion to be had as to how closely a safer alternative to alcohol would parallel a safer alternative to the cigarette. Certainly (in Europe) the possibility that e-cigarettes should be regulated as medicines was discussed, but in the end they were not; and my guess is that the (then) belief that they were much safer than cigarettes (and the fact that it was convenient to let the user pay directly for them) was a major consideration in their being exempted from being regulated as medicines.
However, in the case of e-cigarettes, it wasn’t a new molecule; or a new use of an existing molecule; rather, a new delivery system for a molecule whose recreational use was well understood. So the parallel really isn’t that close (IMHO).
I looked up a couple articles on this. Both of which definitely question the safety of it.
I think using a term implying that this is an “alcohol substitute” is misleading. It’s merely another drug that affects some of the same systems (e.g., GABA pathway) as alcohol. Lots of stuff do that.
In short they want to introduce a new recreational drug on the market with iffy talk about safety.
Why didn’t the makers of “bath salts” think of this?
How would it be safer? If it acts on the same receptors in the brain, aren’t the outcomes going to be the same? I guess a really big break through would be the ability to clear and block the receptors - I think that would be more along what synthehol is like.
If you want something that you can make a drink with instead of alcohol, there’s already a perfectly good molecule that’s known damn well to be safe. It won’t get you drunk, but, well, that’s the whole point.
I was going to suggest that you’re too gullible. Then I looked at your join date, and your user name, and realized there is probably a different reason for your post.
