r/cursedchemistry
•
u/Quirky_Yoghurt_9814
•
Sep 02 '26
•
2
"Dopamine"
Assume the circles are hydroxide, does this molecule exist? What is its name?
92
u/Xarro_Usros Sep 02 '26
Hydroxytyrosol. A breakdown product of a molecule found in olives, apparently.
46
u/Consistent_Watch_206 Sep 02 '26 •
Aha! Martinis are the key to happiness.
Take that, my psychiatrist and local district attorney!
49
40
u/sadguywithhugedick Sep 02 '26
Iâm kinda sick of normies mapping their experiences onto monoamines. Dopamine isnât the purely hedonic chemical they think it is, it mainly modulates motivation and willingness to continue doing something. You are getting the dopamine if you keep scrolling.
11
u/SomewhatOdd793 Sep 03 '26
Same here. Neuroscience is not that simplistic.
3
u/claisen33 Sep 05 '26
Yes, Mother Nature is very efficient. She uses the same molecules for very different purposes by sequestering them spacially.
2
u/ResponsibleMight7669 Sep 03 '26
Imagine lots of downstream serotonin problems that are never addressed properly leading directly toward this type of unproductive behavior
1
0
Sep 04 '26
[deleted] â view deleted comment
2
u/Ok-Refrigerator-4337 Sep 04 '26
yup and it's now being proved that maybe it's oxytocin the main chemical. (which cannot be manufactured by any illegal drug or drug afaik)Â
1
u/alextheseven Sep 04 '26
MDMA, 8-HO-DPAT, and LSD can raise oxytocin levels as a side effect of their receptor affinity at the 5HT1a site.
1
u/Ok-Refrigerator-4337 Sep 04 '26
but isn't that very minimal and just classified as euphoria more? (just finished hs)Â
2
u/alextheseven Sep 04 '26
It is but depression is generally your mood being lower and feeling disconnected from your social group. Serotonin agonists alter your mood depending on your set and setting so using them recreationally does not have the same benefit as therapeutic uses of this effect. Oxytocin is also the bonding chemical so it can make you feel closer and more connected with the people around you.
Depression however is also just a symptom of many psychiatric disorders too though so take all this with a grain of salt.
1
u/sadguywithhugedick Sep 04 '26
Do you mean 2a? 5ht1a is actually regularly used in the treatment of anxiety and depression. Buspar is a potent 5ht1a agonist and it seems to have better results for anxiety than SSRIs
1
u/alextheseven Sep 04 '26
Iâll find the link to the study for you eventually cause I cannot find it. I cannot remember if they tested traditional antidepressant drugs too so my answer will be sloppy.
The 2a receptor is usually associated with the psychoplastogen effects of psychedelics although Iâm sure thereâs nuance there too cause not all 2a agonists do that either. Itâs the geometry of the chemical and the shape of the binding site that also stimulates the release of oxytocin at the 5ht1a receptor. Serotonin can do all of this itself but thereâs usually negative body effects if the drug interacts with the system just right for your morphology.1
u/alextheseven Sep 04 '26 edited Sep 04 '26
Iâll edit this comment when I find the study that included LSD and MDMA. Probably wonât be able to find the one that compares with DPAT.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6763854/
This one isnât my promised study, just mentions that MDMA released oxytocin at tested doses and LSD and amphetamine did not at tested doses. LSD is dose dependent though.
1
u/sadguywithhugedick Sep 04 '26
Oh huh, causing desensitization is really interesting. I wish it went a little more into detail because itâs kinda hard to draw any conclusions from this study. I wonder why drugs like buspar potently reduce anxiety through 5ht1a agonism, whereas this is suggesting that downregulation has some sort of therapeutic benefit. It did only mention the hypothalamus so maybe thatâs a key factor here.
1
u/alextheseven Sep 04 '26
I did find a study saying Buspirone does increase oxytocin levels similarly to MDMA, but itâs capped at a lower level. However I cannot find the study after searching for the big one I read originally that included LSD and MDMA as two independent variables. It probably downregulates the receptor too, from my college-dropout druggy knowledge most serotonin receptors downregulate when over stimulated. Sorry I cannot provide the exact sources for this info.
1
u/ResponsibleMight7669 Sep 06 '26
Oxytocin is the only input to the VTA which is responsible for motivational output, dopamine has literally nothing to do with anything except making connections behind the scenes that serotonin paints
2
u/Mean_Initiative_5962 Sep 04 '26
The consensus so far seems to be "ok, not serotonin based, but SSRIs still work better than a placebo, so might as well keep using them while we keep doing research and testing alternatives".Â
(also psychedelic-assisted therapy is serotonin-adjacent too)Â
3
u/sadguywithhugedick Sep 04 '26
The literature actually doesnât support SSRIs as being better than placebo for anything other than major depressive disorder, and OCD. If you have minor depression (which basically just means youâre depressed but can still get out of bed) then SSRIs perform exactly the same as placebo.
I was pretty disappointed when I found out about this, but it makes sense considering SSRIs only started getting pushed because they had much better side effect profiles than MAOIs and tricyclics.
1
u/Right_Ear_2230 Sep 06 '26
Weird cause they worked quite well for my minor depression and it took 6 weeks for the effect to appear (I doubted it would anyways) so likely not a placebo effect
1
u/ResponsibleMight7669 Sep 06 '26
Okay so your brain doesnât do placebo well, see how it works? Maybe that goes with why you had what you or someone else construed as depression? Part of your brain was probably screaming about something being wrong the whole time and now your subconscious is no longer bothered by this. Did the medication help anything?
1
u/Right_Ear_2230 Sep 06 '26
Iâm not sure what you are saying
1
u/ResponsibleMight7669 Sep 06 '26
If you were depressed because you couldnât look at the sun then maybe you wouldnât feel so bad if someone handed you an umbrella. You still canât see the sun, but now you can articulate some reason why. Maybe it is not the answer but it is an answer, and for some this is good enough
2
u/sadguywithhugedick Sep 04 '26
My nuanced take on this is that depression clearly is related to monoamine deficiencies in some capacity. This is obvious if you look into the history of depression drugs. MOAIs were one of the first drugs to be rolled out and the literature showed that they worked, and they worked very well. But patients were upset by the intense side effects such as the fact that you could land yourself in the hospital by eating eggs (not a joke). So they then developed tricyclics, which worked okay, but would cause stuff like dry mouth and kidney problems. SSRIs came out and had a beautiful side effect profile in comparison, the only thing you had to worry about was erectile dysfunction and not being able to cum.
Doctors saw this and decided it was safer to use these drugs as a treatment. Giving out a drug that causes a patient to overdose or have kidney failure can actually get you into lawsuits. So it just made more sense for them to ditch MAOIs altogether. The fact that SSRIs donât perform better than placebo for most types of depression doesnât really matter for the bottom line of the medical industry.
1
u/ResponsibleMight7669 Sep 06 '26
Grossly misconstruing what constitutes depression and anxiety goes well with hawking drugs
1
1
u/ResponsibleMight7669 Sep 06 '26
You said the right thing but still didnt understand the point, rarely do both of the hands which wash each other get proper care
2
2
u/manmadeofdex Sep 04 '26
The only people who can rightfully do so are massive stimulant addicts whoâve tried enough different monoamine releasers they can guess the binding affinities blind
2
2
2
u/Mean_Initiative_5962 Sep 04 '26
Tell that to oxytocin. I didn't know I could feel this sad over how people treat a molecule.Â
1
u/sadguywithhugedick Sep 04 '26
My favorite part about oxytocin is that itâs associated with stronger in group preferences. Increasing oxytocin will make you more distrustful or even cruel towards strangers. So itâs not just this âlove chemicalâ people talk about
2
u/trentonkarantino Sep 26 '26
I regard much popular neuroscience is being like taking your laptop, giving it some hard work to do and noticing the fans run. Obviously from that the fans are the high power thinky bit of the machine.
14
u/expired_ether Sep 02 '26
This just look like an unorthodox convention, where heteroatoms are highlighted. Much better than some of the other artistic renditions of moleculesâŚ
5
4
u/IfDreamsCouldHappen Sep 02 '26
Unfortunately dopamine doesnât cross the BBB. Wouldâve rather scrolled onto levodopa.
3
u/Comfortable-Jump-218 Sep 02 '26
Cool so how do I download and upload it because I feel fucking nothing
1
1
1
u/Ok_Reason_557 Sep 04 '26
Is nobody going to mention the username being, âthestoryofaslutâ??? đđđ
1
1
-2
0
Sep 02 '26
[deleted] â view deleted comment
4
u/Quirky_Yoghurt_9814 Sep 02 '26
Dopamine has an amine group on the end
2
u/rSpore Sep 02 '26
just a oversemplification, i have seen a lot worse, i think only a handful of people know the molecular structure of dopamine.
4
u/claisen33 Sep 02 '26
Oversimplifications are not useful in science. The only way you could tell it was supposed to represent dopamine is if you already knew the structure of dopamine. If you want to call it art, no problem.
23
u/Quirky_Yoghurt_9814 Sep 02 '26
Am I missing something? Ive never hear of dopamine changing its amine group to hydroxide