Pour me a glass of Synthehol thanks!

Real Klingons don't drink synthehol

Alcohol is probably the most commonly used psychotropic drug in society. It is legal; it comes in wondrous variety, and has been part of human civilisation since we “came down from the trees”. However, there is a downside to alcohol as well. Liver disease, addiction, social dysfunction, not to mention the many deaths each year from traffic accidents are things that we have taken for granted.

In the fictional world of “Star Trek”, “synthehol” is an artificial substitute for alcohol. States Wikipedia:

“It allows the drinker to experience intoxicating effects without any adverse after-effects such as hangovers; also the intoxicating effects themselves can be dispelled easily, apparently simply by the intent to do so.”

As I can well imagine in real life, no one is too keen in the Star Trek universe on “synthehol” but it is to regular drop on a starship.

So how realistic is an alcohol substitute? According to psychopharmacologist David Nutt, “there is no scientific reason why it could not be made right now”.

Alcohol exerts most of its effects on the brain through GABA-A receptors, though more strongly to some particular subtypes. Nutt states that partial agonists of GABA-A receptors already exists. Alcohol in addition inhibits NMDA receptors and similarly, NMDA antagonists are also available. According to Nutt the right mixture of these drugs would be able to deliver the pleasurable effects of alcohol without some of its side-effects.

Now, if these could be delivered in a palatable liquid form that works well with mixers, then we’ve got a winner. Ignoring the obvious ethical dilemma of producing a new designer psychotropic drug, not to mention the huge backlash from the existing beer, wine and spirits industries, “synthehol” may yet still become a reality.

I can see it now. In a hundred year’s time, a group of old men huddled over their schooners of synthehol-beer reminisce over the good old days when wine was made from grapes and beer was made from hops. And no one will believe that vodka was ever actually made from potatos.

From: New Scientist

All the pleasures of alcohol, with no downsides (excerpt)

• 11 April 2006
• Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition
• Graham Lawton
  

...CASUAL drinkers are unlikely to have raised their glass to the news last month that most people who suffer severe alcohol-induced liver disease are social drinkers not alcoholics. Nor to the finding that moderate drinking might not, after all, help prevent heart disease.

There may, however, just be a solution to our drinking woes - one that will allow us to go to a bar and drink as much as we want; get merry, not legless; wake without a hangover; and never have to worry that one of our favourite pastimes may be killing us. It's a cocktail of drugs that mimics the pleasurable effects of alcohol without the downsides. The idea is only on the drawing board, but there is no scientific reason why it could not be made right now, says psychopharmacologist David Nutt of the University of Bristol in the UK.

Alcohol exerts its effects on the brain mainly by latching onto signalling molecules called GABA-A receptors. There are dozens of subtypes of these, some of which are associated with specific effects of alcohol. Memory loss, for example, seems to occur because alcohol binds to a subtype in the hippocampus called alpha-5. Nutt says it would be possible to design molecules that bind strongly to the good subtypes but more weakly to the bad ones...

...Alcohol also inhibits NMDA receptors, which are part of a general excitatory signalling circuit, so a second ingredient of the alcohol substitute would be an NMDA antagonist...

...The trick pharmacologists need to pull off is to make a mixture of molecules that deliver alcohol's pleasurable effects, notably relaxation and sociability, without the aggression, nausea, loss of coordination and amnesia that can cause drinkers and those around them so much grief. Long-term problems such as cirrhosis of the liver could also be eliminated, says Nutt, who publishes the idea next month in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, (vol 20, p 318)...