{"id":673656,"date":"2026-11-03T12:14:11","date_gmt":"2026-11-03T12:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/673656\/"},"modified":"2026-11-03T12:14:11","modified_gmt":"2026-11-03T12:14:11","slug":"opioid-users-found-a-miracle-drug-to-help-them-quit-then-the-dea-banned-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/673656\/","title":{"rendered":"Opioid Users Found a \u2018Miracle Drug\u2019 to Help Them Quit. Then the DEA Banned It"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2012, as the driver of deaths in the opioid<\/a> crisis began moving from prescription pills to heroin, Laura Bohn was tasked with finding safer drugs to manage pain.<\/p>\n

Funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, in 2017 she and other scientists revealed in the science journal Cell<\/a> that several compounds\u2014including a particularly promising one called SR-17018\u2014could relieve pain in mice without causing respiratory depression. That\u2019s a big deal, because respiratory depression is typically what causes people using opioids to stop breathing and die.<\/p>\n

Bohn, senior associate vice president of research at University of South Florida Health, says her team filed a patent on SR-17018. They went on to discover that mice using the chemical did not develop a high tolerance for it and that mice already dependent on morphine\u2014a powerful opioid\u2014could consume SR-17018 to reset their tolerance without suffering from painful withdrawal symptoms.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s no longer just mice who use SR-17018.<\/p>\n

On Reddit<\/a> and Discord<\/a>, people who use drugs frequently refer to the compound as a godsend that\u2019s helped them quit using opioids they\u2019re addicted to. Until very recently, the drug, though not regulated by the US Food and Drug Administration<\/a>, was relatively easy to purchase online, as it was not a federally controlled substance. Bohn, meanwhile, has been in the process of trying to conduct clinical trials on humans, which has never been done.<\/p>\n

But all of that came crashing to a halt when the US Drug Enforcement Administration emergency-scheduled SR-17018 as a Schedule I controlled substance in late August, putting it in the same category as heroin with \u201cno currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Bohn, the move will make it much harder to do the research she\u2019s been planning. \u201cIt’s a real hassle,\u201d she tells WIRED. \u201cRight now, I would like to have it tested for additional safety studies, and I can’t have it made, I can’t ship it, I can’t touch it. I can’t do anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

For drug users who hope to use it to wean off opioids\u2014despite the lack of clinical evidence that the drug is effective in humans\u2014it\u2019s the removal of a potential off-ramp for their addictions.<\/p>\n

Jim Bates has been hooked on various opioids, including prescription pills, heroin, and fentanyl, since he was 25. About two years ago, the 53-year-old Duncan, Oklahoma, kitchen manager got addicted to 7-OH<\/a>, a concentrated compound found in kratom that activates the brain\u2019s opioid receptors. \u201cThat shit blew my head off,\u201d he says, noting he was introduced to it at a vape shop. \u201cIt was a whole lot like heroin.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 2012, as the driver of deaths in the opioid crisis began moving from prescription pills to heroin,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":673657,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[27103,424,1689,103,61,60,38315,4055,7191],"class_list":["post-673656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-discord","tag-drugs","tag-fda","tag-health","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-opioids","tag-pain","tag-reddit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=673656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/673657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=673656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=673656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=673656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}