Just so you know St John's Wort is basically a natural SNRI (or something very similar) and so is possibly as dependency causing as a pharma one. People do report withdrawal symptoms that sound similar. Its very cool though that nature produced this eons before pharma companies dreamed them up and meta analysis shows it having very similar efficacy to many anti depressants.
My wife has been taking it and stopped due to almost exact adverse effects that SSRI/SNRIs induce (nausea, vomitting, diarrhea , headeche, vivid dreams, emotional blunting....).
In fact every drug that one can buy without prescription (and most prescription based) originates in one way or the other from "folk medicine". Most known example is acetylsalicylic acid (Aspirin) which is extracted from the bark of the willow tree.
But whole process is best summed up by opioids:
1.) First the pain relieving, sedative and other effects have been attributed to Papaver somniferum (opium poppy). The knowledge was passed generation after generation and became part of the native folk medicine.
2.) As the scientific enterprise was getting more refined during enlightenment phase alkaloids that made the plant such a good medicine were isolated. Morphine was first the first one, followed by codeine, thebaine, papaverine and noscapine. I'll stick to opiate/opiod alkaloids and further development of other drugs.
So morphine, codeine and thebaine are opiates - opioids that are extracted directly from a plant.
3) By studying those three alkaloids and tweaking the molecules first semi synthetic opioids were created. I will mention most basic and known ones:
-from opiate (and more broadly classed "opioid") morphine, semi synthetic opioid dia(cetyl)morphine (most famously known by Bayers brand name Heroin) was synthesised.
- from opiate (and more broadly classed "opioid") codeine, semi synthetic opioid hydrocodone was synthesised.
- from opiate (and more broadly classed "opioid") , semi synthetic opioid thebaine oxycodone was synthesised. Hydrocodone and buprenorphine can/are also synthesised from thebaine.
4) From further tweaking of opioid molecules and discovered metabolites host of other opioids we're synthesised like oxymorphone for an example.
5.) During research & development vast knowledge of opioids mode of action and how to create host of semi synthetic opioids was accumulated. From original point 1 (plant itself) to point 4 (understanding of how opioids work and can be created) the newest method of creating opioids was learned and fully synthetic opioids like pethidine/meperidine, methadone, fentanyl were introduced.
This is the rough process of how most of drugs were discovered and vast majority can be traced to plants.
This is the reason why I made the distinction between real science backed medicine...
Psychiatry is still pseudoscience wearing the badge of the scientific (medical) world.
...and psychiatry that is by the rigorous standards of science actually a pseudoscientific spin off thet doesnt even treat illness/disease but "disorders". If someone brought hypothesis to physicists or biologists for some new discovery but hypothesis was using method of detection that psychiatry is using when proving that they discovered "disorder" the paper would be laught of by physicist and biologists. But I have reserved my openes that psychiatry could become evidence based...
One day understanding and the instruments that can detect true diseases in this field may come
...but then it would again fall in the discipline of biology. We do not even know what is mind or consciousness if the strict evidence based scientific method is used - how could we then, with a straight face, say "we know how to cure it"?
But I digress. Just wanted to say that almost all medications that are commonly used come from plants and medicine that was practioned in Sumer, Egypt, Asia and South America long before the science as we know it today was available.
Sorry for the long post. I'm going to bet to get my beauty sleep.
Have fun and have a great Tuesday/Wednsday!
Edit: I am very tired and made too many mistakes while writing that I had to edit spelling and other mistakes in my post.
