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  • N&PD Moderators: Skorpio | someguyontheinternet

Deliberate ingestion of isopropanol

Limpet_Chicken said:
Nuke, did I read that right? I SWEAR I read a 'yet' in there.

Drinking acetone? you gotta be shitting me, maybe my eyes are just strained, but I'm sure I read a 'yet' in that sentence...

I wouldn't fancy it myself, schizo ex gf years back drank some in a suicide attempt (at least I think thats what it was), didn't kill her, but put her in hospital.

That said I don't know how much she drank, its not the sort of thing you ask your GF when she comes out of hospital for that sort of thing :/

And surely, its a bit of a waste of time for a GABA agonist buzz, unless its quite qualitatively different from EtOH.

Ether on the other hand, now that is tasty.
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That's the thing, it's not much different from ethanol at all. The acute intoxication is virtually indistinguishable from ethanol (I'm talking about isopropanol here). It does seem to be 2x more potent at causing intoxication -- which would explain why the dumb asses that drink a whole bottle of 90% isopropanol (standard drugstore size) tend to go into a coma and die or fall into a deep sleep that's not a coma and die of respiratory depression instead. A whole one of those bottles is a MASSIVE dose of isopropanol! The equivalent amount of ethanol could only be called SEVERE "alcohol poisoning"... although OD would be more appropriate since it's likely they'll die quickly from not being able to breathe quickly if nobody is around to help then to a hospital. Basically two bottles of 90% ethanol (standard drugstore size, smaller container, don't remember mL total in the bottle off the top of my head) would have similar life ending effects as one same size bottle of the 2x more potent isopropanol.

GABA downers can be broken into two distinct categories, one is quite safe in overdose (even massive), the other is very dangerous in overdose.

GABA(A) has several allosteric sites that can be acted on by agonists for each site. The most important sites are the BZD (benzo) site on the GABA(A) complex and the BARB (barbiturate) site on GABA(A). Both of these sites are different sites than the site GABA itself binds to.

Agonists of the BZD subreceptor in the GABA(A) complex do NOT open the ion channel to allow Cl- ions into the neuron which hyper polarizes the membrane (makes it less likely to fire). Instead, they change the conformation (the way the protein called the GABA(A) complex is folded) ever so slightly. This conformation of the GABA(A) receptor has a much higher affinity for GABA, so GABAs effects are greatly potentiated as long as the benzo keeps the GABA(A) complex locked into this different configuration. Benzodiazepines are the primary drugs that do this, but so do others such as zolpidem, zopiclone, and zaleplon (they're called nonbenzodiazepines but that's just because a "benzodiazepine" is defined by chemical structure not receptor affinities... these drugs are "benzos" as far as intoxication mechanism is concerned). They're quite safe in overdose since the body can, in an overdose, detect excessive CNS depression and release less GABA into the synapses to act on GABA(A) receptors... the worse the OD, the less GABA the sending neurons release. This is strong protection against overdosage; your body has a way to compensate for excessive consumption (although you WILL black out totally and completely possibly for days at these doses I'm thinking of).

Barbiturates bind to the BARB site, a different allosteric site, on the GABA(A) complex as an agonist. The major difference is that agonists of this receptor subtype can open the Cl- ion channel without the presence of GABA. This is dangerous because the body has NO way stop you from dying of respiratory depression or going into a coma (massive OD) if you take too much. It'll try to release less GABA which is the only thing it can do, but that won't help, since agonists of the BARB site can open the Cl- channel without any GABA at all.

It's debated whether simple alcohols such as ethanol bind at the BARB site (with obviously a significantly lower affinity) or at a different site in the GABA(A) complex all together. We do know that the behavior is just like the BARB site's behavior even if ethanol and other simple alcohols bind to a different allosteric site. It is totally possible to OD and die on ethanol, and due to the potency increase and extended duration (acetone's half life is ridiculously long, which adds to CNS depression), OD risk is even higher. Basically I'm saying it's no wonder that somebody who guzzles a whole bottle of mostly isopropyl alcohol frequently dies.

In realistic doses, it's not terrible. Ethanol is better though. I think ethanol just happens to have the PERFECT carbon chain length for minimal side effects as solvent simple alcohols go. It's possible that methanol would be just as good if it wasn't for the fact that its metabolite formic acid is extremely toxic.

Regular propanol (-OH on the end instead of on the middle carbon like in isopropanol), is probably the "best" substitute for ethanol, since its metabolite is an aldehyde that can be cleared easily, unlike the ketone that results from isopropanol metabolism. I don't for see them being toxic (propanol's metabolites).

Isopropanol isn't abused (at least not like ethanol is) because of the super nasty hangover and extreme sedation once a significant amount of acetone has built up.
 
You'll hate the butyric acid smell! And it's the equimolar metabolite of n-butanol!!

It's like rancid sweaty cloths! even in such low concentration! The smell is worse then propionic acid..
I once have it dripped in my lab clothing (1-2 drops i think) and it reeks me a day.
 
dread said:
No it's not. Butanol's metabolite would be butanal, or butyraldehyde.
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Which is going to get converted to butyric acid. And as the person above said, butyric acid has one of the worst odors I've ever smelled, it's up there with thiophene. I worked with it and we quickly discovered the bottle couldn't leave the hood once opened, and that we had to remove the gloves we had on and leave them in the hood all day to prevent stinking up the lab. Truly nasty stuff to work with. Butanol doesn't smell so great on it's own either.
 
No it's not. Butanol's metabolite would be butanal, or butyraldehyde.
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Butanol itself to me smells like volatiling a-bit-rancid-off glycerol which is bearable but is not nice.

Its first metabolite, butanal also has foul smell if you've ever smell it. Cannot describe precisely in word but a coughable smell. butanal is then further oxidized to butyric acid with worse smell as i mentioned above! :)

PS. I'd rather avoid these smells reaking out of my body, it should be worse than ether smell:\
 
resorcinol said:
I think ethanol just happens to have the PERFECT carbon chain length for minimal side effects as solvent simple alcohols go.
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Nice post resorcinol (allostery is awesome). :D

I wonder how something like fluoro-methylene-ol, amino-methylene-ol or methylenediol fares in comparison to alcohol at GABA potentiation?

And diethyl ether is hands down the #1 best drug to take if you are looking for at least a full next 24 hours of insane rocket breath. Brush your teeth, chew some gum, drink water, eat food? Nice tries... try not talking to anyone for 24+ hours unless you don't care if they get on your case about why your breath smells so damn bad.
 
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Recently I was looking in to some other ethanol analogues. Apparently, many are used as anesthestic/sedative/hypnotics agents 2,2,2-trichloroethanol, and other halagonated substitutes. At least in the case of the flouro analogue, there seems to be some acute toxicity associated. I know the bromo analogue is used commonly for auditory brainstem recording and other similar measures.
From a pharmacological stand point, don't all sedative/hypnotics work by similar mechanisms (decrease Glu, increase GABA), and therefore generally produce similar effects. Although, the effects following a general dose-dependant curve, the curve it self differs in steepness.
I think there may be some interesting analogues. Wonder if any are as safe as ethanol.
 
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