I was reading through an article in a magazine that basically said that, eventually, we'll be able to have drugs that have a very complex method of action on our brains, to the point where we can modify very specific things. The article used the example of having a drug that makes you better at gambling. Is this complete bullshit?
I was thinking the other day (and mind you, I have no pharmacology or chemistry background beyond the basics, so the following may seem incredibly noobish), that proteins can be incredibly complex and can have incredibly complex methods of action on the body. Could an artificial protein-based drug be the wave of the future, basically having a method of action that is specific enough to cause extremely precise changes in brain chemistry without causing the damage that our current recreational drugs cause? It's like instead of using a large hammer to get the job done, you use a precise laser. Maybe you could design a highly complex molecule that could change personality traits, or make people better at certain skills, like analytical thinking, for one?
Of course, it's possible that eventually, nanotechnology will be what this requires. If anyone's read
The Singularity Is Near by Ray Kurzweil, he basically predicts that we may one day be able to program nanobots to do basically anything within the body, everything from non-invasive surgery to artificial immune systems to creating "virtual reality" by affecting the sense centers of the brain. We could also possibly program nanobots to cause recreational drug-like effects very precisely with minimal or no harm to the body, and have them self-terminate after a certain amount of time (i.e. they go dormant, and you essentially piss them out). It sounds like a scary idea at first, but I really believe that, if the technology gets that good, they will be incredibly safe to use.
I think the
far, far future of "getting high" will eventually land in the world of nanotechnology (like everything else), but in the "less" far future, do you think it'd be possible to design highly complex molecules that have very, very complex properties, like I described? Or does it not work that way? School me if it doesn't, since I'm pretty much a beginner at this stuff.
