@4meSM
@someguyontheinternet
How about going at this from a completely different angle? I once had the (perhaps crazy) idea of writing a business plan, including financial projections for the first three years to convince investors even more, for founding a pharmaceutical company specializing solely in the manufacturing and marketing of opioid medications in underserved markets, and since I would technically "work" for my own company as a (non-)executive director I could learn from my own chemists within a completely legal framework. Perhaps this idea actually isn't crazy because it is much more unrealistic to pursue such an end (experimenting chemically with opioid substances) as a private individual, rather than doing this strategically with proper licenses and regulatory compliance. I could then for instance make a deal with one of the chemists of the R&D department (the most talented ofc), to instruct me in this science by offering both intrinsic as well as extrinsic rewards (career advancement for the former, and financial rewards for the latter). This whole endeavor would in fact fulfill three of my biggest dreams in life: 1) satisfy my scientific nature/mentality (in this case my fascination with chemistry in regards to the molecules that make up the substance class known as opioids), 2) satisfy my entrepreneurial nature (always loved the idea of making big
, in this case by pushing the most addictive drug in a completely legal way to the masses, perhaps in developing countries where officials can be bribed and corrupted more easily and regulation as well as competition is less intense) and 3) supply my junky self with a quasi-limitless, on-demand amount of opioids, synthesized off the books (meaning not recorded and documented in any shape or form so as to not trigger any investigation by regulators).
I can't actually see myself execute this whole idea though. I think you need very, very good connections for this to work out because the pharma-industrial complex is a highly regulated (which is code for big corporations actively preventing small enterprises from becoming a competitive threat to their position) environment. So we circle back to trying to learn and experiment with opioid chemistry by oneself as a private individual which is perhaps even more unrealistic. I definitely live in the wrong era. Wish I lived at the end of the 19th century where Citizen Science was an actual thing and doing practical science wasn't such a highly regulated environment with astronomically expensive lab equip and impossible-to-get chemical precursors. Science should be, in my humble opinion, a completely anarchistic world. Speaking of science, genetic engineering is also a fascinating subject. I'd probably try to genetically engineer homeostasis out of existence to make drug tolerance a thing of the past lol. Oh well, at least I can dream about all these things...
Oh and thanks for the link someguyontheinternet, I find this one here quite interesting:
https://www.rcsb.org/structure/6DDF
I'm currently reading up on the G-Protein signalling of the Filamin A protein complex and how microdosing of naltrexone intervenes and basically "hacks" this process in order to put back and keep the switch at the Gi-Protein and how this lowers tolerance to opioids and keeps it permanently at a low level by preventing it from ever going back to the Go-Protein. I'm experiencing this from a practical perspective since almost two years now, but understanding it from a theoretical perspective further adds to my knowledge and makes it even more interesting to me. Yeah, as you can see, neuropharmacology is yet another scientific subfield that fascinates me.
There just isn't enough time in life to study all these things. If the devil was real I'd sell my soul to him to live long enough in order to learn all these sciences, apply all of them and have fun while doing it (and of course profit from it both financially and recreationally).
pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
www.rcsb.org