Did you know all phenethylamines (including NBOMe's) and tryptamines will be banned in Denmark after 1.1.2012? All of them! I thought we were screwed here in Finland being the first country where MXE is banned but I really feel for the Danes. Many things are good here in the North but I feel sickened about our authorities right now.
I would be interested in seeing the actual phrasing of the law (not that I could understand Danish, lol, but you get what I mean), as there are MANY non-psychedelic compounds that are phenethylamines and tryptamines. I mean, even some amino acids are phens and trypts like phenylalanine, tyrosine, and tryptophan... a bunch of naturally occurring neurochemicals like serotonin, melatonin, and the catecholamines.
This is one of my primary areas of interest, so I'm gunna use this reply as a springboard into a related topic that I've wanted to generally rap at in the social for a while.
The topic being that I'm extremely bored with tryptamines and phenethylamines TBH... there are a bunch of heterocyclic alkylamine families out there that are completely unexplored, and most importantly completely and totally legal. I hope the oppressive legislation against phenethylamines and tryptamines just serves to motivate chemists to explore different areas. There are whole universes of thiophenes, furanyls, benzocycloalkylamines, pyranyl/furanyls etc etc.
Only recently have we even gotten decent crystallographic data on the 5-HT2A receptor that allows for accurate computational modeling of new compounds, and the effects of psychedelics on secondary messaging pathways are still being elucidated. I think the golden age of psychedelic chemistry and pharmacology has yet to come, we're living in what essentially amounts to hideously primitive times.
It was less than 150 years ago that Arthur Heffter isolated mescaline from the peyote cactus. Psilocin and psilocybin weren't even isolated from mushrooms until 1958, when they were investigated by Albert Hofmann. Since that time, we have limited our exploration of psychedelic compounds to two classes of compounds (of which the ergolines may be considered a third, but have been historically classified as tryptamines).
We've stepped but a single foot into an incalculably vast domain, which is as of yet totally unexplored. So don't lament about the current situation, because I think it will ultimately serve to spur creativity and give us many new jeweled realms to explore. I can't even begin to emphasize how many materials are out there that look extremely promising and worth exploring; even obvious ones like
meta and
para subbed dimethoxy thiopropamine and the thiopropamines with a
meta methoxy and basically any type of hydrophobic group in the
para position, and the thiopropamine with the actual ring sulfur as the hydrophobic para sub and a
meta methoxy. (these are really pseudo-descriptors, as thiophene doesn't have true
ortho,
para or
meta positions, but I think if you draw out 3,4-DMA and then draw out thiophene under it, its clear what I mean.. para would be directly across from the alkylamine and meta the non-sulfur position next to it).
Since methiopropamine has demonstrated the analogy between amphetamines and thiopropamines, I'm surprised that this area hasn't been explored -- if the analogy further holds, the
meta and
para subs should open up the door to a completely unrelated group of compounds in a way analagous to how 3,4-DMA is completely pharmacologically dissimilar to amphetamine (and indeed also to 2,4-DMA and 2,5-DMA which are also simple stimulants). To my surprise, these compounds have not been reported in the literature -- they are just big dark spots on the map right now.
Assuming the analogy holds even further, if you ring constrained the methoxy groups to a methylenedioxy, where the
meta oxygen's nonbonding electrons are anti to the para sub, you would probably have compounds active at SERT/NET/DAT (although it may take some fiddling with the ring substitutions because thiophene is lopsided compared to benzene and I'm extrapolating from phen and entactogen SAR). These compounds may even be amenable to substitution at the amine, so that opens up even more territory -- and this is just starting from one parent heterocycle. There's just so damn much you can do, and the actual chemistry of synthesizing heterocyclics is getting more and more defined everyday.
There are many aspects of psychedelics that I'm cynical about, mainly the social and political issues surrounding their usage (legality, vendors selling crap indiscriminately, irresponsible use, etc.)... but I'm finding it extremely hard to be cynical about the actual chemistry and pharmacology that will come along in the future, as long as we take what we've learned from the phens and tryps and use that as a starting point for exploration in other areas I think we are going to strike gold continuously... and learn a great deal about the biochemical nature of the mind in the process.
