Recreational Potential of Medical Lysergamides

[Cwest]

So I will start by saying my chemistry knowledge is not up to par as most of the people who frequent ADD/NPD.
I have been looking at the medical lysergamides lately (mainly ergometrine, dihydoergotamine, ergotamine, methylergometrine, methylsergide, cabergoline, ergoloid and a few others) and seen that some of the rarer side effects that increase with dosage include hallucinations, euphoria and dysphoria. I am aware that these side effects occur in a plethora of non recreational pharmaceuticals but the similarity in structure to LSD and other recreational lysergamides makes me wonder if any of these medical lysergamides are indeed recreational (to a degree).

If you have any information or even first hand experience on any of these substances or any other medically used lysergamides as far as being used recreationally please let me know.

Also to be clear this is purely out of interest, I do not have a bunch of migraine or vasoconstriction medications I want to try and trip on. Taking these medications irresponsibly will most likely lead to gangrene and amputations.

 

[endotropic]

You're not going to find one with the right profile and low enough toxicity to actually have recreational effects, but I don't see a problem approaching this from a theoretical standpoint (i.e. don't go overdosing on these meds to test this theory).

I think you need to start by looking for a couple of things: efficacy at 5-HT2A and efficacy at 5-HT2B. Most of the drugs you listed bind potently to 5-HT receptors (plug them into http://pdsp.med.unc.edu/pdsp.php to see which), but you need to do some more digging to find whether they activate or inhibit said receptors. Dihydoergotamine for example binds potently to 5-HT2A (38nM), but antagonizes the receptor rather than activate it.


edit: you can also find some clinical reports on abuse of these drugs; tldr it's about as fun as you'd expect[1][2]

 

[Cwest]

thanks endotropic, yes this is me looking at it theoretically and you gave me a more in detail description of what I thought (toxicity or gangrene before recreational effects).

does anyone know of a medically used lysergamide that is recreational? or could be?

 

[Cwest]

hey mods can you help me correct the spelling of the title please?

 

[DL-ark]

Maybe as dopamine agonists? I understand they can be recreational in some cases (Aporphin for example)

 

[Kilfer]

Regarding ergotamine, I recall from my not-so-glorious summer spent working as a hospital pharmacy orderly back in the early 80's a rather interesting migraine medication. It was available as a suppository that comprised not only the ergotamine and caffeine mix that was then familiar to migraine sufferers but also scopolamine and pentobarbital. That's pento not pheno, the short-acting mainline barb.

A potent brew to say the least. Maybe in part due to this my naïve belief back then was that ergotamine was some sort of psychedelic agent thrown into the mix... migraine is still not well understood so why not? Weirder things were known to happen and the fact that the subs had to be ordered from a compounding pharmacy added to the aura of mystery, no pun intended. It's only decades later, in fact a few minutes ago on Wikipedia, that I learned that ergotamine was and still is used as a vasoconstrictor in the treatment of migraine headaches.

So unless intracranial vasoconstriction is one's idea of fun I guess it's pretty safe to rule this lysergine out as having any sort of recreational potential