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Using the body to make drugs!

fastandbulbous

fastandbulbous

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Prompted by a thread in DB, I was wondering if anybody here has ever used their body as the means of O-demethylating codeine?

All you'd have to do is dose yourself with grapefruit juice and codeine (grapefruit to prevent any metabolism of codeine -> norcodeine or morphine -> normorphine), collext your piss over the next 8 hours (which would contain morphine O-glucuronate), extract the morphine conjugate and hydrolyse it to glucuronic acid and morphine with dilute hydrochloric acid.

It wouldn't be a quantitative conversion, but if 300mg of codeine resulted in 200mg of morphine, it would be a novel way of demethylatinf codeine (and a lot more fun than using the ugly chemical reagents needed to do it!)


I know it's a long shot, but I'm hoping someone will reply...
 
Yeah, I suppose... Diluate HCl you say.... You got any numbers to geuss what kinda yield, over what kinda timecourse you'd be expecting?
 
If you have any information on when the codiene will start being excreted,etc.. I will try it the next time I have any codiene (don't know when that would be).

I don't really want to have to end up isolating it from a gallon of urine after drinking a bunch of GF juice though.
hmm.
 
You got any numbers to geuss what kinda yield, over what kinda timecourse you'd be expecting?
Click to expand...

Er, no. I was just sort of spouting off the top of my head about the possibility of getting the body to O-demethylate codeine derivatives to the analogous morphine deriv. The conjugated morphine should hydrolyse with dil HCl though, it's just an ester hydrolysis, and they happen without much prompting unlike amides. The chart you posted of affinities for the mu receptor for the conjugate was higher than that of morphine, so you might not even have to hydrolyse it. These are all unknowns at the moment

Fizzacyst: I also don't know how much urine you'd accumulate over 8 hours (about long enough to get nearly all of the excreted metabolite), but you might be able to increase it by increasing kidney clearance with something acidic to favour the formation of salts (I suppose just drinking grapefruit juice is going to help in that dept).

You got to admit though, it's a lot easier than having to use any of the chemicals normally employed for O-demethylation of codeine. It's almost the pharmacology equivalent of a fast breeder reactor, where you get more plutonium fuel out than the amount of enriched uranium you start.

Guess I'll have to start rummaging for pharmokinetics studies on the subject
 
This sounds like a great idea. Id like to try this if I come upon a decent amount of codeine.
 
Surely data from labs who carry out GC/MS tests on urine samples will show the concentration of morphine conjugate in the urine after administering a given dose of codeine? This could give an approximate estimate of the yield of morphine provided.
 
Well, piss extract would be different. How would this be different than using syntheic insulin? It's made by engineering bacteria to make insulin, and then excrete it. In essence, it's bacteria piss.

An even closer analogy would be ethanol, and people have no problem with drinking that.
 
^ I've always doubted that axiom. I mean, no where else in your body is.
 
Well it comes directly from your bloodstream. If you've got any nasties in there then you're already in trouble if there are enough for significant numbers to pass through the kidneys. Any of us who've had a UTI will attest to how unpleasant it can be if bacteria get into your wee-wee system.
 
And through a molecular seive that'll stop large proteins, never mind whole bacterial cells. Even so, the process of extraction with a solvent will destroy any bacteria present. After that, it's up to the person doing the extraction to ensure aseptic conditions
 
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