alt Hacker NewsAnyone got a quick primer on what 7-Oh is? That's a new term for me and the web search doesn't seem reliable.
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recent jon oliver last week tonight segment on kratom and the wider 7-oh stuff.
Gas Station Drugs: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRZqHzDG_c8
> John Oliver discusses the sprawling industry of “gas station drugs” – a world of questionable supplements and boner pills – which is posing a risk to the public by putting underregulated substances over the counter, and, more importantly, could prevent people from saving up for a Honda Civic.
Kratom is a leaf that is primarily farmed in Asia which contains the active ingredient Mitragynine, which has some very mild partial-agonist opioid effects. When kratom is consumed, your liver converts a very small amount to a MUCH more potent molecule called 7-hydroxymitragynine. As with all natural drugs, some asshats in a lab decided to figure out how to create the latter molecule semi-synthetically and in bulk. They pressed them into pills and sell them in head shops and some gas stations. It's pretty addictive, nasty stuff.
I first learned of kratom in the last year from Elijah Lemard
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0z5ixJIqbGY&t=267s
He's an odd guy who likes to investigate some really dodgy stuff. And I suspect many here on HN would appreciate him.
That led to 7-OH showing up in my feed at some point. In a nutshell, it's the strongest of the active compounds in the kratom plant, that binds to opioid receptors. 7-OH is the marketing name for the alkaloid 7-hydroxymitragynine that is being refined from kratom. It's not clear to me if it's simply extracted, or as some quick research suggests, it might also be a chemical alteration of the more commonly occurring compound in kratom mitragynine.
Anyway, this stuff looks super habit forming, and, of course, the refined version is that much more addictive.