Nardil/Phenelzine (Hydrazine chases the blues away)

As I mentioned yesterday, derivatives of arylethylamines - phenethylamine in particular - are drug targets in depression, but a sophisticated mechanistic understanding remains elusive. When you have some idea what molecule you'd like less of, a favorite trick is to find something (an "inhibitor") that binds to some enzyme in the pathway to your molecule and mucks up the works.

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Of this sort of drug, the first class is "reversible" inhibitors, which just hang out like hands in mittens. They nestle in an active site and keep other molecules from binding. As the drug is metabolized and its concentration decreases, the enzyme/mitten eventually empties and returns to normal behavior.

The second class, which Nardil, above, belongs to, "irreversible" inhibitors, are like mittens mom clips to your sleeves. They usually form a covalent bond to an enzyme, not letting go until your body makes some new enzyme and degrades the ruined one.

It's that hydrazine moiety in there that does the job. It's pretty remarkable to find a hydrazine moiety in a drug, since these compounds tends to be pretty dangerous. The closely related phenylhydrazine famously poisoned its discoverer, Emil Fischer. They're also responsible for some of certain mushrooms' considerable toxicity.

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Phenethylamine is happy time for depressed females eating chocolate. It is but an amino group away from more permanent joy. Depression is a rational passive response to living in a toxic society. Consider the active alternative.

Nardil is a powerful monoamine oxidase inhibitor. Get happy, eat pickled herring or chopped liver, die. Yahweh is a vengeful god.

The fully realized bachelor living within his bachelor pad often suffers from the malaise of not washing the dishes for three or four weeks at a time. A service for eight goes through 82.5% of its inventory, and the wonder wowser of them all, Fiscal 1990 Program Solicitation 90.1) Exacerbating probems to justify more regulation and its costs. Hydrochlorofluorocarbons and hydrofluorocarbons are LYING to you.

An amino pyridine that didn't go to crud in favor of saving the snail darter and eating truly safe granola is called Enviro-whiner bottom line: that about 23.278 grams of antimatter sloppily handled will give you a few hundred owls. I must admit a modest fondness for the surreality of owl pellets, those regurgitated remains of quantitative geometric parity divergence vanishes.

Note to anile posseurs: 7.6 MB of Uncle Al essays have a concordance. The second post was crudely hashed from http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/...

bachelor - antblast.htm
solicitation - antimat.htm
HFCCs and HFCCs - ecorgasm.htm
LYING TO YOU- moon.htm tuned.htm
owl pellets - bourg.htm coords.htm

etc. If they know they are idiots, and we know they are idiots, and each knows the other knows they are idiots, and even other idiots know they are idiots - and they are boring idiots - why do they further pursue the point?

Returning to topic: It would be compassionate to enact capital punishment by therapeutically dosing a condemned prisoner with a month of Nardil to relieve depression. The last meal would then be aged cheese, a bowl of Bovril, teriyaki tofu main course accompanied by a fava bean side plus a bottle of Chianti. The first two rows of witnesses should wear rain gear against hypertensive splatter.

Oh cheer up, sir, it's a tongue-in-cheek homage and all in good fun. The link at the author name, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociated_press, provides a clear hint of what's going on, and it's built right into emacs---no programming necessary! For the record, "LYING TO YOU" drew from your comments on refrigerants on this blog, not from some other page. You will admit that your prose does have certain... statistical regularities.

Despite my colleagues' and my best efforts at the Institute, we know that in the end you can never be duplicated. Rock on, Uncle Al...

As for token MAOI discussion, it was interesting to see that some are being investigated as nootropic drugs, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selegiline .

By Computer Simul… (not verified) on 30 Jul 2008 #permalink

now THAT would be something to see...

By around the cor… (not verified) on 30 Jul 2008 #permalink

I am utterly amazed MAOIs are still on the market. They may be effective, but to a foodie they're bordering on a death sentence -- would seem to negate the point of an antidepressant, no?

Just found this blog, and this entry blows my mind. I never knew what hydrazine did when it wasn't busy as a rocket propellant. (Hydrazine + nitrogen tetroxide = WHOOOSH! Or boom, if something goes wrong. Google "Nedelin Catastrophe".)

On the mushroom link (gyromitrin) I see that the stuff metabolizes to MMH. Dude. That *IS* rocket propellant! (Hypergolic motors usually use either MMH or UDMH. Americans prefer MMH and Russians prefer UDMH, but that's not an absolute rule.)

This is a very cool blog. I shall visit often. ;-)

By Calli Arcale (not verified) on 15 Aug 2008 #permalink