[travel] Oxytocin fun

[mattbell]

I was thrilled when I walked into a pharmacy in Laos and saw *everything* for sale. Interestingly, one brand of cough syrup here contains opium. I got most excited to see that you could buy Oxytocin (Not OxyContin)... over the counter. For those who don't know, oxytocin is secreted in large amounts during orgasm, and is associated with forming feelings of trust and love. It also, in even larger amounts, induces labor in pregnant women. This is the purpose for which it is sold. For men, the oxytocin rush during orgasm is apparently accompanied by an even larger testosterone rush, so simply having an orgasm isn't the same as boosting your levels of ocytocin.

I wanted to buy some, but I did some research first. They were selling it in syringes. Apparently the digestive system breaks it down if taken orally, so the two alternatives are a nasal spray and an injection with a syringe. No improvised spray bottle was handy, and I don’t have those heroin-addict injection skills. So no experiment was performed.

Comments

[flamingnerd.livejournal.com]

dude. taking it would almost certainly cause some really painful uterine cramps in women --and whatever the homologous tissue is in men. It's also not going to cross the blood brain barrier, to give you those happy brain feelings, so it's prolly not worth buying. if it *would* cross over into the brain, I might try getting the right dose for a high and risk cramps, but... yeah prolly not gonna work. alas! woulda been fun to take to BM. ;)

Oxythingy

[miriam-thisflighttonight.blogspot.com (from livejournal.com)]

Just as well we didn't, Matt. It would've severely dampened things in Luang Prabang if I went into labour. Would've made a good blog post, though.

[resipisco.livejournal.com]

Are any of oxytocin's precursor's for sale? Do they cross the BBB? Would you need to include a reagent to catalyze synthesis? Could you find one that only becomes active in the CNS (ie. in the presence of something only/mostly found in areas of desired activity)?

I should've paid more attention in Psychopharmacology years ago. We totally covered pharmaco-kinetics/dynamics.

[flamingnerd.livejournal.com]

I don't know any of the answers to these questions off the top of my head, but here are my best answers:

Are any of oxytocin's precursor's for sale? probably
Do they cross the BBB? maybe
Would you need to include a reagent to catalyze synthesis? of course! good luck getting a catalyst (aka enzyme) across the BBB though.
Could you find one that only becomes active in the CNS (ie. in the presence of something only/mostly found in areas of desired activity)? uh.... that's asking a lot. I ***might*** be able to, but seriously I don't even have the time to look up the other questions. More likely I'd have to do years of research to make this happen --if I could.

I'm sure the internet can tell you more if you really want to know, prolly the wikipedia page for oxytocin. Wikipedia is actually a really excellent resource for introductory info on biomolecules including enzymes and hormones.