The Origin of Heroin

From DailyKos...

In the aftermath of the Civil War a savage drug addiction ran rampant among wounded veterans who had received a powerful medication in field hospitals; so the urban legend goes anyway. But in 1874 a British chemist was hard at work on a new substance that would rescue victims from the curse of soldiers disease, AKA morphine addiction.

Neurotransmitters and their respective receptors fit together like a key in a lock. One class of neurotransmitters associated with pain are the endorphins. Just as a lock can be picked by a skeleton key, pain can be blocked and consciousness changed by molecules that resemble beta-endorphin. Resin scraped from the ripening seed pods of the opium poppy contain such molecules.

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