On Reddit, over 300k people are helping each other test new synthetic opioids they order online — and get clean (or try to). Recently, they’ve discovered an illegal research chemical, a fine white powder they order from China, that’s helping them detox for good. It arrives in packets labeled NOT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION (to get around American drug laws) though they are absolutely consuming it — and they claim it works better than any opioid addiction treatment on the market.

A tribute to the power of technology (and chemistry). Enjoy.

Log onto r/researchchemicals, sort by “Top—All Time,” and you’ll find a bewildering mix of tragedy and comedy. In the top post, a mother who just lost her son to an overdose writes, “I think probably all of you who are taking these things have moms. Or someone who loves you. And so it is for them that I am posting this. Please, please, reconsider.”

Scroll down and there’s a bizarrely heartwarming post about someone’s dad trying the novel dissociative 2F-DCK (structurally similar to ketamine though it differs by a single atom): “I’m visiting home and me and my brother both did 2fdck. Well my dad ‘caught’ us [...] He asked for some and I shit you not, I had 175mg racked up and he took it in one line. He told me and my brother everything. Things my mom doesn’t even know. I have never seen him happier.”

Scattered between those extremes, you’ll read self-aware snark (“It is I, 90% of the dissoheads on this sub [...] after taking 30mg 3-MeO-PCP 3 times a day for a month, I have solved literally every scientific equation known to man...”) and personal stories like this one from a user who took APVP (a synthetic stimulant) and stayed awake for three days hallucinating “shadow people.”

As one observer commented: “the amount of risk y’all motherfuckers are willing to take with your minds and bodies is either admirable or just plain stupid [...] Not judging, just saying. Carry on with your wild ass lives.”

The research chemical (RC) community congregates on r/researchchemicals and a few drug class-specific subreddits: r/dissociatives, r/opioid_RCs, and r/noids (synthetic cannabinoids). Reddit explicitly bans buying, selling, and trading drugs, so these subreddits traffic instead in information. People share their experiences procuring, using, and detoxing from a range of synthetic compounds: sedative benzos, painkillers, psychedelics, and stimulants like MD-PHP (similar to meth and known as “monkeydust” in the UK), which in one user’s words made him “feel like im never gonna experience reality again, fucked up primitive stupid ass thoughts, this shit is like meth had a pedophile redneck uncle.”

On r/opioid_RCs, which has 19k members, people experiment with everything from low-potency plant opioids like kratom to a class of synthetic opioids known as nitazenes (“zenes”) that can be over 20 times as potent as fentanyl. The sidebar reads: “This subreddit is designed for people who have already begun using opioids. If you have not yet started down this path, please turn back now.”

The research chemical community is a microcosm of the ongoing American opioid crisis, which claimed almost 55,000 lives in 2024. Roughly 88 percent of those deaths involved synthetic opioids like fentanyl and zenes. The cause of death is typically trouble breathing (most opioids suppress your respiratory capacity).

People aren’t normally looking for these super-potent synthetics, but they end up consuming them via counterfeit oxycodone pills, which come in every color and are labeled “30” to mimic the real thing (they’re known as “Dirty 30s”). On research chemical subreddits, users — many of whom started as oxycodone addicts before graduating to more powerful synthetics — order these drugs from labs in China, the UK, the Netherlands, and elsewhere. It’s all labeled “not for human consumption” to get around the 1986 Federal Analog Act, which declares such substances illegal only if they are intended for human consumption. This language created a massive loophole and a thriving gray market.

Some zenes lead to immediate tolerance and extremely severe withdrawals. In one post on r/opioid_RCs, for example, a user begs for help getting admitted to an Oregon hospital, writing that he “...might make an attempt on my life because the withdrawals are so severe.” (Roughly 70 percent of opioid addicts relapse, often because withdrawal is so painful.) As far as I can tell, people in these research chemical subreddits definitely want to experiment — but just as often, they want to stop using without serious withdrawal. One person pleads, “I smoked this shit for a month straight and no post whatsoever couldve ever prepared for how fucking painful and excruciating the withdrawals truely are. Im on day 1 and what the fuck do i actually do???”

Most doctors prescribe suboxone or methadone to treat withdrawal, but they’re notoriously inconvenient, highly stigmatized, and fraught with a host of side effects. People on methadone endure constipation, sweating, sexual dysfunction, and another round of severe withdrawal afterward. In fact, r/opioid_RCs is full of addicts who use the ultra-potent zenes on top of suboxone or methadone, defeating the purpose completely. Basically, even though they want to get clean, existing treatments are no match for the newest synthetics.

About a year and a half ago, I began to notice r/opioid_RCs users talking about a new chemical they claimed helped them get clean: SR-17018. The oldest post is from two years ago, when most users hadn’t heard of it. It reads, simply: “Has anyone heard of this chem?” (One of the top responses: “Let’s talk more about new shit see how quick this one gets banned”)

SR-17018 was discovered by researchers at Scripps Research Institute (hence “SR” for Scripps Research) in 2017 while they were trying to create safer pain relievers. In 2019, they found that SR-17018 was capable of immediately relieving the horrific ordeal of withdrawal and reversing opioid tolerance in mice, essentially rebooting an opioid addict’s brain to a pre-addiction state. Last year, reports of SR-17018 — all of it acquired from a sole Chinese vendor whose stock often runs dry — began to trickle into r/opioid_RCs.

No one in the world has been prescribed SR-17018 by a doctor, and the compound has so far been tested only in animal trials.¹ But one user claims SR-17018 helped him “get off 3 years of [medically assisted withdrawal therapy],” writing “yes it is a miracle drug, but unfortunately is not available now but the demand is crazy…” Another says “For almost a year, I took the equivalent of 30 mg fentanyl every day and I stopped instantly [...] took SR and I don’t feel any withdrawal symptoms at all.” A third: “After 20 years trapped in the grip of synthetic opioids [...] I finally found a way out... thanks to SR-17018.”

I talked to one of these people, a 29-year-old German man named Felix who says he’s an amateur “researcher” and “pharmacology nerd.” He used SR-17018 to detox from opioid addiction after a bicycle accident. (At his peak, he was taking 1-2 grams of oxycodone daily, 100x his prescribed dose.) He first read about SR-17018 back in 2021 on r/drugnerds, a subreddit where people discuss cutting-edge drug research. When it finally came onto the market in 2024, he decided to make another run at sobriety and ordered it online (from China), paying with euros and receiving the substance in a white powdery form.

Felix didn’t tell his doctor, because he knew a trained medical professional would never countenance what amounted to a high-risk, self-administered clinical trial with a patient population of one. “With all due respect,” he says, “he doesn’t know as much as me.”

After planning and executing his dosage schedule with the help of fellow Redditors, his pain immediately went away, and he didn’t experience withdrawal. After a month of progressively smaller doses, Felix was able to stop taking opioids for good. He’s been clean for over two months. Felix did ask me to emphasize that without therapy to help him treat why he became addicted, he would’ve never been able to get and stay clean. (He cautions other users that daily exercise and social interaction remain crucial to staying clean and fighting addiction.)

Recently, a handful of people created a new subreddit, r/SR17018, to guide each other specifically through using this drug. It has a few hundred members, one of whom calls the chemical a “FUCKING godsend for opiate dependency.” Occasionally, they’ll post pictures of plastic bags with captions like “finally.”

One user says, “SR has helped me kick a nasty fetty/zene habit and im only on day 3 and i feel like a 8/10 only wish they packaged it better for us so we dont waste any 😭”

Obviously, self-experimentation is risky. And even on the subreddit, users caution each other to watch out for scams: “Don’t trust anyone, do your own research,” someone advises. “SR isn’t approved for human use, and your stuff might get seized at customs or end up being impure.”

Also, if the compound really does mute or reverse opioid tolerance, opioid addicts risk overdosing if they relapse after a course of SR-17018. Here’s a heartbreaking post about a former mod on r/opioid_RCs, who overdosed after getting clean with SR-17018:

After Dom had been on SR-17018 for about 2 weeks, he went dark. All of us who were close to him said things like ‘hopefully he’s living the good life, maybe he just doesn’t need us anymore...’

But we all knew that wasn’t his way. He was a scientist, and a real friend. A few days later, we got confirmation that he had passed away, overdosed along with someone who he loved very much.

To me he died a hero. Had he not recommended it (SR-17018), I’d still be on cychlorphine, awaiting the balls to shoot myself. Dom’s diligent reports and eventual sacrifice gave me a second chance at a real life [...] while my life may still be in decades worth of pointless disrepair, I now have a chance to fix some of it, and a good man died getting me that chance.

This experimental drug — synthesized in a Florida lab nearly 10 years ago and never approved for human consumption — has already been used by hundreds of people, and will probably be used by thousands more as long as it remains available. If the only alternatives are a lifetime of addiction or several months (or years) of excruciating withdrawal, people will keep charting their own paths to sobriety, and posting their way through it so the world can watch and learn.

—Dani Socher

FOOTNOTES

¹ In 2022, researchers publishing in Pharmaceutics reported that SR-17018 “may be useful” in addiction treatment because it can modulate morphine withdrawals and dependence in mice. No further studies have been published since then, and there’s no evidence suggesting plans for future research.