In 2002, I popularized synthetic cathinone, which was also the first psychoactive compound I developed (followed by many more).

The idea to create a synthetic cathinone came to my mind after chewing Khat leaves. Cathinone is the active substance in the Khat plant and following my Khat experience, I thought it would be interesting to produce this molecule synthetically. One can state that this was the “ground zero” from which Doc Zee emerged. If the sequence of events that led to this point and onwards is of interest to you, I recommend that you watch King Khat on Psychedelic Speakers, a film by Uri Marantz, which is based, more or less, on actual events that I experienced during that period of time in my life. But, I want to dedicate this post to another topic, which is also mentioned in passing (and inaccurately due to poetic license for the sake of better flowing narrative) in the film. After the invention of cathinone and a number of its other derivatives, my life took a somewhat unusual turn. So I decided it was time to return to academic pursuits and believe it or not - it happened thanks to cathinone.

I noticed a very interesting phenomenon in the Khat plant - herbivorous insects make sure to stay away from it. My assumption was that this phenomenon was related to cathinone and the assumption turned out to be correct. Cathinone is very similar to a neurotransmitter that exists in invertebrates (which includes insects) called octopamine. When octopamine is released it causes insects to become hyperactive and therefore it will only be secreted under circumstances where such activity is beneficial to them.

The cathinone acts on insects in a similar way and puts them into a jittery mode. So why are they shying away from it? Because in the insect kingdom over-excitement produces prominence - in other words when an insect is exposed to too much cathinone its natural predators will recognize it more quickly and make it their dinner. This insight gave me an idea, what if we developed an octopamine-like substance that plants can absorb and when insects reach them and start eating from the plant, the substance will make them move more noticeably and whoop - here we have a great biological pest control supplement. I dove into research, mapping movement patterns of insects and at the same time looking for the appropriate molecule that would also affect the insects but on the other hand would have no effect on humans. I guess such a molecule exists, I haven't found it yet. What I did find as part of this research is a cathinone derivative called 4 methyl meth cathinone. This molecule has certainly been found to have an effect on insects, but sadly to chagrin of agriculture it has also been shown to affect humans. Yes, 4-methylmethcathinone, also known as 4-methyl-phenyl-drone or mephedrone for short, which later became the most popular drug in Britain, started as part of an experiment I conducted in an attempt to develop a biological control plant growth regulator.

If you follow this link https://commons.wikimedia.org/.../File:Octopamine... you can see a schematic I uploaded to Wikimedia in 2010. In the middle of the schematic is octopamine and around it is an analogue space generated by all combinations of 5 transformations to 3 species of octopamine. This analogue space was the foundation of the research described in this post.