A lot of the cocaine users I knew back in the day turned into planarians after a while.

Thanks for the update. That was a great series.

So how the fuck did cocaine producers in middle-of-nowhere Colombia figure this out exactly...? I find it really hard to believe that so many different manufacturers all came to the same discovery and all decided to start using Levamisole in their product simultaneously without being connected somehow.

@3 because the Bilderbergs engineered it that way. Same as the potent new strains of bud they developed. It's all part and parcel of their plan to keep the population docile.

he said with a straight face...

Next up: solving the mystery of why anyone in their right mind would use cocaine

Without bothering to look into it deeply, my guess is that this is garbage. Many invertebrates, including nematodes (the deworming targets in the commercial use of levamisole) and arthropods (insects), have levamisole-responsive receptors in their acetylcholine signaling; mammals do not (this is why the drug is effective in deworming cattle, housepets, and people). Flatworms probably do have levamisole-responsive receptors (indeed, the clue was in the quote where the levamisole was described as being at "inactive concentrations", indicating there is such a thing as "active concentrations", as is the case for many invetebrates and as isn't the case for mammals, at least within reasonable concentration ranges). Thus: they observed that cocaine can combine with levels of levamisole that are on their own insufficient to effect a pronounced response, thereby achieving a synergistic effect in the presence of functional levamisole-responsive receptors that mammals don't have. That this is applicable to human drug use is less than likely.

Mind you: it's in a peer-reviewed journal (it's not my field, I have no idea how good a journal Neuropharmacology is thought to be), so hopefully they've been forced to consider this point. But even if they have discussed this question, it's going to be a hard one for them to convincingly tap-dance their way out of. With the caveat that I'm too lazy to actually read the paper, my guess remains that it's garbage.

@5: Cocaine is a hell of a drug.

What kind of sick twisted world do we live in where you can't even trust what is in your cocaine!

Go away, warren. You are almost as boring as my ex-wife.

Phenylbutazone, an equine pain medication was popular for awhile. It mixes well with cocaine but is quite harsh on the schnozz.

Not withstanding @6's reasonable sounding arguments , thanks for following up on this. I was wondering allowed to someone recently whether evamisole was still as much of a problem in the cocaine using world as in the past.

Thank you @6.