The Phenethylamines Backbone: The Inert Phenethylamine or PEA - by Shulgin

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Chip says: I finally managed to get a shipment of it in and it was a total failure ! It sounds good but it does nothing even at doses around 3 grams !

This, the simplest of all phenethylamines, has always been the darling of the psychopharmacologists in that it is structurally clean, it is naturally present in various human fluids and tissues, and because of its close chemical relationship to amphetamine and to the neurotransmitters.

These facts continuously encourage theories that involve PEA in mental illness. Its levels in urine may be decreased in people diagnosed as being depressed. Its levels may be increased in people diagnosed as being paranoid schizophrenics. Maybe it is also increased in people under extreme stress.

The human trials were initially an attempt to provoke some psychological change, and indeed some clinicians have reported intense headaches generated in depressives following PEA administration. But then, others have seen nothing.

The studies evolved into searches for metabolic differences that might be of some diagnostic value. And even here, the jury is still out.

Phenethylamine is found throughout nature, in both plants and animals.

It is the end product of phenylalanine in the putrefaction of tissue.

One of its most popularized occurrences has been as a major component of chocolate, and it has hit the Sunday Supplements as the love-sickness chemical. Those falling out of love are compulsive chocolate eaters, trying to replenish and repair the body's loss of this compound--or so the myth goes.

But this amine is voraciously metabolized to the apparently inactive compound phenylacetic acid, and to some tyramine as well. Both of these products are also normal components in the body. And, as a wry side-comment, phenylacetic acid is a major precursor in the illicit synthesis of amphetamine and methamphetamine.

Phenethylamine is intrinsically a stimulant, although it doesn't last long enough to express this property.

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