What are meds made of?

I guess that the meds we take are made from petroleum products?

3 Likes

Quite a lot of prescription medicines contain drugs that were originally discovered in plant materials. In herbal medicines, the plant matter is used as-is. But in modern drug preparations, it is more likely that the drug is carefully extracted from plant material so that it can be purified. Plants contain a staggering number of chemicals in quantities that vary depending on the particular plant, when and where it was harvested and even the soil on which it was grown. These other chemicals can cause allergies or affect the way the drug works so they are removed. Often a drug precursor is extracted from plants and this is then processed chemically into the finished drug.

Drug companies try to produce formulations that contain only one active ingredient with just enough additional ingredients to hold the pill together through the manufacturing process. Each pill contains, as far as possible, exactly the same quantity of active ingredient so the effects of taking it are predictable.

Some drugs are entirely synthetic and may indeed be made from materials derived from petroleum. That makes no difference to their effectiveness or safety. The same pure drug will have exactly the same effect whether it is produced from a plant or made from scratch in a factory.

1 Like

Meds are made out of distilled sanity.

5 Likes

Whatever it is made of, you can’t stop taking it anyways