DEA Slams Door on SR-17018, the Opioid Quit Drug Users Swear By

The Drug Enforcement Administration emergency-scheduled a compound called SR-17018 as a Schedule I controlled substance in late August, lumping it in with heroin under a category the agency says has “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.” The ban lands on a drug that, until recently, was easy to buy online and was being openly used by people trying to get off opioids.

The science behind it is real, if early. Laura Bohn, senior associate vice president of research at University of South Florida Health, and colleagues published findings in Cell in 2017 showing compounds including SR-17018 relieved pain in mice without triggering respiratory depression—the thing that typically kills people who overdose. Her team, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, filed a patent. Follow-up work found mice didn't build tolerance to the chemical, and morphine-dependent mice could take it to reset their tolerance without the usual withdrawal misery. Human trials have never been run.

That didn't stop people who use drugs from adopting it. On Reddit, Discord and Telegram, users trade tips on SR-17018—often shortened to SR-17—and describe it as a way out. Jim Bates, a 53-year-old kitchen manager in Duncan, Oklahoma, got hooked on 7-OH, a concentrated kratom compound, then moved to a similar chemical called MGM-15. He told WIRED it was “all I was thinking about” until he tapered off over about three weeks with SR-17018, with no physical withdrawal symptoms and no euphoria. Michael, who used it to quit 7-OH in January and asked that his last name be withheld, said the anxiety, sweating and restlessness vanished and he kept working through it.

For Bohn, the scheduling is a wall. “I can't have it made, I can't ship it, I can't touch it,” she told WIRED, calling it “a real hassle” that stalls the safety studies she wants to run before any human trial. Denver attorney Robert Rush, executive director of the nonprofit Rights and Reason Project and Bohn's lawyer, asked the DEA to hold off, arguing SR-17018 has a lower risk profile than the other synthetic opioids being banned alongside it. He says the agency never responded.

The DEA pointed WIRED to its notice of intent, which says the drug turned up in two samples across two states since 2025 through the National Forensic Laboratory Information System, plus some West Coast detections via a separate monitoring program. The notice argues the four synthetic opioids covered by the order are likely to be trafficked and abused, and warns that resetting opioid tolerance might leave users more vulnerable to overdose on their next use—though the notice acknowledges the same is true of abstinence. Rush fires back that the emergency power is “draconian” here, since SR-17018 hasn't been tied to ER visits or overdose deaths.