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I noticed that many drugs that cause dependence have the suffix word "-ine". For example: Caffeine, nicotine, benzodiazepine, methamphetamine, cocaine, and morphine.

My questions:

  1. Why do many of these drugs that cause dependence have the word "-ine" in them?
  2. What does "-ine" mean in a chemical?
Rodrigo de Azevedo
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reinardhz
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    It might be worth checking out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkaloid#Naming. – orthocresol Dec 24 '21 at 18:00
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    Also check out things that end in "-ol." – Todd Minehardt Dec 24 '21 at 20:51
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    Here are twelve substances, all starting from the letter A, that are not drugs : alanine, aniline, acridine, adenosine, alizarine, amine, anthocyanine, arginine, asparagine, aspirin, atropine, aspirine. – Maurice Dec 24 '21 at 20:52
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    Different but (somewhat) related and not at all straightforward to answer: What is the definition of an opioid, beyond that it's something that stimulates opioid receptors? – uhoh Dec 24 '21 at 23:06
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    Put succinctly, -ine is just a common termination for chemical substances in general. You're suffering from selection bias. – Nicolau Saker Neto Dec 25 '21 at 00:04
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    @Maurice: To be pedantic, adenosine, aspirin, and atropine are drugs. – Vikki Dec 25 '21 at 03:16
  • Related: https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/88299/why-do-most-drugs-eg-oxycodone-have-seemingly-arbitrary-names – Nilay Ghosh Dec 25 '21 at 03:50
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    @Vikki Yep, but in many languages there are different terms to describe a "mind-affecting drug, used for recreational purposes or for stunning/torturing people" and "drug used to cure people (i.e. medicine), maybe not mind-affecting at all". For example, in Italian, "droga" mainly means "drug" as what is sold by drug-dealers (funnily enough it can also mean "spice", as in "spices used for cooking") or something used to alter mind perceptions (e.g. morphine as a pain-killer). You would never call "aspirin" a "droga" in Italian. In English the two meanings are conflated. – LorenzoDonati4Ukraine-OnStrike Dec 25 '21 at 13:21
  • @NicolauSakerNeto are you sure is just a common termination? Because I noticed many of "-ine" dependence drugs have simple benzene ring in their molecular structure that have minimal one nitrogen atom. So i think "-ine" suffix must have something related with that molecular structure. – reinardhz Dec 26 '21 at 21:26
  • This is silly. Tennessine and saline, among many others, use this common ending. There is no ‘there’ there. – Ed V Dec 27 '21 at 01:42
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    I don't think one can get addicted to Strychnine. :-) – Carlos Gouveia Dec 29 '21 at 18:38

1 Answers1

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The suffix "-ine" is not necessarily a bad thing causing dependence, proline is just an amino acid and chlorine is a gas. So there must be another reason!

As per the Elsevier's Dictionary of Chemetymology

-in(e): ultimately derived from -inus (Latin suffix meaning belonging to or being similar to)

One can then immediately guess the ancient organic names of natural products, with a little knowledge of plant names. What is the botanical name of tobacco? Nicotiana tabacum, so a chemist or whoever extracted nicotine named it after deriving from tobacco plant.

The word coffee and hence caffeine are derived from Arabic. Its botanical name is Coffea arabica so one can guess that caffeine was derived from this plant.

Note the halogens form an exception and plenty of other common organic chemistry names in your list. Not all natural products are named after plants, it just could be a fictitious deity like morpheus. Get hold of a good dictionary and look up the word origins of each.

Addedndum related to the comments: This is not the reason that "-ine" was chosen to indicate nitrogen in medicines. The suffix "-ine" has a wider meaning. As stated, fluorine, bromine, iodine etc. have no nitrogen or compounds such as phosphine, arsine have no nitrogen at all. If you have access to the unabridged Oxford dictionary (>20 volumes) they have full page on "-ine" and the original meaning of "-ine" is derived from, related to, therefore amine is from "ammonia" and "-ine". Divine is belonging to or related to God. In short, "-ine" is well beyond chemistry.

AChem
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  • Makes sense. Cocaine is derived from coca plant. Except Methamphetamine is not a natural alkaloid and achieved by reduction of ephedrine. – reinardhz Dec 27 '21 at 05:01
  • This answer feels incomplete to me without addressing that many of the -ine names one is likely to see in the context of drugs result from the substances being amines/alkaloids, which is indeed related to the molecular structure as the OP suspected (-ine for this reason implies there is a nitrogen atom). – electronpusher Dec 28 '21 at 04:24
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    @electronpusher, I addressed your point. – AChem Dec 28 '21 at 04:44
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    Magazine must be a very addictive drug, as many scientists are abusing it very frequently. – Poutnik Dec 22 '22 at 14:24