You Should Know

So big mistake here: NAC is not harmless. It does have side effects and it also has toxicity at high doses.

It has not been studied in long term use orally or IV, it's main use bomg short term use for paracetamol overdose treatment. Inhalation is more studied but it is not absorbed into the body in the same way.

We think it is safe but we haven't actually done human trials to be sure. What we have found in mice is that high doses can cause lung and heart damage and also when it comes to alcohol it is protective if taken before alcohol consumption BUT it amplifies the toxicity to the liver if about 4 hours taken after alcohol. All of this is summarised on the Wikipedia page which looks to be good quality.

Overall it may be a useful drug but don't take it off label or self medicating. Medicine is littered with unexpected effects of drugs that only came out once it was too late. Thalidomide is a good example - a "wonder drug" for nausea used in pregnancy that was not tested and caused horrific birth defects which only became evident when it was too late.

Your body is not a lab, be careful experimenting with supposedly "safe" drugs.

Cool. All the medical risks of alcohol for getting none of the things why I’d drink it. What a deal.

I was immediately imagining how I could use this knowledge to my advantage at a high stakes poker game or high level business negotiations, until I remembered I'm sat in my underpants talking shit on the internet.

Yes, that's known and studied.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30019966/

Now, depending on people that anti-alcohol protection might be an advantage or drawback.

Yup. Please, please don't drink too much regardless of how drunk or not it gets you. Alcohol is never good for your body.

It's also useful for other addiction treatment for things like meth, etc. IIRC it can also be used to cycle with ADHD meds to reduce tolerance, (though if taken with them, you don't get any benefit from the ADHD med).

NAC is also useful for things like COPD, and weirdly is a pretty great chelation agent for heavy metals and I want to say is also used for paracetamol overdose.

Semi-related: is there a nootropic/drugnerds community on Lemmy yet?

As some people have pointed out, it protects the liver, but from personal experience, I can't confirm the "not getting drunk" part ... so I'd be really cautious about blanket statements as the one in the title of this post.

NAC is amazing and I highly recommend it, especially for long covid problems involving lung capacity.

But NAC does have one potential harmful effect that I am aware of. It is a powerful antioxidant, and too much antioxidant activity has been found to predict lung cancer.

So don’t take a lot of NAC for a long period of time.

I swear by it myself. It has done amazing things for me. But it is a powerful drug (I think it’s a drug and not a supplement because I don’t think it’s a nutrient but I could be wrong)

Cool, thanks for sharing!

This is a common coughing medicine I believe. This is also used to cure paracetamol/acetaminophen poisoning

Does it protect the liver or does it reduce the alcohol consumption?

I eat a lot of paracetamol because longtime unwell. Would NAC benefit my liver from the hit it takes from paracetamol?

Stick to naltrexone