SR-17 · quitting7oh.org

SR-17018 is a Schedule I controlled substance as of August 27, 2026. DEA scheduled it by its legal name, 5,6-dichloro desmethylchlorphine, in a temporary order effective through August 27, 2028. Possession is a federal offense. This page documents the protocol the community used while SR-17 was unscheduled, and it stays up because people mid-taper need the stepdown schedule. It is no longer a path you can start legally. If you are on SR-17 now, see If you’re mid-taper.

SR-17018 has never been studied in humans. All efficacy and safety data is rodent. Doses below come from community forums (Reddit, Bluelight), not clinical trials. It is still a mu-opioid agonist and produces its own dependence and withdrawal.

SR-17018 (also called SR-17) is a biased mu-opioid agonist developed at Scripps in 2017. Community use as an informal bridge off 7-OH and the related synthetics took off through 2024. The appeal is its pharmacology: rodent studies show it suppresses withdrawal and reverses tolerance with much less respiratory depression than classical opioids. The catch is everything that comes with using a research chemical for human dependence.

📊 Want a day-by-day cross-taper schedule? The SR-17 Cross-Taper Calculator builds the preload, cross-taper, hold, and SR-17 stepdown phases from your starting 7-OH dose.

The protocol

This is the most common SR-17 plan reported in this community. Community experience, not a clinical protocol. Treat it as a reference.

Step 0: allergy test. Take ~10 mg of SR-17 orally. Wait several hours, watch for any reaction. SR isn’t a known allergen, but unregulated research chemicals can carry contaminants.

The day-by-day:

Day	SR-17	7-OH (or your current opioid)
1 (preload)	50 mg × 3 (every 6 to 8 hours)	Normal dose, no change
2	50 mg × 3	Cut in half
3	50 mg × 3	Stop completely
4 to 7 (hold)	50 mg × 3	None
Taper	100 mg/day → 75 → 50 → 25 → jump	None

Total runway: roughly 10 to 14 days start to finish.

Three principles behind it:

Preload first, don’t quit cold. SR’s tolerance-reversing effect works through substitution at the mu receptor while you still have the original compound on board. Stopping 7-OH first and then trying to recover with SR is the wrong sequence and produces unnecessary withdrawal.
Use more SR, not 7-OH, to cover gaps. If 50 mg × 3 isn’t holding you in the first few days, raise the SR. Some readers run higher per-dose totals early. Reaching back for 7-OH undermines the whole transition.
Always taper the SR. Extended use creates SR-specific dependence. Keep the total course at 7 to 10 days maximum, then step down. Abrupt stops after even a short course can produce a rough few days that a taper would have avoided.

If 50 mg × 3 isn’t enough even after increasing, or you’re coming off stacked synthetics rather than 7-OH alone, ask on the Discord or r/quitting7oh before improvising. Community experience there is ahead of anything published.

Dose rationale

There is no clinical dosing protocol for SR-17 in humans. The 50 mg × 3 starting point sits inside the range reported on Bluelight and community guides on sr17018.org: allergy-test dose under 10 mg, opioid-tolerant starting doses commonly 50 to 150 mg total daily, split across multiple administrations.

Dosing every 6 to 8 hours follows from a ~6-hour half-life in rodent studies. Less frequent dosing lets blood levels drop and withdrawal symptoms break through between doses.

SR-17 has roughly 69% oral bioavailability in mice and crosses the blood-brain barrier efficiently. It’s highly lipophilic with poor water solubility, so dosing requires a carrier (oil, propylene glycol, ethanol-based solution). Vendors selling liquid form have usually handled this; powder requires you to do it yourself.

Rodent doses (24 to 48 mg/kg/day in the published work) do not translate linearly to humans. Don’t do that math.

Truths to be clear-eyed about

It is still an opioid. Mu-receptor Ki of 11 nM, comparable to many clinical opioids. It produces opioid effects.
It produces its own withdrawal. Documented in rodent cessation studies. Reported shorter and less intense than morphine withdrawal, but it is real.
Reports of “minimal euphoria” are common. That’s part of why it’s used as a tool rather than recreationally. Absence of euphoria is not absence of opioid effects.
Keep naloxone (Narcan) on hand. SR-17 overdose responds to naloxone like any mu agonist. Non-negotiable.
Don’t use SR-17 alone if at all possible. Someone needs to know what you’re doing and be able to reach you.

Sourcing and quality

Kept for readers who already have material on hand and need to judge what it is. Buying SR-17 now means buying a Schedule I substance.

No FDA oversight, no pharmaceutical-grade QC. SR-17 is sold by chemical suppliers operating outside pharmaceutical standards.
Demand a third-party COA. Reputable research-chemical vendors provide HPLC or NMR analysis. Less reputable ones provide nothing or fake certificates.
Contamination has happened. Designer opioids in the same chemical family have appeared mislabeled or as adulterants. Brorphine specifically carries severe respiratory-depression risk despite producing little euphoria. That’s the failure mode you don’t want.
Batch-to-batch variability. Without lab equipment, you’re trusting the vendor’s stated concentration. Some readers have reported significant variability across batches.

MGM-15 and the other synthetics

Probably effective for MGM-15, and pseudo, but the data is community-reasoned rather than research-confirmed. The published Bohn lab work demonstrated substitution for morphine and oxycodone, not the kratom synthetics specifically. The pharmacological logic transfers because all of these compounds activate the mu receptor.

The MGM-15 caveat: MGM-15 has dual mu/delta activity. SR-17 is essentially mu-only (Ki >10,000 nM at delta). SR covers the mu component but doesn’t replace the delta activation. Expect a “delta gap” feeling (anhedonia, low mood, persistent off feeling), the same gap Suboxone users coming off MGM-15 report. See Depression and Anhedonia for the post-acute mood picture.

For pseudo or MIT-A, the same logic applies. Stacked synthetics may need a longer preload window than pure 7-OH. Be honest about your full compound history when planning a transition.

Legal status: Schedule I

SR-17018 is a Schedule I controlled substance. DEA’s temporary scheduling order (Docket DEA-1665) published August 27, 2026, took effect that day, and runs through August 27, 2028.

The order schedules it under its legal name, 5,6-dichloro desmethylchlorphine. The full chemical name is 5,6-dichloro-1-(1-(4-chlorobenzyl)piperidin-4-yl)-1,3-dihydro-2H-benzo[d]imidazol-2-one. “SR-17018” appears in the order only as an alternate name, so searches for the SR number alone may miss it. Three other synthetic opioids went into Schedule I in the same order: 5,6-dichloro brorphine (SR-14968), N-propionitrile chlorphine, and spirochlorphine.

What changed in practice:

Possession is a federal offense, at any quantity, as of August 27, 2026. Manufacture, distribution, import, and export carry the full Schedule I criminal, civil, and administrative penalties.
The “research chemical, not for human consumption” label no longer does anything. That framing worked because SR-17 was unscheduled and prosecution ran through the analogue act, which turns on intent to consume. A named Schedule I listing needs no analogue argument.
Vendors selling it are selling a Schedule I substance. Expect supply to move, disappear, or get replaced with something else under the same label.

DEA’s stated basis: identification in law enforcement seizures and in toxicological cases, detected through DEA TOX, NFLIS, and NIST’s RaDAR program, plus rising online discussion of recreational use. SR-17018 was named in a NDEWS Weekly Briefing in November 2025.

This isn’t legal advice.

If you’re mid-taper

If you’re partway through an SR-17 cross-taper right now, the order didn’t change the pharmacology. It changed your legal exposure and it will change your supply.

Stopping SR-17 abruptly produces its own withdrawal, so an unplanned stop is its own problem. The stepdown schedule below and the cross-taper calculator still describe what the community documented. What’s gone is the ability to restock, so plan on finishing with what you have rather than assuming another order arrives.

If you can’t finish on hand, the paths that remain are Suboxone, tapering with kratom leaf, and cold turkey with helper medications. A prescriber won’t help you plan an SR-17 taper, but they will treat withdrawal, so a telehealth appointment is worth having if you’re facing a gap. The Discord and r/quitting7oh are where people are working through this in real time.

Tradeoffs

In favor:

Novel pharmacology that reduces respiratory depression and tolerance in lab settings
Minimal euphoria in user reports, making it function as a tool rather than a temptation
Substitutes for stronger opioids via preload, eases the transition off
Cash-pay, no prescriber needed (also a downside)

These were the arguments while it was unscheduled. Schedule I placement doesn’t touch the pharmacology, but it removes the practical case: there is no legal way to obtain it.

Against:

No human clinical data; all efficacy claims come from rodent studies
Sourcing is gray-market with the quality concerns that brings
Schedule I as of August 27, 2026; possession is a federal offense
It still produces dependence and withdrawal
Post-SR relapse with reduced tolerance is a documented pattern, and a returning user faces significant overdose risk

If you’re finishing a course, plan the post-SR phase as carefully as the SR phase itself. Supplements, PAWS support, and structure for the weeks after stopping matter as much as the protocol did. The paths still open are Suboxone, tapering with kratom leaf, and cold turkey with helper medications.

When to seek emergency help

Severe respiratory depression (slow or shallow breathing, blue lips or fingertips)
Loss of consciousness
Severe chest pain or irregular heartbeat
Any thoughts of self-harm or suicide. Call or text 988.

Pharmacology: why people choose SR-17

SR-17 is a biased partial agonist at the mu-opioid receptor with strong selectivity for G-protein signaling over β-arrestin2 recruitment. The G-protein-vs-β-arrestin distinction matters because the analgesic and reward effects of opioids run primarily through G-protein signaling, while many of the worst side effects (respiratory depression, severe withdrawal, fast tolerance buildup) involve β-arrestin signaling. Compounds biased toward G-protein signaling deliver the helpful effects with fewer of the harmful ones, in theory.

In rodent studies this translated to real, documented advantages: SR-17 produces robust analgesia with very little respiratory depression and much less analgesic tolerance than morphine. Substituting SR-17 for morphine in dependent mice reversed analgesic tolerance and suppressed withdrawal symptoms. That last finding is the mechanism that made SR interesting for human opioid discontinuation.

More recent research shows SR-17 stimulates an unusual pattern of mu-opioid receptor phosphorylation that persists for hours, which may explain its tolerance-reversing effects through a mechanism distinct from the simpler G-protein bias model.