Should I be worried about Magnolia Bark Extract and dependency/withdrawal issues?

Withdrawal from URIDINE?!? Maybe those people are just really sensitive to GABAergics.

That study you linked is silly. They Googled shit and wrote a meta analysis on it. They even say no actual peer-reviewed research has shown addictive potential.

No peer‐reviewed papers relating to Magnolia abuse/misuse/dependence/addiction were here identified. Conversely, some 41 websites relating to Magnolia issues were here assessed, with most (e.g., 21) being dedicated to its purchase/acquisition.

So they Googled a bunch of sites selling it, along with drug forums, and made determinations based off the wording people used. Very strange way to do it. Also, who knows if those sites were actually selling magnolia bark. Could have been etizolam and they were just calling it magnolia bark. Without testing and peer-reviewed research using good study design, they are just speculating on things. They also talk about people smoking it...

Misuse of magnolia bark compounds mostly seemed to occur orally, with smoking and vaporizing intake techniques being also reported, at dosages in the range of 60–900 mg. Adverse, transient, untoward effects included mouth/throat numbness, lightheadedness/tiredness, and dizziness. Although specific withdrawal symptoms were not described, levels of tolerance were anecdotally reported (see Table 1).

If you look at the table, they are citing Amazon listings, Bluelight, and drugs-forum. LOL

A vast range of Magnolia vending websites, especially when searching in English, was identified. Branded with various commercial names, Magnolia derivatives were offered either as pure concentrates/extracts or mixed with other substances. Overall, these commercial websites labelled their products as “safe,” “legal,” and “pure,” whilst describing themselves as “verified merchants,” offering a “100% satisfaction guaranteed, top‐choice supplement” deal. Purchase prices were in the range of euros 5–55/USD 6–60 per 60 Magnolia bark extract tablets, with variations depending on the quantity of items purchased.

Seriously, who wrote this stupid meta analysis?!?

To the best of our knowledge this constitutes the first description of the Magnolia derivatives' putative potential of misuse. The compound may be misused mainly as a sedative/sleeping aid, but polydrug intake patterns were here identified as well. Furthermore, synthetic magnolol and honokiol structural analogues could contribute to increasing the number of synthetic cannabimimetic/GABA‐ergic misusing compounds.

If this is the extent of the evidence of its abuse potential, I think we are good.

The Web plays a huge role in the modification of both psychotropics' availability and changes in drug scenarios (Schifano, Orsolini, & Papanti, 2015; Schifano, Papanti, Orsolini, & Corkery, 2016), and one could argue that the vast levels of Magnolia online acquisition possibilities may reflect the large number of potential customers. Indeed, the recent increase of Magnolia popularity, mainly a sedative, here identified may arguably be due to its peculiar pharmacological properties, acceptable affordability levels, virtually worldwide favourable legal status, and customers' attraction to a product being perceived as “natural” and hence somehow “safe.”

Scientific research also plays a huge role in what people use and how they treat things. When you make a glorified blog post based off Google searches, then publish that to a scientific journal, it spits in the face of actual researchers. This joke of a paper should be thrown in the trash where it belongs.

There are a number of possible limitations of this study; a multilingual analysis of a larger sample of websites could have provided better levels of information. Furthermore, only publicly available websites/fora were monitored here, and further data of interest could possibly have been identified by the analysis of the “deep web”/“dark net” material (Orsolini et al., 2015). We made no Magnolia purchase attempts; hence, one could argue about the product content/dosage being delivered. Overall, anecdotal reports are only partially reliable, and it may be inappropriate to trust information obtained from the internet without independent verification. Since no peer‐reviewed papers relating to Magnolia misuse issues were identified, the present conclusions mainly relied on sources (e.g., websites) characterized by levels of unreliability. Hence, a bias may well have been introduced here, and the manuscript's conclusions should be considered as authors' opinions. Only large‐scale, adequately controlled, clinical studies can give a clear indication of a drug characteristics and adverse effects. However, in line with present observations, previous studies from our group (Schifano et al., 2009; Siemann, Specka, Schifano, Deluca, & Scherbaum, 2006) have clearly suggested that the increase in online trafficking/debate about a specific psychoactive drug typically precedes the occurrence of clinical incidents at the population level.

So they admit their paper is trash, and not based in any objective scientific measurements... Why even publish this pile of garbage?!?

This paper was supported in part by grants of the European Commission (Drug Prevention and Information Programme 2014‐16; contract no. JUST/2013/DPIP/AG/4823; EU‐MADNESS project).

AHH, there it is! They got free money from the government to sit on their computer and Google Amazon and Bluelight, then write something that appeared to be a scientific paper on it. What a joke.