Adrenochrome is a chemical compound with the molecular formula C9H9NO3 produced by the oxidation of adrenaline (epinephrine). The derivative carbazochrome is a hemostatic medication. Despite a similarity in chemical names, it is unrelated to chrome or chromium.
Effect on the brain

Several small-scale studies (involving 15 or fewer test subjects) conducted in the 1950s and 1960s reported that adrenochrome triggered psychotic reactions such as thought disorder, derealization, and euphoria.[2] Researchers Abram Hoffer and Humphry Osmond claimed that adrenochrome is a neurotoxic, psychotomimetic substance and may play a role in schizophrenia and other mental illnesses.[3] In what they called the "adrenochrome hypothesis",[4] they speculated that megadoses of vitamin C and niacin could cure schizophrenia by reducing brain adrenochrome.[5][6] While the treatment of schizophrenia with such potent anti-oxidants is highly contested in literature, and adrenochrome is not currently believed to have any psychedelic properties,[7] a number of recently published papers consider Hoffer's paper a landmark contribution to the notion that impairment of what's now termed the anti-oxidant defense system (AODS) seems to play a role in schizophrenia.[8]