紆余曲折
u.yo.kyoku.setsu

Literally: crouch – too much – bend – fold / fracture

Alternately: 紆余 refers to something, especially a road, being full of twists and turns. 曲折 similarly refers to something being bent or zig-zag. Put them together and you get a compound that describes an intricately complicated situation; especially a problem or decision that ties into other issues and will take a lot of time and trouble to resolve – if any decision is ever reached at all.

Notes: Replacing 折 with homophone 節 (“node”) is considered an error. However, replacing 紆 with homophone 迂 (“roundabout way”), while rare, is acceptable.

Adrenaline! From this page describing some drama surrounding the discovery of adrenaline… but I like to think that it came up in my image search because 紆余曲折 also describes the shape of the molecule.