October 4, 1997
XI. Abused Drugs
A. Alcohol
Alcoholic beverages have been used since the dawn of history, and the opinions and traditions of the past often cloud the discussion of this subject. The oldest alcoholic drinks were fermented beverages of relatively low alcohol content, that is, the beers and wines. When the Arabs introduced the then recent technique of distilling into Europe in the Middle ages, the alchemists believed that alcohol was the long sought elixir of life. Alcohol was therefore held to be a remedy for practically all diseases, as indicated by the term whisky (meaning "water of life"). It is now recognized that the therapeutic value of alcohol is much more limited than its social value.
marijuana
http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc97/8_23_97/fob2.htm
http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc97/3_22_97/bob1.htm
http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc98/7_11_98/fob2.htm
alcoholism
http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc98/1_24_98/fob1.htm
interesting
http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arch/12_14_96/fob1.htm
http://members.aol.com/wayneheim/wayne.htm
http://www.neuroguide.com/neuroimg_4.html#illustration
crank
http://www.pathfinder.com/time/magazine/1998/dom/980622/nation.crank.the_drug_on7.html
http://www.isc.tamu.edu/FLORA/medbot/eryt1.htm
http://tnason.home.mindspring.com/stimulants.htm
animation
http://www.neuroguide.com/newpump.html
Payotte
http://www.isc.tamu.edu/FLORA/medbot/loph1.htm
http://www.isc.tamu.edu/FLORA/medbot/Medical.htm
Medical botony
http://www.isc.tamu.edu/FLORA/medbot/mbhome1.htm
marijuana
http://www.isc.tamu.edu/FLORA/medbot/cann1.htm
Hops
http://www.isc.tamu.edu/FLORA/medbot/humu1.htm
*XVII. Drug addiction and abuse.
1. tolerance
2. dopamine and serotonin release
3. structures of tobacco, alcohol, illegal drugs
Psychedelics (Hallucinogens)
Lysergic Acid Diethylamide
There is no sharp line that divides the psychedelics from other classes of centrally active drugs. Under certain conditions, or at toxic dosage, several classes of drugs (anticholinergics, bromides, antimalarials, opioid antagonists, cocaine, amphetamines, and corticosteroids) can induce illusions, hallucinations, delusions, paranoid ideations, and other alterations of mood and thinking that are observed in spontaneously occurring psychotic states. However, despite the legal terminology that defines lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and related drugs as hallucinogens, the production of hallucinations is not the most useful way to describe the very interesting pharmacological effects of these group of drugs.
Most descriptions of the psychedelic state include several major effects. There is heightened awareness of sensory input, often accompanied by an enhanced sense of clarity, but diminished control over what is experienced. Frequently there is a feeling that one part of the self seems to be passive observer rather than an active organizing and directing force., while another part of the self participates and receives the vivid and unusual sensory experiences. The environment may be perceived as novel, often beautiful, and harmonious. The attention of the user is turned inward, preempted by the seeming clarity and portentous quality of his own thinking processes. In this state the slightest sensation may take on profound meaning. Indeed, 'meaningfulness' seems more important than what is meant, and the "sense of truth" more significant than what is true. Commonly there is a diminished capacity to differentiate the boundaries of one object from another and of the self from the environment. Associated with the loss of boundaries there may be a sense of union with "mankind" and the "cosmos." The drug-induced sensation that the mind is capable of seeing more than it can tell and of experiencing more than it can explain has led some to apply the term "mind expanding" to these agents.
LSD and related psychedelic drugs have actions at multiple sites in the CNS, from the cortex to the spinal cord. Some of the best studied of these involve agonistic actions at presynaptic receptors for serotonin in the midbrain. An earlier view that the subjective effects were due to blockade of serotonin now seems undefendable. The firing rate of neurons in the dorsal raphe nuclei is sharply reduced after small doses of LSD are administered systemically. Serotonin itself is inhibitory when applied iontophoretically to serotonin containing neurons in the dorsal raphe nuclei or to those neurons of the forebrain to which the dorsal raphe neurons project. While tryptamine produces inhibition about equally at both sites, LSD is considerably more potent in producing inhibition at the presumed presynaptic sites on the dorsal raphe neurons.
LSD binds with approximately equal affinity to serotinin1 and serotinin2 receptors and produces changes in the rate of firing of serotonin containing neurons. Halperidol, which can block the hallucinogenic actions of LSD and mescaline, has a 400-fold greater affinity for the serotonin2 receptor than the serotonin1 receptor. The precise mechanism by which LSD and related compounds produce their subjective effects remains quite uncertain.
http://www.sci.ouc.bc.ca/chem/molecule/pdb/lsd.pdb
Depressants Abuse
http://208.214.26.166/schaffer/dea/pubs/abuse/chap3/depress/barbit.htm
October 4, 1997
by J. Raloff
Where there's money, there's cocaine.
This aphorism doesn't just indicate the extent to which modern culture has embraced mood-altering drugs‹it's a fact. Fully 78 percent of the $1 bills circulating in Miami carry traces of cocaine, a federally funded study has found. So do similar shares of singles in Houston and Chicago. The only difference is that Miami's currency tends to carry more of the white powder.
In conducting the analyses that established those numbers, Jack Demirgian of Argonne (Ill.) National Laboratory (ANL) and his colleagues handled hundreds of cocaine-tainted bills‹some bearing as much as 1 milligram each. Yet while the chemists' skin readily absorbed cocaine from other contaminated items, it never picked up the drug from dollars.
To figure out why, Demirgian enlisted the help of Benjamin S. Tani, also of ANL, to study the bills with scanning electron microscopy. They saw no cocaine on the bills' surface; instead, they found it wedged in the nooks and crannies below.
Magnified, the currency's linen fibers "look almost like hacksaw blades," Demirgian notes. "We think that cocaine particles on the surface become fractured by the natural bending of the bills" and fall into the irregular holes formed by the money's fibers. British paper currency, which his team examined this summer, has more rounded fibers and far smaller holes‹none apparently large enough for the cocaine crystals to enter.
"I think this study showed that [U.S.] money does like to hold onto the drugs that it comes into contact with," says Kent Lunsford of the Office of National Drug Control Policy in Washington, D.C. The finding, he says, seems to undermine the argument many lawyers had been tendering: that clients caught with cocaine on their hands had innocently picked it up from money.
copyright 1997 Science Service
http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc97/10_4_97/fob2.htm