Account update link for Action E-List - davidc5419. Unwanted Side Effect: Cocaine Vaccine Leads Addicts to Take 10 Times More Cocaine. Over the last decade, the advances in neuroscience that led doctors to view addiction as a disease, rather than a desire or personal failing, raised the natural question of whether or not addicts could be vaccinated against drug use as if it were a virus.
While the theory remains valid, the recent clinical trial of one of those vaccines, called TA-CD, highlights the complexity of the issue. TA-CD works by preventing cocaine from entering the brain, thus stopping the user from getting high. It does not, however, stop cravings, leading some test participants who received the vaccine to take 10 times as much cocaine in the hopes of overriding the vaccine and getting high, or to bankrupt themselves while trying to do so.
According to the study, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, some participants in the study bumped more yeyo than the researchers conducting the study had every seen before. Amazingly, none of the test subjects overdosed. [The Washington Post] Health | Cannabis 'disrupts brain centre' Scientists have shown how cannabis may trigger psychotic illnesses such as schizophrenia. A King's College London team gave healthy volunteers the active ingredient tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). They then recorded reduced activity in an area of the brain which keeps inappropriate thoughts at bay. THC levels are thought to have doubled in the most popular type of street cannabis - possibly at the expense of potentially beneficial ingredients. A separate study has shown that one of these ingredients - cannabidiol (CBD) - has the potential to dampen down psychotic symptoms, and could form the basis of new treatments.
The research will be discussed at a conference on the impact of cannabis use to be held at the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College this week. Dependency Although figures are not kept, it is estimated that as many as 500,000 people in the UK may be dependent on cannabis. Increasing numbers of people are seeking help for cannabis problems at specialist clinics. Side effects. New Kind of Appetite Suppressant - Hope for the Obese? Marijuana and schizophrenia. Thousands treated in ER for frightening symptoms as use of 'bath salts' and synthetic marijuana rockets.
By Daily Mail Reporter Updated: 20:39 GMT, 6 April 2011 Thousands of Americans are arriving at ER with frightening symptoms after taking apparently harmless - and increasingly popular - synthetic drugs. The drugs, legal in many states, are marketed as 'soothing' bath salts or incense and can be bought for as little as $10 a time. But they have been implicated in nine deaths since last year, including the suicide of an 18-year-old boy who shot himself after taking marijuana-like substance K2.
Drugs tragedy: 18-year-old student David Rozga killed himself last year after taking marijuana-like substance K2, which is growing in popularity A dozen students have been expelled from the U.S. Naval Academy for taking or possessing the same drug, which can cause seizures, hallucinations and extreme paranoia. Synthetic drugs have surged in popularity this year as they become more widely available. Scandal: 12 students (not pictured were expelled from the U.S. Vice Admiral Michael H. Marijuana and the Brain.
Marijuana And the Brainby John GettmanHigh Times, March, 1995 In 1970, marijuana was placed on Schedule 1 of the Drug Enforcement Administration's controlled-substances list, largely because scientists feared that, like opiates, it had an extremely high potential for abuse and addiction. But the discovery of THC receptor sites in the brain refutes that thinking, and may force both scientists and the DEA to re-evaluate their positions. Introduction The next century will view the 1988 discovery of the THC receptor site in the brain as the pivotal event which led to the legalization of marijuana. Before this discovery, no one knew for sure just how the psychoactive chemical in marijuana worked on the brain.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, researchers made tremendous strides in understanding how the brain works, by using receptor sites as switches which respond to various chemicals by regulating brain and body functions. The receptor breakthrough occurred in 1988 at the St. More Evidence Ties Marijuana to Stroke Risk - Drugs. DRUG ABUSE AND STROKE IN YOUNG PATIENTS - General Medicine. Emergence of Recreational Drug Abuse as a Major Risk Factor for Stroke in Young Adults — Ann Intern Med. Medical Marijuana - Vaporizer Study.