Drugs
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What cannabis actually does to your brain
I was going to give the article a pass on a few things, but calling cannabis addictive has to be addressed. In Biophysiology, J. J.
Mind & Brain :: News :: January 14, 2013 :: :: Email :: Print Revisiting data casts doubt on the link between heavy cannabis use and declining IQ By Arran Frood and Nature magazine Getting high on a regular basis as a teenager has been said to lower your IQ—but the truth may not be so simple. Image: Flickr/prensa420
Pot Smokers Might Not Turn Into Dopes After All
'I Wanted To Live': New Depression Drugs Offer Hope For Toughest Cases : Shots - Health Blog
Chris Stephens, 28, who has been battling depression all of his life, plays with his dogs at home in Concord, Calif., on Friday. After a dose of ketamine, Stephens says, "I actually wanted to do things. I wanted to live life." Lianne Milton for NPR A club drug called "Special K" is generating a lot of buzz among researchers who study depression.scientists explain how ketamine vanquishes depression within hours
Many chronically depressed and treatment-resistant patients experience immediate relief from symptoms after taking small amounts of the drug ketamine. For a decade, scientists have been trying to explain the observation first made at Yale University. Today, current evidence suggests that the pediatric anesthetic helps regenerate synaptic connections between brain cells damaged by stress and depression, according to a review of scientific research written by Yale School of Medicine researchers and published in the Oct. 5 issue of the journal Science. Ketamine works on an entirely different type of neurotransmitter system than current antidepressants, which can take months to improve symptoms of depression and do not work at all for one out of every three patients. Understanding how ketamine works in the brain could lead to the development of an entirely new class of antidepressants, offering relief for tens of millions of people suffering from chronic depression.
An ecstasy pill with a rocket shop imprint. iStockphoto.com As far as recreational drugs that could have health benefits go, ecstasy doesn't exactly have a lot of champions.
Pure Ecstasy Is Safe, Canadian Doctor Says, But Don't Buy 'E' On The Street : Shots - Health Blog
Exactly a century after ecstasy was first patented, Health Canada has approved the drug’s import for the first Canadian study using the illegal substance in trauma survivors’ therapy. The decision to allow two Vancouver therapists to import nine grams of MDMA from a laboratory in Switzerland — one of only two such permitted facilities worldwide — will kickstart the first experiment with the euphoria-and-empathy-producing drug in B.C. on Jan. 1, according to a Health Canada email obtained by the National Post , dated Nov. 23. “I don’t know if we’ll have to wait until the MDMA is actually in our hands, but we’ve got a whole list of people who want to come to do it,” Dr. Ingrid Pacey, one of the researchers, told the Post . “There’s a part of me that still doesn’t quite believe it. When the MDMA arrives from Switzerland … when it finally lands on Canadian soil, then I’ll be certain.”
Ecstasy to be used in Canadian study into post-traumatic stress disorder | Canada
PTSD and MDMA Therapy - Medical Uses of Ecstasy
MDMA, the active ingredient in the drug Ecstasy, has been reviled as a menace and even a killer. Now some therapists claim it can help light the way out of a traumatic past. Photo: Dan Saelinger
8 March 2012 Last updated at 21:44 ET Could LSD be used to treat alcoholism? One dose of the hallucinogenic drug LSD could help alcoholics give up drinking, according to an analysis of studies performed in the 1960s. A study, presented in the Journal of Psychopharmacology , looked at data from six trials and more than 500 patients.
LSD 'helps alcoholics to give up drinking'
How Psychedelic Drugs Can Help Patients Face Death
As her fears intensified, Sakuda learned of a study being conducted by Charles Grob, a psychiatrist and researcher at Harbor-U.C.L.A. Medical Center who was administering psilocybin — an active component of magic mushrooms — to end-stage patients to see if it could reduce their fear of death. Twenty-two months before she died, Sakuda became one of Grob’s 12 subjects. When the research was completed in 2008 — (and published in the Archives of General Psychiatry last year) — the results showed that administering psilocybin to terminally ill subjects could be done safely while reducing the subjects’ anxiety and depression about their impending deaths. Grob’s interest in the power of psychedelics to mitigate mortality’s sting is not just the obsession of one lone researcher. Dr.
Single dose of 'magic mushrooms' hallucinogen may create lasting personality change, study suggests
Sep. 29, 2011 — A single high dose of the hallucinogen psilocybin, the active ingredient in so-called "magic mushrooms," was enough to bring about a measurable personality change lasting at least a year in nearly 60 percent of the 51 participants in a new study, according to the Johns Hopkins researchers who conducted it. Lasting change was found in the part of the personality known as openness, which includes traits related to imagination, aesthetics, feelings, abstract ideas and general broad-mindedness. Changes in these traits, measured on a widely used and scientifically validated personality inventory, were larger in magnitude than changes typically observed in healthy adults over decades of life experiences, the scientists say. Researchers in the field say that after the age of 30, personality doesn't usually change significantly. "Normally, if anything, openness tends to decrease as people get older," says study leader Roland R.<img src="http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/71936557a.jpg?w=480&h=320&crop=1" alt="71936557a" title="71936557a"/> A compound found in marijuana can treat schizophrenia as effectively as antipsychotic medications, with far fewer side effects, according to a preliminary clinical trial. Researchers led by Markus Leweke of the University of Cologne in Germany studied 39 people with schizophrenia who were hospitalized for a psychotic episode. Nineteen patients were treated with amisulpride, an antipsychotic medication that is not approved in the U.S., but is comparable to other medications that are.
Marijuana Compound Treats Schizophrenia with Few Side Effects: Clinical Trial
IS ALCOHOL A GATEWAY DRUG? ALYSSA J. MYERS & MARION O. PETTY DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY Missouri Western State University Sponsored by: BRIAN CRONK ( cronk@missouriwestern.edu )
IS ALCOHOL A GATEWAY DRUG?
By John Horgan Three years ago, I was reminded in dramatic fashion of the chasm between psychiatry and more-effective branches of medicine. My 14-year-old son, Mac, while playing lacrosse, emerged from a collision with his right arm askew.