"First things first, but not necessarily in that order" Dr Who

Being the nerd that I am, I'm a fan of the Dr Who series of which the link above gives 2 prequels to the annoyingly tense mid season happenings. Chris Nichols "oooooh weeeehooooooo wheeeehooooo wheeeeeohooooo oooooo"

5) Some research (on psychopharmacology)

I'll start with the behavioural studies, so basically the effects the drugs have on moods (which in turn may effect the subject's physical behaviour, but at the end of the day it's up to them to whether they hug or attack someone). Tried to bold the important parts.

Curran & Travill (1997) 

• Studied 12 ecstasy and 12 alcohol users 
• The MDMA users had a 'high' all weekend, then a low midweek.

Gerra et al. (2000)

• Found that novelty seeking was high sort after by MDMA users

Parrott, Siskm, & Turner (2000)

• Looked at 12 heavy MDMA users, 16 light users, and 22 non users.
• 12 heavy users - reported higher paranoia, psychoticism, anxiety, obsessionality, impulsiveness, and poor sleeping than the light and non users. (what did they expect?).
  
• But they had also used amphetamine (presume this means at least once, but now are solidly on the old MDMA) So the effects could be due to the amphetamine drug, rather than the MDMA... unknown.

Cognitive studies (effects on the old memoirs)

 Parrot er al. (1998)

• Studied 10 regular users (>10 tabs [presume this means doses), 10 novice users (<10 tabs), and 10 control group subjects (probably non users).
• They found that the regular users had worse immediate and delayed recalls (short-term and long-term memorys)
• Also that there was no difference between all groups on choice, simple RT (gonna find out what it refers to), and vigilance tasks.

What types of cognition are impaired? 

Parrott (2000)

• found that users tended to have reduced memory. (Scholey et al. [2001] suggested that it was 'every day memory') 

Impaired: 

• Executive
• Planning
• Impulsiveness

(related to the frontal cortex and the hippocampus)

Ooh fMRI scans (good pictures of the brain functioning)

An MRI (different setting allow the fMRI)

This is actually an MRI the f= the function

This is an fMRI - you can see which bits are in use

Roberts, GMP et al. (2009)

• Looked at 20 MDMA, 20 control, and 14 cannabis subjects.
• The signature of colour on the brain showed up a lot stronger than cannabis users
• There were also abnormal activations in the frontal, left-temporal, and right-parietal regions of the brain.

Jager et al. (2008)

• 71 drug users (33 MDMA, 322 pills average)
• MDMA had no effect on working memory or attention, but reduced the associative memory performance.
• Associative memory - affected by amphetamine much much more than by ecstasy.

Cowan (2007)

• Saw a reduction in levels of 5-HTT, in ecstasy users who recently quit their habit.
•  And that 5-HTT levels has normalised in those who had stopped for a long time.
• However he couldn't conclude a lot because many studies have used different methods making them hard to compare.

 Problems with interpreting results

• There arn't really any random allocations of subjects.
• Subjects may use more than one drug at a time (polydrug use)
• For example: 70% of MDMA users interviewed drank dangerous amounts of alcohol (Winstok et al,, 2001)
• Other drugs are toxic - Amphetamines are more toxic with load music (mice) (Morton et al., 2001)
• The contribution of heat, dancing, and unclean drugs don't help
• The subject may already have pre-existing personality differences (individual difference).

Some interesting facts

Whereas horse riding there is 1 serious accident every 350(ish), there is only 1 serious effect from MDMA in every 10,000(ish) users.

MDMA is only one of many other drugs that are neurotoxins in animals. And may have the same effect in humans.

MDMA impairs cognition in animals and might do the same in humans. Can also effect the moods of humans.

Gonna end with a question after talking to Josi...

Q: Is taking ecstasy any worse than taking any other drug?

As students we often bindge on alcohol, and some on cigerettes. Who decides whether it is wrong to take MDMA? (besides the law obviously)

Next Post

either addiction or emotion

Something fun for your trouble

coming soon!

"Teenagers Forget Streisand because the Only Girl is Cooler than Dynamite" The Blanks

4) How MDMA (Ecstasy) works

 MDMA - Methylene-dioxy-methamphetamine aka Ecstasy

Its kind of like LSD, but without hallucination, 1-6mg will cause euphoria and overdose can cause hallucinations, it can be very strong and have effects that last as long as 24 hours. There are high numbers of overdoses which often lead to acute toxic reaction, convulsions and death.

Ecstasy was about in 1914 with minimal use, but as time went on usage increased until 1985 where reports of 30,000 doses are taken every month in Texas USA (Stock, 1986).

However now about 50,000 people in Briton use it evey weekend! and 15% of all 16-24 year olds have at least tried it.

      Drug usage in Scotland (Health Education Population Survey 1998)

 Looking at the totals you can see Ecstasy is still an uncommon drug, especially compared to cannabis.

An increase of Ecstasy use was because ecstacy was legal in USA before 1985, Ecstasy is safer and milder than DOM (STI, Dimethoxy-4-methylamphetamine), a synthetic amphetamine, and some psychiatrists started suggesting Ecstasy as an alternative to psychotherapy (Grob et al., 1992) because it effects the social and emotion feelings (enactogenic. Pentney, 2001).

and most importantly it was seen as very cool and became iconic within the 'rave' club scene.

 

RAVE DOG!!

SOME CREEPY PEOPLE!

Physical effects

• Muscles tension
• Appetite suppression
• Insomnia
• Trismus - inability to properly open the mouth
• Bruxism - gnashing of the teeth

Toxic reactions

• Hyperthermia
• Tachycardia
• Dilated pupils
• Convulsions
• Kidney failure

However USA's hospital admissions only had 20 MDMA cases (1986).

Psychological effects

• Intense euphoria
• Emotional warmth
• Increased communication
• Less aggression
• Hallucination (uncommon for low doses)

• Paranoia, anxiety and panic were found by Pallanti & Mazzi, (1992) with suggestions of suicidal ideas.

Neurological actions

• Increase in release of 5HT (serotonin)
• Depletes 5HT in terminal buttons
• Hallucinogenic effects may be due to action on 5HT 2a
• Effects dopamine and noreadrenaline
• Has stimulant effect (like amphetamine) 

Is it addictive?

(not really)

• Well animals self adminiter MDMA sometimes (Lamb & Griffiths, 1987).
• May be because of the DA (dopamine)

    -  Drug interactions

• MDMA used when 5HT anti-depressants (e.g. Prozac) can cause death (Lane & Baldwin, 1997)
• 'Serotonin syndrome' (when the body has too much serotonin)

Does ecstasy leave any long-term effects?

• Studies on rats have suggested that many high doses of MDMA causes a degeneration of 5HT neurons, fo which there is no reversal after 2 weeks
• Low doses have been found to do the same in primates and other species (Kosten & Price, 1992)
• Ectasy can cause the loss of fine axon endings from the dorsal raphe nucleus terminating in neocortex and forebrain regions (Molliver et al., 1990).

 

Are the effects irriversible? 

• No one fully knows yet.... sounds promising...
• But the destroyed 5HT neurons are irreversible, oh well (Molliver et al, 1990.
• The non-human primates are more vulnerable than rats (Scanzello et al., 1993)
• Ecstasy users have shown lower levels of 5HT IAA (Ricaurte et al., 1990)

Ecstasy effects the 5HT levels... so 5HT effects what behaviours?

• Depression
• Anxiety
• Sleep
• Impulsivity

• Long-term users may eventually have any or all of these (also possibly non).

Next Post

5) Some researh

Something fun for your trouble

Some of you may know me and Dave Canham saw Ross Noble in Chester as he was touring on his bike. Well for those of you who don't know him here's a clip of one of his well know jokes. (btw he does all his stand up unplanned)