Synthetic cathinone derivatives are a new class of psychoactive substances (NPS), also known as “bath salts”, designed to exert psychostimulant effects resembling those of well-known psychostimulants, such as cocaine and 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA, “ecstasy”). As major constituents of bath salts, the cathinone derivatives 3,4-methylenedioxypyrovalerone (MDPV) and...
Life SciencesSeptember 15, 2018Mohammed Majrashi, Mohammed Almaghrabi, Maali Fadan et al.
Designer drugs are synthetically formulated to mimic the psychostimulatory effects of an original controlled/illegal drug of abuse. Designer drugs have similar chemical structure or functional analog as compared to existing controlled psychostimulatory drugs. There is a substantial rise in the production and use of designer drugs globally. Piperazine designer drugs were synthesized as an...
The West African iboga plant has been used for centuries by the Bwiti and Mbiri tribes to induce hallucinations during religious ceremonies. Ibogaine, the principal alkaloid responsible for iboga's psychedelic properties, was isolated and sold as an antidepressant in France for decades before its adverse effects precipitated its removal from the market. An ibogaine resurgence in the 1960s was...
White ecstasy and the writing of history on Michel de CerteauResumenEste artículo se propone ilustrar algunos paradigmas compartidos entre la experiencia mística y la escritura de la historia a la luz del pensamiento y la obra de Michel de Certeau. El curso de la exposición nos arroja a la posibilidad de que subsista no sólo una experiencia de la escritura asociada a la alteridad desde el siglo...
Abstract The serotonin (5-HT) system plays an important role in the pathophysiology and treatment of several major psychiatric disorders. Currently, no suitable positron emission tomography (PET) imaging paradigm is available to assess 5-HT release in the living human brain. [11C]AZ10419369 binds to 5-HT1Breceptors and is one of the most 5-HT-sensitive radioligands available. This study applied...
The nineteenth-century medicalization of religious excess was given its greatest impetus by Jean-Martin Charcot and Paul Richer in their iconographic and clinical studies of hysteria.In Charcot's /conographie photographique de la Salpetriere (1876), Les Demoniaques dans l'art ( i 886), and La Foi qui guerit ( 1897) and in Richer's Etudes cliniques sur la grande hysterie (1881/85), they examined...
Mental disorders are rising while development of novel psychiatric medications is declining. This stall in innovation has also been linked with intense debates on the current diagnostics and explanations for mental disorders, together constituting a paradigmatic crisis. A radical innovation is psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy (PAP): professionally supervised use of ketamine, MDMA, psilocybin,...
This chapter explores how the different expectations for men and women might be seen to constitute an affective inequality , and the repercussions of this for heterosexual couples who take MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine or ‘ecstasy’). Qualitative data from ten couple interviews conducted as part of a doctoral thesis are drawn on. The chapter begins with a literature review exploring...
RATIONALE: Mephedrone (4-methylmethcathinone; 4-MMC) is a novel recreational drug similar to methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) and amphetamine. Several adverse effects have been reported, but little is known about its sub-acute effects. OBJECTIVES: To study sub-acute effects of mephedrone over a period of 9 days. METHODS: Recreational mephedrone users were recruited and followed over a time...
(±)-cis-4,4′-Dimethylaminorex (4,4′-DMAR) is a new psychoactive substance (NPS) that has been associated with 31 fatalities and other adverse events in Europe between June 2013 and February 2014. We used in vitro uptake inhibition and transporter release assays to determine the effects of 4,4′-DMAR on human high-affinity transporters for dopamine (DAT), norepinephrine (NET) and serotonin...