3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) is a substituted phenethylamine more commonly known as the drug of abuse "ecstasy." The acute and persistent neurochemical effects of MDMA in the mice are distinct from those in other species. MDMA shares biological effects with both amphetamine-type stimulants and mescaline-type hallucinogens, which may be attributable to distinct effects of its two...
September 30, 2009John Mann, John Emsley, Philip Ball et al.
Timothy Leary's advice to "tune in, turn on and drop out" was a 1960s exhortation to experiment with LSD, but humans had been consuming ergot alkaloids related to lysergic acid diethylamide for at least a thousand years. Opium has been around even longer with its medicinal uses being known to the Ancient Sumerians as long ago as 3400 BC. This is the first book to cover all of the major...
Pyramidal neurons in layer 5 of the cerebral cortex are involved in learning and memory and have complex connections with other neurons through a very large array of dendrites. These dendrites can switch between long term depression and long term potentiation depending on global summation of various inputs. The plasticity of the input into pyramidal neurons makes the neuronal output variable....
Direct Analysis in Real Time (DART) is a novel ionization technique that provides for the rapid ionization of small molecules under ambient conditions. To investigate the trend of non-controlled psychotropic plants of abuse in Japan, a rapid screening method, without sample preparation, was developed using DART-time of flight mass spectrometer (TOFMS) for plant products. The major psychotropic...
One important technique in behavioral pharmacology is to train laboratory animals to discriminate between a psychoactive drug effect and a nondrug condition. Tests with different drugs have identified several categories of drugs that have different discriminable effects. The two authors describe and discuss the early research on discriminable effects of sedative and hallucinogenic drugs and...
Although man's first encounters with hallucinogens predate written history, it was not until the rise of the sister disciplines of organic chemistry and pharmacology in the nineteenth century that scientific studies became possible. Mescaline was the first to be isolated and its chemical structure determined. Since then, additional drugs have been recovered from their natural sources and...
Many plants contain toxic alkaloids which may be dangerous to humans. Despite the large number of poisonous plants, cases of fatal plant poisonings are relatively rare. The frequencies of poisonings and the plants involved are often regionally specific. Plant poisonings can be aggregated into three categories: unintended ingestions, intended ingestions, and poisoning due to abuse of plant...
Interview with John Sinclair Ann Larabee and Mathew Bartkowiak In 1967, John Sinclair's TransLove Energies sponsored the Belle Isle "Love-in," a gathering of hippies that turned into a violent clash among the participants, biker gang members, and the Detroit police. Nearly 40 years later, on a peaceful, sunny afternoon, we sat down with John Sinclair on Belle Isle to discuss the state of...
Reviewed by: Black Drink: A Native American Tea Deward E. Walker Jr. Charles Hudson. Black Drink: A Native American Tea. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004 Pp. 184. In this reprint edition of the 1979 original, we are presented once again with the results of Professor Charles Hudson’s excellent research into the American Indian cultures of the southeastern United States. We have grown...
Desde a metade da última década, em grandes cidades do Brasil, começou a se difundir o uso da secreção da rã Phyllomedusa bicolor. Tradicionalmente usada como revigorante e estimulante para caça por grupos indígenas do sudoeste amazônico (entre eles, Katukina, Yawanawá e Kaxinawá), tem havido um duplo interesse pelo kambô nos centros urbanos: como um "remédio da ciência" – no qual se exaltam...