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By Jan Hoffman Fentanyl overdoses have finally begun to decline over the past year, but that good news has obscured a troubling shift in illicit drug use: a nationwide surge in methamphetamine, a powerful, highly addictive stimulant. This isn’t the ’90s club drug or even the blue-white tinged crystals cooked up in “Breaking Bad.” As cartels keep revising lab formulas to make their product more addictive and potent, often using hazardous chemicals, many experts on addiction think that today’s meth is more dangerous than older versions. Here is what to know. What is meth? Meth, short for methamphetamine, is a stimulant, a category of drugs that includes cocaine. Meth is far stronger than coke, with effects that last many hours longer. It comes in pill, powder or paste form and is smoked, snorted, swallowed or injected. Meth jolts the central nervous system and prompts the brain to release exorbitant amounts of reinforcing, feel-good neurotransmitters such as dopamine, which help people experience euphoria and drive them to keep seeking it. Meth is an amphetamine, a category of stimulant drugs perhaps best known to the public as the A.D.H.D. prescription medications Adderall and Vyvanse. Those stimulants are milder and shorter-lasting than meth but, if misused, they too can be addictive. What are meth’s negative side effects? They vary, depending on the tolerance of the person taking it and the means of ingestion. After the drug’s rush has abated, many users keep bingeing it. They forget to drink water and are usually unable to sleep or eat for days. In this phase, known as “tweaking,” users can become hyper-focused on activities such as taking apart bicycles — which they forget to reassemble — or spending hours collecting things like pebbles and shiny gum wrappers. They may become agitated and aggressive. Paranoia, hallucinations and psychosis can set in. © 2025 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 4: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 4: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 29750 - Posted: 04.19.2025

Study links heavy drinking to brain injuries, Alzheimer’s

By Erin Blakemore Consuming more than eight alcoholic drinks a week is associated with brain injuries linked to Alzheimer’s disease and cognitive decline, a recent study in the journal Neurology suggests. The analysis looked for links between heavy drinking and brain health. Researchers used autopsy data from the Biobank for Aging Studies at the University of São Paulo Medical School in Brazil collected between 2004 and 2024. The team analyzed data from 1,781 people ages 50 or older at death. The average age at death was 74.9. With the help of surveys of the deceased’s next of kin, researchers gathered information about the deceased’s cognitive function and alcohol consumption in the three months before their death. Among participants, 965 never drank, 319 drank up to seven drinks per week (moderate drinking), and 129 had eight or more drinks per week (heavy drinking). Another 368 were former heavy drinkers who had stopped drinking before their last three months of life. The analysis showed that heavy drinkers and former heavy drinkers, respectively, had 41 percent and 31 percent higher odds of neurofibrillary tangles — clumps of the protein tau that accumulate inside brain neurons and have been associated with Alzheimer’s disease. Moderate, heavy and former heavy drinkers also had a higher risk of hyaline arteriolosclerosis, which thickens the walls of small blood vessels in the brain, impeding blood flow and causing brain damage over time. Though 40 percent of those who never drank had vascular brain lesions, they were more common in moderate (44.6 percent), heavy (44.1 percent) and former heavy drinkers (50.2 percent), the study found.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 4: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology; Chapter 19: Language and Lateralization
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 4: Development of the Brain; Chapter 15: Language and Lateralization
Link ID: 29749 - Posted: 04.19.2025

Faces From a Meth Surge

The devastating stimulant has been hitting Portland, Maine hard, even competing with fentanyl as the street drug of choice. Although a fentanyl overdose can be reversed with Narcan, no medicine can reverse a meth overdose. Nor has any been approved to treat meth addiction. Unlike fentanyl, which sedates users, meth can make people anxious and violent. Its effects can overwhelm not just users but community residents and emergency responders. John once fielded customer complaints for a telecommunications company. Now he usually hangs out with friends in the courtyard of a center offering services to help people who use drugs, hitting his pipe, or as he calls it, “getting methicated.” He usually lives outdoors, though he can sometimes handle a few days at a shelter. By noon, he tries to stop smoking meth, so he can get to sleep later that night. Quitting is not on his radar: meth rules his life. “We cannot ride on the railroad, the railroad rides upon us,” he said, with a nod to Henry David Thoreau. Most weekdays, Bill Burns, an addiction and mental health specialist with the Portland police, walks the Bayside neighborhood, checking in on folks. On Thursdays, he rewards the regulars he drives to addiction treatment clinics with his own homemade jolts of dopamine: sugar-dense, Rice Krispie-style treats. Recently, he encountered a young man in full meth psychosis, wild-eyed, bare-chested and bleeding, flinging himself against concrete barriers in an alley. Mr. Burns slipped between the man and a brick wall and wrapped his arms protectively around him. Even as the man flailed uncontrollably, smacking Mr. Burns and smearing blood on his shirt, he managed to stammer, “Sorry!” Speaking softly, Mr. Burns kept repeating, “You’re going to be safe. You’re OK. We’re here because we just want to make sure you’re safe. No, you’re not in trouble. Nobody wants to hurt you. ” © 2025 The New York Times Company

Don’t Underestimate the Risks of Benzodiazepines

By Christina Caron Victoria Ratliff, the wealthy financier’s wife on season 3 of HBO’s “The White Lotus,” has a problem: She keeps popping pills. And her drug of choice, the anti-anxiety medication lorazepam, has left her a little loopy. In the show, which follows guests vacationing at a fictional resort, Victoria pairs her medication with wine, which leads her to nod off at the dinner table. Sometimes she slurs her words. When she notices that her pill supply is mysteriously dwindling, she asks her children if they’re stealing them. “You don’t have enough lorazepam to get through one week at a wellness spa?” her daughter, Piper, asks “The White Lotus” is not the only show to recently feature these drugs. The new Max series “The Pitt,” which takes place in an emergency department, includes a story line about a benzodiazepine called Librium. This isn’t a case of Hollywood taking dramatic liberties. Benzodiazepines such as lorazepam and chlordiazepoxide are notorious for having the potential to be highly addictive. They may also come with difficult — sometimes fatal — withdrawal symptoms. The characters’ misuse of benzodiazepine drugs is not uncommon, said Dr. Ian C. Neel, a geriatrician at UC San Diego Health. “We definitely see that a lot in real life as well.” And in recent years, he added, studies have shown that it’s a bigger problem than doctors initially realized. The drugs, which are often called benzos or downers, are commonly used to treat anxiety, panic attacks and sleep disorders like restless leg syndrome. But they can also be used for other reasons, such as to help people manage alcohol withdrawal. © 2025 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 4: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology; Chapter 15: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 4: Development of the Brain; Chapter 11: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Link ID: 29705 - Posted: 03.15.2025

What to Know About Buprenorphine, a Proven Treatment for Opioid Addiction

By Moises Velasquez-Manoff When President Trump announced plans to impose tariffs on Mexico and Canada, one of his stated rationales was to force those countries to curb the flow of fentanyl into the United States. In fiscal year 2024, United States Customs and Border Protection seized nearly 22,000 pounds of pills, powders and other products containing fentanyl, down from 27,000 pounds in the previous fiscal year. More than 105,000 people died from overdoses, three-quarters of them from fentanyl and other opioids, in 2023. It doesn’t take much illicit fentanyl — said to be about 50 times as powerful as heroin and 100 times as powerful as morphine — to cause a fatal overdose. In my article for the magazine, I note that one of the many tragedies of the opioid epidemic is that a proven treatment for opioid addiction, a drug called buprenorphine, has been available in the United States for more than two decades yet has been drastically underprescribed. Tens of thousands of lives might have been saved if it had been more widely used earlier. In his actions and rhetoric, Trump seems to emphasize the reduction of supply as the answer to the fentanyl crisis. But Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has pointed to American demand as a driver of the problem. Indeed, if enough opioid users in the United States ended up receiving buprenorphine and other effective medication-based treatments, perhaps that demand for illicit opioids like fentanyl could be reduced. Devastating losses. Drug overdose deaths, largely caused by the synthetic opioid drug fentanyl, reached record highs in the United States in 2021. Here’s what you should know to keep your loved ones safe: Understand fentanyl’s effects. Fentanyl is a potent and fast-acting drug, two qualities that also make it highly addictive. A small quantity goes a long way, so it’s easy to suffer an overdose. With fentanyl, there is only a short window of time to intervene and save a person’s life during an overdose. Stick to licensed pharmacies. Prescription drugs sold online or by unlicensed dealers marketed as OxyContin, Vicodin and Xanax are often laced with fentanyl. Only take pills that were prescribed by your doctor and came from a licensed pharmacy. © 2025 The New York Times Company

How a Leftist Activist Group Helped Torpedo a Psychedelic Therapy

By Andrew Jacobs and Rachel Nuwer After more than three decades of planning and a $250 million investment, Lykos Therapeutics’ application for the first psychedelic drug to reach federal regulators was expected to be a shoo-in. Lykos, the corporate arm of a nonprofit dedicated to winning mainstream acceptance of psychedelics, had submitted data to the Food and Drug Administration showing that its groundbreaking treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder — MDMA plus talk therapy — was significantly more effective than existing treatments. At a pivotal public hearing last summer, two dozen scientists, doctors and trauma survivors told an F.D.A. advisory panel how MDMA-assisted therapy had brought marked relief from a mental health condition associated with high rates of suicide, especially among veterans. Then came skeptics with disturbing accusations: that Lykos was “a therapy cult,” that practitioners in its clinical trials had engaged in widespread abuse of participants and that the company had concealed a litany of adverse events. “The most significant harms in Lykos’s clinical trials were not caused by MDMA, but by the people who were entrusted to supervise its administration,” Neşe Devenot, one of the speakers opposed to Lykos’s treatment and a writing instructor at Johns Hopkins University, told the committee. Dr. Devenot and six others presented themselves as experts in the field of psychedelics, but none had expertise in medicine or therapy. Nor had the speakers disclosed their connection to Psymposia, a leftist advocacy group whose members oppose the commercialization of psychedelics and had been campaigning against Lykos and its nonprofit parent, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, or MAPS. The critics did not provide evidence to back their claims of systematic wrongdoing, but when the votes were counted that day, the panel overwhelmingly rejected Lykos’s application. Before voting, panelists cited a number of concerns, among them MDMA’s potential effects on the heart and liver, and whether trial results were influenced by the fact that most study participants correctly guessed they had received the drug and not a placebo. © 2025 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 16: Psychopathology: Biological Basis of Behavior Disorders; Chapter 4: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 12: Psychopathology: The Biology of Behavioral Disorders; Chapter 4: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 29659 - Posted: 02.05.2025

The Race for All-Powerful Pot

By Katie J.M. BakerMegan TwoheyDanielle Ivory and Jeremy Singer-Vine At Stiiizy, the best-selling cannabis brand in America, the goal is explicit: producing powerful and cheap marijuana. Inside its Los Angeles headquarters, crews dust joints with concentrated THC, the intoxicating component of cannabis. They package pocket-size vape cartridges that promise “the highest potency possible.” On its website, the company declares that “it has never been easier (or quicker) to get silly high for an affordable price.” Dispensaries operating under the brand of another leading company, Cookies, have promoted “powerful medical benefits,” including “cancer fighting” qualities. A cannabis-infused chocolate bar was, until recently, described as containing properties “beneficial to those suffering” from glaucoma, bacterial infections and Huntington’s disease, a devastating genetic illness. More than a decade after states began legalizing recreational marijuana, businesses are enticing customers with unproven health claims, while largely escaping rigorous oversight. A New York Times review of 20 of the largest brands found that most were selling products with such claims, potentially violating federal and state regulations. And as companies compete, potency has gone up — with some products advertised as having as much as 99 percent THC — and prices have gone down. “What we’re seeing is really a race to the bottom,” said Matt Zehner, a senior analyst at Brightfield Group, which tracks the legal cannabis industry. Some executives said their companies are trying to navigate complex rules while satisfying their customers. Stiiizy’s co-founder and chief executive, James Kim, said in an interview that many are heavy users in search of a good deal, something he had sought as a broke “pothead” in his early 20s. “This is why I believe we’re very successful,” he said. But in a $32 billion industry that has been volatile — only about a quarter of businesses turned a profit last year, one survey found — companies say they also face pressure to do whatever they can to survive. © 2025 The New York Times Company

Cigarettes with less nicotine may help some smokers quit

By Aimee Cunningham If cigarettes contained very little of the chemical that keeps people smoking, it could help smokers move away from these deadly products. That’s the rationale behind a new rule proposed on January 15 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which seeks to limit the amount of the addictive chemical nicotine in cigarettes. The reduced-nicotine cigarettes would have less than 5 percent of the amount of nicotine that’s generally found in regular cigarettes. The rule would also cap the nicotine in certain other products in which the tobacco leaves are burned. The FDA rule is just one step toward reduced-nicotine cigarettes and other combusted tobacco products becoming the standard. This process would probably take many years, depending on the priorities of future administrations and whether the tobacco industry challenges the rule in court, as it has the FDA’s rule placing graphic warning labels on their products. The 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control gave the FDA the authority to require graphic warning labels and to reduce nicotine in tobacco products. The idea for a nicotine limit has been around for decades. And the evidence supporting drastically lowering the amount of nicotine in combusted tobacco products has grown during that time. Randomized controlled trials of reduced-nicotine cigarettes report that people using them end up smoking fewer cigarettes per day. That’s also the case for studies that focused on groups at higher risk for smoking, including people who are socioeconomically disadvantaged and people with mental health conditions. © Society for Science & the Public 2000–2025.

Psychedelic drug DMT to be trialled on UK volunteers to tackle alcohol misuse

Hannah Devlin Science correspondent A powerful psychedelic that is used in healing ceremonies by Indigenous groups in the Amazon is being trialled as a pioneering approach to reduce problematic alcohol consumption. Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) is the active ingredient in ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic brew that has been used for thousands of years by shamans in South America. Scientists based at University College London are testing whether a one-off dose of the drug could help hazardous drinkers who want to reduce their alcohol intake. Alcohol addiction is notoriously difficult to overcome and there are few effective therapies available. “The current treatments really don’t work for a large proportion of people. For alcohol addiction, 50% of people relapse within three months and around 60-70% within three years,” said Prof Ravi Das, who is co-leading the trial at University College London with Prof Jeremy Skipper. “Treatment itself hasn’t changed fundamentally in 70 years, so there’s a desperate need for new drugs and treatment approaches. To the extent that DMT might provide a more effective treatment approach, it is worth exploring.” In its pure form, DMT is one of the most powerful psychoactive substances found in nature. “The dose we chose reliably produces strong effects,” said Dr Greg Cooper, a research fellow at UCL, adding that this included total out-of-body experiences, fully immersive hallucinations and entering colourful geometric landscapes. © 2025 Guardian News & Media Limited

Surgeon General Calls for Cancer Warnings on Alcohol

By Roni Caryn Rabin Alcohol is a leading preventable cause of cancer, and alcoholic beverages should carry a warning label as packs of cigarettes do, the U.S. surgeon general said on Friday. It is the latest salvo in a fierce debate about the risks and benefits of moderate drinking as the influential U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans are about to be updated. For decades, moderate drinking was said to help prevent heart attacks and strokes. That perception has been embedded in the dietary advice given to Americans. But growing research has linked drinking, sometimes even within the recommended limits, to various types of cancer. Labels currently affixed to bottles and cans of alcoholic beverages warn about drinking while pregnant or before driving and operating other machinery, and about general “health risks.” But alcohol directly contributes to 100,000 cancer cases and 20,000 related deaths each year, the surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, said. He called for updating the labels to include a heightened risk of breast cancer, colon cancer and at least five other malignancies now linked by scientific studies to alcohol consumption. “Many people out there assume that as long as they’re drinking at the limits or below the limits of current guidelines of one a day for women and two for men, that there is no risk to their health or well-being,” Dr. Murthy said in an interview. “The data does not bear that out for cancer risk.” Only Congress can mandate new warning labels of the sort Dr. Murthy recommended, and it’s not clear that the incoming administration would support the change. © 2025 The New York Times Company

Could Ozempic treat addiction?

By Shane O’Neill In 2018, Matt Christensen kicked heroin by replacing drugs with drinking. When he stopped drinking in 2022, he turned to food. He put on 95 pounds. His doctor recommended he try Wegovy, part of a class of drugs known as GLP-1 receptor agonists, to help him lose weight. Eventually he switched to a different drug called Zepbound, which targets both GLP-1 and GIP agonists. The drugs worked. Get concise answers to your questions. Try Ask The Post AI. But a funny thing happened on his weight-loss journey: His cravings for food had diminished but so had his cravings for drugs and alcohol. Christensen, 42, started drinking at age 9 and using heroin at 17. For decades, catching a cold meant reaching for a hot toddy. Work stress meant numbing out with Xanax. Even passing through certain neighborhoods in Chicago where he used to buy drugs would lead to cravings. But after he started taking GLP-1 agonists, those triggers became, well, less triggering. “It was the weirdest thing,” he said. “It was just quiet. I just found it really easy all of a sudden.” More than that, Christensen noticed that an unease he had always felt in his body — a discomfort he perpetually tried to quell with fidgeting, food or drugs — was diminishing. “That’s a feeling that I’ve had my entire life,” he said. “Taking these drugs has toned that down. “There’s no silver bullet for addiction or mental illness, but for me, in concert with the other treatments, it has been an absolute game changer,” he said. Matt Christensen says weight-loss drugs like Ozempic and Zepbound have been “an absolute game changer” when it comes to his addiction struggles.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 4: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology; Chapter 13: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of the Internal Environment
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 4: Development of the Brain; Chapter 9: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of the Internal Environment
Link ID: 29589 - Posted: 12.07.2024

This Drinking Habit Is More Dangerous Than Bingeing

By Christina Caron The holidays offer an excuse to gather with loved ones, let loose and indulge: Plates loaded with comfort foods. Unapologetic napping. All the pie. And, for some, plenty of alcohol. But heavy drinking is not limited to the holiday season. Nor is it mainly the pastime of college students. Overall binge drinking rates are now equivalent among young adults and those in midlife. That’s because young people, especially young men, are bingeing less — while middle-aged adults are throwing back more alcohol in a single session than they previously did. We’ve long been warned about the risks of binge drinking, usually defined as having four or five drinks in a two-hour span. And now researchers are increasingly focused on a more dangerous pattern of alcohol use that they call high-intensity drinking: consuming eight or more drinks in a row for women and 10 or more drinks in a row for men. High-intensity drinking is even riskier than binge drinking, and it’s on the rise among certain segments of the population. How does high-intensity drinking differ from binge drinking? The definition of binge drinking stems from the work of Henry Wechsler, a social psychologist at Harvard University who in 1993 tracked alcohol use among college students across the country. He found that young women who reported consuming at least four drinks in a night and men who consumed at least five experienced the most drinking-related problems. But other researchers noticed that some of the worst consequences associated with binge drinking, such as blackouts and alcohol poisoning, tended to happen when people had much more than four or five drinks. Over the years, experts have referred to heavier levels of binge drinking in different ways, including “extreme drinking” and the far less catchy “extreme ritualistic alcohol consumption.” In recent years they settled on “high-intensity drinking.” © 2024 The New York Times Company

Alcohol Deaths Have More Than Doubled in Two Decades

By Roni Caryn Rabin The number of deaths caused by alcohol-related diseases more than doubled among Americans between 1999 and 2020, according to new research. Alcohol was involved in nearly 50,000 deaths among adults ages 25 to 85 in 2020, up from just under 20,000 in 1999. The increases were in all age groups. The biggest spike was observed among adults ages 25 to 34, whose fatality rate increased nearly fourfold between 1999 and 2020. Women are still far less likely than men to die of an illness caused by alcohol, but they also experienced a steep surge, with rates rising 2.5-fold over 20 years. The new study, published in The American Journal of Medicine, drew on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Deaths related to alcohol included those caused by certain forms of heart disease, liver disease, nerve damage, muscle damage, pancreatitis and alcohol poisoning, as well as related mental and behavioral disorders. The study did not include other deaths influenced by alcohol, such as accidents. “The totality of the evidence indicates that people who consume moderate to large amounts of alcohol have a markedly increased incidence of premature deaths and disability,” said Dr. Charles Hennekens, a professor of medicine at Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine at Florida Atlantic University and one of the study’s authors. The increase at the onset of the pandemic appears to have persisted. Adults reported more heavy drinking and binge drinking in 2022, another recent study found. Some 48,870 alcohol-related deaths were reported in 2020, up from 19,356 in 1999, the new study found. The mortality rate rose to 21.6 deaths per 100,000 in 2020, an increase from 10.7 deaths per 100,000 in 1999. © 2024 The New York Times Company

NHS hopes to save thousands of lives with pill that helps smokers quit

Denis Campbell Health policy editor Hundreds of thousands of smokers will be given a pill that increases people’s chances of quitting, in a move that NHS bosses believe will save thousands of lives. About 85,000 people a year in England will be offered the chance to use varenicline, a once-a-day tablet that experts say is as effective as vapes at helping people to kick the habit. Amanda Pritchard, the chief executive of NHS England, hailed the pill as a potential “gamechanger” in the fight to tackle smoking and the huge harm to health it causes. The drug helps people to quit by reducing their cravings for nicotine and ensuring that it cannot affect the brain in its usual way. It has also been found to reduce the side-effects smokers can experience when they stop using tobacco, such as trouble sleeping and irritability. The NHS in England will give varenicline as part of its efforts to keep driving down the number of people who smoke. A decline in smoking rates over the past 20 years means that only 11.6% of adults in England still have the habit – about 6 million people. Health service bosses hope its use will lead to 9,500 fewer smoking-related deaths over the next five years. The drug – known at the time as Champix – began being used in 2006 and was taken by about 85,800 people a year until July 2021. It then became unavailable after the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), which regulates drugs, found impurities in it. That problem has now been addressed to the MHRA’s satisfaction and it has recently approved a generic version of the drug, which NHS England will use. It cited research by University College London that found it would save £1.65 in healthcare costs for every £1 it spent on the pill. © 2024 Guardian News & Media Limited

The agony of ketamine addiction: ‘I felt like I was peeing glass’

By Elle Hunt The first time Nick (not his real name) tried ketamine, he felt as if he’d entered another dimension. Though he smoked marijuana regularly and had experimented with other drugs, Nick had never even heard of ketamine. But when his friend pulled out a bag of white powder, “I did what anybody else would do at 20 years old. I tried it,” he says. “And I found it really fun, to be honest.” The floaty feeling, like he’d been lifted out of his own body, was “euphoric”, he says. “Like you’re in a fairy world.” Sixteen years later, reality is biting hard. Nick, now 36, has spent the past three months in recovery for ketamine addiction after more than a decade of heavy use. His bladder is a fifth of the size it should be, he says. It’s “more than likely” that it will have to be removed and replaced with a urostomy bag. That’s setting aside all the other “brutal things” he’s gone through as a consequence of ketamine addiction – from being bed-bound by pain to embarrassing bladder failures. Now six months clean, Nick still cannot last half an hour without needing to use the toilet. “I am now a disabled person, having been such a fit lad,” he says. Nick is sharing his story to warn others of the dangers of ketamine, which is rapidly emerging as gen Z’s recreational drug of choice. Widely used in human and veterinary medicine as an anaesthetic, in illicit use the class B substance is typically snorted for its dissociative effects. According to the most recent government figures, use in England and Wales has more than doubled since 2016; among 16- to 24-year-olds, it has more than tripled, and there are stories of addicts as young as 12 or 13. The story is similar elsewhere. In Australia, recreational use of ketamine was reported to have reached a record high last year. In the US, seizures of illicit ketamine grew by 349% between 2017 and 2022. The death of Friends actor Matthew Perry at the age of 54 from “acute effects” of ketamine raised awareness of the risks of addiction. © 2024 Guardian News & Media Limited o

Alcohol consumption abundant in the natural world

Ian Sample Science editor Humans may have turned drinking into something of an art form but when it comes to animals putting alcohol away, Homo sapiens are not such an outlier, researchers say. A review of published evidence shows that alcohol occurs naturally in nearly every ecosystem on Earth, making it likely that most animals that feast on sugary fruits and nectar regularly imbibe the intoxicating substance. Although many creatures have evolved to tolerate a tipple and gain little more than calories from their consumption, some species have learned to protect themselves with alcohol. Others, however, seem less able to handle its effects. “We’re moving away from this anthropocentric view that alcohol is used by just humans and that actually ethanol is quite abundant in the natural world,” said Anna Bowland, a researcher in the team at the University of Exeter. After trawling research papers on animals and alcohol, the scientists arrived at a “diverse coterie” of species that have embraced and adapted to ethanol in their diets, normally arising through fermented fruits, sap and nectar. Ethanol became plentiful on Earth about 100m years ago when flowering plants began to produce sugary fruits and nectar that yeast could ferment. The alcohol content is typically low, at around 1% to 2% alcohol by volume (ABV), but in over-ripe palm fruit the concentration can reach 10% ABV. In one study, wild chimpanzees in south eastern Guinea were caught on camera bingeing on the alcoholic sap of raffia palms. Meanwhile, spider monkeys on Barro Colorado Island, Panama, are partial to ethanol-laden yellow mombin fruit, revealed to contain between 1% and 2.5% alcohol. “Evidence is growing that humans are not drinking alone,” the authors write in Trends in Ecology and Evolution. © 2024 Guardian News & Media Limited

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 4: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology; Chapter 6: Evolution of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 4: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 29537 - Posted: 11.02.2024

‘It Took Over Everything’: Stories of Marijuana’s Little-Known Risks

By Megan TwoheyDanielle Ivory and Carson Kessler As marijuana legalization spreads across the country, people are consuming more of the drug, more often and at ever-higher potencies. Most of the tens of millions of people using marijuana, for health benefits or for fun, don’t experience problems. But a growing number, mainly heavy users, have experienced addiction, psychosis and other harmful effects, The New York Times found. “Cannabis is a lot of things at once,” said Dr. Kevin Gray, a psychiatrist and specialist in bio-behavioral medicine at Medical University of South Carolina Health. “It can be medically therapeutic. It also can be highly problematic.” In interviews and surveys, hundreds of people told The Times about serious — sometimes frightening — symptoms that they were stunned to learn could be caused by cannabis. Here are some of their stories. David Krumholtz, an actor known for films like “10 Things I Hate About You” and TV shows like “Numb3rs,” resumed smoking marijuana in 2016, after a decade-long break. Within months, he started to experience cycles of intense nausea and vomiting — a sometimes debilitating condition called cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome. It can lead to dehydration, seizures, kidney failure, cardiac arrest and even death in rare instances. He lost 100 pounds and was in and out of emergency departments. At home in New Jersey, he would spend 10 hours at a time in hot baths, which for unknown reasons can temporarily relieve symptoms. “I had numbness in my extremities, pain in my chest and my blood pressure skyrocketed,” he said. Mr. Krumholtz, 46, believes he would have eventually died had he not suffered an episode that almost derailed his dream job, a role in the blockbuster 2023 film “Oppenheimer,” and inspired him to quit marijuana for good. © 2024 The New York Times Company

5 things to know from this week’s big report on cannabis

Pien Huang More than half of all U.S. states have legalized cannabis, be it for medical purposes, recreational use, or both. The shelves of cannabis dispensaries offer an ever-widening array of gummies, drinks and joints. Meanwhile, the federal government still considers most types of cannabis illegal. A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, released this week, finds this disconnect between the states and the federal government is leading to fragmented policies, and risks to the public. As states built new commercial markets for cannabis, they initially focused on regulating sales and revenue. “The consequence of that is the public health aspects were often given a backseat and we're now playing catch up for that,” says Dr. Steven Teutsch, chair of the National Academies committee that wrote the report on how cannabis impacts public health. The report calls for federal leadership and national standards on cannabis quality and potency, to safeguard public health. Here are five takeaways: 1. People consume cannabis more regularly than alcohol in the U.S. In 2022, more U.S. adults reported using cannabis than alcohol on a near-daily basis, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. It was the first time that regular marijuana use surpassed regular alcohol use. © 2024 npr

How Fentanyl Drove a Tsunami of Death in America

By Maia Szalavitz Last year over 70,000 Americans died from taking drug mixtures that contained fentanyl or other synthetic opioids. The good news is that recent data suggests a decline in overdose deaths, the first significant drop in decades. But this is not a uniform trend across the nation. To understand this disparity, it’s important to examine how we got here. Today’s crisis is often described as a series of waves. But if you look at the data, it was more like a couple of breakers followed by a tsunami. First, prescription opioid fatalities rose. Then heroin deaths surged. And finally, illicitly manufactured fentanyl overtook all that preceded it. Once fentanyl and other synthetic opioids dominate a market, whether a state is red or blue doesn't matter. Skyrocketing overdose deaths are nearly unavoidable, regardless of whether a state enforces tough penalties for drug possession or decriminalizes it. Understanding how fentanyl saturated the drug supply, moving from the East Coast of the United States to the West, is critical to ending the worst drug crisis in American history. In 2000, America was in its first wave of the opioid crisis. This was dominated by deaths from prescription painkillers like OxyContin. As you can see in the first map, though not entirely new to the country, illicitly manufactured fentanyl made up a tiny percentage of total drug seizures nationwide. Because escalations in opioid prescribing to treat pain were seen as the cause of the overdose problem, doctors began cutting off patients and law enforcement shuttered so-called pill mills. The number of opioid prescriptions began plummeting. © 2024 The New York Times Company

NPR Exclusive: U.S. overdose deaths plummet, saving thousands of lives

Brian Mann For the first time in decades, public health data shows a sudden and hopeful drop in drug overdose deaths across the U.S. "This is exciting," said Dr. Nora Volkow, head of the National Institute On Drug Abuse [NIDA], the federal laboratory charged with studying addiction. "This looks real. This looks very, very real." National surveys compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention already show an unprecedented decline in drug deaths of roughly 10.6 percent. That's a huge reversal from recent years when fatal overdoses regularly increased by double-digit percentages. Some researchers believe the data will show an even larger decline in drug deaths when federal surveys are updated to reflect improvements being seen at the state level, especially in the eastern U.S. "In the states that have the most rapid data collection systems, we’re seeing declines of twenty percent, thirty percent," said Dr. Nabarun Dasgupta, an expert on street drugs at the University of North Carolina. According to Dasgupta's analysis, which has sparked discussion among addiction and drug policy experts, the drop in state-level mortality numbers corresponds with similar steep declines in emergency room visits linked to overdoses. Dr. Nabarun Dasgupta, a researcher at the University of North Carolina, is an expert on the U.S. street drug supply. He believes data shows a sudden drop in drug overdose deaths nationwide that could already by saving Dr. Nabarun Dasgupta, a researcher at the University of North Carolina, is an expert on the U.S. street drug supply. He believes data shows a sudden drop in drug overdose deaths nationwide that could already by saving "roughly 20,000 lives" per year. © 2024 npr

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