Download Tolerance

Drugs and Consciousness
• Tolerance: user needs more and more of a substance to
get “high”
– High vs. low tolerance
• Physical dependence: need drug or else experience
physical withdrawal symptoms.
• Psychological dependence: need drug or else don’t feel
like yourself.
• Withdrawal: psychological or physical reaction to absence
of drug, after dependence.
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaMgdlUcsko
Stimulants, Depressants, and the CNS
• Stimulants – speed up CNS activity
• Depressants – reduce CNS activity
Drugs and Addiction 3 Myths
1. Taking addictive drugs leads to immediate and
irrevocable addiction.
 Even morphine taken as painkiller doesn’t usually lead
to addiction. (only about 10% of reported cases)
2. Addiction can’t be overcome alone.
 Many people simply age out of addiction or quit on
there own. Programs have little or no more success
than individuals trying on their own.
Drug and addiction-Myths
3. The definition of addiction can be extended to
other repetitive, pleasure-seeking behaviors.
– “Shopoholics” are not the same as
Please… c’mon now.
alcoholics.
Drugs and Alcohol
• Experience strongly affected by
expectations/reasons for use.
Depressants: Alcohol
• depresses the sympathetic nervous system.
• Alcohol tends to magnify all our tendencies.
– Helpful people become more helpful, aggressive more
aggressive, sexual or sexual wannabes, more sexual.
• People become more self-disclosing.
Korsakoff’s Syndrome
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDcyBXJAZ
NM
A case of confusion
Note – the final part of the clip is this
psychologists personal hypothesis, the
conclusion was not proved.
Alcohol addicts
• Alcohol addicted people experience
debilitating withdrawal symptoms
– diarrhea, vomiting and hallucinations.
• Children of alcoholics can hold more liquor in
their first experience than non COAs
– suggests a genetic link.
Addiction correlates
• Risk taking boys more likely than others.
• Mice have been bred to prefer alcohol to water.
• Children of alcoholics have a 4X higher rates (about 60%)
– Adopted Children of alcoholics still have 4x greater rate.
• Age of first use correlates:
– Under 15, 60% chance of alcohol problems
– Over 21, drops to 7%.
Rat Studies: Duke University
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWRMOK
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Depressants: Barbiturates or
Downers
• Quaaludes, tranquilizers, valium sleeping pills.
• All act to suppress the sympathetic nervous
system
– Taken with alcohol = coma
Depressants: Opiates
• Heroin, morphine, opium.
• Depress the entire neural system.
• Give feeling of “blissful pleasure”
– some first time users report having orgasms from use.
• Highly physically addictive.
– Tolerance builds quickly. Withdrawal creates awful
symptoms.
• Brain stops producing endorphins.
Psychoactive Drugs: Stimulants
• Nicotine, Methamphetamines, cocaine, ecstasy.
• Increase heart rate, respiration,
breathing,pupils dilate, appetite diminishes,
creates energy boost.
• Feelings of euphoria, confidence, well-being
followed by a corresponding crash.
Stimulants: Speed/Coke
• high doses can deplete natural stores of
neurotransmitters. (serotonin, dopamine).
• Acts on pleasure system by blocking the reuptake of
Serotonin and Dopamine.
• Chronic users, heavy doses creates extreme paranoia.
Stimulants: Cocaine and Speed
• The most highly psychologically
addictive.
• Rats will hit a lever 1000s of times to get
cocaine to the exclusion of food.
Ecstasy: MDMA
• Ecstasy: amphetamine with mild hallucinogenic
effects
– can cause dehydration.
– Repeated use = brain damage in serotonin system.
• Associated with extreme sociability: hugging,
touching, etc.
• Extreme Euphoria.
Hallucinogens
• LSD, ecstasy, peyote, mescaline, psilocybin, Marijuana.
• Virtual high:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHwwdUOQL8Q
• Common to see visual distortion of things that are there.
• Heavily influenced by emotional state, and personality:
explaining bad trips.
Marijuana
• 2nd most used drug, about 20% of high schoolers.
• Active Ingredient is THC. Can be ingested by eating
or smoking.
• Mild hallucinogen: distorts time perception,
makes it particularly dangerous for driving.
Drugs and Consciousness Cheat Sheet
• Stimulants – speed up the activity of the CNS
– Amphetamines– they increase the release and decrease the
removal of norepinephrine and dopamine at synapses causing
increased activity at the receptors. They also reduce the activity
of GABA
– Cocaine – like amphetamines
– Caffeine
– Nicotine – enhances the action of acetylcholine, increases the
release of glutamate, the brain’s primary excitatory
neurotransmitter
– MDMA (methylenedioxymethamphetamine) or Ecstasy – similar
to amphetamines
Drugs and Consciousness Cheat Sheet
• Depressants – reduce the activity of the CNS – they increase the
availability of GABA , which reduces the activity of many neural circuits.
– Alcohol
– Tranquilizers
– Barbiturates
• Opiates/narcotics – agonists for endorphins, HIGHLY addictive because
they stimulate glutamate receptors and physically change the neuron
structure – neuron comes to require the drug to function properly
– Morphine - (an ingredient of opium which is derived from the poppy plant)Percodan, Demoral
– Heroin – derived from morphine but 3x more powerful
– Tylenol 3, codeine, percoset, vicodan, oxycotin, Advil
Drugs and Consciousness Cheat Sheet
• Hallucinogens/psychedelics
– LSD – lysergic acid diethylamide 1938 Swiss chemist Albert
Hofmann synthesized it from a rye fungus
• Hallucinations – time is distorted, sounds cause visual sensations,
leave the body
• Stimulate serotonin and dopamine receptors in the brain
• Flashbacks, trips, not addictive
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PCP (Angel Dust)
MDMA (Ecstasy) - hallucinations
Mescaline (mushrooms)
Ketamine – “Special K” an anesthetic used by veterinarians,
produces hallucinogenic effects, dissociative experiences. Can
also cause enduring amnesia and memory loss.
– Marijuana, Mary Jane, weed, Reefer, grass, etc., etc., etc.
• Main ingredient is tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)