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DRUGS
Drug Tolerance
• The diminishing effect with regular
dose of the same dose.
Psychological v. Physical dependence
Withdrawal
Rohypnol-A Date Rape Drug
 Characteristics
 7-10 times more potent than valium
 Produces profound, prolonged sedation,
a feeling of well-being, and short-term
memory loss
 Legally prescribed in England and 26
other countries for insomnia and pre-op
anesthetic – not approved in US
 mid-1990’s popular as a “party drug”
 Tasteless, odorless, and colorless.
Date Rape Use
 Drinks are spiked
 Causes sedation in 15 minutes –
enhanced by alcohol and
marijuana
 No memory of sedation period
 Victims don’t recall experience
making prosecution difficult
Street Use
• Smuggled from Mexico or Colombia
•‘roofies’ or ‘roches’
•$1 - $2 a pill
•1996 DEA declared is a Schedule 1 – similar to
heroin – 10year prison for smuggling offense
•Up to 20 years for use in rape
Protection Guidlines
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•
•
•
Don’t drink something you don’t open
Don’t exchange or share drinks
Don’t accept a drink from a punch bowl
Don’t drink from a container being passed
around
• Don’t leave your drink unattended
• If someone orders from a bar, accompany
the person and watch it being poured.
Psychoactive Drugs
• Depressants: slow down body
functions.
• Stimulants: arouse body
functions.
• Hallucinogens: distort
perceptions or evoke sensation
without sensory input.
Depressants
Alcohol
• Slows down
sympathetic nervous
system.
• Disrupts memory
processing.
• Reduces selfawareness.
• Involved in up to 60%
of all crimes.
• The worst drug from a
macro perspective out
there.
• Alcohol Consumption among College Students
• 81% drank alcohol in the past year – men slightly less
likely to abstain
• Percentage of abstainers and frequent binge drinkers
increased
• Of those who consume
– 48% say getting drunk is an important reason
– 44% were occasional or frequent binge drinkers (5 in a row for
men, 4 for women)
– Male, white, aged 23 or younger, never married, and belonging
to fraternities or sorority houses had higher binge drinking rates
– Frequent bingers are more likely to miss a class, fall behind,
forget where they were, get hurt, damage property
• Fraternities and sororities constitute the heart of the
campus alcohol culture
– 66% are binge drinkers
• Task Force on College Drinking
– 1400 college students die annually from alcoholrelated unintentional injuries
– 500,000 students are unintentionally injured annually
– 600,000 students are assaulted by drinking student
– 70,000 are victims of alcohol-related sexual assault or
date rape
– 400,000 students had unprotected sex and more than
100,000 report having been too intoxicated to know if
they had sex
– 25% report academic consequences of their drinking
– 150,000 develop an alcohol-related health problem
and between 1.2 and 1.5% indicate they tried to
commit suicide
– 2.1 million drove while under the influence
– 11% report they had damaged property while under
the influence
– 31% met the criteria for a diagnosis of alcohol abuse
• Of particular interest –
• Heavy drinkers frequently drink to the point of
physical distress
• Problem drinkers not only drink heavily, but also
experience trouble with authorities as a result –
frequently, problem drinkers don’t label their own
drinking pattern as problematic
• Context-dependent drinkers typically drink in
social settings rather than at home by
themselves or with family
• The single best expectancy predictor for
heavy and context-dependent drinkers was
social and physical pleasure, whereas the
most powerful expectancy predictor for
problematic drinkers was tension reduction
Depressants
Barbiturates
• Tranquilizers
• Taken to sleep (but
reduce REM
sleep).
• Taken with other
drugs- you can get
a synergistic
effect.
Depressants
Opiates
• Heroin and
morphine
• Addition comes
fast and the
withdrawal
symptoms are
bad
Stimulants
• Amphetamines
(Speed)
• Cocaine
• Crack
• “the crash”
Caffeine – Is it Harmful?
• Most popular, and most ancient, drugs
• Drug occurs naturally in more than 60 plants and
trees
• Stimulates neurotransmitters in the CNS
• Temporarily increases heart rate, metabolism,
and stomach-acid secretion
• Dilates some blood vessels and constricts others
• Wards of drowsiness and increases alertness
• Shortens reaction time but little effect on verbal
fluency, numerical reasoning, or short-term
memory
Can Produce •
•
•
•
•
•
Trembling
Chronic muscle tension
Throbbing headaches
Depression
Insomnia
Very little long term effects
Hallucinogens
LSD (Acid)
• Can cause
PTSD and
schizophrenia.
• Geometric
patterns
Hallucinogens
Marijuana
• THC
(Tetrahydrocannabinl)
• Difficult to classify
• Can amplify senses
• Is it addictive?
LSD
• Drug of choice in mid-1990’s
• First ‘acid trip’ was taken in 1943 by
chemist Albert Hofmann, the creator of
LSD:
“Last Friday, April 16, 1943, I was forced to stop my
work in the laboratory in the middle of the afternoon
and to go home, as I was seized by a particular
restlessness associated with a sensation of mild
dizziness. On arriving home, I lay down and sank into
a kind of drunkenness which was not unpleasant and
which was characterized by extreme activity of
imagination. As I lay in a dazed condition with my
eyes closed there surged upon me an uninterrupted
stream of fantastic images of extraordinary plasticity
and vividness and accompanied by an intense
kaleidoscope-like play of colors.”
Characteristics
•Called acid, sugar, big D, trips, or microdots
•Extremely potent hallucinogen
•Average dose is .5-1.0 micrograms
•Neither physical or psychological dependency, but
tolerance develops quickly
•Ingestion shows effects in 30 – 45 minutes and lasts
for 8 – 10 hours
Effects
•Mood and mental set will ‘color’ experience
•Changes in sensory perception
•Great variations in emotion, including
depersonalization and detachment
•Vision most affected – feeling of perceptual
sharness, illusions develop as objects seem to
change shape and color
•Walls and other objects become wavy
•Bizarre shapes and designs with no basis in reality
appear
•One sensory experience may translate into another –
red is seen as warm; music is seen
•Difficult to distinguish between past, present, future
Reported personal changes
•Early proponents suggested it helped them to
achieve personal insight
•Enhanced their creative activity
•Timothy Leary described religiouslike
experiences; insight into philosophy, religion,
and daily life
Timothy Leary & Richard Alpert
(Baba Ram Dass)
In 1963, he and Richard Alpert were fired from their positions at
Harvard after which they both lived at Millbrook for a time. At
Milbrook they continued to work with psychedelics both
therapeutically and recreationally...with the occasional help of
Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Abbie
Hoffman and Aldous Huxley.
Near-Death Experiences
 Near-Death
Experience
 an altered state of
consciousness
reported after a close
brush with death
 often similar to druginduced
hallucinations