DOING YOUR OWN RESEARCH

DOING YOUR OWN RESEARCH

If reading this book has raised your level of interest and you want more specific information, or you want the straight story about a new develop­ment, there is no substitute for doing your own research.

Reading both scholarly review articles and original research papers is much easier than most people believe. In fact, one of the first steps in writing this book was gathering such research. Much of the library work for the first edition was done by two college students, neither of whom had any previous experience using a medical library. Should you decide to investigate for yourself, here are some suggestions about where to begin.

Public libraries are not likely to have the sorts of journals and books you will need. Because there is such a vast amount of medical literature pub­lished, most universities with a medical school have a separate library just to house all this information. Find a medical library at a nearby medical school. If for some reason you cannot get to a medical school, check to sec if there is a college or university biology department nearby and use the

library they use.

Next, go to the library and make friends with the reference librarian, because you will need his or her help until you are familiar with the library and the search mechanisms. The most efficient way of searching the literature is to use MEDLINE or PubMed, databases of the National Library of Medicine, a US government institution that allows you  

search almost all the published medical literature on any subject you can think of related to health. You can search by author, title, subject, key­word, institution, and many other descriptors.

In most cases you will find far more information than you need. A good place to start is with reviews. Reviews are documents that consoli­date and summarize the research and literature available in a given area, and they are usually written in less technical language. Reading several recent reviews about the topic you are researching will help you form a base of knowledge about the subject. Practice using MEDLINE by start­ing out with simple concepts; for example, search for marijuana articles. There are hundreds of them, and many of the titles will be so technical that they might seem indecipherable. So tell the computer to select mari­juana review articles. This will reduce the number markedly.

If you have read Buzzed, then you know that one of the active ingredi­ents in marijuana is THC. Try searching for THC and you will get more articles. Refine your search by asking for reviews of THC and you will get articles different from those you did when you searched for marijuana in general. Play with the database and have fun. Search for all kinds of com­binations of keywords, like THC and learning, or THC and adolescent. You will soon have an idea of the enormous amount of information there is about just this chemical. Understand, though, that no one study tells the whole story.

As a final note, we caution you not to accept everything you read as directly applicable to the human condition. Often scientists employ very high levels of a chemical to test for toxic effects in animals, and sometimes the chemical levels they use in/on animals are hundreds or thousands of times higher than a human would ever use, taking into account the weight of the human compared to the animal. Consequently, some of the toxic effects seen in animals may not apply to humans. On the other hand, ani­mal experiments cannot reveal many subtle effects of chemicals, particu­larly psychological ones, and thus animal studies almost certainly miss some important effects that humans will experience. So, as you read a sci­entific paper, remember that it is just a small part of the literature about a drug, and while the data may be true, it is important to understand that data in the context of everything else known about the drug.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

There is an ongoing debate in the United States about the legalization or decriminalization of drugs by society. Several states have either passed laws or are considering laws that allow the use of marijuana for medical and possibly recreational purposes, but these laws are still controversial, and there is the additional problem that these state laws can be in conflict with federal laws. As a result, no one knows what the outcome will be even though it appears that federal officials are beginning to limit some prosecutions.

A number of prominent Americans—including the conservative Repub­lican senator Rand Paul—have concluded that the War on Drugs is leading to injustices. As this is being written, Senator Paul and Democratic senator Patrick Leahy want to change the law and have introduced the justice Safety Valve Act, which will allow judges more discretion in sentencing.

On the other side, many people believe that any effort to reduce the pressure on drug users and dealers will result in a flood of illegal sub­stances that, in their worst nightmares, will become readily available to children. Unfortunately, drugs are already readily available to anyone, including children, from all economic levels. So that nightmare is here right now.

To reduce demand, we need to increase education. As we have said elsewhere in this book, effective drug education is not just a matter of exhortations to refuse all drugs, because many individuals believe that the drugs they use are harmless. It is a matter of teaching the basic science that can help us appreciate what complex and delicate organisms our brains are, how body chemistry may vary from person to person, and how little we know about the many ways, both positive and negative, short-term and long-term, that the powerful chemicals we call "drugs" can affect us. Good education is expensive, but with it we will be healthier, and as a society, we will save the enormous costs of lost wages, law enforcement, and prisons that drugs have brought us.

FLASHBACKS

FLASHBACKS

The issue of flashbacks, or posthallucinogen perception disorder (PITPD), is clearer. Flashbacks are the reemergence of some aspect of the hallucino­genic experience in the absence of the drug. They are most commonly reported in frequent I.SD users, although isolated case reports exist about flashbacks in individuals after use of other serotonin-like hallucinogens. The most common form includes altered visual images, wavering, altered borders to visual images, or trails of light. While flashbacks can occur after a single use of the drug, they may become increasingly common as the number of hallucinogenic experiences increases. Use of other drugs, like marijuana and alcohol, and even extreme fatigue, can trigger this phenomenon. The overall incidence is hard to judge because use of other drugs or psychiatric conditions must be ruled out. By our best guess, inci­dence for the common user is low.

People's reactions to flashbacks vary widely. Some users experience anxiety and depression while others view flashbacks as an acceptable side effect of an otherwise positive experience. In many cases, flashbacks diminish with abstinence, although symptoms that persist for years have been reported.

Persistent symptoms might actually reflect long-term changes in how the brain processes sensory images. Studies of vision of habitual LSD users (when they are not under the influence of the drug) show that their brains may continue to respond to visual stimuli after the stimuli are removed. This response suggests that repeated LSD usage may cause some neuroplastic changes that persist. In the "Brain Basics" chapter, we dis­cuss the brain's capacity to remember all sorts of experiences, including repeated drug applications.