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.

HOW MDMA WORKS IN THE BRAIN

HOW MDMA WORKS IN THE BRAIN

Quite a bit of what MDMA does is disclosed by its capacity to expand the levels of the monoamine neurotransmitters dopamine and norepinephrine (see the "Stimulants" part) and serotonin (see the "Psychedelic drugs" section) in the neurotransmitter. Like amphetamine, MDMA effectively "dumps" them into the neurotransmitter, and the measure of these neurotransmitters that is discharged is substantially bigger than is generally observed with cocaine. Dissimilar to amphetamine, MDMA makes a decent showing with regards to of expanding the levels of serotonin. While amphetamine is ten to one hundred times better at discharging dopamine and norepinephrine than serotonin, MDMA is the inverse: it discharges serotonin much more adequately than it does dopamine. 

Most MDMA impacts bode well, given its biochemical profile. The expansion in body temperature, the generally low enslavement potential and the abatement in forcefulness are run of the mill of medications that deliver a major increment in serotonin levels in the neurotransmitter. The serotonin-particular reuptake inhibitors (SSA's, for example, fluoxetine (Prozac), do this in a differ­ent way that causes more restricted impacts. While MDMA effectively dumps serotonin into the neural connection and creates extensive builds along these lines, Prozac and medications like it forestall serotonin recover however don't effectively discharge it. This implies the neuron needs to discharge serotonin first before antidepressants can do anything. MDMA can make substantially more sero­tonin accessible in light of the fact that it doesn't need to sit tight for the neuron to flame. 


We don't know whether its consequences for serotonin alone are sufficient to clarify the extraordinary impacts of MDMA on state of mind, or whether some undescribed impact is in charge of the feeling of compassion and positive emotions. Late research in people recommends that serotonin discharge is fundamental for a large portion of its consequences for state of mind, since individuals who get serotonin receptor-blocking drugs before MDMA encounter considerably less exceptional disposition changes than individuals who get MDMA alone. Notwithstanding, fentluramine, an amphetamine subsidiary that has a comparative capacity to dump serotonin, shares some of these activities (like its capacity to diminish animosity) however has not been accounted for to cause the same enthusiastic changes. lhe activities of MDMA are as yet a secret, in light of the fact that no other medication creates an identi­cal state and on the grounds that the neurochemical impacts we have watched so far don't totally clarify these impacts.