Study: Marijuana may lessen effects of binge drinking
Coffee, over-the-counter drugs and cold showers are hangover cures of the past -- but experts say smoking marijuana may become the newest remedy for binge-drinking college students.
A University of California, San Diego study suggests marijuana may protect the brain from some of the damage caused by binge drinking, though its results face some contention from experts.
James Strauss, a senior lecturer in anatomy and physiology at Penn State, said the idea that marijuana is safer than alcohol is a "real stretch." In reality, he said, the study's most important findings were that the best way to protect the brain from damage is to not smoke or binge drink.
"Why can't people go out and have fun sober without using drugs or alcohol as a crutch?" he said. "Maybe we shouldn't be doing either."
The study compared brain matter between three groups of 16- to 19-year-olds: one group of binge drinkers, one group of binge drinkers and marijuana smokers, and a group with little exposure to either alcohol or drugs. Binge drinkers were defined in the study as a woman who consumed four or more drinks in one sitting and a man who consumed five or more.
The study found while binge drinking negatively affected all eight regions of the brain, smoking and binge drinking only degraded three areas.
Because the study focused on the effects of the substances on only white brain matter, the effects of marijuana may be more harmful to other parts of the brain than binge drinking, Strauss said.
Strauss said he is wary of the study because researchers used a small sample group with individuals of various health backgrounds, and didn't follow the individuals throughout their lives.
But Bruce Mirkin, director of communications for the Marijuana Policy Project, thinks smoking marijuana isn't as dangerous as many scientists think.
"Marijuana is absolutely safer than alcohol," he said.
Mirkin hopes the results of the study will affect college campus policy. Placing stricter regulations on marijuana usage than on alcohol usage is inappropriate, because alcohol is "clearly more dangerous" and the legal issues that surround marijuana will steer students toward "more dangerous substances," he said.
Jamie Cousins (sophomore-nutrition) said the results of the study will not drastically affect Penn State or college students -- "If they're already smoking, they'll keep smoking," he said.
Collegian staff writer Christian Jones contributed to this report.
Why ketamine makes you feel really damn good
Now we know why people have been dosing themselves with the animal tranquillizer ketamine for years. Scientists have learned that ketamine, known to the experimental among you as Special K, is a powerful, fast-acting antidepressant.
Psychologists have known for a while that ketamine seems to instantly cure severe depression, and is especially helpful for suicidal people. One dose of ketamine can ease depression for weeks.
But scientists weren't sure why. University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center researcher Lisa Monteggia and her colleagues decided to find out. They gave depressed mice doses of ketamine, observed behavior changes, and examined exactly what happened in the rodents' brains when the drug kicked in. What they discovered was that ketamine is essentially a fast-acting version of traditional antidepressants like Prozac, a selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor (SSRI). SSRIs can take weeks to have an effect, however, while ketamine is almost instantaneous.
What these ketamine experiments reveal is a set of neurochemical pathways in the brain that, when manipulated, can ease depression very quickly.
A release about the study in Nature offers a technical explanation:
Lisa Monteggia and colleagues studied how ketamine and other similar NMDA receptor antagonists function in a mouse model. They found that blocking NMDA receptors with ketamine leads to the deactivation of a factor involved in protein synthesis, eEF2 kinase, which in turn results in the promotion of BDNF synthesis. The authors found that by inhibiting eEF2 kinase, they could induce a fast-acting behavioural change similar to that caused by traditional antidepressants. As ketamine can have significant side effects, this work raises other potential points of interest in the pathway that could be targeted.
Though ketamine's many side-effects make it a non-ideal solution for depression, Monteggia's experiments have shown researchers that there are new ways to change neurological activity in the brain to get results that are better than those of traditional antidepressants. Our moods are not set in stone, and are in fact very easily shifted with the proper chemical intervention.
It's possible that all those raver kids taking Special K in the 1990s weren't just in it for the high. The drug may have been easing their depression too.
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| Bull dog , in drug shop (Photo credit: waltfur) |
e via Nature.
