Tuesday, January 30, 2007
don't vote for crack, vote for smack
Playing around on the internet, I found this site that gives you a 9th grade version of the chemistry of your brain on a number of popular recreational drugs. If nothing else, you get to toss mice around like a Real Lab Scientist. If you know anything about brain chemistry you'll understand why some of these seem pretty fun but also extremely stupid. I always plead with my students at least once a semester to save that crap for college where they've at least finished the bulk of their development from the teenage years.
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I was fairly disappointed that it didn't let me throw a mouse into the centrifuge.
Actually, that's a pretty good summary of the neuropharmacology of drugs of abuse, except that it makes it seem like we understand this stuff much better than we actually do. No one really knows how LSD works, because no one really knows how serotonin works.
And I don't buy that alcohol's mechanism of action is even remotely that simple. It's a tiny, fairly amphiphillic molecule, which means it can go pretty much anywhere (including through cell membranes and into cells). From a delivery perspective, it's a damn-near perfect drug.
I could explain more, but I'm kinda drunk right now...
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