Reply #43: Is anybody checking out them articles on alcohol & cocaine addiction?

[nolabels]

It is kind of revealing, they are showing when mixed they multiply each others toxic effect. Another thing was this piece below about long term effects of Cocaine.

The story line in the book “Fortunate Son” had * into the nose candy pretty deeply


http://www.drugabuse.gov/NIDA_Notes/NNVol13N3/Cocaine.html

Cocaine Abuse May Lead To Strokes and Mental Deficits
By Steven Stocker, NIDA NOTES Contributing Writer
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Long-term Reductions in Blood Flow

Scientists began to observe that cocaine could cause persistent blood flow deficits in the brain in the mid-1980s. NIDA-funded scientist Dr. Nora Volkow and her colleagues at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, and at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston used another imaging technique called positron emission tomography (PET), which can show the flow of blood in the brain tissue rather than in the brain arteries, as MRA does. When the researchers compared PET scans of young adult cocaine-abusing men with scans of normal volunteers, they found that most of the abusers had less blood flow in some areas of the brain. When the researchers performed PET scans again 10 days later, the blood flow deficits were still there, even though the abusers had stopped using cocaine. Many of the volunteers had difficulties concentrating and performing simple calculations, which the researchers concluded were associated with the blood flow deficits.


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Using a technology called transcranial Doppler sonography (TCD), Dr. Ronald Herning, Dr. Jean Lud Cadet, and colleagues in NIDA's Division of Intramural Research in Baltimore have found evidence that cocaine abusers do indeed have significant atherosclerosis in their brain arteries. In TCD, very high frequency sound waves are bounced off the blood flowing in large arteries in the brain, and the characteristics of the reflected sound waves can be used to estimate the constriction of the arteries. "Our data suggest that cocaine abusers in their thirties have arteries that are as constricted as those of normal subjects in their sixties," says Dr. Herning.

Mental Deficits

Drug treatment providers should be aware that mental deficits that develop in cocaine abusers as a result of reduced blood flow may hamper the ability of these patients to benefit from treatment, says Dr. Strickland. Some patients have trouble paying attention or remembering conversations; others disrupt the therapy by being disinhibited. They constantly interrupt the therapist, they begin tasks without waiting for all the instructions, and they may become aggressive.

Dr. Strickland recommends giving new drug abuse patients neuropsychological screening tests to identify their deficits. Once these deficits are identified, the therapist can modify the drug treatment to accommodate the deficits, he suggests. For example, if the patient has trouble paying attention and remembering, the therapist could present information in small segments and repeat each segment until the patient learns it.
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