One approach to determining the validity of self-reported drug use measures is to examine the extent of logically inconsistent responses over time. Because lifetime use logically should never decline, the rate of subsequent recanting of earlier reported lifetime use provides relevant evidence on validity. In this chapter, recanting rates are examined in nationally representative samples of high...

OBJECTIVES In this study, we examined the prevalence and correlates of current synthetic cannabinoid (SC) use among high school seniors in the United States. METHODS Monitoring the Future, an annual nationally representative survey of high school seniors, began querying current (30-day) SC use in 2014. Data were examined from the 2 most recent cohorts (2014-2015; N = 7805). Prevalence of self...

Salvia divinorum is a hallucinogenic plant with ethnopharmacological and recreational uses. It differs from classic serotonergic hallucinogens such as LSD and psilocin in both phenomenology and potent agonist activity of the active component salvinorin A at κ-opioid receptors. Awareness of S. divinorum has grown recently, with both an increase in its public representation and concern over its p...

and seeks to give a reasonable explanation as to why young people are, in increasing numbers, taking to drugs at the present time. Unfortunately, one of the few original conceptions of the author, is a table in which a number of pieces of gross misinformation are clearly perpetrated. In this table (p. 14) no attempt is made to compare the effects of the various major addicting drugs: heroin is ...

In a chromosome study on leucocyte cultures made in 13 patients treated with chlorpromazine, 15 treated with perphenazine, and nine treated with lysergide, a significantly higher frequency of gaps, breaks, and hypodiploid cells in the patients treated with perphenazine and lysergide occurred compared with the 41 controls studied. It is concluded that if some drugs can induce major chromosome ab...

During the last few years there has been increasing evidence from the Gardai and other sources of an increasing use among young people of drugs, particularly marijuana but also amphetamines, LSD and, to a much smaller extent, hard drugs such as heroin. Because of this increasing problem the Department of Health appointed a Working Party on Drug Abuse under the chairmanship of Dr Karl Mullen and...

What is the level of consciousness of the psychedelic state? Empirically, measures of neural signal diversity such as entropy and Lempel-Ziv (LZ) complexity score higher for wakeful rest than for states with lower conscious level like propofol-induced anesthesia. Here we compute these measures for spontaneous magnetoencephalographic (MEG) signals from humans during altered states of consciousne...

It must be explicitly stated that some individuals should never take drugs of this category, and that one's friends are not suitable judges of suitable candidates. Furthermore, a secure environment is essential for the protection of the subject who takes LSD, since hs is vulnerable, hypersuggestible, and emotionally labile. In the hands of experts these agents are relatively safe, but they are ...