Our taste for addictive psychoactive substances is attested to in the earliest human records. Historically, psychoactive substances have been used by (i) priests in religious ceremonies (eg, amanita muscaria); (ii) healers for medicinal purposes (eg, opium); or (iii) the general population in a socially approved way (eg, alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine). Our forebears refined more potent compou...

Both UNODC and U.S. surveys of opium poppy cultivation indicated a significant increase in cultivation and potential production in 2007, and production and export of synthetic drugs (amphetamine-type stimulants, crystal methamphetamine and Ketamine) from Burma continued unabated. (Note: 2008 UNODC Cultivation Report statistics were not available by our printing deadline.) The significant downwa...

BACKGROUND Opium is an addictive agent and one of the most common narcotics With great challenges of intraoperative hemodynamic instabilities. OBJECTIVES The current study aimed to assess the effects of clonidine on intraoperative blood loss in patients with and without opium addiction in femoral fracture surgeries. PATIENTS AND METHODS In a randomized clinical trial, 160 candidates for ele...

BACKGROUND Coronary artery disease (CAD) is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in the world. Determination of the risk factors and high risk groups plays an important role in the prevention and controlling programs. The present study aims to determine the relationship between opium consumption and severity of CAD. METHODS In this hospital based case-control study, 299 patients who wer...

Taking high nitrogen aluminum dross as the research object, effects of additives sodium carbonate and cryolite roasting process on denitrification effect were studied. The principle additive was studied by XRD, SEM TG-DSC. experimental results show that can quickly reduce content nitride in dross. optimum parameters also obtained simultaneously. When mass ratio to 0.4, temperature 900 °C, time ...

The opium poppy, Papaver somniferum, is one of mankind's oldest medicinal plants. Opium poppy today is the commercial source of the narcotic analgesics morphine and codeine. Along with these two morphinans, opium poppy produces approximately eighty alkaloids belonging to various tetrahydrobenzylisoquinoline-derived classes. It has been known for over a century that morphinan alkaloids accumulat...

BACKGROUND Opium-dependence having different effects on the nervous system is a common problem, especially in the Middle East and Iran. The aim of this study is evaluating the effects of opium-dependence on visual evoked potential (VEP) in men. METHODS Thirty subjects with both chronic cigarette smoking and opium-dependence (group 1) and 30 subjects with only chronic cigarette smoking (group ...

Opium the "keystone" of empire in Asia The years between 1780 and 1842 were formative years for the opium trade. They were also the formative years of the British Empire. The opium agriculture in India changed from an informally cultivated cash crop to a centralized, systematized state-run industry. Before the Battle of Plassey, opium had probably served to provide a small buffer of cash for th...

BACKGROUND There are widespread misconceptions about the positive effects of opium on coronary artery disease (CAD). Thus, we performed a study to explore the opium addiction process contributing factors among CAD patients using a grounded theory approach. METHODS The sample comprised 30 addicted CAD patients and their family members, physicians, nurses and friends. Purposive and theoretical ...