I Am Fighting Alcohol – and Losing
"Booze becomes the antidote to too much thinking." - Alan Stokes Source: I am fighting alcohol - and losing I The Sydney Morning Herald Image from Unsplash
Parents: Three Things You Have to Know about Planning Schoolies
Around 40,000 schoolies flock to the Gold Coast each year for a well-earned celebration of 13 years of study, and thousands more head to places like Byron Bay, Bali and even Thailand. A 2012 study revealed that around three-quarters of those involved in the festivities got drunk, and a quarter of all schoolies were injured as a [...]
Don’t Dismiss the Link between Smoking and Suicide, Researchers Warn
Women who smoked were 4.4 times more likely to kill themselves compared with women who had never smoked. To the long list of ways that smoking can kill you, experts should add one more cause of death — suicide. So say some sharp-eyed readers of the New England Journal of Medicine. In February, a trio of [...]
Cannabis Use Can Be Prevented, Reduced or Delayed
Responding to rapidly shifting legal and cultural environments, researchers at the University of Montreal and CHU Sainte-Justine Children's Hospital have found a way to prevent, reduce or delay cannabis use amongst some at-risk youth. Cannabis users are at risk of neurocognitive deficits, reduced educational and occupational attainment, motor vehicle accidents, exacerbation of psychiatric symptoms, and [...]
Silk Road Mastermind Ross Ulbricht Jailed for Life
Ulbricht, who ran Silk Road under the alias "Dread Pirate Roberts" and commissioned five murders at a cost of $US650,000 ($850,000), was sentenced to two life sentences for narcotics distribution and criminal enterprise. - AFP Source: Silk Road mastermind Ross Ulbricht jailed for life
Balinese Welcome Boycott by ‘Boganaires’
Those who party hard and ugly in Bali could be partying hard in Engadine or St Kilda, except the drinks are cheaper and the waiters are too gentle to tell you to rack off (an expression from my youth, sadly not used much today.) It's a kind of bullying, on an international scale, where those [...]
Busy Students Turning to Prescription Drugs
When university student Jen* faced a seven-hour shift at work after a night of socialising, she turned away from coffee to help her stay awake and picked up a little white pill. The Charles Sturt University student took a Ritalin pill just before midnight and when she got home, she was able to study, tidy [...]
Novel Forms of ‘Smoking’: ‘Shisha’ and E-cigarettes
Since the introduction of national tobacco prevention programmes in the 1980s, Australia has experienced declining rates of youth smoking, with the latest figures showing that only 3.4% of 12-17 year-olds smoke daily. Across the wider population we have seen a dramatic shift in the way most Australians regard smoking. Recently, however, novel ways of smoking have come onto the scene which challenge some of the [...]
Cocaine Changes the Brain and Makes Relapse More Common in Addicts
New research published today in The Journal of Neuroscience identifies a molecular mechanism in the reward centre of the brain that influences how recovering cocaine addicts might relapse after stressful events. Importantly, the study identifies a potential mechanism for protecting against such relapses with treatment. - University of East Anglia Source: Cocaine changes the brain and [...]
Your Adolescent Brain on Alcohol: Changes Last into Adulthood
Repeated alcohol exposure during adolescence results in long-lasting changes in the region of the brain that controls learning and memory, according to a research team at Duke Medicine that used a rodent model as a surrogate for humans. The study, published April 27 in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, provides new insights at the [...]