Alcohol and Drugs Affect Everyone
- The Australian Drug Foundation
Smoking Skunk Cannabis Triples Risk of a Serious Psychotic Episode
Smoking powerful skunk cannabis triples the risk of suffering a serious psychotic episode, scientists have found. In the population studied by the researchers in south London, where cannabis use is widespread, the drug is linked to one quarter of all new cases of psychosis, the team found. The findings add to a compelling body of [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Alcohol a Bigger Problem than Ice, Says Jeff Kennett
Former Victorian premier Jeff Kennett has questioned what Tony Abbott's ice taskforce will achieve and appealed for "courageous" leadership on the bigger problem of alcohol. Mr Kennett has called for a total ban on alcohol advertising and sponsorships, saying the key to tackling the ice epidemic is education. His stand was endorsed by the president [...]
Legal Highs – A Look at the Growing Use of Synthetic Drugs
In recent years, hundreds of new synthetic recreational drugs have emerged – drugs that neither the general public nor the scientific community know very much about. Many of these new synthetic drugs – often referred to as “legal highs” – are dangerous and continue to lead to poisonings throughout the US and the rest of [...]
Why Do Meth Addicts Appear to Age So Rapidly?
By now, most of us have seen the shocking before and after pics of people addicted to methamphetamines. Exactly what is happening inside each cell to cause such striking changes to a person’s face and body? Meth, scientists from the Italian Institute of Technology and UC Irvine say, causes abnormalities in the fat metabolism of [...]
Neuroscience Has Proved That P0rn is Literally Making Men’s Brains More Juvenile
Scientists are now seeing that continued exposure to porn gives the brain an unnatural high—something it literally isn’t wired to handle—and the brain eventually fatigues. Anatomy and physiology instructor Gary Wilson notes this is the same pattern noticed when drugs are abused: the brain becomes desensitized. More of the drug or harder drugs are needed [...]