[Argentinian women and the uses of drugs: A sociohistorical analysis of female drug use in Argentina (1860-1930)]. / Mujeres argentinas y usos de drogas: análisis sociohistórico del uso femenino de sustancias psicoactivas en Argentina (1860-1930).

This article describes cases presented by experts from the legislative and medical-legal fields regarding the use of psychoactive substances among Argentinian women from 1878 to 1930. Background information is presented regarding the relationship between women and the use different drugs, medical interventions on the female body where psychoactive substances were used are analyzed, and experts' descriptions of cases of female drug users are detailed. Experts' discourses during this period did not attempt to comprehend the specificities of female consumption, but were rather used to position the issue of drug use as a social problem. This was done using three prototypes: the victim of a sick husband; the prostitute who encourages drug use among the weak in spirit (natural-born criminals); and the virtuous young woman who succumbs to drug addiction in spite of her father's rule. Each figure reinforces the need for state intervention and increased social control.

Este trabajo describe casos expuestos por expertos de los ámbitos legislativo y médico-legal periodístico, en los que se reporta el consumo de sustancias psicoactivas por parte de mujeres de Argentina, entre 1878 y 1930. Se presentan antecedentes sobre mujeres y usos de distintos fármacos, se analizan las intervenciones médicas que utilizan sustancias psicoactivas sobre el cuerpo femenino, y se detallan los casos de mujeres consumidoras desde las miradas expertas. En este periodo, los discursos expertos no buscaron comprender la especificidad femenina del consumo, sino promover el tema drogas como un problema. Esto se produce utilizando tres prototipos: la víctima de un marido enfermo, la prostituta que envicia a los débiles de espíritu (criminal nata), y la joven virtuosa que contraviene la ley del padre y sucumbe en la toxicomanía. Cada figura refuerza la necesidad de intervención estatal y control social.

The DARK Side of Total Synthesis: Strategies and Tactics in Psychoactive Drug Production.

Humankind has used and abused psychoactive drugs for millennia. Formally, a psychoactive drug is any agent that alters cognition and mood. The term "psychotropic drug" is neutral and describes the entire class of substrates, licit and illicit, of interest to governmental drug policy. While these drugs are prescribed for issues ranging from pain management to anxiety, they are also used recreationally. In fact, the current opioid epidemic is the deadliest drug crisis in American history. While the topic is highly politicized with racial, gender, and socioeconomic elements, there is no denying the toll drug mis- and overuse is taking on this country. Overdose, fueled by opioids, is the leading cause of death for Americans under 50 years of age, killing ca. 64,000 people in 2016. From a chemistry standpoint, the question is in what ways, if any, did organic chemists contribute to this problem? In this targeted review, we provide brief historical accounts of the main classes of psychoactive drugs and discuss several foundational total syntheses that ultimately provide the groundwork for producing these molecules in academic, industrial, and clandestine settings.

The importance of neuropsychopharmacology in the development of psychiatry.

The author establishes that Psychiatry has been in a difficult situation especially in Hungary since closing down the National Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology. He reviews the most important factors which hold up the development of Psychiatry. He settles that the development of Psychiatry is inconceivable without a person's holistic approach which assumes the biological, mental, cultural-social and spiritual approach. Disturbances of perception have particular roles in the formation of psychopathological symptoms which are based on the operation of the nervous system. This fact emphasises the importance of the nervous system and the neuropsychopharmacology which we have known since the beginning of history although it is hardly half a century old. He pays the attention to the psychoactive medicine that was well-known in the ancient civilization. He reviews some of them which were actually the first neuropsychopharmacological pharmaceuticals. He emphasises the dichotomy of the psychopathological symptoms which are partly objective, partly subjective but based on the operation of the nervous system by all means. His statements not only establish a new kind of approach of both the person and the Psychiatry but enables the development of Psychiatry, the creation of a new sort of diagnostic system, eliminating the variance among the experts dealing with people, the neurologists, the psychiatrists, the psychologists, the sociologists, the philosophers and the theologians, ensuring the biological (neurological), psychological, cultural and spiritual perpetuity. The biological, genetic, psychic, cultural-social and spiritual approach, the application of nanomedicine that enable not only recognising the organic neurological bases of the psychiatric disorders that are all crucial for the future researchers but also essential in the development of the neuropsychopharmacology based on the function of the nervous system.

[Transitions of psychotropic drugs in the Japanese Pharmacopoeia (JP) (Part 14). Transitions in the standards and test methods of Valerian root in the Deutsches Arzneibuch (DAB) and comparison between the USP, BP, EP and JP, and Oleum Valerianae (Japan Kesso oil) listed in DAB6 (1926)].

Valerian has been used as a name for Japanese Valerian and European Valerian root. Valerian in the German market today was originally called Baldrian. Transitions in the standards and the test methods of Valerian root listed in the DAB were studied this time. Moreover, we compared these standards and test methods with those in the USP, BP, EP and JP. We also considered the pharmacology evaluation in Germany. At the time, the standards and test methods had content in accordance with the EP from DAB9 (1986) of the West Germany publication. It also agreed with the EP and BP of the same period. To date in the DAB, botanical features have been mainly derived from the discriminating characteristics of the Valerian root. In DAB9 (1986), standards and test methods were added to the content, enhancing it and making it more stringent. This is thought to have happened as a result of a new, academic finding showing an improvement in the pharmacology level. Valerian root has been listed continuously in the DAB. These listings suggest that Valerian root has continally been evaluated as a sedative. We think that the listing was connected with a relisting in the BP as a result of scientific communications between Britain and Germany, EC member nations, such as through EP publications. On the other hand, the oil made with Japanese Valerian was listed in a radical field in DAB6 (1926) in the past. This is a valuable result, proving that it was used and evaluated as an important herbal medicine from Japan and foreign countries at that time. The Japanese Valerian referred to is not grown in Japan today. Moreover, it is not possible that cultivation will be restarted through good quality revaluation. However, this fact introduces a valuable piece of history supporting the survival of Japanese Valerian and European Valerian root as a sedative in the future.

Drugs in context: a historical perspective on theories of psychopharmaceutical efficacy.

This article demonstrates that psychoanalysis and socially oriented psychiatry were crucial to the understanding and adoption of the first effective psychopharmaceuticals in North American psychiatry. In the 1950s and the early 1960s, psychoanalysts, socially oriented psychiatrists, and biologists collaborated, debated, and organized interdisciplinary conferences to situate the biochemistry of new psychopharmaceuticals, such as chlorpromazine, in the broader psychosocial context of patients' lives. Psychoanalytical and sociological perspectives not only helped American psychiatrists explain the mechanism of drug action in research but also established the professional authority of psychiatrists over the new pharmaceuticals. As modern pharmacology narrows its focus to microscopic targets in the body, I argue that this early drug research illustrates the present-day need for holistic and interdisciplinary approaches to drug response that acknowledge the psychosocial significance of psychiatric medication in the lives of individuals.

Botany meets archaeology: people and plants in the past.

This paper explores the close links between botany and archaeology, using case studies from the ancient Mediterranean. It explains the kinds of palaeobotanical remains that archaeologists can recover and the methods used to analyse them. The importance of iconographic and textual evidence is also underlined. Examples of key research areas that focus on ancient plants are discussed: diet and palaeoeconomy; medicines, poisons, and psychotropics; perfumes, cosmetics, and dyes; and prestige.

Psychoactive plants described in a Brazilian literary work and their chemical compounds.

Ethnopharmacological research investigates the plants and other medicinal and toxic substances utilized by different traditional populations. One approach in this field is a literature search of the available publications on medicinal plants. The purpose of the current study was to select plants with psychoactive effects described in a Brazilian literary work written by Pio Correa in 1926. Those mentioned plants were classified in accordance with their indications for use as stimulants and depressors of the central nervous system. For the phytochemical study herein, we researched these species via a database search, and all the obtained information was compiled into a new database to analyze possible correlations between the chemical compounds and the psychoactive categories. Of the 813 plants searched in the literary work, 104 presented chemical data in the scientific periodicals consulted. Seventy-five of them belong to the stimulant category, while 31 are depressors and two of them belong to both categories. Phenols and flavonoids were the main compounds observed in plants of both categories, though at different frequencies. Monoterpenes (29.9%) and sesquiterpenes (28.6%) were also observed in plants from the stimulant category, while 25.8% of plants from the depressor category were comprised of carotenoids and 22.6% of steroids. The main specific compounds were identified as ferulic acid, α-pinene, limonene, α-humulene and kaempferol among the stimulant plants. Otherwise, in depressor plants were characterized caffeic acid, kaempferol, quercetin, ß-carotene, physalins and withanolides as specific compounds. The association between ethnopharmacological and chemotaxonomic data, as presented in this study, could support plant selection in further investigations by research groups whose studies focus on psychoactive plants as potential therapeutics.

Khat in the Horn of Africa: historical perspectives and current trends.

AIM OF THE STUDY: This article looks at the history of the expansion of khat consumption from the traditional chew regions to Western countries and assesses the implication of possible international control for its use and trade in the Horn of Africa. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Ten months of initial field work in Ethiopia, three follow up field work, archival work in Ethiopia and Europe, as well as study of available relevant literature. RESULTS: The debut of khat in the West in the 1980s was initially greeted with disdain and indifference. Authorities dismissed it on grounds that the mode of consumption, chewing the leaves for an extended period of time to extract a miniscule amount of the active ingredient, would not be appealing to Western users. Following the Mogadishu debacle of 1993, as depicted in the movie Black Hawk Down, authorities in the West began to express concern that khat was a new drug of abuse. Its trade was increasingly linked with terrorism because of its association with immigrants from the traditional khat use countries in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Amid hysteria and moral panic, many Western countries classified khat as a highly potent controlled substance, rendering its possession, cultivation, and trade illegal. CONCLUSION: This article argues that more and more Western governments, out of panic rather than definitive evidence of harm, will be instituting national laws banning the leaves, but khat will not be placed under international control because the scientific evidence of harm is unlikely to rise to a critical mass that would justify its illegalization. States in the source countries would continue to tolerate khat because banning it would be disastrous from an economic and social welfare standpoint. Because of its ambiguous legal position and the unstable nature of its active ingredient, cathinone, khat would not be successfully commoditized as a global commodity or transformed into a highly concentrated illicit drug. In this situation, khat would continue to be chewed in the traditional-use areas of the Red Sea littoral marketed by local syndicates who work with a large network of petty commodity traders.

Strange fires, weird smokes and psychoactive combustibles: entheogens and incense in ancient traditions.

This paper seeks to emphasize what may be the most primary mode of altering consciousness in the ancient world: namely, the burning of substances for inhalation in enclosed areas. While there is abundant literature on archaic uses of entheogenic plants, the literature on psychoactive incenses is quite deficient. From the tents of nomadic tribes to the small meditation rooms of Taoist adepts, the smoldering fumes of plants and resins have been used to invoke and banish and for shamanic travels since humanity mastered fire. The text provides details of primary "incense cults" while highlighting some commonalities and shared influences when possible. Further speculation suggests that selective burning of certain substances, such as mercury and sulphur, may have contributed to their lasting use and veneration in alchemy from India and China to the Arabian and European protochemists. This article would have a companion online database for images and further examples of ingredients in various incenses from China to ancient Greece.

Historia reciente de las sustancias psicoactivas / Recent history about psychoactive substances

Se efectúa un interesante repaso histórico sobre la utilización de las sustancias psicoactivas a lo largo del tiempo, proponiendo para ellas el término enteógeno, que significa "que despierta o genera una experiencia de la divinidad en mi interior", al ser el más acorde con la utilización etnográfica de dichas sustancias. Ya entrados en el mundo contemporáneo se habla del descubrimiento del doctor Hofmann (la LSD-25) y cómo se relacionó con la experiencia psicodélica en el mundo occidental. Con el paso de los años, esta sustancia pasó de ser un tema muy interesante para la mente humana a convertirse en un problema, al llegar al gran público. Posteriormente el artículo analiza algunos de los paradigmas contemporáneos en el uso de psicótropos: el psicomimético, el psicodélico y el enteógeno o de desarrollo personal (AU)

[Salem witches, flying brooms, and synthetic drugs]. / Brujas de Salem, escobas voladoras y drogas de síntesis.

As supplementary material to Health Education programs about synthetic drugs, the authors present a historical summary on LSD, stramonium and khat. "Tripis", Special K and other synthetic pills contain these substances and are being widely used by youths. The history of these main hallucinogenic active ingredients has a strong tie to the mythology of witchcraft and witches: a historically interesting time period bearing a large amount of religious intolerance. The objective of this review is to end the belief today's youth have that they are taking new substances which have no risks.

Drug addiction. Part I. Psychoactive substances in the past and presence.

Substances capable of changing the functions of the central nervous system are widely distributed in plant kingdom, and many of them were discovered by ancient food-gatherers at the dawn of humanity. In the Old World only a few substances producing euphoria or altered states of consciousness and having habit-forming properties are still widely used. They are the products of poppy (opium, morphine), hemp (hashish, marijuana), and of fermentation of various organic materials alkohol. This list has recently been joined by the psilocybin-containing mushrooms. The addiction-forming compounds originated in the New World and widely spread are tobacco (nicotine) and cocaine. In the 19th and 20th, century the development of medicinal chemistry resulted in several synthetic compounds, originally proposed as therapeutics, such as barbiturates, benzodiazepines and amphetamines. Due to legal problems, to avoid production of the substances already prohibited, many designer drugs were manufactured. In addition, several compounds were synthesized as recreational drugs. Also some compounds that were not regarded as drugs, such as aromatic hydrocarbons and other cleansing agents, as well as steroids were found to have properties of dangerous, habit-forming agents. The attitude of society and the pattern of use of psychoactive substances have changed with time, particularly in the last decades. The active principles are now more addictive because of concentration, purification, chemical modifications and the way of ingestion, which now favors most rapid transport to the central nervous system. The substance abuse approaches the level of global epidemics, and the recent usage of drugs of addition is also reviewed.