NSC 3356 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Psychoactive Drug, Coevolution, Distillation

• School: Baylor University
• Department: Neuroscience
• Course: NSC 3356
• Professor: jimpatton

Document Summary

Pharmacology of alcohol: psychopharmacology of alcohol, most commonly used psychoactive drug and abused after caffeine. Not as much stigma like nicotine: more stigma early and mid-century, but things have changed partly because of the attitudes towards alcohol depending on the culture or religion. Its ubiquitous in nature without doing anything to it. Very old drug starting with mead, beer and wine. He then talked about wheat: of course it was used for food, but if it was soiled they boiled it to beer or porridge. It lasts longer, cleaner, minerals/not so much sugar. Not only used by humans getting into ripe stuff so it appears that mammals have an affinity of this drug: distillation increased the potency; production of gin by the dutch first start of alcohol abuse. Fyi- cough syrups have alcohol in it as a solvent to allow the drugs to absorb. He also talked about the gunpowder trick from the book.