EVILS OF TINKERING WITH POTIONS

REPUTABLE pharmacologists improve a basic medication so that, over the
years, minor modifications refine it and extend its range.

Just as latter-day penicillins are much more effective than the original
preparation, so have pharmacologists adjusted the formula of the basic
drugs misused for recreation so as to change their actions. In doing so
they may have, wittingly or unwittingly, given drug dealers the opportunity
to increase their market by offering dangerous drugs with additional effects.

The pharmacologists have been busy with the amphetamines and have thereby
provided drug dealers with an enhanced income, but at the cost of safety.
Simple amphetamines have their dangers: by attaching to the amphetamine
molecule another chemical structure, they have created Ecstasy, a more
complex preparation. Ecstasy is short-acting, produces euphoria, a sense of
emotional closeness and intimacy. It puts up the blood pressure and the
heart rate. Pharmacologists have now added several molecular groups and
attached them to the original amphetamine.

The new "designer drugs" have the action of amphetamines and Ecstasy, plus
the mind-bending effects of LSD. Overall, DOB and 4-MTA are much more like
LSD than amphetamines or Ecstasy in their actions. They are hallucinatory
and long-acting: the trip may last for 24 hours or more, the blood pressure
is increased, and the user may also suffer gangrene.

Professor David Nichols, of Purdue University, Indiana, said: "Normally the
user has to wait for the drug to wear off. Gangrene has been reported on
several occasions from the misuse of DOB."

The hallucinatory LSD effect may be particularly dangerous for those people
who have a susceptibility, whether from hereditary or environmental causes,
to the schizophrenic group of illnesses. DOB and its related compounds may,
like LSD, precipitate an acute psychotic breakdown which can extend into
schizophrenia.

Checked-by: Pat Dolan