Word: acidic
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Several dozen "smart bars" have opened around the country, replacing beer and margaritas with Memory Fuel, Fast Blast and Mind Mix -- amino-acid cocktails that, as one user sees it, "help restore the power edge that people lose as they get older." Smart stuff is also the drug of choice at "raves" -- '60s-style happenings now popular on the West Coast. But despite the mounting enthusiasm, many scientists say the only thing smart about these substances is the way they've been marketed. "Smart drugs," asserts Dr. James McGaugh, director of the center for the neurobiology of learning and memory...
...drawing up plans for a house renovation: "I walked in and was able to visualize all four levels of the structure at once -- where all the plumbing was, the electrical outlets -- without once referring to the blueprints." Another user recalls instantly becoming "witty and logical" after taking the amino acid pyroglutamate, while a third says that on Hydergine he suddenly could remember ordinary events that had occurred more than 20 years before...
Salesmen of smartness have embraced an impressive vocabulary to explain how the drugs work: one amino acid, said a pumped-up advocate, "inhibits an enzyme that breaks down the endorphins and enkephalins localized in the brain." Another "causes an increase in a particular neurotransmitter involved in mental alertness. Your arousal index is much higher...
Thomas sashays along, giggling impishly, working the mid-afternoon crowd like a town mayor on acid. When he sees a friend--which is often--he breaks off his monologue for an ecstatic hug and a shriek: "Hiiii!" "You look wonderful!" "I love your hair...
...sold like a used car," says Christopher Blythe of the Citizens Utility Board, a Wisconsin consumer-protection group. "What's next, the L.A. police department trying to buy civil rights credits from Wisconsin?" While this trading system may increase the chance that some regions will suffer from more acid rain, it should encourage a nationwide cleanup of SO2, which the Clean Air Act wants to reduce by 10 million tons a year. "I'm not quite sure what people are complaining about," says Daniel Dudek, senior economist for the Environmental Defense Fund. "We want to accomplish our environmental goals with...