Word: psychopharmacologist
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Government has declared total war on illegal drugs. But is it a battle that can ever be won? No, according to a new book by Ronald K. Siegel, a research psychopharmacologist at the UCLA School of Medicine. In Intoxication: Life in Pursuit of Artificial Paradise (Dutton; $19.95), Siegel argues that the war is doomed because it is against man's own nature. His controversial contention: humanity's pursuit of happiness through chemicals -- whether ; caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, opium, marijuana or cocaine -- is a universal and inescapable fact of life...
...dependence quickly follows. Tobacco only seems safer because it is not immediately dangerous. Nicotine is not likely, for example, to fatally overstimulate a healthy heart, cause disorienting hallucinations or pack anywhere near the same euphoric punch as many other drugs. "People die with crack immediately," explains Alexander Glassman, a psychopharmacologist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute in Manhattan. "With cigarettes the problems occur 20 years down the line. Nobody lights up their first cigarette and dies...
...muscles and suppresses the appetite for carbohydrates. Since nicotine cannot be stored in the body, smokers maintain a relatively constant level in the blood by continuing to smoke. "Because you take 200 to 400 of these hits a day, there's a lot of reinforcement," says Nina Schneider, a psychopharmacologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. "It's self-administered, and it controls mood and performance. That's what makes it so powerfully addicting...
...This is a drug society. We have prescription drugs, over-the-counter drugs and drugs you can buy in the grocery store," says Dr. Ronald K. Siegel, a psychopharmacologist at UCLA. "We have to understand that the drive to intoxication is irrepressible, unstoppable. It functions almost like hunger and sex. Our species has always gotten high on something, long before we were fully civilized primates...
Others are not so sure. Ronald K. Siegel, a psychopharmacologist at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute, believes that reactions to MDMA are unpredictable , and not nearly so glowing as some therapists make out. Involuntary teeth clenching, biting of the inside of the cheek, increased sweating, blurred vision and fluctuations in blood pressure have occurred during clinical sessions, he points out. Says Siegel: "People are trying too hard to make this drug into the one that LSD was not -- a drug that is safe and effective and can be freely used and dispensed. MDMA...