The Pharmaceutical Journal Vol 267 No 7166 p410
22 September 2001

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Hazard of recreation
Beyond personality
Migration mystery

Hazard of recreation

The concept of drugs as a recreational tool is recent, but has expanded vastly. Recreation signifies the restoration of interest and will after exposure to demanding pursuits, and is not really a function of any known drug, whether stimulant or relaxant. We should do well, I believe, to discard the notion of the recreational drug as an illusion. Yet this will not happen in the short term, and the concept will long continue to intrigue those who are unwilling to face up to the truth.

As an editorial in the British Medical Journal for 1 September remarks, the consumption of these drugs has “reached epidemic proportions”. It is estimated that 45 million European citizens have tried cannabis, younger people using it more frequently. Another 1.5 million in the European Union have consumed cocaine and diamorphine. It is not unknown for such users to suffer premature death from cardiovascular complications in particular. Massive overdoses may kill individuals who attempt to smuggle illegal drugs by swallowing packets of them which disintegrate in the gut, and children who gain access to drugs in bulk are particularly prone to inadvertent poisoning.

Cocaine, amphetamine and related stimulants activate the sympathetic nervous system by inhibiting noradrenaline reuptake at peripheral sympathetic nerve terminals and stimulating sympathetic secretion, or by releasing noradrenaline, dopamine and serotonin from sites in the autonomic nervous system. Sympathetic activation produces marked effects on vasomotor activity. Moreover, cocaine and amphetamines can induce pulmonary oedema and dilation of heart muscle. Hallucinogens produce mild adrenergic effects but have less serious cardiovascular complications.

The most commonly taken narcotics are morphine and diamorphine, which account for nearly half drug-related deaths in recreational abusers. They increase parasympathetic and reduce sympathetic activity, so inducing bradycardia and hypotension. Adolescents may abuse volatile solvents, with most fatalities in boys. Cardiac arrhythmias are the commonest cause of sudden death. Cannabis, the most used recreational drug, in moderate doses increases sympathetic and reduces parasympathetic activity, so producing tachycardia. High doses of cannabis have the reverse effect on these types of nervous activity, and induce bradycardia and hypotension. It is in young adults that most adverse cardiac effects occur, and these are potentially reversible if dealt with promptly. Choice of treatment depends upon an appreciation of the cardiovascular effects induced by all these drugs. Unfortunately, an unwillingness of many abusers to provide information on their habits makes successful management of poisoning difficult.

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Beyond personality

In her book ‘Science and poetry’ (2001), the moral philosopher Mary Midgley writes: “During the Renaissance, the idea of explaining natural phenomena in terms of sympathies and attractions between various substances within a wide natural system was prevalent among perfectly serious students as well as among sorcerers.” She develops this theme broadly and maintains that this attitude made it possible for scientists to love and revere nature and its laws, and to encounter them with sympathy and understanding.

In recent decades we in the West have neglected our moral obligation to study the laws and processes of nature with due understanding, and a tincture of reverence, as we have embarked upon an intensely arrogant programme intended to shape nature to our political ends. We have insisted that as a race of living creatures we are unique and the very lords of creation, and can do what we like to modify or extinguish any natural law that stands in our way.

Many people have come to feel that some of the technology that has become possible through our advances in scientific knowledge is impossible to justify on grounds of morality, ethics or safety. There are too many uncertainties to which we turn a wilfully blind eye, for our comfort.

Even our development of new physiologically active chemical agents throws up now and then rather terrifying possibilities that we choose not to face until we must. There are, after all, many individuals of ill will in this world whose delusions of grandeur lead them to misuse what in safe and responsible hands may be perfectly acceptable discoveries.

Poetry, too, may have its quirks, persuading us to use expressions that, if judged from the angle of logic, are not really justifiable.

For example, we readily attribute human emotions to elemental forces, which is fine if we appreciate that this is poetry and not serious fact. One outstanding expression to which we consent is “the cruel sea”. Cruelty, however, is a human feeling, not applicable to the wild forces of the universe. Then we talk of “smiling” landscapes, “friendly” trees and “frowning” precipices. Smiles, friendliness and frowns are human values, associated with personalities. “Babbling” brooks are commonplace, although they have no mouths or tongues with which to babble.

Ophelia may well have fallen into the “weeping brook” without understanding that brooks possess no eyes, and therefore cannot weep as we do. And exactly what do the hills do when they “rejoice”?

All these things are fascinating aspects of the great world of Mother Nature, and it is instructive to ponder them occasionally.

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Migration mystery

According to a commentary in Science for August 10, a fierce debate still goes on among anthropologists over how and when the first migration of Asiatic people across the Bering Strait into the Americas occurred. It is not doubted that indeed this migration did occur, and that Americans are really of Asian descent, but one school of thought contends that more than one wave was involved.

It has been generally accepted that some 11,000 years ago the natives of the New World originated from Asiatic settlers who had made their way across a then ice-bound strait from Mongolia and China via Siberia and Alaska. A recent study of the skulls of the first inhabitants of these regions now suggests that there were two distinct migrations. Anthropologists from Michigan, China, Mongolia and Wyoming have reported to the United States National Academy of Sciences an analysis of 2,000 skulls from 100 to 10,000 years old, and compared their characteristics with those of individuals from 19 major groups world-wide in respect of 21 criteria.

Their conclusions are that the earliest trans-Bering migration occurred about 15,000 years ago and that most native Americans descend from two Caucasoid Japanese populations, the Ainu and the Jomon. A second group of immigrants who crossed from Asia some 5,000 years ago gave rise to the Inuit and possibly the Navajos. The conclusions are arrived at on the assumption that there is a firm link between cranial shape and genetic heritage, which some experts regard as incorrect. However, the enormous mass of data gathered by the investigators is quoted in favour of the new hypothesis.

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