- A new study that casts doubts on whether Ritalin use
for youngsters makes them susceptible for drug abuse later in life has
sparked people's attention to a little-known fact: Ritalin reacts in Junior's
brain similarly to cocaine.
-
- Yes, it's true: Methylphenidate (generic moniker for
the brand-name drug Ritalin) targets the pleasure-producing centers of
the brain - those that produce dopamine - the same way cocaine does.
-
- Dopamine is the neurotransmitter that makes the physical
side of life fun and pleasurable. When you eat chocolate, for instance,
your dopamine level rises and you get a shot of "happy juice."
If you relied on chocolate for continual euphoria instead of an occasional
pick-me-up, however, you'd get quite fat because your limbic system (in
which dopamine does its duty) is designed to regulate the amount of the
neurotransmitter in your system. To keep you from having too much, it reabsorbs
the stuff; thus, it'd be back to the Hershey's every little bit.
-
- It's like a mental grandma with a cookie jar-she always
gives you enough to feel good, but never enough to spoil your dinner.
-
- Drugs like marijuana and heroin cheat grandma by making
her produce more cookies than usual, ramping up dopamine production. Remember
the "I Love Lucy" episode in which Lucy and Ethel got a job at
a candy factory and the production belt started kicking out more goodies
than they could process? That's the picture. But, as Dominic Streatfeild
points out in "Cocaine: An Unauthorized Biography," blow is craftier
that pot or smack:
-
- "Instead of simply cranking up production in the
brain," explains Streatfeild, "what cocaine does is to block
its reuptake. It does this by hitting a molecule called the dopamine transporter,
bonding to, and thus disabling it. As more cocaine is taken, the more dopamine
transporters are kept busy, the less dopamine is reabsorbed, thus the more
dopamine there is floating around - the better you feel."
-
- What's interesting with Ritalin is that it works the
same way. To be sure, cocaine and Ritalin have different molecular structures,
but they are Tweedledee and Tweedledum pharmacologically.
-
- "According to animal studies, Ritalin and cocaine
act so much alike that they even compete for the same binding sites on
neurons," writes Brendan I. Koerner for Slate. They both vie to block
the same dopamine transporters - like two suitors attracted to the same
girl.
-
- Coke and Ritalin produce results so similar that test
animals do not even discriminate between the two drugs.
-
- Writes Richard DeGrandpre, author of "Ritalin Nation,"
"The laboratory procedures that led to the New York Times' reporting
that 'monkeys hooked up intravenously will inject themselves [with cocaine]
repeatedly, rejecting food, sex and sleep,' also led to the finding, not
reported by the Times, that lab animals given the choice to self-administer
comparable doses of cocaine and Ritalin do not favor one over the other."
-
- I suppose the paper of record thought it too much a shocker
to report that "the most commonly prescribed psychotropic medicine
for children in the United States," as DeGrandpre puts it, is comparable
in effect to a drug widely thought to be one of the most habituating on
earth (perhaps it wasn't fit to print).
-
- DeGrandpre notes the paradox: Why aren't all these members
of Gen Rx becoming addicted?
-
- The main reason, as he points out, is that people usually
become habituated to drugs they take in non-medical situations. Plenty
of people take very strong opiates as painkillers in hospitals and never
become addicted. But if taken in different situations and with different
expectations from the user, the results could be habituation. The drug's
chemistry is, after all, only part of the drug experience.
-
- Of course, Ritalin can be had and used in non-medical
contexts. DeGrandpre notes many such cases, including kids selling their
prescriptions to their fellows instead of taking the drug, kids stealing
Ritalin from the school nurse's office, even teachers stealing it from
their kids.
-
- Explains Koerner, "Recreational users frequently
crush their supply into fine powder for nasal delivery [as cocaine is usually
ingested] or, in extreme cases, melt it into an injectible solution [as
Sigmund Freud used to take his cocaine]."
-
- Despite the similarity with cocaine and the ease of abuse
- made all the easier by its prolific prescription - Ritalin remains legal
and lauded, while cocaine is profoundly illicit.
-
- One of the great ironies of drug policy is that the government
damns some abusable substances on one hand, while completely sanctioning
them on the other. It's like a parent who trusts his teen driver with a
Honda, but not a Toyota.
-
- The metaphor is apt because when it comes to which substances
its people wish to ingest, the government considers itself mother and father
and the people its little children. Considering the fact that the government
is supposed to be the servant of the people - constitutionally, at any
rate, it only has powers they grant - that might be the biggest irony of
all.
-
- Joel Miller is senior editor of WND Books and co-publisher
of Oakdown Books.
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- © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com, Inc.
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- http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=30441
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