Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!turpin
From: turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Recreational drugs & poisons (was: monogamy)
Summary: Not all are the same.
Message-ID: <15499@cs.utexas.edu>
Date: 6 Dec 90 04:37:44 GMT
References: <59261@microsoft.UUCP> <ewg8s1w163w@bluemoon.uucp> <59597@microsoft.UUCP>
Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 39

-----
In article <59597@microsoft.UUCP> rodvan@microsoft.UUCP (Rod VAN MECHELEN) writes:
> You do not understand the nature of poison.  In small amounts, it acts 
> as a stimulant.  In moderate to large amounts, it acts as a depressant,
> and in (relatively) big amounts it kills.
>
> Were you to take a very very small dose of cyanide, you would find its
> effects most invigorating.  At a higher dose, you would find it depressing,
> and at the dose where most of us think of it as being very little, the
> stuff is lethal.
>
> Alcohol, caffeine, amphetamines are all the same. ...

The buncum above has just enough truth in it to be dangerous.  A
little alcohol does seem stimulating, a lot does cause a stupor,
and a large amount, death.  But this pattern is NOT followed by
all drugs.

I have never heard the claim that cyanide is invigorating in
small amounts.  (Does anyone know whether there is a grain of
truth here?)  

It is just plain false that all poisons will stimulate in small
doses and sedate in larger doses.  It is also false that caffeine
or methamphetamine will act as a sedative if one takes enough. 

Many drugs show a completely different pattern from the one
described by Mr Mechelen.  In a small amounts, morphine is an
analgesic.  In larger amounts, it brings on euphoria and
sedation.  In even larger amounts, it kills.  It never
stimulates. 

In very small amounts, LSD is a hallucinogen.  In larger amounts,
it is a hallucinogen that lasts longer.  In very large amounts
... well, I don't know if anyone knows what a fatal dose is for
LSD.  (The original experimenters used doses that were
*thousands* of times stronger than those typically taken later,
with no apparent ill effects.)

Russell


Brought to you by Super Global Mega Corp .com