...such drugs promise to do a lot of good. Many people already use Provigil to cope with night-shift work, jet lag and lack of sleep, and suffer few side-effects. Others use beta-blockers to overcome the anxiety and stress of performance. Scientists use off-label drugs to increase their focus. If that helps them unravel the mysteries of the universe, so much the better. If chemical assistance can help increase the useful human lifespan, the benefits could be huge.

Frankly, I don't care that much if big pharma wants to peddle dope to everyone; neither do I mind that much if politicians want to score masturbatory brownie points railing against the horror of people—children, even—using mild prescription stimulants to do well in school of all things! However, I cannot help but think that a society in which BOTH of those things are extremely common is a very, very confused society indeed.

Also, I think the ad is supposed to use the clouds of smoke around the judge as a symbol of his excessive sleepiness, but my first reaction is "maybe he should stop smoking reefer in court if he's excessively sleepy at work"...

It's interesting, though, I am sure they chose the image of a judge to maximize the (false) sense that they're really a legitimate, non-sketchy business, rather than blatant drug pushers...

Ott - The Queen of all Everything
Vibrasphere - Manzanilla
Cosma - Ethno-bialick
Younger Brother - Crumblenaut
Saafi Brothers - Free Senses
H.U.V.A. Network - Rain Geometries
Shen - Cold Bones
Shulman - The Unexpected Visitor
Entheogenic - Pagan Dream Machine
Human Blue - Lost Time
Ooze - What’s Up
Bluetech - Elementary Particles (re-edit)
Prometheus - Long Wave
Carbon Based Lifeforms - Comsat
Cosmosis - Afterglow
Cell - Sensitiv’ Garden
Saafi Brothers - Altered Future
Shpongle - Shpongle Falls
Aes Dana - Undertow
Solar Fields - Leaving Home

BIRMINGHAM, ALA. -- Growing scientific evidence shows that gambling hijacks the brain by triggering a chemical reaction almost like cocaine does, say researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

...

Ross said gambling relies on a key element found in all addiction -- a surprise or jolt that triggers a chemical reaction in the brain. Typically, drugs produce this effect, but research shows that gambling does the same thing.

"It's got an action you can do that's guaranteed to get you a surprise," he said. "That's why gambling is addictive -- people are surprised if they win and surprised if they lose."

Gambling can produce an incredibly strong drive, really having little to do with money, Ross said.

He cited a case in which three armed men robbed a casino in South Africa. They ordered customers to lie on the floor to be relieved of wallets, winnings and cellphones, he said.

"The pathological gamblers, while lying on the floor, were reaching up and playing slot machines," Ross said. "Now bear in mind, anything they won they weren't going to be able to take home."

Researchers led by Jean-Antoine Girault of the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris looked at a brain protein called DARPP-32 which helps the dopamine signaling process.

The team found that when lab mice were given a jolt of cocaine, amphetamine or morphine, DARPP-32 built up in part of the brain called the striatum.

They then created mice whose DNA had been modified so that the gene expressing DARPP-32 turned out a slightly altered form of this protein -- a form where just one amino acid building-block had been changed.

Mutant mice and wild mice were given two shots of cocaine or morphine seven days apart. The drugs had far less effect on the engineered mice, as shown in their movement, and these rodents were far less likely to crave another dose.

[British] Government advisers warned yesterday that new drugs to treat conditions as varied as Alzheimer's disease, attention deficit disorder, and narcolepsy are in danger of being misused by students eager to bump up their grades.

The use of brain-boosting drugs, many of which are designed to improve memory and attention span in people with serious degenerative brain diseases, could become as big a problem for the education system as performance-enhancing drugs are in sport, the experts said.

The report urges the government to be alert to the misuse of "cognitive-enhancers" and to prepare the ground for regulations and even urine tests to control their use in schools, universities and workplaces.

The report, by the Academy of Medical Sciences – despite the description, not a statutory consultative body – goes on to re-iterate the need for a rational reclassification of all psychotropic substances based on harm. Given the widespread use of stimulant drugs for AD(H)D, it's hard to see how banning their use by "normal" children would be either practical (vague and subjective as the diagnosis of ADHD often is) or legal (without substantial and unsavoury legislative changes effectively giving the Government to drug-test children before they take exams).

The multi-state theory is an extrapolation of what I called signal theory, or the theory that runaway feedback in sensory circuits is responsible for many of the perceptual effects of psychedelics. The multi-state theory expands on this notion, breaking down the effects of psychedelics at various dose ranges into stages of cortical network excitation, destabilization, feedback overload, complete cortical decoupling, and subsequent cortical resynchronization at an optimized high-energy phase state. It is my assertion that the process of cortical decoupling and subsequent resynchronization at an optimized phase-state is the most poorly understood event in the psychedelic experience; yet this is the very process that makes psychedelics so mystical, powerful, and useful for facilitating novel and unique expanded mind states.

Most of the paper is pretty technical, so if you have questions feel free to ask.