Holly suffers from bouts of anxiety (the "mean reds"), and finds spending time at Tiffany & Co. calming. She feels "nothing very bad" can happen to a person in such elegant surroundings. Though she clearly aspires to own beautiful and expensive things, it also seems she yearns for the sense of stability and protection she associates with wealth. She sometimes gets a breakfast pastry in the morning and takes it with her to look in the store. When she spends a day with Paul, she takes him to Tiffany & Co., so they can look at all the fine jewelry, and he can experience one of her favorite places.
Juan Ignacio Molina
Juan Ignacio Molina. Born June 24 1740; Died September 12 1829; Chilean Naturalist.
He is usually referred to as Abate Molina (form of Abbott Molina). He wrote "Compendio della storia geografica, naturale e civile del regno del Cile" (1776), latter translated in English, French, German and Spanish. The journal "Moliniana" is dedicated in his honour.
Mescaline
"Mescaline"' (3,4,5-trimethoxyphenethylamine) is a chemical substance. It occurs naturally in some cactuses, like the Peyote cactus,the Peruvian Torch cactus or the San Pedro cactus. Small amounts of it can also be found in certain members of the Fabaceae (bean) family, like Acacia berlandieri.
The chemical can cause hallucinations. In has been used as a drug in Native American religious ceremonies. It is illegal in many countries. Some people use it as an illegal drug.
Mescaline is used primarily as a recreational drug and is also used to supplement various types of meditation and psychedelic therapy. It is classified as a schedule I drug in the U.S., making it illegal in all forms; however, it remains legal in certain religious ceremonies registered by the Native American Church Schedule I drugs have a high potential for abuse, no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, and a lack of accepted safety for use under medical supervision.
According to the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA), researchers have found that mescaline found in peyote may affect the fetus of a pregnant woman using the drug.
Psilocybin
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Psilocybin is a chemical substance. It can cause hallucinations when eaten, and has also been found to reverse psychological conditioning, grow brain cells and heal the brain. It occurs in many kinds of fungi and mushrooms, most notably Psilocybin mushrooms. Most of these are known as psychedelic mushrooms.
The substance is used as a recreational drug. It is illegal in many countries.
Ketamine
Ketamine is a dissociative anesthetic. It is a type of drug a doctor might give to put someone to sleep for an operation. Ketamine can also be used as a painkiller and a bronchodilator (which makes it easier for air to get into your lungs).
Sometimes it can lead to a special type of hallucination which makes you feel detached from yourself and the things around you which is why some people use it as a recreational drug. As it can have severe side effects, it is usually not available as an over-the-counter drug.
In medicine ketamine is normally injected into a vein or muscle.
Ketamine is not the first anaesthetic a doctor would think of using in most situations because of the hallucinations it causes. On the other hand, while most anaesthetics suppress your breathing, resulting in the need for a machine to help you breathe, ketamine does not.
This can make it a useful anaesthetic when you don't have any equipment available, for example, in a war zone.
Short term side effects happen in about 40% of people and include:
In the medical setting ketamine is only given a few times so most long term effects mentioned below are found in recreational ketamine users and animal models.
There are 110 reports of people with problems in their urinary tract due to using ketamine.
Symptoms include:
These urinary tract problems are most common in people who have abused ketamine daily for a long time.
People who abuse ketamine a lot (more than 4 times a week) have been found to have impaired memory and increased depression when compared to people who don't abuse ketamine. Those who use ketamine less frequently (1-4 times per week)and those who had stopped taking ketamine showed no difference in the aforementioned parameters. This suggests that these problems with memory and mood do not affect infrequent users and might be reversible once ketamine use is stopped.
One study has recently been done using monkeys as a model to see if ketamine is toxic to the brain.
The study found that injecting the monkeys every day for 6 months with ketamine caused more cells to die in the front of their brain and also caused a decrease in activity in the areas of the brain which control movement.
Ketamine is a NMDA antagonist in the CNS. By inhibiting NMDA receptors in inhibitiory neurons in the brain, it causes increased CNS activity and sympathomimetic effects. As a result, there is not only an anaesthetic effect, but also activation of the CNS unlike other anaesthetics. This is beneficial in surgical settings because it maintains blood pressure, airway reflexes, bronchioles remain dilated and airways patent. Making this a particularly useful drug in shock and surgery patients because of blood pressure maintained with ketamine use, unlike typical anaesthetics which cause decreased BP and respiratory suppression.
One study by Evgeny Krupitsky has found that using ketamine along with psychotherapy and group therapy was a lot more effective at treating alcohol addiction than the traditional treatment.
The same scientist found that ketamine might also be useful for treating heroin addiction. Patients who had been treated for their addiction with multiple sessions of ketamine fared much better than those who had only had one session of ketamine with abstinence rates of 50% and 22.2% respectively.
Some small studies have been done which found that a single dose of ketamine was able to improve treatment resistant depression after just a few hours with the effects lasting for one week. The rapid anti-depressant effects of ketamine may prove to be a useful alternative compared to current anti-depressants which can take several weeks to have their effects.
CRPS is a disease that causes severe pain and swelling, getting worse over time.
Some studies have been done which suggest that ketamine might be useful as a painkiller for CRPS.
Diazepam
Diazepam is a benzodiazepine which has a relatively long half-life. It is mostly used to treat anxiety, certain forms of epilepsy, muscle spasms (where the muscle moves on its own, causing pain), and sleeping problems. Like with other benzodiazepines, there is a risk of addiction if used for long periods of this. For this reason the drug is used to treat acute cases (2-4 weeks maximum) to avoid dependence. According to the World Health Organization diazepam is an "essential drug".
Diazepam is marketed under a number of names; its original trade name was "Valium". It has been the most prescribed medicine in the United States many times. It is sometimes used recreationally to cause a calming effect.
Fluoxetine
Fluoxetine hydrochloride is an antidepressant medication. It is used as a drug against various illnesses, like depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, Panic disorder, and other illnesses. Fluoxetine is a one of a group of antidepressants called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). It is commonly known as "Prozac".
There are newer drugs available to treat these conditions. Nevertheless, it remains very popular. Over 23.1 million prescriptions for fluoxetine were filled in the United States in 2006. This makes it the third most prescribed antidepressant.
Portable Document Format
The Portable Document Format (PDF) is a file format for storing documents on a computer. Adobe created it in 1993 to make it easier to exchange documents. PDF is often used to make documents print-ready. PDF documents can have stylised text and images in them.