Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich says reading an interview in which Noel talked about quitting drugs is what made him give up taking cocaine.

16:09 Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich says reading an interview in which Noel talked about quitting drugs is what made him give up taking cocaine. 0 Comments

Ulrich says in the interview with the mrror that he was using cocaine up to around ten years ago but, when reading about Gallagher's own experiences with the drug, decided he wanted to stop."I loved the social elements of cocaine. I loved the danger of it," he said. "Then, about 10 years ago, I read an interview with Noel Gallagher, in which he said, 'I just stopped doing cocaine'. I thought that was really cool. It felt so fresh, so honest, so pure - I love that side of him. I've never had an addictive personality, so I woke up one day and said, 'Enough'."In fact, Ulrich says he only began taking cocaine in order to be able to drink more with his bandmates. "In the early days, I'd always get drunk way faster than the other guys," said Ulrich. "I realised that if there was a little bit of cocaine involved I could stay up longer, instead of ending up face down in the corner, passed out three hours before the party ended."

Spanish police have arrested a Colombian drug boss dubbed ‘The Mouse’, the alleged leader of a major cocaine smuggling gang accused of 400 killings

20:31 Spanish police have arrested a Colombian drug boss 0 Comments

Spanish police have arrested a Colombian drug boss dubbed ‘The Mouse’, the alleged leader of a major cocaine smuggling gang accused of 400 killings, officials said on Saturday. Officers arrested the 40-year-old, whose real name is reportedly Hernan Alonso Villa, in the eastern seaside city of Alicante on Friday, according to a police statement. He is considered ‘the top leader of the military wing of the Oficina de Envigado, a Colombian criminal organisation accused of 400 killings as well as drug-trafficking, extorsion and forced displacements of Colombian citizens’, it said. ‘He is one of the criminals most wanted by the Colombian authorities. He had more than 200 people under his command and was responsible for exporting cocaine to Spain, the United States and Holland,’ the statement said. Spanish officers arrested him under a Colombian extradition warrant for charges including alleged homicide and arms offences. He was carrying 40,000 euros ($54,000) in cash when he was caught, the statement said. Authorities say the ‘Oficina’ gang dates back to the 1980s when it carried out killings for the now-dismantled Medellin Cartel. Spain is one of the main entry points for illegal narcotics into Europe and Colombia is one of the world’s biggest sources of cocaine. Colombia produced 290 tonnes of cocaine in 2013, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

Scientists Have Discovered Why Marijuana Makes You Paranoid

08:08 Scientists Have Discovered Why Marijuana Makes You Paranoid 0 Comments

Your weed-induced paranoia is a real thing.

A new study has found that weed can make actually you paranoid, confirming the findings of investigations dating back to the 1930s, as well as anyone who has ever smoked weed and then ridden the subway. However, researchers found that it's not the weed that directly causes panic, but rather that it makes you more vulnerable to the onset of panic. The study: Oxford University researchers administered intravenous injections to 121 participants who had all recently experienced paranoia. Two thirds received a dose of THC and the remaining third received a placebo.

The participants were then placed in a real-life situation — the hospital cafeteria — and a calm situation depicted in a virtual reality headset. Half of the real THC group felt elevated levels of anxiety and panic in both settings. In the placebo group, only a third felt such effects. Being high makes people more prone to becoming paranoid, but as the lead researcher puts it, "More importantly, it shines a light on the way our mind encourages paranoia. Paranoia is likely to occur when we are worried, think negatively about ourselves, and experience unsettling changes in our perceptions." When one is high, the changes in perception can lead to a state of disorientation, opening the way to panic and paranoid thoughts. If one feels self-conscious or anxious prior to getting high, then the high will make paranoia more likely to occur.

Clarifying the lore. It's common knowledge that the high from cannabis can generate some level of paranoia in some people, and consuming too much at once can lead to a panic episode. This study demonstrates that those feelings are a direct reaction to the unexpected nature of altered perception, and that a person manifests their own paranoia due to a state of disorientation. The report says that, in a normal state, "Many people have a few paranoid ideas, and a few people have many." Based on your existing vulnerability to paranoia, being high can exacerbate your tendency to feeling paranoid. A number of studies on cannabis over the past few decades cite paranoia as a side effect, including studies of its psychiatric effects, its dangers, and its medical uses, but none of them have discovered how much our own state of mind plays a part. Now we can confirm that if you smoke weed and start getting paranoid, it may well be your own state of mind.

Can Alcohol Kill You?—Let’s Count the Ways

08:23 Can Alcohol Kill You 0 Comments

According to the World Health organisation, alcohol kills more than 3 million people worldwide each year, which translates to one person every 10 seconds. That’s more than the amount of people lost to AIDS, tuberculosis, and violence. The statistic includes alcohol-related driving fatalities, violence, and health issues arising from excessive alcohol consumption. Because alcohol is legal in most countries, and because—especially in the US and western culture in general—it is promoted in advertising and glamorised in film, its dangers are often minimised or disregarded by young people, and the warnings about problem-drinking and its consequences are viewed as the admonitions of uptight grownups. Unfortunately, the facts support the admonitions. So, how can alcohol kill you?

Here are a few ways it can—and does—end lives: Drunk driving accounted for ten thousand deaths in 2010—that was over thirty percent of all traffic fatalities. Acute alcohol poisoning kills over one thousand people each year. Nearly sixteen thousand people died in 2010 from alcohol-induced liver disease. Over fifty percent of people who die in fires have high blood-alcohol levels. One quarter of all emergency room admissions, one-third of all suicides and more than half of all homicides and incidents of domestic violence are alcohol related. Unintentional injuries related to alcohol consumption cause over eighteen hundred deaths each year among college students. Health problems, including increased likelihood of stroke, diabetes, cirrhosis of the liver, oesophageal cancer, and compromised immune system can lead, if untreated, to premature death. Alcohol in combination with other drugs, especially pain medications, tranquillisers, and sleep medications, can cause death by slowing down respiration as well as by causing the aspiration of vomit. The simple fact is that alcohol impairs judgment, cognition, inhibitions regarding excessive risk-taking and acting out of aggressive tendencies, and other faculties that reduce the likelihood of accident or death. If alcohol consumption becomes regular, increases over time, or increases in amount, or if consequences of drinking are accumulating, treatment is indicated, because yes, alcohol can kill you. 

Prostitute Injected Google Exec With Heroin, Left Him to Die on Yacht

17:53 Left Him to Die on Yacht , Prostitute Injected Google Exec With Heroin 0 Comments

More than seven months after a Silicon Valley executive was found dead on his yacht of an apparent overdose, police said they have uncovered new video evidence that reveals he may have been murdered. Alix Tichelman, 26, who police describe as a high-end call girl, is believed to be the woman in the video injecting Forrest Hayes, 51, with heroin during a date together last November, according to Santa Cruz police. It was initially thought that Hayes, who had worked at Apple and was employed by Google at the time of his death, died of an overdose on his yacht, "The Escape." A Woman Found Out a Serial Killer Once Lived in Her Home From Watching TV The newly uncovered surveillance video shows a woman, who Santa Cruz police say is Tichelman, administering the drugs and never trying to help Hayes or to call authorities when it was clear something had gone terribly wrong, Deputy Chief Steve Clark said. "She was so callous that in gathering her things, she was literally stepping over the body and at one point stepped over the body to grab a glass of wine and finish the glass of wine," Clark told ABC's San Francisco owned station KGO-TV. Police said the woman believed to be Tichelman even drew the blinds to the bedroom on the 50-foot yacht before leaving. Investigators took Tichelman's fingerprints from the wine glass, according to KGO-TV. Posing as a potential client, police said they met up with Tichelman to a hotel on July 4 and arrested her on suspicion of second-degree murder, destruction of evidence and transporting and providing narcotics. It was unclear if Tichelman has hired an attorney. An obituary posted in the Santa Cruz Sentinel describes Hayes as a husband and father to five children. "More than anything else he enjoyed spending time with his family at home and on his boat," the obituary said. "His brilliant mind, contagious smile, and warm embrace will be missed and cherished in memories by his friends and family."

We could wipe memories of drug addicts, says top Cambridge neuroscientist

17:33 says top Cambridge neuroscientist , We could wipe memories of drug addicts 0 Comments

Substance abusers could have their memories of drug addiction wiped in a bid to stop them using illegal narcotics, an award-winning neuroscientist has said. According to new research by Cambridge University’s Professor Barry Everitt: disrupting the memory pathways of drug users could weaken powerful “compel” cravings, reduce “drug seeking behaviour” and open a new field of addiction therapy. Professor Everitt, who is this year’s joint winner of the prestigious Fondation (CORR) Ipsen Neuronal Plasticity Prize, told this week’s Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS) how his research in rodents had found that targeting “memory plasticity” in rats was able to reduce the impact of maladaptive drug memories.

He added that this knowledge could offer a radical new method of treatment of drug addiction in humans, where researchers have already established that the path to addiction operates by shifting behavioural control from one area of the brain to another. This process sees drug use go from a voluntary act to a goal directed one, before finally becoming an compulsive act. It was this process that Professor Everitt's research is trying to “prevent” by targeting “maladaptive drug-related memories” to “prevent them from triggering drug-taking and replaces”. In humans this could potentially be done by blocking brain chemicals. “It's the emotional intrusiveness of drug and fear memoirs that can be diminished, rather than an individual's episodic memory that they did in the past take drugs or had a traumatic experience,” he told The Independent. “Conscious remembering is intact after consolidation blockade, but the emotional arousal [that] leads to drug seeking or distressing feelings of fear that are diminished.”

His research group discovered that when drug memories are reactivated by retrieval in the brain, they enter a pliable and unstable state. By putting rats in this state Professor Everitt was able to prevent memory reconsolidation by blocking brain chemicals or inactivating key genes. In one study, the team diminished drug seeking behaviours by obstructing a brain chemical receptor linked to learning and memory, thus erasing memories, while in another study it found they could weaken drug use memories by altering a particular gene in the amygdala, a brain area processing emotional memory. “Of course, inactivating genes in the brain is not feasible in humans,” the professor told FENS. “So we’re directing our research to better identify the underlying brain mechanisms of memory reconsolidation.” He added: “We specifically examined how we could target these maladaptive drug-related memories, and prevent them from triggering drug-taking and relapse.”