{"id":21094,"date":"2011-03-05T21:09:43","date_gmt":"2011-03-06T02:09:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/21094\/vaccine-cocaine-addiction-discovered-sorry-charlie\/"},"modified":"2011-03-05T21:09:43","modified_gmt":"2011-03-06T02:09:43","slug":"vaccine-cocaine-addiction-discovered-sorry-charlie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/21094\/vaccine-cocaine-addiction-discovered-sorry-charlie\/","title":{"rendered":"Vaccine For Cocaine Addiction Discovered! Sorry, Charlie!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Back in January, this little headline caught my attention: Vaccine for Cocaine Addiction Discovered<\/a>.\u00a0 Wow!\u00a0 Now there\u2019s something I\u2019d never heard of before.\u00a0 I read the story and realized that like frequently happens with announcements from the scientific community, it was being sensationalized by the media a bit.\u00a0 Yes, technically, what the researchers were announcing is a vaccine, in that it is a \u201cpreparation of a weakened or killed pathogen, such as a bacterium or virus, or of a portion of the pathogen’s structure, that stimulates immune cells to recognize and attack it, especially through antibody production <\/span>(Science Dictionary)<\/a>\u201d, but addiction is a complex biological, social, psychological and spiritual condition.\u00a0 It\u2019s not an ordinary disease.\u00a0 This \u201cvaccine\u201c doesn\u2018t do anything for the latter three dimensions of the condition.\u00a0 Whereas curing it with a pill is a lofty goal and it certainly makes for an attention-getting announcement for your research, what they\u2019ve really done is found a promising way to block the effects of cocaine intoxication; what that does for addiction is not so clear. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"That said, what they\u2019ve done is a pretty interesting bit of biomedical science that could have lots of useful future applications. Essentially, they\u2019ve figured out how to create an immune system reaction to prevent cocaine from even reaching the brain. In Mice.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

When I had to come up with a topic for a three-minute presentation for the HIV\/blood borne pathogens awareness class that is a state-requirement for my chemical dependency counseling license, I chose to do a little more research into what was being announced, how it worked in the body and what else it might do.\u00a0 That was a bit of a lofty presentation goal for a maximum of three strictly timed minutes.\u00a0 I had to rush a bit at the end, but come with me to class today and watch my presentation\u2026<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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\"\"A couple things I left out of my brief presentation:\u00a0 the cocaine \u201cimmunity\u201d is not permanent.\u00a0 They found that these cocaine-eating antibodies last about 13 weeks (in mice) .\u00a0 There doesn\u2019t seem to be any description of any studies on coke-headed mice.\u00a0 By that, I mean mice who had already become addicted to cocaine.\u00a0 I\u2019ve heard of instances of mice, when given a choice between food and cocaine, choose cocaine to the point that they starve themselves to death.\u00a0 We don\u2019t know what the treatments this discovery suggests do for cravings<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

\"\"On Charlie Sheen, I want to publicly admit that I went a bit overboard in my last blog<\/a> when discussing old Charlie.\u00a0 I know many of you are probably already tired of hearing about the guy, so I\u2019ll keep this brief.\u00a0 See, what I was trying to say was that I thought only through him crashing and burning was he ever going to want to \u201cget better.\u201d\u00a0 I still think that.\u00a0 To take that analysis and then actively wishing harm upon the guy under the guise of discussing hubris, that was going too far on my part.\u00a0 We all tend to attack in others what we don\u2019t like about ourselves, and so to go after the guy for his unbridled arrogance, upon reflection, tells me more about myself and what I need to work on as opposed to anything about Charlie.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Sorry, Charlie.\u00a0 After watching you, yet again, on Dateline today, calming planning strategies with your posse as to how turn your upsurge in infamy into merchandising opportunities, I still think you’re crazy.\u00a0 Crazy like a fox.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n


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* * *<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll conclude with a couple songs from last night\u2019s open mic night!!\u00a0\u00a0 A week or so ago, I posted a \u201chomer version\u201d of this song I found on YouTube from Lisa Dudley, \u201cJust For Today\u201d\u2026\u00a0 Here is a live version.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Did I mention that after I sent Lisa Dudley the video, she wrote me back saying that it was a \u201cdream come true\u201d to have had someone cover one of her songs?\u00a0 That was kinda neat.\u00a0 It never hurts to help fulfill people\u2019s dreams.
\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The second song is a bit darker.\u00a0 You might have seen this already, as it\u2019s about the 4th or 5th time I think I\u2019ve posted me singing this song on YouTube.\u00a0 Regardless, I think it worked out pretty well.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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It is a mad world sometimes, particularly here in part of the FriendBurst blogs lately.\u00a0 I wish the political bloggers here would go back to debating the issues (an activity I only occasionally participate in, but enjoy reading) instead of bitching and moaning about who said what to who, ad hominen attacks and whiney drama blogs.\u00a0\u00a0 I recently sent invitations to a couple politically oriented friends to come by our little site here and check out the active political blogs\u2026 to think that this week\u2019s sample was what they might have found\u2026 come on, people, we\u2019re better than this.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in January, this little headline caught my attention: Vaccine for Cocaine Addiction Discovered.\u00a0 Wow!\u00a0 Now there\u2019s something I\u2019d never heard of before.\u00a0 I read the story and realized that like frequently happens with announcements from the scientific community, it was being sensationalized by the media a bit.\u00a0 Yes, technically, what the researchers were announcing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,8,11,587],"tags":[1068,2280,2284,2332,2331,2330],"class_list":["post-21094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","category-music","category-people","category-science","tag-addiction","tag-charlie-sheen","tag-cocaine","tag-cornell","tag-scripps","tag-vaccine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21094\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}