I’m very excited! We’ve just bought quite a few new things to pad out our Legal Highs and Entheogen categories, which happen to be our favourite. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be trickling new products on here and there, including more kratom, herbal teas and other delicious extracts, as well as popular smoking mixtures in the same league as Spice Diamond. It’s going to take forever to write all the descriptions and produce a nice set of images for each. We’re going to try and put more on there about traditional usage, and maybe some pharmacology too. I just wish I was working on it full time!
Pyramidal neurones in the Cerebral Cortex
As it happens, I’m pretty busy with my second module of the semester: neuropharmacology. In a few weeks, I’ll have to do another presentation in the same vein as my one on salvia. I’m thinking I’ll talk about either kratom, ayahuasca or psychoactive mushrooms. Kratom has some very interesting properties, acting as an opioid, ayahuasca highlights the importance of drug-drug interactions, containing DMT and an MAO inhibitor, while psychoactive mushrooms are just really interesting. The last option also allows me to bring in some whole Amanita muscaria caps (another exciting new product!) in to pass around — everyone would love that, right? As if that wasn’t reason enough, it’s active constituent, muscimol, is also of use pharmacologically. During some preliminary research, I found this great paper on hallucinogens and dissociative agents naturally growing in the United States I thought I’d share with you. Not hard going at all, and totally worth a read.
I’ve also got to pick a 10 week research project to do after Christmas. One of the options, and no doubt the one with the most competition, is on cannabinoids, eating behaviour and GABA signalling. Another one that stands out is the effects of ketamine on the visual cortex. Looks like a busy few weeks ahead.
