We’ve all heard about people who are addicted to alcohol, drugs or even gambling–but the NEW kind of addict get his stash from his physician, in the form of prescription drugs. Sometimes these addicts O.D., as in the cases of Heath Ledger and Michael Jackson.
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Those hallucinogenic mushrooms may be tempting (NOTE: Subscribers can still listen to this show), but beware: A single high dose of psilocybin, the active ingredient "magic mushrooms," was enough to bring about a measureable personality change lasting at least a year in nearly 60% of the 51 participants in a new study.
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Did you know that drug deaths now outnumber traffic fatalities in the US? In 2009, they killed almost 40,000 people nationwide.
While most major causes of preventable death are declining, drugs are an exception. Prescription pain and anxiety drugs are potent and highly addictive and are especially dangerous when combined with one another or with other drugs or alcohol. Prescription drugs now cause more deaths than heroin and cocaine combined.
The death toll from drugs has doubled in the last decade, killing one person every 14 minutes. In contrast to this, traffic accidents have been dropping for decades because of huge investments in auto safety, such as airbags and anti-lock brakes.
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Sadness, apathy, preoccupation–these traits come to mind when people think about depression, the world’s most frequently diagnosed mental disorder. Yet there’s new evidence that depression has a positive side-effect: Depressed people perform better in certain types of tasks. Should this make you happy?
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