Infections and preventive methods

All fruits and vegetables should be washed and scrubbed. In suspect areas, travelers should eat only cooked foods and use only milk known to be pasteurized. You may be asking, "Why all this fuss about a disease I have hardly heard about?" Consider this one fact about amebiasis: in some forms, it has a fatality rate of 40 percent. 

Your life, if you become infected, is only as good as a 6 to 4 bet; not very good odds. In addition, if an acute attack is survived, there may be serious, chronic complications. Fortunately, treatment has been improving, and today, when the best available treatment is applied promptly and vigorously, the fatality rate can be reduced to less than 5 percent. How is the disease recognized? In the tropics, it will usually start as full- blown amebic dysentery, with up to 25 bowel movements a day, and with stools often containing blood and bits of mucus.

The patient may feel slightly feverish and will soon be weakened by the abdominal distress and dehydration. In this country and other temperate zone countries, there is rarely such extreme diarrhea; and the combination of abdominal distress, diarrhea alternating with constipation, fatigue, slight fever, and vague aches and pains throughout the body may be passed off as "colitis," "irritable colon," or "upset stomach." In some persons, symptoms are so mild that they do not see a doctor for treatment and unknowingly become carriers of the amebic organisms.

Another problem in diagnosing the disease arises from the increasing numbers of Americans who take short winter vacations in semitropical and tropical countries. If a vacationer develops diarrhea and other intestinal symptoms, he is not eager to consult a doctor in a strange country. He also does not want to interrupt his brief holiday. So he doses himself with Lomotil, paregoric, or anything else he has brought along for "tourists' diarrhea." When he returns home, he plunges into work. Thus, the diagnosis of amebiasis may be missed, and the best time to treat it lost; later, there may be dangerous spread of infection in the body, making for treatment problems.

To be sure, most cases of diarrhea during vacations are the relatively harmless tourists' diarrhea. But we strongly advise anyone who develops diarrhea in a semitropical or tropical country to tell his physician about it promptly upon return home or, if the stay is to be more than the usual brief vacation, to consult a local doctor (you can usually find a competent physician by calling the nearest American consul and asking for the name of his doctor). 

When there are symptoms suggestive of amebiasis, your physician will rarely start treatment until a precise diagnosis is made. That means finding the amebic organisms in the stool. Unfortunately, locating the organisms is not always simple; and some physicians who have devoted themselves to the study of this disease will not exclude the diagnosis of amebiasis until six stools, including one passed after a saline purge, have been judged negative by a competent diagnostic laboratory. 

SCHIZOPHRENIA- PARANOIA-MANIC-DEPRESSIVE PSYCHOSIS

SCHIZOPHRENIA

 This is the most common psychosis. It was once called dementia praecox (early loss of mind) because it often appears between the ages of 15 and 30. Schizophrenia means split mind but the illness is not simply a mental fragmentation. It is an extensive deterioration of the personality and a breaking away from reality, a retreat into an unreal world. Schizophrenia manifests itself gradually as a rule, but it may show up abruptly as an acute attack of confusion.

The individual becomes increasingly withdrawn; his emotions become distorted or fade. Schizophrenia takes four forms. Simple schizophrenics are apathetic, inattentive, detached, and indifferent to their surroundings.

Hebephrenic escape from reality through infantile devices-baby talk, thumb-sucking, incontinence

Paranoids experience delusions .of grandeur, considering themselves to be famous figures (the President, Napoleon, even God), or they suffer from ideas of persecution, convinced that they are being hounded, that someone is out to get them. Catatonics may sit motionless for hours or even days, totally unreachable, much like statues, refusing food, and then suddenly they may go into a wild frenzy.

 PARANOIA

This psychosis also is called monomania, delusional in- sanity, and persecutory insanity. Although a paranoid person is extremely ill, he may seem to act fairly normally. He may have adequate memory, logical reasoning, and show no apparent confusion, although his judgment is impaired. The disorder usually strikes between the ages of 30 and SO, particularly among individuals who have been suspicious, jealous, self-centered. A victim of paranoia suffers increasing delusions, seeing hidden meanings in many things that convince him he is being plotted against-by such means as x-ray or hypnotism. Often, he feels he must defend himself by lawsuits or antisocial acts which may even include murder. Some paranoiacs are referred to as maniacs-for example, the pyromaniac who may set fire to buildings in order to destroy the" evil people" in them.

MANIC-DEPRESSIVE PSYCHOSIS

In this illness, there is alternating extreme moods-periods of mania, with grossly exaggerated feelings of well-being and elation, and supreme overconfidence; and periods of melancholia, with equally exaggerated feelings of misery during which a sense of profound, unjustified guilt may make the victim immobile. Normal people have ups and downs of mood. The changes may be rhythmical in nature, alternating from day to day, sometimes within the same day. But such mood variations are quite different from the wild elation and profound unhappiness of manic-depressive psychosis.

Stress- Frustration treatment

COPING EFFECTIVELY MENTAL AND emotional stress cannot be eliminated from life. 

Nor does it have to be. In itself it is not harmful. It is not a disease but a normal part of life. It is not so much the amount of stress an individual is subjected to that determines whether he or she will suffer from acute anxiety or depression or psychosomatic illness as it is how the stress is perceived, understood, and handled. And there are measures we can make use of to handle stressful situations in our lives more effectively.

There can, of course, be situations that seem so overwhelming that we may need medical or other professional help if we are to cope with them. Such help, as the next chapter will show, is available. But for most situations we have resources of our own that we can learn to use successfully.

HANDLING FEELINGS OF FRUSTRATION

When we have worries and cannot do anything about them, we have feelings of frustration. Long continued, frustration can take serious physical toll. In a classic experiment demonstrating the physical effects of frustration, rats were strapped to a board-for them, a most frustrating situation. As they struggled uselessly to get out of the situation, large areas of their heart muscles disintegrated and the animals died. Obviously, the one way to have saved the rats would have been to release them. Medication might conceivably have dulled the frustration for them but not released them. Man's frustrating situations are not so obvious. 

But they can be no less exacting. And while there is often a temptation to regard them as insoluble and to dull the feelings they arouse by such means as drugs and alcohol, man's frustrating situations quite often can be solved.

There is usually something that can be done to adapt to the circumstance or to change the seeming circumstance. If, say, your job is a particularly frustrating one, must it remain so? Is the frustration irremovable? There are many cases like that of a man, a successful young executive, or so he had been, who became a victim of painful headaches and insomnia and began to have trouble with associates on the job and with family at home. 

He had recently been assigned to a responsible new position in a division of the company that was in trouble. He worked hard and yet couldn't make as much of a dent in the many problems the division faced as he thought desirable. Increasingly anxious and tense, he put pressure on the people working with him as well as on himself, to the point where he no longer had their cooperation.

He had a gnawing, ever growing fear that his superiors were dissatisfied with his work. Only when he faced up to the fact that it was this fear which was driving him and, at the same time, was frustrating him, making him act in a self-defeating fashion, could he nerve himself for a showdown with the company president. It was a productive showdown. 

Was the president dissatisfied with his work, he wanted to know. On the contrary, the president told him, he thought he had done remarkably well in a difficult situation. And, in fact, so concerned was the president over the possible loss of the young man that he insisted he take an immediate vacation and promised to assign additional personnel to help him in his work. If you feel you are faltering in your job, that you are out of your depth, it mayor may not be true. It's healthy to find out where you stand, to take action rather than suffer along. 

You may not be out of your depth at all but may have created frustration for yourself by demanding more of yourself than anybody could reasonably expect. If you are out of your depth, the chances are that this will be discovered by others sooner or later; and if you own up to it sooner, there may be something of an immediate wrench but you will save yourself much grief and may well find yourself a happier situation much sooner. 

BODY DEFENSES AND MEDICAL REINFORCEMENTS

BODY DEFENSES AND MEDICAL REINFORCEMENTS

You CAN be certain of one thing about your body: it is a battleground. You have had your share of colds and other commonplace infectious diseases and perhaps even a few serious ones. Much more often, hundreds upon hundreds of times, you have been threatened by infection, your body has responded, and invading organisms have been repulsed- all without your being aware of even the threat, let alone the encounter. 

All of us are constantly exposed to microorganisms in the air, soil, and water. Some are harmless; many are potentially dangerous. And the body's defenses are so organized that it is usual for a quick counterattack to be mustered against invading organisms-quick and effective enough to prevent infection.

It is only when invading organisms are too numerous to be fended off in time or when body defenses are impaired through injury or poor health that an infection takes hold. You can probably expect to live a long time, because of your body's natural ability to repulse many invasions and because of the growing arsenal of weapons your physician has to help when necessary. 

Also of tremendous importance: the growing armamentarium that medicine now has to increase your defenses against specific disease agents in advance of attack, and the growing knowledge about natural defenses and how to help keep them intact, knowledge that you yourself can apply. 

THE DECAY PROCESS-ADVANCES AGAINST GUM DISEASE

THE DECAY PROCESS 

Decay, essentially, is an acid-etching process. The acid is formed when bacteria, always present in the mouth, digest food particles left in the mouth. The acid attacks the enamel, the outer layer of the teeth which, even though it is the hardest substance in the body, will dissolve in acid. Decay is sneaky. Even a tiny hole, one you cannot see, through the enamel can be enough to allow acid to enter to start dissolving the dentin, the softer structure under the enamel. 

When the decay process finally reaches the pulp, the living part of the tooth containing nerves and blood vessels, you may feel pain, but not necessarily. A tooth may r. be almost completely rotted away and abscessed without causing pain. It would be bad enough if the effects of decay in a tooth were limited to the tooth, but a diseased tooth can allow bacteria to enter the blood- stream to be circulated to the rest of the body. Dr. J. C. Muhler, of Indiana University, one of the country's leading dental researchers, has written:

ADVANCES AGAINST GUM DISEASE 

Meanwhile, gum disease-technically known as periodontal disease-has come in for hard study. And not only have effective methods to help The Armed Forces always had been faced with a serious dental disease problem. Entering servicemen had an average of seven decaying teeth each, and developed more while on duty; service dentists couldn't begin to cope adequately. In 1961, the Army set up a small-scale experimental program. 

Servicemen had their teeth cleaned in the dental chair, but instead of finishing up with the usual abrasive polishing paste to make the teeth gleam, Army dentists used a paste with fluoride added.

Along with bright teeth, servicemen also got fluoride burnished into the enamel during the polishing. In the same sitting, a topical fluoride solution was dabbed on. 

They were then sent away to make regular daily use of a fluoridated toothpaste. . By 1963, Army dentists had expanded the program so it reached more than 300,000 men. It has been expanding since, and in the Navy and Air Force as well. Result: huge reductions in new cavity formation. A comparison study at the Navy's New London, Connecticut, base, for example, showed an 86 percent reduction in the decay rate among men on the program. 

After two years of experience with the program at the Naval Academy at Annapolis, Admiral Kyes could report that "midshipmen now have a caries expectancy of one new cavity in ten years," versus the average rate of university students of the same age of two new cavities each year. 

HELP FOR ADDICTS- Addiction is a disease - rehabilitation and medicines

 A parent can remind the addict that marijuana can be habit-forming, cause listlessness with prolonged use, and temporarily alter vision enough to make driving extremely dangerous. And, of course, too, it may lead to possible arrest and conviction of a felony, barring the individual from the practice of many professions and from obtaining a passport. Barbiturates, it can be explained, can be as addictive as heroin. Strong doses of amphetamines are dangerous, too, and even hippies have been known to post signs warning that "Speed Kills.

“A child tempted by drugs or already experimenting with them is not a hopeless case by any means. And with wise rather than hysterical action on the part of parents, there is a good chance he may "turn off" rather than "turn on." Where, if needed, can a parent turn for help? A good place to start is with the family physician. In most communities help is also available through psychiatric clinics and outpatient services. Virtually every major city has a center that will refer a parent to the best agency for a particular problem. 

Hospitals, child-guidance centers, voluntary health and social organizations, and many law enforcement agencies which are anxious to protect rather than prosecute, unless prosecution is absolutely essential, can tell parents what to do.

HELP FOR ADDICTS Addiction is a disease. It is not an easy one to overcome-but it is curable in many instances. In fact, as authorities point out, many addicts, when they reach the age of 30 or 35, often suddenly lose the need for heroin, for example. They withdraw on their own and never go back to the habit. Why this maturing-out process, as it is known, occurs is a mystery; addicts themselves are unable to explain it. "Our problem," says one authority "is to keep them from dying of heroin addiction before they get to be 30 or 35 and to replace their 10-year to 15-year period of drug abuse with years of useful activity.

 There are three major approaches to treatment in the United States. One is civil commitment, used in some states, with emphasis on education, job rehabilitation, and careful follow-up. Another is a methadone maintenance program which substitutes the milder drug methadone for heroin and includes schooling, job training, and other rehabilitative activities. There are also group therapy programs, typified by organizations such as Synanon and Day Top, which are regarded by many authorities as promising. 

Drug use and rescue measures - heroin and it effects on health

SUSPECTING DRUG USE Rehabilitation of a chronic drug user can be a long, hard process. Prevention and intervention-turning youngsters off when they start turning themselves on-are problems of parental concern.

How can a parent begin to suspect that a child may be taking drugs? It's important to note any unusual changes from normal behavior. If a child who has always been friendly and outgoing suddenly becomes withdrawn and hostile, something is wrong though it may not necessarily be drug use. 

Some experts suggest that a youngster who keeps to himself for long periods in his room or in the bathroom, who is often on the phone and who is called by persons who will not identify themselves to parents, may be taking drugs. Other possible indications include a sharp slide in school grades, disappearance of clothing and personal belongings and thievery at home (used to pay for drugs), alienation from old friends, and taking up with strange companions. There are physical indications.

Person smoking marijuana has a strong odor of burnt leaves on both his breath and clothes which persists for hours after use of the drug. Marijuana dilates the pupils of the eyes and sometimes reddens and inflames the eyes. Other symptoms include sleepiness, lack of coordination, wandering mind, increased appetite, and craving for sweets. There may be a tendency to laugh and giggle excessively. 

If a person is high on LSD or another hallucinogen, the symptoms are almost unmistakable: severe hallucinations, incoherent speech, cold hands and feet, strong body odor, laughing and crying jags, vomiting. Symptoms of amphetamine usage include aggressive behavior, rapid speech, giggling and silliness, confusion of thinking, extreme fatigue, shakiness, loss of appetite.

Those for the barbiturates are stupor, dullness, blurred speech, drunk appearance, vomiting. If pills are found on children who deny they are illicit drugs, the pills can be identified by a druggist or physician. If cigarette papers and possibly small seeds are found in clothing pockets, they may well indicate marijuana usage. When a child is sniffing glue or drinking cough medicine containing narcotics for kicks, he may have a dreamy blank expression and a drunk about that, the seriousness of the situation justifies the invasion.

There should take effort then to find out whether the child has only experimented a drug regularly. In discussing drugs with a child, the parent can, and should, use an intelligent, reasonable approach. It is far more likely to be successful than an authoritative pronouncement. A youngster can be reminded that LSD usage is extremely dangerous risk-taking; that it has caused hundreds of victims to end up in mental institutions or to suffer injuries such as three University of California at Santa Barbara students suffered when, on an LSD trip, they stared 50 long at the sun while holding a "religious conversion" that they never again will be able to read. A youngster resists any argument that marijuana is as addictive or is dangerous as heroin. 

NArcotics and Health Issues

NARCOTICS

Narcotic drugs include opium and its pain-killing derivatives such as heroin, morphine, and codeine, which are obtained from the juice of the poppy fruit. In addition, there are synthetic, or man-made, narcotics such as Demerol and nalorphine. 

Most used by addicts is heroin, also called junk, snow, stuff, and smack. Heroin is a brain and nervous system depressant. It reduces hunger, thirst, and sex drive as well as pain feelings.

Typically, heroin produces an easing of fear and a relief from worry as a first emotional reaction. It provides self-confidence and, as some addicts describe it, a kind of imperviousness to troubles which "roll off the mind." After this first reaction, there may be a period of inactivity that verges on a stupor us state. 

Heroin and other narcotics produce tolerance, so that increased dosage needed to achieve effects, and physical dependence. When an adult taking heroin, withdrawal sickness may include such symptoms, chills, shaking, diarrhea, nausea, sharp abdominal and leg.

Sedatives and drug addiction - Medicines and rehabilitation

SEDATIVES

Sedatives constitute a large family of compounds with relaxing effects on the nervous system. Dating back to 1846, the barbiturates are the best known.

 Many barbiturates with different types of action are available. Some, such as pentobarbital and secobarbital, are fast-starting and short- acting, exerting their effects quickly but for a relatively short period. Others, phenobarbital, amobarbital, and butabarbital, are slow-starting but long-acting. Most often abused are the short-acting compounds, commonly called goofballs and barbs. In normal, medically prescribed doses, barbiturates mildly slow the heart rate and breathing, lower blood pressure, and mildly depress nerve activity.

In larger doses, they may cause confusion, slurred speech, and staggering, deep sleep-symptoms much like those of alcoholic inebriation. Sedatives not only produce tolerance so that increasingly greater doses are needed to achieve the same results; they also produce physical dependence.

Their abrupt withdrawal can lead to cramps, nausea, delirium and convulsions, and, in some cases, sudden death. Withdrawal must be carried out in a hospital over a period of weeks with gradual reduction of dosage. It isn't only large dosage that can be fatal. Even a small dose may produce slowing of reaction and some distortion of vision. Barbiturates Drugs are a major cause of automobile accidents. 

The combination of barbiturates and alcohol is especially dangerous; the two substances have a synergistic effect in which each greatly increases the effects of the other. Barbiturates are frequently implicated in suicides, but they also cause many accidental deaths which only appear to be suicides.

 A major problem with barbiturates is that a user may react more strongly at one time than another; and with a strong reaction, there may be some confusion about how many pills have been taken and the user may groggily go on to take more, sometimes a fatal over dosage. 

Drug addiction and stimulant drugs - effects on

STIMULANT DRUGS 

Amphetamines-stimulants for the central nervous system-were first introduced in the 1920's. Best known for their ability to combat fatigue and sleepiness, they have many medical uses.

Under some circumstances, they may be employed as an aid in weight reduction because of their appetite-suppressing effect. They are sometimes used in the treatment of mild mental depression. In some children-who tend to be overactive and irritable, behavior problems in school and at home--the amphetamines have what seems to be a paradoxical effect: though basically stimulants, in these children they have a valuable calmative effect. 

Stimulants have been widely abused. There has been a heavy illegal traffic in such agents as Benzedrine, Dexedrine, and Methedrine, commonly called pep pills, bennies, and speed.

While these drugs produce no physical dependence, a tolerance to them does develop and increasingly large doses are required to achieve the same results. Their effects are many: increased heart rate, elevated blood pressure, palpitations, dilation of the pupils, dry mouth, sweating, headache, diarrhea, paleness. 

The drugs stimulate the release of norepinephrine, a neurohormone ordinarily stored in nerve endings. Norepinephrine be- comes concentrated in higher brain centers. When seriously abused, the stimulants can produce exhaustion and temporary psychosis which may require hospitalization.

 When used for long periods for "kicks" or for staying awake, the drugs have another danger: they may lead people to try to do things beyond their physical capacity, leaving them seriously exhausted at best and, at worst, leading them into serious and even fatal accidents. "Speeding," the injection of Methedrine into a vein, has still other dangers. An unaccustomed high dose can kill. 

And injections may lead to critical serum hepatitis. Heavy chronic users of stimulant drugs tend to become irritable and unstable and, like other chronic drug users, may suffer social, intellectual, and emotional breakdown. In our heavily medicated society, the abuse of stimulants is not limited to young people and thrill seekers. 

Many otherwise intelligent persons get on a kind of pill-go-round, using sedatives to calm themselves down and fall asleep and stimulants to wake themselves up and keep going. 

Marijuana and its effects on health and work related issues

MARIJUANA

This is a drug found in the flowering tops and leaves of a hemp plant which grows in mild climates in countries around the world. Known variously as pot, tea, grass, weed, Mary Jane, hash, and kif, marijuana is smoked in short cigarettes or pipe-full made up of the leaves and flowers of the plant.

The smoke has an odor resembling burnt rope or dried grass. Marijuana produces certain clear-cut physical reactions: increase in heartbeat, lowering of body temperature, reddening of the eyes. In addition, the drug affects blood sugar levels, stimulates appetite, and tends to dehydrate the body. 

The effects on emotions and senses vary considerably not only with the quantity and strength of the drug used but also with the circum- stances, including the social setting and the expectations of the user, beginning about fifteen minutes after inhalation of the smoke and for as long as four hours, some users feel excited, some depressed, some experience no mood change.

Often, the sense of time and distance becomes distorted so that a minute may seem as long as an hour, a nearby object may seem far off. The drug affects ability to perform any task requiring clear thinking and good reflexes. Marijuana is an extremely controversial drug. There is a prevailing belief that it is harmless, but some investigators are convinced it is not. 

A recent survey of 2,700 doctors and other professionals in mental health practice disclosed that they had seen 1,887 patients with adverse reactions to marijuana in a period of eighteen months.

As some scientists note, "The very unpredictability of marijuana on different individuals and on the same individual at different times and under different conditions increases the risk to the user." Much still remains to be learned about the long-term effects and possible dangers of marijuana; and aided now by the recent synthesis of the drug's active ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol, and investigations are being carried out. 

Only very recently has hashish, a drug known for centuries, become a major element in what has been called "America's drug subculture." Both hashish and marijuana come from the same plant. While marijuana is made from the tops and leaves, hashish is the dried resin of the plant. Hashish is often sold in chunks about one-inch square and one- quarter-inch thick and looks much like a clod of dirt. It has little taste -a hint of the household spice thyme.

 Users may put a tiny pebble of it in a pipe or sprinkle a few crumbs of it onto a cookie. Reactions are varied. Some users feel nothing but a slight drowsiness. At the other extreme, some go into panic and scream that they are losing their minds. Some authorities report that if there is a psychological disability, the drug tends to aggravate it and that large doses can cause the same kind of psychotic breakdown as LSD can produce. No one really knows the long-term effects of the drug. Users claim that there will be no permanent effects upon body or mind.

On the other hand, doctors in countries with long histories of hashish usage suggest that the user will become lethargic, apathetic. As this is written, plans are being formulated for the first United States scientific studies of hashish.

Drug addiction releif and benefits on sensory organs

There may be a sharpening of other senses-taste, smell, hearing, touch. And often various sensory impressions may appear to merge, so that colors, for example, may seem to have taste. Users report many other strange experiences, including simultaneous opposite emotions, being at once happy and sad, elated and depressed, tense and relaxed. 

At different times, there may be different effects for the same individual. Responses cannot be predicted, which is why users often describe their experiences as "good trips" and "bad trips." Some LSD users believe that since LSD heightens their senses, it makes them more creative. But this is not supported by the paintings, writings, and other creative efforts of drug users i in fact, in many cases, the works produced after drug use am poorer than before. How LSD works in the body is not yet thoroughly understood.

There is some evidence that it affects the amounts or levels of certain chemicals in the brain and changes brain electrical activity. Experiments with animals suggest that the drug may block a normal filtering process in the brain which then becomes flooded with myriad un screened sights and sounds. The dangerous effects of LSD are many. Hospitals report that some users, in a panic over their inability to cut off the effects of the drug, fear they are losing their minds. 

Some become paranoiac, developing in- creasing suspicions that people are out to harm them and control their thinking. Weeks and even months after LSD use has been stopped, some people have recurrences of the same experiences they had while using the drug and fear they are going insane.

Accidental deaths have been reported-instances of users walking in front of moving cars, convinced they were impervious to harm, and even leaping out of high windows because of a conviction they could fly. Medical experts report that the overwhelming fears and worries that may accompany an LSD experience can sometimes be disturbing enough to produce acute and even long-lasting mental illness.

Changes in chromosomes-the tiny threads in the nucleus of all cells which carry genetic information and guide reproduction-have raised concern. The changes found are actual breaks in the chromosomes, and the fear is that this may lead to birth defects in children of users. 

Drug Addiction and Curative Measures

RELATIVELY FEW readers of this blogs will have had any personal experience with illicit drug use. Yet it has become important for every concerned person-in term of children and other contacts-to be informed about that problem and what can be done to prevent serious consequences. Until fairly recently, illicit drug use and addiction were largely confined in the United States to the Skid Rows-to the hopeless, helpless, and disadvantaged of society. 

But in recent years, the scene has shifted dramatically to better neighborhoods and schools, to the respected and well-educated who, in increasing numbers, especially the adolescents, have been "turning on."

College and university students have been tempted to try drugs since 1962 when a Harvard instructor and some graduate students enthused over the virtues of a then little-known drug, LSD. Soon LSD became an "in" drug. It has also become an illegal drug, and even aside from its illegality, after a first surge of use it has become much less popular as it has become clear that taking LSD is playing a chemical Russian roulette. But the use of other drugs-marijuana, amphetamines, barbiturates, opiates-is widespread. And the penalties may be multiple.

 There are the legal punishments which may ruin the life of an offender. There are the possible threats of impaired development and alienation from life and society. And there are the risks to physical health. What scientific information is there available about the various drugs, their effects, and their hazards? Recently, pediatricians, psychiatrists, and other physicians, and the National Institute of Mental Health and other government and private agencies have been working to bring together all known facts.  Lysergic acid diethylamide is a man-made chemical first synthesized in 1938 from ergot alkaloids. Often called "acid" by its users, it is a mind-altering drug, classed legally as a hallucinogen.

A single ounce of LSD is enough to make 300,000 of the usual doses, each amounting to a speck, usually taken in a sugar cube or on a cookie or cracker. LSD, in an average dose, has effects that last eight to ten hours- increase of pulse and heart rate, rise in blood pressure and temperature, dilation of the pupils of the eyes, flushing or paleness of the face, sweaty palms, chills, irregular breathing, nausea, and distortion of the physical senses. Actually, the first effects of the drug may be on the physical senses. There are visual phenomena: walls appear to move, colors become more brilliant, unusual patterns unfold, flat objects become three-dimensional.