
Cocaine stops you from recognising other people's emotions - gruez
http://www.europeanneuropsychopharmacology.com/article/S0924-977X(15)00265-5/abstract
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bandrami
> The study, which took place at the Netherland's Maastricht University,
> started by giving 24 students either 300mg of the drug or a placebo

Umm... that's an entire line (assuming 3 to a gram).

> They were also found with increased heart rate

Ya think?

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eruditely
3 lines to a gram are some fat lines, it's probably more like 12-14 lines a
gram.

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bandrami
> 3 lines to a gram are some fat lines

What can I say? I miss the .com days of the 90s...

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mahouse
Now it's all nootropics :(

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cheepin
Only 12 people got the actual drug, and their performance was only degraded
10%. This is an interesting theory with a little evidence but hardly "stops
you from recognizing other people's emotions", and may be just noise from the
small sample.

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zamalek
> _stops_ you from recognizing other people's emotions

Journalistic sensationalist garbage. I'm no advocate of drug usage but lying
about things achieves nothing.

However, from an anecdotal perspective: my flatmate's ex-girlfriend had
completely annihilated her brain with chronic use of that drug and, knowing
her, would I agree with those incredibly inconclusive results? Somewhat - she
definitely showed no capability of responding to emotions in others, but her
brain way _beyond_ fried: so it may have been systemic (or other drugs).

> little evidence

I wouldn't call it that, it is a weak correlation at best. They should have
included significantly more people.

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soylentcola
Also, there's the issue of what sorts of neurological "types" tend to abuse
which sorts of drugs. I currently take medication for ADHD which works on the
dopamine response and feedback system. Cocaine at least superficially works on
similar mechanisms.

I remember when I was talking to my doctor prior to being put on the
medication and discussing any past recreational drug use. I'm sure that part
of this was in order to determine any abuse potential but the doc also
mentioned that a lot of times people with atypical dopamine feedback will
abuse or "self-medicate" with cocaine.

I wonder if more people who gravitate toward heavy cocaine use (or the ones
more likely to become habitual cocaine users) do so because they don't get the
same sort of feedback and reinforcement from external stimuli as more
"neurotypical" people.

It's all just conjecture on my part but my experience is that a lot of people
who use recreational drugs have their drugs of choice because it's not always
just about getting "messed up" but could be because certain tweaks to their
neurochemistry are more pleasurable than others.

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NKCSS
Just had to respond to that domain name; there wasn't a abbreviation
available?

~~~
ivanca
Auto-complete is such a common feature on all browsers that I don't think it
hurts them one bit.

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danneu
I have a long domain name I registered a long time ago when I was in a
creativity famine.

Really, the annoying part is that it's always truncated with ellipses before
you get to the guts of the URL on many services including my own.

Check out these two blog posts:

    
    
        http://europeanneuropsychopharmacolo...
        http://europeanneuropsychopharmacolo...

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c3534l
I'm curious as to what the placebo they used was. It'd have to be something
that could be mistaken for cocaine in low doses, otherwise it's not worth much
as a placebo in this trial.

~~~
codezero
Placebos are to make them think they are taking a drug, not necessarily a
specific one.

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bro-stick
So it may double the utility for stock broker trainers breaking in green
trainees whom have latent objections to stealing from granny's life saving. :(

With the clichés of money, hookers and blow, the ease of excess partying
habits can very easy and eventually kill most people. Felix Dennis nearly
bought the farm in that lifestyle, many others weren't so lucky and/or weren't
able to exhibit enough self-control.

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mozumder
Anyone with increased heart rates and stress levels is likely also going to
have difficulty processing others emotions. You don't need cocaine to do that.

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smsm42
Sidebar helpfully links the similar study about cannabis:
[http://www.europeanneuropsychopharmacology.com/article/S0924...](http://www.europeanneuropsychopharmacology.com/article/S0924-977X\(14\)00325-3/abstract)

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vegabook
So it impairs your acuity to negative signals from others _while high_. This
is not interesting - it's kinda obvious. It would have been much more worrying
if it continued long term.

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poelzi
A sensitive friend of a friend experienced it 3 out of 3 times exactly like
that. Maybe for some people the effect is lower, but most people are not very
sensitive towards emotions anyway...

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jqm
Couldn't recognize emotions because they wouldn't stop talking long enough?

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anocendi
Is the study suggesting that most Politicians live on Cocaine?

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dang
Url changed from
[http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/26151/1/c...](http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/26151/1/cocaine-
stops-you-recognising-other-people-s-emotions), which points to this.

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totallystupid
That's strange I've always found low doses have the opposite effect : more
empathetic.

Perhaps it just impairs performance on the simulators where emotion
recognition is tested with images, and not in real life.

Or maybe my brain chemistry is different.

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BinaryIdiot
As with everything in biology there are exceptions, imperfect measurements or
wrongly self-perceived measurements. In other words: it could be one of your
two suggestions or something else :)

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totallystupid
Yeah maybe I just believed I was being more empathetic while in fact I was
only more confident in my belief.

They are called psychoactives after all -- how reliable could my report be if
my perception was altered?

