Interesting brain chemistry stuff

A cannabis-like substance produced by the brain may dampen delusional or psychotic experiences, rather than trigger them.

Heavy cannabis use has been linked to psychosis in the past, leading researchers to look for a connection between the brain's natural cannabinoid system and schizophrenia.

Sure enough, when Markus Leweke of the University of Cologne, Germany, and Andrea Giuffrida and Danielle Piomelli of the University of California, Irvine, looked at levels of the natural cannabis-like substance anandamide, they were higher in people with schizophrenia than in healthy controls.

Compared with 84 healthy volunteers, levels were six times as high in people with symptoms of psychosis and eight times as high in those with schizophrenia.

But were the high anandamide levels triggering the psychotic symptoms or a response to them? Leweke and his colleagues found, to their surprise, that the more severe people's schizophrenia was the lower their anandamide levels.

The team's theory is that rather than triggering psychosis, the substance is released in response to psychotic symptoms to help control them. People with the worst symptoms might be unable to produce sufficient anandamide to prevent them.

Here

It's been a dirty day

I don't know you
And you don't know the half of it
I had a starring role
I was the bad guy who walked out
They said be careful where you aim
'cause where you aim you just might hit
You can hold on to something so tight
You've already lost it


Dragging me down
That's not the way it used to be
You can't even remember
What I'm trying to forget


It was a dirty day
Dirty day


You're looking for explanations
I don't even understand
If you need someone to blame
Throw a rock in the air
You'll hit someone guilty


From father to son
In one life has begun
A work that's never done
Father to son


(And love...it won't last kissin' time)
(And love...it won't last kissin' time)
(And love...it won't last kissin' time)


Get it right
There's no blood thicker than ink
Hear what I say
Nothing's simple as you think


Wake up
Some things you can't get around
I'm in you
More so when they put me in the ground


These days, days, days run away like horses over the hill
These days, days, days run away like horses over the hill...
[Repeat and fade until end]

(not me, U2)