Scientist developing anti-suicide nasal spray! Causes Euphoria!

Visionary_Kpsycho

Visionary_Kpsycho

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The Associated Press
Posted : Wednesday Jul 25, 2012 7:39:50 EDT

INDIANAPOLIS — An Indiana University School of Medicine scientist has been awarded $3 million to develop a nasal spray intended to combat suicidal thoughts among soldiers.

The Army awarded the research grant to Michael Kubek, associate professor of anatomy and cell biology and of neurobiology. He works with thyrotropin-releasing hormone, or TRH, a neurochemical he helped discover in the human brain.

IU said TRH is known to have antidepressant and anti-suicidal effects, but it isn’t suitable for injection or oral use. So Kubek and other scientists at Purdue and at Hebrew University in Jerusalem are developing a nasal spray designed to deliver appropriate doses of the drug to the brain over time.

The project is part of a national effort designed to combat suicides in the nation’s military.

The Pentagon, which tracks military suicides, reported that troops have committed the act at an 18 percent increase over the same period last year. Now, more troops die by their own hands that by the hands of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The spray is only possible because of advances in "nanotechnology delivery systems." Researchers plan to run a full battery of trials over the next few years, and hopefully put the spray not only in the hands of soldiers, but civilians as well.

The scientists say that applications go beyond anti-depression medications.
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I was wondering if we can have an intelligent discussion about this TRH. And how exactly this "nasal spray can induce euphoria and calmness, being quoted something that can replace the current system on anti-depressants. They say they want it in the military first then possibly for civilian use. This is extremely interesting for me in the future. What do you guys think?

http://www.businessinsider.com/suicide-rates-double-in-july-army-issues-nasal-spray-2012-8?fb_action_ids=10152044326185327&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_source=other_multiline&action_object_map={%2210152044326185327%22%3A10150877814457609}&action_type_map={%2210152044326185327%22%3A%22og.likes%22}&action_ref_map=[

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2012/07/ap-anti-suicide-nasal-spray-research-072512/

Enjoy!
 
Because a force of low intelligence trained killers with high tech gear hooked on euphoric antidepressants is a great fucking idea, right.

Go read Brave New World.
 
It seems fucking absurd to me that they're spending millions on some new drug to make soldiers happy enough to not want to kill themselves instead of stopping and asking why so many troops involved in this conflict can't live with themselves? What are they doing and seeing that makes them want to give up on life, and why are they being put in that situation?

I wonder what the suicide rate was amongst WW2 vets? I'm sure it was high, but I doubt it was nearly as high as the current Afghanistan/Iraq vets. Why?
 
^during vietnam loads of soldiers were using heroin. most of them stopped when they came back. i guess it's more difficult to do that now.
 
ww2 was definitely a more just war than afghanistan/iraq which was largely political imo and driven by money/greed. WW2 needed to happen, people knew this and did what they had to do to protect their countries. Still my grandfather would only talk about it when drunk and had some pretty awful stories about trenches full of bodies and things like that; no question it left a mark on him but there was no such thing as PTSD back then.

now think of vietnam; bullshit war, devastating results and i bet there is in an insane increase in the amount of soldiers dealing with trauma afterwards. Afghanistan/iraq, i think are similar to vietnam in that they were based on bullshit and were not justifiable wars.
 
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RobotRipping said:
ww2 was definitely a more just war than afghanistan/iraq which was largely political imo and driven by money/greed. WW2 needed to happen, people knew this and did what they had to do to protect their countries. Still my grandfather would only talk about it when drunk and had some pretty awful stories about trenches full of bodies and things like that; no question it left a mark on him but there was no such thing as PTSD back then.

now think of vietnam; bullshit war, devastating results and i bet there is in an insane increase in the amount of soldiers dealing with trauma afterwards. Afghanistan/iraq, i think are similar to vietnam in that they were based on bullshit and were not justifiable wars.
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Exactly. My grandfather was similar, he was one of 2 survivors out of his air force squadron and from what I've heard he came back a heavy drinker and would rarely talk about what happened. But there's still a difference, in that they were fighting for their country, they were genuinely fighting to prevent awful dictatorships from becoming the dominant global powers. It was horrible, but they knew they were doing the right thing.

Whereas these wars, what are they fighting for, honestly? I think there's a widespread perception that the current war in the Middle East is about protecting American interests and sustaining access to oil, and I think a lot of the troops probably just can't cope with what they're seeing and doing for that goal. It's one thing to do horrible things in battle because otherwise your country and your way of life will be destroyed, it's quite another to do them because the powers that be want to maintain control over a certain area of the globe.
 
I was talking more of the euphoric nature of this new nasal spray; does this spray actually cause a kind of cocaine, meth (dopamine like) effect? Or some sort of a sedation effect? For that matter has anyone on here ever heard of thyrotropin-releasing hormone, or TRH, and its effects?
 
Visionary_Kpsycho said:
For that matter has anyone on here ever heard of thyrotropin-releasing hormone, or TRH, and its effects?
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TRH is nothing new, as they seem to imply in the article. It's the hormone secreted by the hypothalamus that induces TSH (thyroid-stimulating hormone) release in the pituitary, which in turn induces thyroid hormones (T3 & T4) release in the thyroid.

T3 and T4 have a stimulating effect on the organism. You can read about Hyperthyroidism which is an oversecretion of these hormones.
 
sekio said:
Because a force of low intelligence trained killers with high tech gear hooked on euphoric antidepressants is a great fucking idea, right.

Go read Brave New World.
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I get the point you're trying to make, but the military is hardly a "low intelligence" group. In fact, on average, military personnel are better educated than their civilian peers, and the literacy rate in the military is nearly 100%.
 
Zapa said:
TRH is nothing new, as they seem to imply in the article. It's the hormone secreted by the hypothalamus that induces TSH (thyroid-stimulating hormone) release in the pituitary, which in turn induces thyroid hormones (T3 & T4) release in the thyroid.

T3 and T4 have a stimulating effect on the organism. You can read about Hyperthyroidism which is an oversecretion of these hormones.
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This.

Fucking with the endocrine system carries long-term risks that are no less grave than fucking with the nervous system. In many ways it's more dangerous -- it's like the difference between turning around a fleet of sailboats, versus changing the course of a heavy ocean liner. This proposed therapy has more in common with anabolic steroids than with anything typically thought of as psychoactive.

Hyperthyroidism causes a sustained state of hypomania, in addition to changes in most of the rest of the body's organ systems, including drastic metabolic changes. I've dealt with patients who were diagnosed with Graves' disease, a natural form of autoimmune hyperthyroidism. Just like bipolar people in their manic phase, euphoria may sometimes be part of the picture, but it's not a prominent feature, and in most patients is not strong enough for them to want to leave the condition untreated. Motivation, insomnia, irritability, racing thoughts, and a perpetual feeling of being under great stress usually are prominent features. People present for this diagnosis knowing that something is very much off, and wanting to fix it.

Now, I can definitely see hyperthyroid soldiers, at least the rank-and-file cannon fodder, being useful to military leaders. But the same can be said for child soldiers in the Congo, who are reportedly given mixtures of cocaine and gunpowder to snort (the gunpowder not only dilutes the cocaine, but irritates their GI tracts which increases irritability and therefore aggression). And I think, in the end, this is what this development comes down to -- damage control and the lesser of two evils. A whole bunch of veterans needing treatment for the [after]effects of years of hyperthyroidism is whole lot smaller of a public relations disaster than a whole bunch of veterans offing themselves, becoming addicted to opiates or alcohol, or ending up in psych wards.
 
Zapa said:
T3 and T4 have a stimulating effect on the organism. You can read about Hyperthyroidism which is an oversecretion of these hormones.
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I don't think that facilitates the euphoria. I've taken T4 (levothyroxine) before and I wouldn't even describe it as psychoactive.

I could be wrong though. I haven't looked too deeply into the pharmacology of TSH.
 
I can think of older, better drugs that would relieve depression administered intranasally;).

How does TRH have an anti-depressant effect? It seems in higher doses it actually lowers dopamine. Raising dopamine may play a role in many antidepressants' effects. What advantages would this have over older drugs? I mean is it like others antidepressants which makes hopeless drowning rats swim long, but in humans according to some is little better than placebo except for major depression. Also what about negative feedback fucking with your endocrine system like MyDoorsAreOpen mentioned? If it's more effective, has less side effects or is even faster acting, I see this as a good thing. But why the military and not civilian? Again I think MyDoorsAreOpen might be right, that it's more like a stimulant for combat.

Fuck it, give them MDMA assisted therapy:D.
 
Roger&Me said:
I get the point you're trying to make, but the military is hardly a "low intelligence" group. In fact, on average, military personnel are better educated than their civilian peers, and the literacy rate in the military is nearly 100%.
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Are you referring to all military personnel, or the way things are in the USA?
education is how people are bribed into joining the military in many countries; I don't think it's necessarily a true reflection on civililian vs military peoples' relative intelligence.

This whole story/idea is depressing. What a sad, stupid, scary world we live in.
 
I think a big piece of it is how connected deployed soldiers are able to be with their life back home these days. In the past wars discussed here, like ww2 and even Vietnam, contact with home was limited to letters, which took a long time, and are a much more distant form of communication. The soldiers were able to fully assimilate into their "new life" and take on a persona which could often make them more resilient to the shitty conditions they were living in. Now, with constant contact via the Internet, they can stay fully in contact with their life at home, which keeps them connected to home drama (girlfriend/wife cheating, breakups, various other family drama, etc), as well as frequent reminders of regular life. Those things make them less able to take on that new persona and thus they end up with a lot more mental conflict and anguish over their situation than ww2 soldiers had.

I'm not saying that its a bad thing that the soldiers can stay more in touch with their families and friends, though, because when I was deployed to Iraq, I don't know what I would have done without the ability to stay easily in touch. Just making a hypothesis as to why suicide rates are higher now, even though deployment conditions are generally better now. Also, The vast majority of deployed people in Iraq and Afghanistan currently are NOT directly involved in much (or any) combat, and are therefore not the civilian-slaughtering, baby-killing straw men that some of the people in this thread are discussing, so the trend of increasing suicide is likely from varied sources, not just guilt over doing bad things.

But, if this spray works to stave off the acute effects of this kind of dissonance and help them keep it together long enough to come home and recover from it for real, I don't see how that is a bad thing. I don't think it is a long-term solution, as drug-induced euphoria is definitely NOT the solution to depression, but if it can help lower the number of soldiers killing themselves while deployed long enough to come home and deal with their situations and get additional treatment if necessary, then there really is no downside. The article did say the spray will be undergoing a full battery of testing.
 
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