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Could alcohol potentially cause olney's lesions?

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phantomcosmonaut

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Dec 24, 2011
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I may be missing something since I haven't read anything about this. Many NMDA receptor antagonists are thought to have the ability to cause these lesions. Since alcohol is also an NMDA receptor antagonist, does it do the same thing? Both the dissociative anesthetics (PCP, K, DXM, MXE) and alcohol are known as "toxic", so are they toxic in the same way? It would be nice if someone could explain all this to me, thanks.
 
Isn't the damage induced via alcohol to the CNS due in part to likely thiamine-poor diet in chronic alcohol abusers, and partly via a purinergic receptor-mediated mechanism?
 
Considering that the existence of Olney's lesions in humans has never been proven despite attempts to do just that, I think it's kind of a moot point, unless you are enquiring about the possibility in a mouse/rat/etc model. Attempting to determine whether something causes an effect in humans when that effect has never been observed in humans seems like an exercise in futility to me...
 
A good part of alcohols toxicity comes from the fact that it gets metabolized into acetaldehyde which is toxic to your body, I have also read things that stated alcohol depletes your body of vitamins. Dehydration isn't too healthy either but I don't know if its going to cause toxicity.
 
The toxicity from alcohol isn't from Olney's lesions, that much is known.

As stated before there's no evidence for the development of Olney's lesions in higher primates. Just in murine models and even then it's mostly restricted to high-dose dissociatives directly administered to the brain.
 
I think there is some evidence for an increased risk of brain lesions in humans from high dose / long term dissociative abuse.

However, we've got huge amounts of research on what high dose / long term alcohol abuse brings. Korsakov's, liver failure, death.
 
IIRC they tested dxm on monkeys and found no evidence of olney's lesions so I doubt it's something that would happen in humans.
 
Olney's lesions is one of those scary drug myths that gets thrown around.. and I've never heard of alcohol causing them. PCP > DXM > Ketamine, in that order is what I remember for the alleged risk of developing olney's lesion.. I also remember reading some literature that said that a one time massive dose of a dissociative NMDA antagonist was more likely to cause damage and lead to lesions than small repetitive dosing.. I.e., taking a gram of DXM once would be more damaging than taking 300mg every weekend for 2 months.
 
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