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 Simplepowa
Socially Awkward
Registered: 03/06/09
Posts: 3,275
Loc: Canada 
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 SPRAY OF HOPE - Military developing anti-suicide nasal spray as deaths hit record numbers  2
#16734176 - 08/20/12 10:44 PM (9 months, 23 days ago) |
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As the suicide rate among soldiers climbs to the highest levels in history, the Army is hoping Americans might one day treat their mental health woes with a single sniff.
The Army has just handed a $3 million grant to researchers at the University of Indiana’s School of Medicine for the creation of an anti-suicide nasal spray. The project, to be led by Dr. Michael Kubek, an associate professor of neurobiology, is arguably one of the more unusual military efforts to thwart a record number of suicides among active-duty personnel and veterans.
“Suicide is the toughest enemy I have faced in my 37 years in the Army,” Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, the Army’s vice chief of staff, said this week in announcing new suicide numbers. Austin is spearheading his service’s efforts to find ways to halt the surge in suicides.
“That said, I do believe suicide is preventable,” Austin added. “To combat it effectively will require sophisticated solutions aimed at helping individuals to build resiliency and strengthen their life coping skills.”
According to Kubek and his colleagues, a snort of their suicide-stopping neurochemical — a naturally occurring compound called thyrotropin-releasing hormone, or TRH — could be the solution.
Suicide among American troops has increased steadily since the start of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In July, the number of suicides among active-duty soldiers reached 26 — more than double the number in June and the highest for any month since the Army began keeping such statistics.
The Pentagon reported in June that suicides among soldiers have averaged one per day this year, an 18 percent increase in suicides during the same period last year, and have now surpassed the rate of combat fatalities.
“We’ve known since the 1970s that TRH has antidepressant effects, and it works quite rapidly,” Kubek, whose work has been instrumental in uncovering how TRH impacts the brain, told The Daily. “The bottom-line problem has been figuring out how to get it into the brain.”
Earlier trials of TRH already showed that boosting an individual’s levels can quickly decrease suicidal ideas, depression and bipolar disorders. But doctors have until now relied on spinal taps to dose patients — because TRH can’t cross the blood-brain barrier by more traditional methods, like pills or injections.
By harnessing new advancements in nanotechnology, however, Kubek’s research team has now devised nanoparticle drug-delivery systems, designed to dissolve over time inside the brain, that can safely usher TRH across the blood-brain barrier when inserted into the human nasal cavity.
The nanoparticle breakthrough was enough to convince military brass that Kubek’s nasal spray just might have a shot at preventing suicides. The project’s three-year Army grant will be used to ascertain whether TRH and the drug-delivery systems are safe, and then conduct a clinical trial to “show, in human patients, that this really can save lives,” Kubek said.
And like a myriad of military medical breakthroughs before it, the spray might one day make it into the hands, and noses, of civilian patients. Already, the National Institute of Mental Health has funded research that used TRH to treat civilians suffering from bipolar disorder and depression. “This is far from a soldiers-only solution,” Kubek said. “Potentially, if this works, we have an entirely new type of pharmacology.”
Indeed, experts in the realm of civilian mental health said they’re heartened by the research. “This is a brilliant idea,” Dr. Ken Duckworth, medical director for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, told The Daily. “It would solve one of the biggest problems we have with medication used today. It might work, but it doesn’t work fast enough.”
Should the program succeed, TRH wouldn’t entirely replace traditional antidepressants. Instead, Kubek envisions using it as a rapid-fire prevention tactic among patients in crisis, or immediately after a patient starts taking antidepressants, such as Prozac or Zoloft, which typically take four to six weeks to kick in.
“The phase directly after starting an antidepressant is very vulnerable time frame in a patient’s life,” he said, adding that patients aged 18-24, like much of the military population, are most at-risk during this period. “The nasal spray would stabilize them right away, while they wait for the [antidepressants] to do their job.”
Nationwide, suicides are the 10th leading cause of death among adults, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and rates continue to hold steady or increase across demographics. “As a public health concern, suicide is something we haven’t had success in addressing,” Duckworth said. “There is a crying need out there for something like this.”
http://www.thedaily.com/page/2012/08/17/081712-news-anti-suicide-spray-1-4/
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If you can't control drugs in a maximum security prison, then how can you control drugs in a free society?
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If it's true that there was a Big Bang, everything that each of us are was once contained in that needle tip of highly condensed matter. Over time, the Universe grew in ways which enabled it to see and understand itself. We are the universe looking back at itself.
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nooneman
Stranger
Registered: 04/25/09
Posts: 5,849
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Re: SPRAY OF HOPE - Military developing anti-suicide nasal spray as deaths hit record numbers [Re: Simplepowa] 1
#16734410 - 08/20/12 11:22 PM (9 months, 23 days ago) |
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I bet a combination of meth and heroin would make an AMAZING anti-suicide spray. 110% effective.
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chopstick
slightly racist
Registered: 07/26/08
Posts: 1,164
Loc: Chin's Wok
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Re: SPRAY OF HOPE - Military developing anti-suicide nasal spray as deaths hit record numbers [Re: nooneman]
#16734510 - 08/20/12 11:39 PM (9 months, 23 days ago) |
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Haha, that might be a bit much. One day I'd like to market a psilocybin & MDMA nasal spray..
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better than sporks!
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 Grogan
Shroomieologist
Registered: 05/20/03
Posts: 1,139
Last seen: 1 day, 13 hours
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Re: SPRAY OF HOPE - Military developing anti-suicide nasal spray as deaths hit record numbers [Re: chopstick] 4
#16734890 - 08/21/12 12:43 AM (9 months, 23 days ago) |
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wow.... creeeeeeepy.
they are trying to make killing, bombing and maiming a happy thing guys this is COOL!
They really want to kill themselves to free themselves from the military implants..
I can just see them jumping on a guy thats freaking out in combat and wanting to kill himself, them ramming white bottles of "IT MAKES WAR HAPPY" in their noses, after 10 minutes he picks up his gun and calmly starts shooting brains..
Why don't they just put a drug dosing machine in every soldiers brain so they press a button and they get drugged?? better yet how about legalize opium and shit so there is NO reason for a war?
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"Maybe a cow occasionally ate a shroom, but it certainly wouldn't be such a potent shroom that the cow would be trippin balls. " LOL
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venetianblinds
venetianblondes
Registered: 05/25/11
Posts: 2,183
Loc: 
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Re: SPRAY OF HOPE - Military developing anti-suicide nasal spray as deaths hit record numbers [Re: Grogan]
#16735003 - 08/21/12 01:04 AM (9 months, 23 days ago) |
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1.hold apparatus up to nostril.
2.squeeze trigger
3.suicide thereafter not possible
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Style is the answer to everything.
A fresh way to approach a dull or dangerous thing
To do a dull thing with style is preferable to doing a dangerous thing without it
To do a dangerous thing with style is what I call art. ~Bukowski
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Nullface
Registered: 09/04/11
Posts: 4,716
Loc: USA
Last seen: 59 minutes, 10 seconds
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Re: SPRAY OF HOPE - Military developing anti-suicide nasal spray as deaths hit record numbers [Re: venetianblinds] 2
#16735289 - 08/21/12 02:07 AM (9 months, 23 days ago) |
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Yeah this is pretty disgusting. Further proof the military doesn't think of you as anything other than a disposable drone.
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hockeyplyr1057
Music Lover
Registered: 03/20/07
Posts: 554
Last seen: 15 days, 14 hours
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Re: SPRAY OF HOPE - Military developing anti-suicide nasal spray as deaths hit record numbers [Re: Simplepowa] 1
#16735469 - 08/21/12 02:47 AM (9 months, 23 days ago) |
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Every time that I read "TRH" my mind kept seeing "THC" 
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All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. -Gandalf
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bloodsheen
ChemChaplin
Registered: 09/24/08
Posts: 2,666
Last seen: 4 days, 17 hours
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Re: SPRAY OF HOPE - Military developing anti-suicide nasal spray as deaths hit record numbers [Re: Nullface]
#16735472 - 08/21/12 02:47 AM (9 months, 23 days ago) |
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Hm, this is pretty odd. So its like an instant anti-depressant?
I agree with some of the other (albeit sarcastic) posts about just using drugs. How is this different from like getting high? Its a short fix for a long-term problem. Plus, whos to say it wouldn't be psychologically addictive? I guess we'll find out soon enough...
Also, 3 million? Fuckin chump change
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A cautious young fellow named Lodge / Had seat belts installed in his Dodge. / When his date was strapped in / He committed a sin / Without even leaving the garage. That's clever, isn't it?-A boy and his dog
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The Vapor
Lost In A Tea Daze
Registered: 03/22/10
Posts: 6,974
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Re: SPRAY OF HOPE - Military developing anti-suicide nasal spray as deaths hit record numbers [Re: bloodsheen]
#16735479 - 08/21/12 02:49 AM (9 months, 23 days ago) |
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Sounds like some sort of fucking mind control to me.
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bloodsheen
ChemChaplin
Registered: 09/24/08
Posts: 2,666
Last seen: 4 days, 17 hours
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Re: SPRAY OF HOPE - Military developing anti-suicide nasal spray as deaths hit record numbers [Re: The Vapor]
#16735492 - 08/21/12 02:52 AM (9 months, 23 days ago) |
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Also how do you test this? I mean really, how do you prove somebody is gonna kill themselves? Would the testers ask "Do you feel like killing yourself more or less since you used this spray?" 
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A cautious young fellow named Lodge / Had seat belts installed in his Dodge. / When his date was strapped in / He committed a sin / Without even leaving the garage. That's clever, isn't it?-A boy and his dog
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Nullface
Registered: 09/04/11
Posts: 4,716
Loc: USA
Last seen: 59 minutes, 10 seconds
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Re: SPRAY OF HOPE - Military developing anti-suicide nasal spray as deaths hit record numbers [Re: bloodsheen] 2
#16735509 - 08/21/12 02:56 AM (9 months, 23 days ago) |
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One step closer to an inhuman, unfeeling, unsympathetic killing machine. The massacres that are about to unfold will be legend and nightmare.
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pyrate999
INTP
Registered: 03/07/10
Posts: 6,902
Loc: Wrong place, wrong time.
Last seen: 9 hours, 45 minutes
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Re: SPRAY OF HOPE - Military developing anti-suicide nasal spray as deaths hit record numbers [Re: Grogan]
#16735536 - 08/21/12 03:07 AM (9 months, 23 days ago) |
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This can't be good. 
Quote:
Grogan said:
wow.... creeeeeeepy.
they are trying to make killing, bombing and maiming a happy thing guys this is COOL!
They really want to kill themselves to free themselves from the military implants..
I can just see them jumping on a guy thats freaking out in combat and wanting to kill himself, them ramming white bottles of "IT MAKES WAR HAPPY" in their noses, after 10 minutes he picks up his gun and calmly starts shooting brains..
Why don't they just put a drug dosing machine in every soldiers brain so they press a button and they get drugged?? better yet how about legalize opium and shit so there is NO reason for a war?
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Do you have a cat?  
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CidneyIndole
www.shroomery.OG
Registered: 05/16/05
Posts: 3,880
Loc: Love's Secret Domain
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Re: SPRAY OF HOPE - Military developing anti-suicide nasal spray as deaths hit record numbers [Re: Grogan]
#16735632 - 08/21/12 03:35 AM (9 months, 23 days ago) |
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Quote:
venetianblinds said:
1.hold apparatus up to nostril.
2.squeeze trigger
3.suicide thereafter not possible
But also this:
Quote:
Grogan said:
wow.... creeeeeeepy.
they are trying to make killing, bombing and maiming a happy thing guys this is COOL!
Fascinating technology, though. I remember a while back on opiophile they were talking about coating loperamide with some kind of particle to sneak it past the BBB.
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I am me. We are You.
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badchad
Mad Scientist
Registered: 03/02/05
Posts: 9,217
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Re: SPRAY OF HOPE - Military developing anti-suicide nasal spray as deaths hit record numbers [Re: Simplepowa]
#16735745 - 08/21/12 12:22 PM (9 months, 23 days ago) |
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I'd speculate on a number of things: TRH is an approved drug so its safety profile is well known.
My understanding is that its a hormone, so its likely to have longer term effects, as opposed to other small molecule drugs that act director on neurotransmitter receptor (e.g., it won't get you high).
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...the whole experience is (and is as) a profound piece of knowledge. It is an indellible experience; it is forever known. I have known myself in a way I doubt I would have ever occurred except as it did.
Smith, P. Bull. Menninger Clinic (1959) 23:20-27; p. 27.
...most subjects find the experience valuable, some find it frightening, and many say that is it uniquely lovely.
Osmond, H. Annals, NY Acad Science (1957) 66:418-434; p.436
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frylock91
Registered: 07/25/10
Posts: 8,607
Loc: Richmond, VA
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Re: SPRAY OF HOPE - Military developing anti-suicide nasal spray as deaths hit record numbers [Re: Grogan]
#16736119 - 08/21/12 01:56 PM (9 months, 23 days ago) |
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How does trying to minimize suicide mean they're trying to make killing and maiming a happy thing? I don't understand.
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 PSN: Upperlevel804
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bloodsheen
ChemChaplin
Registered: 09/24/08
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Re: SPRAY OF HOPE - Military developing anti-suicide nasal spray as deaths hit record numbers [Re: frylock91]
#16736147 - 08/21/12 02:01 PM (9 months, 23 days ago) |
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Quote:
frylock91 said:
How does trying to minimize suicide mean they're trying to make killing and maiming a happy thing? I don't understand.
Shroomerites tend to be extremely anti-war and anti-government. They think its a plot to keep soldiers mentally sound for the sole purpose of keeping them out in the field.
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A cautious young fellow named Lodge / Had seat belts installed in his Dodge. / When his date was strapped in / He committed a sin / Without even leaving the garage. That's clever, isn't it?-A boy and his dog
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pyrate999
INTP
Registered: 03/07/10
Posts: 6,902
Loc: Wrong place, wrong time.
Last seen: 9 hours, 45 minutes
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Re: SPRAY OF HOPE - Military developing anti-suicide nasal spray as deaths hit record numbers [Re: frylock91]
#16736167 - 08/21/12 02:05 PM (9 months, 23 days ago) |
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Quote:
frylock91 said:
How does trying to minimize suicide mean they're trying to make killing and maiming a happy thing? I don't understand.
Why would someone in war want to take their own life?
I think it may have to do with killing and maiming being a sad thing, but I don't know for certain.
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Do you have a cat?
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unknown1123
Experimental
Registered: 05/15/08
Posts: 4,580
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Re: SPRAY OF HOPE - Military developing anti-suicide nasal spray as deaths hit record numbers [Re: pyrate999]
#16737248 - 08/21/12 05:16 PM (9 months, 22 days ago) |
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Ketamine nasal spray, 100% effective
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SCleROTiUM_LICK
ResearchedFiction Writer
Registered: 11/08/06
Posts: 846
Last seen: 16 hours, 9 minutes
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Re: SPRAY OF HOPE - Military developing anti-suicide nasal spray as deaths hit record numbers [Re: bloodsheen]
#16737357 - 08/21/12 05:30 PM (9 months, 22 days ago) |
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Quote:
bloodsheen said:
Quote:
frylock91 said:
How does trying to minimize suicide mean they're trying to make killing and maiming a happy thing? I don't understand.
Shroomerites tend to be extremely anti-war and anti-government. They think its a plot to keep soldiers mentally sound for the sole purpose of keeping them out in the field.
Yeah, the cynicism is a little overboard here. If this were some kind of ploy to make people into killing machines above and beyond what is already done, we wouldn't be hearing about this before it was even developed.
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SCleROTiUM_LICK
ResearchedFiction Writer
Registered: 11/08/06
Posts: 846
Last seen: 16 hours, 9 minutes
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Re: SPRAY OF HOPE - Military developing anti-suicide nasal spray as deaths hit record numbers [Re: SCleROTiUM_LICK]
#16737378 - 08/21/12 05:32 PM (9 months, 22 days ago) |
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Hell, maybe they could even spread it into the air and thwart suicide bombers. Who's to say?
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