Maria -- By my figuring, and in common parlance, a pharmaceutical IS a drug -- which is of course why places pharmaceuticals are sold used to be called drug stores.  Btw I don't think it's useful to think of the beer of your two-beer buzz as a drug (that's part of a point I made before), and "What is a drug?" is not to me a very useful question.  On the use of social sciences -- I'd suggest some paleohistorical anthropology or possibly historical paleoanthropology.  I'd like to take off from a base in Siegel's Intoxication and ask when human beings began, ritually, ceremonially, consciously to seek intoxication.  My guess is about 40,000 years ago, a time to which some have traced the origins of human language (and the ceremonial Chauvet paintings, etc.) -- but I've already suggested that possibility in This Strange Illness. -- Jared

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Just to confuse things even more, my sources say that hydrocodone with acetaminiphen (Vicodin or Lortab, and please forgive my spelling) is the most prescribed pharmaceutical.  It's a great pain reliever, but it also is quite pleasant if you don't have to work or otherwise function in life (at least for me)

Again, let me ask about pleasure:  A two-beer buzz is quite nice.  In my last job I interviewed drug users, and they all spoke of the pleasure of the drug, at least at first.  When does a pharmaceutical become a drug? Many of the users I talked with started opioid abuse with Vicodin and Oxycodone.

David Fahey <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Good point, Ernie. I just read a news article that called caffeine "the
world's most popular psychoactive drug." Are we weakening the meaning of
the word drug when we apply it to a bottle of Coke, a glass of iced tea,
and a cup of expresso? There is the further complication that the word
drug is used for medicines, both prescription and over the counter. I am
told that lipitor (my nightly pill) is the most prescribed drug in the
world. Should I expect the ADHS to study cholesterol-lowering medication?

David Fahey

At 12:19 PM 3/29/2005, you wrote:
>Hi,
>
>Might we begin by at least striving towards basic agreement on precisely
>what is a "drug"?
>
>ernie




Maria G. Swora, Ph.D. MPH
Department of Sociology
Benedictine College
Atchison, Kansas 66002

Don't believe everything you think.


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