This is my first contribution to this listserv. I joined last week and came back on Wednesday to many posts. I have a passion for history and the history of this disease/condition/syndrome or whatever the heck you want to call it. I have a degree in Pharmacy and one in the history of medicine from the University of Washington. I teach at Bellevue Community College in the ALDAC program and have been teaching the History of Addiction to A/D counselors and others for a few years now, as well as relapse prevention and pharmacology. 
 
I must say that when my own personal addiction ended my pharmacy career and I ended up in AA and NA (or in other words, the current mutual support societies) the so called "big book" made no sense to me at all and the first books on "recovery" I read included Not God and John Barleycorn which I guess shows me to one of those who likes the overall picture and where I fit in it.
 
In regards to what defines a drug, well in 3rd year Pharmacy School we spent a large number of hours discussing just that and like in most disciplines, the further in one gets the more complex it becomes, (i.e. are Vitamins drugs, are is that a dose related question, 30mg Vitamin C vs. 1000mg or 6000mg Vitamin C).
 
I have copied a few slides from my main history PowerPoint I give to the patients here at Hazelden Springbrook (a facility that specializes in treating health care professionals - doctors, nurses, pharmacist, etc.). For whatever it is worth.
 
Thanks for having this listerv.
 
Hippocratic School Disease and Cures

Both were as a result of natural processes, Old view a pharmakós or scapegoat was used to absorb the alien impurity (magic and religious beliefs) Symbolic transference of the malady from one person to another person or animal.

Used phármakon a suitable drug or technique: i.e. using opium to treat cholera, Cholera causes diarrhea, Opium causes constipation.

As opposed to sacrificing youths with the litany: "become our excrement" or "pay the debt of the people."

n 
Hippocrates defined a Drug = a substance that instead of being "overcome" by the body nand assimilated in nutrition nIs capable of "overcoming" the body nWhile provoking and causing large changes in nin very small doses compared with other foods norganic function, or in mood, or in both
 
A Short History Of Medicine:

        2000 BC - Here, eat this root. 

        1000 AD - That root is heathen. Here, say this prayer. 

        1850 AD - That prayer is superstition. Here, drink this potion. 

        1940 AD - That potion is snake oil. Here, swallow this pill. 

        1985 AD - That pill is ineffective. Here, take this antibiotic. 

        2000 AD - That antibiotic is artificial. Here, eat this root

Larry Lombard, Compliance Coordinator,Halzelden Springbrook, [log in to unmask]

________________________________

From: Alcohol and Drugs History Society [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jared Lobdell
Sent: Tuesday, March 29, 2005 11:42 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: alcohol and other drugs


Hi! Ernie -- Striving, but probably not reaching, I think.  By common usage (at least as far as I have observed it)  a drug is a biological or chemical entity (BE or CE) taken/ingested/administered for the purposes of human system alteration, but not classified as a food.  Or, by 19th century usage, a drug is a substance/thing/ item listed in the Pharmacopeia.  Clearly the second definition is insufficient (it wouldn't include PCP or MDMA not to mention all the SSRIs MOAIs, etc.  The first would lead to counting caffeine as a drug but not sugar, not to mention the question of chocolate, which many consider both a food and a drug -- not to mention beer (which likewise could be considered both).  So what we're left with, I think, is the necessity to choose as a definition of "drug" whatever definition will, in Lakatosian terms, lead us to a progressive research programme -- and not to use a definition ("boundary-drawing") that will lead us to! a degenerating research programme.  Accordingly, I would deep-six the inclusion of alcohol as a drug, even tho' it satisfies both definitions above, simply because (in my view) it distracts from making real advances on the etiology and epidemiology of alcoholism and wastes time on subsidiary matters like whether alcoholism is a form of drug addiction (and all the rest of what some have called the AOD syndrome, with the accent on the O).  But if someone can show me how defining alcohol as a drug will improve our research programme, I'll be happy to listen (assuming what is said is medically and biogenetically relevant). -- Jared Lobdell 
 

        -------------- Original message -------------- 
	
        > Hi, 
        > 
        > Might we begin by at least striving towards basic agreement on precisely 
        > what is a "drug"? 
        > 
        > ernie