I've had a good day today. I even studied some psychopharmacology today! It's an interest of mine and I won't bore you with ALL the details, but I found this particularly interesting -- it's about alcohol. Most drugs hit multiple neuro-receptors, and a lot of associated behaviors/activities overlap but this is a distinct one where major roles can be seen. So with Alcohol, you're working on Glutamate (associated with learning and memory), GABA ( associated sedation and anti-anxiety) , Dopamine (associated with saliency(liking) , rewarding and reinforcing behaviors), and Opioid receptors (associated with pain and also reinforcement of behaviors).

Alcohol inihibts glutamate receptors (thus memory loss), excites GABA(a) receptors (thus leading to relaxation and anti-anxiety), excited dopamine (causing you you like the effects reinforces you to do it again), and excites opoid receptors (decreases pain but more importantly also reinforcement of behavior). --it's no wonder it's addictive, it's a quadruple threat there! Of course, this is just actue effects, chronic long term effects on these receptors are all very damaging!

Anyway, I'll leave it at that, I really hate to bore people with my posts. Change of subject -- I had a great time this weekend. Im glad I got to see my friend and he won't be in the country for like a month so that at least gives me a break for a while haha. I appreciate him very much and spending time with me and my family -- but it can be a lot.