"Your friend shows up to a dinner party late. He is disorganized, with a confused affect, stains on his shirt, and bloodshot eyes. He eats all 50 of the mini pizzas you have laid out, and then apologizes, saying he didn't know why he was so hungry. What substance is your friend most likely on?
A) Cannibis
B) Phencyclidine
C) Opiates
D) Benzodiazepines
E) Cocaine"
I started for a moment at the question, not grasping for the answer, written as it was in neon lights on a billboard for all to see, but in a brief flash of reverie. Five different dinner parties, with five different friends, and five different chemical additives. In one, this one, a artificially starving friend, brain doused with cannabinoids, triggering a relapse to a more primal state, a drive to satiety the most important thing in his world. In another, a crazed man, immune to pain and with the strength of lunacy, rampages through the house, PCP (phencyclidine) having added to my soiree a jerky psychotic bull to destroy my china. In two, a similar scene, a sleepy addle brained friend, constantly falling face down into his soup, drowning in a sea of tranquil euphoria. Finally, a hyper compatriot, not hungry in the least, but telling us at a fevered clip the story of his life.
These thoughts burst through my brain, the result of days of study of the neurochemistry and behavioral patterns of each of these substances. For a moment, I am frustrated. All that work, all that understanding, and this is the question they ask?
But I accept it, and move on, wishing wryly that all of my cases could present as poorly written stereotypes.
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