The Number is 420

This blog was written in two parts.  The first was on April 20, after my morning coffee at 5am, when inspiration suddenly showed up, uninvited.  I wrote a little bit then, but left the main ramble to be written later (and a ramble it should be - the topic is 4/20, after all).  That newer part has been now added.  The two are separated by a pukish-green band. I call that colour "forensic green" 😈:

                                                                                                                                                                

Well, I decided to start another post today, even though I don't have much time and therefore I won't finish it.

It is April 20  today, which means Mary Jane  is on the minds of many.  Who?  I will explain.

Also the jokes of the late-night talk show host Stephen Colbert, whose monologue I sometimes watch with my morning coffee, were especially mathematical, and then Canadian, and therefore very pleasing to me today.

There are other things heavy on my mind, like muons  not only flying through pyramids, to be caught and analyzed, but also indicating that our physics might have gaps bigger than we think.  But that may have to wait until later, when time comes to also talk about Ramesses II  and girls with pony tails.

For now, it will have to wait.

April 20, or 4/20 in the American date format, is the day associated with smoking/consuming marijuana (cannabis).  This is because "420" is the popular term used for that drug.  Another term is "weed" and another "Mary Jane".  Possessing marijuana  used to be illegal, but it is now legal in Canada and many other countries and US states, too.  In fact, marijuana possession has been decriminalized in all US states, except for Idaho.

This might have to do with the fact that Idaho  was recently ranked to be the dumbest US state of them all, by educational achievement.  (Well, that's harsh.  Let's call it the "least smart" instead.  Or the "51st Smartest State".  Shall we?) 🔗

It is true that the state is called the "Gem State", but this is because almost every type of gemstone has been found within the state's borders, not because of the gem-like qualities of its intellectual achievements, especially when one considers the legislature. 🔗

For example, consider Sunday.  Many states restrict various activities on Sundays, such as hunting or the sale of alcohol.  However, Idaho reportedly also restricts carousel/merry-go-round riding.  Even though that might be just an urban legend, some people apparently did research on this and found out that this thing comes from a 1910 court case that was based on the Sunday Rest Law  (which also banned other activities).

Although the above is meant only as a joke, because the law is not really enforced (I think), Idaho  still separates itself from the rest with some of its other, more serious laws.

I don't consume marijuana and don't really like when others smoke it nearby because it smells awful to me.  However, it is an intriguing drug with an interesting history, made from a plant with fantastic properties for practical use.  It is one of the earliest plants to be cultivated, with finds suggesting its use as early as 10,000 years ago and throughout the Neolithic Age  (the last stage of the Stone Age).

The plant and products made from it have been in use ever since.  The word "canvas" is derived from "cannabis".  Even though canvas is now made from cotton or linen or even PVC, historically it was made from hemp - the cannabis  plant.

Note: today, we usually use two homophones (same sound, different meaning) of the same origin: canvas is a coarse fabric used for painting or similar, while canvass is an activity of a careful examination of an area or a survey.

This is all for now.  Later, I will edit and expand this blog.

                                                                                                                                                                 

Interestingly, quite a few smart, intelligent, knowledgeable people consider moderate consummation of cannabis to be harmless, while others, just as smart and knowledgeable, disagree.  Some of them are passionate about their opinions and consider them established facts.  I know people in both camps and value their judgement, especially when it is based on deeper knowledge of the biology and chemistry involved.  Yet, they disagree.

The number is 420 because 4:20 pm was the time a group of California high-school students chose to meet to smoke cannabis.  They started calling the drug "420".   Since one of them was a "roadie" for the very popular band Grateful  Dead, the usage has spread to popular culture.  ("Roadie" is a member of the "road crew", who travel with the band, set up the stage and do all sorts of other needed work and then generally hang around the band and their fans.)

Note: Using "420" and not, say, "430",  is unfortunate, because 4/20 is Hitler's birthday and neo-nazis sometimes use that coincidence for hidden messaging.  "420" is actually banned from usage on car license plates in Austria precisely for this reason.  "430" (just 10 minutes later) would have been much better, because 4/30 is the day when the monster killed himself at the end of the war, so we can all celebrate that.

In the past, US farmers were actually required to grow hemp/cannabis, for industrial use.  However, when Mexican immigrants in the early 20th century started using cannabis as a recreational drug, the US government did not like that.  The immigrants were using the Mexican Spanish term "marijuana" for cannabis.  That term was then used by the US government in its anti-cannabis campaign with the intent to associate the drug with Mexicans and appeal to the racist sentiments of English-speaking Americans.  It was thought that this association would increase the society's acceptance of and support for outlawing the drug.  The effort has met with success and marijuana is, on the US federal level, illegal to this day.

But the cannabis plant is still grown for industrial use and serves a great variety of non-drug related needs.  Currently, various laws regulating the plant often distinguish between "hemp", which is cannabis with less than 0.3% THC (the psychoactive component), and "marijuana", which is cannabis with more than 0.3% THC.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

There are other things on my mind today, too.

While I was sipping my (very) early morning coffee, Stephen Colbert (the late-night talk show host in the recording from the previous evening) was making a whole bunch of silly, yet funny jokes, e.g.

Honeymoon Salad = Lettuce alone, no dressing

• "Lettuce alone" sounds like "let us alone"
• "no dressing" means both "no sauce poured on a salad" and, approximately, "having no clothes on"

But then he made other silly jokes that were not so funny:

He described the Olympics as showing you sports that are so obscure and strange that just the description of the activity alone makes the whole thing funny, e.g. "canoe slalom".   Wait just a minute!  That's not right!  I have done that sport and I loved it!  Nothing strange about that thing. 

Whitewater canoeing and kayaking is fun but it is not for the faint of heart.  Most people can't do it, not even an approximation thereof, and if they do, then only quite recreationally (as I did).  The required skill is non-trivial, especially on a single-handed canoe (as the one in the picture - in a canoe you kneel and your paddle has a single blade; in a kayak you sit and use two blades).  If you don't sufficiently master the skill, you will flip.  And if you are not prepared for that or panic or are unwise and unlucky, you can drown.

Some do drown, especially outside the fake world of competitions and in the real world of real rivers, with no slalom gates, only rapids, waterfalls, boulders and a lot of white in between.  It is a manly  sport.

Not like that other thing where you dress up in oh-so-tightly wrapped tighty-tights, throw some funny-shaped thing around for a second or two and then mostly roll with and on each other on the ground, all while wearing a very big helmet, because, you know, you could get a boo-boo.

No sir, on whitewater you wear a helmet, not because you might bump into some other guy, but because if you don't and you flip, the rocks in the river can easily smash your skull open and that won't be a boo-boo that any amount of shiny tighty-tights can fix.

So making jokes about my (former) sport isn't right.  It just ain't funny, man, OK?!   🤣

Note: No need to call things names - that would be rude.  That sport of tighty-tights shall remain unnamed.

Note: In the future, I might address other references in today's Colbert's jokes, such as when he mentions the Council on Nicea  or the Japanese Love Hotels (rabu hoteru). Maybe I'll explain how the former relates to Earth axial precession, problems with the Hebrew Calendar and Carl Friedrich Gauss, one of the greatest mathematicians of all times, while the latter relates to Nintendo, Tokyo Olympics and involves UFOs, too.  One can even talk about Edo-period Osaka and Roman Pompeii.  Perhaps I'll throw in my experiences with the Tokyo Capsule Hotels (kapuseru hoteru), who knows. 😀

By the way, there are a number of other salad jokes.  I liked the one on The Red Green Show  (in the 90's) about how to make a tossed salad.  While most people mean by that just to mix the contents a little, Red Green  took it literally.  He put a bowl of salad on a table made from wooden planks on two supports, then cut the center plank with the bowl on it in the middle and hit the other half (on the other side of the support) with a big sledgehammer.  That propelled/tossed the salad high in the air and you've got yourself a tossed salad.   I always wanted to replicate that, but never did.

Talking about Adolf Hitler and silly jokes.  (The monster was not silly or humorous, but laughing at  him is OK.)   When I was a boy, my father told me this joke from the times after the war (WWII):

A man goes to the government office asking to change his name.

"That's not something you can do just like that," says the bureaucrat, "you need to have a valid reason."

"I do have a valid reason," says the man.  "Everyone looks at me strangely when they hear it and tells me how bad a name it is.  It really is bad, and I just hate it."

"OK, what's your name then?"

"Adolf Dumbass."

"That sounds like a valid reason to me," says the bureaucrat. "So what kind of a new name would you like to have now?"

"John Dumbass."

Colbert does not do just silly jokes, but also has a bit of a monologue, sometimes followed by a segment of a more lighthearted fun, where he is making jokes about strange happenings in the world.  This is called Meanwhile, or now, during the Covid-19 pandemic, Quarantine-while.

He introduces the segment with an elaborate, complicated metaphor, first indicating how incredibly well-crafted and thought-through is his monologue and then how arbitrary, slapped-together at the last minute is his Meanwhile segment.  In every show, he (or his writers, I should say) uses a different, fun, ridiculous metaphor, with subjects ranging from food to art to buildings.  Today his metaphor was math, which was great fun (for me).  It was probably fun for him, too, because he could not keep a straight face (as he normally does) and chuckled once or twice while plowing through that mountain of words.

I could not resist and made some notes of it, so here it goes:

You know (Colbert says), I spend most of my time seeking out the finest, most topical integers and plugging them into the variables a, b, and c  with the aim of using the Pythagorean  model to demonstrate that there is no value where a^n + b^n = c^n  for any integer value of n  greater than 2, to provide the elegant and beautiful and undeniable proof of the Fermat's Last Theorem that is my monologue,

but sometimes, just sometimes, upon waking up in the dumpster behind the high school after a savage beating by the AP Calculus Club who caught me in the supply closet stealing textbooks to sell on the black market,  I raid the recycling bin for some used graph paper, turn it over to the blank side, yank a loose tooth from my mouth and use the still moist root to draw crude X  and Y  axes and a wobbling sine curve, without showing my work, and then shove it under Mr. Coleman's door before the 3rd period to finish the bloody check-minus  homework assignment of news that is my segment Meanwhile.

Ouch, this was so complicated that it will need an explanation, which will probably kill the joke 😬:

• "^" means "power to"
• Pythagorean  theorem states that a^2 + b^2 = c^2  (in a right-angled  triangle)
  
• Fermat's Last Theorem is known to be extremely simple to state and extremely difficult to prove.  It was proven eventually, but it took 360 years of math work to do so.   (I mentioned it in my "The Number is 42"  post from earlier this month.)
  
• AP Calculus is a notably difficult Advanced Placement Calculus course & exam
• graph paper is paper with a grid pattern printed on it for use in plotting graphs of functions and drawing mathematical curves
• sine is a trigonometric function with a wave-like graph
• check-minus (✓-) is a grade in the coarse check-grading system used by some teachers that means "barely passable"
  

• showing my work ... to get a full grade, a student must show his "work", i.e. demonstrate how he obtained his result
• under the door ... shoving the homework under the door of the teacher's office is a common method of delivery of homework when it is not collected in class
  
• 3rd period  is the block of time allocated to the 3rd class of the day
• Mr. Xxx  is a typical way to refer to a teacher whose name is Xxx

At a later time Colbert  also commented on the clothes that the Americans and the Canadians are going to wear at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics (to be held in July 2021).

While the Americans (on the right) are looking like kids from a "NASA prep school"  (prep = an expensive private "preparatory" school), the Canadians look very different with - what's that? - a Canadian Batman T-shirt.

 

He wasn't wrong.

He then followed with a scene from a "Canadian" version of Batman, where the bad guy was constantly saying "sorry" while beating people up.   (If you don't know, our American cousins see us, Canadians, as being excessively polite and saying "sorry"  too much.  In a way, they are correct.)

So that was my morning coffee.

Note: I had better stop watching that show.  If viewing of one third of one show generated all this rambling, what would happen if I watched a whole week of it? 😱  I hope/assume that other parts of the show or the episodes from other days are more boring, so that I can safely skip them or fall asleep if I try to watch in the evening instead of in the morning.

But that Canadian outfit is really weird.   Jeez Louise!   Me not likey too much!

Note: "Jeez Louise!"  is an expression my sea-faring daughter acquired from her globe-trotting British crew mates.  More about it in her blog: https://adasboatblog.blogspot.com/

Side note:  As described in her blog, my daughter has been sailing the Caribbean Sea since October (with a little break in the middle).  Oh, I am sooo envious!

Originally, they wanted to continue across the Pacific to Tahiti, but then Tahiti got closed because of Covid.  So they changed plans and decided to cross the Atlantic instead.  But on the (rough) trip back east from Panama (against strong winds), the boat got so beat up by waves that repairs were needed.  They had to stop in Sint Maarten and it is taking weeks to get it all done.  That exhausted the time allocated for that adventure, so now she'll be coming home without crossing the big pond.

Well, every cloud has a silver lining, as John Milton poetically told us all those centuries ago.  Because of the unexpected additional island time, she has now met so many interesting people and has done so many additional activities, that the experience will be with her for a very very long time.  I sent her this old Irish saying to express my opinion on the matter:

There are good ships,
And there are wood ships,
The ships that sail the sea. 

But the best ships,
Are friendships,
And may they always be.

By the way, 420 is also the name of the type of a sailboat young people typically use for learning how to sail and then how to race double-handed (with two people on the boat).  When she comes home, my sailor daughter will be coaching a 420 racing team, while her younger siblings will be sailing 420s in a non-racing way.  Hooray!  I'm very pleased with that outcome and it is a nice coincidence that I get to say that on 4/20.

But I digress.

Back to 420, the drug and 4/20, the date.  Actually, no, let's talk about that 4/30 that could have been (+10 minutes) but wasn't, instead (for a little bit).

On April 30, 1945 Adolf Hitler  shot himself.  That was, of course, very very good.  But that was also April 30, the day before May 1, the International Worker's Day, a big day in the communist calendar.  Stalin, whose Red Army  was fighting bitter street battles to take control of Berlin, had his sights set on showing the glory of his victory.  And he wanted to do it by May 1.  Extra effort (and extra dying) was employed to achieve that goal.  The Reichstag (means "Imperial Diet") was seen by many as a symbol of the German state and government (which is still the case).  The Soviet flag was meant to fly over it on May 1.  So the Red Army  battled on and after much effort, eventually, a crew of soldiers managed to hoist a Soviet flag there on the evening of April 30.  Except that there was no picture of it and that was important.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

Now I will interrupt this with a story my mother told me about her time, as a teenager, during the war and the Soviet liberation of her town, Brno.  At that time, she was hiding in a big house/villa by a lake, outside the city, with a bunch of other people.  One of them got shot by a passing plane and was dying on a table in the basement, while the roof of the building was taken by the Nazis to make a nest for a machine gun to shoot at the Russians across the lake.  Russians started shooting back and the whole situation was getting messy, so people in the building decided to get back to the city.  That involved going through some fields with an occasional bullet or rocket flying around.  To protect themselves, they were crawling in a ditch on the side of a road.

And there he was: a Soviet soldier walking casually on the road, just like that.  Bullets flying around here and there did not faze him - after years of going through horrific battlefields and wading through rivers of blood, sometimes literally, these guys were used to much worse.  As he looked down at the scared silly people in the ditch, he asked, as my mother then understood,

"What time is it?" (or maybe "How about these times? Eh?")

That was odd.  My mother was not perfectly fluent in Russian and also not fully versed in the crude variations of colloquial Czech, so she witnessed what she considered to be a truly bizarre interaction:

"Mother, give him some onions", said the man behind her.

His wife then took off her wristwatch and handed it to the soldier.

The soldier took the watch, pulled up his sleeve, and there it was: his arm was full of wrist watches, affixed next to each other, neatly in a row.  He strapped the new contribution next to the others and walked on.

Later, my mother was informed that what the soldier actually said was "давай часы!" (dhavay chasih!), which is a phrase that every Czech has eventually learned in those times.  Although vaguely related to telling time, it actually means "give me your wrist watch".  "Onions", of course, was the colloquial Czech for that thing, derived from the shape of pocket watches that people used in older times.

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

 

So now I will go back to that story of a Soviet flag over Reichstag.

Soviet soldiers actually did manage to get in by April 30 evening and raise their flag there.  However, no photo was taken and then the flag was shot down the next day by German snipers.  So the event was re-staged a couple of days later, with different soldiers.  The photographer was inspired by the famous photograph of American soldiers raising their flag on Iwo Jima (taken at the end of February) and wanted to have something like that for the Soviets, too.

He got his uncle in Moscow to sew together a large red flag from a red tablecloth used by the TASS news agency for official functions.  The tablecloth was "borrowed" from the warehouse of said agency.  He brought that flag to Berlin, picked up random soldiers on the street and climbed the building to photograph them raising the flag.  He wanted this to be done in a fashion somewhat similar that Iwo Jima photo, only more dramatic.  He succeeded (I think).  Taking the picture actually was a little bit dramatic, because there was a burning fire in the building and the staircase was in a very bad shape.  Gettting in and then getting out was not entirely trivial.  Note: The crude seams on the sewn tablecloth are clearly visible in the picture.  No matter. 🔗

However, there was a problem.  As was the case with many/most of the Soviet soldiers at that time, one of the soldiers involved had wrist watches all over, on both of his arms (and thus my mom's story above).  That was clearly visible in the picture, too.  Since looting was officially a no-no, this had to be corrected.  And it was.  With a sharp pin, the negative was doctored and the extra wristwatch had simply disappeared.

Note: Later, the picture was doctored even more, with smoke and fire added, and colours, too

 

Disclaimer: I very much dislike the Soviet Union (and what became of it, too) and am quite happy to begrime it and make fun of it.  But I do acknowledge how much her people and her soldiers, perhaps flawed and perhaps imperfect themselves, sacrificed to defeat the Nazis.  They literally saved many millions from a horrible fate and gave millions of their own lives to do so.  They remember that to this day and we should, too.

Side note: The flag in the picture from Iwo Jima, flying on top of Mount Suribachi, was actually not the original flag that was raised there, either.  There was a first, original flag, but it was too small (54x28") to be seen from other parts of the island, so they arranged for a bigger flag (96x56"), went up the mountain again and a flag was raised (and photographed) for the second time.  That's the one that became iconic.

Another side note: The American photographer, Joe Rosenthal, received the Pulitzer Prize for his picture.  The Russian photographer, Evgenii Khaldei, received no recognition, only a small caption "E.Khadlei"  when his photograph was published.

 

Both men came from families of Russian Jews, but their stories were very different.

 

Rosenthal's parents came to the US in 1911, and Rosenthal converted to catholicism at a young age.  Because of his poor eyesight, he was refused by both the Army and the Navy as a photographer.  He ended up working for the Associated Press.  He went through generally boring assignments, such as "documenting life on a ship."  Eventually, he was sent to the Pacific and landed on Iwo Jima, where he took that one photograph which defined his career, almost by accident.  After being informed that the flag had been already raised, half-way up as he was climbing the mountain, he wanted to turn back.  However, soldiers going down told him to continue, because the view from the mountain "was great".  So he did and found out there that a second flag would be raised.  He took a picture. 🔗

 

Khaldei's family came from the Ukraine's Donbass area (where there is ethnic fighting going on even now).  Anti-Jewish pogroms were quite common in Russia, especially in those regions and especially during the civil war of 1917, when he was born.  His mother was killed during one of those pogroms as she held him in her arms.  His father and sister were killed in 1941 by invading Nazis.

 

He made it his work to document the Nazi atrocities throughout the war - and he succeeded.  As a result of his work during the war, as well as that of other photographers, all people in the Soviet Union knew about the atrocities and had no illusions about their enemy.  (Not so much in the West - that had to wait.)  But the position of Jews in the Soviet Union started getting worse around 1943, for a host of reasons.  By the time the war ended, it was already bad, and in 1948 he was dismissed from his job for being Jewish.  His skills were questioned and his work was marginalized.  However, his photography eventually did find recognition, in the West.  Deservedly so.  His pictures, glorious or ordinary, haunting or uplifting, always tell a story. 🔗

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

Where was I?  Ah, 420.

So cannabis, when used as a drug, has two psychoactive components: THC and CBD.  They are chemically similar, but somewhat different in their effect.  While THC gives you a high - euphoria, CBD seems to be good against anxiety, depression, and seizures.

The two components and their two effects tend to work in tandem and that's how cannabis was understood and used throughout history.  However, more recently, as the drug was made illegal, and therefore very profitable, and as it was then consumed more and more and was competing against other drugs, "weed" needed to be made more potent.  So people meddled with it, and the concentration of THC has gradually increased.  Now it is much higher than ever before, and that "tandem" effect no longer works as before - some flavours are approaching a much more dangerous territory.

The drug, similarly to others, works by affecting the neurotransmitters in our brain.  That stuff always fascinates me.  There are about a dozen different molecules that our body parts use to send signals to each other.  Some in our brain, some in other places. 🔗↗

For example, Acetylcholine, ACh, is a neurotransmitter that signals muscles to contract.  When chemicals that mess with ACh, such as nerve agents, e.g. VX, get introduced into the body, the body loses control over its muscles.  People soil themselves and go into convulsions.  Soldiers that are hit with it not only die, but die in horrific ways that demoralize their fellow soldiers - the idea being that, for every soldier dead, there will be 10 not able to fight from the horror of witnessing what happened to their comrade.  That is the main reason, I was told as a young man being trained to be a chemical weapons officer (and by "chemical weapons" I mean "detecting/neutralizing them", not "using them"), why chemical weapons would continue to be used by armies - to instill fear into the opponent.  There are much better alternatives for actually achieving superiority on the battlefield.  Chemical weapons ain't it.  They are just nasty. 🔗

Interesting thing about VX: although considered very much an American chemical weapon, it was actually developed by the British in 1952, not Americans.  It was meant to be used as a pesticide, but it proved to be just too toxic.  However, as a means of killing people, not beetles, it was much more valuable.  It was significantly more stable than the G-series nerve gases that had been developed by the Germans.  It stayed on surfaces and remained toxic much longer, which was deemed good (not bad).  However, by 1956 the British renounced the use of chemical weapons, so instead of using their invention themselves they did a little horse-trading with the Americans,

and ended up exchanging the technical details on VX for technical details on how to make thermonuclear weapons (H-bombs).  Both sides came out with new ways to develop weapons of mass destruction, and that was considered good (not bad).

A horse walked into a bar
Bartender: Hey
Horse: Yes, please

Other neurotransmitters signal different things, but, if you mess with them, they can get quite nasty, too.  That's why I don't "do" drugs - even though I readily and happily put neurotransmitter-affecting chemicals into my body if I know what they will do and why I want them to do it.

Drugs affecting neurotransmitters have been, historically, used by populations and militaries.  Nazi leaders were known to be addicted to drugs.  For example, the nickname for Göring was Möring, because he was a morphine addict.  Others were addicted to methamphetamine and oxycodone.

Pervitin (a methamphetamine) was called the "people's drug" and was widely promoted and distributed.  Giving Pervitin to soldiers en masse was done on the initiative of Dr. Otto F. Ranke, who himself was a daily user.  This allowed soldiers to fight longer without a rest and, in a sense, made Blitzkrieg possible. (Blitzkrieg means "lightning war" - a form of war used by Germany to "surprise" and occupy her neighbours).  It also sometimes/often turned the soldiers into crazy beasts. 🔗

This was the first large-scale use of a synthetic drug on a battlefield and it was a success.  The manufacturer, Temmler, made a ton of money from the pills.  British press described the soldiers as "heavily drugged, fearless and berserk".  Foreign commanders were taken by surprise.  Churchill wrote in his memoirs: "I was dumbfounded ... it was one of the greatest surprises I have had in my life."

Roughly speaking, there are 3 main neurotransmitters in the brain that affect how we feel about ourselves and about doing things: dopamine, norepinephrine and serotonin.

All drugs for the brain, good or bad, seem to affect at least one of these three in some way.  Cannabis/THC affects the levels of dopamine 🔗 through a bit of a complicated mechanism, whose description involves labels like CB1 and GABA, so I'll skip that.  Except to say that all these drugs, the better ones, are truly wondrous and if they are taken in a way that will not get us addicted or mentally crippled or otherwise positioned to destroy our lives, they can be really helpful to make our lives not only bearable, but actually enjoyable - in a good way.  I like drugs a lot, especially(😝😯)/but only(👍😇) if they are used appropriately.  Just like knives and fire. 🔗

For example, take SSRI's (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors).  They affect serotonin, which controls happiness/depression, anxiety and things like that.  Serotin gets released and absorbed and released and absorbed and so it goes, while its levels in the brain then affect how we feel about things, such as this blog.  SSRI's slow down the absorption, so people end up with more serotonin and thus feel less depressed, if that was their problem.  It helps people with PTSD and make them (almost) whole again.  Fantastic!  Good stuff (I mean it).

Except when it isn't.  We all know (do we?) that Prozac (Fluoxetine)  can sometimes make people into something they weren't before and is not good.

And then it can get worse.  Consider this:

By the end of 1990's, Christopher Pittman, as a child, was in a sorry mental situation and was put on Paxil (an SSRI).  Then he moved and so on, and his new family doctor, being momentarily out of Paxil, reached into his drawer and gave him his free samples of Zoloft instead (another SSRI).  It didn't have a good effect and Pittman looked worse, so the bozo (the doctor, not Pittman) doubled the dosage.  That really did affect Pittman's serotonin levels, but not in a good way: instead of losing his sense of depression, he lost his sense of inhibition and went on a murderous rampage.  That was not the desired effect or a contemplated side-effect of the prescribed SSRI.  Not good.  Nevertheless, the drug company did relatively well in the ensuing trial and the jury found that the fault was with the crazy boy and not with the drug that made him crazier or even the reckless bozo doctor.

(By bozo, I mean a stupid, foolish person and not a member of the Bozo ethnic group from around Niger River who trace their roots and culture from the 10th century Ghana Empire.)

SSRI's have been linked to dozens of homicidal and otherwise unpleasant incidents, perhaps not as crazy as the one described above, because doctors, in general, actually are NOT stupid stupid incompetent people like the doctor in that story.   (I formulated that sentence to use the highlighted phrase on purpose, because I wanted to please my daughter who thinks that her father favours this kind of wildly exaggerated descriptions.  She is right.)

But things got better with SSRI's.  The FDA (US Food and Drug Administration) has slapped a "black box" warning label on antidepressants and doctors now also know much more about them and are much more careful with their prescriptions.  ("Black box" warnings mean that "this is really serious", just like those on cigarettes).  Except now others complain about those very labels, because this labelling apparently deters patients from trusting the drugs and taking them when they really should.

(Side Note/Warning: as is the case with many other drugs, SSRI's, in general, need to be slowly ramped up when people start taking them and slowly ramped down when/if they stop.  The brain has to "get used to them".  People should understand and expect this process and be patient and be very compliant with the dosing protocol.  If you don't, the side effects might not be just a tummy ache, but a serious screwup of your marbles.)

All in all, SSRI's and all medicinal drugs, in general, helped millions of people and improved their lives, sometimes in a very very dramatic way.  We should be all very thankful for that, no matter how many flaws are in the system - and there are many.  I am very fond of drugs because of this positive effect on people and also because they are very interesting to me as a scientific subject, especially on the atomic level.   About that 420, I'm not so perfectly sure.  That's a subject of a discussion that is likely to be played out for decades to come... 😐

Below is a radar plot depicting the data presented in
Nutt, David, Leslie A King, William Saulsbury, Colin Blakemore.
"Development of a rational scale to assess the harm of drugs of potential misuse"
The Lancet 2007; 369:1047-1053

Side note: drugs effects are approximate and imperfect.  That's why taking any drug has to be done with caution.  For example, the so-called PDE5 enzyme (Phosphodiesterase type 5) is very similar to PDE6.

PDE5 controls, among other things, smooth muscles and affects blood circulation.  That's why it is targeted by Viagra (sildenafil) and its competitors (used to treat erectile dysfunction).  However, these drugs will also (partially) hit the similarly-shaped PDE6, which affects vision.  If you take those drugs and see stars, it might not be because of how good the experience was but simply because this might be one of the side effects of the pill.

Note: I was urged to add some links to my sources.  I'll try.  Gradually, I'll add more of these: 🔗, when opportunity arrives.  It won't be a complete list, only a subset.  Much of the info is just a compendium of the nibbles I find here and there and summarize, of what I have read or saw before and of what is in my head from the many years of accumulating such facts and anecdotes (which I roughly confirm by reading some references on the web).  But I'll try to use more of such links in the future.