Drug Abuse

For this task, you will prepare a lecture suitable for a community college course on the pharmacological effects of a particular drug of abuse. You may choose one of the following as the format for this presentation: prepare a recorded lecture with an accompanying transcript of the lecture or submit a written lecture as a paper.

Include the following in your lecture:

Choose a commonly abused drug and gather information on the drug’s pharmacology.

Discuss how the drug is typically administered, absorbed. and distributed throughout the body.

Include the concept of biotransformation; explain where it occurs and identify the pharmacological processes involved.

Explain the difference between effective dose and lethal dose and how these concepts relate to the therapeutic index of the drug you are presenting.

Discuss how this particular drug affects the process of neurotransmission and include in your discussion the impact this drug has on specific neurotransmitters.

Be sure to include information on tolerance (neuroadaptation) with this particular drug and the different types of tolerance experienced with this drug.

In addition to information found in the course text, find at least three research articles relevant to the pharmacology of the drug you are presenting (published within the past 5 years) to support your lecture.