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Did you know when you're in love it's like smoking marijuana? Well, maybe not exactly.  But the highs are similar, according to a new report . Newswise.com says that the hormone oxytocin, which has been associated with interpersonal bonding, may enhance the pleasure of social interactions by stimulating production of marijuana-like neurotransmitters in the brain, according to a University of California, Irvine study. The research provides the first link between oxytocin – dubbed the “love hormone” – and anandamide, which has been called the “bliss molecule” for its role in activating cannabinoid receptors in brain cells to heighten motivation and happiness.  Not to get too technical but the researchers discovered that social contact increased production of anandamide ( messenger molecule which plays a role in pain, depression, appetite, memory, and fertility) in  the nucleus of the brain, which triggered cannabinoid receptors there to reinforce the pleas...

Big surprise.  A new study has found that regular marijuana use is bad for teens' brains. You think? Frequent marijuana use can have a significant negative effect on the brains of teenagers and young adults, including cognitive decline, poor attention and memory, and decreased IQ, according to this new study, newswise.com reports. “It needs to be emphasized that regular cannabis use, which we consider once a week, is not safe and may result in addiction and neurocognitive damage, especially in youth,” said Krista Lisdahl, PhD, director of the brain imaging and neuropsychology lab at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, at the Web site. Now when I was a teen, everyone smoked weed, and I mean, everyone.  You couldn't go to a party, or even a dorm room, without that sweet smoky smell in the air.  I must be the only person on the planet who only ever took one puff  (and that was with my baby sister!).  But I just never had the desire for drugs of any k...

Another frightening fact about teenagers and alcohol .  "On an average day, 881,684 teenagers aged 12 to 17 smoked cigarettes, according to a report by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). The report also says that on an average day 646,707 adolescents smoked marijuana and 457,672 drank alcohol," according to newswise.com. To put this in (terrifying) perspective: the number of adolescents using marijuana on an average day "could almost fill the Indianapolis Speedway (seating capacity 250,000 seats) two and a half times," the Web site reports. OMG. "This data about adolescents sheds new light on how deeply substance use pervades the lives of many young people and their families," newswise.com quotes SAMHSA administrator Pamela S. Hyde. “While other studies indicate that significant progress has been made in lowering the levels of some forms of substance use among adolescents in the past decade, this report shows tha...