“Alcoholism is one of the leading causes of disease and death worldwide, yet despite its social and health impact, available therapeutic options remain limited”
…the study focused on analysing the neurobiological mechanisms associated with alcohol use disorder by examining post-mortem brain tissue from individuals who had consumed alcohol chronically for an average of 35 years. Specifically, the researchers investigated changes in the endocannabinoid system, which is closely linked to reward and addiction mechanisms.
The endocannabinoid system is a chemical communication network that regulates essential functions such as pleasure, memory, mood, and stress response. It is composed of receptors such as CB1 and CB2, their natural ligands, and enzymes responsible for their degradation, including FAAH and MGLL. “This system acts as a fine modulator of brain function and plays a central role in reward and motivation processes”, explains Manzanares.
The researchers analysed two core areas of the mesocorticolimbic system: the prefrontal cortex, which is associated with judgement, planning, and decision-making, and the nucleus accumbens, considered the central hub of reward and habit formation.
By comparing samples from individuals with alcohol use disorder with those from non-addicted individuals, the team observed a marked imbalance in the expression of several endocannabinoid system genes. In particular, they detected a strong increase in the CB1 receptor: expression of the gene encoding this receptor rose by 125% in the prefrontal cortex and by 78% in the nucleus accumbens. “This receptor is closely involved in the reinforcement of addictive behaviours and the risk of relapse”, notes researcher María Salud García Gutiérrez, first author of the study.
In contrast, expression of the CB2 receptor gene was reduced by approximately 50% in both regions. “Since the CB2 receptor plays neuroprotective and anti-inflammatory roles, its reduction suggests an impairment of the brain’s defence mechanisms against alcohol-induced damage”, explains the researcher.
Moore’s 2021 death at age 41 from blunt force trauma after falling from a Los Angeles balcony—ruled accidental due to acute alcohol intoxication—lends this sketch an uncanny prescience. Autopsy reports confirmed no evidence of foul play.
If USA and the West had fair and honest elections, we would have seen this same response decades ago. Apparently, Japan had real elections and Takaichi won in a landslide. Poll the West and no one but woke idiots and some (subversive) immigrants want open borders or believe any of the excuses corrupt politicians and writers make for them. In Japan, FAFO. You will be ‘sushi wrapped’ and deported without delay. That’s what those wise people want and that is what their duly elected government is giving them. ABN
I said a few days ago, “with DNI Tulsi Gabbard putting strategic pressure from the inside, and We The People putting accountability pressure from the outside, this Deep State intelligence nut just might begin to crack. In fact, I might even argue that cracking is exactly what we are starting to see.”
Today, we see evidence of just that; perhaps even the first signs that John Ratcliffe is on board. Perhaps.
The context here is important. Within the larger administrative state network: CNN is the preferred PR firm of the State Dept.; the CIA use The Washington Post; the FBI use Politico and the New York Times; the DOJ use the New York Times and Wall Street Journal; while the control lawfare embeds within the domestic IC spread their narrative distribution to the NYT, WSJ and Politico depending on the context.
When we see the Washington Post contracting, shrinking or otherwise limited in their activity, we can be confident the feeder system from the CIA is subsequently diminishing. If the CIA was operating at full narrative weapon capacity, the Washington Post newsroom would be bustling. The opposite is also true, although we have not seen much of that until recently. So, that’s the context:
More than $30 billion in taxpayer-funded welfare money intended to help America’s poorest families has instead beeen used as a ‘slush fund’ – diverted into programs ranging from college scholarships to government budget backfills.
The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, known as TANF, was created nearly three decades ago to provide direct financial support and services to struggling families.
Today, the program distributes about $16.5 billion annually in federal funds, supplemented by roughly $15 billion in state contributions.
But federal auditors and analysts say the program’s structure, which gives states broad control over spending with limited reporting requirements, has made it difficult to track how billions of dollars are ultimately used.
States often use TANF money to finance programs with only indirect connections to helping poor families, said Hayden Dublois of the Foundation for Government Accountability. He described the system’s lack of oversight as ‘fraud by design.’
A federal statement announcing Jeffrey Epstein‘s death has surfaced in newly released Justice Department files but it carries a date that appears to precede the moment he was officially found dead inside his New York prison cell.
The document, issued by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and dated Friday, August 9, 2019, states that Epstein had already been found unresponsive and pronounced dead.
But prison records and official accounts show Epstein was not discovered unresponsive until the morning of August 10, 2019, when a corrections officer delivering breakfast found him in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan.
In the statement, then–Manhattan US Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman said: ‘Earlier this morning, the Manhattan Correctional Center confirmed that Jeffrey Epstein, who faced charges brought by this Office of engaging in the sex trafficking of minors, had been found unresponsive in his cell and pronounced dead shortly thereafter.
Non-FIML sociology cannot but be based on and imbued with vagueness and uncertainty. Individuals make their ways in this foggy social environment according to their upbringing, experiences, and the different ways they have learned to negotiate ambiguity. Each non-FIML individual cannot but conform to or accept a position somewhere on the spectrum of private neurosis-public semiotics.
This is so because non-FIML individuals cannot attain interpersonal certainty; they can only attain a semblance of interpersonal certainty that is necessarily made up of many erroneous interpretations of the world around them, their loved ones, and themselves. Their understanding of themselves and of others will necessarily be made up of either private interpretations (that are sure to be largely false and thus neurotic) or public/cultural interpretations that are similarly just as false and/or too narrow or generalized (science, mainstream psychology, professional societies, religious or ethnic allegiances, etc.) to be fully satisfying to the profound needs of the individual. This is not to say that many individuals living in conditions like that are not happy, but rather that their sense of who they are and what they are doing is false, utilitarian, exploitative, slavish, or otherwise limited in one way or another. Individuals in conditions like that cannot but offend their deep-seated needs for interpersonal honesty/certainty by compromising their individual understanding of what the world around them means by accepting either prepackaged public explanations (public semiotics) or making up their own (private neurosis).
Most individuals in the world are, thus, contorted in some way. Some are deeply unhappy because they can sense something is wrong but have no way to grapple with it. Others decide to make their way in the world as it is, fully accepting, even enjoying, their perceived “need” to deceive themselves and others, to manipulate others, to take advantage of them, etc.
I think the above roughly describes a big part of what is meant by delusion and suffering in Buddhism. Delusion and suffering constitute the first two of the Four Noble Truths. The First Noble Truth says unenlightened life is characterized by suffering or dissatisfaction. The second explains the first by saying, briefly, that people suffer because they become attached to delusions. Delusions can be egocentric, sociocentric, or both. They can be a private neuroses or the very public madness of a whole society, or both. However you look at it, individual human beings will suffer and experience discontent under these conditions because their core sense of what is true is almost constantly being violated.
In the Buddha’s day, you fixed this problem by becoming a monk. You can still do that today, or you can practice Buddhism as a lay person. My feeling is that if you only practice Buddhism and do not do FIML practice, you will make a lot of progress but remain unsatisfied. Societies today are so large and complex, it is nearly impossible not to be influenced constantly by them. If you can join a monastery or build a cabin in the woods, lucky for you. Most of us, though, will continue to live among unenlightened people and will continue to have deep needs for highly satisfying interpersonal communication with our loved ones and close friends. FIML practice fits in right there. Since so many monasteries today are burdened with the weight of their own semiotics, FIML practice probably would be a very good practice even for monks, if it can be arranged.
In the Chinese Buddhist tradition, there is a story about heaven and hell. In hell people sit at a dinner table to eat but are forced to use chopsticks that are so long they cannot put any food in their mouths, and so they go hungry and feel miserable. In heaven, conditions are exactly the same, but people there use their long chopsticks to feed each other, so everyone if well-fed and very happy.
FIML practice is like heaven. By doing it we feed each other and grow more satisfied as we come to understand what the real conditions of this world are.
A man and woman have appeared in court accused of assaulting two girls in Dundee.
Prosecutors allege Ilia Belov, 22, approached and followed four girls, who were aged between 12 and 14, and made sexual remarks to them before seizing one of the girls and pushing her to the ground.
His co-accused Nadjedzha Belova, 20, is accused of repeatedly seizing and pulling another of the girls by the hair, dragging her to the ground, and punching her on the head to her injury.
The case was continued without plea to a case management hearing on 6 March at Dundee Sheriff Court.
The offences are alleged to have taken place in St Ann Lane, Lochee last August.
American Buddhist Net 