Your Brain on Drugs: Five Questions for David Presti
More than 550 Berkeley students take your course Drugs and the Brain every year. What do you hope your students take away from the class?
Respect for the power of drugs, and specifically that all drugs are poisons as well as medicines. This is embedded in the ancient Greek word pharmakon. The origin of our words pharmacy, pharmaceutical, and pharmacology, it means both medicine and poison. While the ancients appreciated this dual property of drugs, it is often overlooked, even forgotten, in contemporary society.