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STONED TROUT
Substance abuse used to be just a human addiction problem. Sure, you sometimes heard about birds and bears getting drunk on fermented berries, but animals did not used to seek out drugs.
But now, if you are a central European brown trout, then you prefer your stream water polluted with a healthy dose of methamphetamine (“meth”).
A new study, published in the Journal of Experimental Biology, has found that trout can become addicted to the street-drug meth. And they do not have to buy it from dealers behind a gas station: they are literally swimming around in their drug of choice.
“Our results suggest that flows of illegal drugs into freshwater ecosystems cause addiction in fish and modify habitat preferences,” the researchers, led by Pavel Horky from the Czech University of Life Sciences, write.
The scientists suggest that trout meth addiction is caused by human drug problems spilling over into our waterways.
But how do you test to see if a trout is addicted to meth? Horky and his team placed 40 brown trout into a fish tank whose water contained the same level of meth that is found in drug-contaminated waterways near human population centers.
After eight weeks, the team moved the fish into a drug-free tank. But every day, they gave them an option between meth water and meth-less water.
They also had a control group of another 40 trout who had been “sober” their entire lives.
Without exception, the meth trout preferred drugged-up water when given the choice. They were also less active than the regular trout, indicating that they could be struggling with withdrawal symptoms.
When they dissected the fish after the test, they discovered traces of meth in the fish brains after only 10 days of exposure.
So, how does the drug get into the water in the first place? It arrives from sewer systems in the form of human-drug-users’ waste products.
“Where methamphetamine users are, there is also methamphetamine pollution of waterways,” Horky said, .
Waste treatment plants are not designed to remove such drug contamination.
Horky explains that fish with drug addiction could actually start hanging around water treatment outflows in order to get their next “fix.”
At the same time, they would also be exposed to any number of other dangerous chemicals.
“Such effects could change the functioning of whole ecosystems,” Horky says.
He also warns that meth is just one of the drugs that we pump into waterways. Everything from Advil to Prozac ends up in the same place.
UK researchers have found shrimp with cocaine in their systems. And, in the US, mussels have started testing positive for opioids, like oxycodone and antidepressants.
Then, when people eat drug-filled seafood, the chemicals transfer back into them, making a full circle, before returning again to animals...and so on.
As a result, many are advocating for better environmental regulations that would require prescription drugs to be eliminated from water runoff.
So, could you actually fail a drug test just because you eat a lot of fish and seafood? After all, you are what you eat! Just what we need: a scary, new problem to worry about.
SOURCE: oddee.com
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