Synergistic interactions between “club drugs”: GHB and PCP enhance each others discriminative stimulus effects

TL;DRAbstract

Gamma‐hydroxybutyrate (GHB) is used to treat narcolepsy, and is abused as a “club drug”. GHB is often abused together with other “club drugs”, such as the N‐methyl‐d‐aspartate (NMDA) antagonists ketamine and phencyclidine (PCP). We recently found that the NMDA antagonist dizocilpine markedly enhanced GHB‐induced catalepsy in rats. The present studies explored the generality of this interaction. Different groups of rats were trained to discriminate 2 mg/kg PCP or 3.2 mg/kg of the GABA B agonist baclofen from saline. In the PCP‐trained rats, the dose‐response (DR) curve for PCP's discriminative stimulus (DS) effects was shifted 2.5‐fold to the left by 178 mg/kg GHB, but not by baclofen. In the baclofen‐trained rats, 2 mg/kg PCP shifted the DR curve for GHB's baclofen‐like DS effects 2.2‐fold to the left. In contrast, PCP did not shift baclofen's DR curve. These results suggest that NMDA antagonists potentiate not only the cataleptic effects of high doses of GHB, but also the DS effects o

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