Hi there, I'm Mrs. Kemp and welcome to today's lesson all about recreational drug use: stimulants.

This fits into the disease and drugs unit, but you may also recognise some of the information from healthy lifestyles.

Okay, so our main outcome for today then is I can explain how stimulants affect the body in both the short and long term.

We have some different key terms that we're going to be using today and please pause the video and have a read of those if you'd like.

Otherwise do rest assured that actually I will go through each one of these as we move through the slide deck.

So we have three learning cycles for today, types of stimulant, stimulant effect on reaction time, and substance abuse.

We're going to start with types of stimulant.

Okay, so drugs can actually be used for medicine or for something called recreation, okay? The drugs that you use for medicine then, you may be able to get them from the pharmacy.

So just over the counter.

So things are ibuprofen, paracetamol, all of those that we just buy from shops and ibuprofen is classed as a painkiller 'cause it will take away some pain.

Other drugs that are used for medicine then, you actually need to have those prescribed by a doctor.

An example of those that you may have taken before is an antibiotic.

Antibiotics kill bacteria so if you've got a bacterial infection of some sort, the doctor will give you some antibiotics, you'll take them and they will kill that pathogen.

Some drugs, however, may actually be used for recreation so they don't make people feel better in any way to sort of get rid of like a disease or problem in that way.

But they do make people feel different and they can make a person feel very good.

Sometimes you might hear that being called a high or euphoric means that they have a sort of feeling of, you know, real intense happiness.

Some drugs then such as ecstasy are illegal, okay? Or we might have nicotine, which actually we find in cigarettes and other tobacco products, vapes, and that is actually a legal drug but still used for recreation and not medicine.

Sometimes people can use drugs that are meant to be as a medicine but use them for recreation and often that means that that drug then becomes illegal.

Different drugs have different effects on the body, okay? Stimulant types of drugs, they speed up the messages that travel from the brain to the rest of the body and that can make a person feel very awake.

It might make them feel more confident than they usually do and more energetic, okay? So those are some of the reasons why people might take them if they want to feel different in different moments.

Some of those drugs actually we get from plants.

Often drugs do come from plants, drugs that we find for medicinal reasons, okay? But also drugs that we find that people are using for recreation.

Cocaine is an example that comes from a plant, okay? And it actually comes from the cocoa plant.

Those are some dried leaves there in the picture.

Also caffeine, caffeine is a type of stimulant and it comes from coffee beans, okay? It's actually found there because it has a kind of natural insect repellent.

So it tries to get rid of things that may be there to invade the plant, but it also has this stimulant effect on us when we take it.

Alright then what do caffeine and cocaine have in common? A, they are both found in plants.

B, they are both depressants.

C, they are both illegal and D, they are both stimulants.

I'll give you a moment to think about it, but if you need more time, please pause the video.

Okay, did you remember that they are actually both found in plants and they are of course both stimulants.

That's A and D.

Excellent, really well done.

Okay, so cocaine is actually a highly addictive and illegal drug.

Remember that we find it there in the leaves of the coca plant.

It's actually extracted from there then and often it's made into a white powder.

You can see that in the image there and people might take that up their nose, sometimes known as snorting, or sometimes people can smoke that and they might roll it into a sort of cigarette type thing.

It has a stimulating effect on the body then and can make people feel that sense of euphoria.

Remember that's a sort of overwhelming feeling of happiness.

It can though unfortunately also have some really serious negative effects on the body, okay? One example, and this is only one example, might be a stroke or a heart attack because it is having an effect on the actual heart itself and actually people that take cocaine might actually overdose where they take so much that their body just cannot cope with it and it leads to them maybe potentially falling into a coma or even death.

Another type of drug then that has a stimulant effect is known as ecstasy.

Its chemical name is MDMA.

It's actually manmade so it doesn't come from a plant this one and it is an illegal drug.

It has a stimulating effect on the body then and can make people feel more energised.

So like they've got lots of energy and want to do lots of things, maybe dance and also feel that sense of euphoria as well.

Now it also has a massive side effect, especially affecting your homeostatic controls.

Homeostatic controls are how your body keeps your internal environment the same.

So things like temperature and water control, okay? So like how much fluid you're going to release in urine, for example.

Now actually ecstasy can interfere with this system, especially in your water control and in some circumstances because of the way that somebody's body has reacted to the ecstasy, it has actually led to death.

Okay, ecstasy is an illegal drug that has a stimulating effect on the body.

Is that true or is that false? Can you justify your answer? Ecstasy is manmade.

B, ecstasy is an illegal class A drug.

I'll give you a moment to think about it, but if you need more time, please pause the video.

Okay, that one is actually false and that's because ecstasy is an illegal class A drug.

Excellent, really well done.

So onto our first task of the day then task A, okay, we will be recording these on your worksheet so please get that out.

Can you name two examples of drugs that are classed as stimulants? Number two, can you describe the effect of stimulant drugs have on the body? And finally number three, explain why cocaine is a class A drug.

I'll give you a moment to think about it, but if you need more time, please pause the video.

Okay, did we have some examples then of some stimulants as cocaine, caffeine or ecstasy? You may have written MDMA there because that is the chemical name for it.

Can you describe some of the effects then? Stimulants speed up the messages from the brain to the body.

They can make a person feel energised and euphoric.

Number three, explain why cocaine is a class A drug.

Cocaine is a highly addictive and dangerous drug.

In high doses it can lead to an overdose and death.

Class A drugs are considered the most dangerous and harmful.

Okay, if you need to add a little bit more, please do otherwise let's move on to our next learning cycle.

So we are moving on to stimulant effect on reaction time.

So caffeine we know comes from those coffee beans as we saw earlier on.

Okay, it's actually legal, okay? It's in our drinks, it's in things like tea as well and also in cocoa beans which make chocolate.

There's a cocoa bean there, you might not realise that that's actually where chocolate comes from, but that is the sort of base of all chocolate products.

When we ingest anything that contains caffeine then, what happens to it is it's broken down and then the food is broken down, sorry and then it is absorbed in through our gut lining just like everything else and straight into our bloodstream.

We can then find out actually how a person is affected by caffeine, by carrying out a really simple test on reaction times, okay? It's called the ruler drop test and you may have done this previously and you could also have a go at this if you wished.

All you need really is a metre ruler and another person.

So you need two people.

So person one should rest their arm on the corner of the desk, okay? The reason that we do that is it makes sure that that arm stays in the same place all the time.

They should clasp their hands so they're ready to grab a ruler like this, okay? And the other person then needs to hold the ruler above the person's hand.

Make sure that you keep the distance from the ruler and the hand exactly the same each time.

Okay, I've suggested five centimetres but you might change that for a different value depending on what you wish.

Without warning then, so the other person must not tell them 'cause it's got to be a reaction that they don't realise, a person two will drop the ruler, you need to catch it, okay? You read off the distance that you caught it, you then need to look that number up in a reaction time table to find out how quickly that distance relates to time, okay? Repeat that five times and then you can work out an average afterwards.

So let's have a look at this sample data.

We've got reaction time of somebody that has not had any caffeine and then we've got the reaction time with somebody who has had some caffeine.

How can we calculate a mean? We're going to do this together using the person's data where they didn't have any caffeine.

And what we need to do is we need to add up all of those numbers first of all and then we divide by the number of repeats.

Now we can count the number of repeats.

One, two, three, four, five.

So we know there were five repeats.

So if we do all of those numbers added up together, we get 1053, we divide that number by five and we get a value of 210.

6.

I'm gonna round that up to 211 to put into my table.

Okay, over to you then, your turn.

Can you have a go at calculating the mean for the person who had taken some caffeine before carrying out the rule or drop test? I'll give you a moment to think about it, but if you need more time, please pause the video.

Okay, so first of all, we had to pull those numbers together, then we divide by five and we should have got 193.

Hopefully you've got the same, if not, you might want to go back and check your calculation.

Lovely.

Well done.

Okay, so let's have a look at this data a little bit more carefully.

Alright, on our second task, please do get out your worksheet so that you can record your answers.

Number one, describe the results from the reaction time test.

Number two, explain the results from the reaction time tests using your knowledge of caffeine and stimulant drugs.

I'll give you a moment to think about it, but if you need more time, please pause the video.

Okay then let's have a look.

So our description should be something along the lines of when a person has taken caffeine, their reaction time decreases.

The decrease in the data is 18 milliseconds.

So I've given an idea there of the actual amount of time that it decreased by.

An explanation for that then is that caffeine is a stimulant drug that is readily absorbed into the bloodstream from the gut.

They have a faster reaction time because the caffeine speeds up the messages sent from the brain to the rest of the body.

Okay, let's think about the actual practical in itself.

Do you think Jun's conclusion for the ruler drop test is valid? This is what he said.

"I conclude that caffeine will always decrease a person's reaction time." What do you think? Do you think that test did show that? I'll give you a moment to think about it, but if you need more time, please pause the video.

Okay, so Jun has actually made a correct statement there that actually in this case the person's reaction time did decrease.

However, we haven't taken into account any of the factors that may have affected a person's response to caffeine, such as things like body mass.

We also don't know how tired those people are or any other things that have happened to them during the day.

It is also a very, very small sample size.

One person is not enough to make a sweeping statement about everybody, okay? You need to make sure that any evidence is repeated using a large number of people to make sure that it's representative of all people.

I hope that you've got some of those down.

You might wanna add a little bit more into your answer.

Please pause the video.

Okay, right, let's move on to our final learning cycle of today then, substance abuse.

So drugs unfortunately can be abused by people and this is where there is an excessive or addictive use of a drug.

Both legal and illegal drugs can actually be misused and they can really cause quite a lot of damage to the body and the mind.

It can also have a real effect on relationships that that person might have.

Addiction is where somebody is not able to have control over using it and actually it can mean that even though they know that this drug is causing them harm maybe to their body or to their relationships around them, actually they really feel like they can't stop doing it.

Caffeine is an example of a legal drug and it's completely uncontrolled, okay? People can have a cup of coffee whenever they want but it can still lead to psychological, so in their mind, and also physical addiction.

It actually interferes with the reward system in a person's brain and too much caffeine can lead to increase in heart rate, insomnia, and also digestive issues.

So we often think because it is completely uncontrolled actually it maybe has no damaging effects on our body and things like energy drinks that we can see in that picture there actually contain really, really high levels of caffeine.

We should really seriously consider at what age we can drink things like that.

And actually if it's suitable to drink at any point.

They can have about double the amount of caffeine then that you have in a shot of coffee.

So it really is quite a lot more than we might see in more natural products such as coffee and tea.

When a person stops using caffeine then they might experience something called withdrawal.

And this is because of those physiological addictions.

They might get things like headaches, they might feel anxious, they worrying about things, they might be a bit more irritable than normal, so getting annoyed with things that maybe normally they wouldn't.

They might feel very sluggish and very tired and it can lead to a decreased amount of alertness.

So how sort of awake they feel.

Because of this it can mean that people often then end up going back to using caffeine again to try to experience those feelings of more energy and alertness that they might do normally.

Which of the following then are effects of prolonged caffeine use? A, addiction, B, decreased reaction time, or C, slower heart rate.

I'll give you a moment to think about it, but if you need more time, please pause the video.

Okay, did you say a addiction? Excellent.

Well done.

Okay, onto a very different drug then, but does still have depressant effects and this one is heroin.

Heroin is definitely illegal and it is class A.

So the government perceived this as one of the most dangerous drugs.

It actually comes from that lovely looking flower there called the opium poppy.

And it comes from the seeds that are found within that.

People will mostly smoke or inject it and actually it's highly, highly addictive so people can get very addicted to it.

Even just after one use.

It is very easy to overdose.

So that is where they have taken a large amount and can lead to coma or death.

And because of that then it does kill more people in the UK than any other type of illegal drug.

That's obviously why it is also a class A drug.

When people use heroin, what it does is it goes straight to that pleasure centre in the brain and it makes them feel incredibly relaxed and happy.

So reasons why people might turn to drugs in the first place could be that they are feeling depressed or lonely or anxious and what heroin will do is it will take them away from that feeling for the amount of time where they're experiencing the sort of high from it and sort of mean that they are kind of sheltered from their own feelings for a while.

Because of the effect on the brain then, the brain actually starts to crave it in itself, okay? So it will want to have that drug all the time more and more and that can have a really devastating effect on a person's life because it essentially just completely takes over their life and they will want to keep doing that drug, whatever effect it has on them and also the people around them.

The other point to why people often continue to take it then is that actually the withdrawal symptoms from heroin are really intense and it often means that people will relapse.

So relapsing is where someone has tried to stop taking a drug and then they end up going back to it.

Things that they might feel then are things like anxiety and depression.

So those are the things that they might feel in their mind, but also the physical effects of sort of really intense nausea and vomiting, increased heart rate, diarrhoea and also many aches and pains over their body, but also just their whole bones feeling like they are in pain and it can be very, very distressing and a really awful thing for somebody to have to go through.

Okay, true or false, only illegal drugs can be abused, is that true or is that false? Justify your answer.

Any drug that is misused can be harmful.

B, only class A drugs are really dangerous.

I'll give you a moment to think about it, but if you need more time, please pause the video.

Okay, have we gone for false? And that is because actually any drug that is misused can be harmful.

Remember that some legal drugs, if they are legal when they are prescribed by doctors, then actually if they are then used by people without a prescription, they do become illegal.

Alright, then onto our final task of the day.

That's task C.

And this is about drug use then, and actually Talk to Frank is the longest running anti-drug campaign in the UK.

It gives free and honest advice on drugs for people that are worried about themselves or others and you can actually find this very easily on the internet.

Could you have a go at designing a webpage for Talk to Frank on heroin addiction? On that page then, what you need to include is to explain the term addiction, explain why a person may become addicted to heroin, and also describe some of the effects of withdrawal from heroin.

I'll give you a moment to think about it, but if you need more time, please pause the video.

Remember you can record this on your worksheet.

Okay, did you think that for addiction then, addiction is not having control of using, taking, or doing something that could cause you harm.

Why might someone become addicted to heroin then? When people use heroin, it goes straight to the pleasure centre of the brain and makes 'em feel relaxed and happy.

The brain will soon start to crave the drug.

You can be psychologically and physiologically addicted to heroin.

Some of the effects of withdrawal then are things like anxiety, depression, nausea and vomiting, increased heart rate, diarrhoea, and also bone pain.

Hopefully you've got all of those down, but if you need to add a little bit more, please do.

So we have come to the end of our lesson today and I'd like to just go over some of those key learning points before we finish.

Drugs can be used for medicine or recreation.

Drugs can be categorised as stimulants or depressants.

Stimulants can make a person feel more alert and decrease their reaction time.

Stimulants can be legal, for example, caffeine or illegal, for example, cocaine and ecstasy.

Addiction is not having control over using, taking, or doing something that could cause you harm.

Substance abuse can cause you physical and mental harm.

Always best to try to avoid taking drugs in the first place.

It's easier than then having to stop taking them.

It's also illegal and therefore we should take that into consideration and the damage that it does to our bodies.

Okay, thank you so much for learning with me.

I've really enjoyed this lesson and I hope you have too, thank you.