PCP 353
PCP’s physical effects include increased salivation, body temperature, pulse
rate, and blood pressure. Case reports about humans indicate that PCP can
raise blood pressure so high that a medical emergency occurs. The drug can
bring on dizziness and double vision, create seizures, and cause muscle dis-
coordination and damage. Numbness caused by PCP can promote injury due
to lack of pain signals that ordinarily warn a person to stop doing something.
Cases of kidney failure and liver destruction have been associated with the
substance.
The higher one rises in the traditional evolutionary scale (for example, from
mice to rats to humans), the lower the dose necessary for PCP to create an-
esthesia. Two observers who noted that trend concluded that human brains
are exquisitely sensitive to PCP. Animal experiments reveal brain damage
when the substance is used chronically for as little as five days. PCP addicts
have complained of memory trouble. A small human study found impaired
ability for abstract thinking and for physical movement in response to signals,
impairment measured years after the persons said they had stopped using
PCP. Moreover, users of the drug may have normal scores on intelligence tests
but have emotional disabilities and be crippled in their ability to cope with
problems. Those latter defects may be caused by the drug or may instead be
reasons why people resort to the drug.
Abuse factors.Initially PCP was a Schedule III drug, but in 1978 government
authorities shifted it to Schedule II because of recreational use. At about that
time a Los Angeles psychiatric hospital emergency room tested 145 consecu-
tive patients for PCP; 63 were positive (over 40%).
A study of 200 recreational users found differences in effects reported by
persons who took a little of the drug once a month and by persons who took
a lot every day for years. Heavy users felt more pepped-up, violent, and su-
icidal. Regular users of PCP are known for self-destruction; one study found
that 24% of regular users had tried to commit suicide, and 36% had overdosed
on other drugs. A study of PCP users who were treated at a charity hospital
found no behavioral difference between black or white males, but black fe-
males acted much stranger and more aggressively than white females. The
meaning of that finding is unclear—it could be racial, could be cultural, could
be a statistical oddity that would disappear after more research.
When monkeys were given a choice between water or PCP, the animals
showed no preference; such indifference is a sign of low addictive potential.
An experiment measuring rats with prenatal exposure to PCP found the ani-
mals were more sensitive to the drug than were rats lacking prenatal expo-
sure—the opposite of tolerance. Dependence has been reported in monkeys
that receive PCP. Pigeons that received the drug every day for 215 days did
not develop dependence. Human research has found tolerance but not depen-
dence among users, although dependence is suspected.
Various cold remedies contain doxylamine succinate, which can cause a
false-positive drug test for PCP.
Drug interactions.In a rat experiment neither alcohol nor PCP affected
blood pressure, but blood pressure rose when they were used simultaneously.
They also speeded up the heart. One human study found that PCP may be
more likely to induce excitability in alcoholics than in nonalcoholics, possibly