Oral bioavailability is lower (around 1/2 to 1/3 if I recall correctly) than nasal use. It also gets spread out over a much longer time because it's absorbed more slowly, which results in lower peak concentrations.

So between the low dose, lower oral bioavailability, slow onset, and lower peak blood concentrations the effects would not have been similar to what we imagine when we think of cocaine users today.

Drugs like this can have very different effects depending on the dose and route of administration. I'm not suggesting that it was a good idea to put this into drinks, but I don't want people getting the wrong idea that anyone drinking this wine in the past was getting the same effects as someone doing a line of cocaine.

In some countries you can get coca leaf tea (mate de coca) which is made from coca leaves and contains small amounts of cocaine, not far from the doses used in this old wine. A lot of tourists are disappointed to discover that it's only mildly stimulating if they feel anything at all, not the intense drug rush associated with taking larger concentrated doses nasally.

Mark Twain wrote about it and apparently really enjoyed the drink. The drink was made with Pisco, pineapple juice and cocaine

The study want to prove that cocaine is yet another polluter thar alters the fish behaviour even in the small quantities that can be found in the wild in polluted areas. Not that something is special or different about cocaine pollution.

So the control group in this case are fishes with an implant with no drug at all.

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(26)...

I expect the fish to be more active. A coffee patch would be a nice 4th group as another control.

[1] Chewing the leaves of coke is common in many countries of South America, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acullico

Fish lack urea cycle, so they produce and excrete significant amounts of ammonia as part of normal metabolism.

Yep. Not just drugs are monitored this way, but also the spread of infectious diseases. That can lead to sometimes pretty weird findings - for example, polio virus is supposed to be extinct, but every so often it shows up in sewage monitoring of major German cities [1]. The cause most likely are people (tourists and immigrants) from Africa and Asia that got an attenuated virus-based vaccination in their home country shortly before they came here.

Covid is, at least in Bavaria, also part of the regular monitoring schedule [2], Austria monitors for Covid, RSV and influenza [3].

[1] https://www.aerzteblatt.de/news/erreger-der-kinderlaehmung-i...

[2] https://bay-voc.lgl.bayern.de/abwassermonitoring

[3] https://abwasser.ages.at/de/

Cringe sciencedotorg coverage... TL;DR: Doped Salmon wild. Wild Salmon dopey.

But a lot more fun in pictures; Spiders on Drugs, courtesy NASA.

Quoted Photos: https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/nasa-spiders-drugs-experime...

Source: Using Spider-Web Patterns To Determine Toxicity: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19950065352

Salmons get crazy and shine after prolonged walks with Lucy in the sky and some diamonds;

The salmons in question just hanged out with White Stripes.

What does it do that keeps you in the restroom frequently?

In her case I believe she was friends with the head of a university lab who recruited her out of her PhD program.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4QSYx4wVQg