http://www.al-bab.com/bys/articles/hassan05.htm
The consumption of qat causes acute effects on the central nervous system leading to exacerbation of symptoms in psychiatric patients, on the cardiovascular system leading to hypertension and increased risk of cardiovascular events particularly in hypertensive patients and on the male urinary bladder neck leading to weak stream of micturition. The effects on other parts of the body such as the mouth, oesophagus and gastrointestinal tract as well as foetal development seem to be related to chronic intake.
The consumption of qat is also said to induce an increase in libido, spermatorrhoea and erectile dysfunction but this has not been adequately studied.
While attaining a subjective state of well being, the chewers feel an increase in alertness and energy together with enhanced depth of perception. These effects were found to be a maximum between 1.5 – 3.5 hours after starting to chew and they were progressively replaced by mild dysphoria, anxiety, reactive depression, insomnia and anorexia (loss of appetite). (2,3)
Today at work was pretty lousy. My boss is anally retentively clean and he's starting to impose his standards on me. Fair enough if his methods improved productivity but they don't. He spent two days on a course this week that emphasized this 'lean', tidy philosophy that has origins from the Japanese. Personally I don't think we should be looking to follow the Japanese model of a robotic workforce. Humans make the robots and the robots do robotic jobs. A human made to act like a robot will not perform as well as a robot and a human's strength is creativity. Just look at the flexible work place that exists at Google. He also turned up the heat on me for taking too long to finish a project which just reinforces the general theme of lack of acknowledgement of good work and air of suspicion in my work place. I have many more tasks to attend to than that one project and unlike the posers in my office, I don't feel the need to pubicly list all of my weekly achievements and kiss arse. Once the employer and the employee have lost trust for one another the employment needs to end. Just like a romantic relationship would need to. I now feel far less guilt about giving my 1 month's notice on Monday. Sure they've trained me and paid for training courses but they've been under paying me for at least 2 years, actually since the beginning. If I kept a poker face my starting salary would only be 10% less than what I am on now after a recent raise. My old boss who retired and left the 2nd in charge boss as my boss was a pleasure to work for. He was such a knowledgeable man and incredibly motivating. My current boss is too much like a peer with marginly more knowledge than my own, he has a focus on the safety paperwork and tidiness that I have no respect for and a real tight arse when it comes to training me. One moment he's a best mate talking about footy and then the next moment he's tell me "You need to clean up your office fella" or "What is your charge out rate? Look at how much time you've spent on that job". Well get stuffed, if I ignored every other responsibility I'd have finished that job months ago. I do not care what reference I get by leaving with only the minimum notice. I have given way too much to that company without gratitude for too long. They can stick their job. I'm going to enjoy leaving knowing that they'll begin to realise how much I did after I've gone.
