Popular myths among drug users are prevalent, and perhaps none of these myths are as well-established while the misconception that it is extremely hard to become hooked on hallucinogens. While physical dependence and addiction to hallucinogens does not occur as rapidly as addiction to opiates, barbiturates, benzodiazepines or alcohol, it will happen and can have severe results. Because individuals who use hallucinogens experience significant distortions in what they see, hear and feel, chronic use of these substances can lead to a number of psychological and physiological problems, including addiction syndrome.
Hallucinogens are a hard class of drug to define but generally include any drugs that cause prominent altered states of perception that greatly distort a user’s ability to differentiate between what’s a hallucination and what’s reality. The most common and popular hallucinogen is LSD or Lysergic Acid Diethylamide – a powerful hallucinogen synthesized from spurned wheat or corn ergot. Other hallucinogens include Ecstasy, PCP, Psilocybin, Mescaline, Ketamine and Dextromethorphan. And though some people might argue that not most of these drugs are true hallucinogens, all of them cause addiction.
In general LSD, ecstasy, psilocybin and mescaline are thought true hallucinogens and work by disrupting the brain’s ability to produce and utilize serotonin. Serotonin really helps to regulate sleeping patterns, mood and sexual desire, among other things. Other drugs that aren’t true hallucinogens – like Ketamine, PCP and Dextromethorphan – block the neurotransmitter glutamate, which is responsible for controlling cognitive functions like learning and memory.
Whether true hallucinogen or not, most of these drugs cause major disruptions in the senses and deprive mental performance of its ability to use normally. In response your body can make changes in the central nervous system to adjust to and mitigate the results of these drugs. As time passes and with continued use these changes be much more permanent, culminating at a place where your body only functions “normally” once the drug is in the system. This is known as physical dependency. While not similar as addiction, some individuals consider physical dependency and addiction to be synonymous with each other.
However, while addiction is a clinical, neurological disease psychedelic mushroom chocolate bars on the market California, it’s most often classified by a small grouping of behaviors as opposed to physical signs or symptoms. This is because hallucinogens cause the pleasure and reward center in mental performance to be stimulated. Once mental performance associates a drug with a sense of “reward,” it will continue to work to recreate that feeling whenever possible. Therefore, the longer an individual uses a hallucinogen like LSD or ecstasy, the more associations are made in mental performance that not only “remembers” the pleasurable feeling of hallucinating, but additionally the environments in which the use took place.
This entire associative process builds neurological pathways in mental performance to service them. Because these pathways have a key purpose to recreate the pleasurable event, they cause severe and uncontrollable cravings in the consumer to obtain on top of the drug again and again, and true addiction is born.
Addiction to hallucinogens is just as real and life threatening as addictions to drugs like heroin and cocaine. And because ab muscles nature of addiction does not allow most sufferers to find help on their own, it’s up to you to obtain help when someone you adore is fighting an addiction to hallucinogens.
