Hallucinogenic drugs are categories of brain-influencing drugs that change people’s emotions, judgments, and impressions. Hallucinogenic drugs compromise auditory, optical, and other human senses. They are known to instigate euphoria, anxiety, enhanced emotions, paranoia, and agitation. Overdose on hallucinogenic drugs is likely to trigger psychosis, seizures, respiratory complications, and cardiac arrest. Hallucinogenic drugs impede the user’s brain functioning as well as the central nervous system and interfere with the user’s experience of reality. They can be categorized as deliriants, dissociative and psychedelic drugs.
Dissociative drugs trigger catalepsy, analgesia, amnesia, and a feeling of disconnection from one’s surroundings (Harmon, 2009). This type generates sensory deficiency in the user’s brain in a way that motivates the brain to develop perceptions not related to genuine external objects. The drugs cause feelings of depersonalization where real events seem unreal or surreal. Dissociative drugs include magic mushrooms, phencyclidine, ketamine, and dextromethorphan. Phencyclidine (PCP) was initially created to be used as an anesthetic.
Unlike dissociative drugs, which generate feelings of detachment from the real world, psychedelic drugs transform the way the abuser perceives his/her environment (Mehling & Triggle, 2009). Psychedelic drugs are assumed to turn off the selectivity of the brain’s perceptive function to enable individuals to comprehend everything around them. Examples of psychedelic drugs include lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), psilocybin, peyote, and mescaline. The effects of psychedelic drugs often vary according to the specific drug used and the dosage consumed. They work by disrupting the link between neurotransmitters and the central nervous system.
Unlike the other two drug categories of hallucinogenic drugs, deliriants generate completely false perceptions, which are often not based on any form of reality (Cefrey, 2005). Deliriants trigger a condition of disorientation in the drug user, which is often accompanied by an inability to manage personal actions. Deliriants include Atropa belladonna and Mandrake.
Although all the hallucinogens alter the individual perception of reality, each of the three kinds of hallucinogenic drugs influences bodily functions in different ways. Dissociative hallucinogens, for instance, operate in a way that resembles depressants. Dissociative drugs decelerate the user’s heart rate and respiratory processes. Phencyclidine, for instance, gives the user a feeling of invincibility. Injury intoxicated with phencyclidine can cause the user to emit excessive myoglobin, which can cause renal failure.
The signs of use of deliriants resemble the deliriousness that is experienced during fever, where people see nonexistent objects. Those objects may also be distorted. Most of the users of deliriants do not remember the objects they perceived or things done while high on drugs. Due to the toxic nature of deliriants, they are more dangerous than other hallucinogenic drugs and are more likely to be fatal. The conditions that follow the abuse of deliriants include irritability, dehydration, and confusion.
When the doses of dissociative hallucinogens that are consumed are at sub-anesthetic levels, the rational and perceptive affected by dissociative drugs are similar to those created by other hallucinogens like lysergic acid diethylamide, psilocybin, and mescaline. However, the most substantial disparity between dissociative and psychedelic drugs lies in the dissociative effects of surreal feelings, depersonalization, and derealization.
References
Cefrey, H. (2005). Hallucinogens and your neurons: The incredibly disgusting story. New York, NY: The Rosen Publishing Group.
Harmon, D. (2009). Hallucinogens: The dangers of distorted reality. New York, NY: The Rosen Publishing Group.
Mehling, R., & Triggle, D. (2009). Hallucinogens. USA: Infobase Publishing.