Popular myths among drug users are prevalent, and perhaps none of those myths are as well-established because the misconception it is not possible to become addicted to hallucinogens. While physical dependence and addiction to hallucinogens doesn’t occur as rapidly as addiction to opiates, barbiturates, benzodiazepines or alcohol, it will happen and can have severe results. Because those who use hallucinogens experience significant distortions in what they see, hear and feel, chronic utilization of these substances can cause a host of psychological and physiological problems, including addiction syndrome.
Hallucinogens are a difficult class of drug to define but generally include any drugs that cause prominent altered states of perception that greatly distort a user’s power to differentiate between what is a hallucination and what is reality. The most typical and well known 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 while some people might argue that not all of these drugs are true hallucinogens, each of them cause addiction.
In general LSD, ecstasy, psilocybin and mescaline are believed true hallucinogens and work by disrupting the brain’s ability to create and utilize serotonin. Serotonin helps you 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 can be responsible for controlling cognitive functions like learning and memory.
Whether true hallucinogen or not, all of these drugs cause major disruptions in the senses and deprive mental performance of its ability to operate normally. In response the human body will make changes in the central nervous system to adapt to and mitigate the consequences of those drugs. As time passes and with continued use these changes be permanent, culminating at a point where the human body only functions “normally” once the drug is in the system. This is known as physical dependency. While not the same as addiction, some individuals consider physical dependency and addiction to be synonymous with each other.
However, while addiction is a scientific, neurological disease psychedelic mushroom chocolate bars on the market California, it’s usually classified by several 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 works on the hallucinogen like LSD or ecstasy, the more associations are built in mental performance that not only “remembers” the pleasurable feeling of hallucinating, but in addition the environments in that your use took place.
This entire associative process builds neurological pathways in mental performance to service them. Since these pathways have a key purpose to recreate the pleasurable event, they cause severe and uncontrollable cravings in the user to have high on 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 the very nature of addiction doesn’t allow most sufferers to find help by themselves, it’s your responsibility to have help if someone you love is fighting an addiction to hallucinogens.