Popular myths among drug users are prevalent, and perhaps none of those myths are as well-established while the misconception it is difficult to become dependent on hallucinogens. While physical dependence and addiction to hallucinogens does not occur as rapidly as addiction to opiates, barbiturates, benzodiazepines or alcohol, it does happen and might have severe results. Because those who use hallucinogens experience significant distortions in what they see, hear and feel, chronic use of these substances can result in a bunch 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 power to differentiate between what’s a hallucination and what’s reality. The most frequent and well-known hallucinogen is LSD or Lysergic Acid Diethylamide – a strong 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.
Generally LSD, ecstasy, psilocybin and mescaline are considered true hallucinogens and work by disrupting the brain’s ability to make and utilize serotonin. Serotonin helps you to regulate sleeping patterns, mood and sexual desire, among other things. Other drugs that are not true hallucinogens – like Ketamine, PCP and Dextromethorphan – block the neurotransmitter glutamate, that is 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 body can 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 body only functions “normally” when the drug is in the system. This is recognized as physical dependency. While not the same as addiction, some people consider physical dependency and addiction to be synonymous with each other.
However, while addiction is a medical, neurological disease psychedelic mushroom chocolate bars for sale California, it is most often classified by a small grouping of behaviors as opposed to physical signs or symptoms. The reason being 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 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 merely “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 main purpose to recreate the pleasurable event, they cause severe and uncontrollable cravings in an individual to have at the top of the drug again and again, and true addiction is born.
Addiction to hallucinogens is equally as real and life threatening as addictions to drugs like heroin and cocaine. And because the nature of addiction does not allow most sufferers to get help on their own, it’s your decision to have help if someone you like is fighting an addiction to hallucinogens.