HALLUCINOGENS

Natural and Synthetic

(Scale = Centimeters)

Brand / Generic Names

Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, Peyote, Psilocybin, MDMA, Bufotenine

Street Names

"A", Acid, Adams, Buttons The Beast, Blotter, Blue Chairs, Blue Cheers, Blue Mist, Brown Dot, California Triple Dip, Cube, Dot, Flat Blues, Gelatin, Green Wedge, Hawk, LSD, Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, M and M's, Mescal, Microdot, Mighty Quinn, Mind Detergent, Owsley Acid, Owsley Blue Dot, Pearly Gates, Pink Wedge, Pink Owsley, Purple Owsley, Sandoz's, Strawberries, Sugar Cube, Sunshine, Uncle, Vacation, Wedding Bells, Window Panes.

Possible Effects of Hallucinogens

Hallucinogens are drugs that cause hallucinations. An hallucination is a sensory experience of something that does not exist outside the mind. It may involve hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting or feeling something that isn't really there. Or, it may involve distorted sensory perceptions, so that things look, sound, smell, taste, or feel differently from the way they are.

Hallucinogenic drugs usually produce so-called pseudo-hallucinations. This means that the user typically knows that what he or she is seeing, hearing, smelling, etc. is not real, but is a product of the drug.

One common type of hallucination produced by these drugs in called synesthesia, a transposing of sensory modes or sensory crossover. For example, seeing a particular sight may cause the user to perceive a sound. Hearing a sound may cause him or her to perceive an odor.

Sometimes, the hallucinations can be very frightening to the user. The user may be panic-stricken by what he or she is seeing or hearing, and may become uncontrollably excited, or even try to flee from the terror. Hallucinogen users call these kinds of experiences "bad trips". Users of hallucinogens have been known to be driven into permanent insanity by these experiences .

A "bad trip" sometimes may be re-experienced as a flashback. Hallucinogen flashbacks apparently do not occur because of a residual quantity of drug in a user's body. Rather, flashbacks apparently are vivid recollections of a portion of a previous hallucinogenic experience. Essentially, flashbacks are very intense, and very frightening day dreams.

There are three types of flashbacks; emotional, somatic, and perceptual. The emotional flashback is the most dangerous. It brings back strong feelings of panic, fear and loneliness, and creates an intense and very real recollection of the original "bad trip". A somatic flashback consists of altered body sensations, e.g., tremors, weakness, nausea, dizziness, etc. that were part of the original "trip". In a perceptual flashback, the user re-experiences some of the sensory distortions of the original "trip".

In general, hallucinations intensify whatever mood the user is in when the drug is taken. If the user is depressed, the drug will deepen the depression. If the user is feeling pleasant, the drug usually will heighten that feeling. If the user expects that the drug will help him or her achieve new insights or an expanded consciousness, the drug will seem to have that effect. However, use of hallucinogens often uncovers mental or emotional flaws of which the user was unaware. Such flaws can result in the panic and terror of a "bad trip" even though the user was expecting a pleasurable experience.

The most common effect of an hallucinogen is hallucinations. The user's perception of reality is severely distorted, often to the point of synesthesia. This makes it virtually impossible for the hallucinogen-influenced person to function in the real world.

It is unlikely that hallucinogens directly are life-threatening. However, overdoses have often indirectly resulted in death. One LSD user was killed when he attempted to stop a train bare handed. The extreme panic and agitation of a "bad trip" have been known to lead to suicide, or to accidental deaths as users have tried to flee from their hallucinations. The most common danger of an hallucinogen overdose is an intense "bad trip", which can result in severe and sometimes permanent psychosis . There is some evidence that prolonged use of LSD may produce organic brain damage, leading to impaired memory, reduced attention span, mental confusion, and impaired ability to deal with abstract concepts.

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