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Hallucinogenic Drugs in Modern Society Humans are involved with hallucinogens since thousands of years. The use of Hallucinogenic Drugs is not limited to particular area. It has been extensively consumed in all over the world. Several modern intellectuals think that ancient Hindus used hallucinogenic substance for purposes of religious ritual and elation. It is well documented that Chinese used opiates as a drug to overcome their dilemma. Native Americans also accepted hallucinogenic mushrooms to use in religious ceremony but it raises a point of controversy in modern legislation.
In 1948, Albert Hoffman exposed LSD which was first produced from rye mold, used as antibiotic substances in fungi. After few years, these substances began to cause ruthless polarization in judgments about their use and benefit. Since World War II, the modern West actually became concerned with hallucinogenic drugs. It is very important to know the evolution and importance of Hallucinogenic Drugs in modern society. The present paper explains the concise overview of hallucinogenic drugs, its effect and uses in modern Society. Among many intellectuals, Leary argued that hallucinogenic drugs opened up to human perception things long lost from Western belief, things that were well understood in older civilizations and religions.
These drugs have the potential to cause intense religious and mystical experiences, experiences that could easily be distorted and misinterpreted by Western reductionist ic intellectuals as being symptoms of psychosis. Leary concluded that it was the modern West that was insane, not some poor individual in a psychiatric ward who was experiencing visions and hearing voices (De Gracia, 1993). Hallucinogenic Drugs are used by primal societies as medicinal and inspirational agents categorized as unsafe drugs by the US government. Their ability to amplify and distort brain functions has made them objects of attention to both artists and scientists (Levitt, 1975). Hallucinogens, which also recognized as psychedelic drugs, are medication that changes the mental state of a person the way he perceives the world.
Hallucinogens strikingly affect all the senses and cause hallucinations seeing or hearing things that do not subsist or are hazy. A person's thoughts, sense of time and sensations can also be misrepresented. By using such drugs, person becomes far from reality and he realizes such events which has no connection with real life. There are many different varieties of hallucinogens occur naturally in our surroundings that are in trees, vines, seeds, fungi and leaves.
Others are artificial made in laboratories. Drugs categorized as hallucinogens include LSD (lysergic acid diethyl amide), 2, 5 -di methoxy- 4 -methylamphetime (DOM), N, N-dimethyltrptamine (DMT), psiloc in, and mescaline (Australian Drug Foundation, 2002). As with other medicines, all these drugs have general side effects, such as distortion of sensory perception, and other psychic and somatic effects. These drugs also show signs of cross-tolerance. It indicates that people addicted to hallucinogenic drugs develop a higher tolerance to hallucinogens, the more they are used and the shorter the time span is between the last usages. Hallucinogenic drugs are effectively used in long-standing neurotic states and facilitating psychotherapy for treating and increasingly popular from 1953.
In sixties, many associations including the Royal Medico-Psychological Association of Euro physiologists, pharmacologists, psychologists, and several eminent laymen, as well as clinical psychiatrists who participated in their quarterly meetings to converse over the issue of the therapeutic use of hallucinogens. They have realized that there is no qualm that hallucinogenic drug such as L. S. D. may put forth weighty effects on some neurotic patients and bring about clinical progress. LSD is one of the most potent hallucinogenic drugs identified.
It stimulates centers of the sympathetic nervous system in the midbrain, which leads to pupillary dilation, increase in body temperature, and rise in the blood-sugar level. LSD is regularly used as hallucinogens in Australia. It was discovered as a treatment for some mental illnesses. There is some recent proof of increased popularity. In its unadulterated state, LSD is a white odorless powder. It usually comes in the form of liquid, tablets or capsules, squares of gelatine or blotting paper.
LSD can be swallowed, sniffed, injected or smoked. It is very powerful, with small amounts causing strong effects. LSD also has a serotonin-blocking effect. The hallucinogenic effects of lysergic acid diethyl amide are also the outcome of the intricate interactions of the drug with both the serotonergic and dopaminergic systems. During the first hour after intake, the user may experience visual changes with tremendous changes in mood. The user may also undergo impaired depth and time perception, with unclear perception of the size and shape of objects, movements, color, sound, touch and the user's own body.
Dr. Sandison upholds that there is uncertainty whether it produces improvement by the release of unconscious material, as, or whether it acts mainly by intensifying suggestibility and strengthening transference relationships. Professor Pilot talks about how personality may modify a patient's reaction, and emphasizes that the obsession personality is most resistant to the drug. Obsession neurotics may indeed become very concerned, but much depends on dosage (Crocket, 1953). In late sixties, LSD had become the matter of progressively more mixed media hype. Poet George Andrews asserted LSD is the only answer to the atomic bomb, and Paul McCartney admitted that using LSD, he discovered God is everything and everywhere and everyone.
Many persons like the MP Jonathan Aitken reported his own LSD familiarity, featuring visions of hell (Antonio Melechi, page 45). Records indicate that in each period of history, humanity has had a strong aspiration to achieve totality. Previously the aim was to gain satisfaction by moral and religious means. In modern time, more than ever before, civilization wishes 'the end of desire' through prosperity, supremacy, familiarity and sometimes religion.
Western culture, today uses cannabis and LSD, common ways of attempting to find wholeness if we transcribe religion into spiritual knowledge. Though the invention of LSD cannot be made the scapegoat for the increase of drug consumption by all sections of society, it has been observed by many of the hippy culture as something which was predestined, that it had come like a redeemer to assuage the pain and deprivations of modern living. Psychiatrists and analysts were not the only ones who wanted models but religious group also observed LSD as a substance which bring them nearer to God. Walter Pahnke gave it to theological students before Communion and observed that some of them experienced strong feelings of religious joy and of proximity to God. This drug when used increasingly provide mind-expanding and relief to populace. The existentialists noted those effects by which some subjects felt outside time and outside their bodies (Melechi, 1977).
Hallucinogens such as mescaline have been used in Native American ritual ceremonies. The site of action for hallucinogenic drugs has now been recognized. They act in the brain at a specific receptor subtype for the chemical neurotransmitter serotonin (Jacob 1979, pg: 396 - 404). Our modern society has recently taken up the use, sometimes illegally, of hallucinogens on a majestic scale. Even though, it is realized that Hallucinogens drugs cause hallucinations which have deep distortions in a persons insight of realism.
Under the pressure of hallucinogens, people see images, hear sounds, and feel sensations that seem real but do not exist. Some hallucinogens also produce speedy, intense emotional swings. Hallucinogens cause their effects by unsettling the interaction of nerve cells and the neurotransmitter serotonin. Many people suppose they can attain mystic or religious experience by changing the chemistry of the body with hallucinogens, seldom recognizing that they are merely reverting to the age old practices of prehistoric culture.
Whether drug-induced adventures can be indistinguishable with the metaphysical insight declared by some spiritualists, or are merely a forged of it, is still contentious. Today intellectuals believe that the prevalent and increasing use of hallucinogens in our society may have little or no value and may sometimes even be damaging or hazardous. In any occurrence, it is a recently introduced and superimposed cultural characteristic without natural roots in Western folklore (Suites, pg: 10). Many societies value Hallucinogenic drugs for their use in religious rites or as medicinal agents. But use of these drugs in modern Western societies is continuously a matter of controversy. On one side, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs have placed them in Schedule I, the most restrictive class.
So they are considered to be dangerous drugs. The populace also had a pessimistic mind-set towards drugs, in part because of their relationship with the antiwar and opposes cultural movement of the 1960 s. When it is viewed as affirmative side, hallucinogenic drugs are considered to be a therapeutic way for exploration of the hidden depressions of the mind. There are solid grounds by which scientists have been interested in this drug group. Hallucinogenic drugs might provide some insight into these basic psychological processes which may produce profound changes in perception and affect. Other reason for using these drugs for medication is that impressive effects are often produced by minuscule quantities (microgram amounts in the case of LSD).
Physician who study brain are particularly interest in hallucinogenic drugs; their potency implies that the drugs act with specificity at particular sites within the brain. These drugs are not only grouped as a evidence of cross-tolerance importance, but it provides presumptive facts for a common biological site of action and supports the strategy of searching for a single site in the brain shared by all of the drugs in the class. From a strictly molecular point of view, it is not understandable that this should be the case, since the various drugs are structurally different. LSD is an ergot derivative; mescaline and DOM are henylethylamines; and Psiloc in and DMT are indole amines.
Medical uses of these drugs are clearly visible in our social structure. Some hallucinogens are presently used in proven medicine, including ketamine, an intravenous anaesthetic used in many surgical procedures when the use of an anesthetic mask is unwanted. Amphetamines, Magic mushrooms are commonly found in Australia and have the active component psilocybin. They can be eaten fresh, cooked or brewed into a 'tea'...
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