Psychology & Psychiatry

Single dose of hallucinogen may create lasting personality change

A single high dose of the hallucinogen psilocybin, the active ingredient in so-called "magic mushrooms," was enough to bring about a measureable personality change lasting at least a year in nearly 60 percent of the 51 participants ...

Psychology & Psychiatry

Psychedelic drugs: how the brains of informed users are different

There is a new generation of drug users out there who possess highly detailed pharmacological and technical knowledge about the drugs they take. "Psychonauts" (meaning "navigator of the soul") are enthusiastic and deliberate ...

Psychology & Psychiatry

Less fear: How LSD affects the brain

Scientists at the University of Basel have shown that LSD reduces activity in the region of the brain related to the handling of negative emotions like fear. The results, published in the scientific journal Translational ...

Psychology & Psychiatry

Discovering hallucinogenic mushrooms in Mexico

Before being qualified as "magic" and becoming the global phenomenon they are today, certain mushrooms were considered as sacred by the Mesoamerican peoples of Mexico. In the Nahuatl language the word teonanacatl, literally ...

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Hallucinogen

This general group of pharmacological agents can be divided into three broad categories: psychedelics, dissociatives, and deliriants. These classes of psychoactive drugs have in common that they can cause subjective changes in perception, thought, emotion and consciousness. Unlike other psychoactive drugs, such as stimulants and opioids, these drugs do not merely amplify familiar states of mind, but rather induce experiences that are qualitatively different from those of ordinary consciousness. These experiences are often compared to non-ordinary forms of consciousness such as trance, meditation, and dreams.

Hollister's criteria for establishing that a drug is hallucinogenic is:

Not all drugs produce the same effect and even the same drug can produce different effects in the same individual on different occasions.

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