Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Many psychoactive substances are used for their mood and perception altering effects, including those with accepted uses in medicine and psychiatry. Examples of psychoactive substances include caffeine, alcohol, cocaine, LSD, nicotine, cannabis, and dextromethorphan. [46] Classes of drugs frequently used recreationally include:
Psychoactive drugs, such as alcohol, caffeine, amphetamine, mescaline, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), cannabis, chloral hydrate, theophylline, IBMX and others, have been studied on certain animals. It is believed that plants developed caffeine as a chemical defense against insects.
Psychoactive drugs exert their sensory and behavioral effects almost entirely by acting on neurotransmitters and by modifying one or more aspects of synaptic transmission. Neurotransmitters can be viewed as chemicals through which neurons primarily communicate; psychoactive drugs affect the mind by altering this communication.
Experts in the United Kingdom have suggested that some psychoactive drugs that may be causing less harm to fewer users (although they are also used less frequently in the first place) are cannabis, psilocybin mushrooms, LSD, and MDMA; however, these drugs have risks and side effects of their own. [32]
A stimulant is an overarching term that covers many drugs including those that increase the activity of the central nervous system and the body, [5] drugs that are pleasurable and invigorating, or drugs that have sympathomimetic effects. [6] Sympathomimetic effects are those effects that mimic or copy the actions of the sympathetic nervous ...
Contact high is a phenomenon that occurs in otherwise sober people who experience a drug-like effect just by coming into contact with someone who is under the influence of a psychoactive drug. In a similar way to the placebo effect, a contact high may be caused by classical conditioning as well as by the physical and social setting. [8] [9]
Several non-human animal species are said to engage in apparent recreational drug use, that is, the intentional ingestion of psychoactive substances in their environment for pleasure, though claims of such behavior in the wild are often controversial. [1]
Substance dependence, also known as drug dependence, is a biopsychological situation whereby an individual's functionality is dependent on the necessitated re-consumption of a psychoactive substance because of an adaptive state that has developed within the individual from psychoactive substance consumption that results in the experience of withdrawal and that necessitates the re-consumption ...