Psychoactive drug

[3] These include anesthetics, analgesics, anticonvulsant and antiparkinsonian drugs as well as medications used to treat neuropsychiatric disorders, such as antidepressants, anxiolytics, antipsychotics, and stimulants.

[6] Substances which are rewarding and thus positively reinforcing have the potential to induce a state of addiction – compulsive drug use despite negative consequences.

This is especially true of certain deliriants (e.g. Jimson weed), powerful dissociatives (e.g. Salvia divinorum), and classic psychedelics (e.g. LSD, psilocybin), in the form of a "bad trip".

[14] This may be manifest in the long history of drug use, and even in children's desire for spinning, swinging, or sliding, suggesting that the drive to alter one's state of mind is universal.

In The Hasheesh Eater (1857), American author Fitz Hugh Ludlow was one of the first to describe in modern terms the desire to change one's consciousness through drug use:[D]rugs are able to bring humans into the neighborhood of divine experience and can thus carry us up from our personal fate and the everyday circumstances of our life into a higher form of reality.

We do not mean the purely physical craving ... That of which we speak is something much higher, namely the knowledge of the possibility of the soul to enter into a lighter being, and to catch a glimpse of deeper insights and more magnificent visions of the beauty, truth, and the divine than we are normally able to spy through the cracks in our prison cell.

The entire catalog, at least to the extent that research has thus far written it, may include only opium, hashish, and in rarer cases alcohol, which has enlightening effects only upon very particular characters.

[citation needed] A notable example occurred with Prohibition in the United States, where early in the century alcohol was made illegal for 13 years.

In recent decades, an emerging perspective among governments and law enforcement holds that illicit drug use cannot be stopped through prohibition.

[citation needed] One organization holding that view, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), concluded that "[in] fighting a war on drugs the government has increased the problems of society and made them far worse.

"[17][failed verification] In some countries, there has been a move toward harm reduction, where the use of illicit drugs is neither condoned nor promoted, but services and support are provided to ensure users have adequate factual information readily available, and that the negative effects of their use be minimized.

One narrower definition of psychotropic refers to drugs used to treat mental disorders, such as anxiolytic sedatives, antidepressants, antimanic agents, and neuroleptics.

[23] Psychiatric medications are psychoactive drugs prescribed for the management of mental and emotional disorders, or to aid in overcoming challenging behavior.

[28][29] Both military and civilian American intelligence officials are known to have used psychoactive drugs while interrogating captives apprehended in its "war on terror".

In July 2012 Jason Leopold and Jeffrey Kaye, psychologists and human rights workers, had a Freedom of Information Act request fulfilled that confirmed that the use of psychoactive drugs during interrogation was a long-standing practice.

Most anesthetics induce unconsciousness, allowing the person to undergo medical procedures like surgery, without the feelings of physical pain or emotional trauma.

[49] In the United States, critics have noted that prohibition or regulation of recreational and spiritual drug use might be unconstitutional, and causing more harm than is prevented.

Transition rates were slightly lower in older cohorts but were not affected by sex, country of the study, hospital or community location, urban or rural setting, diagnostic methods, or duration of follow-up.

Under the leadership of Timothy Leary, new spiritual and intention-based movements began to use LSD and other hallucinogens as tools to access deeper inner exploration.

[59][60] The aims and methods of psychonautics, when state-altering substances are involved, is commonly distinguished from recreational drug use by research sources.

[62] Self-medication, sometime called do-it-yourself (DIY) medicine, is a human behavior in which an individual uses a substance or any exogenous influence to self-administer treatment for physical or psychological conditions, for example headaches or fatigue.

The substances most widely used in self-medication are over-the-counter drugs and dietary supplements, which are used to treat common health issues at home.

Both legal and illegal, the consumption of drugs and their effects on the human body encompasses all aspects of sex, including desire, performance, pleasure, conception, gestation, and disease.

There are many different types of drugs that are commonly associated with their effects on sex, including alcohol, cannabis, cocaine, MDMA, GHB, amphetamines, opioids, antidepressants, and many others.

[77] Psychoactive drugs are administered via oral ingestion as a tablet, capsule, powder, liquid, and beverage; via injection by subcutaneous, intramuscular, and intravenous route; via rectum by suppository and enema; and via inhalation by smoking, vaporizing, and snorting.

Dr. Timothy Leary, based on his own experiences and systematic observations on psychedelics, developed this theory along with his colleagues Ralph Metzner, and Richard Alpert (Ram Dass) in the 1960s.

They act by increasing the synthesis of one or more neurotransmitters, by reducing its reuptake from the synapses, or by mimicking the action by binding directly to the postsynaptic receptor.

[81] Exposure to a psychoactive substance can cause changes in the structure and functioning of neurons, as the nervous system tries to re-establish the homeostasis disrupted by the presence of the drug (see also, neuroplasticity).

[97] Many professionals, self-help groups, and businesses specialize in drug rehabilitation, with varying degrees of success, and many parents attempt to influence the actions and choices of their children regarding psychoactives.

[98] Common forms of rehabilitation include psychotherapy, support groups and pharmacotherapy, which uses psychoactive substances to reduce cravings and physiological withdrawal symptoms while a user is going through detox.