Popular myths among drug users are prevalent, and perhaps none of the myths are as well-established while the misconception it is not possible to become dependent on hallucinogens. While physical dependence and addiction to hallucinogens doesn’t occur as rapidly as addiction to opiates, barbiturates, benzodiazepines or alcohol, it will happen and might have severe results. Because those who use hallucinogens experience significant distortions in what they see, hear and feel, chronic usage of these substances can result in a number of psychological and physiological problems, including addiction syndrome.

Hallucinogens are a hard class of drug to define but generally include any drugs that cause prominent altered states of perception that greatly distort a user’s ability to differentiate between what is a hallucination and what is reality. The most frequent and popular hallucinogen is LSD or Lysergic Acid Diethylamide – a robust hallucinogen synthesized from spurned wheat or corn ergot. Other hallucinogens include Ecstasy, PCP, Psilocybin, Mescaline, Ketamine and Dextromethorphan. And though some people might argue that not many of these drugs are true hallucinogens, each of them cause addiction.

Generally LSD, ecstasy, psilocybin and mescaline are considered true hallucinogens and work by disrupting the brain’s ability to create and utilize serotonin. Serotonin helps you to regulate sleeping patterns, mood and sexual desire, among other things. Other drugs which are not true hallucinogens – like Ketamine, PCP and Dextromethorphan – block the neurotransmitter glutamate, that is in charge of controlling cognitive functions like learning and memory.

Whether true hallucinogen or not, many of these drugs cause major disruptions in the senses and deprive mental performance of its ability to work normally. In response the human body can make changes in the central nervous system to conform to and mitigate the consequences of the drugs. With time and with continued use these changes be more permanent, culminating at a place where the human body only functions “normally” once the drug is in the system. This is known as physical dependency. While not the same as addiction, some people consider physical dependency and addiction to be synonymous with each other.

However, while addiction is a medical, neurological disease psychedelic mushroom chocolate bars on the market California, it’s most often classified by several behaviors rather than physical signs or symptoms. This is because hallucinogens cause the pleasure and reward center in mental performance to be stimulated. Once mental performance associates a drug with a sense of “reward,” it will work to recreate that feeling whenever possible. Therefore, the longer a person runs on the hallucinogen like LSD or ecstasy, the more associations are built in mental performance that not merely “remembers” the pleasurable feeling of hallucinating, but in addition the environments in that your use took place.

This entire associative process builds neurological pathways in mental performance to service them. Since these pathways have a primary purpose to recreate the pleasurable event, they cause severe and uncontrollable cravings in the consumer to obtain high on the drug again and again, and true addiction is born.

Addiction to hallucinogens is just as real and life threatening as addictions to drugs like heroin and cocaine. And because the very nature of addiction doesn’t allow most sufferers to get help by themselves, it’s your decision to obtain help when someone you adore is fighting an addiction to hallucinogens.