The Truth About Hallucinogens

The Truth About Hallucinogens

Hallucinogens appear repeatedly in the history of mankind since thousands of years ago, but it was until less than 200 years ago when marijuana, opium, and other drugs became a real problem for the modern society. However, marijuana is perhaps one of the hallucinogenic plants that have been more commonly associated to enlighten states of the mind.

Medicine describes as hallucinogens a group of pharmacological agents categorized into different classes of psychoactive drugs encompassed in broad categories that have been subject of popular cult throughout the 20th century. It is more likely that you and everybody else have heard about hallucinogens associated to ancestral cultures, urban sub-cultures and contra cultures that have also adopted the representation of the plants as symbol of their corresponding cultural movements.

Hallucinogens include drugs considered psychedelics, dissociatives, and deliriants, among which marijuana seeds are the most popular cultural and recreative drug, which is also widely known for its therapeutical properties. Sativa seeds, opium, peyote and other hallucinogens amplify the states of mind or contribute to propitiate different consciousness levels that include meditation, trance, meditation, spiritual conversion experiences, and lucid dreams.

However, the hallucinogens consumptions methods vary and maybe that is the clue why the amplified states of mind vary as well. In the New World, marijuana leaves are smoked since ancestral times. Cannabis seeds, also known as hemp seed, Indica seeds, or Sativa seeds, are also dried along with flowers to produce marijuana cigarettes. The smoke produced by marijuana seeds or any other part of the plant is commonly associated to rituals that are still practiced by Native American Indians and other Native tribes from Canada to Patagonia.

In the decade of 1960, marijuana, psilocybe mushrooms, peyote, ayahuasca preparations, San Pedro cactus, and other hallucinogen plants became representative of the a psychedelic movement that also incorporated LSD, a drug derived from a fungus that acts directly on the serotonin receptor to cause perceptual distortions that is associated with the pop art of that era.

Psychedelic drugs are still popular for being considered mind and consciousness expanders, although marijuana has also sedation properties at higher doses and does not affect serotonin receptors, reason why its categorization as true psychedelic drug has been questioned. Nevertheless, is due to cannabis seeds are not potentially harmful drugs why a long-time debate on its legalization exists.

When it comes to psychedelic drugs, the immediate and secondary effects depend on the dosage and setting in which a person consumes the drug, but with marijuana, those effects are not as significant or long-lasting like occur with other hallucinogens, hence marijuana does not cause habit or dependence. Until today, Native Americans religious ceremonies are well known for smoking rites that include tobacco, peyote, and marijuana leaves to promote deliriant effects associated with spiritual contact.

But once again, a majority of psychedelics drugs are non-toxic despite of their hallucinogenic conditions, reason why it is very difficult fall in overdose and there are not records citing marijuana as a drug that led someone to dead.