Marijuana

The drug I chose to write about is LSD (Lysergic acid diethylamide). LSD is a synthetic drug; a derivative of lysergic acid (Levinthal, 2016, p. 115).

Behavioral effects

LSD is classified as a Hallucinogen and mimics Serotonin (Levinthal, 2016, p. 115). The person using LSD can experience rapid and emotional shifts that can include fear to euphoria and the user may experience many emotions at one time (NIDA, 2015). The user’s behavior is unpredictable because the illusion’s one sees is specific to that user.

Physiological effects

LSD in oral doses more than 100µg produces “hallucinations” or “illusions” for the user. Psychosensory changes occur when someone uses LSD (Gasser, 2014). The user may hear of see things that are not real. Other physiological effects of the user include: increase blood pressure, increased heart rate, increased body temp, pupil dilation, loss of appetite, dry mouth, sweating, numbness, weakness and tremors (NIDA, 2015).

Acute health effects

LSD’s effects of brain functioning are very complex and not fully understood (Gasser, 2014). Acute health effects include altered mental status, including a change in perception of reality, intensified feelings and sensory experiences, increased heart rate and sometimes nausea (NIDA, 2015).

Chronic health effects

LSD users develop high tolerance to the drug quickly, so it takes more and more amounts of LSD to get the user “high” or “on a trip” in subsequent uses. If a person is a chronic LSD user, he or she may develop persistent psychosis, meaning they will have hallucinations even when not actively using the drug. They may also experience mood disturbances, paranoia and disorganized thinking (NIDA, 2015). Chronic uses may also develop Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder (HPPD). HPPD can include visual disturbances such as halos or trails attached to moving objects (NIDA, 3025). Sometimes, if a person has developed HPPD, their symptoms can be mistaken for other neurological disorders such as strokes or brain tumors (NIDA, 2015).

Combining with other drugs

The only cross tolerance that happens with LSD is with drugs that also act on serotonin receptors, for example the drug peyote. There is no cross tolerance with drugs that act on other neurotransmitters (NADA, 2015).

What surprised me

I was surprised to learn that LSD is not classified as an addictive drug. I was also surprised to read that there are no real short term effects of LSD once the drug wears off.

Sources:

References:

Gasser P, Holstein D, Michel Y, et al. Safety and Efficacy of Lysergic Acid Diethylamide-Assisted Psychotherapy for Anxiety Associated With Life-threatening Diseases. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease. 2014;202(7):513-520. doi:10.1097/NMD.0000000000000113.

NIDA. (2015, February 1). Hallucinogens and Dissociative Drugs. Retrieved from https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/hallucinogens-dissociative-drugs on 2017, November 7

Levinthal, C. F. (2016). Drugs, behavior, and modern society. Pearson Education Inc.