What are Hallucinogens?

Hallucinogens are natural or synthetic types of psychotropic drugs that affect the central nervous system of the human body, can cause changes in feelings and emotions, and produce illusions and hallucinations in time and space, leading to self-distortion, delusion and split thinking .

Hallucinogen

Hallucinogens are those that affect people

Hallucinogens are also called pseudopsychotics. People's knowledge and use of hallucinogens can be traced back to ancient times ^[1]

Hallucinogens can cause

If we can explain to patients, these weird thinking, vision and sound are all

Hallucinogens include

Although humans have used natural plants containing hallucinogens for thousands of years, the separation, identification, and pharmacological research of their active ingredients are still quite limited. German chemist Arthur Hoffter isolated its main hallucinogenic component, mescaline, from Peyote in 1896, and Ernst Spath successfully synthesized it for the first time in 1919. It was the first hallucinogen to know the exact chemical structure. DMT is actually a normal metabolite in the human body, and was first chemically synthesized in 1931. 5-MeO-DMT was first synthesized in 1936. It was successfully isolated from the seeds of the endemic South American tree species Anadenanthera peregrina in 1959 and is considered to be its main psychoactive component. The powder of this seed was inhaled by the indigenous people to obtain hallucinogenic effects. . In 1958, Albert Hofmann successfully isolated its main hallucinogenic ingredients Psilocybin and Psilocin from the "Holy Mushroom" in Mexico, and in 1959, it was used for another Mexican hallucinogenic "elixir" of olotiuhqui (a seed of morning glory) The hallucinogenic substance was chemically separated and the main hallucinogenic component was considered to be

Over the past fifty years, human understanding of pharmacological mechanisms of hallucinogens has taken a tortuous path, mainly due to the lack of a reliable animal model. In the 1950s, some experimental studies of LSD (mainly in vitro experiments) concluded that LSD works mainly by antagonizing 5-HT. However, BOL, a brominated derivative of LSD, is a very potent 5-HT antagonist, but does not produce LSD-like hallucinations in the human body. This result shakes the hypothesis of 5-HT antagonism of LSD. In the 1960s and 1970s, some studies found that many hallucinogens such as psilocybin, DMT, and DOM can increase 5-HT levels in animals' brains and reduce 5-HT turnover. Therefore, some people have suggested that hallucinogens may be 5-HT. Agonist, but inconclusive. Although some animal models have been established during this period in an attempt to systematically study the psychopharmacological activity of hallucinogens, such as observing the autonomic activity of rats, behavioral syndromes caused by hallucinogens in cats, etc. The hallucinogenicity data lack relevance and have not been widely used. After the 1970s, with the rise and widespread use of drug identification technology, behavioral pharmacologists seem to have found an ideal animal model for studying hallucinogens. Because earlier studies have shown that hallucinogens do not cause physical dependence in animals, cannot form stable self-administration behaviors, and have no (or only weak) strengthening effect, animal models of traditional studies of drug abuse potential have hallucinogenic effects. The agent is not effective. Based on these characteristics, theoretically, there is no ideal animal model to study hallucinogens, because the hallucinogenic effect in the human body is usually expressed by humans through words and words, and animals have no language ability, so any behavioral study of animals Performance, researchers can not determine whether it is the result of hallucinogenic effects. Drug identification technology is different. Animals can be trained to recognize certain drugs and physiological saline. Through operational training (stepping), animals can get rewards (food, water, or avoid electric shock, etc.) after correct identification. been punished. In this way, after several alternating trainings, the animal can obtain a stable discrimination ability against this drug, and then it can be tested for other drugs. This model is equivalent to the animal "telling" researchers whether the in vivo effect caused by the test drug is similar to a training drug or saline. Similarly, people can be trained to conduct drug identification studies, telling researchers that the test drug is similar or different from the training drug. Studies over the past three decades have found that almost all drugs that act on the central nervous system can be recognized by animals as an in vivo stimulus, and that the stimulus has very good pharmacological specificity, which is usually only the same as the training drug Pharmacologically classified compounds (having the same or similar pharmacological mechanisms) will be recognized by animals as similar to training drugs, while other drugs will be recognized by animals as physiological saline. Several typical hallucinogens (LSD, DOM, 5-MeO-DMT, etc.) are used to train animals, and compounds found to have hallucinogenic effects in the human body are well recognized by animals as training drugs. There is a very good correlation. Of the hundreds of hallucinogens studied so far, only one "false positive" (identified as an hallucinogen by animals and no hallucinogenic effect in humans) was found. And still inconclusive. Antagonistic studies on the hallucinogen discerning effect have found that hallucinogenic discriminatory stimulation can be antagonized by 5-HT2 (mainly 5-HT2A subtype) receptor antagonists, suggesting that hallucinogens are stimulated by agonizing 5-HT2. The body produces hallucinogenic effects. Vollenweider et al. Found that the hallucinogenic effects of psilocybin in the human body can be antagonized by the 5-HT2A receptor antagonist ketanserin, which is the most direct evidence for hallucinogens as 5-HT2A receptor agonists. In addition, studies have found that 5-HT1A receptors and 5-HT2C receptors may also have a regulatory effect on hallucinogenic effects. For example, in a clinical trial of DMT, Strassman found that DMT and 5-HT1A receptor antagonists The combination of pindolol increased the hallucinogenic effect by 2-3 times. But as a general conclusion, this is still controversial.

Although much progress has been made in hallucinogen research over the past fifty years, many unsolved mysteries remain to be studied. With the development of neuroscience, combined with psychology, brain imaging technology, pharmacology, psychiatry and other disciplines, scientists can further understand the major basic topics of human cognitive functions, the biological basis of consciousness and perception, which is beneficial to people Understanding human beings, and then exploring new treatments for a variety of neuropsychiatric diseases, hallucinogens may be an important tool for their unique pharmacological effects. Through scientific experimental design, strict clinical supervision, and conducting clinical trials of hallucinogenic psychopharmacology may be a scientific peak in the field of neuropsychopharmacology in the future. Of course, relevant government policies will directly affect the development of this field. Similarly, there is still much room for basic research on hallucinogens. Because LSD can cause psychiatric-like symptoms in humans, scientists have identified rat LSD as an animal model for screening antipsychotic drugs, and believe that drugs that can antagonize LSD to identify stimuli may have antipsychotic potential. This hypothesis and subsequent years of research have brought several drugs to the clinic, most notably the atypical antipsychotic drug risperidone. The mouse head shake induced by the hallucinogen DOI has now become an accepted model for screening antipsychotics. The study of hallucinogens in China is almost blank. The main reason may be that hallucinogens are not traditional Chinese substances of abuse. Traditional Chinese hallucinogens account for only a small percentage of drug abusers in China, making it difficult to obtain hallucinogens. It is very promising to learn from the data accumulated in the European and American research institutes over the past few decades to carry out relevant basic and clinical research in line with national conditions.