Psychedelics designer drugs

Designer drugs are mind-altering and can produce hallucinations. For these reasons, they are often called psychoactive or psychedelic. Designer drugs produce their effects by altering the way nerve cells (neurons) in the brain communicate with each other (Figure 1.1). 

The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) is a membership-based non-profit research and educational organization. We assist scientists to design, fund, obtain approval for and report on studies into the healing and spiritual potentials of MDMA, psychedelic drugs and marijuana. 

Pharmacologists have developed quite an art in the design and evaluation of animal behavior models for the study of psychedelic drugs. They have always faced two formidable tasks, however. There is the qualitative question is the drug a psychedelic And there is the quantitative question how potent is it ... 

Some of the researchers who have experimented with synthesized mescaline, LSD, or psilocybin have remarked upon the similarity between drug-induced and spontaneous mystical experiences because of the frequency with which some of their subjects have used mystical and religious language to describe their experiences. These data interested the author in a careful examination and evaluation of such claims. An empirical study, designed to investigate in a systematic and scientific way the similarities and differences between experiences described by mystics and those facilitated by psychedelic drugs, was undertaken (Pahnke, 1966, 1967). First, a phenomeno-... 

The paper by Izumi is reminiscent of the era in which therapists took the new psychedelics in order to better understand their patients. In this case, the drug was taken to facilitate the design of a mental hospital that would provide a properly therapeutic environment for patients. The hospitals that have been built as a result of these experiences have been the first major innovations in mental-hospital construction in many years, and herald an era in which buildings will be people-oriented, in contrast to the present, when people are required to be building-adapted. 

This book is a broad and serious inquiry into this much-discussed topic. It will enlighten and surprise the uninitiated, as well as the frequent user. It includes first-hand reports of the nature of the experience recent scientific theories the use of psychedelics in primitive and non-western cultures and the sociology of drugs in our own society. There are also sections on the potential creative uses of psychedelics, from the enhancement of religious experience to the treatment of alcoholics and the design of mental hospitals. 

A number of other synthetic drugs exist in this series, with names like MMDA, TMA, PMA, 2CB, 2CT2, and so forth. Since they are custom-made by psychedelic chemists, writers often refer to them as "designer psychedelics." Most are pharmacological curiosities, rarely seen on the street. They differ from other drugs in this section and from each other in duration of action, euphoric potential, and tendency to affect visual perception. 

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