Psychotomimetic reactions

Side-effects The most frequent side-effect is drowsiness, others are nausea, vomiting, sweating, dizziness, vertigo, dry mouth and headache. Hallucinations and psychotomimetic reactions are less frequent than with pentazocine, reflecting a relative weak kappa component of the compound. Nalbuphine-induced respiratory depression is... 

Schizophrenia] is also psychological, sociological, and even theological. For like the psychedelic reaction, the molecular abnormality in schizophrenia merely sets off the train of events which are perceived and reacted to by a person in terms of his life s programming.. .. The same factors that lead to a psychotomimetic reaction in normal people probably lead to the psychosis features of schizophrenia (p. 128). 

Customarily, consciousness acts as a reducing valve on the amount of information permitted into awareness, but the drug disturbs this function, and the subject s thought processes are swamped with an "information overload." Ideation becomes so rapid and extended as to be more aptly described as intuition. What would normally be regarded as overinclusiveness of concepts becomes in the psychedelic experience the basis for remarkably speeded, enriched, and extended modes of ideation. In psychotomimetic reactions, however, the overgeneralization disrupts thought processes and produces intense confusion and bewilderment. 

Around 1952, Osmond and I had become familiar with psychotomimetic reactions induced by LSD. There was 2 marked similarity between these reactions and schizophrenia and the toxic psychoses. Delirium tremens is one of the common toxic states. It occurred to us that LSD might be used to produce models of dt s. Many alcoholics ascribed the beginning of their recovery to "hitting bottom," and often "hitting bottom" meant having had a particularly memorable attack of dt s. We thought that LSD could be used this way with no risk to the patient. We treated our first two alcoholics at the Saskatchewan Hospital, Weyburn, Saskatchewan, and one recovered. 

Within a few years after our first patients were treated, we became aware that a large proportion of our alcoholic did not have psychotomimetic reactions. Their experience were exciting and pleasant, and yielded insight into their drinking problems. It became evident that a new phenomenon had been recognized in psychiatry. Osmond created the word psychedelic to define these experiences, and announced... 

Regarding legal experimental use of the psychedelics, it has often been observed that the language used by the guide will influence what the subject says later to describe his session. This observation is borne out by some of the early research studies. It was initially believed that LSD produced psychotic reactions, and the drug was termed "psychotomimetic" by psychiatrists and psychologists (Rinkel, 1956). 

In addition to their inherent unpredictability and the complexity of the process involved, no universal criteria exist for evaluating the validity or desirability of specific reactions and outcomes. Certainly the nature of a person s experience and his subsequent mode of being-in-the-world are meaningful ways of distinguishing psychotomimetic from psychedelic... 

Known as special K, jet, green, and other names on the street, ketamine is sometimes injected, but can be evaporated to solid crystals, powdered, and smoked, snorted, or swallowed. Marijuana cigarettes are sometimes soaked in the ketamine solution, allowed to dry, and then smoked. Ketamine has become popular as a rave club drug. Side effects include signiflcant transient increases in blood pressure and heart rate, respiratory depression, airway obstruction, apnea, muscular hypertonia, psychomotor and psychotomimetic effects, and acute dystonic reactions. Following overdose, seizures, polyneuropathy, increased intracranial pressure, respiratory arrest, and cardiac arrest may occur. 

Conclusion. Central cholinergic blockade may be another approach to the treatment of mental depression in the same way that central adrenergic blockade has been a pharmacologic approach to the therapy of combative and hostile behavior and the control of severe anxiety reactions. Further molecular modification will be required to divorce the concomitant psychotomimetic side effects from the desired antidepressant action which is produced by this series of anticholinergic esters. 

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