Using Drugs to Induce Altered States

These nondrug factors can be classified in three groups longterm factors, immediate factors, and factors related to the setting in which the drug is used. 

Immediate factors are (5) the subject s mood when he takes the drug, since this mood may be amplified or inhibited (6) the subject s expectations about the experience and (7) whether these expectations are the same as what he desires to experience. 

Given this cautionary note on the complexity of using drugs to induce d-ASCs, a few general things can be said about drug-induced states in terms of the systems approach. 

Values of Variables for Maximizing Probability of Good or Bad Trip 

Drug factors Quality Pure, known Unknown drug or unknown degree of (harmful) adulterants 

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I0 Using Drugs to Induce Altered States II. Obseryation of Internal States I2 Identity States... 

Some drugs, called deliriants, cause delirium at siibtoxic doses. They are a stnuige group of plants and chemicals derived from them. Some of them have been used for thousands of years to induce altered states of consciousness They certainly do not appeal to all people, and some of them are dangerous. Nevertheless, they remain popular. 

The dynamic interaction of perception, emotion, and cognition in the creation of conscious experience is highlighted by the visual image transformations that are enhanced by natural and drug-induced alterations of brain-mind state. Later in the book we will read the detailed accounts of such transformations in the reports by careful self-observers such as Albert Hofmann (who discovered the psychotogcnic potential of LSD) and Heinrich Kliiver (who used mescaline to study visual hallucination). In Hofmann and Kliiver s work, the most valuable descriptions are formal. That is, they emphasize form rather than content. 

This normalizing account of hypnagogic hallucinations lends itself nicely to explanation in terms of AIM and hence to integration with those spontaneous and induced alterations in conscious state that interest us most. For example, an exaggeration of the normal tendency to hallucinate at sleep onset is seen in narcolepsy, as well as with the use of clinical and recreational drugs that alter the M axis of the AIM model in ways that promote REM sleep phenomena, including the intense dreaming often associated with it. 

A narcotic is a substance that produces insensibility, or a stuporous state. The most notable characteristics of narcotics are their ability to decrease the perception of pain and alter the reaction to pain, and their extremely addictive properties. Narcotics often induce a state of euphoria or extreme well being. The word narcotic is derived from the Greek word narke (meaning stupor), and traditionally applies to drugs known as opiates. Recently, the word narcotic has been adopted to include non-opiate, addictive drugs such as cocaine and cannabis. Narcotics are primarily used in medicine as pain killers and are often called narcotic analgesics. 

The treatment of anxiety throughout human history has involved a variety of natural agents which were administered to relieve tension and induce a state of altered consciousness, with ethanol in its various forms the most widely used [4]. Within the last century, general CNS depressants such as barbiturates, bromide salts, and ethanol surrogates such as chloral hydrate and paraldehyde have been employed to treat anxiety. Because of side-effects of the other drugs, barbiturates were used predominantly in the first half of this century as anxiolytics, but their clinical utility was limited by tolerance and dependence liability. Propanediolcarbamates such as meprobamate were also used to treat anxiety but displayed many of the barbiturate side-effects. 

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