Psilocybine and Designer Drugs

The search for spiritual enlightenment through the use of psychedelics is a practice deeply rooted in history and experiencing a resurgence in modern times. Ancient cultures around the world, including those in the Amazon Basin, North America, Greece, and India, have long used psychoactive substances in religious and spiritual rituals to facilitate...

The 5-HT2A receptor is thought to be the primary target for psilocybin (4-phosphoryloxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine) and other serotonergic hallucinogens (psychedelic drugs). Although a large amount of experimental work has been conducted to characterize the pharmacology of psilocybin and its dephosphorylated metabolite psilocin (4-hydroxy-N,N-dimethylt...

Aim: There have been significant changes in adolescent consumption habits over the past fifteen years. New molecules have been synthesized, new devices created and a number of products have increased in popularity; and as a result clinicians sometimes lack information. We chose to focus on this population because of its vulnerability, as adolescen...

In the area of psychotropic drugs, tryptamines are known to be a broad class of classical or serotonergic hallucinogens. These drugs are capable of producing profound changes in sensory perception, mood and thought in humans and act primarily as agonists of the 5-HT2A receptor. Well-known tryptamines such as psilocybin contained in Aztec sacred mus...

Covering: up to December 2013.Over the past decade, there has been a growing transition in recreational drugs from natural materials (marijuana, hashish, opium), natural products (morphine, cocaine), or their simple derivatives (heroin), to synthetic agents more potent than their natural prototypes, which are sometimes less harmful in the short ter...

A new wave of designer drugs is emerging in both emergency room (ER) patients and the community at large. These drugs commonly known and sold as "bath salts" produce toxic effects as well as disturbing psycho pathological symptoms. These drugs are a synthetic modification of the naturally occurring alkaloid cathinone, which can be extracted from th...

We conducted a random survey of illicit drug use by undergraduate students at a private southern university in 1990 and compared the results with results from a similar 1986 survey of that college's student population. During the 4 years since the first study, the prevalence of cocaine use declined from 39% to 21%, and use of traditional amphetamin...

The stimulus properties of 3,4-methylenedioxyamphetamine (MDA), 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) and several related compounds were compared to those of (+)-lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and mescaline (3,4,5-trimethoxyphenylethylamine) in a two-lever, water-reinforced, drug discrimination task. In animals trained to discriminate LSD (0.0...

Hallucinogenic drugs have as their primary effect the production of disturbances of perception. Hallucinogens can be classified according to their chemical structure as indoleamines (similar to serotonin), phenethylamines (similar to catecholamines), dissociatives (phencyclidines) and others (including salvinorin, dextromethorphan, muscarinic antag...

This "Designer Drugs 2.0" issue of Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics focuses on novel psychoactive substances, primarily cannabinoids and cathinones, and the repurposing of established psychoactive compounds (e.g., modafinil, psilocybin, lysergic acid diethylamide, and 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine) that simultaneously offer new pharmacother...

Drug abuse is a worldwide problem. Although commonly abused drugs can be identified during routine urine drug testing, less commonly abused drugs may escape detection. These less commonly abused drugs not only include some designer drugs such as synthetic cannabinoid but also include abuse of psychedelic magic mushroom (active ingredients: psilocyb...

Aim of the study: Based on an abundance of information on the internet, psychotropic plants and mushrooms are of increasing relevance as legal and cheap alternatives to other illicit drugs. Due to the lack of a German database, the abuse of selected biogenic drugs using reported exposures to 3 German Poison Information Centres (PICs) was examined....

To describe patterns of simultaneous polysubstance use (SPU) among Danish 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) ("Ecstasy") and hallucinogen users. A cross-sectional survey of 98 active MDMA and/or hallucinogen users recruited through homepage advertisements, flyers, and word of mouth in Denmark. Lifetime and recent substance use and SPU at last...

When humans departed from their simian cousins, endowed with a large frontal brain capable of planning and self-reference in the arid savannah, they walked away from the shaded calm of the fruit trees on two feet to encounter a troubling world of new dangers and uncertainties. From that point forward, humans have created gods, myths, language and w...

We report the case of a 25-year-old, hepatitis C-infected man, who presented with severe rhabdomyolysis and acute renal failure, and later developed posterior encephalopathy with cortical blindness after the ingestion of magic mushrooms. Conventional respiratory and cardiovascular support including mechanical ventilation, continuous veno-venous hem...