He can experience two feelings at the same time (happy and sad, elated and depressed), the arm and legs feel heavy as lead, minutes seems like hours, while consciousness is retained and the person can think logically up to a point of great understanding, a sense of re-birth with new insights. The person may also feel that he can 'step outside' himself and look at his body (de-personalisation). These include emotional instability, time distortions including perception of rapid ageing, visual and auditory illusions and synaesthesia (a mixing of sensory input so that the abuser may see sounds or smells and hear or feel colours). LSD often produces an initial burst of activity characterised by flushing, tremor, dilated pupil, flushed face, chilliness, a rise in body temperature, an increase in heart rate, goose bumps, salivation, perspiration, rapid development of tolerance but no addiction.Īs the initial stage progresses, the individual may begin to experience euphoria, which is usually accompanied or followed by a range of psychedelic effects. Higher doses usually give effects for 10 to 12 hours. LSD is usually sold in the form of tablets, thin squares of gelatin or impregnated paper.

The average effective oral dose is from 30 mg to 50 mg, but the amount per dosage unit varies greatly. LSD is nearly always administered orally. Eventually, upon its widespread use and the discovery of its psychotherapeutic effects in the 1950s and 1960s, illicit use began to spread rapidly. He experienced the effects now known as a 'trip' which lasted for about two hours.īecause of the extremely high potency of LSD and its structural relationship to a chemical which is present in the brain and its similarity in effects to certain aspects of psychosis, LSD was used initially as a tool of research to study the mechanism of mental illness. Its hallucinogenic effects were discovered in 1942 when a chemist accidentally took some LSD. LSD was first synthesised in 1938 by Drs Hofmann and Stoll of Sandoz Pharmaceutical Company. It is produce from lysergic acid, a substance derived from the ergot fungus, Claviceps purpurea, which grows on rye or from lysergic acid, a chemical found in morning glory seeds. LSD is an abbreviation of the German expression for the lysergic acid diethylamide. It should be stressed that the hallucinogens are unpredictable in their effects each time they are used. Although no evidence of physical dependence is detectable when the drugs are withdrawn, recurrent use tends to produce psychic dependence varying according to the drug, the dose and the individual user. Recurrent use hallucinogens produces tolerance which tends to encourage the user to resort to greater amounts of the drug. Long after hallucinogens have been eliminated from the body, users may experience flashbacks - fragmentary recurrences of psychedelic effects - such as the intensification of a perceived colour, the apparent motion of a fixed object or the mistaking of one object for another. Include in this groups of substances are LSD, morning glory seeds, peyote or mescaline, phencyclidine, marijuana, synthetic amphetamine derivatives, nutmeg mace, certain mushrooms and synthetic tryptamines. Acute anxiety, restlessness, and sleeplessness are common until the drug wears off. Persons in hallucinogenic states should therefore be closely supervised and not to be distressed to keep them from harming themselves and others.

However, the most common danger is impaired judgement, leading to rash decisions and accidents. Occasionally, de-personalisation and depression are so severe that suicide is possible. A user may speak of 'seeing' sounds and 'hearing' colors. The senses of direction, distance and time become disoriented. Under the influence of hallucinogens, the pupils dilate and body temperature and blood pressure rise.

The lastest abuse incident of a hallucinogen, Ecstasy, as an example, has been said to give the abusers the stamina to dance for lengthy periods to rave music. Nevertheless, the emergence of a rave culture together with the extra purchasing ability, especially among Malaysian teenagers, seem to promote the increasing use of hallucinogens in the country. Hallucinogens, at present, can be said to be relatively unknown among drug abusers in Malaysia. These drugs induce a state of excitation of the central nervous system, manifested by alterations of mood, usually euphoric, but sometimes severely depressive. HALLUCINOGENIC DRUGS ARE substances that distort the perception of objective reality.The world hallucinogen described drugs that, in small doses, could alter perception, thought and mood, creating illusions in the mind of the user.

Hallucination drugs