Altered Consciousness
pertaining to psychoactive drugs
Psychoactive Drugs
A drug capable of influencing perception, mood, cognition, or behavior.
Opiates
Drugs derived from the opium poppy, that relieves pain and commonly produces Euphoria.
Psychedelic Drugs
Consciousness- altering drugs that produce hallucinations, change thought process, and disrupt normal perception of time and space.
Withdrawal
Physical and psychological symptoms that occur when someone addicted to drugs stops taking it.
Facts
Using psychoactive drugs, be it to find pleasure or to avoid pain, can harm health and cause social problems both in the short and longer term.
The development of drug addiction can be seen as a learning process. A person takes a drug and experiences the psychoactive effect, which is highly rewarding or reinforcing, and which activates circuits in the brain that will make it more likely that the person will repeat this behavior.
Drug addiction is more common among people with mental disorders than among the general population.