Opioids and Psychedelics Quiz

What is opium?

What are opioids?

What is a synthetic opioid?

What is the problem with the increasing use of fentanyl?

What is the most potent commercially available opioid?

Opioids are responsible for 25 percent of death certificates related to overdose deaths.

Who made an evaluation of drug dangerousness?

Psychedelic drugs are considered more dangerous than legal and illegal drugs.

Who coined the term "psychedelic"?

What was the name of the mental hospital where Osmond worked?

Who was Osmond's director of research?

What was Albert Hofmann looking for when he produced LSD-25?

LSD-25 was the 25th chemical that Hofmann produced in a series of lysergic acid compounds.

Hofmann's first experience with LSD happened on April 16, 1943.

What did Hofmann experience after ingesting LSD?

Hofmann believed that some of the LSD had been absorbed through his fingertips during the crystallization process.

What is Bicycle Day?

What happened to Hofmann after taking a large dose of LSD?

Hofmann believed that LSD could be useful in psychiatry.

How many papers about LSD had been published by 1960?

What happened to John Lilly when he took LSD while in an isolation tank?

What was the name of the first article concerning LSD?

The term "world illusion genic" has been proposed as an alternative to hallucinogens.

Psychedelic drugs are psychotropic in the sense that they are mind-altering.

Psycholytic means mind dissolving.

Psychedelic drugs that appear to provide extrasensory empowerment are called telepathines.

What happened to Timothy Leary when he took psychedelic drugs for the first time?

What does "turning on" refer to?

What does "dropping out" refer to?

Leary believed that psychedelic drugs could liberate people from the games of life.

By the late 1960s, psychedelic drugs had spawned a counterculture with characteristic lifestyles, leaders, status distinctions, and internal rivalries.

Those who used LSD were charged with being sick and dangerous.

What did drug advocates reply when they were accused of being sick and dangerous?

Medical personnel and lawmakers were accused of approving enslaving drugs such as alcohol and nicotine but prohibiting the liberating psychedelics.

LSD had become the sacrament that provided anyone who wanted them with visionary experiences that had previously been the property of solitary mystics and esoteric collectives?

Who introduced psychedelics to a group of artists, engineers, architects, and scientists in the San Francisco Bay area?

Participants reported experiencing mental fluidity, increased ability to visualize and recontextualize problems, and crediting LSD for contributing to the birth of the computer revolution.

Osmond traveled to Leary to say that he was doing something dangerous, and Osmond tried renaming the psychedelics by introducing the neologism "psychedelic" to distance legitimate research from the frivolous use of psychedelics.

LSD was available to physicians until 1963 and its availability was restricted in 1966. Possession of LSD became illegal throughout the United States in 1968. The Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act was put in place in 1970.

The Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act classified many psychedelics as Schedule I controlled drugs, meaning the drug has high abuse potential, no current accepted medical use, and a lack of safety, even with medical supervision.

A study in 1990 found that 77 percent of Tibetan Buddhist practitioners reported previous experiences with major psychedelics, and 32 percent claimed that major psychedelics had contributed to attracting them to Tibetan Buddhism.

In the early 1990s, some government-sanctioned research with psychedelics resumed.

In the 1990s, the focus of psychedelic research switched from studying their phenomenological effects (the subjective experiences they produce) to understanding their physiological and neurological effects, and potential therapeutic uses.

Psychedelics were being considered as potential treatments for severe substance abuse, pain, and depression associated with terminal illnesses.

In 2006 three events occurred that shifted attitudes towards the potential benefits of psychedelics. The first event was the celebration of Albert Hofmann's 100th birthday, with a symposium that drew 200 journalists and over 1000 participants.

The second event was the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to allow the religious sect Uniao do Vegetal to import the psychedelic brew ayahuasca into the United States.

The third event was the publication of a paper reporting the results of an experiment at John Hopkins University in Baltimore, in which volunteers were given psilocybin, the psychedelic mushroom.

There are more clinical trials in psychedelics happening today than ever before.

What is the smallest dose of LSD that can produce some mild euphoria?

What is the typical dose of LSD?

How long does it take for LSD to take effect?

The psychoactive effects of LSD can be noticeable in a matter of minutes. Effects can be increased heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature, dilated pupils, and mild dizziness.

The psychoactive effects of drugs depend on the set and setting.

What does "set" refer to?

LSD can produce dramatic mood swings.

What drug did the anthropologist Bhirendra experience while working with the Tamang shaman?

What is the scientific name for the mushroom that McKenna ate?

Psilocybin gets converted to psilocin when ingested.

How long does a psilocybin trip typically last?

The physiological effects of psilocybin are like those of LSD but milder, and the psychological effects are more visual, less intense, and less dysphoric, compared to LSD.

What is the name of the cactus that contains mescaline?

How is peyote typically ingested?

How much mescaline is considered an effective dose?

The effects of mescaline last from eight to twelve hours.

Mescaline produces a more intense physiological arousal and a more sensual, perceptual, and stable trip than LSD.

Huston Smith's experience with mescaline showed him that the drug "acted as a psychological prism", revealing multiple layers of the mind that he could move between at will.

DMT has been found throughout the living natural world, including the human body and brain and has been synthesized.

What happens when 50 milligrams or more of DMT are smoked or injected?

Who conducted research on the effects of DMT at the University of New Mexico?

One of the striking results of Strassman's research was that at a sufficiently high dose, individuals reported being propelled to a world that exists independently of the individual mind.

Strassman's research also found that contact with aliens, implantation of devices, and transmission of information can occur while under the influence of DMT.

Strassman's research suggests that the pineal gland, a tiny gland in the middle of the brain that produces melatonin, could be the source of DMT surges.

Strassman's research suggests that the production of DMT in the pineal gland is high enough to create otherworldly experiences.

Where is ayahuasca found?

What is the name of the plant vine used to make ayahuasca?

Ayahuasca can contain other plants in addition to Banisteriopsis caapi.

The addition of Psychotria viridis adds DMT to ayahuasca.

The addition of DMT to ayahuasca makes for better and brighter visions.

Ayahuasca is known as a purgative because it causes vomiting and severe diarrhea.

Ayahuasca can produce flying images of colored lights, geometric patterns, and animals such as jaguars, birds, and reptiles, as well as visions of spirit helpers, demons, deities, and distant events.

Ayahuasca tourism began in the 1990s.

Ayahuasca has been touted as a panacea, but it's important to be cautious about claims of its healing powers.

Tolerance to LSD develops within two to three days and then disappears just as quickly.

There is a cross-tolerance between many psychedelic drugs, meaning that intoxication with one of them will inhibit the effectiveness of another if it is taken shortly after the first.

Researchers believe that psychedelic drugs work by increasing activity in the brain's serotonic neural pathways.

Psychedelic drugs stimulate the 5-HT2 subtype of serotonergic receptors, which can increase activity in those pathways.

Psychedelic drugs can both excite and inhibit by attaching to different receptors on the same neuron.

The activity of the MDN is attenuated when under the influence of psychedelics, which could account for transformations of self-identity, including death and rebirth experiences.

Psychedelic drugs may shift people's perception and conceptualization of the self and the world, leading to experiences that are more or less meaningful than their previous ones.

There can be an increase in hypnagogic imagery and dreams may take on the vividness, intensity, and perceptual peculiarities of drug trips when under the influence of psychedelics.

What is the most common adverse effect of psychedelic drugs?

Flashbacks can be triggered by intoxication with marijuana or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors.

There is a psychopharmacological resemblance between psychedelics and SSRIs, with not only reports of SSRIs triggering flashbacks but also an apparent heightening of SSRI activity by psychedelics.

The perceptual aspects of flashbacks have been subsumed in a broad category of post-psychedelic perceptual disturbances called hallucinogen persisting perception disorder.

These long-term alterations of perception can last from seconds to years.

Some of these perceptual distortions include intensification of color, changes in size, images of geometric forms, images in the peripheral visual fields, afterimages, and stationary images of moving objects.

The brain functions in a manner that maintains synaptic homeostasis.

Flooding receptor sites with chemical agents that can activate them leads to a compensatory attenuated response.

Research has shown that repeated administration of LSD to rats decreases the availability of the 5-HT2 receptor subtype in the brain.

Chronic administration of LSD to rats for seven days resulted in alterations in the behaviors of rats that were detectable more than thirty days after the drug treatment.

The effects of psychedelics on serotonin receptor binding have been noted in those with schizophrenia, and some medications used in the treatment of schizophrenia block 5-HT2 receptors.

Some psychedelics can elicit schizophrenia-like symptoms in humans.

Researchers have hypothesized that excessive 5-HT2 receptor activation may be a critical factor in psychotic schizophrenia, at least in some cases.

Psychedelics may be able to precipitate schizophrenia.

Psychedelic mood swings, visual hallucinations, mania, grandiosity, and religiosity can persist after a trip.

The incidence figures for psychosis following the use of psychedelics have ranged from 0.008 to 4.6 percent.

Research has found that 37 to 49 percent of those hospitalized for LSD psychosis had received previous psychiatric treatment.

A comparison of people with schizophrenia with and without previous drug use and a control group of people without schizophrenia found that those using drugs had better psychological adjustment before the onset of schizophrenia than those not using drugs, but worse psychological adjustment than the non-schizophrenic individuals.

In the schizophrenia study, the use of multiple drugs was common, making it difficult to implicate any single drug as a causative agent for chronic psychosis.

Psychotomimetic effects of different drugs of abuse can be addictive, and these effects can contribute to chronic psychosis.

There are differences between acute psychoses that develop two to seven days after using LSD and psychoses in which no drugs had been used, suggesting that some people are more vulnerable to psychosis induced by psychedelics.

Hoffer and Osmond noted similarities between delirium tremens, the hallucinations reported by people in the throes of alcoholism, and psychotomimetic experiences under the influence of LSD.

Hoffer and Osmond speculated that giving alcoholics a high dose of LSD would mimic delirium tremens before they sink to that stage. When they tried this, the results were apparently good.

Hoffer and Osmond came to reconceptualize the LSD experiences as instances of mystical transcendence rather than psychosis.

Arnold Ludwig and his colleagues randomly assigned 176 alcoholic hospital inpatients to four groups of 44. The groups were given either milieu therapy, LSD, psychotherapy, or hypnosis, or combination of these.

Ludwig studied the effects of LSD therapy on alcoholics, and the study found no evidence that any of the LSD sessions made a difference in therapeutic outcomes.

In conclusion, there were either no differences in outcomes with the use of LSD or the differences disappeared by the time of 6-month follow-ups. Given the serious social burden posed by alcoholism, the fact that individuals seeking conventional forms of treatment for alcoholism have a high failure rate, psychedelic treatment is being reexamined to see if there are ways of harnessing it.

Stanislav Grof has conducted extensive research concerning the administration of psychedelic drugs to those who are dying of cancer.

The purpose of psychedelic therapy for those who are dying is not treatment of their disease, but to relieve suffering and enhance spiritual experiences.

The analgesic effects of psychedelics have sometimes persisted for weeks after their acute effects have worn off.

Psychedelics have also changed people's attitudes towards death.