A Psychoactive Drug - Essay Example

Intro: A psychoactive drug is a chemical effect drug that acts with the central nervous system and can cause a variety of effects on the human body. Once acting upon the nervous system, a psychoactive drug can change a person’s entire mood, as well as changes in perception as a whole. The drugs work with the central nervous system to change how the brain works. These drugs can sometimes form hard to break addictions, but other forms of psychoactive drugs can also help break people of life long addictions. There are many different types of psychoactive drugs, from the often used drugs such as caffeine and alcohol, to psilocybin found in mushrooms, and even the medically elite drugs that help people with depression and other mind illnesses. Within this category of psychoactive drugs are drugs that act as stimulants on the body and bodily functions, drugs that act as depressants on the body and bodily functions, and also antipsychotic drugs. All of these drugs affect the body in different ways, both positive and negative. Some of these drugs can be used to treat disease, while some may be often abused and used illegal in the more casual scene. Another type of these drugs, antipsychotic drugs, is often used to treat mental illnesses, and are used to treat a myriad of diseases and illnesses assorted with psychotic disabilities. Body: There are four main groups of psychoactive drugs, which can then be divided down into many different subgroups. The groups at times often overlap, causing some drugs to fall into more than one category. The main groups are stimulants, depressants, hallucinogens, and antipsychotics. All of these different groups of drugs are classified as psychoactive drugs, and all work with the brain and nervous system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoactive_drug). However, these drugs can all affect the brain in different ways, to a myriad of different effects as well. Almost as long as there has been psychoactive drugs around have people been arguing over them. The ethics and morality of these drugs has long been debated, with people who use them claiming them to be moral and spiritual, and the other side arguing against that claimed morality. The Opium War is one slight example of a fight over the use of these drugs(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressants). It is also interesting how some types of these drugs are legal, while others are not. The consumption of alcohol and tobacco is legal, where using psilocybin or cannabis is not. This leads some people to believe that the government should stay neutral on drugs, and that the laws surrounding them are merely political (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressants). The first kind of psychoactive drug is a stimulant. Amphetamine is one drug that does just this. Know by many slang names, amphetamine is a commonly used stimulant drug. It is also used to treat narcolepsy, ADHD, and various other sleeping disorders. Amphetamines prevent the chemical process of reuptake inhibition. The drugs can produce of feeling of ego-ness, and increase a person’s acting in social settings. It can also cause a person to talk rapidly, increase sex drive, and eventually leads to fatigue as the drug wears off (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphetamines). The short term use of this drug can cause many different effects on the body, and can include “decreased appetite, increased stamina and physical energy, increased sexual drive/response, involuntary bodily movements, hyperhidrosis, hyperactivity, jitteriness, nausea, itchy, blotchy or greasy skin, tachycardia, irregular heart rate, hypertension, and headaches.”( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphetamines). The drug can also have long term effects on the body. These effects include “tremor, restlessness, changed sleep patterns, anxiety and increase in pre-existing anxiety, poor skin condition, hyperreflexia, tachypnea, gastrointestinal narrowing, and weakened immune system”( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphetamines). Tolerance to this drug can also be developed, leading people to take larger and larger doses of the drug to get the same feelings as when they first used it. This can often lead to harmful addictions, and also a painful withdrawal state. The next type of psychotic drug is a depressant, or better know as a “downer”( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressants). A depressant is a drug that specifies on a part of the body and lowers that part’s functions, and often affects the central nervous system. There are two common classes of depressants barbiturates and benzodiazepines, but can also include alcohol, narcotics, and even tranquilizers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressants). Barbiturates are good at treating the medical conditions they are prescribed for, but it was found that they were often abused. After the cost of the using the drug overcame the medical use for it, a replacement drug was sought after. Barbiturates are still used today, mostly in the prevention of seizures (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressants). The third type of drug is the antipsychotic drug. Antipsychotic drugs are used to treat medical conditions dealing with psychosis. They are often used to deal with schizophrenia, mania and delusional disorder, but may also treat various other psychosis related diseases and illnesses ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antipsychotic). There are two main types of antipsychotic drugs, the typical antipsychotic and the atypical antipsychotic drug. However a new type of antipsychotic drug has just recently been discovered, the partial agonists. Work on this type of drug has been going along at a steady pace, and one new type has already been approved by the Food and Drug Administration(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antipsychotic). This drug is different from the previous two types, however they can sometimes be classified as atypical antipsychotic drugs. Conclusion: In conclusion, while the many types of drugs may be vast, almost as vast as their wide arrangement of effects, all psychoactive drugs change the way our body works. By working and changing the underlying foundations of our nervous system, psychoactive drugs change our abilities to perceive, work, and even think. They create inside us a new reality and change the very mold on which we were created. For some these drugs can be used to treat diseases, for other they can form life long habits. However, the use of these drugs is left up to the user, and all that can be said is that the many different types of psychoactive drugs can definitely cause many different changes to the chemical makeup of our bodies. From the stimulant drug, which speeds up our body and the processes to it, which can often be used or called “speed” in local clubs, to the depressants used to slow down the body and its functions, all of these drugs somehow get inside our head and change what our concept of reality is. They can make us more alert, like a stimulant, or calm us down like a depressant. Many of us all have had a popular type of stimulant every day, caffeine is steadily becoming more and more popular. There are also antipsychotic drugs, which can help combat mental illnesses, and other problems people may have with their psychosis or related illnesses. Read More