Hallucinogens

Hallucinogens, or psychedelics affect a person's perceptions, sensations, thinking and emotions. They include drugs such as LSD, mescaline, DMT and peyote. They are used in various ways from tablets to smoking to eating mushrooms. They cause intense physical and psychological effects on the body and mind. Heavy users develop brain damage such as impaired memory and attention span and confusion. Other effects include increased heart rate and blood pressure, sweating, tremors and sleeplessness. Bad trips may result in panic, confusion, suspiciousness, and feelings of helplessness and loss of control. Flashbacks of experiencing the effects without taking the drug can occur. Mood swings and sense of time and self can change causing panic. Mental or emotional problems that were not apparent can be unmasked with use.


Heroin

Heroin is an illegal, highly addictive drug. It is both the most abused and the most rapidly acting of the opiates. It is typically sold as a white or brownish powder or as the black sticky substance known on the streets as "black tar heroin".

Although purer heroin is becoming more common, most street heroing is "cut" with other drugs or with substances such as sugar, starch, powdered milk, orquinine. Street heroin can also be cut with strychnine or other poisons. Because heroin abusers do not know the actual strength of the drug or its true contents, they are at risk of overdose or death. Heroin also poses special problems because of the transmission of HIV and other diseases that can occur from sharing needles or other injection equipment.

Heroin is processed from morphine, a naturally occurring substance extracted from the seed pod of the Asian poppy plant. Heroin usually appears as a white or brown powder. Street names associated with heroin include "smack," "H," "skag," and "junk." Other names may refer to types of heroin produced in a specific geographical area, such as "Mexican black tar."