What Drugs Are Considered Classic Psychedelics?
Psychedelics include many different substances, ranging from naturally derived compounds to laboratory-made drugs that alter perceptions, change emotions, intensify sensory experiences, and even cause users to feel profound spiritual or even mystical feelings.
While they share many things in common, several types of psychedelic drugs can be categorized based on how they’re made or what they do to the people who take them. While most are considered to have a lower potential for addiction, they’re not safe and often unregulated, and even common psychedelics can cause some major potential problems in users, such as the side effects of different psychedelic mushroom strains.
Table of contents
» How Are Psychedelics Classified Into Different Categories?
» What Are Dissociative Psychedelics?
» What Emotional Effects Are Common With Empathogen Use?
» What Makes Atypical Psychedelics Different From Classic Psychedelics?
» Key Takeaways on Types of Psychedelic Drugs
» Resources
How Are Psychedelics Classified Into Different Categories?
If you’re wondering how the different types of psychedelic drugs are organized into categories, much of it comes down to their chemical structure – what makes them do the things they do to humans. Among classic psychedelics, the different chemical structures include:
- Tryptamines: These psychedelics, such as psilocybin mushrooms and DMT, come from plants and fungi.
- Phenethylamines: This class of classic psychedelics includes mescaline.
- Lysergamides: The best-known lysergamide is LSD, also known as acid.
However, psychedelics can also be classified by their effect, and that’s how most people who use the drugs would think of the differences between these substances. Effect categories include:
- Classic Psychedelics: These drugs, which include magic mushrooms, LSD, mescaline, and DMT, work by affecting the brain’s serotonin 5-HT2A receptors, leading to classic side effects like altered perceptions, intensified sensory experiences, and spiritual experiences.
- Dissociatives: This type of psychedelic, which includes ketamine and PCP, still produces an altered state of consciousness in users – but they work by affecting other receptors in the brain, including NMDA receptors, instead of the serotonin 5-HT2A receptors.
- Deliriants: Drugs like scopolamine that cause users to feel confused or delirious.
- Empathogens: This type of psychedelic, which includes ecstasy (MDMA), releases dopamine and serotonin, which tends to cause the user to feel increasingly friendly and empathetic, as well as sensing that they’re more fully connected to others around them.
- Atypical: Atypical psychedelics still can make people feel the same things as classic psychedelics, or at least some version of them, but they work in much different ways. This type can include things like MDMA, scopolamine, and nitrous oxide, among others.
What Are Dissociative Psychedelics?
Unlike thinking about the types of opioids from strongest to weakest, psychedelic categories don’t necessarily break down the drugs based on their strength or weakness. Instead, the distinction lies in their chemical structure and how they affect users.
Dissociative psychedelics, for example, cause users to feel like they’re having altered perceptions, changes in cognition or consciousness, and even sensations of dissociating or detaching from themselves or the world around them. This type of drug can cause many different experiences in users, including:
- Sensory distortions include changes to how they see, hear, feel, taste, or smell things around them.
- Hallucinations, including both visual and auditory.
- Dissociating, or feeling separate from their own body or environment.
- Altered reality.
- Dream-like states.
- Struggling to pay attention, remember things, or think through problems.
- Significantly reduces feelings of negative or intense emotions like pain or anxiety.
Dissociative hallucinogens include many different psychedelics, including PCP, ketamine, DXM, and even so-called laughing gas (nitrous oxide).
What Emotional Effects Are Common With Empathogen Use?
Empathogens tend to make users feel more empathetic toward others and the world around them. This can manifest as feeling friendlier, more socially connected, and even benevolent, and the user will also likely feel like they’re more connected to the outside world. These effects happen because the drugs cause their brains to release extra neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine that correspond to mood, sense of rewards, and anxiety, as well as other emotional and cognitive effects.
MDMA, also known as Molly or Ecstasy, is perhaps the most common type of empathogen. While many of the effects from empathogens might seem positive, such as feeling a strong sense of belonging or love for others and the world around them, they can also cause extremely negative feelings and even health dangers. Adverse effects of empathogens like MDMA can include:
- Excessive sweating.
- High body temperature.
- Becoming dehydrated.
- Feeling depressed or severely anxious.
- Drastic mood swings.
These problems can become extremely bad, especially emotionally, as the person “comes down” from the drug, meaning their neurotransmitter levels crash as their body returns to normal and the drug dissipates in their system. This can cause people to feel exhausted, depressed, irritated, or highly anxious, unable to concentrate or remember things, and even become extremely paranoid, suspicious, and scared. While users might think they’re in for a fun night out at the club or a party when they take these drugs, the several days of these low feelings and lingering effects of the drugs as their bodies crash from the substance can make them extremely debilitating, scary, and not worth the short-term high.
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What Makes Atypical Psychedelics Different From Classic Psychedelics?
Among the different types of psychedelic drugs, atypical psychedelics stand out compared to classic psychedelics because they have a completely different (not typical) way of causing the psychedelic effects in users. While they can still cause people to feel altered perceptions, intensified emotions, deeper connections to people and things around themselves, hallucinations, and other classic psychedelic effects, they work by causing the brain to change something different from other types of more classic hallucinogens. Chemically, this usually comes down to how the drugs interact with neurotransmitter receptors in the brain.
With classic psychedelics, many of the effects that people feel are caused by changes to how their brains’ serotonin 5-HT2A receptors function, causing their brains to have more serotonin, which can cause these classic psychedelic effects. MDMA, on the other hand, affects the release of several different types of neurotransmitters, including dopamine and norepinephrine, in addition to serotonin, giving users altered perceptions, but because of different chemical processes in the brain.
Key Takeaways on Types of Psychedelic Drugs
- There are many different types of psychedelic drugs, which can be classified based on their chemical structure.
- It’s more common to differentiate psychedelics based on the effects they have on users.
- Classic psychedelics such as mescaline, LSD, magic mushrooms, and DMT work by altering a specific serotonin receptor in the brain.
- Other psychedelics can cause things like altered perceptions and intensified feelings or emotions by affecting other neurotransmitter receptors, including those that influence levels of dopamine or norepinephrine.
- Psychedelic use can cause intense negative emotions and potential health problems in users.
If you or a loved one is struggling with admitting addiction but thinks you have a problem with drugs or alcohol, it’s time to get help – and WhiteSands Treatment can help. Our network of drug rehab treatment facilities in Florida features compassionate experts who know what it takes to break the chains of addiction, once and for all. Call us at 877-855-3470 today to get started on your road to recovery.
Resources
- National Library of Medicine – Classic Psychedelics: An Integrative Review of Epidemiology, Therapeutics, Mystical Experience, and Brain Network Function
- Alcohol and Drug Foundation – Psychedelics
- ScienceDirect – Psychedelics
- National Institute on Drug Abuse – Psychedelic and Dissociative Drugs
- Alcohol and Drug Foundation – Empathogens
If you or a loved one needs help with abuse and/or treatment, please call the WhiteSands Treatment at (877) 855-3470. Our addiction specialists can assess your recovery needs and help you get the addiction treatment that provides the best chance for your long-term recovery.
About the Author
Jackie has been involved in the substance abuse and addiction treatment sector for over five years and this is something that she is truly eager about. She has a passion for writing and continuously works to create informative pieces that not only educate and inform the public about the disease of addiction but also provide solutions for those who struggle with drug and alcohol abuse.
