Substance Abuse during Pregnancy
“Bert” Bertis Britt Little in Drugs and Pregnancy, 2022
Mescaline is a naturally occurring hallucinogenic alkaloid that is concentrated in the ‘buttons’ of the peyote cactus, Lophophora williamsii. Mescaline also occurs in the San Pedro cactus (Trichocereus pachanoi) and the Peruvian torch (Trichocereus peruvianus). Flattened, dried seedpods from these cacti are called “peyote buttons” or simply “peyote.” Buttons are ingested for recreational use. Members of the Native American Church may use mescaline legally in their religious rituals and ceremonies. Naturally occurring mescaline is often contaminated with strychnine, which may heighten the excitement sensation. Mescaline from natural sources is associated with severe nausea and vomiting. Mescaline is available from chemical synthesis. Mescaline effects are similar to LSD effects, but some mescaline users report much more vivid and intense hallucinations. Auditory hallucinations are reported with mescaline but not with LSD. The hallucinogenic effects usually last about 12 hours, but some users report much longer (20–40 hours) periods of hallucination, probably depending mainly upon dose and drug concentration.
Mystical States achieved through Psychedelics: The Origins, Classical, and Contemporary Use of Psychedelics
Andrew C. Papanicolaou in A Scientific Assessment of the Validity of Mystical Experiences, 2021
On the basis of their chemical structure, the classic psychedelics are divided into two classes. The one includes drugs with a chemical structure like that of tryptamine. Among the drugs in this class are the synthesized psychedelic LSD, psilocybin, and dimethyltryptamine or DMT, which is found in ayahuasca, a psychotropic concoction used ritually in South America. The second category includes substances with a chemical structure similar to phenethylamine. Mescaline, the main psychoactive agent in the peyote (Lophophora williamsii), and other cacti, is the best-known psychedelic of that class. This class includes also several synthesized compounds. The cactus Peyote has been used for millennia by several Mexican Indian tribes including the Chichimeca, Huichol, and Tarahumara tribes, for therapeutic and religious purposes9 and it continues to be used today as a sacrament by the Native American Church to be recounted below.
Targeting the Nervous System
Nathan Keighley in Miraculous Medicines and the Chemistry of Drug Design, 2020
Stimulant and mind-altering drugs of this kind have been used in different forms throughout history. Mescaline, found naturally in the peyote cactus, is used by native North Americans to access a pseudo-religious trance. Another psychoactive plant extract belonging to this class of compounds is ephedrine, known since ancient China. The first fully synthetic ‘recreational drug’ is an analogue of ephedrine, amphetamine, first synthesised in 1887. It has been used to cheat in sports, to increase heart rate and circulation to improve the performance of the athlete, but this was risky and resulted in deaths. Interestingly, pseudoephedrine (a diastereomer of ephedrine) is used in many over-the-counter cold remedies, but has a much lower stimulant effect than ephedrine. Even though it is freely available, it is illegal in many sports, and has been implicated in many drug scandals.
On the mushrooming reports of “quiet quitting”: Employees’ lifetime psilocybin use predicts their overtime hours worked
Published in Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 2023
Benjamin A. Korman
To determine whether the findings were unique to psilocybin or could be extended to other classic psychedelics, the main analysis was re-run while including LSD (variable LSDFLAG; 0 = never used, 1 = ever used) and mescaline/peyote (variables MESC2 and PEYOTE2; 0 = never used, 1 = ever) as covariates in the statistical model. As commonly done in studies on psychedelic use (Johansen and Krebs 2015; Krebs, Johansen, and Lu 2013), mescaline and peyote were merged into one category due to that fact that mescaline is the primary psychoactive substance in peyote (Nichols and Barker 2016). Lifetime psilocybin use was again significantly associated with overtime (B = −0.042, IRR = 0.959, SE = 0.023, p = .045) while lifetime LSD and mescaline/peyote use were not (see Table 1: Model 2 for details).
Safety issues of psilocybin and LSD as potential rapid acting antidepressants and potential challenges
Published in Expert Opinion on Drug Safety, 2022
Giordano Novak Rossi, Jaime E. C. Hallak, José Carlos Bouso Saiz, Rafael G. Dos Santos
Although preliminary and nonconfirmatory, results from recent randomized, double-blind, and controlled clinical trials have been promising (especially concerning psilocybin, which is the most studied serotoninergic hallucinogen) [10,12]. Besides psilocybin and LSD, ayahuasca (a psychedelic brew usually made from the vine Banisteriopsis caapi and the bush Psychotria viridis which contains beta-carbolines and DMT as its active components) is another substance that shows preliminary evidence as a rapid-acting antidepressant, as reported by observational studies (where there is substantial evidence pointing to its therapeutic effects) and open and placebo-controlled clinical trials [46,47]. Despite this, it is still in an earlier study phase and is likely to take more time to standardize its administration (e.g. investigate proportions, dosages, and other pharmacological variables pertinent). Mescaline has vastly been left out of recent clinical scientific investigations, probably in part due to its long-lasting effects in comparison with other serotoninergic hallucinogens.
Beyond LSD: A Broader Psychedelic Zeitgeist during the Early to Mid-20th Century
Published in Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 2019
Jacob S. Aday, Emily K. Bloesch, Christopher C. Davoli
Much of the psychedelic research conducted in the 1950s and 1960s focused on either LSD’s basic effects on cognition, as a potential adjunct to psychotherapy/clinical applications, or as a model for psychosis (see Masters and Houston 1966). Subsequently, the progression of LSD research mirrored that of mescaline and employed very similar methods. Mescaline is the principle alkaloid in the peyote cactus found in many parts of the Southwestern U.S. and Mexico and has been used for thousands of years by Native Americans. Its effects were popularized in The Doors of Perception (1954), Aldous Huxley’s classic account of his experience taking the psychedelic substance. This section elaborates on the ways in which much of the early mescaline research paralleled the LSD research that would follow, suggesting that LSD researchers were influenced by this early work.
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