You may feel that street drugs are found everywhere now that the use of this has become so common. Many people, especially those who have just discovered their teens, are tempted to fall in prey for this excitement or escape that street drugs seem to offer. Yet there are a lot of things you need to learn on this one topic that explains to you the risk that such excitement or escape conceals for you. The truth remains that drugs don’t actually solve your problems – they help you to hide from your feelings and problems. When the effect of street drug wears off, the problem stays right there. They could just make things worse and ruin your life. So before street drugs destroy your life any further, here is what you need to know.

Drug abuse is most commonly associated with the use of illegal street drugs. The most commonly known street drugs include Cocaine, Crack-cocaine, Heroin, Methamphetamine, Phencyclidine, Marijuana, Ritalin, Tobacco, Steroids, LSD, Ecstasy and Inhalants.  These drugs induce addiction, which means frequent and uncontrollable use of the drugs over and over again. Young people tend to be drawn to this danger for various reasons – to enjoy, to follow the crowd, curiosity, rebellion, influence of friends or simply because they can be easily bought. The major four types of drugs that are believed to be abused are stimulants, depressants, analgesics and hallucinogens.  Some people use a mix of these drugs and this may bring in for them the most unpredictable results. It could lead to unconsciousness, coma or even death at times.

Now let us see the consequences of use of these street drugs on your brain. When you use heroin, the brain cells become dependent on this drug for even executing the normal routine activities. It leaves the user in a fog for many hours after use. Marijuana smoking affects those part of the brain that deal with emotions, memory and judgment. It leads to weakening of long term memory and problem-solving capability of an individual. Either as a powder or as a crack, cocaine leads to feelings of paranoia and anxiety. They make individual lose interest in life or in enjoying any worldly pleasures. Inhalants include glue, gasoline, hair spray and paint thinner, which are sniffed in and they leave an immediate effect on the body. It destroys the fatty tissues and stops proper neural transmissions. Use of steroids leads to moodiness and permanent loss of learning and memory abilities.

Hallucinogens have their immediate effect on the autonomic nervous system. It leads to increase in heart rate, blood pressure and body temperature. Extended use of hallucinogens lead to problems in concentrating and also make it difficult for users to differentiate reality from fantasy. It impairs memory and causes paranoia and anxiety. The individual experiences a dry mouth, dizziness or subjective feelings of hot and cold. These include cannabis, LSD, ‘magic mushroom’ and ecstasy. The use of hallucinogens heightens the user’s sensory experiences leading to distortion of their perception, feeling of insight and enhancing their mood in general. They make the users feel disconnected from the world and also from themselves.

What is common in all these resulting effects of use of hallucinogens is hallucinatory and reactive emotional states – some pleasant, some unpleasant and even terrifying ones; time disorientation and recent (transient) memory loss. Gradually, over a period of time, the focus on physiological changes fade into background and perceptual distortions and hallucinations start becoming more prominent. Hallucination is a state that most desire to evoke with the use of street drugs. Hallucination is what helps the individual to run away from the complexities of life. The human brain can produce auditory or visual hallucination under different conditions.

However, the easiest way to invoke a hallucination is use of such illegal drugs and even some over-the-counter drugs. Hallucination can be defined as false or distorted experiences that appear to be real perceptions. These sensory impressions generated by the mind can be seen, heard, felt or even smelled or tasted!  Although hallucinations occur in all sensory systems of the body, the visual effects are most common and the auditory effects are least common. These visual hallucinations can occur in various ways.

In the early stages, such addicted people seem to visualize geometric shapes without even closing their eyes and later on they progress to seeing landscapes or other such symbolic objects. Synesthesia, which means crossing of senses – which means sounds are seen and objects are heard, is a common hallucination under the use of street drugs. Alteration in aesthetic experiences are marked by feelings like colors appear more intense, objects and events look sharper and music seems richer and more meaningful. There is a general feeling that time has slowed down. They even feel at times that the time has completed stopped moving ahead.

“Bad trip” is one of the most undesirable effects of prolonged use of hallucinogen. Over a period of time, the addicted individuals seem to realize that the hallucinogenic experiences will never end. Some may find it difficult to understand what is real and what drug-induced fantasy is. This may create panic reactions amongst such addicts. This is what they term as a bad trip for the street drug users.

Many a times such states occur in an addict when the affects of street drugs are combined with a depressing environmental situation or a negative mood swing. In mild cases, they can be “talked down” and re-assured that their fears will finish as soon as the effects of the drug has worn down. The bad trip is usually found common amongst psychologically less stable street drug users who use these hallucinogenic drugs in combination with other drugs, leading to adulteration.

The intensity of these effects of drug abuse, including both visual and auditory hallucination, increases with the rise in dosage! Once you identify abuse or addiction to such illegal street drugs, seek help at the earliest. This will help you to minimize damage to your family, friends and especially you. Treatment helps such addicted people to return to a normal and healthy life.