Alternative Consciousness
Drugs and Thugs October 27, 2020 R. Crandall
By the early 1940s, illicit drugs in America were scarce and often heavily diluted due to wartime conditions: resources were diverted to the national effort, sea passages were militarized, and private aircraft and international airspace were limited. After the war, cannabis became a potent fuel for the countercultural awakening spreading across the nation. The chapter defines "psychedelic drugs" as a class of substances affecting cognition and perception, and identifies how alkaloids like psilocybin, LSD, DMT, and mescaline bind to serotonin receptors that regulate sensory input and interpretation.