Talk:Psychedelic drug

Definition of "psychedlic" according to pharmacologists

Someone wrote: "Many pharmacologists define psychedelic drugs solely as chemicals that have an LSD- or mescaline-like action, working on the serotonin 5-HT_2A receptor in the brain."

I'm quite sure that's not true. I'm sure enough that instead of putting a citation needed tag, I'm cutting it out and replacing it with something accurate.AlkaloidMan (talk) 08:05, 31 October 2010 (UTC)AlkaloidMan

The paper that has been linked doesn't define psychedelics at all. It merely mentions tryptamines and phenethylamines as "two major classes" of psychedelics, sharing the main action over the 5-ht2a receptor. Psychedelics is a broad term and like the article says, it can also be used to describe non-serotonergic drugs, such as salviorin a. The way it stands now, the definition isn't just wrong, the article is also contradicting itself by mentioning atypical psychedelics.--87.155.249.53 (talk) 16:07, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Salvinorin A is most definitely not a psychedelic, and should not be described as such. Thoric (talk) 18:27, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Proper scope for this page

There was a thread a few years ago on the proper scope of this page, which reached no definitive conclusion, but I think the matter needs to be settled. Basically the question comes down to this: should the page have a broad scope as it does now, covering (classic) psychedelics, empathogens, dissociatives, deliriants, and cannabinergics, or should it have a narrower scope, covering only classic psychedelics? Unfortunately, pages already exist corresponding to both those possible scopes: Hallucinogen and Serotonergic psychedelic respectively. Therefore, regardless of which names should be used for the pages for the two concepts, there is a problem because there are three pages.

This is what I think should be done. This page should then be reduced in scope to only cover classic psychedelics. This seems preferable to the topic being covered on the page "Serotonergic psychedelic," since that is a more technical term and in any case not the term used in most of the literature based on my sampling; that page's content can be merged into this one's, and it can become a redirect. Then, I think this page should have a longer section on nomenclature similar to the one on the "Hallucinogen" page to clear up confusion among readers. At the top of the article it could say "Psychedelics, serotonergic psychedelics, classic psychedelics, or classic hallucinogens are ...", to make immediately clear that several names are used for the same thing.

I wanted to check with other editors before making big changes, but if my plan sounds good, I will go ahead and start moving content on the other hallucinogens to the "Hallucinogen" page. Then I could propose a merger and the material from "Serotonergic psychedelic" could be moved here. Gazelle55 (talk) 01:25, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

Merger proposal

Based on my post just above, I'd like to formally propose merging Serotonergic psychedelic into this page. This page has only covered serotonergic/classic psychedelics for some time now and there is no reason to have two pages for the same concept (see above). There isn't much material on the other page anyway so it could easily be integrated here. Furthermore, the less common, broader definition of psychedelic drug is already covered at the article Hallucinogen. Following the merger, I would bring together some sources to clarify the confusing and sometimes overlapping uses of the terminology for readers. Gazelle55 (talk) 16:28, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

I agree with the proposed merger, although the resulting page should make it clear that there is some controversy of definition and naming convention. Expect potential resistance. There are many who feel that "psychedelic" should be a very broad term, others who feel it should be very narrow, and some who feel there are some edge cases. The term 'psychedelic' was originally coined to refer to mescaline and very similar substances. It was later determined that a great number of substances and experiences "could" cause one to have a "psychedelic experience", thus muddying the definition, but I believe it important to reserve the term "psychedelic drug" for those substances which consistently facilitate a typical "psychedelic experience". Thoric (talk) 00:55, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

I completely agree. I don't anticipate much resistance among the watchers of this page, since the current version of the article is restricted to serotonergic hallucinogens. Maybe more from the watchers of the serotonergic psychedelic page, but maybe not, since they are presumably most interested in serotonergic hallucinogens. Since the serotonergic psychedelic page is the one that would go away, I would argue that's where you should really make this merger proposal visible. Jbening (talk) 17:56, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments. Thoric, yes I agree that it needs to be clear to readers about the inconsistent terminology. I would add some synonyms to the lead sentence and also have a sentence in the lead section explaining this a bit. Then there could be a more in-depth explanation under "Nomenclature" than there is now. For precision, we could even move the article to "Classical psychedelic," though I think this might confuse readers even more. Jbening, fair point. I added a note at Talk:Serotonergic psychedelic directing people here, and plus there is the merge template at the top of the article there, so hopefully anyone who objects will notice in time. Gazelle55 (talk) 23:17, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

Not to open a can of worms, but I see that the list of psychedelic drugs article includes a number of substances that wouldn't fit in the scope of this article, and there's a rather weak, unsourced claim at the top of that list to the effect that "serotonergic psychedelics are usually considered the classic psychedelics" with a wikilink to the article we're considering merging into this one. My own argument for limiting the term "psychedelic" to serotonergics would be that the term was invented to describe the actions of LSD-like hallucinogens, and it has only casually and sporadically been used in reference to other hallucinogenics. Do any of the books listed as refs 4,8-10 in this article (Leary; McKenna; Davis; Pollan) make such a claim, and/or is there another good source for the decision to limit psychedelics to serotonergics? If such statements are made in one or more of those books, could someone with access to them include a quote and page in the reference, so it's available to people who haven't read the books? I see the author of ref 34 in this article (Carhart-Harris, Robin; Guy, Goodwin; 2017)) limits "psychedelic" to the LSD-like hallucinogens, but says merely that, "When using the term ‘psychedelics’ I refer to those compounds with appreciable serotonin 2A receptor agonist properties that can alter consciousness in a marked and novel way," without claiming that that's a mainstream approach. Reference 2 (Aghajanian and Marek, 1999) implies that same usage. Reference 3 (Milliere et al, 2018) also implies it, if one reads "classical hallucinogens" as being equivalent to "psychedelics". None of the references I've looked at so far makes it a slam dunk. Jbening (talk) 23:21, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

Looking over the list of psychedelic drugs article, I would say that a great number of those do not really qualify. Meaning drift is an age old problem, typically dependent on people borrowing a word, and using it incorrectly while deeply integrating it into their vocabulary without maintaining a connection to the originating people. While that has happened to some degree with the word, "psychedelic", in this information age, we as an encyclopedia do not need to fall prey to accepting a loosey goosey definition, and can uphold the original meaning and intent. The fact is that "psychedelic" was chosen to differentiate the properties of certain substances from being merely psychoactive, as well as from simply inducing hallucinations. We also have words like "dissociative" and "deliriant" to describe other sorts of substances which may or many not induce hallucinations, and as such we should really reserve the word, "psychedelic" for those substances which reliably induce "mind manifesting" or "soul manifesting" experiences, and are not better described by "dissociative" or "deliriant". It may be prudent for this article to mention common substances which are sometimes described as "psychedelic", and make it clear that they actually have a more correct classification, and link to those articles. --Thoric (talk) 16:14, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

Apologies that I've been so slow to follow up on this and thanks for giving more comments... yes, it is good that we look more closely at reliable sources and see how they define "psychedelic". I agree with Thoric that we shouldn't follow popular usage and instead stay encyclopedic. That said, I don't think that necessarily means sticking to the word's original definition – if the usage in reliable sources has changed we should follow suit. Jbening, thanks for looking into some sources. I think some of those like Pollan and McKenna are popular press sources that won't hold as much weight as academic sources anyways, and I agree that none of the research papers you mentioned have a slam dunk. I've collected some up-to-date references and their definitions to try to get more clarity:

1. Nichols, 2016: "This review will focus exclusively on the so-called classic serotonergic hallucinogens (psychedelics), which are substances that exert their effects primarily by an agonist (or partial agonist) action on brain serotonin 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) 2A receptors, as discussed later."

2. Nichols, 2018: "Before they had been pharmacologically classified as 5-HT2A receptor agonists or partial agonists, psychedelic drugs like mescaline , psilocybin , and LSD , were recognized for their powerful effects on the human psyche."

3. Reiff et al., 2020: "The psychedelics can be divided into four classes based on their pharmacological profiles and chemical structures: classic psychedelics (serotonin 2A [5-HT2A] receptor agonists), empathogens or entactogens (mixed serotonin and dopamine reuptake inhibitors and releasers), dissociative anesthetic agents (N-methyl-d-aspartate [NMDA] antagonists), and atypical hallucinogens, which affect multiple neurotransmitter systems (6)."

4. DiVito & Leger, 2020: "Classically, the unifying property of psychedelic drugs is their agonism of the serotonergic system, particularly the serotonin-2A receptor (5-hydroxytryptamine-2A receptor; 5-HT2A receptor), which is known to induce the alterations in sensorium and hallucinations that are characteristic of these agents [1, 15]."

5. Marks & Cohen, 2021: "Psychedelics are a class of natural and synthetic compounds that includes psilocybin, MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine), ibogaine and DMT (dimethyltryptamine)."

6. Siegel et al., 2021: "Psychedelics, also known as serotonergic hallucinogens, are among the hallucinogenic class of drugs and can exert profound effects on the brain and behavior via serotonin receptor mechanisms (Kyzar et al., 2017; Nichols, 2016)." And yet it also says in the next paragraph: "Psychedelics is a broad category with mechanistically dissimilar agents. Based on pharmacological profiles and chemical structures, psychedelics can be divided into four classes: classic psychedelics (serotonin 2A [5-HT2A] receptor agonists), empathogens or entactogens (mixed serotonin and dopamine reuptake inhibitors and releasers), dissociative anesthetic agents (N-methyl-D-aspartate [NMDA] antagonists) and atypical hallucinogens, which affect multiple neurotransmitter systems (Reiff et al., 2020)."

7. Nutt, 2019: "Though MDMA isn’t a psychedelic in the true sense of the word ..."

So based on the above it seems pretty clear to me that there is no consensus definition – both narrow and broad definitions are used. So here is what I'm thinking. 1. We rename this page "Classical psychedelic". 2. We then merge Serotonergic psychedelic into this page. 3. We could make a "Psychedelic drug (disambiguation)" page, which could link both to Hallucinogen (the broad definition) and a page called "Classical psychedelic". Does that make sense? Gazelle55 (talk) 23:48, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the great survey of sources, Gazelle55. I have no objections to what you propose. But personally I would still be in favor of leaving the current article titled as is, and merging serotonergic psychedelic into it, as you originally proposed. While I grant that the term "psychedelic" hasn't been used 100% of the time to refer to 5-HT2A agonists, the vast majority of uses are in reference to 5-HT2A agonists, as well as the original uses. We could acknowledge that fact with a brief statement in the lede to the effect that (1) the term "psychedelic" has been been used for decades without a systematic definition, (2) most uses refer to serotonergic hallucinogens, but (3) other classes of drugs such as X, Y, and Z have also occasionally been described as psychedelics. The wikilinks to those other classes of drugs in that brief statement would IMO be enough mention of anything other than serotonergic hallucinogens, since interested readers could click through to those articles to learn more. Jbening (talk) 02:16, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

You're right, Jbening, I think it will be better to stick with the original proposal and then clarify in the lead like you suggest. I think we have consensus on the merger but I'm just stuck on a procedural conundrum now. We haven't really found any source that explains "The term psychedelic normally means 5-HT2A agonists but is sometimes used to include other types of hallucinogens such as X, Y, and Z." I can show the sources using different definitions but if I then put them together to make the point it seems like a clear violation of WP:SYNTH... any thoughts on how we can move forward on a case like this? If not I can post at the Help Desk. Gazelle55 (talk) 18:59, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

(Sorry for the slow reply.) I don't see a problem. Of your modern sources, 1-4 support what we're proposing, 6 does in its first mention, and 7 does by implication. Plus we could cite The varieties of psychedelic experience and maybe one other classic source for the fact that the original meaning was restricted to what we now know are 5-HT2 agonists. Your refs 5 and 6 would support the occasional unsystematic broadening of the meaning to other hallucinogens. I don't see any undue synthesis. Jbening (talk) 16:27, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

(Also sorry for the slow reply), just to note, the opening description of Hallucinogen is as follows: Hallucinogens are a large and diverse class of psychoactive drugs that can produce altered states of consciousness characterized by major alterations in thought, mood, and perception, among other changes. Most hallucinogens can be categorized as psychedelics, dissociatives, or deliriants. -- so it would seem weird for "Psychedelic (drug)" to disambiguate to "Hallucinogen" when the Hallucinogen article already declares itself as the broad term, and psychedelic as a more specific term. As I've said before, there is an overall tendency for meaning drift to bloat the meaning of originally specific terms, and as an encyclopedia, we should strive to keep the primary meaning clear, and distinguish that primary meaning from the bloated, drifted meaning. Just because many people (including published academics) have used a specific term incorrectly, doesn't mean that we should also be incorrect. The word, "psychedelic" was purposely coined to more accurately describe what were (at that time) described as "hallucinogens". If we allow "psychedelic drug" to be bloated, then it loses its true meaning. We already have other specific terms for other non-psychedelic, hallucinogenic substances (dissociative, deliriant), as well as a broad inclusive term -- hallucinogen. I provide my psychoactive Venn diagram for reference: Psychoactive Drug Chart --Thoric (talk) 14:56, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the input and apologies for taking so long to do this. I've now merged the article into this one and added a clarifying sentence in the lead. I also added a few sentences of clarification in the "Etymology and nomenclature" section. If you see any problems, let me know or else be WP:BOLD. Gazelle55 ^{Let's talk!} 16:12, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

The potential psychological dangers of psychedelic experiences.

A conversation about this article took place here. OP is concerned that the risks of psychedelics are under-emphasized in the article. Most of the responses are invocations of WP:FALSEBALANCE, WP:FRINGE, WP:OR, and so on. I think these all miss the point. You can see my comment there for more background. However, here is the final paragraph of my comment, which will hopefully start a collaborative discussion about how to improve the article pursuant to OP's concerns:

"I think a concrete improvement that can be made to the article to address OP's well-founded concerns is to include a mention of the "Potential adverse effects" section in the lede, rather than only presenting positive information in the lede. These adverse effects would ideally be mentioned directly after the passage that states "psychedelics are physiologically safe." Pecopteris (talk) 19:39, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

The article already has a section entitled Psychedelic_drug#Potential_adverse_effects, which is slightly longer than the section entitled Psychedelic_drug#Potential_therapeutic_effects. Of course there should be a disclaimer in the introduction to the potential for negative experiences, if that is what is of concern here, then it can be easily remedied. Thoric (talk) 01:59, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, I think the concern here is that the lede is misleading, because it says things like "they're physiologically safe", but doesn't mention anything about the potential psychological dangers of these substances. I think the remedy is to incorporate something from the "potential adverse effects" section into the lede.

Any specific suggestions about how to word that/where, specifically, to include it? I'm happy to take a stab at it if nobody else wants to. Pecopteris (talk) 02:07, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Research Process and Methodology - SP24 - Sect 201 - Thu

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 4 March 2024 and 4 May 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Kph7917 (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Kph7917 (talk) 17:44, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Requested move 11 August 2024

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. (non-admin closure) RodRabelo7 (talk) 18:46, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

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Psychedelic drug → Psychedelic – Make shorter (WP:CONCISE, WP:PRECISE), in line with other drug classes like antidepressants, antipsychotics, and antibiotics. –Tobias (talk) 12:58, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

Survey

Please begin your contribution to this discussion with a bullet and your !vote in bold (preferably either 'Support' or 'Oppose') before providing your reasoning. Don't forget to sign your post using ~~~~!

Support per nominator, even the opening starts with Psychedelics instead of Psychedelic drugs. Killuminator (talk) 13:14, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

• Strong Oppose - The term, psychedelic, is both a noun and an adjective with a robust disambiguation list. The proposed move would crush that. Taking a personal approach as an example, I associated 'psychedelic' with colours and music, whilst 'psychedelic drug' is clear and unambiguous in its reference to chemicals that alter human perception. If the nom were changed to the plural noun, Psychedelics, I would be more likely to support it, but with reservations. Please note that the antibiotic article deals with more than drugs, and the other two examples do not have adjectival uses in common English (and I'd still argue that the plural is a better naming convention for those articles even if Wikipolicy disagrees). Cheers, Last1in (talk) 13:26, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

  The same goes for analgesic, sedative. There are quite a lot of words used as both adjectives and nouns. Nonetheless, Wikipedia focuses primarily on nouns, and a brief look at the Cambridge Dictionary lists the noun definition for the drugs first. Your concerns are understandable, but that is what disambiguation pages are for. Regarding the idea of titling the articles in the plural, I don't see any reason to do that. In general, you will talk about them as a whole group, but neither is it a rigid number of items in the list, nor is it uncommon to refer to a single "antidepressant", but it is in no way superior to the singular form. The antibiotic article deals with substances that eliminate bacteria, which are intentionally used solely in pharmacological contexts and therefore can be called drugs, at least I can't spot the "more".

  Additionally, "antipsychotic," like "antidepressant," is not as uncommon in psychiatric contexts as you might think. "Antipsychotic therapy" can refer to any therapeutic approach aimed at avoiding psychosis and similar conditions, encompassing psychotherapy, lifestyle changes, and other interventions, not just pharmacological options. –Tobias (talk) 14:00, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

  I do not think that we have explained the objection clearly enough. The issue is the tension between WP:PRECISION and WP:CONCISE, and which is more important in this specific case. When a reader considers the term, 'Psychedelic', this is not necessarily the page that they wanted, nor the one that meets WP:SURPRISE (as applied to article naming in WP:NAME). I think good analogies would be Rock, Columbia and Mercury. I am not saying that anything you've written here or below is wrong, nor that my position is the only correct one (or even the best one). It's a valid discussion with extremely good reasons in both direction. Cheers, Last1in (talk) 20:31, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

• Strong Oppose - The word psychedelic is both a noun and an adjective, and doesn't necessarily imply a drug. I would support a move to psychedelic (drug) to be more in line with cannabis (drug). Thoric (talk) 19:46, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

  I already explained this and there is no psychedelics plant that it can be confused with. Furthermore, psychedelics are not cannabis; where do you get the comparison from? What sense would it make to leave a redirect from "psychedelic" to "psychedelic (drug)" in terms of unnecessary disambiguators and parentheses? –Tobias (talk) 20:27, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

  I don't think you understand. The word psychedelic has had far more widespread use as an adjective over the past 60 years, than its original coinage as a drug classification, thus, Psychedelic should redirect to Psychedelic (disambiguation) and not to Psychedelic drug. I said that the only move that I would possibly support would be from Psychedelic drug to Psychedelic (drug). This has more to do with that there are different uses of the word psychedelic than drugs than to psychedelic somehow being a plant. The root problem is that the word psychedelic itself contains the ic suffix, which means "relating to", (of course there is no word psychedel), but psychedelic sounds inherently like an adjective, thus to ensure clarity that we're talking about a drug, it requires proper context, and this can be shown in a Wikipedia article by putting the context in parentheses. Thoric (talk) 20:55, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

  I actually do. However, I believe, you may not know what parentheses are used for. They are needed to create different pages for topics that share the same designation, but differ in their matter. Their reason is definitely not to outline an article's subject, even if they are adapted to it when necessary. "Psychedelic" is just the common name for this class as it is with "hypnotics", regardless if there might be another meaning to the term. That is what templates like About and Other uses are used for. I would be okay with "psychedelic (drug)" and not a redirect but the disambiguation page on "psychedelic". –Tobias (talk) 10:16, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

  The psychedelic page was originally it's own page, which someone split into Psychedelia and psychedelic (disambiguation). I would be all for moving Psychedelic (disambiguation) back to Psychedelic. Thoric (talk) 13:52, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose: The word 'psychedelic' can mean a lot of things, but when we're talking about substances, it's clearer to specify. Waqar💬 15:14, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose. "Psychedelic" doesn't just mean a drug and isa rarely used on its own to mean a drug. -- Necrothesp (talk) 11:15, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

Discussion

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.