Video transcript
– Your consciousness is your awareness of yourself and your environment. Some chemicals known as psychoactive drugs can alter your consciousness by affecting your perceptions and moods. There are three main categories of psychoactive drugs I want to tell you about in the next few videos: Depressants, stimulants, and hallucinogens. So let’s start with depressants. Depressants are drugs that lower your body’s basic functions and neural activity, for example, your heart rate, reaction time, processing speed, that kind of thing. The most popular depressant, one you might not even think of is a consciousness-altering drug, is alcohol. Alcohol, like other depressants, slows neural processing. It slows your sympathetic nervous system down, which is the system that usually helps you respond to dangerous situations. That just means you think and act more slowly. Alcohol can also disrupt your regular sleep cycle, specifically disrupting REM sleep. When you don’t get enough REM …