Hypnosedative Stimulants

The most widely used stimulant in America is, of course, caffeine. Drinking all those cups of coffee and cans of cola can cause harm. More harmful, perhaps, are two other kinds of stimulant, amphetamine and cocaine. Both, the amphetamines in particular, can be extremely dangerous.

Just what do stimulants do? Basically, stimulants “rev up” a neutral network known as the symphatic division of the autonomic nervous system. The autonomic nervous system (ANS) relays impulses to those muscle tissues throughout the body that are not under voluntary control, the heart, the intestinal muscles, and so on. The sympathetic network is the part of the autonomic nervous system that readies us to cope with stress in what is known as the “fight or flight” reaction. Once the emergency is past, another part of the system (the parasympathetic nervous system) reverses things and restores normality, slowing the hearth rate, sending the digestive system back to work, and so on.

The stimulant drugs mobilize the body’s fight or flight mechanism inappropriately, when it may not in fact be needed. Caffeine does so on a relatively low level. The more powerful stimulants do so on a larger scale and, as we shall see, may thereby be endangering the body rather than protecting it.