Notes

Altered States - Crash Course Psychology #10
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Mesmer was inadvertently using the healing power of suggestion
So hypnosis is a good example of an altered state of consciousness -- when you’re fully conscious in the clinical sense, but also not in what you’d consider a normal waking state.
First off, let’s define hypnosis simply as a calm, trance-like state during which you tend to have heightened concentration and focus, and in which you’re typically more open to suggestion.
Nor is hypnosis a reliable way to enhance the recall of deeply buried memories.
Dissociation is a sort of detachment from your surroundings, which can range from mild spacing out all the way up to a total loss of your sense of yourself.
So, in legitimate clinical hypnosis, people aren’t being made to dissociate. Instead, think of them as being asked to dissociate - and some people are better at this than others, which is essentially what being “highly hypnotizable” means.
The more you use a substance, legal or illegal, the less you feel its effects as your tolerance grows.
Psychoactive drugs are chemical substances that alter your mood and perception.
Depressants, like alcohol, tranquilizers, and opiates, do exactly what you’d expect--they bring the mellow, slow body functions, and suppress neural activity.
Stimulants, obviously, excite rather than suppress neural activity, and speed up body functions, bringing up your energy, self-confidence, and changing your mood.
In addition to depressants and stimulants, we’ve got hallucinogens, which come in a variety of plant and fungal forms, as well as synthetic forms like LSD or lysergic acid diethylamide.
All this just goes to show that whether you’re a psychologist, neuroscientist, or philosopher, our various states of consciousness provide a rich, complex world of inquiry to contemplate, showing yet again, just what a messy and marvelous thing the human mind is.
If your consciousness wasn’t too altered today, you learned what hypnosis is and what it can and can’t do; how psychoactive depressant, stimulant, and hallucinogenic drugs work on the brain; and how non-drug induced hallucinations can happen to anyone.