Words to avoid

Words to avoid (or use with care) because they are loaded or confusing.

Amphetamines

Alexander Shulgin: "There have been countless articles appearing in the scientific literature over the last few years capitalizing on the problems of drug abuse. During this period there has been an increasingly frequent apology for the drug-abuse victim through some ration- alization of h i s role in social terms, while at the same time imbuing the abused drug with a defective personality. Thus, one finds attacks on "abuse drugs" as if they had, inculcate within their chemical makeup, virtue or vice. The vocabulary employed in reference to these drugs confirms this role, and an outrageous example is the wide usage of the term "amphetamines."

Arketamine, and esketamine

The naming convention is strange from a chemist standpoint. (R,S) are the old latin names, S being SINISTER, which adopts its current connotations from the cultural context of left-handedness being looked down upon historically. (D,L) are the more recent ones with regard to each chirality being polarizable within light. The ketamine names aren't even using (R) or (S), but opted to just put it at the front of the pronouncable word. It's like calling them Deketamine vs Elketamine.

Drug

"Drugs" is a word that's been used by governments to make it impossible to think creatively about the problem of substances and abuse and availability and so forth and so on (partial transcript of Terence McKenna in Mexico 1996).

Use the term substance, compound, medicine, molecule, or chemical, depending on the context.

Narcotic

"In a legal context, a narcotic drug is simply one that is totally prohibited, or one that is used in violation of strict governmental regulation, such as cocaine and marijuana. From a pharmacological standpoint, it is a vague and ineffectual term."

Mescalbean

All parts of the mescalbeans are very poisonous, containing the alkaloid cytisine (not mescaline, as suggested by the name). The seeds or other parts of the plant have been reported to have been used as a hallucinogen by some Native American people, but this is uncertain, due to confusion over names. The symptoms of cytisine poisoning are very unpleasant, including nausea and seizures; as little as one seed can be fatal.

Ipomoea tricolor

In cultivation, the species is very commonly grown mis-named as Ipomoea violacea, actually a different though related species.

Syrian rue

Peganum harmala is also known as Syrian rue, an inaccurate name, since it is not in the rue (Ruta, Rutaceae) family.