Eli5: What is it in e.g drugs and mushrooms that makes you hallucinate?

Question

I have been thinking about this for like a year. What is it really that is going on?

In: 0

Answer 1

Drugs have certain chemicals (psilocybin in mushrooms) that look similar to some of the chemicals that our brain cells naturally produce and use to communicate with other brain cells (see: neurotransmitters, synapse)

The certain chemicals in drugs will create interactions between our brain cells that would otherwise not be there.