I’ve never understood how they make people see things. Same thing with ayahuasca. Obviously, there’s some sort of chemical reaction within our brain like with any drug, but what about these makes us see things that aren’t there? Also, how does our brain create so many realistic images in front of us without them being real?
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We don’t know enough of how the brain works to explain the exact mechanism in detail. We run up against the “hard problem of consciousness.” That’s the famous unsolved problem in neurology and philosophy of explaining why any physical state of brain matter corresponds to a subjective experience. That is to say, no one knows why it feels like something to be a brain but it doesn’t feel like anything to be a rock, so we’re not prepared to explain why it feels different to be a brain with LSD in it in it than to be a brain without.
That being said, there’s a specific serotonin receptor protein (the 5-HT2A receptor) that a lot of hallucinogenic drugs activate. 5-HT2A activating drugs typically feel more similar to each other than to hallucinogenic drugs that interact with brains differently. And researchers have designed new hallucinogenic drugs of this type by analyzing the 5-HT2A receptor protein to design something that will activate it. And medications that interfere with 5-HT2A receptors can stop drug trips early. So it seems very likely that this particular protein is important in how these drugs work.
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