1. Explain how the use of substances alters a person’s state of consciousness, including depressants, stimulants, and hallucinogens. Include in this explanation what happens to the neurotransmitters and body chemicals as well as how you might recognize if a person at work or in your family is in an altered state of consciousness due to the influence of drugs.
Each of these three types of substances affect a person’s state of consciousness in different ways. Depressants are taken with the hope of relaxation, stress relief, and minor euphoria. However, some of the undesired effects are anxiety, nausea, disorientation, impaired reflexes and motor functioning, amnesia, loss of consciousness, shallow respiration, convulsions, coma, and death. Conversely, stimulants are taken with the opposite desired affect: higher mental and physical energy and major euphoria. Again, there are undesired effects as well, such as irritability, anxiety, sleeplessness, paranoia, hallucinations, psychosis, elevated blood pressure and body temperature, convulsions, and death. Hallucinogens are taken with the desired effect of relaxation and heightened aesthetic responses. The undesired effects of hallucinogens are panic, nausea, longer and more extreme delusions, hallucinations, perceptual distortions (“bad trips”), and psychosis. These substances affect the brain in two primary ways. Agonist drugs enhance synaptic transmission and antagonistic drugs inhibit synaptic transmission. Simply put, your brain is either flooded or deprived of the transmissions it needs to function normally. When a person is experiencing an altered state of consciousness, it is usually visible to bystanders. The affected person does not act like themselves, they often become clumsy, speech becomes impaired, and motor skills are affected, first the fine motor skills, then the standard motor skills such as walking.
2. This question has five parts. One of the cornerstones of Freudian theory is the concept of the unconscious not to be confused with the state of being knocked unconscious by a blow to the head. (a) What did Freud mean by the concept of the unconscious? (b) When is it beneficial for much of our behavior to be unconscious? (c) When is it not beneficial? (d) If much of our behavior is unconscious, can you recognize unconscious behavior in yourself and in others? (e) How would you know behavior was unconsciously driven?
A) Freud’s term for thoughts or motives that lie beyond a person’s normal awareness, which still exert great influence.
B) It is beneficial for our behavior to be unconscious when we sleep. If you have to stay conscious to breathe throughout the night, no sleep would be had. This is also a time for the brain to exercise its unconscious thoughts so that they do not surface at an inopportune time during the day.
C) It is not beneficial for unconscious thoughts and actions, such as repressed sexual desires, to surface at work or in public in general.
D) Actions such as breathing or growing tired at specific times are unconscious actions taken by your body without conscious thought. Although you can consciously take over these actions and alter them, this generally happens without thought or intervention.
E) Unconscious behavior happens without having to think about it or expend any energy into performing the action.
3. Group think is a concept that involves individuals abandoning their critical sense and agreeing to group process even when they know it will have disastrous consequences. (Challenger disaster, Enron, Iraq war, etc.). Your will encounter these pressures in your work life and need to be prepared. Have you ever done something in a group that you would not have done if you were alone? What happened? How did you feel? What have you learned from this chapter that might help
