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were receiving a sedative. If told that the experimental drug was stimulat- ing, volunteers felt the more typical anxiety and energy.” 30 * THE BUILDING BLOCKS First, what do we call it? Even among researchers there is little agree- ment over this crucial point. Some don't even use the word drug, preferring instead molecule, compound, agent, substance, medicine, or sacrament. Even if we agree to call it a drug, look at how many different names it has: hallucinogen (producing hallucinations), entheogen (generating the divine), mysticomimetic (mimicking mystical states), oneirogen (produc- ing dreams), phanerothyme (producing visible feelings), phantasticant (stimulating fantasy), psychodysleptic (mind-disturbing), psychotomimetic and psychotogen (mimicking or producing psychosis, respectively), and psychotoxin and schizotoxin (a poison causing psychosis or schizophre- nia, respectively). This focus on name is not trivial. If everyone agreed about what a psychedelic is or does, there certainly would not be so many words for the same drug. The multitude of labels reflects the deep-seated and ongoing debate about psychedelic drugs and their effects. Scientists rarely acknowledge the importance of the name they give to psychedelics, even though they know how powerfully expectations modify drug effects. All undergraduate psychology students learn this in their introductory psychology courses when they review landmark studies published in the 1960s. These experiments injected volunteers with adrenaline, the "fight-or-flight" hormone, under different sets of expecta- tions. Adrenaline caused a calm and relaxed state in volunteers told they Thus, what we call a drug we take, or give, influences our expecta- tions of what that drug will do. It also modifies the effects themselves, and how we interpret and deal with them. No other drug's name feeds back so powerfully upon the responses they elicit as do the psychedelics, because they greatly magnify our suggestibility. In addition to what we call psychedelics, the terms we apply to the people involved in their use also impact set and setting, and therefore drug response. As one who takes the drug, are we research subjects or volunteers? Clients or celebrants? As the one giving them, are we guides, sitters, or research investigators? Shamans or scientists?