Psychoactive Faunas: New Unconventional Substances of Abuse

Abstract

Prevalence of substance abuse remains very high globally and particularly in third world countries.-where people turn to cheap, equally potent and dangerous principles from animals and are collectively called Psychoactive Faunas - the group of animals whose body parts, secretions or excretions/wastes contain one or more substances; which taken in a sufficiently high dose via any route of administration, possess the potential to alter an individual’s cognitive state and behavior. Except for wild life related laws in most countries, there are no specific laws regulating the increasing abuse of these substances in most countries of the globe. Methods:- Preliminary search was performed via Google® to obtain potential keywords that would be representatives of “Abuse of Psychoactive fauna” Animal’s name and possible street names on PubMed/Medline, Scopus, and Google Scholar. Secondary searches were also carried out. Results:- The database search yielded 39,187 records. Twenty one (21) Journal Articles, Five (5) Newspaper reports, One (1) Policy document, total Twenty seven (27) studies included in the present review. Discussion and Conclusion:- The findings demonstrated evidences of the abuse of psychoactive fauna different parts of the globe of whole lizard, its tail or dung; snake venom or skin; toad venom; whole scorpion, its tail or venom; cattle dung; human excreta or urine; whole hallucinogenic fish; cow dung; hen dung; spider web and more recently goat or sheep dung. Lizard is the currently the most cited of psychoactive faunas of abuse apart from snakes, toads, and scorpions that have been extensively studied. Scientific Significance:- Majority of previous reviews on substance abuse have not acknowledged psychoactive faunas as potential sources of drug of abuse. Our findings has provided documented evidences of their use