A drug may be helpful or harmful. The effects of drugs can vary depending upon the kind of drug taken, how much is taken, how often it is used, how quickly it gets to the brain, and what other drugs, food, or substances are taken at the same time. Effects can also vary based on the differences in body size, shape, and chemistry.

Street Names: XTC, X, Adam, E, Roll

How It's Used: Ecstasy is swallowed or sometimes snorted.

Effects & Dangers:

• This drug combines a hallucinogenic with a stimulant effect, making all emotions, both negative and positive, much more intense.
• Users feel a tingly skin sensation and an increased heart rate.
• Ecstasy can also cause dry mouth, cramps, blurred vision, chills, sweating, and nausea.
• Sometimes users clench their jaws while using. They may chew on something (like a pacifier) to relieve this symptom.
• Many users also experience depression, paranoia, anxiety, and confusion. There is some concern that these effects on the brain and emotion can become permanent with chronic use of ecstasy.
• Ecstasy also raises the temperature of the body. This increase can sometimes cause organ damage or even death.

Addictiveness: Although the physical addictiveness of Ecstasy is unknown, teens who use it can become psychologically dependent upon it to feel good, deal with life, or handle stress.

Street Names: Liquid Ecstasy, G, Georgia Home Boy

How It's Used: When in liquid or powder form (mixed in water), GHB is drunk; in tablet form it is swallowed.

Effects & Dangers:

• GHB is a depressant drug that can cause both euphoric (high) and hallucinogenic effects.
• The drug has several dangerous side effects, including severe nausea, breathing problems, decreased heart rate, and seizures.
• GHB has been used for date rape because it is colorless and odorless and easy to slip into drinks.
• At high doses, users can lose consciousness within minutes. It's also easy to overdose: There is only a small difference between the dose used to get high and the amount that can cause an overdose.
• Overdosing GHB requires emergency care in a hospital right away. Within an hour GHB overdose can cause coma and stop someone's breathing, resulting in death.
• GHB (even at lower doses) mixed with alcohol is very dangerous — using it even once can kill you.

Addictiveness: When users come off GHB they may have withdrawal symptoms such as insomnia and anxiety. Teens may also become dependent upon it to feel good, deal with life, or handle stress.

How It's Used: Inhalants are breathed in directly from the original container (sniffing or snorting), from a plastic bag (bagging), or by holding an inhalant-soaked rag in the mouth (huffing).

Effects & Dangers:

• Inhalants make you feel giddy and confused, as if you were drunk. Long-time users get headaches, nosebleeds, and may suffer loss of hearing and sense of smell.
• Inhalants are the most likely of abused substances to cause severe toxic reaction and death. Using inhalants, even one time, can kill you.

Street Names: K, Special K, vitamin K, bump, cat Valium

How It's Used: Ketamine usually comes in powder that users snort. Users often do it along with other drugs such as Ecstasy (called kitty flipping) or cocaine or sprinkle it on marijuana blunts.

Effects & Dangers:

• Users may become delirious, hallucinate, and lose their sense of time and reality. The trip — also called K-hole — that results from ketamine use lasts up to 2 hours.
• Users may become nauseated or vomit, become delirious, and have problems with thinking or memory.
• At higher doses, ketamine causes movement problems, body numbness, and slowed breathing.
• Overdosing on ketamine can stop you from breathing — and kill you.

Addictiveness: Teens who use it can become psychologically dependent upon it to feel good, deal with life, or handle stress.

Street Names: acid, blotter, doses, microdots

How It's Used: LSD is licked or sucked off small squares of blotting paper. Capsules and liquid forms are swallowed. Paper squares containing acid may be decorated with cute cartoon characters or colorful designs.

Effects & Dangers:

• Hallucinations occur within 30 to 90 minutes of dropping acid. People say their senses are intensified and distorted — they see colors or hear sounds with other delusions such as melting walls and a loss of any sense of time. But effects are unpredictable, depending on how much LSD is taken and the user.
• Once you go on an acid trip, you can't get off until the drug is finished with you — at times up to about 12 hours or even longer!
• Bad trips may cause panic attacks, confusion, depression, and frightening delusions.
• Physical risks include sleeplessness, mangled speech, convulsions, increased heart rate, and coma.
• Users often have flashbacks in which they feel some of the effects of LSD at a later time without having used the drug again.

Addictiveness: Teens who use it can become psychologically dependent upon it to feel good, deal with life, or handle stress.

Street Names: pot, weed, blunts, chronic, grass, reefer, herb, ganja

How It's Used: Marijuana is usually smoked — rolled in papers like a cigarette (joints), or in hollowed-out cigars (blunts), pipes (bowls), or water pipes (bongs). Some people mix it into foods or brew it as a tea.

Effects & Dangers:

• Marijuana can affect mood and coordination. Users may experience mood swings that range from stimulated or happy to drowsy or depressed.
• Marijuana also elevates heart rate and blood pressure. Some people get red eyes and feel very sleepy or hungry. The drug can also make some people paranoid or cause them to hallucinate.
• Marijuana is as tough on the lungs as cigarettes — steady smokers suffer coughs, wheezing, and frequent colds.

Addictiveness: Teens who use marijuana can become psychologically dependent upon it to feel good, deal with life, or handle stress. In addition, their bodies may demand more and more marijuana to achieve the same kind of high experienced in the beginning.

Street Names: crank, meth, speed, crystal, chalk, fire, glass, crypto, ice

How It's Used: It can be swallowed, snorted, injected, or smoked.

Effects & Dangers:

• Users feel a euphoric rush from methamphetamine, particularly if it is smoked or shot up. But they can develop tolerance quickly — and will use more meth for longer periods of time, resulting in sleeplessness, paranoia, and hallucinations.
• Users sometimes have intense delusions such as believing that there are insects crawling under their skin.
• Prolonged use may result in violent, aggressive behavior, psychosis, and brain damage.
• The chemicals used to make methamphetamine can also be dangerous to both people and the environment.

Street Names: roofies, roach, forget-me pill, date rape drug

How It's Used: This drug is swallowed, sometimes with alcohol or other drugs.

Effects & Dangers:

• Rohypnol is a prescription anti anxiety medication that is 10 times more powerful than Valium.
• It can cause the blood pressure to drop, as well as cause memory loss, drowsiness, dizziness, and an upset stomach.
• Though it's part of the depressant family of drugs, it causes some people to be overly excited or aggressive.
• Rohypnol has received a lot of attention because of its association with date rape. Many teen girls and women report having been raped after having rohypnol slipped into their drinks. The drug also causes "anterograde amnesia." This means it's hard to remember what happened while on the drug, like a blackout. Because of this it can be hard to give important details if a young woman wants to report the rape.