Book excerpt: Find out how plant-derived drugs react with your brain to produce either healing or harmful results! The Concise Handbook of Psychoactive Herbs will give you a better understanding of herbal products that have psychological effects. The book explores how they work, how effective they are, and what is known about their safety. Geared towards non-specialist professionals and curious individuals, this guide shows how herbal preparations can affect the brain, mental state, and behavior of a user and includes treatment methods, tables, illustrations, a glossary, and a bibliography. The Concise Handbook of Psychoactive Herbs contains chapters on several types of psychoactive herbs, including: stimulants cognition-enhancers sedatives painkillers hallucinogens With the Concise Handbook of Psychoactive Herbs, you’ll examine the effects of psychoactive drugs on the nervous systemboth positive and negative. Each chapter discusses a type of herbal medicine, its action on the brain and other systems of the body, side effects, and the potential for addiction. The book closely examines possible drug interactions with prescription medications and emphasizes the caution you need to take when using herbal health products. In the Concise Handbook of Psychoactive Herbs you will learn about the psychoactive actions of such medicinal plants as: coffee tobacco cannabis ginseng chamomile cocoa opium poppy peyote gingko biloba