Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Producing distorted perceptions; hallucinogenic.
  • adjective Causing a lasting change in perspective or thought; life-altering.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective producing mood changes or distorted perception; -- used mostly of psychoactive substances.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective producing mood changes or distorted perception

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Guys, warn me when you're going to unleash that kind of cognitive dissonance — I need time to appropriately pair it with the proper mind-altering chemicals.

    Archive 2009-02-01 Matthew Guerrieri 2009

  • During the 1960s and '70s, the mind-altering choices were of the drug kind, and drinking, although popular, was relegated to beer and very cheap wine, or maybe the odd Black Russian, or Margarita, but there was scant attention to cocktails and how they were being made.

    Karl Kozel: It's Getting Better All The Time Karl Kozel 2010

  • It was some of the very people who thought themselves left wing – the pleasure-seeking, mind-altering drug takers and sexual pioneers of the 1960s who instigated the fragmentation of the working-class family and sold the poor the poisonous idea of liberation through chemical and sexual experimentation.

    We're told marriage is being undermined by Hello! Rubbish | Catherine Bennett 2011

  • Guys, warn me when you're going to unleash that kind of cognitive dissonance — I need time to appropriately pair it with the proper mind-altering chemicals.

    I catch the paper boy / But things don't really change Matthew Guerrieri 2009

  • They must be joking, or else they are laboring under the influence of mind-altering drugs.

    Archive 2009-02-01 2009

  • We as a society must examine why teens turn to mind-altering substances and we must deal with these root causes of drug use through education, prevention, intervention, and treatment.

    Howard Meitiner: Bath Salts: New Drug, Old Problem Howard Meitiner 2011

  • Scientologists do not approve of psychiatric medication because they believe it to be mind-altering.

    Police report found no Scientology role in suicide 2009

  • The young scientists dabbled in mind-altering drugs as they searched for a quantum-physics-based explanation for such phenomena as telepathy and extrasensory perception.

    Merry-Prankster Physicists John Gribbin 2011

  • What has made this pattern more noticeable is that we're now seeing more families under pressure and more individuals who use mind-altering drugs.

    Howard Meitiner: Bath Salts: New Drug, Old Problem Howard Meitiner 2011

  • Or it might, as many studies appeared to prove, be the result of mind-altering street drugs such as cannabis or skunk, a more powerful form of cannabis.

    Henry’s Demons Patrick Cockburn 2011

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