Drug

![Flowering San Pedro, a psychoactive cactus.[22] Today most mescaline is extracted from columnar cacti, not the vulnerable peyote.[23]](/uploads/202501/10/Flowering_San_Pedro_cactus2908.jpg)
A drug is any substance other than food, that when inhaled, injected, smoked, consumed, absorbed via a patch on the skin or dissolved under the tongue causes a physiological change in the body.
In pharmacology, a pharmaceutical drug or medicine, is a chemical substance used to treat, cure, prevent, diagnose a disease or promote well-being. Traditionally drugs were obtained through extraction from medicinal plants, but more recently also by organic synthesis. Pharmaceutical drugs may be used for a limited duration, or on a regular basis for chronic disorders.