1) Yes, dissociatives most certainly do deserve their own category.
2)Nitrous oxide (N2O) is released naturally by oceans and bacteria in soil. And sewage releases it also, if I remember correctly (so you can all go huff your shit now to get high). So yes, there is a naturally occurring dissociative.
And from a recent email to my obnoxious mother:
"Why are so -called 'natural' (plant-derived) drugs any better than pharmaceutical drugs? Food is a drug, alcohol is a drug, prozac ia a drug. Any lines that you are drawing are arbitrary. Do you think your body cares whether a drug is 'natural' or synthetic? Absolutely not. To your body, a drug is a drug, regardless of its origin.
Furthermore, the view that 'natural drugs are safe, better, blahblahblah..' is extremely myopic. I can think of hundreds of naturally occuring compounds that are harmful and even deadly. Even plant-derived hallucinogens are far more potent than synthetic ones.
If anything, synthetic medicines are superior, or at least they are becoming more so with time. See, at this point, we know enough about synthetic chemisty and psychoneuropharmacology to be able to design drugs which selectively (and thus with few side effects) correct a problem."
[ 30 July 2002: Message edited by: fairnymph ]