Exploring the Uncharted Landscape of Psychedelic Use - A Cross-Sectional Survey Study

Abstract

Psychedelic research has been witnessing a revival within the last two decades after a hiatus of more than twenty-five years. Several clinical studies have demonstrated the therapeutic potential of psychedelic substances for treating mental disorders such as major depressive disorder (Davis et al., 2020), OCD (Moreno et al., 2006), addiction (Romeu et al., 2014), eating disorders (Sprigs et al., 2021), end-of-life anxiety (Griffiths et al., 2016), and PTSD (Krediet et al., 2020). Additionally, a large number of studies investigated the link between psychedelic use and constructs or concepts such as personality traits (Erritzoe et al., 2018), trait mindfulness (Smigielski et al., 2019), well-being, life satisfaction (Gandy, 2019), and many more. However, so far, most studies focused on the individually and societally beneficial effects of psychedelics and largely steered clear of investigating the potentially detrimental effects of these powerful substances. Accordingly, this study will explore several potentially detrimental phenomena associated with psychedelic use, such as spiritual bypassing (Masters, 2010), psychological addiction to mystical/peak experiences induced by psychedelics, spiritual narcissism (Vonk & Visser, 2020), and challenging psychedelic experiences (the so-called "bad trips").

Topics & conditions

Detected automatically by Psychedelic Commons from the title and abstract, not labels from the source. They may be incomplete.

Keywords