Relationship between personality and psychedelic challenging experience

Abstract

The challenging experience holds significant therapeutic potential and depending on its features it is associated with both positive and negative changes in one’s wellbeing and spirituality (Barrett et al., 2016; Carbonaro et al., 2016). Challenging experience that is characterized as acute adverse effects is also one of the few risks of the psychedelic experience (Barrett et al., 2017; Elsey, 2017). Psychedelic are low in toxicity and dependence potential (Johnson et al., 2008) and use of psychedelics in healthy population is not connected with mental health problems (Johansen & Krebs, 2015; Studerus et al., 2011). Psychedelics are on the contrary studied and used for treating mental disorders (Carhart-Harris & Goodwin, 2017). Evidence suggests that risks of psychedelics are negligible in controlled enviroment (Bender & Hellerstein, 2022). It is known, that set and setting, such as environment, mood, expectation and personality are absolutely crucial for the occurrence and consequences of psychedelics phenomena, including challenging experience (Carhart-Harris et al., 2018), yet the causes and related final outcome of such experience is not fully understood. Describing the personal factors contributing to a challenging experience could improve both safety and therapeutic benefit of psychedelic therapy and allow the process to be tailored to the individual. The research question of this research is whether there is a relationship between selected personality dimensions and challenging psychedelic experiences. The research is based on other investigations conducted on this topic (Haijen et al., 2018; Hemsley & Ward, 1985; Lienert & Netter, 1996; Studerus et al., 2012), especially study from Barrett et al. (2017) using Challenging Experience Questionnaire (CEQ) scale. This research will attempt to use a single scale to validate the current findings and possibly elaborate on them further. Thus, the aim of this research is to evaluate the relationship between dimension Extraversion, Tough-mindedness, Anxiety and their factors and Challenging psychedelic experience and its dimensions. Investigation described in this preregistration uses CEQ scale, that will be translated into Czech and tested on the Czech population in this research, with the author's permission. Second measure is Catell personality scale 16PF. Also included are questions on set, setting, the difficulty of challenging experience and other demographic and personal questions to ensure entry criteria are met.

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