An Observational Study on the Effects of Psilocybin Truffle Use in a Retreat Setting

Abstract

The last two decades have witnessed a psychedelic renaissance, in several domains including cognitive science, clinical research, and inevitably public interest. Expectedly, the number of academic publications investigating the effects of psychedelics has been growing exponentially (Petranker et al., 2020; Siegel et al., 2021; Weleff et al., 2021), accompanied by the increasing rate of psychedelic use, both in Europe (EMCDDA, 2023; Schutten, 2023), and the United States (Livne et al., 2022). However, most of the published studies employed conventional experimental designs such as cross-sectional and randomized-controlled trials, and the use of synthetic psychedelic substances, most relevantly, synthetic psilocybin. In doing so, they have significantly reduced the ecological validity of their findings, considering most psychedelic substance use is done by people in naturalistic settings, using natural products, such as truffles and mushrooms. Accordingly, we require systematic research on the naturalistic use of psilocybin truffles to rectify the overt discrepancy between the more prevalent form of psychedelic use and the lack of studies investigating it. Similarly, the majority of research has focused on the therapeutic applications of psychedelic substances in patient groups instead of healthy volunteers. Currently, there is insufficient data on the transformative potential of psychedelic substances on non-clinical populations and their therapeutic potential through naturalistic use. The existing work suggests that the use of psychedelics by healthy volunteers can enhance mindfulness (Radakovic et al., 2022), creativity (Mason et al., 2021; Wießner et al., 2022), meaning in life and connectedness (Forstmann et al., 2020; Hartogsohn et al., 2018; Plesa & Petranker, 2023), and mood and well-being (Nayak et al., 2023; Raison et al., 2022; Sjöström et al., 2024). In summary, the use of synthetic psilocybin in manufactured and experimentally controlled environments, we'd argue, is largely deprived of ecological validity, due to ignoring the inherently context-dependent and person-specific nature of complex dynamic processes of change and transformation engendered by the naturalistic use of psilocybin. Accordingly, this observational study aims to address these problems, by investigating the context-dependent processes of change and transformation brought on by the naturalistic use of psilocybin by recruiting participants planning to attend a psilocybin truffle retreat in the Netherlands. We currently propose a collaboration with several psychedelic retreats (e.g., Eremia; https://www.eremia.org/). Eremia, for example, offers legal psilocybin retreats in the Netherlands. Their retreats are currently organized during the weekends (3 nights-2 days) and involve three distinct themes (Unlock, Courage, Compassion; we will accept participants from all there of these retreat categories) catering to different intentions and participants' profiles. During the experience, groups of up to 20 participants will be guided and trained by experienced psychotherapists (facilitators). The facilitators also decide upon the amount of truffles administered per person. The specific dose of truffles is decided by the facilitators in consideration of several factors such as the previous experience with psychedelics, prior experience with meditative and contemplative practices, and personality. During the retreats, participants are guided through additional meditation sessions, breathwork exercises, group therapeutical exercises, intention sharing, integration circles, and movement practices. Retreat participants will be informed about our study after having been successfully screened for retreat participation by our collaborators. If they express interest in participating in our study, the potential participants will contact the study team and will be provided with the information letter. Consequently, they can decide whether or not they want to participate in our study, which will be conducted before and following the retreat. Their decision will have no impact on their participation in the retreat. After an intake meeting and survey, participants will answer daily personalized questionnaires belonging to different categories (e.g., mood, anxiety, rumination, meaning in life, insightfulness, creativity, mind-wandering, mindfulness, flow, quality of relationships, sense of belonging, connectedness, physical well-being, degree of sleep quality, adult use of psychoactive substances including coffee and alcohol, perception of weather, attunement with the world (i.e., openness/closeness to the world)) on the ecological momentary assessment platform m-Path (Mestdagh et al., 2023), for 2 weeks before and 3 months after the retreat. The analysis and the interpretation of the results will be grounded in the theoretical framework we have been developing through two papers, one submitted (Beykoylu & Vervaeke, submitted) and one in preparation (Beykoylu et al., in prep.), proposing a unifying framework taking complex dynamic systems and 4E cognition perspectives.

Topics & conditions

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

Keywords