Self-experimentation among psychedelic researchers, facilitators and clinicians

Abstract

Self-experimentation refers to the practice of intentionally using oneself as an experimental subject. Self-experimentation is a contentious topic in psychedelic science and in psychedelic assisted psychotherapy. Historically, self-experimentation was common practice among early researchers, who in this way aimed to gain insight into the working mechanisms of psychedelics as well as the right dosage to be administered to their patients (Passie & Brandt, 2018) . However, since the 1960s media reports warning of the potential risks of unregulated and excessive psychedelic use, as exemplified by previously esteemed figures in the field such as Timothy Leary, have cast a condemnatory perspective on self-experimentation. This negative stereotype was confirmed in a recent vignette study, showing that the self-admitted use of psychedelics by researchers negatively impacted the perceived quality and integrity of their research (Forstmann & Sagioglou, 2021). One specific concern is that self-experimentation might induce implicit and explicit researcher biases, e.g., resulting in a motivated tendency to ‘prove’ that psychedelics are effective (Petranker et al., 2020). Next to this, self-experimentation raises ethical concerns: its scientific value is questionable due to the lack of controls and because the experimenter may differ in important ways from the research subject. In addition, it is unclear whether ethical approval should be obtained before using oneself as an experimental subject (Hanley et al., 2019). Still, a first-hand experience with psychedelics, or at least an experience with a type of altered state, is considered an indispensable part of the training for clinicians administering psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy and is included as part of several training programs (Nielson & Guss, 2018). Also, due to the challenging nature of experimental research with psychedelics (e.g., being in the confined environment of an MRI scanner), self-experimentation allows researchers to assess the feasibility and safety of an experimental protocol, thereby reducing the challenges and risks their participants might otherwise endure. However, because of the taboo surrounding self-experimentation, in the scientific literature the topic is never discussed. A few small scale studies have investigated the use of self-experimentation of psychoactive substances among psychiatrists (Bernard & Dessomme, 2020) and among mental health professionals (Winkler & Csémy, 2014). However, as-of-yet it is unclear to what extent psychedelic researchers and practitioners have decided to engage in psychedelic self-experimentation, which perceived risks and benefits truly motivated this decision, and the effects this decision has had on their attitude towards self-experimentation with psychedelics and psychedelics in general. This study is exploratory and descriptive in nature and aims to assess how prevalent psychedelic self-experimentation is among researchers and clinicians and how self-experimentation is perceived. Additionally, it assesses how individual differences in prior experience with using psychedelics affect one’s explicit attitudes and beliefs about psychedelics. The study also includes implicit measures of attitudes towards psychedelics, but we did not preregister specific hypotheses for the implicit measures.

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