People who take psychedelics are more likely to report having psychosis-like symptoms, but this is mostly because they have other mental health problems and have used other psychoactive drugs before.
In a study published in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers found that people who took psychedelics learned to better integrate evidence and be more flexible when they learned about their fears. Psychedelics are a group of drugs that have hallucinogenic effects and can change how people see, feel, and think. LSD and psilocybin are two of the most common psychedelics.
While it has been said that psychedelics can cause “prolonged psychotic reactions,” larger studies have found no evidence that this is true.
In this study, when psychedelic users were compared to people who didn’t use them, the average schizotypy scores of users were much higher than those of people who didn’t use them, but the overall effect size was still small. Furthermore, when only healthy people were looked at, the effect was only marginally significant. In the end, when taking other drugs into account, the effect of psychedelics on schizotypy was no longer significant in either sample.
A follow-up survey of 197 people looked at drug use and found no evidence that those who had more exposure to psychedelics were more likely to be schizotypal. However, the use of stimulants like cocaine or amphetamines was a strong predictor of more schizotypy in the study. To find out what happened, the researchers also did a behavioral study with 39 of the people who took part in the study. The group was made up of 22 people who had used psychedelics and 17 people who had not.
Psychedelic use was linked to lower Evidence Integration Impairment scores or “lack of ability to modify beliefs when facing new information”. According to the authors, these results show that psychedelic-assisted therapy can help people with non-psychotic psychiatric conditions that are marked by overly fixated cognitive styles, like depression. Overall, the findings show that there is only a very weak link between psychosis-like symptoms and psychedelics.
