The main thing that people fear from psychedelics, aside from the harms of intensely bad trips (which can be prevented through proper drug education, instead of constant fear mongering), is that these drugs allegedly cause people to develop psychotic symptoms. Given my positive view on drugs on Twitter and in other blog posts, you can probably, correctly, guess I think this is BS.
I didn’t want to go and describe the details of all the studies on this, so here’s a table of some larger studies I’ve known of. Basically, once you control for familial risk factors, usage of other drugs, etc. the effect disappears. Considering psychedelics are a good way of dealing with most of these problems, I see no problem with the usage of these controls. Some may criticize that not all of this research is directly related to psychotic symptoms or schizophrenia. Sure, but the fact that psychedelics decrease violence and mental health problems is surely decent evidence for now.
| Citation | Findings |
|---|---|
| Johansen and Krebs, 2015 | Massive study (N > 130,000) found psychedelic usage was not associated with mental health problems like suicidal behavior, depression and anxiety, etc. when controlling for sociodemographics, other drug use and childhood depression. |
| Nesvag et al., 2015 | Replies to last study and argues they over-adjusted in their methodology. The authors argue the study should be done with a different sample to provide accurate results. [note on this paper at bottom] |
| Hendricks et al., 2015a | Usage of main psychedelic substances was associated with significantly reduced likelihood of past month psychological distress, past year suicidal thinking, past year suicidal planning, and past year suicidal attempts. |
| Hendricks et al., 2015b | Psilocybin usage provides benefits expanded upon in last source |
| Ajantaival, 2014 | “No independent association between any recency of any psychedelic use and increased likelihood of past month psychological distress, past year suicidality, or everyday impairment was found. A decreased likelihood for past year suicidal thinking was found among all groups that had last used psychedelics >12 months ago or psilocybin <1 month ago, as well as for past year suicide plans and past month serious psychological distress among those whose last psychedelic use was psilocybin >12 months ago.” |
| Strassman, 1984 | Existing evidence at the time was incredibly weak. From what was available, it appeared the best studies showed very low adverse reactions to the drugs while the worst studies, which often featured participants with already negative characteristics taking drugs which we of unknown purity, showed the largest effects. |
| Hendricks et al., 2018 | Psychedelic usage was associated with lower criminality within the general population. |
| Walsh et al., 2016 | Psychedelics decreased likelihood of committing domestic abuse against one’s intimate partners. |
Fin.
