Psychedelics and Mental Health: A Population Study

Abstract

BackgroundThe classical serotonergic psychedelics LSD, psilocybin, mescaline are not known to cause brain damage and are regarded as non-addictive. Clinical studies do not suggest that psychedelics cause long-term mental health problems. Psychedelics have been used in the Americas for thousands of years. Over 30 million people currently living in the US have used LSD, psilocybin, or mescaline.ObjectiveTo evaluate the association between the lifetime use of psychedelics and current mental health in the adult population.MethodData drawn from years 2001 to 2004 of the National Survey on Drug Use and Health consisted of 130,152 respondents, randomly selected to be representative of the adult population in the United States. Standardized screening measures for past year mental health included serious psychological distress (K6 scale), mental health treatment (inpatient, outpatient, medication, needed but did not receive), symptoms of eight psychiatric disorders (panic disorder, major depressive episode, mania, social phobia, general anxiety disorder, agoraphobia, posttraumatic stress disorder, and non-affective psychosis), and seven specific symptoms of non-affective psychosis. We calculated weighted odds ratios by multivariate logistic regression controlling for a range of sociodemographic variables, use of illicit drugs, risk taking behavior, and exposure to traumatic events.Results21,967 respondents (13.4% weighted) reported lifetime psychedelic use. There were no significant associations between lifetime use of any psychedelics, lifetime use of specific psychedelics (LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, peyote), or past year use of LSD and increased rate of any of the mental health outcomes. Rather, in several cases psychedelic use was associated with lower rate of mental health problems.ConclusionWe did not find use of psychedelics to be an independent risk factor for mental health problems.

Psychiatry & the psychedelic drugs. Past, present & future

“…A serious adverse event is defined as a reaction that results in death, is life threatening, results in prolonged hospitalisation or persistent or significant disability. The absence of this so far is consistent with research using psilocybin in healthy volunteers (Studerus et al, 2011), pre-prohibition research with LSD and mescaline (Cohen, 1960), modern population level data on recreational use of psilocybin mushrooms and other psychedelics Hendricks et al, 2014Hendricks et al, , 2015Johansen and Krebs, 2015;Krebs and Johansen, 2013a;Nutt et al, 2010;Walsh et al, 2016) and toxicology work (Gable, 2004). However, modern trials with psilocybin are notable for not collecting adverse event data systematically in a manner that allows aggregated analyses.…”

Psychedelics

“…Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that psychedelics played a substantial role in defining the youth culture of the 1960s and 1970s, with books and essays too numerous to cite being written on this topic. It is believed that more than 30 million people have used LSD, psilocybin, or mescaline (Krebs and Johansen, 2013). One suspects that had LSD never been discovered, the world might look very different today than it does now, for better or worse, depending on one's perspective.…”

Mechanisms of Action and Persistent Neuroplasticity by Drugs of Abuse

“…Similarly, although these substances are used frequently by humans, addiction appears to be very uncommon, and indeed they have been used to treat alcohol addiction (Gable, 1993;Studerus et al, 2011;van Amsterdam et al, 2011;Krebs and Johansen, 2013). This is consistent with the rather low-affinity, mixed and delayed efficacy of LSD on various types of DA receptors (Passie et al, 2008); with a very low affinity of psilocybin/psilocin to DA receptors (Passie et al, 2002) and with salvinorin A having selective high affinity to and agonistic efficacy on k-opioid receptors (Roth et al, 2002;Chavkin et al, 2004).…”