After a trip the world feels different
Do animals, plants or even inanimate things have a consciousness? After drastic experiences with hallucinogenic drugs like LSD or magic mushrooms, many give a new answer to this question.
Psychedelic drugs can profoundly change the psyche. After a trip, many people report mystical insights such as the feeling that the whole of nature is permeated by spirit and consciousness. Such reports of experience have now been investigated in a study at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
Psychiatrists Sandeep Nayak and Roland Griffiths of the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research there recruited via social media and online platforms around 1600 adults who, according to their own information, had already had life-changing experiences with hallucinogenic drugs such as magic mushrooms, LDS, ayahuasca or mescaline. As the authors describe in "Frontiers in Psychology," the participants had already consumed psychedelic drugs more than 20 times on average in their lives. On their most impressive trip, most were under the influence of psilocybin or LSD.
According to their statements, they were more likely to attribute consciousness to living beings, inanimate objects, and the entire universe after this experience than before. For example, only a minority said they had thought plants were conscious before, but afterward the majority thought it was possible - a significantly larger proportion than in the general population, the authors write. Superstitious beliefs such as "The number 13 brings bad luck," on the other hand, did not increase. The newly acquired beliefs remained stable until the time of the survey - at which point the trip in question had taken place eight years ago on average.
The changes were closely related to the intensity of mystical experiences, such as feeling "a living presence in all things," the two researchers noted. "It is not clear why this is: whether it is an innate effect of the drug or cultural factors," Sandeep Nayak said in a press release. Psychedelics might exert their effects via increased neuroplasticity, for example. In children, "a broad attribution of consciousness" is normal; it is suppressed or unlearned only later. Because hallucinogenic substances alter conscious experience in unusual ways, it is thought they may even offer insights into the nature of consciousness itself.
Another reality behind the physical world?
Expectations of the drug might also contribute to its effects; this should be controlled for in future studies, Nayak and Griffiths acknowledge. Moreover, the present study recorded changes only retrospectively. But a longitudinal study already observed a similar change of heart in 2021. The team led by Christopher Timmermann of Imperial College London had recruited adults on a research platform who wanted to take hallucinogens such as psilocybin, mescaline or LSD. Questioning before and after showed: their worldview changed toward metaphysical beliefs such as "there is another reality or dimension behind the physical world." Again, the new beliefs persisted over the long term.
Spectrum of Science
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