In an analysis of 110 Reddit posts from individuals with long COVID who used psilocybin, 78.2% reported any improvement in their symptoms, while 11.8% reported worsening. Among those reporting improvement, 77.9% said the improvement lasted beyond the acute psychedelic experience, and 5.8% reported improvement only during the experience. The most common symptoms were fatigue (47.3%), cognitive impairment (46.4%), and depression (30.0%). The authors suggest that controlled studies comparing social media data for other self-treatments or prospective observational studies of individuals self-treating with psychedelics may be warranted.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, smell loss (olfactory dysfunction) has become more common, but effective treatments are scarce. Anecdotal reports suggest that serotonergic psychedelics like LSD and psilocybin might help. Analyzing 125 online posts from people with self-reported smell loss, 108 (86.4%) reported improvements in their sense of smell after using psychedelics. Of those, 55 (50.1%) first noticed improvement during the psychedelic experience, and 42 (38.8%) said the improvement lasted at least one day. No statistical link was found between dose and how long the benefit lasted for either psilocybin or LSD. These findings indicate that further research is needed to explore whether these substances could become a clinical treatment for smell loss.