During the COVID-19 pandemic, people who had used psychedelic drugs at least once in their lives reported higher positive affect and personality traits linked to resilience, such as greater openness and lower conscientiousness, compared to those who had not. Among 5,618 participants (average age 29, 72% female), 32% reported lifetime psychedelic use. The number of past psychedelic experiences predicted higher scores on a measure of plasticity. No evidence linked lifetime psychedelic use to impaired mental health indicators. Other psychoactive drugs showed opposite associations with mental health.
The Altered Xperience Project (AXP) is an open citizen science initiative that systematically collects data on subjective experiences from consciousness-manipulating techniques, including psychoactive substances and non-pharmacological methods. A proof-of-principle dataset (v1.0) includes data collected through May 2022, with most gathered between October 3 and 13, 2022. The dataset covers low, medium, and high doses of alcohol, cannabis, NMDA, and psilocybin. Participants were recruited internationally via social media by the citizen science group El gato y la Caja, and participation was incentivized with an infographic comparing individual data to others. The data is publicly available on the Open Science Framework.