Psychedelics like psilocybin strongly increase the sense that life has meaning, based on three different studies: a clinical trial for depression, a healthy volunteer study, and naturalistic retreats. The 'presence of meaning' rose substantially after a psychedelic experience, while the 'search for meaning' dropped only slightly. These meaning enhancements were moderately linked to improvements in mental health, such as greater wellbeing and reduced depression. Mystical, ego dissolution, and emotional breakthrough experiences were associated with increased meaning, though the strength varied by context. The evidence converges to show a robust, lasting positive effect of psychedelics on meaning in life, with context influencing outcomes.
Serotonergic psychedelics like psilocybin, LSD, and DMT help advance understanding of consciousness and brain activity, but little work connects psychedelic theory to experiential differences in autism. This narrative review compares the psychedelic state and autism in adults using predictive processing as a unifying framework. Both involve a shift toward sensory information over prior knowledge, but may affect opposite ends of the cortical hierarchy. The contrast refines concepts like psychological flexibility and suggests testable hypotheses, though neurobiological findings in autism are heterogeneous and comparing a transient state with a lifelong trait has inherent limitations.