Reports of personally meaningful experiences from psychedelic substances and meditation are highly similar in semantic and lexical content, with both groups expressing positive emotions on average. However, psychedelic experience reports are more emotionally charged, showing higher levels of both positive and negative sentiments compared to the more neutral meditation experiences. This suggests emotional intensity may be a distinguishing factor between the two types of experiences. The study used Natural Language Processing methods to analyze open-ended narratives from 197 participants, but challenges with the methods and dataset limit the conclusions that can be drawn.
Psychedelic and meditation experiences are both known to be personally meaningful and transformative, but their similarities and differences are unclear. This study used natural language processing to compare open-ended narrative reports from 197 participants about their most meaningful experience facilitated by psychedelics (134 people) or meditation (63 people). The semantic and lexical content of the reports was highly similar, with both groups expressing positive emotions on average. However, psychedelic reports were more emotionally charged, showing higher levels of both positive and negative sentiments, while meditation reports were more neutral. This suggests the two types of experience are generally similar, with emotional intensity as a possible distinguishing factor. Methodological challenges limit conclusions, but the work offers new hypotheses for future research.