Psychedelics alter metaphysical beliefs

Christopher Timmermann,Hannes Kettner,Leor Roseman,Chris Letheby,Robin L Carhart-Harris,Fernando E Rosas

doi:10.1038/s41598-021-01209-2

Abstract

Can the use of psychedelic drugs induce lasting changes in metaphysical beliefs? While it is popularly believed that they can, this question has never been formally tested. Here we exploited a large sample derived from prospective online surveying to determine whether and how beliefs concerning the nature of reality, consciousness, and free-will, change after psychedelic use. Results revealed significant shifts away from ‘physicalist’ or ‘materialist’ views, and towards panpsychism and fatalism, post use. With the exception of fatalism, these changes endured for at least 6 months, and were positively correlated with the extent of past psychedelic-use and improved mental-health outcomes. Path modelling suggested that the belief-shifts were moderated by impressionability at baseline and mediated by perceived emotional synchrony with others during the psychedelic experience. The observed belief-shifts post-psychedelic-use were consolidated by data from an independent controlled clinical trial. Together, these findings imply that psychedelic-use may causally influence metaphysical beliefs—shifting them away from ‘hard materialism’. We discuss whether these apparent effects are contextually independent.

Highlights

Can the use of psychedelic drugs induce lasting changes in metaphysical beliefs? While it is popularly believed that they can, this question has never been formally tested
Proponents of physicalism maintain that the nature of reality is fundamentally physical and all mental properties derive from this basic property, the position of idealism states that all physical properties derive from a fundamental reality which is mental and dualism states that the nature of reality consists of two separate properties[1]
A factor analysis on the ten self-constructed belief items developed for the survey, together with three items derived from previous r esearch[6], revealed a single belief factor comprised of nine items, which we labelled Non-physicalist Beliefs (NPB; see “Methods” for factor analysis results)

Summary

Introduction

Can the use of psychedelic drugs induce lasting changes in metaphysical beliefs? While it is popularly believed that they can, this question has never been formally tested. The observed belief-shifts post-psychedelic-use were consolidated by data from an independent controlled clinical trial. Together, these findings imply that psychedelic-use may causally influence metaphysical beliefs—shifting them away from ‘hard materialism’. It is closely related to the so-called ‘overview effect’35, ‘universal insight’[35], experience of ‘awe’[19,35,36] and ‘non-dual’ s tates[37]. Such experiences (often reported as inducing an ‘ontological shock’38) appear to have a powerful capacity for mediating major shifts in perspective[19,31,39], including shifts in metaphysical beliefs

Methods

Results

Conclusion