POSTER PRESENTERS

INTRODUCTION

There is a renewed interest in the effect of psychedelics on psychiatric conditions, such as depression and existential distress. Thus far, clinical trials and randomized studies of psychedelics have considered only small numbers of participants, which limits statistical power and our ability to draw firm conclusions. Larger surveys on the effects of psychedelics on mental health of (recreational) users could be informative and cheaper to collect. For survey results to be generalizable we need to assume users and non-users are comparable. To test this hypothesis, we compared their characteristics with non-psychedelic users in the same cohort.

METHOD

We compared the group of psychedelic users and non-users in terms of gender, age, years of education, use of illicit drugs and alcohol, loneliness, sleep and hallucinations.

RESULTS

Of 6031 participants, 692 (11.5%) had ever used LSD or psilocybin. Psychedelic users had used a wider variety of other drugs (99.0% vs 44.8%,). Similar levels of loneliness were found in non-psychedelic users compared to psychedelic users (mean 2.33 vs. 2.46, p = 0.122) and similar levels of sleep quality and sleep duration.

DISCUSSION

We found that psychedelic users have tried a significant amount of other illicit drugs. Because almost all illicit drugs have an effect on sleep, emotions and feelings of connectedness/separation and possibly an effect on psychiatric disease, such as depression; this survey research is a less ideal method to study the effect of psychedelics on psychiatric disease. Highlighting the need for randomized and controlled trials.