[Active dose of 25mg of psilocybin] can alter a person’s core metaphysical beliefs…
Findings from the journal Scientific Reports suggest that psychedelic drugs can alter a person’s core beliefs about the nature of reality, consciousness, and free will. After taking psychedelics, participants’ views tended to sway from physicalism to supernatural beliefs, and these changes lasted up to six months… the extent that participants felt ‘emotional synchrony’ with other attendees predicted future changes in metaphysical beliefs, suggesting that group settings can magnify belief-change during psychedelic ceremonies… this shift away from hard materialism was only found among patients who showed at least a 50% improvement in depression scores with psilocybin, suggesting a link between belief changes and positive mental health…
These findings extend current understandings of the interaction between the psychedelic state and both suggestibility and trait absorption by highlighting how changes in metaphysical beliefs may become prominent in group settings during psychedelic-use. These relationships evoke historical cases where psychedelics have been exploited for purposes of mind-control. Important ethical considerations are raised by the prospect of… [isolate] catalysed changes in core beliefs occurring without prior informed consent… The relevant ten items were conceived with the intention of assessing beliefs in separate domains, including panpsychism [the view that mentality is fundamental and ubiquitous in the natural world], idealistic/solipsistic beliefs (i.e. ‘the physical world is an illusion generated by the mind’), beliefs in the literal transcendence of the constraints of this universe, and related beliefs in the existence of other worlds or universes that one can visit, monism (i.e. the position that there is only one fundamental type of substance), idealism (i.e. that reality is entirely constituted by mind or consciousness), physicalism or materialism (i.e. the belief that reality is entirely constituted by physical or material objects and processes), the notion that all mental events (including the sense of self) can be traced back to brain activity and more nuanced positions highlighting the embeddedness of conscious experience in brain, body and world (i.e. enactivism)…
Original Article (Nature & Psypost):
Psychedelics can alter a person’s core metaphysical beliefs for as long as six months after use, study suggests & Psychedelics alter metaphysical beliefs
Artwork Fair Use: Urstadt
Recent Comments