ArticleJournal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England)2023
Investigation of self-treatment with lysergic acid diethylamide and psilocybin mushrooms: Findings from the Global Drug Survey 2020.
Article in Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England), 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers.
What it found
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The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed, 58 citations in OpenAlex.
- Naturally Derived Psilocybin for Therapeutic Use: A Six-Criterion Framework for Evidence, Safety, and Benefit-Risk Considerations in Policy and Clinical Development.Biomolecules · 2026Review
- Who Keeps Using Lysergic Acid Diethylamide? Correlates of Past-Year Use in People Who Initiated Use at least Five Years Ago.Psychedelic medicine (New Rochelle, N.Y.) · 2026Article
- Fusing Specialized Surveys of Rare Populations to Larger Surveys for Generalized Inference: Cross-Sectional Survey Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2026Article
- Extended difficulties after psychedelic experiences: Prevalence and associations in a global, multilingual sample.Research square · 2026Article
- Perceived Availability of Lysergic Acid Diethylamide in the United States from 2015 to 2019.Psychedelic medicine (New Rochelle, N.Y.) · 2026Article
- Difficulties following naturalistic psychedelic use and associations with adverse childhood experiences.The International journal on drug policy · 2026Article
- Recalled childhood trauma and post-psychedelic trajectories of change in a mixed-methods study.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Naturalistic use of psychedelics is associated with longitudinal improvements in anxiety and depression during global crisis times.Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England) · 2025Article
- Do undergraduates' views of psychedelics relate to the context for psychedelic use?Drug science, policy and law · 2025Article
- Health-related behavioral changes following the use of psychedelics in naturalistic settings.Preventive medicine reports · 2025Article
- Psychedelic use in individuals living with eating disorders or disordered eating: findings from the international MED-FED survey.Journal of eating disorders · 2025Article
- Clinical Research on Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD) in Psychiatry and Neuroscience.Pharmaceuticals (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Serotonergic Psychedelics Rapidly Modulate Evoked Glutamate Release in Cultured Cortical Neurons.Journal of neurochemistry · 2025Article
- Psychedelic iatrogenic structural dissociation: an exploratory hypothesis on dissociative risks in psychedelic use.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Exploring the therapeutic potential of psychedelics: Fear extinction mechanisms and amygdala modulation.Psychedelics · 2025Article
- The Psych Behind Psychedelics: Exploring Hallucinogen Use as a Marker for Untreated Mental Health Disorders.Health psychology research · 2025Article
- Article
- Attitudes of European psychiatrists on psychedelics: a cross-sectional survey study.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Content analysis of Reddit posts about coadministration of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and psilocybin mushrooms.Psychopharmacology · 2024Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 4 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundGrowing numbers of people are using psychedelics for personal psychotherapy outside clinical settings, but research on such use is scarce.
aimsThis study investigated the patterns of use, self-reported outcomes and outcome predictors of psychedelic 'self-treatment' of mental health conditions or specific worries/concerns in life.
methodsWe use data from the Global Drug Survey 2020, a large online survey on drug use collected between November 2019 and February 2020. In all, 3364 respondents reported their self-treatment experiences with lysergic acid diethylamide (
resultsPositive changes were observed across all 17 outcome items, with the strongest benefits on items related to insight and mood. Negative effects were reported by 22.5% of respondents. High intensity of psychedelic experience, seeking advice before treatment, treating with psilocybin mushrooms and treating post-traumatic stress disorder were associated with higher scores on the self-treatment outcome scale after averaging values across all 17 items. Younger age, high intensity of experience and treating with LSD were associated with increased number of negative outcomes.
conclusionsThis study brings important insights into self-treatment practices with psychedelics in a large international sample. Outcomes were generally favourable, but negative effects appeared more frequent than in clinical settings. Our findings can help inform safe practices of psychedelic use in the community, and inspire clinical research. Future research can be improved with utilisation of prospective designs and additional predictive variables.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.