The Rising Use of LSD among Business Managers

Abstract

Background

Although studies have demonstrated that the use of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) is on the rise in the United States, it remains unclear how this trend looks across the hierarchical ladder of the American workforce. This is relevant given that LSD is increasingly being touted as a means of boosting creativity and performance, with mounting anecdotal evidence that business managers in particular are turning to it for inspiration and insight.

Methods

Using pooled cross-sectional data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (2006–2014) on 168,920 adults in the United States employed full-time (weighted = 117,270,940), this study investigates how temporal trends in past year LSD use differ among business managers and non-managers.

Results

The results suggest that the prevalence of past year LSD use increased over time at a greater rate among business managers than non-managers and that this difference cannot be accounted for by changes in business managers’ perceived risk of LSD use or general substance use relative to non-managers.

Conclusions

The study’s findings indicate that temporal trends in past year LSD use depend on employees’ hierarchical rank in their organization and suggest that business managers, regardless of gender, are becomingly increasingly interested in the potential competitive advantages that LSD may offer.

Keywords:

• LSD
• psychedelics
• trends
• business managers
• workforce

Declaration of Interest

The author declares that he has no conflict of interest.

Notes

1 One of the fourteen response options was “Office & Administrative Support” indicating that the operationalization of managerial status was not confounded with employees working in a lower-ranked, support-oriented administrative role.

2 It is worth noting that although the prevalence of past year psilocybin use has recently overtaken that of past year LSD use among young adults aged 19 to 30 years old (Keyes & Patrick, 2023), the average age of business managers has been estimated to be 44 years old (Zippia, n.d.).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG—German Research Foundation) under Germany’s Excellence Strategy—EXC-2035/1–390681379.