Psychedelic Experiences and Mindfulness are Associated with Improved Wellbeing

ABSTRACT

Both psychedelics and mindfulness are recently emerging topics of interest in academia and popular culture. The Prevalence of personal meditation practices and recreational psychedelic use has consistently increased in the past decade. While clinical work has shown both to improve long-term wellbeing, data on naturalistic applications of psychedelics and mindfulness are lacking. The current study examined the relationship between psychedelic use, mindfulness, and multi-faceted wellbeing as an outcome. Hierarchical regression was used to quantify these associations on a sample of people (N = 1,219) who engage in both meditation practices and psychedelic use. Results show that both mindfulness and mystical experiences are associated with substantial increases in wellbeing. Psychedelics were found to be a moderator of the relationship between mystical experience wellbeing. These data are among the first to establish a strong relationship between personal mindfulness practice, recreational psychedelic use, and overall psychological wellbeing in a naturalistic framework.

KEYWORDS:

• Psychedelics
• mindfulness
• wellbeing
• mystical experience
• recreational
• meditation

Acknowledgments

We thank Claire Oakley for her assistance with graphic design and proofreading. We thank community moderators Warren Davies and CADJunglist for their assistance in participant recruitment. This research was funded in part by a grant from Western University, WSS-SSHRC Open, 48397

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data Availability Statement

The data that support the findings of this study and associated materials are openly available on Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/ph6ks/

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Western University [WSS-SSHRC Open, 48397].