How can psychedelic drugs influence critical thinking and creativity? This is what a recent study published in PLOS One hopes to address as a pair of researchers from the University of Graz in Austria investigated a link between a commonly known sense of connectedness of psychedelic drug use and creativity in users. This study has the potential to help researchers better understand the benefits of psychedelics while working to erode the negative perceptions of psychedelics.
For the study, the researchers conducted a cross-sectional online survey comprised of 326 participants, with 187 identifying as psychedelic users and the remaining 138 identifying as non-psychedelic users. Each participant completed a questionnaire regarding their life satisfaction, sense of connectedness, and real-life creativity. In the end, the researchers found that psychedelic users experienced greater levels of creativity and connectedness while life satisfaction was only slightly higher than non-users.
The study notes, “These study findings are in line with previous online surveys indicating higher creative ideation performance as well as self-reported benefits for creativity associated with psychedelic drug use. Prochazkova found acute and positive effects of microdosing on divergent thinking in natural open labeled microdosing events. The current study can add the finding that connectedness, especially to the self and to the world, could potentially represent a psychosociological factor in the long-term influence of psychedelic drug use on creative cognition.”
This study comes as the number of individuals in the United States identifying as psychedelic users was found to have increased between 2002 and 2019 from 1.7 percent to 2.2 percent, respectively, or an estimated 5.5 million Americans in 2019. Therefore, this study could add to the growing body of knowledge that psychedelics contain benefits, as opposed to the negative stigma they have been given over the years.
What new connections between psychedelics and creativity will researchers make in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!
Sources: PLOS One, Marijuana Moment, Columbia University Irving Medical Center