In a naturalistic sample of 1,219 meditators who also use psychedelics, hierarchical regression showed that both trait mindfulness and the intensity of mystical-type experiences independently predicted substantial increases in multi-faceted wellbeing. Recreational psychedelic use additionally moderated the relationship between mystical experiences and wellbeing, suggesting psychedelics amplify the wellbeing benefits associated with mystical experiences.
Both psychedelics and mindfulness are a recently emerging topic of interest in academia and popular culture alike. Personal meditation practices and recreational psychedelic use have consistently increased in the past decade. While clinical work has shown both to improve long-term wellbeing, the data on naturalistic applications of psychedelics and mindfulness is rather lacking. The current study aims to examine the relationship between psychedelic use, mindfulness, and multi-faceted wellbeing as an outcome. Hierarchical regression was used to quantify these associations on a large sample of people (N = 1219), who engage in both meditation practices and psychedelic use. These results show that both mindfulness and mystical experiences each predict substantial increases in wellbeing. Psychedelics were found to be an important moderator of mystical experience to explain improvements in 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.
The paper situates itself within renewed scientific and popular interest in psychedelics and in mindfulness-based contemplative practices. Earlier clinical research has shown that high-dose psychedelics (notably psilocybin) can occasion mystical-type experiences that are followed by persistent improvements in measures such as life meaning, spirituality and psychological functioning, while formal mindfulness interventions (for example MBSR, MBCT) have demonstrated small-to-moderate improvements in stress, depression and anxiety. The authors note phenomenological and neurobiological overlap between deep meditation and psychedelic states (for instance reductions in default mode network activity) and point out that a small number of studies suggest combined use may yield additive benefits. However, naturalistic data on recreational psychedelic use, everyday mindfulness practice and their joint associations with multi-dimensional wellbeing remain limited. Qiu and colleagues set out to address that gap by testing whether trait mindfulness and psychedelic-mediated mystical experience are associated with a broad range of wellbeing outcomes in a large, non-clinical sample. The study pre-registered seven hypotheses on OSF and used hierarchical regression to test whether mindfulness and mystical experience predict affect, meaning in life, life satisfaction, wisdom and symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress, and whether psychedelic use moderates those relationships. The authors emphasise a naturalistic, cross-sectional approach to capture how people actually engage in meditation and recreational psychedelic use outside laboratory settings.
Papers cited by this study that are also in Blossom
Aday, J. S., Mitzkovitz, C. M., Bloesch, E. K. et al. · Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews (2020)
Anderson, T., Petranker, R., Rosenbaum, D. et al. · Psychopharmacology (2019)
Barrett, F. S., Griffiths, R. R. · Current Topics in Behavioral Neurosciences (2017)
Barrett, F. S., Johnson, M. W., Griffiths, R. R. · Journal of Psychopharmacology (2015)
The investigators conducted a cross-sectional, online survey administered via Qualtrics. Participants were recruited from two sources: online interest communities (subreddits related to drugs, meditation and psychedelics; n = 1,019) and an internal Western University recruitment pool (largely undergraduates; n = 200), yielding a combined sample consistent with the N = 1,219 reported in the paper. The only formal inclusion criterion was competence in English. Participants provided informed consent and the study procedures were approved by the University of Western Ontario's Non-Medical Research Ethics Board; respondents could enter a raffle for one of three US$50 e-giftcards. Survey content captured self-reported meditation and psychedelic use (including age at first use, lifetime doses and estimated average dose for LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, DMT, mescaline and MDMA), basic COVID-19 screening items and a battery of validated psychometric scales. Trait mindfulness was measured with the Five-Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ, 39 items; α = 0.91). Mystical experience was assessed using a revised 30-item Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ; α = 0.97), with participants asked to rate their most meaningful experience. Wellbeing and related outcomes included the shortened DASS-21 for depression, anxiety and stress (total α = 0.93), PANAS for positive and negative affect (positive α = 0.89, negative α = 0.90), Meaning in Life Questionnaire (MLQ; presence α = 0.88, search α = 0.90), Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS; α = 0.87), and a Brief Wisdom Screening Scale (BWSS; α = 0.85). Analytically, the authors pre-registered hierarchical multiple regression as their primary approach. They fit three successive regression models to examine incremental variance explained by mindfulness and mystical experience, comparing models via analysis of variance. Assumptions for linear regression were assessed: homoscedasticity was tested with Levene's test and, where violated, White's robust standard errors were applied; the authors noted that large sample size mitigates some normality concerns and evaluated linearity visually with residuals-vs-fitted plots. Psychedelic use and meditation practice were coded as binary moderators in interaction tests; several exploratory analyses (not pre-registered) examined additional interactions and subgroup comparisons. One pre-registered hypothesis (H7) was not tested and is reported as a deviation from protocol.
Sample characteristics reported in the extracted text indicate an average age of 25.0 years (SD = 8.6). Self-reported religiosity averaged 24.1/100 (SD = 26.0) and spirituality 54.8/100 (SD = 28.8). Psychedelic users reported a mean age of first use of 19.7 years (SD = 6.1) and highly variable lifetime dose counts (M = 43.3, SD = 53.0). Recruitment sources were imbalanced (1,019 online; 200 internal). On the primary analyses, trait mindfulness (FFMQ) explained significant variation across the wellbeing measures. Higher mindfulness predicted greater positive affect, lower negative affect, higher wisdom (BWSS), lower mood disorder symptoms (DASS), and greater satisfaction with life (SWLS). The one pre-registered exception was meaning in life, where the hypothesised effect for mindfulness did not uniformly hold (the extracted text indicates an exception regarding meaning in life but does not provide detailed coefficients for that outcome). Mystical experience (MEQ) generally predicted wellbeing outcomes in the same direction as mindfulness but to a lesser extent; however, an unexpected association emerged whereby mystical experience per se predicted higher negative affect and greater mood disorder symptom scores. Crucially, psychedelic use moderated several of these relationships. When mystical experience was moderated by psychedelic use (psychedelic use coded as a binary variable), the interaction predicted increases in wisdom (ß = 0.24, t = 3.25, p = .001) and satisfaction with life (ß = 0.19, t = 2.28, p = .02). The psychedelic-by-MEQ interaction also predicted reductions in DASS total scores (ß = -0.33, t = -3.94, p < .001) and lower negative affect on PANAS (ß = -0.31, t = -3.72, p < .001). No significant psychedelic-moderated MEQ effects were found for PANAS positive or for the MLQ subscales (presence and search). An interaction between psychedelic use and mindfulness was found for positive affect: psychedelic moderated mindfulness predicted increased positive affect (PANAS positive ß = 0.16, t = 2.29, p = .02). By contrast, meditation practice (coded as >1 year versus <1 year) did not interact with either FFMQ or MEQ to predict wellbeing outcomes. Exploratory subgroup comparisons showed that experienced participants (both psychedelic users and meditators) scored higher on mindfulness and mystical experience than naive participants; the difference for mindfulness was medium in size, while mystical experience showed large effect-size differences. Substance use patterns reported: among the five substances listed (LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, MDMA, DMT, mescaline), 13.7% of psychedelic users had tried only one, 21.0% tried exactly two, 29.1% tried three, 28.0% tried four, 5.8% tried all five, and 28.3% reported not having used any of the five (this latter figure likely reflects how the question was answered or inclusion of other substances). Mean self-reported doses (in conventional units) were reported for each substance (for example LSD M = 188 µg, SD = 99; mushrooms M = 2.84 g, SD = 1.23; MDMA M = 131 mg, SD = 71; DMT M = 33.3 mg, SD = 18.9; mescaline M = 273 mg, SD = 181). The authors additionally report high internal reliability for all psychometric scales used.
Qiu and colleagues interpret their results as evidence that trait mindfulness is robustly associated with a broad conception of wellbeing in a non-clinical, naturalistic sample. The pattern that higher mindfulness predicts greater presence of meaning but less searching for meaning is discussed in light of Mindfulness-to-Meaning Theory (MMT); the authors suggest that regular mindful attention may foster reappraisal and emotional regulation that yields a felt presence of meaning and reduces the ongoing search for it, possibly via nondual states in which seeking diminishes. The discussion frames mystical experience as positively related to wisdom and to search for meaning, proposing that psychedelic-elicited mystical experiences may prompt people to seek meaning or that people use psychedelics to seek answers. The authors note a novel and important nuance: mystical experiences that occur independently of psychedelics were associated with higher negative affect and mood disorder symptoms in this sample, whereas mystical experiences occurring in the context of psychedelic use were associated with improved mood outcomes. Thus, psychedelic moderation appeared to invert the adverse association between mystical experience and negative mood. Overlap between meditators and psychedelic users (58% of participants reported both) is acknowledged as a likely contributor to group differences, with both experienced meditators and psychedelic users exhibiting higher mindfulness and mystical experience scores than naive participants. Strengths emphasised include the large sample, the simultaneous assessment of mindfulness and psychedelic-related mystical experience across multiple wellbeing domains, and the naturalistic focus outside laboratory settings. Key limitations noted by the authors are the cross-sectional, correlational design that precludes causal inference; the asymmetrical recruitment sources which may limit generalisability (online interest forums versus a WEIRD undergraduate pool); and data collection during the COVID-19 pandemic, which could have introduced unmeasured confounds. The authors caution against causal claims and characterise their findings as associations that justify further longitudinal or experimental work.
In conclusion, the study reports that trait mindfulness is strongly associated with multiple indices of wellbeing in a large, non-clinical sample, and that mystical experience relates to several wellbeing facets but shows a complex relationship with negative affect that is moderated by psychedelic use. When mystical experiences are tied to psychedelic use they are associated with improved mood and greater life satisfaction and wisdom; mystical experiences unconnected to psychedelics showed an association with higher negative mood in this dataset. The authors conclude that both mindfulness and psychedelic-moderated mystical experiences exhibit strong positive associations with multifaceted measures of wellbeing in naturalistic contexts, while emphasising the correlational nature of the findings and the need for further research.
Psychedelic drugs have been used throughout history by various peoples across time and geography. People have used psychedelics for spiritual, cultural, and artistic reasons. Despite this, there has been a hiatus in academic research since the 1970s due to government intervention and legal restrictions. Recently, psychedelics have become a topic of renewed interest in both popular culture and academia. A growing amount of the adult population is gravitating towards psychedelic use. Within research communities, many groups are pushing forward, laying the groundwork for this burgeoning field. Since Griffiths and colleagues published their landmark study on psilocybin (R. R., the scientific literature on psychedelics has more than tripled. The current study focuses on the "classical" psychedelics: a group of serotonin 5-HT2a receptor agonists including but not limited to: LSD, psilocybin, DMT, and mescaline. These four substances happen to be the most popular culturally and in scientific research. Although not a classical psychedelic, MDMA elicits similar effects and is thus relevant to the current study. Furthermore, according to the 2020 Global Drug Survey executive summary, MDMA is recreationally more popular than any of the aforementioned classical psychedelics.
Psychedelic drugs, particularly psilocybin, have been shown to occasion mystical experiences in controlled clinical settings (Frederick S.; R. R.. These mystical experiences encompass four key subjective features: mysticism or a sacred sense of unity, truth, and reverence; transcendence of space and time; positive mood; and ineffability (Frederick S.. Post-intervention followup studies suggest that psilocybin-mediated mystical experiences explain persistent increases in life meaning, spirituality, personality openness, and healthy psychological functioning (R.. It is currently unclear as to why psilocybin is capable of eliciting mystical-type experiences, though it is uncontroversial that psychedelics are uniquely capable of occasioning mystical experiences compared to active placebos such as methylphenidate (Frederick S.; Frederick S.. Similarly, LSD, MDMA, and DMT have been reported to occasion mystical experiences, though the existing literature is relatively sparse for psychedelics other than psilocybin.
Meditation and related contemplative practices have a rich and varied history. The origins of these practices are often attributed to Eastern religions, wisdom traditions, and philosophies. Within the last several decades, these practices have gained traction in Western culture. Meditation is an umbrella term that covers a range of contemplative practices. Most of these practices involve training of deliberate attentional focus, often on the breath, sounds, or bodily sensations.
Mindfulness constitutes a subset of the aforementioned meditation practices. Mindfulness has been adopted by both the public and researchers alike and is commonly operationally defined as, "a state of being, characterized by complete attentiveness to present moment experience, in a non-judgmental fashion.". Relevant to the current study is the construct of trait mindfulness, which describes the basal tendency to remain mindful in everyday life. Many mindfulness practices have become secularized or medicalized, as in the case of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) or Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT). These therapies have shown utility in reducing negative affect, stress, depression, and anxiety symptoms with small to medium effect sizes. There are several theories suggesting that the benefits of MBSR may be due to diminished rumination, increased self-compassion or increased mindfulness itself. In addition, Mindfulness-to-Meaning Theory (MMT) has suggested mindfulness produces greater meaning in one's life through mechanisms of cognitive reappraisal and emotional regulation grounded in attentional mechanisms.
Anecdotally, many people report that psychedelic use and mindfulness practice offers similar insights and benefits. Phenomenologically, mindfulness practitioners often report experiences with noetic or mystical qualities. Meditators report altered states of consciousness referring to descriptors such as unity, oneness with all, deeply positive mood, transcendence of time and space, paradoxicality; all of which are reminiscent of psychedelic-mediated mystical experiences. Incidentally, the few neuroimaging studies in both domains suggest that the neural correlates of meditation and psychedelic states are comparable. A key similarity between psychedelic and meditation neural correlates is the marked diminishment of default mode network activity in both cases. Correspondingly, the phenomenological sense of self-a key function of the default modeis reportedly diminished or annihilated in both heavy psychedelic doses or deep meditation states. Psychedelic use and mindfulness seem to be different paths that may occasionally lead to the same destination. A small handful of studies have explicitly studied the benefits of combining psychedelics with contemplative practices. The results of these studies suggest that combining psychedelics with meditation leads to stronger benefits in wellbeing beyond the effect of either practice in isolation. Aside from these explicitly combined investigations, psychedelics and meditation have independently been linked to similar types of improvements in wellbeing. Reported benefits common to both practices include: decreased negative affect; decreased mood disorder symptoms; as well as increased positive affect, spirituality, life purpose, life meaning, and wisdom.
Evidence from clinical research suggests psychedelics can cause persistent improvements to wellbeing via induction of strong mystical experiences. However, naturalistic psychedelic use and its potential for improving wellbeing have been relatively unexamined. Many people report using psychedelics for personal growth, spiritual experiences, or simply for recreational enjoyment. Some recent observational research suggests recreational psychedelic use is capable of eliciting strong mystical experiences. A few studies peripherally examined wellbeing as an outcome variable, observing small improvements to single measures of wellbeing. As of yet, there haven't been any reported explicit investigations into how recreational psychedelic-mediated mystical experiences lead to improvements in wellbeing. Similar claims of increased wellbeing are true of clinical mindfulness-based interventions such as MBSR, MCBT. Mindfulness in everyday life has been more thoroughly explored, with many studies suggesting that non-intervention personal mindfulness practices are linked to increased wellbeing.
The objective of the current study is to examine the recreational engagement of mindfulness and psychedelic-mediated mystical experiences. Additionally, the study aims to uncover how mindfulness and psychedelic experiences influence multidimensional facets of psychological wellbeing. In particular, we predicted both mindfulness and psychedelic-mediated mystical experience are associated with improvements to affect, meaning in life, satisfaction with life, wisdom, and symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress (see pre-registered hypotheses: osf.io/s5b7z).
Hypotheses, study design, and planned analyses were pre-registered on Open Science Framework (OSF) prior to data collection (osf.io/s5b7z). Seven explicit hypotheses were registered (H1-H7) and were intended to be analyzed using hierarchical regression (Table). Hypotheses H7: "MEQ will significantly interact with FFMQ to explain variation in PANAS, BWSS, MLQ, DASS, SWLS scores", was not tested. This deviation from the protocol is because we tested other interaction effects instead (marked as exploratory); all hypotheses that were not pre-registered on OSF are denoted as exploratory analyses.
We employed a cross-sectional survey design, which was distributed online via Qualtrics XM. Participants who completed the survey were offered a raffle entry to draw one of three Amazon.com e-giftcard prizes valued at $50.00 USD. The only inclusion criterion was English competence because all materials were presented in English only. Participants signed informed consent before beginning the study. All study procedures were approved by the Non-Medical Research Ethics Board at the University of Western Ontario.
We used hierarchical regression to assess the effects of predictors on dependent measures of wellbeing. Linear regression assumptions were tested prior to computing the models. Homoscedasticity was evaluated by Levene's test. Models that violated homoscedasticity were corrected using White's robust standard errors method. Failures of normality were appealed on grounds that sufficiently large sample sizes are robust to violation of normality assumption. Linearity was visually evaluated using residual vs fitted plots. We fitted three successive multiple regression models and compared them via analysis of variance (ANOVA). Model 1 was designed to control for confounding demographics variables; Online interest communities relevant to psychedelics and meditation such as Reddit communities, also known as subreddits (N = 1019). Sampled subreddits include /r/drugs, /r/meditation, /r/buddhism, /r/nootropics, /r/psychedelics, /r/lsd, /r/dmt, /r/mdma and /r/shrooms. (2) Western University's internal participant recruitment pool, largely consisting of undergraduate students (N = 200). The average age of participants was 25.0 years (SD = 8.6). Self-reported religiosity was 24.1 out of 100 (SD = 26.0), and spirituality was 54.8 (SD = 28.8). Psychedelic users reported relatively young first age of use (M = 19.7, SD = 6.1), and highly variable total lifetime doses of psychedelic drugs (M = 43.3, SD = 53.0). Geographic distribution is shown on the world map (Fig.). Categorical variables are shown in Table.
Participants were asked if they participated in meditation practices or psychedelic use. Psychedelic users were further prompted with questions about their age of first use, which drugs they use, lifetime doses, and their estimated average dose for each of the five drugs: LSD, magic mushrooms, DMT, Mescaline, and MDMA. Although MDMA is not classically a psychedelic, we included it due to its popularity and significant overlap in phenomenology and pharmacology with the classical psychedelics. Meditators were also prompted further with questions about the age at which they first began meditating, their total experience in years, style of practice, and practice duration. However, only meditation experience is included in this report. Coronavirus Screening. The data reported here were collected in midst of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. Due to the possible confounds on variables such as mood and wellbeing, some basic information about COVID-19 was collected. This procedure was not pre-registered on OSF. These included: participants testing positive, family or friends testing positive, and general attitudes towards the pandemic and the public health response of their locale.
Five-Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ). The FFMQ is a 39 item questionnaire that evaluates trait mindfulness. There are five subscales, each describing a distinct aspect of mindful experience: acting with awareness, observation, non-judgment, nonreaction, and descriptive ability. This questionnaire was rated on a Likert scale from 1 (never or very rarely true) to 5 (very often or always true); higher scores represent higher mindfulness. Reliability was high based on the present sample (α = 0.91).
A recently revised 30-item version of the original MEQ is used in this study (Frederick S.. This scale was originally developed to measure the degree of mystical experience under the influence of psychedelic drugs (R. R.. This scale has a four-factor structure representing aspects of the psychedelic experience: mystical, positive mood, transcendence of time and space, and ineffability. Participants were asked to refer to the most meaningful experience in their life, psychedelic or otherwise, when rating on a Likert scale ranging from 0 (none; not at all) to 5 (extreme, more than any other time in my life); higher scores represent strong mystical experience. Reliability was high (α = 0.97).
A shortened, 21 item version of the original DASS was used because it is suitable for evaluating non-clinical populations. The DASS has three subscales: depression, anxiety, and stress which are rated on a Likert scale from 0 (did not apply to me at all) to 3 (applied to me very much or most of the time); lower scores represent less severity of negative mood symptoms. Participants answer the DASS scale with reference to how they have been feeling over the past week. Reliability was adequate (DASS total α = 0.93, depression α = 0.90, anxiety α = 0.80, stress α = 0.85).
The PANAS is two combined 10item inventories of positive and negative mood states administered together. Participants rated on a 1 (very slightly or not at all) to 5 (extremely) Likert scale the extent to which they felt the indicated mood state in the past week (e.g. nervous, proud, irritable). Scoring high represents more prevalence of positive or negative mood on their respective scale. Reliability was high (positive α = 0.89, negative α = 0.90).
A brief, 10 item questionnaire that evaluates two factors of life meaning: search for meaning, and presence of meaning. Participants rated on a Likert scale from 1 (absolutely untrue) to 7 (absolutely true); higher scores indicate more meaning. Reliability was high (presence α = 0.88, search α = 0.90).
A 5 item scale for measuring general subjective satisfaction with one's life. SWLS is rated on a Likert scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree); higher scores represent higher satisfaction with life. Reliability was high (α = 0.87).
A 20 item scale derived from aggregating items from previous wisdom scales. Scored on a Likert scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Higher scores represent higher wisdom. Reliability was high (α = 0.85).
We registered seven hypotheses on OSF prior to data collection (osf.io/s5b7z). Hypotheses H1-H6 were tested; hierarchical regression was used to control for confounding variables and quantify model improvement by the stepwise addition of mindfulness and mystical experience as predictors (Table). Degree of trait mindfulness explains significant variations in all wellbeing measures as predicted by our hypotheses. As expected, improvements to positive affect, negative affect, wisdom, mood disorder, and satisfaction with life are strongly predicted by FFMQ mindfulness scores (H1b, H2b, H3b, H5b, H6b). The one exception is our hypothesis regarding meaning in life (H4b
The following hypotheses and analyses were not pre-registered on OSF and are reported as exploratory analyses.
The proportion of psychedelic users who have tried each one of the major five psychedelics; LSD, mushrooms, MDMA, DMT, and mescaline are shown as a barplot (Fig.). Concerning these five substances, 13.7% of psychedelic users report having tried only one substance; 21.0% report trying exactly two; 29.1% report three; 28.0% report four; 5.8% report all five; and 28.3% report not having used any of the stated substances. Mean estimated dosages for each substance were also recorded. A 0-5 point scale of qualitative descriptors were derived to give a coarse estimation of recreational doses for different substances; 0-insignificant; 1threshold; 2-light; 3-common; 4-heavy; 5-extreme. We derived this estimation using classifications provided from Erowid Vaults, the oldest and most comprehensive public database of recreational drug use. Average LSD dose was heavy (M = 188, SD = 99) µg; mushroom dose was heavy (M = 2.84, SD = 1.23) g; MDMA dose was heavy (M = 131, SD = 71) mg; DMT dose was common (M = 33.3, SD = 18.9) mg; and mescaline dosage was light (M = 273, SD = 181). Although the current study only explicitly quantified five of the most common psychedelics, many participants reported use of other related substances. In no particular order, the following drugs were mentioned frequently by participants: cannabis, ayahuasca, ketamine, salvia divinorum, 2-CB, PCP, dextromethorphan, and a variety of greymarket psychedelic derivatives (eg. 1P-LSD, 4-AcO-DMT, NBOMEs, AL-LAD).
Psychedelic moderated mystical experience predicts increased wellbeing. Psychedelic use was factor coded as a binary variable and entered as a moderator of mystical experience. Psychedelic moderated mystical experience predicted an increase to wisdom ß = 0.24, t = 3.25, p = .001; and satisfaction with life, ß = 0.19, t = 2.28, p = .02, as measured by BWSS and SWLS respectively. Psychedelic moderated mystical experience also predicts decreased negative mood effects. For the DASS scale, decreased total score was predicted by the interaction, ß = -0.33, t = -3.94, p < .001. Lower negative affect on PANAS was similarly predicted, ß = -0.31, t = -3.72, p < .001. Psychedelic moderated mystical experience was also tested on PANAS positive subscale, and both MLQ subscales: presence and search for meaning. No significant interactions were found. Psychedelic interacts with mindfulness to predict positive affect. Psychedelic use was also tested for interactions with mindfulness as measured by FFMQ. Wisdom, DASS total, PANAS negative subscale, SWLS, and both MLQ subscales were tested but yielded no significant interactions. However, psychedelic moderated mindfulness predicts increased positive affect, ß = 0.16, t = 2.29, p = .02, as measured by PANAS positive subscale.
Meditation practice was also factor coded and tested as a potential interaction variable. Participants who reported less than one year of meditation experience were coded as naive; those with over one year of meditation practice were coded as meditators. Both FFMQ and MEQ were tested for interaction effects in predicting the wellbeing outcome variables. No significant interactions were observed.
Two comparisons were run on both mindfulness and mystical experience total scores. The first comparison contrasted psychedelic users against psychedelic naive participants. The second comparison contrasted meditators, against non-meditators. Meditators were coded as having more than one year of consistent meditation practice; non-meditators coded as less than one year of practice. The proportion of experienced psychedelic and meditation participants far outweighed-by about five to one-the sample of naive participants for either condition. To compensate, the group of psychedelic users and meditators were subsampled to the smaller, naive sample size (n(1, 2) psychedelics=meditators=. In every case, experienced participants in psychedelics and meditation scored higher on mindfulness and mystical experience (Fig.). Mindfulness showed medium effect sizes; mystical experience showed large effect size differences.
Our results show that higher mindfulness is positively associated with a broad conception of wellbeing. Relative to mindfulness, intensity of mystical experience generally predicts the wellbeing outcomes in the same direction though to a lesser degree, even after controlling for demographic variables. The exception is that mystical experience predicts increased negative mood disorder and negative affect, though these predictions are reversed upon the introduction of psychedelic use as a moderator.
Curiously, higher mindfulness predicts increased presence of meaning, yet less searching for meaning. These seemingly discordant results become coherent in the context of Mindfulnessto-Meaning theory, which asserts that deliberate training of attentional mechanisms reappraises experience in a way that is conducive to increased meaning.. Indeed, our MLQ results lend support to MMT but the question remains, why does higher mindfulness predict a marked decrease in search for meaning? One aspect of MMT emphasizes the presence of spirituality as an explanatory component of meaning. The phenomenological state known as nondual awareness is posited to be responsible. Nondual awareness is sometimes characterized by the cessation of seeking, grasping, and self-referential processes; though a precise conception of nondual awareness remains elusive and beyond the scope of this study. Regardless, individuals with higher mindfulness may experience nondual states with regularity. In a sense, they may have already found what they're looking for; no longer feeling the need to search or locate meaning. Other than meaning, higher mindfulness predicts global wellbeing such as satisfaction with life, a very coarse-grained approximation of overall wellbeing. Furthermore, these results suggest improved affect and decreased mood disorder symptoms, which replicate many previous findings. The current study is one of the few studies to quantify a positive relationship between mindfulness and wisdom, corroborating one lone study in this area.
Consistent with our hypotheses, psychedelics predict increased positive affect, satisfaction with life, and presence of meaning. Mystical experience has two particularly strong associations with wisdom and search for meaning. One interpretation is that many individuals report psychedelics as the means by which they first encounter mystical-type experiences, which often initiates a search for meaning. Alternatively, people may be turning to psychedelics as a tool for finding answers and meaning in life. In regard to mystical experience and wisdom, no previous work has explicitly linked the two. Our results suggest a positive relationship between mystical experience and wisdom, which aligns with peripherally relevant research of microdosing psychedelics. People who microdose psychedelics score higher on wisdom as measured by BWSS, compared to people who do not microdose.. Contrary to our hypotheses and previous evidence, mystical experience predicts increased negative affect, anxiety, and stress. It is important to denote, while psychedelics can induce mystical experience, they are not the only method by which people happen upon mystical experiences. These results suggest mystical experiences per se are associated with higher negative affect and mood disorder symptoms. Remarkably, the addition of psychedelic use as an interaction term inverts the association between mystical experience and negative mood. The interaction suggests that mystical experience-as specifically elicited by psychedelics-predicts improved mood, which is consistent with previous findings. However, non-psychedelic related mystical experiences predict decreased mood, a novel finding. Notably, psychedelic users score higher on mystical experience and mindfulness than naive participants; the same is true of meditators. Unsurprisingly, psychedelic users have stronger mystical experiences; meditators are more mindful compared to naive participants on both fronts. But experienced meditators also have stronger mystical experiences than novice meditators and psychedelic users are also more mindful than naive participants. It is important to note that the sample had highly overlapping meditators and psychedelic users (58% of participants report both meditation and psychedelic use), which may explain these differences relative to naive participants. Regardless, both psychedelic users and meditators appear distinct from the ordinary population, exhibiting moderately higher mindfulness and substantially higher mystical experience.
The primary strength of the current study is putting together the pieces of mindfulness and psychedelic moderated mystical experience to explicitly predict a broad array of wellbeing measures. Our study is unique in looking at both of these possible predictors (psychedelic use and mindfulness meditation practice). Previous work tends to only include unidimensional measures of wellbeing. In addition, the non-clinical nature of our sample reveals how many people behave and engage in psychedelics or contemplative practices outside of a highlycontrolled laboratory setting. That said, the primary limitation of our study is that it is cross-sectional and correlational. These results merely show strong associations between mindfulness, mystical experience, and wellbeing, one would be cautioned to draw causal inferences from these data. In addition, the sample was taken from two populations; online interest forums, and an internal recruitment pool. Although participant source was controlled for in the main analyses, the asymmetrical split in sample source may introduce unexpected confounds. The online-recruited subsample represents a broad variance of demographics and geography, whereas the internally recruited sample largely consists of a WEIRD (white, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic) undergraduate students localized around a medium-sized Canadian city. These subsample differences limit the generalizability of results to the broader population. Finally, the data was collected during the COVID-19 pandemic. While we made efforts to control for possible confounds in our analyses, there are surely many complex but relevant variables we may not have considered.
The present study sought to establish potential relationships between mindfulness, psychedelic experiences, and general wellbeing in non-clinical populations. The primary findings were that mindfulness robustly predicts a broad range of wellbeing measures, with one exception regarding the search for meaning. Mystical experience per se explains wellbeing facets notwithstanding affect and mood disorder measures. However, these relationships concerning affect and mood disorder were inverted by the addition of psychedelic use as a moderator of mystical experience. The present study suggests that mindfulness and psychedelic moderated mystical experiences have strong positive associations with multifaceted measures of wellbeing. These data show promise of naturalistic or recreational use of psychedelics as means to improve personal wellbeing.
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Papers in Blossom that reference this study
Earleywine, M., Falabella, G. S., Oliva, A. B. et al. · Journal of Psychoactive Drugs (2024)
Madsen, M. K., Ozenne, B., Armand, S. et al. · Frontiers in Psychology (2022)
van Elk, M., Yaden, D. B. · Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews (2022)