Extended difficulties following the use of psychedelic drugs
AbstractLong-term adverse experiences following psychedelic use can persist for weeks, months, or even years, and are relatively unexplored in psychedelic research. Our convergent mixed-method study gained quantitative and qualitative data from 608 participants who reported extended difficulties following psychedelic experiences. Data was gathered on the context of use, the nature and duration of the challenges they experienced (including a written description of these), plus a range of possible risk factors and perceived causes. The most common forms of extended difficulty were feelings of anxiety and fear, existential struggle, social disconnection, depersonalization and derealization. For approximately one-third of the participants, problems persisted for over a year, and for a sixth, they endured for more than three years. It was found that a shorter duration of difficulties was predicted by knowledge of dose, drug type and lower levels of difficulty reported during the psychoactive experience, while a narrower range of difficulties was predicted by taking the drug in a guided setting. Implications for psychedelic harm reduction are discussed.
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Speaker
Shayam Suseelan is a Postgraduate Researcher at Imperial’s Centre for Psychedelic Research where he assists in the conduction of EEG and fMRI scans for mesolimbic reward system deficits in Gambling use Disorder. Specialising in neuroscience, he achieved his BSc. in Biochemistry at the University of York. He then completed an MSc. in Psychology at the University of Greenwich where he was supervised by Dr. David Luke. Suseelan is part of the Challenging Psychedelic Experiences Project led by Jules Evans, which aims to explore adverse effects of psychedelic use and identify effective coping strategies for long-term integration of such experiences. He has a keen interest in the therapeutic applications of psychedelics, along with their mechanisms of action, and seeks to broaden accessibility to a diverse range of communities.