It’s typically assumed that indulging in narcotics comes at a cost: Every drug is a double-edged sword, from ca eine to cocaine, alcohol and of course, sugar. There’s always a down- side—it’s just usually worth it. Weekend warriors are willing to pay the price for a good time on Monday; even if you know that price could be liver or cardiovascular damage, the fun is worth it. The higher the high, the more you come down. That’s the price of admission, right?
Not always.
As Swiss chemist and nerd Albert Ho man wrote in his diary after his rst acid trip in 1943—“no hang-over”. He later recounted the experience in his 1979 memoir LSD: My Problem Child. For many fans of the substance, this remains one of the drug’s most redeem- ing virtues. No comedown, crash, or penance.
In fact, better than no payback—Ho man also penned the rst description of what has come to be known as “the afterglow”:
“A sense of renewed life owed through me.”
People frequently report feeling rejuvenated, lightened, and revitalized. Ho man for his part continued to take LSD until he was 96, and lived to be 102.
Could indulging in certain mind-bending drugs actually improve your health? Could regular indulgence make you fitter, happier, and healthier?
In the seven decades that have passed, a wealth of evidence has accumulated that suggests, when taken in the right way at the right time, “classic” psychedelics—such as LSD, psilocybin (the active ingredient in “magic” mushrooms), peyote, mescaline, ayahuasca, and others—can lead to real and sustained changes in behavior and overall, better health: improved diet, increases in exercise and time spent outdoors, reduced levels of smoking and alcohol consumption, lower rates of obesity, even the adoption of meditation and other stress-reducing practices.
In a new review paper published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, researchers from universities and institutes in the Netherlands, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and America together report that a survey of the evidence from over 1,000 studies concludes the link is real, and that this could be helpful in constructing future interventions for people seeking treatment for obesity, smoking, and other addictions—or simply seeking to live a healthier life.
“Chronic diseases are really the main source of suffering, health care costs, and premature deaths that we see today resulting in conditions such as obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and many cancers—all those are some- how related to behavior, and, are in a sense, lifestyle diseases,” says Dr Pedro Teixeira, a Professor in the Faculty of Human Kinetics at the University of Lisbon in Portugal and the Synthesis Institute in the Netherlands, lead author on the paper. He and his co-authors note that the World Health Organization estimates that tobacco and alcohol use alone account for approximately 15 percent of global deaths per year. Add the burden of mortality due to obesity and inactivity, and the costs vastly bal- loon. “If we can make a dent in these conditions, it could have a huge impact on public health.”
The key, says Dr. Teixeira, is that psychedelics seem to have a unique capacity to shift, in a powerful way, how people see themselves and how they relate to themselves, ultimately leading to a greater feeling of empow- erment and a sense of “self-determination”.
In his work prior to studying psychedelics, Dr. Teixeira spent most of his career working with patients struggling with obesity and weight loss.
“That is the prototypical example of when people cannot change their eating and exercise habits—sometimes for decades, despite their best efforts, despite receiving infinite amounts of expertise from health professionals; they just feel stuck,” he says. “Often they are perfectly ‘normal people’, with few other health risk factors besides their weight. The inability to lose weight over decades makes them feel like a failure.”
Yet following an intense psychedelic experience, people frequently are found to have increased psychological openness to new experiences, more explorative behaviors: Broadly speaking, they are more flexible. Quitting smoking, losing weight, exercising more, drinking less — all those things were always possible, but what was missing was their belief that they could achieve them.
In the psychedelic afterglow, suddenly the impossible seems possible. Which makes sense given what we know about how psychedelics affect the brain: Modern neuroscience has revealed that psychedelics increase the “functional connectivity” between networks. Regions that do not normally communicate with each other suddenly do so. Ideas are generated, connections are made, and possibilities envisioned.
So goes the theory purporting to explain how getting high can change your life for the better. What do the numbers say?
Data from surveys shows that psychedelic users report lower rates of obesity—and biological measures often verify this: A 2019 Spanish study published in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs that actually measured the body mass indices of 380 regular users of ayahuasca found they had a mean BMI of 22.6kg./m^2 (49.8 lbs.), far below the 30kg./m^2 (66 lbs.) cut-off for obesity, and impressively lower than the mean BMI for the general population (26 kg./m^2 or 57 lbs.).
Enhancing a sense of “self-determination” may not seem as impressive as the chemical trick of a nicotine patch, or gastric bypass surgery—but that one simple switch holds the key for most people who struggle to change.
“Quite often, people report that what once seemed insurmountable suddenly feels within reach,” Teixeira says. “I think that psychedelics are very much tools that can align us with ourselves.”
The link between recreational psychedelic use and physical tness is mainly correlational at this point—data drawn from “naturalistic” settings: underground ayahuasca retreats, weekends with friends, random experi- ments. Typically, occasions when a behavioral switch was unplanned and “spontaneous”—a welcome surprise.
Far more important and convincing are the small number of controlled, clinical studies with people seeking treatment for addictions and other behavioral blocks that have shown an impressive capacity for psychedelics to help break those blocks—most notably, smoking.
A ground-breaking 2014 pilot study published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore involving 15 smokers dosed with psilocybin in a controlled trial found that 12 of them—80 percent—were still abstinent from cigarettes six months later. This was confirmed not with surveys, but with biological verification: Blood samples which revealed the by-products of tobacco combustion, tests that are now made even more legitimate in an age when smoking is banned from public places and second-hand exposure is minimized.
That 80 percent success rate vastly exceeds what is typically seen with other traditional therapies for smokers seeking to quit, such as nicotine patches or cognitive behavioral therapy—just 35 percent. Even when those patients were studied two years later, the number of those abstinent was still impressively high: 67 percent.
With six million people a year dying from smoking world- wide (a number projected to increase to eight million by 2030), smoking is a far bigger killer than alcohol “by a long shot” says Dr. Matthew Johnson, Professor of Psy- chiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Johns Hopkins, lead author on the smoking studies, and a co-author with Dr. Teixeira on this year’s review.
“Based on deaths, smoking is the most important form of addiction,” he says. And it’s notorious for being one of the hardest addictions to kick. Smokers will typically try to quit dozens of times, only to relapse—enforcing the belief that they “just can’t quit”.
“But with psilocybin, it’s like the tectonic plates of their psyche shift—even if they’d tried to quit 100 times before, suddenly after our trials it seemed like the idea that quitting was impossible had just lifted,” says Dr. Johnson.
This certainly resonates with me: My mother just died from lung cancer this year, having smoked since adolescence until her diagnosis with cancer at the age of 67. Every time I begged her to quit, she would say: “I just can’t.” Which was all the more infuriating because twice in her life she quit, instantly, without a microsecond’s hesitation: When she was pregnant with my brother, and then later with me. So clearly, she was capable of stop- ping, if the ecology of her life made it seem possible.
“It comes down to a sense of self—if they believe they are addicted, then that is what they are,” says Dr. Roland Griffiths, Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Neurosciences at Johns Hopkins, who has worked with psilocybin for 20 years, including the work with smokers. “These problematic beliefs that we hold about ourselves go deep, and I think are the key to much of human suffering. But if we can be freed from these problematic beliefs, everything changes.”
The Johns Hopkins researchers did not stumble upon this idea by accident: In the 1950s, when acid was legal but had not yet leaked from the lab, psychiatrists experimented with dosing alcoholics with LSD to try and break their addiction. The theory went that if they could mimic the symptoms of severe alcohol withdrawal, or “delirium tremens”—hallucinations, shakes, and sweats—with a strong hallucinogen, drinkers could be scared straight.
In fact, the opposite happened: Alcoholics, almost entirely “psychedelic-naïve” first timers, who had no idea what they were in for, reported nothing like what the authors expected. Instead, they ubiquitously described beautiful healing, cathartic, “mystical” experiences that made them feel more in touch with themselves, their lives, and the universe. A 2012 review of those half-century-old studies revealed that the data held up: of 536 people in six trials, 59 percent of people who received one dose of LSD reported lower levels of drinking, compared to 38 percent of those who received a placebo. Those studies—led by legendary British Psychiatrist Dr. Humphry Osmond (the same man who dosed Aldhous Huxley with mescaline, leading to his seminal 1954 work, The Doors of Perception)—have long been referenced as historic and groundbreaking illustrations that psychedelics are not like other drugs. In the right way at the right time, they can be very, very good for you. The “This Is Your Brain on Drugs” adverts from the 1980s would have replaced cracked and sizzling eggs with hatching chirping chicks if they’d taken this into account.
Naturally, psychologists are now interested in incorporating psychedelic therapy into behavioral interventions for weight loss, smoking, and more. But of course, while they are carefully conducting their studies, the “psychedelic wellness” world is moving ahead to start planning for retreats with psilocybin, ayahuasca, and other psychedelics framed around specific lifestyle goals.
Is this simply good news? Or should we be worried about the shift from vilifying psychedelics to defying them?
“An important pitfall to avoid is ‘psychedelic exceptionalism’: Defending psychedelics as ‘the only good drugs’ without recognizing the problems they can cause,” says Dr. Sergio Perez, Special Advisor of Clinical and Scientific Research A airs with Canadian startup Divergence Neuro and director of the of the MIND Academy at the MIND Foundation. “Even when physiologically very safe, they can lead to very re-traumatizing experiences.”
People can most certainly experience bad trips and psychotic episodes that last for months or years following a psychedelic experience, especially in those genetically predisposed. They aren’t for everyone.
But they are for some people—and for those people they can offer more healing than any numbing SSRI, any expensive rehab resort, or any time-consuming shrink could ever deliver. Thousands of words have been print- ed attempting to explain how a psychedelic trip can transform, but my favorite quip comes from Cary Grant, who received LSD therapy in the 1950s to process childhood trauma and loosen the grip of alcoholism.
“An immeasurably bene cial cleansing.”
Four words. Says it all.