Do Psychedelic Trips Open the Door to Messages from God, Spirits, Transcendent Realities, or the Devil? Links with Attitudes About Psychedelics, Opinions About Legalization, and Interest in Personal Use

ABSTRACT

Could psychedelic use open the door to messages from supernatural entities, including God, the devil, or human or nature spirits? Might psychedelics allow a glimpse of some transcendent domain, consciousness, or self that exists beyond the material world? We were interested in how people’s answers to these questions would relate to their attitudes about psychedelic use, legalization, and desire to use psychedelics if given a safe opportunity. After preregistering key hypotheses on the Open Science Framework, we recruited U. S. adults (final N = 800) to complete an online survey. Participants expected psychedelics to prompt psychological messages (from the brain or subconscious) more than spiritual messages, which were typically endorsed more than explicitly supernatural messages; however, even supernatural messages received moderate endorsement. As predicted, seeing psychedelics as a doorway to positive spiritual or supernatural messages (from a transcendent spiritual domain, God, human spirits, nature spirits) was linked with more positive attitudes about psychedelics, more favoring of their legalization, and more past use and interest in personal use. As expected, attitudes about psychedelics were less favorable among those who saw them as doorways to negative messages, either from supernatural evil (devil, demons, evil spirits) or from one’s own mind (dark side, shadow self, “inner demons”). Beliefs in supernatural messages via psychedelics were linked with stronger supernatural beliefs, more prior psychedelic use, younger age, self-identifying as spiritual, more past experiences seen as supernatural (in general and involving psychedelics), and greater approval of psychedelics by one’s religious community (where applicable). In summary, many people see psychedelics as potential sources of supernatural messages. These supernatural attributions, in turn, are closely linked with attitudes, behaviors, and past experiences related to psychedelic use.

Disclosure statement

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

Data availability statement

The data described in this article are openly available at https://osf.io/uybdv/.

Open scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badges for Open Data, Open Materials and Preregistered. The data and materials are openly accessible at https://osf.io/p4gs8, https://osf.io/53tfr, https://osf.io/a5kfq, and https://osf.io/kmf69.

Additional information

Funding

The authors are grateful for funding support from the John Templeton Foundation, [Grant # 59916] and [Grant #36094].