
==== Front
medRxiv
MEDRXIV
medRxiv
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

10.1101/2024.08.27.24312677
preprint
1
Article
Can Psychedelic Use Benefit Meditation Practice? Examining Individual, Psychedelic, and Meditation-Related Factors
Jiwani Zishan http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9054-8982

Goldberg Simon B. http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6888-0126

Stroud Jack http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8534-4491

Young Jacob
Curtin John
Dunne John D. http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9404-7007

Simonsson Otto http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4197-7566

Webb Christian A. http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8310-4539

Carhart-Harris Robin
Schlosser Marco http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0634-0749

28 8 2024
2024.08.27.24312677https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, so long as attribution is given to the creator. The license allows for commercial use.
http://medrxiv.org/lookup/doi/10.1101/2024.08.27.24312677
nihpp-2024.08.27.24312677.pdf
Abstract

Introduction

Meditation practice and psychedelic use have attracted increasing attention in the public sphere and scientific research. Both methods induce non-ordinary states of consciousness that may have significant therapeutic benefits. Thus, there is growing scientific interest in potential synergies between psychedelic use and meditation practice with some research suggesting that psychedelics may benefit meditation practice. The present study examined individual, psychedelic-related, and meditation-related factors to determine under what conditions meditators perceive psychedelic use as beneficial for their meditation practice.

Method

Participants ( N = 863) who had reported psychedelic use and a regular meditation practice (at least 3 times per week during the last 12 months) were included in the study. To accommodate a large number of variables, machine learning (i.e., elastic net, random forest) was used to analyze the data.

Results

Most participants ( n = 634, 73.5%) found psychedelic use to have a positive influence on their quality of meditation. Twenty-eight variables showed significant zero-order associations with perceived benefits even following a correction. Elastic net had the best performance (R 2 = .266) and was used to identify the most important features. Across 53 variables, the model found that greater use of psychedelics, intention setting during psychedelic use, agreeableness, and exposure to N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (N,N-DMT) were most likely to be associated with the perception that psychedelics benefit meditation practice. The results were consistent across several different approaches used to identify the most important variables (i.e., Shapley values, feature ablation).

Discussion

Results suggest that most meditators found psychedelic use to have a positive influence on their meditation practice, with: 1) regularity of psychedelic use, 2) the setting of intentions for psychedelic use, 3) having an agreeable personality, and 4) reported use of N,N-DMT being the most likely predictors of perceiving psychedelic use as beneficial. Longitudinal designs and randomized trials manipulating psychedelic use are needed to establish causality.
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pmc
