The world of psychedelics is about to explode. In a good way, that is. Psychedelic research centers are being established all over the world to gain insight into the unique properties of substances like magic mushrooms, mescaline, ayahuasca, and LSD. New research now shows that how people will react to psychedelics can be predicted based on their personality. How exactly does that work? You can read all about it here on Dutch-Smart.
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Are you prone to bad trips?
Since the very first psychedelic studies, psychiatrists have noted links between personality structure and drug-related experiences. For example, people who score high on neuroticism are more likely to have bad trips, characterized by intense anxiety and an inability to surrender to the psychedelic experience.
In an effort to build on these findings, Petter Grahl Johnstad of the University of Bergen has just published a paper in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, in which he highlights a number of interesting correlations between personality traits and subjective responses to psychedelics.
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TIPI and RTI
He did so as follows. For the study, Johnstad assessed the personalities of 319 psychedelic users using two questionnaires designed to capture certain elements of a person’s nature. The first of these, known as the Ten-Item Personality Inventory (TIPI), is often used to measure the so-called Big Five personality traits of extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness.
In addition to the TIPI, respondents were also given an RTI—or Risk Taking Index. This is used to evaluate a person’s tendency toward risky behavior. You’ve probably already guessed the next step: The results were then correlated with the participants’ self-reports of their psychedelic experiences to determine the impact of these personality traits on psychedelic-induced trips.
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Specific personality traits
The results are certainly interesting. For instance, the study shows that users of psychedelics tend to score higher than average on all Big Five traits and on risk-taking, suggesting that the motivation to use these substances may be determined by a person’s personality. Even more interesting, however, was that the nature of each individual’s psychedelic trips tended to be influenced by their test scores. In this way, the researchers were able to link specific personality traits to certain trips.
For example, people with a high degree of openness were found to be most likely to experience “love, inner visions, and contact with non-ordinary beings and transcendent forces” when using psychedelics. Johnstad and his colleagues hypothesize that the curiosity and open-mindedness of such people may lead them to “pursue unusual and intense experiences” while tripping, which could explain these results.
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Choose your trip partner carefully
On the other hand, extroverts were actually much less likely to encounter these beings while tripping. They are more likely to discover a deeper sense of connection with other people. This, the authors say, likely reflects these people’s preference for social interaction over delving into the inner recesses of their psyche. A less striking finding was that people with high emotional stability were least likely to experience anxiety during a psychedelic trip.
So all of this could mean that when you go tripping with friends, it might be a good idea to do so with someone whose personality is reasonably similar to yours. The last thing you want is for your friend to want to have long conversations while you’re lying there with your eyes closed, lost in space.
