Despite what you may have been led to believe about the use of psychedelic drugs and your mental health, a new study from the Norwegian University for Science and Technology at Trondheim has found that the use of LSD and other psychedelic drugs is not associated with mental health problems.
For the study, researchers analyzed 135,000 randomly chosen people with 19,000 having reported using mind altering drugs including mescaline, which is found in San Pedro cacti and Peyote and psilocybin, which is found in magic mushrooms and LSD.
According to the study, the individuals that reported to have used psychedelics did not have increased chances of getting the eleven indicators of mental health disorders such as depression, psychosis, anxiety, schizophrenia and suicidal tendencies. The results are contradictory to the 50 year old belief that psychedelic drugs are the prime reason for developing psychosis.
Concerns over the effect of these drugs gained prominence long before any study was carried out and even before the drugs were banned by the U.S. government. As part of the ban, the sale and consumption of the drugs was made illegal as was the use for medicinal purposes as well. Since that time, a growing fear has festered among people believing that uses these drugs would lead to psychosis or other forms of mental health diseases. In 2009, this fear even caused the government's chief advisor on drugs, David Nutt, to resign after commenting that LSD causes less harm than alcohol.
Clinical psychologist and one of the researchers Teri Suzanne Krebs said "Psychedelics are psychologically intense, and many people will blame anything that happens for the rest of their lives on a psychedelic experience."
In the U.S., a national survey including 190,000 adults has revealed that the use of psychedelic drugs such as LSD actually helped reduce the chance of developing psychological distress by 19 percent. They also lowered the chance of experiencing suicidal thoughts by 14 percent and reduced the likelihood of planning a suicide by 29 percent.
That is not to say that danger exists when using LSD or other types drugs. Often the risks of these drugs are unpredictable and often cause the taker to experience hallucinations that can even be frightening and cause panic. In addition, many users experience flashbacks, or a recurrence of the LSD trip, long after taking the drug. Regular users often build up a tolerance to the drug leading them to take more and more of the drug to achieve a high that can lead to even more dangerous results such as overdose.
