The psychedelic personality: Personality structure and associations in a sample of psychedelics users

Earlier research has found a reciprocal relationship between personality and psychedelics use: pre-existing personality traits appear to shape acute responses to psychedelics, and psychedelic experiences may produce lasting changes in personality. Prior studies have repeatedly linked the Big Five trait Openness (and related constructs such as Absorption) to mystical-type and visual effects induced by serotonergic psychedelics, and some work has associated Neuroticism with more difficult experiences, although findings have been inconsistent. Other longitudinal and survey studies have reported post-use increases in Openness and, in some samples, shifts in Extraversion, Neuroticism, or Conscientiousness; however, results vary by drug, dose, sample and study design. This study set out to describe the personality structure of naturalistic psychedelics users and to examine how personality traits relate to aspects of their psychedelic use and phenomenology. Using brief measures of the Big Five and a condensed risk-taking index, the investigators compared participants' scores with population norms and tested whether personality dimensions and risk propensity were associated with usage patterns and specific emotional, cognitive and relational features of psychedelic sessions.

Grahl and colleagues conducted an anonymous, web-based survey (the Cannabis and Psychedelics User Survey) between April and September 2019. Recruitment was self-selecting and targeted seven online and community sources (including shroomery.org, DMT Nexus, Bluelight, Reddit r/Psychedelics, the Portland Psychedelic Society Facebook page, the Norwegian Association for Safer Drug Policy, and a Bergen-based user group via snowball e-mail). Inclusion criteria were age 18 or older, good understanding of English, and prior experience with a commonly used psychedelic. The study received a waiver of formal ethical approval because no identifying data were collected. A total of 527 submissions were received; 202 blank or near-blank forms and six internally inconsistent responses were excluded, leaving 319 participants for analysis. Of these, 213 completed the full survey and 106 provided partial responses. Data were analysed with IBM SPSS Statistics 25. The extracted text does not clearly report why some analyses used smaller N values (for example N = 228 appears for some correlations), but this likely reflects item-level missingness or the partial completions. Key measures included demographics, religious/spiritual background and current practice, patterns of psychedelic use (frequency over the prior 12 months, social setting, and degree of advance planning), and self-reported consequences of use. Personality was assessed with the Ten-Item Personality Inventory (TIPI), a two-item-per-trait brief measure of the Big Five; TIPI scores were normalised to permit comparison with available norms. Risk propensity was measured using a modified Risk Taking Index (RTI): the original health/substance-use item was removed and present-only rather than past-and-present ratings were used, and scores were adjusted arithmetically to allow comparison with published norms. Participants selected one psychedelic they had experience with from a list and characterised motivations, emotional and cognitive aspects of experiences, and perceived outcomes (physical and psychological health, happiness, social functioning, spiritual practice). Analytically, the study used Spearman correlations to examine bivariate associations between personality and usage-pattern variables, and multivariate logistic regression models (with binary outcomes for specific experience characteristics) to test associations between the Big Five traits and overall RTI score and selected psychedelic experience features. Gender (male = 1), age, and education were included as control variables in the regression models. The extracted text provides only partial model fit statistics and does not present full tables for every model within the provided text.

The analysed sample was skewed towards males and people in their early thirties: the median participant was a 32-year-old male with some university education, unmarried but partnered, living in North America and employed full time. Psilocybin was the most commonly nominated psychedelic (49%), followed by LSD (22%) and smoked DMT (12%). Median frequency of use of the chosen psychedelic over the prior 12 months was 1–10 occasions; 7% reported 11–50 occasions and 2% reported up to twice per week or more. Compared with published norms for the 31–40 age group, participants scored higher on nearly all Big Five dimensions measured by the TIPI, with particularly notable elevations in Emotional stability and Openness; the exception was male Extraversion, which was not higher than the norm. On the modified RTI, participants also scored higher than norms across risk domains despite methodological adjustments that likely reduced RTI estimates (removal of the substance-related health item and use of present-only ratings). Spearman correlations (reported on subsets of the dataset) showed that Emotional stability correlated with greater psychedelic use over the prior 12 months (rho = .194, N = 228, p < .01). Extraversion correlated with a less intimate social setting for use (rho = .235, N = 228, p < .001) and with shorter advance planning (rho = -.137, N = 228, p < .05); additional correlations indicated Extraversion was associated with less solitary use (rho = -.205, N = 228, p < .01) and more unplanned use (rho = -.168, N = 228, p < .05). The text reports these effects remained robust in multivariate regression models controlling for the Big Five, combined RTI, gender, age and education. Eight multivariate logistic regression models tested associations between personality structure (five TIPI traits plus overall RTI) and eight dichotomous experience characteristics: fear, love, peace, improved connection to other people, contact with non-ordinary beings, contact with transcendent forces, ego death, and inner visions (gender, age and education were covariates). Selected model results reported in the text include: fear during a session was positively associated with overall risk taking and negatively associated with Emotional stability and Extraversion (the fear model had a reported Nagelkerke R-square of approximately .17, though full fit statistics are not completely reported in the extracted text). Extraversion was negatively associated with experiences of peace, contact with non-ordinary beings, and contact with transcendent forces, and positively associated with improved connection to other people. Openness was positively associated with experiences of love, inner visions, contact with non-ordinary beings, and contact with transcendent forces; Openness was not associated with ego death. Ego death showed an association only with the RTI, suggesting a link with higher risk propensity. Conscientiousness was positively associated with improved connection to other people, while Agreeableness was negatively associated with inner visions and contact with non-ordinary beings. The extracted text does not present the full coefficient estimates, confidence intervals or p-values for all models, nor does it give complete model tables within the provided material.

Grahl and colleagues interpret the findings as showing that naturalistic psychedelics users in this sample have a personality profile distinct from general population norms and a higher propensity for risk taking. The elevated Openness is consistent with prior literature suggesting psychedelics use is associated with increases in Openness; however, the particularly high scores on Emotional stability and Agreeableness in this sample are less consistent with earlier studies. The authors note that the modified RTI and the omission of the health/substance-use item would, if anything, have biased scores downward, so the observed high risk-taking scores indicate a substantial tolerance for risk among participants. This is in line with prior findings of lower harm avoidance in psychedelics users. With regard to associations between personality and psychedelic phenomenology, the investigators highlight two central patterns: Extraversion tended to be negatively associated with meditative or inward-directed experiences and positively associated with social, other-directed outcomes (improved connection to others), whereas Openness was positively associated with inner visions and experiences interpreted as contact with non-ordinary or transcendent forces. Emotional stability was negatively associated with fear during sessions, a finding the authors note contrasts with some prior studies but accords with other work. The link between overall RTI and experiences such as ego death and contact with transcendent forces is interpreted as reflecting that more risk-tolerant individuals may be more willing to undertake higher-dose or more radical experiences. The authors acknowledge several important limitations. Personality assessment relied on the very brief TIPI instrument, limiting depth of trait measurement. Recruitment via online psychedelic communities produced a self-selecting sample likely to be more educated, better informed about safe use, and less risk averse than non-participants; only people willing to disclose illicit drug use online took part, and the study recruited mainly current users who may be favourably inclined toward psychedelics. These sampling biases limit generalisability and likely bias results toward positive associations. Other limitations include reliance on self-report, cross-sectional design (precluding causal inference), and lack of dosage information across heterogeneous drugs. The authors also note that naturalistic user profiles may differ from those in clinical trials, so findings should not be directly extrapolated to clinical populations. Overall, the paper presents descriptive and associative evidence that personality traits and risk propensity relate to patterns of psychedelics use and to specific subjective features of psychedelic sessions in a self-selected sample of users, while emphasising the study's methodological constraints and potential biases.