The largest randomized psychedelic trial in history happened in Brazil. Its strangest finding isn’t about ayahuasca at all.
Saved you a click, “they get even happier”.
Dont you just hate click bait titles and the assholes who post them.
What happened was that the people who self-rated themselves as happy before the experience saw virtually no improvement after the experience. Most of the positive outcomes were due to the people who stated they were distressed before the experience.
Also, this link is not pay walled, btw.
from the actual study:
“In contrast the only statistically significant effect we find for non-distressed individuals is a positive, but fleeting, effect on happiness (Figure 2C).”
Pages 17 and 18 of the original study.
https://mattjlowe.github.io/files/Francois Lowe Matavelli (18dec25) Psychedelics.pdf
Seems subscription walled to me. I only see a useless couple of intro paragraphs. Better to link to the actual study instead of a medium blog.
Really? This link should be behind a pay wall: https://medium.com/cabbanis/what-happens-when-a-happy-person-takes-ayahuasca-f793d5685cdf?sk=c6c6098f7d39b352e474a0546fd73795
Yes, it’s behind some kind of wall for me. I don’t know for certain that it’s a pay wall, it might be available to free subscribers or whatever, but I’m not gonna sign up whether it’s paid of not. I dislike Medium and would rather see the study directly than see someone clickbaiting over it.
(Sometimes paywalls are geofenced too, I think. Every time I load a NYT article from an NYC IP that may or may not be a VPN exit node, it works, but any other IP they block with the “please subscribe” blocker.)
Here it is, in case it was unaccessible before:
https://mattjlowe.github.io/files/Francois Lowe Matavelli (18dec25) Psychedelics.pdf
WTF: Let economists control and study your trip? Surprised it’s only 1 in 8 bad trips (which is worse than normal). Not for me, and yeah it’s right there in the abstract, 200x financial gain. FU.
Otherwise unsurprising, psychedelics help depression and neuronal plasticity, shocker.
They were not present. The ceremonies were conducted by a center in Brazil that receives over 1400 people per year. I meant to say that the data and analysis were coordinated and published by a group of economists.
“A commercial center that receives 1400 tourists per year.”
An intimate spiritual retreat just like the ancient shamans intended it.
The cost is 20 dollars. It’s basically for free.
I have participated in these trials in the u.s. i just thought I was hallucinating with myself and everyone was naked, and I was sober but could not remember if this was my party or these young people were trolling me. Truth was, I am a fuddy duddy.
Are you serious? I am super curious to know more about your experience, if you don’t mind sharing.
This particular study was not a clinical trial; it was a field experiment where participants in a religious ritual in Brazil filled a self-assessment questionnaire to measure the outcomes of the ayahuasca ceremony. This article was not peer-reviewed and is basically an explorative article rather than a rigid study, so I think your experience was different.
I have never taken DMT or anything associated. I just managed to be there for everyone else doing it and offering it to be. I’d didn’t have a reason to refuse, I was just super paranoid.
I was offered it from a vape pen once, and I gave it a try, and the only thing I really noticed was that two-dimensional images looked three-dimensional, and I felt really warm, and as it faded, it kind of felt like a rush of heat went through my bladder, which made me feel like I needed to pee.
It was interesting, it was over in like three minutes, but I probably wouldn’t do it again unless I was actually going for psychological benefits.
Oh, I just remembered there was one other side effect, which is weird, as like somehow after doing that, I immediately knew I could write with my right hand almost as well as I could with my left hand, and I tried it, and I could, even though it was still weird and awkward, like I was doing difficult math problems in college again.
I feel like if I kept it up I could become fully ambidextrous now.
To get the full effects of DMT it’s best to have it in a powder form (I think) then take a hit from a crack pipe. When I had a functional vape cartridge I had to take 3-5 pulls in rapid succession to get close to the same effects. That’s the point where you start seeing geometric shapes and maybe an extra dimensional being. The one I met the one time I hit from a pipe suggested I lay off the chocolate milk.
Like you suggested, I don’t think it’s very recreational, but it is a very interesting substance.