Getting high was once seen as an act of deviance or cultural defiance, yet now, thanks to a shift in attitudes towards drugs, it’s science.
Presenting their work in the journal Psychopharmacology, the study authors reveal that pot enhances the mystical experiences occasioned by serotonergic psychedelics, a class of drug that interferes with consciousness by acting upon serotonin receptors in the brain.
To conduct their research, the authors surveyed 321 people about their use of psychedelics.
Results also indicated that smoking weed influences the likelihood of experiencing a bad trip, which the authors describe as a “challenging experience”.
For example, people who mixed their psychedelics with low doses of cannabis tended to obtain lower scores on both the “fear” and “insanity” subscales than those who used no pot at all.
According to the authors, this may be evidence for the contradictory effects of cannabis, with low doses helping to relieve psychological anguish while higher doses enhance this mental turmoil.