New Studies Explore the Link Between Psychedelics & Creative Thinking
Visionary artists Alex and Allyson Grey, whose paintings are influential and can be seen scattered across the world, have unquestionably been influenced by psychedelics. They met during a psychedelic trip, and Alex Grey remarks that the experience “transformed his agnostic existentialism to a radical transcendentalism.” Since then, both artists have continued to use psychedelics for inspiration. The benefits may even extend beyond our traditional ideas of creative pursuits, as numerous professional athletes also credit psychedelics with improving their performance. Simultaneously, it provided artists with up-to-date scientific information to draw upon, fostering cohesion within projects and fodder for the creative process. Floris founded Blossom in 2019 to bridge the gap between dense academic literature and accessible information on the science of psychedelics.
By embracing the intersection of psychedelics, art, and music, we open the door to new ways of understanding ourselves and our connection to the world. Whether you find inspiration in the legendary artists of the 1960s or the modern soundscapes of today, the power of creativity remains an enduring gift of the psychedelic experience. At the end of the first golden-age of psychedelic research, in 1966 (LSD had just been criminalised in California) researchers Willis Harman and James Fadiman published a study which found that psychedelics were able to boost creativity. Aiming to examine the role of psychedelics in creative problem solving, they gathered together a group of 27 professionals which included mathematicians, architects, and engineers.
For example, The Beatles’ album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was heavily influenced by their experiences with LSD, leading to some of the most iconic and experimental music of the 20th century. Visual artists like Alex Grey have also drawn directly from psychedelic journeys, creating intricate, visionary works that capture the essence of altered states of consciousness. Another explanation, which we favored, is that there are different ways of looking at creativity. There is one type of creativity, termed deliberate creativity, which is characterized by being more attention-demanding and goal-directed. Deliberate creativity can be contrasted with spontaneous creativity — a mental state more characterized by unrestrained, bizarre, random, and unfiltered thoughts.
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The first is their well-known ability to produce altered states of consciousness, and the second is their lesser-known ability to trigger neuroplastic changes in the brain. Jasmine Virdi is a writer, educator, poet, and activist based in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Her work focuses on psychedelics, spirituality, and ecology and has been featured in DoubleBlind Magazine, Open Democracy, Psychedelics Today, Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines, Psychedelic Press, and Lucid News. Jasmine has an MSc in Transpersonal Psychology and offers private coaching and mentorship to clients. Since 2018, she has collaborated with the independent publisher Synergetic Press, where her passions for ethnobotany, consciousness, and regeneration converge. Additionally, she volunteers for Fireside Project’s psychedelic peer-support line, aligned with their mission to provide compassionate, accessible, and culturally responsive support to all.
Psychedelic Bloggers
Chances are, there might be a psychedelic for that.Despite their recent focus on medical and mental health benefits, psychedelics have long been linked to creativity and insight. One of the first studies on psychedelics and creativity dates from 1966 (Harman et al., 1966). In this study, the researchers gave participants LSD or mescaline and tested their ability to solve problems. The measures used were scores on tests of creative ability, content analysis of subjective reports and self-ratings, and evaluations of the scientific, industrial, and/or commercial endorsement of the solutions generated during the psychedelic experience. The results indicated that psychedelics appeared to facilitate creative problem solving.
Creativity or an ability to think outside the box has been found to be reduced across different psychological disorders like depression and anxiety. Individuals are stuck with their problems and unable to adapt to everyday circumstances. Thus, creativity has also been suggested to play a role in treating psychological disorders. If you can enhance creativity, then perhaps you can enhance coping and induce adaptive interpretations of life challenges. This is interesting to think about in regards to psychedelic drug action because we know these drugs are being investigated for disorders like depression and anxiety, and individuals claim they gain creative insights into their problems.
However, this experiment was conducted only with 27 participants, all males, and relied heavily on self-reports. After taking psychedelics, the participants reported feeling more insightful, but in practice they actually gave fewer ideas. This implied that the psychedelic might have increased spontaneous creative thoughts, but conversely, reduced deliberate creative thought. Excitingly, the study also found that a week after taking the psilocybin, the participants generated more novel ideas. This led the researchers to propose that a balance between the two types of creative thinking (deliberate and spontaneous) is necessary for productive creativity, and that psychedelics may temporarily disturb this balance.
She also mentioned the possibility of side effects and harms, including drug tolerance and increased connection to the wrong people, such as an abusive partner, members of an extremist group, or even the experimenter. To support future research bridging basic and applied goals, Lyubomirsky presented a conceptual model that includes the psychological mechanisms that MDMA stimulates—reduced fear and negativity, increased sociability, and more communication. These mechanisms can foster perceived social connection, which can lead to potential long-term impacts—improved romantic relationships and social life, reduced loneliness and social deficits, and stronger therapeutic alliances. Mescaline, the main psychoactive component of peyote, was first identified in 1897 by the German chemist Arthur Heffter and first synthesized in 1919 by Ernst Späth. In 1938, Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman synthesized lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) from an alkaloid found in ergot, a fungus that infects grain. Five years later he discovered the drug’s effects, prompting the pharmaceutical company for which he worked to begin marketing LSD in 1947 as a cure for alcoholism, criminal behavior, and even schizophrenia.
Set and setting are always crucial for any psychedelic experience, but especially so if you have a specific intention like increasing your creativity or solving a problem. You’ll be more likely to experience enhanced creativity if you attend a ceremony where you have space and support to explore your own creative intentions. Some people may take psychedelics, or attend a psychedelic ceremony, and not feel any increase in creativity.
The Impact of Psychedelics on Creativity
We score each response according to fluency, which is how many uses they came up with; and originality, which is how unique they are. For example, if I say that I could smash a window with a brick and other people also say they could smash a window, then that would be a low originality score because it wasn’t unique. For our study, we also asked how many uses they came up with that were completely new to them, meaning ways in which they had never seen or envisioned this object used before. It was titled ‘Psilocybin therapy increases cognitive and neural flexibility in patients with major depressive disorder’ and focused on the effects of psychedelics on cognition. The study explored these findings, and the subsequent effects they may have on the treatment of mood disorders, such as depression, by increasing the patient’s’ ability to think flexibly. In the United States, the Drug Enforcement Administration classifies psychedelic medicines as Schedule I drugs, which means they currently have no approved medicinal use and a high abuse potential.
Instead of only thinking about what’s best for humans, we can think about what’s best for all living things. It Report on Psychedelics lets us go past the limits of how we design things now and imagine a new way forward. This way of designing is about being open, aware, working together, helping things grow back, and being good to each other. Ultimately, this can lead to a world where all living things live together in a fair and peaceful way. Have you ever hit a creative roadblock on a project or a problem you need to solve?
