Over the past twenty years, analysis into psychedelic and cannabinoid-based therapies for psychological well being problems has quickly expanded.
Classical psychedelics (LSD, psilocybin and DMT) are being investigated as therapies for despair and nervousness (Wickham, 2024) and cannabis-based medicines are being more and more explored for a variety of indications from insomnia to tic problems, and autism (De Bode, 2024).
Because the scientific group grapples with a quickly evolving proof base, contrasting approaches to regulatory approval and authorities coverage have already begun to form public entry. In 2023, Australia grew to become the primary nation to licence psilocybin as a therapy for despair inside psychiatric settings (Henriques, 2023), In the meantime within the UK, cannabis-based medicinal merchandise are actually be prescribed by specialist docs, though use is basically confined inside the personal sector.
As these beforehand prohibited substances develop into extra utilised, acquainted questions resurface: what are their long-term results on the mind and psychological well being?
A brand new research by Bouso et al (2026) sought to discover this by investigating if long-term customers of hashish and ayahuasca (a natural brew containing DMT) differed to non-users with respect to persona, cognition and psychological well being.
Your mind on medication? Is long-term use of hashish and ayahuasca dangerous?
Strategies
This was a cross-sectional research primarily based in Spain evaluating measures of persona, cognition, and psychological well being between ayahuasca, hashish, and non-regular substance customers.
Ayahuasca customers had been members of the Spanish Santo Daime Church, a spiritual group the place ayahuasca is consumed ceremonially, whereas hashish customers had been members of Catalan cannabis-activist teams.
Members attended a screening go to, then a research go to the place a battery of neuropsychological, persona and psychological well being scales had been accomplished. To be included contributors wanted to be abstinent from ayahuasca for 10 days, and hashish for 30 days previous to the research go to, and have a damaging urine drug check on the day.
To establish how persona, cognition and psychological well being differed throughout the teams, researchers used multinomial linear regression (MLR). To stop overloading the mannequin with predictors, solely variables that exhibited a near-significant (p<0.1) relationship with consumer group had been included.
Variables had been entered into the MLR in levels (stepwise method). At every stage non-significant predictors had been eliminated. Mannequin match was assessed utilizing the Akaike Info Criterion (AIC) metric. A decrease AIC signifies a greater mannequin match with fewer pointless predictors.
Outcomes
The ultimate pattern comprised 219 contributors: 69 ayahuasca customers, 56 hashish customers and 94 non-regular substance customers. Lifetime publicity indicated long-term use with ayahuasca customers reporting a imply use of practically 190 instances and hashish customers over 33,000 instances.
The ultimate mannequin had an adjusted R2 worth of 28% that means that the included predictors defined 28% of the variability in group membership.
Stage 1: sociodemographic, psychiatric historical past and IQ
Hashish customers had been youthful, extra more likely to be male, have decrease instructional attainment and better fluid intelligence than non-user controls. Ayahuasca customers had been extra more likely to have a earlier despair or nervousness prognosis than non-users. When these variables had been added into the MLR, solely age, intercourse and former despair prognosis remained statistically important predictors of group membership. This preliminary mannequin defined 8% of variability in group membership.
Stage 2: neuropsychological assessments
There have been no statistically important variations throughout consumer teams on measures of govt functioning, working reminiscence, selective consideration, cognitive flexibility or choice making. These measures had been subsequently not included within the remaining mannequin.
Stage 3: psychological well being signs
Hashish customers demonstrated statistically considerably decrease obsessive-compulsive and psychoticism scores than non-users. Nonetheless, none of those associations remained important as soon as entered into the MLR and had been subsequently not retained, suggesting the presence of psychological well being signs was much less necessary for distinguishing teams.
Stage 4: schizotypal traits
Ayahuasca customers reported extra uncommon experiences than wholesome controls, whereas hashish customers demonstrated better impulsive non-conformity and introvertive anhedonia. Inclusion of those variables elevated the proportion of variance in group membership defined to 14.1%.
Stage 5: temperament and character dimensions
Ayahuasca customers demonstrated statistically considerably increased self-transcendence, and decrease persistence and hurt avoidance to wholesome controls. Hashish customers, then again, demonstrated better novelty looking for than wholesome controls. These variables remained important within the MLR and inclusion elevated the defined variance to roughly 28%. This means that variations in temperament and character dimensions accounted for essentially the most variation in group membership.
This cross-sectional research in contrast cognition, persona and psychological well being in long-term ayahuasca customers, hashish customers and non-users, discovering that persona traits finest distinguished the teams.
Conclusions
Bouso et al. (2026) in contrast long-term ayahuasca customers, hashish customers and non-users on measures of cognition, psychological well being and persona. Whereas consumer teams had substantial lifetime substance use, no variations had been recognized in assessments of govt functioning, working reminiscence, consideration or decision-making.
Persona measures that assessed temperament and character dimensions defined the most important variation in group membership. Ayahuasca customers demonstrated increased self-transcendence and decrease persistence and harm-avoidance to non-users, whereas hashish customers demonstrated better novelty looking for.
Persona, quite than cognition or present psychological well being signs, was most strongly related to long-term ayahuasca and hashish use.
Strengths and limitations
Finding out the long-term results of a drug is difficult. Customers usually eat a number of substances, differ in necessary sociodemographic traits, and should have co-morbid psychological well being situations. In an try and minimise the affect of those confounding variables, Bouso et al. (2026) adopted a singular naturalistic design, recruiting contributors from established social teams the place ayahuasca (Santo Daime church) or hashish (hashish activist networks) use was an built-in cultural observe.
Whereas this method strengthens the research by means of improved ecological validity by capturing functioning people with real-world publicity quite than skewed treatment-seeking populations, it probably launched choice bias. Non secular organisations and activist networks might entice people with distinct beliefs, values and attitudes unbiased of substance use. Consequently, though the noticed persona profiles had been in step with earlier analysis (increased self-transcendence in ayahuasca customers and novelty looking for in hashish customers), it’s unclear whether or not these variations replicate group membership or the long-term results of the drug. With out potential evaluation, the course of causality can’t be inferred. The distinctive recruitment technique might also restrict the generalisability of the findings to individuals who use these substances exterior these communities.
Whereas the distinct recruitment technique aimed to cut back the prevalence of polysubstance use, contributors additionally reported utilizing different substances. This isn’t an uncommon discovering in drug analysis. Right here, greater than 40% of hashish customers reported MDMA or cocaine use within the earlier month and 42% of ayahuasca customers reporting hashish use within the final month. Though the frequency of use of those substances was not reported, these ranges of polysubstance use should not insignificant and should have contributed to the findings. Moreover, whereas the recruitment method was supposed to enhance matching teams on age, intercourse, training and psychological well being historical past, variations between teams remained, with age, intercourse and former despair being retained within the remaining mannequin.
Regardless of these limitations, the authors ought to be recommended for his or her efforts to minimise acute drug results by requiring each an abstinence interval and a damaging drug check earlier than participation. That is notably necessary when investigating cognition, as earlier meta-analyses counsel that many cognitive deficits related to hashish use diminish following extended abstinence (Schreiner & Dunn, 2012). That stated, the 10-day abstinence interval for ayahuasca customers was supposed to cut back acute results, nevertheless it stays unclear whether or not subacute modifications in neuroplasticity may nonetheless have influenced cognition or psychological well being outcomes (De Vos et al., 2021).
Moreover, the authors used a complete evaluation battery incorporating a number of validated assessments assessing a wide range of cognitive domains, alongside questionnaires measuring psychopathology and persona. This allowed the authors to check a number of competing explanations for group variations inside a single analytical framework.
Recruiting ayahuasca customers from spiritual communities and hashish customers from activist networks improved ecological validity, however limits the extent to which these findings will be generalised to different customers.
Implications for observe
In 1987, anti-drug campaigners in america ran an commercial evaluating the results of medication on the mind to frying an egg.
Whereas Bouso et al.’s research challenges this simplistic message, discovering no important variations throughout a spread of neuropsychological assessments, the outcomes require cautious interpretation. Sure, ayahuasca and hashish customers on this research didn’t differ from controls on measures of working reminiscence, govt functioning, selective consideration or cognitive flexibility. Nonetheless, this doesn’t essentially imply these substances don’t have any long-term cognitive results.
On the one hand, Bouso et al.’s cognitive findings align with earlier hashish analysis suggesting that cognitive deficits might diminish following extended abstinence (Schreiner & Dunn, 2012). Nonetheless, earlier critiques point out that cannabis-related cognitive outcomes could also be affected by age of onset, frequency of use, THC dose and co-occurring psychological well being difficulties (Kroon et al., 2021). As this was a cross-sectional research recruiting socially built-in customers, it’s doable that people who skilled dangerous cognitive or psychological well being penalties arising from hashish had been much less more likely to be recruited as a result of they’d already stopped utilizing hashish or had been now not a part of these socially built-in communities. Subsequently, the research’s pattern might symbolize a subgroup of customers who can tolerate these substances or who had increased baseline cognitive functioning, maybe mirrored by the excessive fluid intelligence noticed amongst hashish customers.
Whereas the restrictions of the persona findings have already been mentioned, the variations noticed between ayahuasca and hashish customers are notably attention-grabbing provided that particular person variations might affect one’s response to psychoactive substances. This can be a central assumption in psychedelic analysis, the place “set” (a person’s mindset, expectations and persona) and “setting” (the social, cultural and bodily surroundings during which a substance is taken) have been hypothesised to affect the acute drug experiences – though this has largely lacked empirical testing (Carhart-Harris et al., 2018). Subsequently, when character dimensions comparable to self-transcendence are increased in ayahuasca customers this will not merely symbolize an impact of the drug or the kind of individual drawn to ayahuasca. As an alternative, it might replicate an interplay between persona, the cultural context of use, and the drug’s pharmacological results. This interplay might have necessary scientific implications as psychedelic- or cannabis-based therapies enter scientific observe, with sure people probably being extra more likely to search specific substances and to expertise each desired therapeutic and opposed outcomes.
To disentangle these potentialities, long-term potential analysis is required to find out if persona traits predict subsequent substance use, and whether or not repeated publicity can itself produce lasting psychological modifications. Understanding who takes these substances, the context during which they’re consumed, and the way people make that means from these experiences could also be simply as necessary as understanding the pharmacological results of the substances themselves.
These findings counsel that choosing the best sufferers for psychedelic and cannabis-based therapies might require consideration of persona and context, not simply the pharmacology of the drug.
Assertion of pursuits
Matthew Cohen doesn’t know the researchers concerned on this research. He has been a research medic in psychedelic trials and has obtained fee for that work. AI was used to assist polish the textual content of this text to enhance readability.
Editor
Edited by Éimear Foley. ChatGPT assisted with language refinement and formatting through the editorial section.
Hyperlinks
Main paper
José Carlos Bouso, Jordi Riba et al (2026) Persona, not cognition, distinguishes power ayahuasca and hashish customers from non-users. European Neuropsychopharmacology 106, 112782. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euroneuro.2026.112782
Different references
Wickham R. Psychedelics and psychological well being: can the sector ship on its promise? The Psychological Elf, 2024.
Nationwide Elf Service weblog
De Bode N. Medical cannabinoids as a therapy for psychological well being: useful or hazardous? The Psychological Elf, 2024.
Nationwide Elf Service weblog
Henriques M. Australia turns into first nation to recognise psychedelics as medicines. BBC Information, 1 Jul 2023.
BBC Information article
Schreiner A.M, Dunn M.E. (2012) Residual results of hashish use on neurocognitive efficiency after extended abstinence: a meta-analysis. Experimental and Medical Psychopharmacology 20(5), 420–429. Full textual content
De Vos C.M, Mason N.L, Kuypers Ok.P.C. (2021) Psychedelics and neuroplasticity: a scientific assessment unraveling the organic underpinnings of psychedelics. Frontiers in Psychiatry 12, 724606. Full textual content
Kroon E, Kuhns L, Cousijn J. (2021) The short-term and long-term results of hashish on cognition: latest advances within the subject. Present Opinion in Psychology 38, 49–55. Full textual content
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