The relationships of classic psychedelic use with criminal behavior in the United States adult population

Abstract

Criminal behavior exacts a large toll on society and is resistant to intervention. Some evidence suggests classic psychedelics may inhibit criminal behavior, but the extent of these effects has not been comprehensively explored. In this study, we tested the relationships of classic psychedelic use and psilocybin use per se with criminal behavior among over 480,000 United States adult respondents pooled from the last 13 available years of the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (2002 through 2014) while controlling for numerous covariates. Lifetime classic psychedelic use was associated with a reduced odds of past year larceny/theft (aOR = 0.73 (0.65-0.83)), past year assault (aOR = 0.88 (0.80-0.97)), past year arrest for a property crime (aOR = 0.78 (0.65-0.95)), and past year arrest for a violent crime (aOR = 0.82 (0.70-0.97)). In contrast, lifetime illicit use of other drugs was, by and large, associated with an increased odds of these outcomes. Lifetime classic psychedelic use, like lifetime illicit use of almost all other substances, was associated with an increased odds of past year drug distribution. Results were consistent with a protective effect of psilocybin for antisocial criminal behavior. These findings contribute to a compelling rationale for the initiation of clinical research with classic psychedelics, including psilocybin, in forensic settings.

Predicting Responses to Psychedelics: A Prospective Study

“…This positive association between psychedelic use and psychological well-being is supported by a large-scale population study in which suicidality and psychological distress were both lower in psychedelic “users” vs. matched non-users (Hendricks et al, 2015 ). These findings reinforce the view that psychedelics are an anomaly among drugs of potential misuse, as, with appropriate caveats regarding context of use (Carhart-Harris et al, 2018 ), use of psychedelics appears to be positively rather than negatively associated with mental health (Hendricks et al, 2015 , 2017 ; Argento et al, 2017 ; Elsey, 2017 ; Forstmann and Sagioglou, 2017 ). Further, a negative correlation between the number of lifetime uses of a psychedelic and change in well-being scores [ r (279) = –0.23, p < 0.001] was found, meaning that those who had more experience with psychedelics in the past showed less improvement in well-being after the psychedelic experience, which is in line with the finding that these individuals had higher well-being scores at baseline.…”

Risk factors for recidivism in individuals receiving community sentences: a systematic review and meta-analysis

“…The risk may also depend on the type of drugs used. 41 When alcohol misuse was examined separately, the association was not as strong. Studies in released prisoners have previously shown that diagnosis of alcohol use disorder increased the risk (to the same level as drug use disorder) of reoffending.…”

Transformative experience and social connectedness mediate the mood-enhancing effects of psychedelic use in naturalistic settings

“…We preregistered a set of control variables, which we included in all analyses performed with the present dataset. We selected these covariates based on previous research that found that users and nonusers of psychedelic substances significantly differ on certain demographic variables (14,36). We tried to include as many relevant demographic variables as possible, without overfitting the models or reducing their interpretability.…”