The Canadian Psychedelic Survey: Characteristics, Patterns of Use, and Access in a Large Sample of People Who Use Psychedelic Drugs
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background : Recent years have seen a resurgence in clinical interest in, and increased public acceptance of, psychedelic drugs in Canada. However, our understanding of how psychedelic drugs are currently used in Canada remains limited. We developed the Canadian Psychedelic Survey (CPS) to gather real-world evidence about psychedelic drug use in Canada. This study aimed to characterize CPS respondents; identify access sources; explore psychedelic-specific patterns, purposes, and contexts of use; and contextualize intense positive and challenging psychedelic experiences. Methods: The CPS was administered in January 2022. We used descriptive statistics to characterize the sample and understand access to psychedelic drugs and detailed patterns and contexts of use. We built separate logistic regression models to identify sociodemographic and psychedelic-related correlates of reporting an intense positive and challenging experience with psychedelic drugs. Results : We analyzed data from 2045 respondents (mean age = 38.4 years; 56% female). Psilocybin, 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), and lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) were the most used psychedelic drugs. Top motivations for psychedelic drug use were fun, self-exploration, general mental well-being, and personal growth. Lifetime intense positive and challenging psychedelic experiences were reported by 82% and 52%, respectively. Over half (56%) of those who had an intense challenging experience reported that “some good” came from the experience after-the-fact. In multivariable analysis, significant correlates of intense positive experiences included higher perceived psychedelic experience and fun and self-exploration as motivations for use ( p < 0.05). Significant correlates of intense challenging experiences included higher perceived psychedelic experience and trauma management, fun, and boredom as motivations for use ( p < 0.05). Conclusion: The CPS is the most comprehensive survey of psychedelic drug use to date. Detailing the range of therapeutic and nontherapeutic experiences of psychedelic drug consumers in Canada, these findings add important nuances that can inform evolving clinical research and policy discussions impacting safe access to and use of psychedelic drugs.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".