DON GONYEA, HOST:
Cultures around the world have been using psychedelic substances for millennia. And if you've ever participated in that tradition, there's a group of researchers who want to hear about it. The 2025 Global Psychedelic Survey launched this week. Based at the University of Michigan, the survey aims to collect people's experiences using psychedelic substances like LSD, ibogaine, psilocybin and others. For more, we've called Jacob Aday. He's the study's co-principal investigator and a researcher at the University of Michigan. Jacob, welcome.
JACOB ADAY: Hi, Don. Thanks for having me.
GONYEA: This isn't the first survey like this. There was another global psychedelic survey in 2023. Can you tell us what's different about this one?
ADAY: For sure, yeah. So I wasn't involved in the initial psychedelic survey in 2023, but it was a really nice survey. They had about 6,000 participants in that initial survey, so a very large sample for this type of survey study. The major limitation was that it was only available in English. And so, of course, a lot of the world's population doesn't speak English, and so this really limits our inclusivity and generalizability of the findings. And so a really exciting thing with this new iteration of the survey is that it's going to be available in 18 languages, and we're hoping to get even more respondents than last time.
GONYEA: And why is a global perspective on psychedelics important?
ADAY: Like you mentioned up front, people use psychedelics across the world and across diverse cultures. And it's really been a critical invitation to the psychedelic literature so far, especially clinical trials, is that participants have been very homogeneous in terms of their demographic backgrounds. They've been overwhelmingly white, middle-aged, educated and almost exclusively English-speaking. So there's a lot that we don't know still about how these drugs are used differently across the world and what those differences might have in patient outcomes. And so it's really important that we have a more inclusive and representative sample when we're studying these drugs.
GONYEA: One of the criticisms that has swirled around psychedelic science is that the people producing the science are themselves advocates for legalization or medicalization. Just comment on that, if you would.
ADAY: I'd say that was probably a fair characterization very early in the recent psychedelic renaissance. You know, the only people who were willing to put their professional credibility on the line for this really fringe and stigmatized area of research were people who were, you know, so-called true believers in what these drugs could do. But as the field has scaled up the last few years, it's certainly not the case anymore that it's just those individuals carrying out the research.
GONYEA: You're really just getting started. What are you most hoping to learn from this survey, if you can say at this point?
ADAY: I would say the key thing we're really interested in is, you know, how people are using these differently across cultures and how we can develop policy and harm reduction strategies to make sure people are using the most safely.
GONYEA: That was Jacob Aday, co-principal investigator for the Global Psychedelic Survey 2025. The survey is open now through May 16. Jacob, thank you for being here.
ADAY: Yeah, thanks for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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