Revealing Statistics Question If Psychedelics Truly Impact Religious Beliefs

We used to have an expression in the newspaper business that may shed light on other realms of life: “Too much checking ruins a great story.”

At first glance, you might think you’ve stumbled onto some great truth – or at least some noteworthy trend based on what we used to call “the power of three.” That’s the old trick of starting a newspaper story with three anecdotes that suddenly illustrate a “growing trend.” Further reporting and a little reflection, however, often reveal a more nuanced reality.

Then there was the type of newspaper assignment we used to write off as a “DUH story.” This would be something like: “Stanford University researchers reported yesterday that people who abuse opioids are three times more likely to commit suicide than those in the overall population.”

No shit, Sherlock.

This all came to mind when the editor at Lucid News asked me if I wanted to write something about a new research study titled, “How Does Psychedelic Use Relate to Aspects of Religiosity/Spirituality?”

I was the perfect guy for the job.

In 2022, I wrote a series of articles for Lucid News under headlines like “What Mainstream Churches Can Learn from an Ayahuasca Church” and “A Jewish Mystic’s Embrace of Psychedelics.” I later expanded those articles into a book titled “God on Psychedelics: Tripping Across the Rubble of Old-Time Religion.” Earlier in my career, I was the religion writer at the San Francisco Chronicle for two decades. Before that, way back in the 1970s, I earned a degree in sociology at the University of California, Berkeley.

That means my eyes don’t completely glaze over when I read a paragraph like this one, taken from the study in question:

“We made use of E-values, a measure for sensitivity analysis related to the evidence for causality in observational studies that are potentially subject to confounding. It is defined as ‘the minimum strength of association, on the risk ratio scale, that an unmeasured confounder would need to have with both the treatment and the outcome to fully explain away a specific treatment-outcome association, conditional on the measured covariates.’”

What the Study Actually Found

This statistical study by two researchers at Stockholm University was inspired by the conventional wisdom that psychedelics may inspire people to radically change their spiritual beliefs or religious affiliations. Psychology professor Pehr Granqvist and PhD candidate Rabbi Aaron Cherniak examined sociological data gathered over several decades from 22,000 people in the United Kingdom.

“We found that people who used psychedelics were less likely to have grown up in a religion or belong to a religion as an adult,” Cherniak said. “Also, psychedelic users were more likely to leave the religion they grew up in than people who had not used [them].”

But the researchers stressed that this does not necessarily mean psychedelic-induced mystical experiences caused people to leave their religion. The same trend was seen for people who used other illicit drugs that are more addictive and less revelatory, like cocaine or heroin. In other words, the type of person who leaves their religion may also be the type of person to ignore the law and take drugs for various reasons, such as recreation, mood adjustment, or stress reduction.

Culture, Not Chemistry

Granqvist and Cherniak suggest that it’s the cultural context, not the pharmacology, that’s at play for psychedelic users who report insights such as “we are all One.” These folks, who evoke universalistic imagery, may already be part of the “spiritual but not religious” crowd that has moved away from the doctrine and denominationalism of mainstream churches.

“Modern psychedelic use often occurs in cultural and social movements that may clash with formal, organized religion,” the study states.

The two researchers also analyzed another database that includes 11,000 respondents in the United States. “Findings with regard to religious and spiritual changes were ambiguous,” the study concludes. “On the one hand, LSD and psilocybin were associated with higher likelihoods of religious change, particularly religious disaffiliation, which again did not appear to differ from use of other illicit substances. On the other hand, psychedelic use did not predict real-time changes in religiosity or spirituality.”

Why do any of these admittedly ambiguous findings matter?

“A critical finding of the study is that psychedelic use does not consistently increase religiosity or spirituality,” Cherniak said. “This result challenges romanticized views that psychedelics inevitably lead to mystical insight or religious awakening.”

The study may also offer some reassurance for clinicians exploring psychedelic-assisted therapy or religious communities concerned about the spiritual implications of psychedelics and whether they pose a threat or an opportunity for contemporary religious thought.

“Psychedelics might gently reorient the compass of meaning, but they do not build or destroy temples,” Cherniak said. “Their impact on spirituality is personal, evoking, and never guaranteed.”

Cherniak’s statements were in a press release announcing the results of the study, which can be read in full in the journal Psychology of Religion and Spirituality.

The rabbi’s comments come at a time when a small avant-garde of Jewish teachers and Christian clergy offer support groups that seek to explore the psychedelic experience within those religious contexts. What inspired me to write God on Psychedelics was the observation that many psychedelic enthusiasts seem drawn toward Eastern mysticism or Native American shamanism. That’s where they go to interpret the transcendent, unitive, or revelatory experiences they may have on a high-dose psychedelic journey. Perhaps they are not even aware that Christianity and Judaism have mystical traditions that could be used as guides.

It’s no secret that psychedelics often inspire profound mystical experiences, even among people who previously considered themselves atheists or who long ago fell away from organized religion. These plants, fungi, and chemical compounds have the power to deconstruct our preconceived ideas about the nature of reality and how we relate to ourselves and the world.

Blind Spots

My work as a religion journalist and my own psychedelic exploration made me wonder:

• Why do relatively few people in the burgeoning psychedelic renaissance connect drug-induced spiritual states with their own religious traditions?
• What lessons can mainstream churches and synagogues learn from psychedelic mysticism and the broader “spiritual but not religious” movement in the United States?
• What can the religious establishment teach entheogenic explorers about ethics, accountability, and community?
  

These are valid questions, which I attempt to answer in the book. But slogging my way through the statistical analysis of Professor Granqvist and Rabbi Cherniak reminded me of the subjective nature of my own presuppositions.

Those preconceived ideas come from my experiences as someone born in the middle of the baby boom generation. Coming of age in the 1960s and ’70s, we were inspired to turn to Buddhism, Hinduism, and shamanism by the much-touted psychedelic influencers of our time: Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert (Ram Dass), Carlos Castaneda, and, last but not least, the Beatles.

The “turn on, tune in, drop out” counterculture of the 1960s, as well as today’s more commodified and medicalized “psychedelic renaissance,” are just parts of broader social changes — such as the “spiritual but not religious” shift and the popularization of alternative “wellness” options. Psychedelics are part of that shift; they are not necessarily causing it.

Granqvist and Cherniak’s paper also arrives as some critics have questioned the presuppositions of two leading researchers into the mystical aspects of the psychedelic experience: Bill Richards and the late Roland Griffiths of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Matthew Johnson, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins, broke ranks with Richards when he published a paper titled “Consciousness, Religion and Gurus: Pitfalls of Psychedelic Medicine.” Johnson saw “danger” in scientists and clinicians imposing their personal religious and spiritual beliefs on the practice of psychedelic medicine. He cited a pervasive, “loosely held eclectic collection of various beliefs drawn piecemeal from mystical traditions, Eastern religions, and indigenous cultures, perhaps best described by the term ‘New Age.’”

Richards responded to his critics by saying, “They just don’t like religion. That’s their right, but this is a rich realm of human experience. … Mysticism is not beyond the scope of scientific enquiry. It is at the frontier of scientific enquiry.”

In an interview for my book, Griffiths also bristled at the suggestion that they were encouraging research subjects to have certain types of religious experiences. “I’m trained as a scientist. I’m a skeptic,” he said. “Our first study was preceded by my involvement with meditation, which continues. But I didn’t come in with an agenda.”

Echo Chambers and Self-Selected Truths

Granqvist and Cherniak concede that previous studies have confirmed the popular belief that “psychedelics elicit phenomenological experiences often perceived as having religious or spiritual significance that have substantial and sustained personal meaning.” They added: “Psychedelic experiences may reflect previously held religious beliefs or spiritual interests or, by contrast, raise alternative religious or spiritual contents, which may be accompanied by the subjective feeling of insight and emotional breakthrough that makes them feel more authoritative.”

They cited several studies, including one by Griffiths showing that two-thirds of those who identified as atheists before psychedelic experiences no longer identified as such afterward. But they note that this study had flaws, as it was drawn from a self-selected opinion survey.

In fact, I was one of the people who filled out that survey. I would guess that some other readers of this article were also among the respondents. Perhaps the greatest value in the Granqvist and Cherniak paper is to remind us that much of today’s psychedelic research and journalism occurs in an echo chamber of self-reinforcing beliefs.

Or, as Mark Twain (quoting Benjamin Disraeli) reminded us many years ago: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

This essay is part of the Lucid News “God on Psychedelics” project, reported by veteran religion journalist Don Lattin and collected in the book “God on Psychedelics: Tripping Across the Rubble of Old-time Religion.” To read the complete series in Lucid News, visit the home page.

Featured image by Lucid News.