Can Psychedelics Lead You to Believe in God?

Source: DiegoLDPunk / Pxhere

Lived experience has long told us that taking psychedelic substances like psilocybin, mescaline, and lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) can result in feelings of religious or spiritual inspiration. Indeed, throughout history and across the world, various cultures have used peyote, ayahuasca, mushrooms, and other plants in ritual practices with the intent of achieving trance states, interacting with the spirit world, or communing with God. In modern times, the term “entheogen” (derived from the Greek word entheos meaning “the divine within”) was coined as an alternative to the word “hallucinogen” to describe substances that can give rise to such mystical experiences without implying that such experiences are psychotic in nature.

Over the past few decades, scientific inquiry has focused on validating the therapeutic and spiritual enhancing properties of psychedelic drugs, with its findings helping to shift public perception from dismissing them as recreational drugs to recognizing their potential medicinal and healing properties. The late Dr. Roland Griffiths—a Johns Hopkins University psychopharmacologist who passed away in the fall of 2023—was pivotal in using traditional research methodologies to increase awareness of psychedelics as entheogens.

In 2006, Griffith and his colleagues published a double-blind crossover study of psilocybin compared to methylphenidate (Ritalin) given to healthy volunteers over a single 8-hour session.¹ Using questionnaires to measure psychiatric symptoms, mystical experiences, and quality of life, the study found that while on psilocybin—the psychedelic component of "magic mushrooms"—67 percent of subjects rated their experience as either the single most meaningful experience of their life or among the top five, on par with the birth of a first child or the death of a parent (only 8 percent reported such experiences on methylphenidate). Seventy-nine percent of subjects rated that their psilocybin experience increased their sense of personal well-being or life satisfaction “moderately” or “very much” (compared to 21 percent after methylphenidate). Follow-up studies found that the profound meaningfulness of the experience, improved life satisfaction, and positive behavioral changes persisted at 14 months.^2,3 Anecdotally, participants described their psilocybin experience as:

• “The utter joy and freedom of letting go—without anxiety—without direction—beyond ego self.”
• “The sense that all is One, that I experienced the essence of the Universe.”
• “The complete and utter loss of self… the sense of unity was awesome… I now truly believe in God as an ultimate reality.”²

In 2019, Griffiths and his colleagues described users of various psychedelics including psilocybin, LSD, ayahuasca, and N, N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) who experienced encounters with God involving extrasensory-telepathic and sensory experiences (for example, visions) and other communications that were rated as more real than everyday normal consciousness.⁴ Following such “God encounter experiences,” atheism in the survey sample decreased from 21 percent to 8 percent.

Notably however, while some reported interactions with “God” (that is, “the God of your understanding"), most described encounters with an “Ultimate Reality,” with a minority reporting encounters with a “Higher Power” or an “aspect of emissary of God.” Accordingly, identification with a “major monotheistic tradition” was low and decreased from 12 percent to 7 percent, whereas identification with some “other” religious perspective increased from 67 percent to 85 percent of the sample.

A similar 2023 survey found that belief in either God, Ultimate Reality, or a Higher Power increased from 29 percent to 59 percent after using psychedelics.⁵ Eighty-seven percent reported a change in their fundamental conception of reality with a substantial majority reporting belief in the following:

• “Some aspect of me will continue to exist after the death of my physical body” (74 percent).
• “There are hidden or deeper purposes to life and all of existence about which many people are unaware” (85 percent).
• “There are hidden or deeper meanings to everyday events beyond both simple factual explanations and more complicated scientific explanations for understanding the world” (87 percent).
• “Primary reality cannot be completely reduced to either the physical or the mid (and or consciousness). They are not separate. Mind (and or consciousness) is fundamentally part of all matter” (71 percent).
• “The universe is conscious” (80 percent).⁵

And so, while psychedelic use can lead to God encounters that increase belief in God, such beliefs don't necessarily conform to Western monotheistic religious traditions. Rather, psychedelic use seems to result in a belief in a dissolution of the ego, the interconnectedness of all things both living and non-living, and belief in an Ultimate Reality that's equated with God and is associated with increased meaning and quality of life.

Other research by Griffiths has found that psychedelic experiences often result in greater attribution of consciousness to both living things and non-living objects⁶ and reduced fear of death.^4,7

Still, since only a small percentage of participants reported belief in monotheism before their psychedelic experience, there appears to be a sampling bias among participants in studies of psychedelic drugs. This raises a question about just how much psychedelic drugs really result in new beliefs about God or whether they strengthen or otherwise impact pre-existing beliefs.

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In my next blog post, Revelation or Delusion? The Impact of Psychedelics on Belief, I’ll explore this question further and take a closer look at what psychedelic experiences tell us, if anything, about the true nature of Reality or God.

For more on psychedelics:

• Psychedelics in Psychiatry: New Data Supporting an Old Idea
• Revelation or Delusion? The Impact of Psychedelics on Belief
• Bad Trip: The Dark Side of Psychedelics