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01 · Meaning and transformation
Will this actually change anything for me?
It is the question almost everyone arrives with. Here is what the published research can and cannot answer.
In controlled, double blind research at Johns Hopkins, a majority of participants still rated a single supervised psilocybin session among the most personally meaningful experiences of their lives fourteen months afterwards.2 People who knew them well independently reported positive changes in their attitudes and behaviour.1
What that research cannot tell you is whether the same will be true for you. The studies were small, the participants were a particular kind of volunteer, and a laboratory is not a retreat. We set out both halves of that picture below.
How this research relates to a Beckley retreat
The studies described here were run as clinical trials, in hospitals or research settings, using standardized synthetic compounds under medical supervision. Beckley is not a clinical program. Our retreats are non-clinical wellbeing experiences that use natural psilocybin and are built around preparation, a guided experience, and integration.
What the research found
Three findings from the Johns Hopkins programme, which is the most replicated body of work on psilocybin and personal meaning.
Still meaningful a year later
Rated the session among the five most personally meaningful experiences of their lives at fourteen month follow up.
Spiritually significant
Rated it among the five most spiritually significant experiences of their lives at the same follow up.
Shifts in openness
Increases in trait openness remained measurable more than a year later, but only in participants who had a complete mystical experience.
What the studies actually did
In 2006, a team led by Roland Griffiths at Johns Hopkins studied 36 hallucinogen naive adults who reported regular participation in religious or spiritual activities. Thirty took part in the double blind crossover comparison, receiving psilocybin or a comparison compound under supportive, supervised conditions with trained monitors present.1
Two months afterwards, participants rated the experience as having substantial personal meaning and spiritual significance, and they attributed sustained positive changes in attitude and behaviour to it. Those self reports were consistent with ratings given independently by community observers who knew the participants well.1
Why the effect appeared to last
A fourteen month follow up found the ratings had held: 58% placed the session among their five most personally meaningful experiences, and 67% among their five most spiritually significant. Correlation and regression analyses indicated that the mystical quality of the session itself played the central role in those later ratings, rather than the drug dose alone.2
A separate analysis found that participants who had what researchers classify as a complete mystical experience showed increases in openness, one of the five major dimensions of personality, that were still present more than a year later. Openness is normally stable in adulthood, which is why a durable change of this kind drew attention, and why it warrants replication.3
What this does not mean
The limitations matter as much as the findings, and they come from the studies themselves.
- The samples were small and self selected. The core study involved 36 volunteers who were hallucinogen naive and already regularly engaged in religious or spiritual practice. That is not a general population, and results may not generalise.1
- A research setting is not a retreat. These sessions took place in a laboratory with trained monitors under double blind conditions.1 No published study has tested whether a retreat produces the same outcomes.
- The openness finding was conditional. It applied to participants who had a complete mystical experience, not to everyone who received psilocybin.3
- These are self reported judgements of meaning. They describe how people valued an experience. They are not measures of a clinical outcome and do not establish that any condition improved.12
- This is not a treatment claim. Psilocybin is not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for any medical indication yet. Beckley programs are wellbeing experiences, not clinical treatment for any diagnosed condition, and they are not offered in the United States.
What our own guests report
88% of Beckley guests describe their retreat as one of the most meaningful experiences of their lives. This is guest reported survey data collected by Beckley Retreats.4 It has not been through peer review, and we hold it to a different standard than the published studies above. It should not be read as clinical evidence.
References
Every figure and finding stated on this page traces to one of the sources below.
- Griffiths, R.R., Richards, W.A., McCann, U., Jesse, R. Psilocybin can occasion mystical-type experiences having substantial and sustained personal meaning and spiritual significance. Psychopharmacology, 2006. View on PubMed
- Griffiths, R.R., Richards, W.A., Johnson, M.W., McCann, U.D., Jesse, R. Mystical-type experiences occasioned by psilocybin mediate the attribution of personal meaning and spiritual significance 14 months later. Journal of Psychopharmacology, 2008. Read the full text
- MacLean, K.A., Johnson, M.W., Griffiths, R.R. Mystical experiences occasioned by the hallucinogen psilocybin lead to increases in the personality domain of openness. Journal of Psychopharmacology, 2011. Read the full text
- Beckley Retreats guest survey data. Internal, self reported, not peer reviewed.