In today's video, I want to talk about the ways in which psychedelic drug use
can change our personality structure. At first glance, it might seem a little jarring to think
that a single event can be so profound that it can permanently alter our default
patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving —so much so, that it constitutes, you know,
an observable personality change. But consider the veteran who comes back from the frontlines of war
forever a changed person; perhaps somebody who is now in a constant state of fight or flight.
We know that trauma can change us in profound ways but what about mystical experiences (if we
were to see them as, in some ways, the inverse of trauma)? I want to tell you about a person that I
met last month at the dog park. We'll call him Bob. I ended up talking to Bob for over an hour
and our conversation took a turn when the subject of psychedelics was brought up. Bob is
a former heroin addict and 20 years ago he had an opportunity to participate in an ibogaine ceremony
led by a shaman. Ibogaine, as some of you guys might know, is a naturally occurring psychedelic
substance found in the West African plant Iboga. This is what Bob told me had happened to him while
he was on his ibogaine trip: he was able to go back in time and revisit traumatic memories of his
past and select different outcomes. He was even able to relive certain events from the perspective
of other people who were involved. What had felt like an entire lifetime in this simulation really
only spanned a mere matter of hours —but according to Bob, these were the most profound handful of
hours of his life. This ceremony took place over 20 years ago and in the time since,
Bob has never touched heroin again and he's not touched any hard drug for that matter —not because
he was able to muster up enough self-discipline to avoid his vices, but because he simply
never felt a compulsion to reach for them again. Of course, today, we're not talking specifically
about addiction. I want to talk more broadly about the phenomenon of personality changes induced by
psychedelics. So in this video, I'm going to cover three things. Number one: what a personality is
(and we're gonna brush up on the Five-Factor Model so that we can all get up to speed). Number two:
what the research says about the ways in which psychedelics can change our personality. There
is a trait that seems to be particularly affected by psychedelics so in the third section of this
video, I want to talk about what this could mean for your subjective well-being... and also what it
could mean for the collective. Society. Humanity. Why not? Let's raise the stakes. Let's go there.
Great! You're still here. Let's start with what a personality is. In psychology, personality refers
to patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving that may distinguish a person from their peers.
The consensus among psychologists is that an individual's personality structure remains more
or less stable over the span of their lifetime; certainly after the age of 30. Following that,
changes to your personality can occur but they tend to occur more gradually (like in the case of
adults becoming more set in their ways as they age) or in the event of trauma (like when somebody
becomes more prone to stress after a traumatic brain injury). The Big Five Personality Model or
the Five Factor Model is the most widely accepted personality taxonomy in the scientific community.
According to this model, there are five distinct personality traits that every individual exhibits
to some degree. They are: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness,
and neuroticism. Openness to experience refers to the tendency to be open to new
ideas and experiences, which tends to manifest as a preference for abstract thinking. More on that
a little bit later. Conscientiousness describes a person's ability to come up with a plan and follow
through on it. Extroversion refers to a person's inclination to seek stimulation from social
interactions. Agreeableness describes a person's tendency to put the needs of others ahead of their
own and the tendency to value cooperation over competition. Neuroticism refers to a
person's inclination towards experiencing negative emotions like fear, anger, sadness, shame, and
guilt. Somebody who has a high neuroticism score tends to react more negatively to a stressful
event and is more likely to interpret a neutral event in a negative way, so it shouldn't come
as a surprise that neuroticism is a particularly strong predictor of a whole host of mental health
disorders (like anxiety disorders, depression, substance use disorders, etc). Now we can ask
the question of how psychedelics can change our personality. Let me begin by telling you about
a study that was published in 2018 by researchers at Imperial College London. This study involved 20
participants with treatment-resistant depression who were given two doses of pure psilocybin seven
days apart. Each participant had an inventory of their personality taken twice: once before the
experiment began and then again at the three-month follow-up. The researchers found that, on average,
the trait of neuroticism among participants had decreased from baseline. Meanwhile,
the traits of extroversion, conscientiousness, and openness had all increased. Let me tell you about
a meta-analysis that was published in the journal of psychopharmacology in 2011. This analysis
combined the results of two studies involving a total of 52 healthy volunteers who completed
two to five full-day drug sessions spaced at least three weeks apart. Among the participants,
researchers found significant increases in the trait of openness following a high dose psilocybin
session. And number two: in participants who had mystical experiences during their session,
the trait of openness remained significantly higher than baseline more than one year after
the session had wrapped up. In the first study we saw that in depressed patients, psilocybin therapy
can lower the trait of neuroticism and increase the traits of extroversion, conscientiousness,
and openness. In the second report, we saw that in healthy volunteers, psilocybin and
(in particular) mystical experiences induced by psilocybin can significantly increase the trait
of openness. So what is openness exactly? Let's talk more about that. To better understand what
this trait entails, let's take a look at the six different facets that make up the trait. They are:
active imagination, artistic interests, depth of emotions, willingness to embrace new experiences,
intellectual curiosity, and tolerance for diversity. I know some places online will
refer to that last facet —tolerance for diversity— as liberalism. There's a reason why I chose
"tolerance for diversity" over "liberalism" because some people can get confused. They
might think that "liberal" means "Democrat." It doesn't necessarily mean that. In fact,
we see that among people with a really high openness score, there's a representation of
people who are fiscally conservative or libertarians. You also see social liberals,
neoliberals, progressives —the whole gamut. You see people who don't identify as having any
political affiliations at all... so what it really comes down to is, "Do you believe in individual
liberty and equality before the law?" If that's what you value, then in some way, you can be
described as a small "L" liberal. So hopefully that made sense and it wasn't too controversial.
Now that that's out of the way, I want to explicitly state that increasing your openness
score can be beneficial to your psychological well-being. People who are high in openness tend
to be more creative and perform better on tests involving divergent thinking. They tend to exhibit
higher levels of crystallized intelligence, which refers to the accumulation of knowledge and skills
acquired throughout life. And this would make sense. If you're more intellectually curious,
you tend to accumulate more knowledge. People who are high in openness also have a greater capacity
for emotional depth and are more likely to experience mixed emotions. Anybody who's familiar
with anxiety disorders will know how common the phenomenon of "splitting" is. Splitting refers
to the interpretation of an emotionally-charged event as either "all good" or "all bad," which
of course does no favors to your emotional health. We know that the world exists in shades of grey.
The more nuance you are able to see, the more nuance you are able to feel... and as a result,
the better off you are. Now let's talk about the societal benefits of having a high openness score.
And fair warning: in this section, my commentary might verge on the territory of sounding a little
political. I want to say right off the bat that if you end up perceiving it that way,
I totally understand if some people are going to be turned off by that. There are many in the
psychedelic community who would prefer for content created in this space to be completely free
from politics. I understand the fear of alienating people and potentially slowing down the cause of
psychedelic education. I completely get it. But at the same time, I have to say that the more I learn
about psychedelics, the more passionate I become about my role as a global citizen. Politics,
to me, isn't about... it isn't about political parties. It's about the way we affect society
and the way society affects us and government just happens to be a primary mechanism in this two-way
relationship. Some people believe that the more enlightened thing to do would be to disengage from
civil society altogether and behave as if you're above it all. So in other words, to "drop out."
I think that's fine if you live the rest of your days in seclusion, away from the rest of
us... but so long as you are here, so long as you are seeing this, you are a part of this too. And
it should pain you to see how polarized we have become. I've been thinking a lot about this issue
of polarization and I think what it really boils down to is the feeling of contempt. Contempt
as an emotion is not productive. It acts as a poison to the person who holds it, so it's
already not productive on an individual level; but when it spills over it —boils
over— to the rest of society via the powerful mechanisms of government and media institutions,
that is when contempt —the contempt that we feel— can become downright dangerous and destructive on
a mass scale. People with contempt in their hearts tend to support government and media institutions
that reflect how they feel, which is why we're now looking at some of our institutions and thinking,
"How the heck did we get here?" You know, I used to have so much faith in institutions. Like I used
to be so idealistic about affecting change from the top-down. I majored in political science in
undergrad. That should tell you something about, you know, my former worldview. And in some ways,
it still makes a lot of sense. If you want to make the world a better place, pass better legislation,
disseminate better information, educate the masses. There's still a part of me that believes
in that for sure. But it also seems that the older I get, the more cynical I become about
placing my faith primarily in institutions. If you want to improve the health of institutions
to improve the health of the people... What if you could turn your attention to the emotional health
of individuals first? It's not far-fetched to think that a viable way forward would be
to improve the emotional health of the people who need it most. We have a solution for this.
It's in the psychedelic renaissance. Just imagine if people who hold contempt in their hearts could
be granted an opportunity to release it. Imagine if the people who exist on the fringes of society
could be brought back into the fold —not by force, not by fear... but by an opportunity to experience
an integration of their soul and the Oneness of all of existence. I get that if i were talking
to any other audience it would sound like a bunch of hippy-dippy, you know, platitudes. But to me,
these aren't platitudes. I see this as perhaps the most viable way forward. What we really have here
is... we have "medicine for the soul." This is how Albert Hoffman referred to LSD, for example.
Psychedelic therapy is medicine for the soul and it could be made available to the masses and
anybody who is curious about it can experience it. I just think healing on a mass scale,
in the ways that it truly counts is so much more accessible than we think —than most people think.
And at the very least, as global citizens in the West (because, of course, I'm speaking from the
perspective of somebody who lives in the West) we owe it to ourselves to at least think about
psychedelics as a path forward for so many issues that currently weigh heavily on our hearts. I hope
that made sense. It's past 1 am, I don't know if you guys know this. So um I'm just completely
beaten. I'm out. I'm gonna end the video here. Hopefully this made sense to you guys. Hopefully
I didn't sound like I was just talking out of my ass... but heck, you know what? If you think
that's what I'm doing now, leave me a comment. Let's talk about it. If you also got what I
was trying to say, let me know as well. I'm all ears and I'll see you guys next week.