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Psychedelic Users Were Less Stressed During COVID-19 Lockdowns

New research has revealed how psychedelics could make people more resilient to the stresses of lockdowns

Evan Lewis-Healey
3 min readOct 28, 2021
Photo by Christian Lue on Unsplash

The impact of COVID-19 goes well beyond contracting the illness. Many countries all over the world have had to do the unthinkable and lock their citizens indoors, sometimes for months on end. An inability to exercise, work, or socialize has, of course, had a huge toll on people’s mental health.

So, how do you maintain resilience against such a stressful situation as a lockdown?

One group of researchers have found that the answer may be to turn to psychedelics.

The Stress of Lockdowns

It’s no secret that psychedelics can promote positive mental health. MDMA is potentially on the path to gain FDA approval to treat PTSD, and psilocybin is having its moment for the fight against depression. But, rather than specifically using psychedelics to treat specific mental health conditions, a group of researchers wanted to see if people that had regularly used psychedelics were more resilient to the stressful effects of coronavirus lockdowns.

The group of researchers, led by Dr. Dóra Révész from Tilburg University, surveyed nearly 3,000…

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Evan Lewis-Healey
Evan Lewis-Healey

Written by Evan Lewis-Healey

PhD candidate at Cambridge University. Studying the cognitive neuroscience of altered states of consciousness.

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