Psychedelics Can Change Your View on the Nature of Reality

New research has found that a high dose of psychedelics can radically shift your metaphysical beliefs.

Evan Lewis-Healey
5 min readJan 6, 2022
Picture retrieved from Wikimedia Commons

“The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out.” — Aldous Huxley

A recent study, published in Scientific Reports, has found that psychedelics can fundamentally change your core beliefs about the nature of fate, reality, and consciousness.

The study is the first of its kind to track changes in these core beliefs before and after participating in a psychedelic ceremony, and represents a more nuanced shift in the ethical underpinnings of psychedelic therapy.

This Is Your Mind on Metaphysics

The branch of philosophy concerning the nature of reality — metaphysics — is a murky subject. Philosophers of the East and the West have been wrestling with metaphysical questions for thousands of years. As of yet, these existential questions, like “What exactly is consciousness?” and “Do we really have free will?” are yet to be universally agreed upon.

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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.