Whether psychedelic drugs can help people “see God” is an age-old epistemological conundrum. What are the boundaries between the physical and spiritual realms?

Or as Steven Wright puts it: “If God dropped acid, would he see people?”

Wright is one of the funniest deadpan comedians around. But some very serious scientists recently delved into this topic, with surprising results. They discovered that psilocybin, the psychoactive ingredient in magic mushrooms, can actually help people perceive a cosmic consciousness in everyday objects. And that’s no joke, with ramifications for investors.

A new clinical study by Johns Hopkins University researchers on the effects of psychedelics suggests that, contrary to popular concept, a single psilocybin experience isn’t likely to make an atheist suddenly believe in God. The psychedelic substance can, however, inspire the belief that consciousness animates animals and plants, or even inanimate objects such as rocks and machines.

The study, published this month in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, surveyed hundreds of people who planned to use psilocybin in a non-laboratory setting, asking them about their beliefs both before and at two separate times after their psychedelic experiences.

While participants reported being more likely to attribute consciousness to primates, insects, trees, or even robots, their religious beliefs didn’t significantly change.

The study asserted: “These findings suggest that concerns that psychedelics could change metaphysical beliefs or result in ‘conversions’ across religious affiliations may be overestimated,” adding that “concerns related to changes in non-naturalistic beliefs or religious affiliation may be exaggerated.”

Why should the results of this study matter to biotech firms researching psychedelic drugs, and their investors? The scientists who conducted the study wrote that the findings are relevant in addressing ethical worries about the clinical applications of psychedelics, noting that changes in beliefs “in the context of psychedelic clinical trials raise bioethical questions for many reasons.”

As the following chart shows, the financial stakes are enormous:

The study pointed out:

“We observed increases in mind perception across a variety of living and non-living targets (e.g. plants, rocks). However, we found little to no change in metaphysical beliefs (e.g. dualism) or Atheist-Believer status.

“For some patients, such changes could be construed as a kind of personal harm. Moreover, these transformations have the capacity to significantly influence an individual’s social ties and relationships. Finally, such changes may be of societal concern, for example with the possibility of fostering beliefs that are nonscientific beliefs.

“The magnitude and persistence of these belief changes matter. As psychedelic therapies move closer to possible approval for widespread use, the ramifications of mental health interventions with the potential to substantially change a person’s belief system raises serious considerations about how and by whom they can be used appropriately.

“For instance, the possibility that psychedelic therapies could be used by individuals or organizations seeking to convert or otherwise coerce people into adopting particular worldviews (e.g., political or religious ideologies) clearly highlights the need for extraordinary caution in their implementation.”

Shroom science…

To study the effects of psychedelics on beliefs in the new study, researchers asked 657 participants questions from three main categories: atheist–believer status, metaphysical beliefs, and mind perception. Respondents were surveyed when they consented to the study, two weeks before their planned psilocybin use, two to four weeks after the experience, and again two to four three months after using the substance.

Atheist–believer status was the most straightforward, consisting of a single item: “How would you characterize your overall religious or spiritual belief system?” People could identify as “Non-believer (e.g., atheist); Agnostic; and Believer (e.g., in Ultimate Reality, Higher Power, and/or God, etc.),” with only one selection allowed.

“Atheist-Believer status showed no change,” the authors wrote. Metaphysical beliefs, meanwhile, centered on ideas including materialism, dualism, idealism and determinism, fundamental philosophical topics involving things like free will and the nature of consciousness itself. Participants were asked, for example, to rate how much they agreed or disagreed with the statement “Everything that has ever happened had to happen precisely as it did, given what happened before.”

In that category, “we observed little to no changes,” the authors explained, adding that the findings “provide evidence that concerns around changes to such beliefs may have been inflated given the general lack of changes observed in the present study.”

Some differences, however, were witnessed in responses related to mind perception, which measured users’ beliefs about “the ability of various targets to have conscious experience.” Those targets included “four species of mammals, five non-mammal objects/entities, and one item about the universe as a whole.”

Examples included questions such as “I (the person taking the survey right now) am capable of having conscious experience,” “Plants (e.g., trees, flowers) are capable of having conscious experience” and “The universe is conscious.”

In those areas, researchers observed “significant increases of small effect size…at both follow-up time points: non-human primates, quadrupeds, insects, fungi, plants, and inanimate man-made objects. Of these, the largest increases were apparent for attribution of consciousness to insects.”

A few items, the study pointed out, “including mind perception of inanimate natural objects (e.g., a rock), inanimate manmade (e.g., a robot), and the universe as a whole showed small, statistically significant effects at one time point but not the other.”

The study concluded: “Psychedelics may cause such belief changes, but the present data suggest they do not occur on average in naturalistic use. To the extent that such belief changes do occur, they may 1) be more likely in a particular subset of individuals, 2) rely on particular contextual, and/or 3) require multiple psychedelic experiences over time.”

The upshot: Psychedelics such as psilocybin tend to expand a person’s consciousness, but they typically don’t result in religious conversions. The findings by Johns Hopkins obviate ethical concerns about the use of psychedelic drugs, just as these substances stand on the cusp of becoming a vast global market.

Read This Story: Cannabis and Crypto: The “Disruptive Duo”

Editor’s Note: I regularly write about the opportunities in cannabis and psychedelics. But I also want to emphasize the big profits that await you in crypto.

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John Persinos is the editorial director of Investing Daily.

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