Psychedelic drugs such as LSD and magic mushrooms do not seem to trigger mental health problems – and may even prevent them, researchers claimed last night.
Norwegian researchers scanned the records of thousands of people to identify those who had used the drugs, which became fashionable in the 1960s.
They say that overall users of psychedelic drugs had better mental health than others.
Those who had used LSD in the previous year seemed to be in good mental health as did those who had used the substances psilocybin, mescaline or peyote over a lifetime.
The researchers found 22,000 people who had used the drugs at least once from a list of 130,000 randomly chosen people from the US national survey on drug use and health conducted at the beginning of the century.
They warn the findings may not mean that the drugs do not cause problems in some people.
The findings were reported in the journal PLOS ONE yesterday.
Researchers Teri Krebs, from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, said: "Many people report deeply meaningful experiences and lasting beneficial effects from using psychedelics.
"Other studies have found no evidence of health or social problems among people who had used psychedelics hundreds of times in legally-protected religious ceremonies."
Fellow researcher Pål-Ørjan Johansen said: "Early speculation that psychedelics might lead to mental health problems was based on a small number of case reports and did not take into account either the widespread use of psychedelics or the not infrequent rate of mental health problems in the general population.
"Over the past 50 years tens of millions of people have used psychedelics and there just is not much evidence of long-term problems."
PLOS ONE 19 August 2013 [abstract]
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