Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities Journal

This project investigates relationships between parental attitudes toward classic hallucinogens (i.e., LSD, psilocybin, and mescaline) during adolescence, frequency of personal hallucinogen use, and current attitudes toward hallucinogens from the perspective of recreational psychedelic users. Previous literature highlights self-reported benefits, spiritual experiences, and less harm in comparison to other substances when reporting on recreational classic hallucinogen use. However, the associations of parental communication and level of familial religious affiliation with current relationships involving hallucinogens have seldom been investigated. 120 participants took a web-based survey on Qualtrics marketed on Prolific regarding the parental communication involving classic hallucinogens during adolescence, first age of use, current frequency of use, and personal attitudes toward legality, medical value, and safety of hallucinogenic substances. In comparison with infrequent hallucinogen users, frequent users held significantly higher scores of positive attitudes toward classic hallucinogens than infrequent users on all attitude scales. Additionally, participants who indicated a very religious familial identity demonstrated significantly higher scores of negative parental attitudes in the Parental Attitudes portion of the survey. Furthermore, perceived negative parental attitudes were associated with a younger age of their child's first use. The research aim is to explore potential differences between parental communication, lifetime use, and the current attitudes recreational users have toward psychedelics. This is integral to understanding how the usage of classic hallucinogens (regarding age during first use and frequency of use) is informed by familial upbringing.