Mystical experiences are an often-overlooked possible aspect of a person's experience that have the potential to impact changes in everyday experience and behaviour. Mystical experiences can occur spontaneously, during meditation or due to the use of psychoactive substances, especially psychedelics. Studies indicate that mystical experiences with psychedelics can cause changes in behaviour, thinking, changes in relationships, etc., but there's a scarcity in research on changes in the first-person experience of individuals. With our master's thesis, we wanted to contribute to the field of psychedelic research by analysing the changes in everyday experience after mystical experiences with psychedelics, in which we wanted to investigate both reflective and prereflective experiences. To investigate this, we used a combination of descriptive experience sampling method and microphenomenological interviews. The data were analysed qualitatively, following the guidelines of constructivist grounded theory approach. The analysis showed that mystical experiences with psychedelics have the potential to change everyday experience, with significant differences in the degree of focused and uncontrolled experience and the frequency of feeling pleasant bodily sensations, but the differences between our co-researchers seemed to be quite individual. In the light of this finding, we wanted to emphasize the role that the individual context and expectations play on mystical experiences with psychedelics and subsequent changes. We also wanted to shed light on the importance of understanding phenomenological data in the study of changes after mystical experiences with psychedelics and call for greater inclusion of systematic first-person research methods in the psychedelic field research.
|