The Relationship Between Psychedelic Use and Positive Adult Development in Emerging Adulthood: An Integrative Review

TL;DR

This review explores how psychedelic use in young adults may influence their personal growth and development across five key life areas.

Contribution

The paper introduces a novel framework linking psychedelic use to emerging adult developmental trajectories.

Findings

Classic psychedelics may support positive developmental changes in emerging adults.

Potential benefits include increased openness, self-awareness, and ethical growth.

The review identifies five developmental pathways influenced by psychedelic use.

Abstract

Preliminary evidence suggests that classic psychedelics may exert lasting positive effects on individuals’ mood, cognition, and personality, but little is known about how these effects may differ across the lifespan. Emerging adulthood (18–29) is a critical developmental stage in which individuals transition from dependence on community institutions toward full independence. It is a time when psychedelic experimentation is common, and psychedelics could have distinctive psychological impacts during this phase, although the developmental significance of such effects remains largely untested. This integrative review offers a framework to generate hypotheses regarding possible ways that psychedelic use may positively interact with emerging adult development. Here, we review pathways by which classic psychedelics may facilitate emerging adults’ positive orthogenetic, veridical‐epistemic, eudaimonic, relational, and ethical developmental trajectories through changes in personality trait openness, belief systems, self‐insight, and social concern. Finally, we offer future research directions and discuss key challenges for research into studying the developmental impact of classic psychedelic use in emerging adulthood.

This integrative review explores how classic psychedelic use might broadly be associated with aiding and/or posing risks to emerging adult development along five possible developmental trajectories: orthogenetic, eudaimonic, veridical‐epistemic, relational, and ethical.

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