#More Americans dropping acid because ‘the world’s on fire’: study

Authors of a new study on American adults’ LSD use believe that the hallucinogen has become exponentially more popular as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“LSD is used primarily to escape. And given that the world’s on fire, people might be using it as a therapeutic mechanism,” University of Cincinnati doctoral candidate Andrew Yockey told Scientific American. “Now that COVID’s hit, I’d guess that use has probably tripled.”

Yockey and his colleagues this month published one of the first studies to examine acid trends in US adults. Using data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, the researchers analyzed responses from 168,000 Americans and found that between 2015 and 2018, LSD intake increased by 56.4% in the US.

Those with college degrees and people aged 35 to 49 got trippier by the biggest margin during that time, with degree holders doing 70% more LSD and 30- and 40-somethings doing 223% more.

Researchers believe the psychedelic’s increased popularity in this period may be due to the 2016 presidential election, which made certain demographics more actively seek out a strong form of escapism. The rise of microdosing is also likely a reason. (The National Survey on Drug Use does not ask users their reason for taking LSD.)

Still, today’s numbers don’t compare with acid’s mid-20th century halcyon hippie peak. “LSD is a lot less popular today than it was in the late 1960s and 1970s,” NYU Langone Health drug researcher Joseph Palamar — who was not involved in the study — told Scientific American. This is in part due to newer research chemicals, including the psychedelic 2C-B, displacing LSD use.

In addition to offering consumers the ability to hallucinate instead of experiencing a global pandemic sober, acid has been found to have mood-boosting effects. Along with other psychedelics including magic mushrooms and ketamine, LSD is known to improve users’ mindset, and some individuals have even reported that the drugs cured their depression and Lyme disease-related pain.

The criminal classification of many psychedelics, however, prevents scientists from easily studying their positive impacts.