Psychedelic users hold experiences that are valuable to the development of policies and practices that can improve safe access to these substances for both medical and non-medical applications. These individual experiences with altered states are deeply personal and often of great impact and importance to those who experience them, and the use of psychedelics can vary from region to region, culture to culture, and from one person to the next.
“Real world” experiences of psychedelic use in non-clinical settings have contributed to the academic and medical community. Using the knowledge of the global psychedelic community can help reduce the harms and maximize the potential outcomes of psychedelic use.
It is with all of this in mind that our team at the Michigan Psychedelic Center (University of Michigan) developed the Global Psychedelic Survey 2025 (GPS 2025), which is a broad, multilingual community-based study of psychedelic consumers around the world. GPS 2025 is the second evolution of this study, following the Global Psychedelic Survey 2023 (GPS 2023; 20+ academic collaborators and 10 academic publications), and was borne from the Canadian Psychedelic Survey 2022 (CPS 2022; 12 academic collaborators and 5 publications).
However, both GPS 2023 and CPS 2022 suffered from a significant limitation: they were only available in English. Although GPS 2023 received over 6300 responses from over 85 countries, it was ultimately a survey of anglophone psychedelic consumers around the globe, and we were determined to broaden the diversity of respondents for 2025. We could not have imagined just how fruitful that effort would be!
As a result of an international collaboration between a consortium of >70 academics and committed individuals around the globe, GPS 2025 will be available in over 15 different languages, ensuring a much more diverse and inclusive respondent cohort. Furthermore, thanks to the support of psychedelic NGOs like MAPS, ICEERS, OPEN Foundation, the Global Psychedelic Society, Psychedelicare.EU, PAREA, the Psychedelic Institute of Australia and so many others in distributing the survey, between May 1-16th psychedelic consumers all over the world will have an opportunity to shape the future of psychedelic research by sharing their experiences with psychedelic substances. Nonetheless, we are still looking for collaborators to help us distribute the survey, so if you, your institution or organization can help, please contact GPS 2025 Primary Investigator Dr. Philippe Lucas at plucasyyj@gmail.com.
For 2025, we’ve also updated the design of the survey, which now includes a comprehensive examination of potential acute and long-term harms, queries on psychedelics and pregnancy, a section specific to Indigenous respondents designed by Indigenous academic collaborators, a questionnaire on entity contact, and even a longitudinal component since we aim to conduct this survey biennially in order to assess the impact of ongoing global legal, regulatory and sociocultural changes on psychedelic access and use over time.
We’ve launched a website to provide additional information on this remarkable effort at www.gps2025.com. Here you will find a list of academic and community-based collaborators, along with past publications from GPS 2023 that cover a broad scope of topics ranging from global trends in microdosing, to the impact of psychedelics on the use of other substances, to the use of psychedelics in the treatment of chronic pain.
Importantly, the budget for this study is under $60,000 USD, highlighting with a high level of coordination and collaboration, large, high impact community-based observational studies can be conducted quickly and for a reasonable cost. It’s an incredible honor to work with so many international psychedelic consumers, NGOs and academics to expand the understanding of “real world” psychedelic use around the globe, and starting at midnight on May 1st, we invite you all to please take a moment to go to http://www.gps2025.com/survey and help inform the future of global psychedelic policy!
Authors: Philippe Lucas, Jacob S. Aday, Daniel J. Kruger, Stephanie Lake
GPS 2025
