Stutterers’ experiences on classic psychedelics: A preliminary self-report study

Abstract

Stuttering poses challenges to social, occupational, and educational aspects of life. Traditional behavioral therapies can be helpful but effects are often limited. Pharmaceutical treatments have been explored but there are no FDA-approved treatments for stuttering. Interest has grown in the potential use of classic psychedelics, including psilocybin and LSD, which have shown effectiveness in treating disorders with similar symptoms (e.g., anxiety, depression, PTSD). The potential effects of psychedelics on stuttering have not been explored. We conducted a preliminary investigation of self-identified stutterers who report their experiences taking classic psychedelics on the online messaging forum, Reddit. We qualitatively analyzed 114 publicly available posts, extracting meaningful units and assigning descriptor codes inductively. We then deductively organized responses into an established framework of psychedelics which includes behavioral, emotional, cognitive, belief-based, and social effects. These effects were subsequently grouped under organizing themes (positive, negative, neutral). Descriptive statistics revealed that the majority of users (74.0%) reported positive overall short-term effects particularly related to behavioral and emotional change (e.g., reduced stuttering and anxiety), but negative (9.6%), mixed (positive and negative; 4.8%), and neutral overall experiences (11.6%) were also reported. The results support the possibility that psychedelics may impact stuttering, but caution must be applied in their interpretation given the entirely uncontrolled research setting and potential adverse health effects of psychedelics as reported elsewhere. While these results do not encourage the use of psychedelics by stutterers, they suggest that future work could examine the impact of psychedelics on stuttering under supervised and in clinically controlled settings.