Psychedelics and Creativity: What the Research Shows

A long-standing claim, a short evidence base

The idea that psychedelics boost creativity goes back at least to the 1960s, when researchers first tried to test it. (Psychological Reports, 1966) Most of the support for it is still personal stories, often about famous artists and scientists. A story about one person cannot tell you what a drug does to creative thinking in general.

The controlled evidence is small. This article sets out what it shows, how it was produced, and why people's sense of being more creative often fails to show up in tests. For microdosing in general, see the microdosing research review.

The 1966 problem-solving study

The study most often cited is a pilot by Willis Harman, Robert McKim, Robert Mogar, James Fadiman and Myron Stolaroff, published in Psychological Reports in 1966. Twenty-seven professionally employed men each had a single session with LSD-25 or mescaline, in small groups of three or four, after extensive selection and preparation. The problem-solving sessions were structured to set up participants' expectations and a social atmosphere suited to creative work. (Psychological Reports, 1966)

The authors reported, tentatively, that the drugs seemed to help creative problem-solving under that carefully structured regimen, and that some increase in creative ability might continue for weeks. (Psychological Reports, 1966) The published abstract describes no placebo or comparison group, and the people involved were selected, prepared and told what to expect. That design cannot separate the drug from expectation, selection and group setting. It is a reason to ask the question, not an answer to it.

How researchers measure creativity

Modern studies mostly use short laboratory tasks. Divergent thinking tasks ask for many answers to an open problem, such as listing uses for a brick, and are scored for fluency (how many ideas) and originality (how unusual). Convergent thinking tasks ask for the single best answer, such as finding the link between several pictures or words.

These tasks capture only part of what people mean by creativity. Skill, persistence and judging which ideas are worth keeping matter in real work and are hard to test in an hour. Different studies also use different tasks, so results are hard to compare.

During the experience

The acute evidence points in two directions at once.

In a double-blind, placebo-controlled study, psilocybin at 0.17 mg/kg increased people's ratings of spontaneous creative insight while lowering their deliberate, task-based creativity during the drug's effects. (Translational Psychiatry, 2021) In a randomised, placebo-controlled crossover study of 24 healthy volunteers given 50 micrograms of LSD, answers became more novel, surprising and original, but less useful, and convergent thinking fell. (Journal of Psychopharmacology, 2022) At two ayahuasca workshops, 26 participants did better on one divergent thinking measure and worse on convergent thinking after drinking, with no placebo group. (Psychopharmacology, 2016)

A 2024 meta-analysis found that classic psychedelics impair attention and executive function during the acute effects. (Scientific Reports, 2024) Put together, the pattern is more unusual ideas and less ability to organise them or judge their worth. That is a poor state for finishing creative work. The psilocybin study also scanned participants' brains and found that both the acute and the later effects were predicted by connectivity within and between parts of the default mode network, a set of brain regions active during inward-focused thought. (Translational Psychiatry, 2021) That is a correlation in one study, not an explanation.

The days after

Some studies look at the days after a session, when the drug has worn off. In the placebo-controlled psilocybin study, people produced more novel ideas seven days later. (Translational Psychiatry, 2021) At a psilocybin retreat, 55 people were tested before, 50 the morning after and only 22 a week later; divergent thinking improved the morning after and convergent thinking was better at seven days. (Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 2019) That study had no control group and lost more than half its participants by the final test.

The same 2024 meta-analysis concluded, from a qualitative look at the studies, that executive function and creativity may be increased for at least 24 hours after the acute effects of psychedelics have subsided. (Scientific Reports, 2024) "May" is the right word. No study has followed people for months to see whether creative output in their actual work changed.

Microdosing: the clearest test, the weakest result

Microdosing, taking small doses repeatedly, is often done for creativity, and it is easier to test with a placebo because there is no full trip to give the game away.

The first quantitative study was open-label. At a microdosing event in the Netherlands, both convergent and divergent thinking scores improved after a microdose of psychedelic truffles, and the authors said placebo-controlled studies were needed to confirm it. (Psychopharmacology, 2018)

The placebo-controlled studies that followed found much less:

• In 34 people starting to microdose psilocybin mushrooms, there was no evidence of improved creativity, wellbeing or cognition compared with placebo. Stronger effects were reported only by people who correctly guessed they had the active dose. (Translational Psychiatry, 2022)
• In a trial of 80 healthy men given 10 micrograms of LSD or placebo every third day for six weeks, no creativity test showed an effect, even though participants reported feeling more creative on dose days. (Psychopharmacology, 2025)
• Pooling three double-blind trials with 171 people, Prochazkova and colleagues found microdosing raised the share of original answers in divergent thinking, with no effect on other divergent scores or on convergent thinking. (Neuropharmacology, 2026)
• A 2026 systematic review found that randomised trials of psilocybin and LSD microdosing showed minimal impact on cognition, creativity or sustained mood. (CNS Drugs, 2026)

An earlier double-blind laboratory study of single LSD microdoses in 20 young adults found effects on how people felt, but cognitive tasks were unaffected. (Biological Psychiatry, 2019)

Why people feel more creative than the tests show

Several explanations fit the evidence, and they are not exclusive.

Expectation. People who microdose expect a lot. In a six-week study of people already microdosing, a separate survey found that expected benefits were large and wide-ranging and did not match the narrower changes actual microdosers reported. (PLOS ONE, 2019) When participants can tell they have had the drug, blinding breaks down and expectation can drive results. (Translational Psychiatry, 2022)

Novelty is not quality. On LSD, ideas became more novel but less useful. (Journal of Psychopharmacology, 2022) Feeling that a thought is new and important is different from producing work that holds up the next day.

The tests may miss it. The authors of the LSD microdosing trial noted that laboratory conditions may hide real-world effects, or that the tests may not capture what users notice, as well as the possibility of placebo effects. (Psychopharmacology, 2025)

Some neuroscientists propose that the psychedelic state could help the idea-generating stage of creativity, and suggest using psychedelics as experimental tools to study it. (NeuroImage, 2020) That is a theory, not a demonstrated effect. For the brain research behind such ideas, see neuroplasticity and psychedelics.

How to read a creativity study

When a headline says a psychedelic boosts creativity, a few questions sort strong findings from weak ones:

1. Was there a placebo? Before-and-after studies with no control group, like the 1966 pilot and the retreat study, cannot separate the drug from expectation, setting and practice at the test. (Psychological Reports, 1966; Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 2019)
2. Could people tell what they had? In the mushroom microdosing trial, stronger effects showed up only in people who guessed their condition correctly. (Translational Psychiatry, 2022)
3. How many people, and how many dropped out? The retreat study fell from 55 participants to 22 by the final test. (Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 2019)
4. Which measure moved? A rise in the number or novelty of ideas is not the same as better ideas; LSD raised novelty but lowered usefulness. (Journal of Psychopharmacology, 2022)
5. How long was follow-up? The longest follow-ups in this research are measured in days or weeks, not the months or years over which creative careers unfold. (Psychopharmacology, 2025; Translational Psychiatry, 2021)

Risks and the law

Creative goals do not change the risks. Research safety guidelines recommend excluding people with a personal or family history of psychosis. (Journal of Psychopharmacology, 2008; Oregon Health Authority, Public Health Division, 2026) In a survey of 541 people with bipolar disorder who had used psilocybin, 32.2% described new or worse symptoms afterwards, prominently manic symptoms. (Journal of Psychopharmacology, 2023) In a survey of 1,993 people describing their worst psilocybin experience, 11% said they put themselves or others at risk of physical harm. (Journal of Psychopharmacology, 2016) Lithium combined with a classic psychedelic has been associated with seizures. (Pharmacopsychiatry, 2021; Oregon Health Authority, Public Health Division, 2026)

Psilocybin is a Schedule I drug under US federal law, and in Oregon it may be used lawfully only at a licensed service centre under a facilitator. (Legal Information Institute (Cornell) reproducing the U.S. Code, current text; Oregon State Legislature, current edition) Check the screening checklist and the is it legal tool before anything else, and see the substance pages for psilocybin and LSD.

The honest summary: psychedelics change how thinking feels and can make ideas more unusual for a while. Whether that turns into better creative work has not been shown.