People who have used so-called “classic psychedelics” such as psilocybin or LSD are less likely to report having frequent bad headaches, a new study concludes.
The results, authors wrote this month in the Journal of Pharmacology, “add to the literature suggesting classic psychedelics as a possible future prophylactic treatment option for primary headache disorders.”
Researchers gathered data from 11,419 records collected from 1999 to 2000 as part of the British Child Development Study 1958, which follows a cohort of people born over the course of a single week in March 1958.
Specifically, they looked at responses to three questions: “Do you often have bad headaches?” “Have you ever tried LSD, also known as acid or trips?” and “Have you ever tried magic mushrooms?”
The team’s analysis showed that “lifetime use of classic psychedelics was associated with 25% lower odds of having frequent bad headaches.”
There are, of course, limitations as to what conclusions can be drawn from the observational nature of the study.
“Although we have proposed a direction of association, we cannot draw any causal inferences about the association between lifetime use of classic psychedelics and frequent bad headaches,” they wrote. “It is possible that the negative association found is a result of people suffering from frequent bad headaches abstaining from the use of classic psychedelics.”
Data from the same survey, for example, showed that low alcohol use was associated with higher likelihood of frequent bad headaches. In that case, authors interpreted the finding by saying it “may be explained by individuals experiencing frequent bad headaches choosing to abstain from alcohol,” noting that alcohol is understood to be a trigger for headaches.
Overall, 16 percent of people in the survey reported frequent bad headaches. Of those, 71 percent were female and 29 percent were male. Lifetime use of classic psychedelics, meanwhile, was reported by 6.5 percent of people with frequent bad headaches and 8.6 percent of those without.
Notably, when the research team divided reports by sex, they noticed a stronger association between psychedelics use and headaches among female respondents.
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