Survey of 5-MeO-DMT users: 69% reported later "reactivations", mostly positive or neutral

The question

How often do people who use 5-MeO-DMT experience “reactivations” (spontaneous returns of parts of the drug experience, similar to flashbacks), how do they feel about them, and what predicts them?

What they did

Researchers ran a cross-sectional survey with 90 Spanish-speaking people who had used 5-MeO-DMT, a fast-acting psychedelic. Participants answered questions about their experience, including how much time they planned ahead, how intense the acute effects were, how meaningful they found the session, and changes in “cognitive fusion” (how tightly someone gets caught up in their own thoughts). The team used descriptive statistics and logistic regression to see which factors predicted reactivations and how positively they were experienced.

What they found

Sixty-nine percent of respondents reported having reactivations. Of those, 97% described the experience as positive or neutral. In a model accounting for several factors at once, spending more time planning ahead and reporting a decrease in cognitive fusion were both significant predictors of having reactivations. Having had a challenging experience was linked to a lower chance of viewing reactivations as positive, while reported psychological insight was linked to a higher chance of viewing them positively.

The fine print

This was a small survey of 90 self-selected people, so those with strong or memorable experiences may have been more likely to respond. Everything was self-reported at a single point in time, so the study cannot show that any factor caused reactivations, and there was no comparison group or verification of what was taken. The findings apply to Spanish-speaking users and may not generalize. This summary is based on the abstract only.

What it means

Among these 5-MeO-DMT users, after-effects resembling flashbacks were common but were usually described as positive or neutral rather than distressing, and the findings point to a phenomenon worth studying carefully in controlled research.

Evidence grade: Low. A one-time online survey of self-selected people who had already used 5-MeO-DMT, relying entirely on self-report and memory, with no control group.

This summary is based on the study’s published abstract.