Observational · 2026
Voice diaries before and after a 5-MeO-DMT retreat showed shifts in language and voice
- Original title
- Speech markers of psychological change following a psychedelic 5-MeO-DMT retreat.
- Authors
- Kuc J, McAlpine RG, Sellers A, et al.
- Journal
- Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England), 2026
- Molecules
- 5-MeO-DMT
- Conditions
- Healthy volunteers, Other
- Participants
- 29
- Evidence grade
- Low
- Source
- Read the original paper
The question
Can the words people use and the sound of their voice track psychological changes around a 5-MeO-DMT retreat, and can speech before the retreat predict how the experience goes?
What they did
Twenty-nine people attending a retreat recorded daily voice journals through a tool called “RetreatBot” for two weeks before and two weeks after a single 12 mg dose of 5-MeO-DMT, a short-acting psychedelic. The recordings were transcribed and analysed with computer language tools: one counted word types, another rated emotional tone. Acoustic features of the voice itself, such as pitch and small fluctuations in the voice signal known as jitter and shimmer, were also measured.
What they found
After the session, participants used more cognitive language (words related to thinking) and fewer social words, and their voice quality changed, with increased jitter and shimmer. Speech patterns recorded before the retreat were related to how prepared participants felt, whether they reported an emotional breakthrough, and their well-being afterwards. The authors describe the overall pattern as a shift from an outward focus toward introspection.
The fine print
This was a small group of 29 self-selected retreat attendees with no control or placebo group, so changes cannot be attributed to the drug itself rather than to the retreat setting, expectations or the act of journaling. Follow-up was only two weeks after the session, and the outcomes are exploratory speech measures rather than established clinical scales. The abstract does not report effect sizes or statistical details, and this summary is based on the abstract alone.
What it means
Automated analysis of everyday speech may offer a low-burden way to monitor how people change around a psychedelic experience, but this early study cannot show that 5-MeO-DMT caused the shifts it observed.
Evidence grade: Low. Small observational study at a retreat with no control group or comparison condition, relying on self-recorded voice diaries.
This summary is based on the study’s published abstract.