RCT · 2026
What experienced meditators said about meditating on DMT-harmine versus placebo
- Original title
- Mixed-methods analysis on psychedelic-augmented meditation experiences from a randomized controlled mindfulness retreat.
- Authors
- Schlomberg JTT, Meling D, Grylka R, et al.
- Journal
- Scientific reports, 2026
- Molecules
- DMT, Other
- Conditions
- Healthy volunteers
- Evidence grade
- Low
- Source
- Read the original paper
The question
How do experienced meditators describe their inner experience when meditating after taking DMT combined with harmine, compared with placebo?
What they did
The study drew on a randomized controlled trial run during a mindfulness retreat, in which experienced meditators received either DMT plus harmine (harmine slows the breakdown of DMT in the body) or a placebo. Participants then took part in phenomenological interviews, which are in-depth conversations about what the experience was actually like from the inside. The researchers analyzed the interview transcripts using natural language processing, a set of computer methods for finding patterns in text, combined with conventional qualitative analysis.
What they found
Meditation under DMT-harmine and meditation under placebo differed in the themes that came up and in how varied the reported experiences were, but the overall meaning-based structure of the accounts overlapped considerably. The combined analysis picked up well-known psychedelic effects and also detected subtler, repeating patterns in the language that theory-driven methods might miss. Participants in both conditions leaned heavily on Buddhist concepts and spiritual language to describe and make sense of what happened. The authors interpret this as evidence of shared features between meditative and psychedelic states, and of a strong link between drug effects and setting.
The fine print
The abstract gives no sample size, no doses and no statistical results, so the strength of the differences cannot be judged from this record. Participants were experienced meditators at a retreat, a selected group whose familiarity with Buddhist language likely shaped how they described their experiences. Blinding is hard to maintain in psychedelic trials because effects are obvious, and the study reports subjective experience rather than clinical outcomes. This summary is based on the abstract alone.
What it means
The study suggests that context and prior training shape how people describe psychedelic experiences as much as the drug itself, and that computer-assisted analysis of interviews can surface patterns standard questionnaires may miss.
Evidence grade: Low. This is a qualitative, language-based analysis of interviews from a randomized trial, and the abstract reports no sample size or numerical outcomes.
This summary is based on the study’s published abstract.