Although large-scale population studies have linked the use of classic psychedelics (lysergic acid diethylamide, psilocybin, or mescaline) to reduced odds of physical health problems, mental health problems, and criminal behavior, the roughly 35 million adults in the United States who have used classic psychedelics are nonetheless stigmatized in the American job market. Various federal organizations in the United States automatically reject applicants on the sole basis of prior psychedelic use, thereby practicing an open form of legal discrimination against these applicants. The present study investigates whether this discrimination can be justified based on associations between lifetime classic psychedelic use and motivationally-based workplace absenteeism.
Introduction
Classic psychedelics, including lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), psilocybin (the psychoactive compound in magic mushrooms), and mescaline (the psychoactive compound in the peyote and San Pedro cacti), are serotonin receptor agonists that can alter individuals' perceptions, moods, and cognitive processes (Nichols, 2016). Each of these substances elicit comparable effects and they have been shown to demonstrate cross-tolerance (Bonson, 2020). For millennia, these substances have been used across cultures for ritual, recreational, and healing purposes (Strassman, 1995).
Research on classic psychedelics is said to currently be experiencing a renaissance (Sessa, 2018), with an ever-increasing number of empirical studies demonstrating their safety and therapeutic benefit (Aday, Mitzkovitz, Bloesch, Davoli, & Davis, 2020; Carhart-Harris & Goodwin, 2017; Chi & Gold, 2020; Elsey, 2017). More generally, recent large-scale population studies have associated lifetime classic psychedelic use, that is any prior use of a classic psychedelic (Krebs & Johansen, 2013), with lower odds of physical health problems (e.g., heart disease, diabetes, obesity; Simonsson, Osika, Carhart-Harris, & Hendricks, 2021; Simonsson, Sexton, & Hendricks, 2021), mental health problems (e.g., psychological distress, suicidality; Hendricks, Thorne, Clark, Coombs, & Johnson, 2015), or criminal behavior (e.g., theft, assault, intimate partner violence; Hendricks et al., 2018; Jones & Nock, 2022; Thiessen, Walsh, Bird, & Lafrance, 2018). It is therefore unsurprising that classic psychedelic use, including the consumption of doses low enough to not induce perceptual alterations (i.e., microdosing), has increased significantly in recent years (Killion et al., 2021; Polito & Stevenson, 2019; Walsh, Livne, Shmulewitz, Stohl, & Hasin, 2022). Despite the accumulation of positive research findings as well as increasing trends in their consumption, classic psychedelic use remains a form of criminal activity in that it - in the United States as well as most Western countries - is punishable by law. As such, its users have been assumed to be aberrant individuals who pose issues to society (Karlsson, 2010; Mugford, 1991). For this reason, classic psychedelic users fear that stigmas relating to the “lifestyles, values and professional standards of ‘drug users’ (lazy, immoral, dishonest)—may […] undermine the rigor, validity, objectivity and integrity of their work” (Ross, Potter, Barratt, & Aldridge, 2020, p. 272). This fear is justified seeing as recent experimental work showed that the public's evaluation of researchers' scientific integrity (i.e., professionalism and honesty) was negatively affected when researchers were presented as users of classic psychedelics (Forstmann & Sagioglou, 2021). Furthermore, scientists in the field of classic psychedelic research have lamented classic psychedelic users being stereotyped as disorganized, delusional, or otherwise inferior (Adams, 2010; Marlan, 2019). Thus, for employees with lifetime classic psychedelic use, job loss or restricted career opportunities are a legitimate fear (Ross et al., 2020), and these individuals have even been considered a minority group based on their persecuted desire for the altered states of consciousness that classic psychedelics offer (Marlan, 2019).
Certain career paths are indeed closed to individuals solely on the basis of their past classic psychedelic use. Organizations that discriminate against classic psychedelic users include, but are not limited to, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (which has roughly 35,000 employees and denies applicants who have used classic psychedelics in the past 10 years; https://www.fbijobs.gov/eligibility), U.S. Customs and Border Protection (which has roughly 60,000 employees and denies applicants who have used classic psychedelics in the past 3 years; https://www.cbp.gov/careers/car), and the Central Intelligence Agency (which has an undisclosed number of employees and denies applicants who have used classic psychedelics in the past year; https://www.cia.gov/cia-requirements/). The lack of a uniform drug policy, such as what length of time without use of classic psychedelics is deemed permissible, across these organizations suggests that the denial of applicants based on prior classic psychedelic use is arbitrary, thus unjustified and discriminatory. Furthermore, each of these aforementioned organizations are more lenient regarding applicants' prior use of marijuana, a substance whose use is illegal under United States federal law and which has been rated by experts as more harmful than classic psychedelics such as LSD (Nutt, King, Saulsbury, & Blakemore, 2007). In line with the interpretation of these recruitment policies as discriminatory are the findings of a systematic review of studies on the long-term effects of classic psychedelics (Aday et al., 2020) which reported that most studies had a follow-up latency of just a few weeks and, of the long-term effects identified, the results were predominantly positive; these included decreased depression, neuroticism, and alcohol use as well as increased optimism, mindfulness, and well-being. Furthermore, recent evidence has shown that lifetime classic psychedelic use is associated with lower health-based workplace absenteeism (i.e., sick leave taken), suggesting that employees' lifetime classic psychedelic use could actually be economically advantageous for organizations (Mellner, Dahlen, & Simonsson, 2022). Thus, according to the current scientific literature, there is no empirical justification for the denial of applicants based solely on their prior use of classic psychedelics.
Although organizations' recruitment policies generally do not explain why past classic psychedelic use precludes employment, a likely assumption is that these organizations see applicants with lifetime classic psychedelic use through a lens warped by stigma and consider such applicants as being unmotivated or unreliable. If empirical findings could demonstrate that the employment of lifetime classic psychedelic users places a burden on the organizations where they work, such as through increased rates of motivation-based workplace absenteeism, recruitment policies disqualifying their prior use could be justified based on both financial and performance grounds.
However, recent evidence speaks against this. As already mentioned, lifetime classic psychedelic users are less inclined to engage in criminal behavior (when disregarding the use of classic psychedelics, itself currently considered a criminal act), suggesting that they may actually be less motivated to skip work (i.e., breach their work contract). Moreover, cross-cultural research has linked classic psychedelic use with higher self-reported measures of trait concern for others and trait empathy (Lerner & Lyvers, 2006) and for this reason classic psychedelic users, relative to non-users, may be less motivated to skip work and potentially leave their coworkers in a difficult work situation. Indirect support for this idea comes from a recent study by Forstmann and Sagioglou (2017) linking lifetime classic psychedelic use to increased pro-environmental behavior such as recycling and responsible water use, suggesting that classic psychedelic users may be more aware of the negative effect that their actions (e.g., skipping work) can have on others compared to non-users. Taking these prior findings into consideration with the increasing trends in classic psychedelic use and career-limiting impacts of various organizations' current recruitment policies, it is worth testing whether lifetime classic psychedelic use is linked to employees' motivationally-based workplace absenteeism.