A new study analyzes 25,419 support interactions recorded by Fireside Project in the U.S. between 2021 and 2026, offering one of the largest datasets on psychedelic experiences outside clinical settings. The findings show who seeks support, which substances are most commonly reported, what difficulties people experience, and how callers evaluate the peer-support they receive.
Research on psychedelics tends to focus on what happens in the lab. Clinical trials, controlled protocols, and specialized medical teams receive most of the scientific attention. But there’s another side that’s far harder to study: what happens when these experiences unfold outside those settings.
What happens when someone is going through a tough experience without a medical team nearby? Who listens to people who need help processing what they’re feeling while under the influence of certain drugs? And what drives them to seek support in the first place?
Cannabis Magazine reported on a new study published on October 30, 2026, in the journal Science Advances. The research introduces a dataset built from 25,419 support interactions recorded in the United States between April 2021 and February 2026.
The study draws on records from 220 trained volunteers and 2,777 post-interaction surveys. It’s one of the largest systematic collections of data on psychedelic experiences in nonclinical settings and, above all, offers an opportunity to examine situations that rarely appear in traditional clinical trials.
Fireside Project: A Support Line for Psychedelic Experiences
Behind the initiative is Fireside Project, a U.S. nonprofit organization founded in 2020. Its main service is a peer-support helpline known as the Psychedelic Support Line.
The concept of peer support is key to understanding the research. This isn’t a medical consultation or a psychotherapy session: it’s a space for people to be heard and supported, where trained volunteers talk with individuals who are going through difficult moments during a psychedelic experience or need help processing what happened afterward.
People can reach out by phone or text message. Volunteers record structured information about each interaction, and those who use the service are later invited to complete surveys about their experience.
40.2% of interactions involved people seeking support during an ongoing drug experience, while 32.1% were related to integrating past experiences. Another 10.6% involved requests for information, and 11.6% fell outside the service’s scope, including medical emergencies, requests involving substances not covered by the service, and other situations requiring a different response. The remaining 5.6% fell into other categories.
That’s why the 25,419 interactions don’t necessarily represent 25,419 different people. They represent contacts recorded by the service.
What makes this dataset particularly valuable is that it offers a window into situations that typically fall outside clinical research. While clinical trials involve selected participants under controlled conditions, Fireside’s records capture requests for support involving different settings, substances, and personal circumstances.
What the Researchers Found
Among the findings, psilocybin (the main psychoactive compound in magic mushrooms) was the most frequently mentioned substance, being reported in 59.9% of interactions in which a substance was identified.
It was followed by LSD (14.4%), cannabis (12.8%), ketamine (7.7%), and MDMA (4.4%). The researchers also recorded interactions involving ayahuasca (3.2%), NN-DMT (1.2%), and 5-MeO-DMT (1.1%), as well as San Pedro (0.45%), Amanita muscaria (0.34%), 2C-B (0.31%), and ibogaine (0.29%). In total, the researchers identified 15 categories of substances, although not all were broken down individually in the main text of the study. A single interaction could involve up to three substances, so the percentages don’t add up to 100%.
Among the most frequently reported substances, cannabis had the highest overall rate of psychological distress, at 47.2% of interactions involving the plant.
That figure stands out, but it needs context. It doesn’t mean that nearly half of cannabis users experience psychological distress. The percentage refers to interactions recorded by a support line that people contact specifically when they need help. The researchers found that this elevated proportion was largely related to a particular pattern among cannabis-related contacts: people were more likely to reach out while they were still experiencing its effects.
When comparing similar types of interactions, differences in distress rates among the major substances were not statistically significant.
In other words, the initial numbers don’t establish that one substance is inherently more problematic than another. When people seek help, and under what circumstances, matters too.
Who Reaches Out for Help?
Among survey respondents who provided information about their gender, 46.8% were men, 39.4% were women, and 13.8% identified as nonbinary or belonged to other gender categories.
In terms of racial and ethnic background, 68.4% identified as White, 6% as Asian, 5.8% as Hispanic or Latino, and 2.9% as Black or African American, while 16.8% fell into other categories or identified as multiracial.
Geographically, California accounted for the most survey responses (335), followed by New York (131) and Texas (121). These figures only reflect respondents who provided that information, as demographic records in the dataset are incomplete.
Additionally, among the 6,998 interactions with information about the person’s social setting, 66.3% involved people who were alone when they sought help, while 26.4% were with one or a few people close to them.
Why Do People Call?
The study also sheds light on the difficulties people were experiencing when they sought support. Anxiety was the most frequently recorded issue, appearing in 4,566 interactions, followed by feelings of overwhelm or emotional overload, with 3,562. Other common themes included interpersonal relationship concerns, fear, and experiences related to identity. The findings show that these interactions weren’t limited to the effects of a substance but involved a range of psychological, emotional, and personal circumstances.
As for mental health histories reported by callers, the study recorded 1,449 mentions of post-traumatic stress disorder, 1,308 of major depressive disorder, and 692 of generalized anxiety disorder, among other conditions.
Mixing Drugs
The study also examined combinations of substances reported during interactions. Among the combinations analyzed, the strongest association was between MDMA and LSD (also known as candy flipping): the two substances appeared together 1.8 times more often than would be expected with independent use.
The researchers also compared distress rates associated with different substance combinations and identified which combinations were associated with interactions that required referrals to emergency services.
Abuse by Facilitators
Another notable finding was the identification of 43 interactions involving reports of abuse by facilitators. These reports were disproportionately associated with ceremonial settings and plant medicines. These were accounts shared during support conversations, not incidents independently investigated or verified by the organization.
Can This Kind of Peer Support Reduce Distress?
Another interesting aspect of the study is how people who reached out evaluated the service and the support they received.
The 2,777 post-interaction surveys were largely positive: 76.1% of respondents strongly agreed that they had felt heard, understood, and supported; 78.2% rated the quality of care as excellent; and 66.8% felt the service had met almost all of their needs. Additionally, 86.6% said they would definitely call again if they needed help, and 86.1% strongly agreed that they would recommend the service.
However, there were also negative experiences, though they were less common: 3.2% said they hadn’t felt supported, 2.1% rated the care as poor, and 2.4% said none of their needs had been met.
No, support lines like these aren’t a definitive treatment. That’s clear. Still, Fireside Project’s earlier scientific research provides additional context for the organization’s continued collection of this information.
In 2023, a team of researchers published a study in Psychedelic Medicine titled Reducing the Harms of Nonclinical Psychedelics Use Through a Peer-Support Telephone Helpline.
The study analyzed 4,047 call records and 848 follow-up surveys from the helpline’s first 17 months of operation.
Among survey respondents, 65.9% said the conversation had helped reduce the psychological distress they were experiencing. Additionally, 29.3% believed they might have experienced some form of physical or emotional harm without that support.
Other findings were also noteworthy: 12.5% said they might have called emergency services, while 10.8% said they might have gone to a hospital emergency department.
The study also found that 39.9% of callers had been alone during their psychedelic experience.
These findings are based on the perceptions of people who voluntarily completed the surveys, so they don’t establish a causal relationship on their own. Even so, they provide an important foundation for further research into the role of support services in nonclinical settings.
Fireside Has Been Documenting Bad Trips for Five Years
The dataset makes it possible to look beyond individual substances and examine the concerns of people who turn to the Fireside Project.
In its institutional report, Five Years of Light, the organization presents additional statistics from conversations collected over five years. Although these figures come from a different subset of data and shouldn’t be confused with the specific findings of the new paper, they help paint a broader picture of the situations the support line encounters.
Among the substances mentioned, psilocybin once again ranked first, accounting for 57.5% of the interactions covered in the report. It was followed by LSD (13.8%), cannabis (9.5%), ketamine (6.9%), MDMA (3.3%), ayahuasca (2.9%), and 5-MeO-DMT (1%).
Like the October 2026 study, the report also documents combinations of substances. The most common pairing was psilocybin and cannabis, accounting for 25.4% of the identified patterns of combined use.
It’s also important to clarify that these are self-reported data, not clinical diagnoses made by Fireside. Still, they add another dimension to the picture: psychedelic experiences don’t happen in a vacuum. They intersect with personal histories, relationships, concerns, and preexisting emotional circumstances.
A Dataset That Opens the Door to New Questions
The new study’s main contribution isn’t any single percentage, but the body of data it makes available to the scientific community.
The authors present the dataset as a resource for studying the epidemiology of psychedelic use, identifying factors associated with distress, and understanding which aspects of peer support may influence outcomes.
One particularly interesting methodological detail is that 50 volunteers completed at least ten interactions with follow-up surveys. This structure makes it possible to investigate whether individual differences among support providers might be associated with the outcomes of those conversations.
The research also doesn’t claim to represent everyone who uses psychedelics. The people included in the records chose to contact the service voluntarily, creating an unavoidable selection bias.
Nevertheless, the study provides something that has been in short supply until now: systematically collected information about psychedelic experiences taking place outside clinical settings.
As psychedelic research and public policy continue to advance in different countries, understanding what happens beyond the lab is also part of the conversation, especially when it comes to paying attention to the people, circumstances, and support needs surrounding these experiences.
