May 29, 2026
Benjamin Clayden, Movin Abeywickrema, Maria Bălăeţ
preprint
Temporal relationships between the recreational use of alcohol, tobacco and cannabis with mental health challenges have been extensively reviewed. However, this is not the case for other widely consumed drugs. Between 7/6/23 and 3/12/23 we searched Web of Science, EMBASE, PsychINFO and MEDLINE databases for studies investigating temporal relationships between recreational drug use (RDU) and...
Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England)
June 18, 2025
Maria Bălăeţ, William Trender, Annalaura Lerede et al.
2 citations
Mental health implications of COVID-19 drug use patterns are still unclear. We used data-driven clustering in a large citizen science cohort recruited agnostically to an interest in drug-use to categorise people according to common patterns of drug use and analysed their mental health symptoms (GAD-7 and PHQ-9 items), from recruitment prior to COVID-19 restrictions in 2020 (N = 242,260) to...
Journal of Psychedelic Studies
May 10, 2024
Maria Bălăeţ
5 citations
This commentary addresses the potential for a nocebo effect arising from the public discourse on psychedelics, especially considering the increasing interest and engagement with these substances. The resurgence of psychedelics in the public and scientific arenas has led to a proliferation of discussions, both positive and cautionary, about their use. However, an imbalance in this discourse,...
Frontiers in Neuroscience
March 15, 2022
Maria Bălăeţ
28 citations
Psychedelic compounds hold the promise of changing the face of neuroscience and psychiatry as we know it. There have been numerous proposals to use them to treat a range of neuropsychiatric conditions such as depression, anxiety, addiction and PTSD; and trials to date have delivered positive results in favor of the novel therapeutics. Further to the medical use, the wider healthy population is...
Scientific Reports
January 21, 2021
Laura Kaertner, Michael B. Steinborn, Hannes Kettner et al.
152 citations
Abstract Psychedelic microdosing describes the ingestion of near-threshold perceptible doses of classic psychedelic substances. Anecdotal reports and observational studies suggest that microdosing may promote positive mood and well-being, but recent placebo-controlled studies failed to find compelling evidence for this. The present study collected web-based mental health and related data using...