Sean Goldy is a postdoctoral fellow at the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelics and Consciousness Research. He completed his Ph.D. in Psychological Science at the University of California, Irvine, where he investigated self-transcendent experiences and their impacts on individuals and society. Via a variety of methods and analytical techniques, his research focuses on examining and better capturing the subjective effects of psychedelics (e.g., DMT, 5-MeO-DMT) and the role they play in therapeutic outcomes.

Different guides, different effects? Examining variance across session facilitators on psilocybin's acute subjective effects in 10 clinical trials.

This study examines whether psychedelic session facilitators/guides influence the acute subjective effects (e.g., the "trip") of psilocybin. Using data from 784 participants across 10 psilocybin dosing studies at Johns Hopkins, we explored facilitator impact on mystical-type experiences measured by the Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ). Results showed facilitators accounted for minimal variance in participants' scores, suggesting that the facilitator’s role has little effect on the phenomenological content of the experience.These findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the factors shaping psychedelic experiences and underscore the importance of focusing on participant- and substance-related variables when evaluating the determinants of acute subjective effects.