Mind-manifesting? Examining naturalistic reports from psychedelics, cannabis, meditation, and dreams from the ALTERD mobile application

Altered states of consciousness (ASC) refer to states that differ markedly from normal waking consciousness. ASC may occur spontaneously, such as in dreaming, or through consciousness modifying techniques, from meditation, to cannabis and psychedelics. The etymology behind the term psychedelic, meaning mind-manifesting, is based on the hypothesis that certain substances, including serotonergic hallucinogens, do not merely distort perception, but also afford genuine observation and insight into the nature of mind, a claim that remains empirically contested today. Here, we address this psychedelic hypothesis using 2,242 reports from the Psychedelics, Cannabis, Meditation, and Dreams categories from the ALTERD mobile application. Across categories, we examined semantic similarity, topic structure, visual phenomenology, and alignment with a priori ASC themes. The Psychedelics category was most semantically similar to Dreams, consistent with a hallucinogenic character, yet it also uniquely coupled with Meditation across ASC themes, including Personal Growth, lending support for the psychedelic hypothesis. Cannabis showed the opposite pattern: similar to Meditation semantically, but not aligned on ASC themes such as Personal Growth. Together, these findings indicate that psychedelics induce a dream-like state, yet support a meditation-like trajectory toward personal growth, whereas cannabis may share phenomenological features with meditation, but lacking a transformative therapeutic character.