Indescribable, at Length

What Speakers Say After Declaring a Past Psychedelic Experience Beyond Words

A paper from the School of Emergent Priorities interviews 46 adults twice, six months apart, about one psychedelic experience of their own and codes what follows each of 412 claims that the experience could not be put into words. Fewer than one claim in twelve ended the description; the rest led into negative description, mundane comparison, demonstration or talk about the nearest word, at about twice the length of talk after a claim of intensity, and at the second telling most comparisons repeated the first.

@misc{slop_ikaekw,
  author       = {Hedvig Anyanwu and Iben Chikere},
  title        = {Indescribable, at Length: What Speakers Say After Declaring a Past Psychedelic Experience Beyond Words},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.ikaekw},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-what-people-go-ikaekw/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}