CEQ – Challenging Experiences Questionnaire (Griffiths 2016)

Michael Hoffman, December 27, 2024, 11 am

Site Map

Contents:

Intro

Utility page, easy to find and clearly titled, that simply summarizes:

  • Basics of what the CEQ is.
  • Its subscales and how many items each.
  • Where it came from, when.
  • Which line of q’airs it’s in (Pankhe, PEQ/SoCQ; MEQ; also draws from HRS & OAV).
  • What Griffiths told Stang about it: yeah, it’s bunk unicorns & rainbows, by design, but thats ok bc our CEQ catches negative experiences [by discarding negative experiences].
  • What it CLAIMS to be (broader than any other), vs.
  • What it actually ended up being (narrow, serving to monetize Grief therapy; simply discarded 18 of 21 actual psychedelic-specific negative effects from A of OAV).

Citation

The Challenging Experience Questionnaire: Characterization of challenging experiences with psilocybin mushrooms
Frederick Barrett, Matthew Bradstreet, Jeannie-Marie Leoutsakos, Matthew Johnson and Roland Griffiths, 2016 https://www.academia.edu/33760114/The_Challenging_Experience_Questionnaire_Characterization_of_challenging_experiences_with_psilocybin_mushrooms

Dimensions/Subscales (Psychedelic Effect Categories)

Fear [5]
  • I had the feeling something horrible would happen
  • Experience of fear
  • Anxiousness
  • Panic
  • I felt frightened
Grief [6]
  • Sadness
  • Feelings of grief
  • I felt like crying
  • Feelings of despair
  • Despair
  • Emotional and/or physical suffering
Physical Distress [5]
  • Feeling my heart beating
  • Feeling my body shake/tremble
  • I felt shaky inside [Michael Williams book: The Unshakeable Race (gnostics)]
  • I felt my heart beating irregularly or skipping beats
  • Pressure or weight in my chest or abdomen
Insanity [3]
  • Fear that I might lose my mind or go insane
  • I was afraid that the state I was in would last forever
  • I experienced a decreased sense of sanity
Isolation [3]
  • Isolation and loneliness
  • Feeling of isolation from people and things
  • I felt isolated from everything and everyone
Death [2]
  • I had the profound experience of my own death
  • I felt as if I was dead or dying
Paranoia [2]
  • I had the feeling that people were plotting against me
  • Experience of antagonism toward people around me

CEQ authors/article: “Do not use our Paranoia scale; it’s bunk.”

Motivation for this Page

motivation for this article:

My site looks like it’s bad in this regard: For each q’air that I cover, I need to have a simple utility page that presents what each q’air is, including a TOC that lists how many items (psilocybin effect questions) are in each dimension / subscale (effects category).

This is a pretty good exercise to do now that I know what format of summary article I need for each q’air. I can make a clean good model now, using the CEQ, exemplifying what people need. What people need is a textbook that embodies the “Science” –

todo: write book:
Source Book About Psychedelics Psychometrics Questionnaires

That book summarizes each q’air, lists its dimensions/subscales & items; pros and cons; goals and non-goals; history; relation to other q’airs. Special focus on item 54 I was afraid to lose my self control – because given, THIS BUNK SCIENCE TOTALLY FAILED TO MANAGE AND TRACK BAD EXPERIENCES, SO TO COMPENSATE, THE TEXTBOOK MUST PUT SPECIAL EMPHASIS ON BAD EXPERIENCES.

As the gate that Loose Cognitive Science must pass through.

You cannot do Loose Cognitive Science; you cannot do Houot’s “exploration”, unless you have the Egodeath theory.

Houot foolishly/naively claims Shamans “have control” while mystics merely have “surrrenderism”.

Crop by Cybermonk
Houot gathering cubensis to do psychonaut exploration, rejecting mystics’ surrenderism, using shamans who have control, instead

Which is to say, the Main or most interesting & valuable thing that a Psychonaut “discovers” in their “exploration” that Houot calls for is the Control Vortex, it is the most interesting potential, which is why I “equate” Transcendent Knowledge & psilocybin with encountering the control vortex aka shadow dragon monster gate; that threat; that drives mental model transformation.

I cannot say “you will have loss of control unless you have the Egodeath theory of psychedelic eternalism”; I must say “The most interesting POTENTIAL of psil is the control threat transformation potential; the control vortex; mental model transformation about control.

Similar big problem / limitation: My Site Map jumbles all q’airs together, but to cross link all my q’air pages I need linkable subheadings within my Site Map page’s “Q’airs” section.

Final thing to do re creating new CEQ page: check every CEQ page I have, are they all beyond redemption? indicate that at the list of my articles below.

I have a bunch of pages fulminating about how failed the CEQ is, yet, I can’t find my page that simply summarizes/ presents what the CEQ is – At top of such a page, need TOC w/ count of items in each dimension aka subscale.

Such a clean page is lacking, even though a big criticism I have is poor doc’n of the q’airs.

My present design is “rant”; ie intense pages about the CEQ but failing to simply present what the CEQ is.

Throw this MEQ & CEQ Pseudo Science in the Trash and Start Over

LOL – if you think my pages are a mess, you should see the state of the “science” of psychedelics psychometrics q’airs!

CEQ was scraped together, cobbled together, badly.

There is every reason to trashcan it and create a real q’air completely from scratch, completely fresh. Could be:

  • MEQ that includes my ECQ – “Eternalism and Control Questionnaire”.
  • MEQ needs rework to include negative experiences.
  • CEQ made a signif misstep in phase 1 Initial Pool (how those items were gathered), then a HUGE misstep in phase 2 (delete 18 of 21 unpleasant experiences that originated in OAV).

I have to give it more thought about what the people need who created MEQ then CEQ – my ECQ looms large here. OAV is quite good, so:

As a model,

  • Consider OAV (aka APV, 5D-ASC)
  • Consider my ECQ (focuses on Control, and Eternalism effects). ECQ – “Eternalism and Control Questionnaire”
  • Consider what the sum of MEQ & CEQ ought to be replaced by:
  • What was the purpose of MEQ? (subset of SoCQ aka PES)
  • What was the purpose of CEQ?
  • What does the field need?
  • Why wasn’t OAV’s A/Angst/Dread/DED dimension serving that need?
    (APV 1975 –> OAV 1985 –> OAV 1994 –> 5D-ASC [ –> 11 Factors])

Abandon all the q’airs & data gathered so far; to be Science, we need a fresh reset of the whole thing, re: “mysticism” and “challenging experiences”.

Any data and “science” using MEQ and CEQ is malformed and needs heavy correction due to mis-defining “mystical” as “positive”:

Studerus 11 Factors Wrongly Says “Negative, therefore Non-Mystical”

  • See start of Studerus article: “positive therefore mystical; negative therefore bad trip“:

Psychometric Evaluation of the Altered States of Consciousness Rating Scale (OAV) (Studerus 2010)

Erich Studerus 1,*, Alex Gamma 2, Franz X Vollenweider 3
PMCID: PMC2930851  PMID: 20824211

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2930851/
PLoS One. 2010 Aug 31;5(8):e12412. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0012412

“The three primary dimensions were termed
“oceanic boundlessness” (OBN),
“dread of ego dissolution” (DED) and
“visionary restructuralization” (VRS).

The OBN scale basically includes items measuring positively experienced depersonalization and derealization, deeply-felt positive mood, and experiences of unity.

High scores on the OBN scale therefore indicate a state similar to mystical experiences as described in the scientific literature on the psychology of religion (eg, see [20]).

20.Stace WT. London, England: Macmillan; 1961. Mysticism and philosophy.
 [Google Scholar]

The DED scale includes items measuring negatively experienced derealization and depersonalization, cognitive disturbances, catatonic symptoms, paranoia, and loss of thought and body control.

High scores on the DED scale therefore indicate a very unpleasant state similar to so called “bad trips” described by drug-users.

The VRS scale contains items measuring visual (pseudo)-hallucinations, illusions, auditory-visual synesthesiae, and changes in the meaning of percepts.”

Stang Got Griffiths to Admit on Video the MEQ Is Bunk and Knowingly Pleasant-Skewed

Stang got Griffiths to admit, on video, the MEQ is bunk, unbalanced (“positively balanced”, “to capture the light side”), and knowingly omits negative experiences.

Page: Stang Rejects Griffiths’ Conception of “Mystic Experiencing” Used to Experimentally Validate Psilocybin
Section: Stang’s Statements from Conversation with Griffiths, September 2020
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2023/01/02/stang-rejects-griffiths-conception-of-mystic-experiencing-used-to-validate-psilocybin/#September-2020

Video: Psilocybin and Mystical Experience: Implications for Healthy Psychological Functioning, Spirituality, and Religion
https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2020/09/29/video-psilocybin-and-mystical-experience-implications-healthy-psychological
Has a transcription (doesn’t say when Stang vs. Griffiths is speaking).

In that video, Griffiths said:

“we haven’t captured that systematically.
[the speakers are discussing two different things at same time: neg. exp. & entities]

“it’s not part of the mystical experience questionnaire.

“the mystical experience questionnaire is tending to capture the light side of things.

“they’re kind of the classic challenging experience that come into play with psychedelics.

“And that can be absolutely terrifying.

“But there’s no question that that comes up [in our psilocybin experiments].

“And we have an entirely different questionnaire, something called the challenging experience questionnaire.”

“And we try to tap into that.

[“we try” – we tried real hard to delete 18 of 21 Dread items from OAV, and other similar intense control-challenge questions from SOCQ & HRS]

“We’ve been very interested in that feature.

[very interested in getting rid of psychedelic-specific challenging effects, so we are just left w/ Grief therapy]

“But I think psychometrically [per scientific measurement via questionnaires], it [neg. fx] falls apart from at least what we’re describing as the classic mystical experience [according to Stace 1960] that’s positively balanced.”

[“positively balanced” means “get rid of Negative, keep exclusively Positive, and call that “balanced”]

Translation: CEQ – Challenging Experience Q’air – is a show piece only, just a thing we can mention to prevent investigation of NEGATIVE MYSTICAL EXPERIENCES.

CEQ is not meant seriously, but only strategically as a thing to point to, to prevent investigation.

See also:

Page: Psychedelics and the Future of Religion/ Transcendence and Transformation Initiative (Stang, Harvard)
Section: Video 1 (Sep 2020): Psilocybin and Mystical Experience: Implications for Healthy Psychological Functioning, Spirituality, and Religion (Roland Griffiths, Charles Stang)
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2022/12/16/psychedelics-and-the-future-of-religion-transcendence-and-transformation-initiative-stang-harvard/#Video-1

Cole-Turner claims that no academics accept Stace 1960 & the MEQ

See article I found last night – different angle – that claims that no academics accept Stace 1960 & the MEQ:

Psychedelic Mysticism and Christian Spirituality: From Science
to Love
Ron Cole-Turner, Published: 26 April 2024
Citation:
Cole-Turner, Ron. 2024. Psychedelic Mysticism and Christian Spirituality: From Science to Love. religions 15: 537.
https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15050537

Michael Pollan Says the MEQ Is Bunk and Cannot Be Filled in

  • See Pollan reporting that after his terrifying frog experience, 🐸😱
    Pollan was forced to write “NA” instead of “5 out of 5” for the FAILED QUESTION “Did you experience warmfuzzy timelessness?”
    Pollan: “I totally experienced timeless eternity but it was HORRIFIC AND TERRIBLE!”

🍄🐸 🚫🕰 😱

In the book How to Change Your Mind, p. 283, Michael Pollan wrote:

Pollan index, book How to Change Your Mind, find strangely worded entry “Mystical Experience Questionnaires (MEQs), pages 282-284.

p. 278:

“no time or space …

It was just horrible. …

the dimensions of time and space returned …

the leaves … had blown off the great tree of being and scattered to the four winds … find their way back, fly up into the welcoming limbs of reality, and reattach. ….

the terror I had just endured, … died … reborn.”

p. 281:

“I had tied myself up in a philosophical knot, constructed a paradox or koan I was clearly not smart enough or sufficiently enlightened to untangle. …

“one of the most shattering experiences of my life …”

p. 282:

“The MEQ asked me to rank a list of thirty mental phenomena– thoughts, images, and sensations that psychologies and philosophers regard as typical of a mystical experience.

(The questionnaire draws on the work of William James, W. T. Stace, and Walter Pahnke.)

“”Looking back on the entirety of your session, please rate the degree of which at any time … you experienced the following phenomena” using a six-point scale.

“(From zero, for “none at all,” to five, for extreme: “more than any other time in my life.”)

p. 283:

“But I was unsure what to do with this one: “Feeling that you experienced eternity or infinity.”

“The language implies something more positive than what I felt when time vanished and terror took hold: NA, I decided.

“The “experience of the fusion of your personal self into a larger whole” also seemed like an overly nice way to put the sensation of becoming one with a nuclear blast.”

A Channel for Magic: Ralph Hood’s Mysticism Scale and the Occult Roots of the Johns Hopkins Psychedelic Research Program (Kitchens, 2022)

Kitchens “A Channel for Magic”: Debunks Psychedelic Therapy Religion

“A Channel for Magic: Ralph Hood’s Mysticism Scale and the Occult Roots of the Johns Hopkins Psychedelic Research Program
Psychologist Ralph Hood’s study of serpent handling and mysticism helped legitimize the study of psychedelics. So why doesn’t he want them approved for medical use?
Travis Kitchens, September 9, 2022
https://www.psymposia.com/magazine/a-channel-for-magic-ralph-hoods-mysticism-scale-and-the-occult-roots-of-the-johns-hopkins-psychedelic-research-program/

I wrote about this article in https://egodeaththeory.org/2025/04/21/idea-development-page-28/#a-channel-for-magic-ralph-hoods-mysticism-scale-and-the-occult-roots-of-the-johns-hopkins-psychedelic-research-program-kitchens-2022 – at top of page, Find “Kitchens”.

Search site for Kitchens:
https://egodeaththeory.org/?s=kitchens

todo: add section for Kitchens article in my Moving Past Mysticism in Psychedelic Science page.

Mystical and Other Alterations in Sense of Self: An Expanded Framework for Studying Nonordinary Experiences (Taves 2020)

“Mystical and Other Alterations in Sense of Self” (Ann Taves, 2020): Debunks Unity Model of Mysticism

Mystical and Other Alterations in Sense of Self: An Expanded Framework for Studying Nonordinary Experiences
Ann Taves, 2020
Perspect Psychol Sci
2020 May;15(3):669-690
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32053465/
doi: 10.1177/1745691619895047. Epub 2020 Feb 13.
PMID: 32053465 DOI: 10.1177/1745691619895047
Free article at: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/86r3f75j

Erratum in: Corrigendum: Mystical and Other Alterations in Sense of Self: An Expanded Framework for Studying Nonordinary Experiences.
Perspect Psychol Sci. 2022 Mar;17(2):614. doi: 10.1177/17456916221076158. Epub 2022 Jan 24.
PMID: 35073216

I wrote about this article in section https://egodeaththeory.org/2025/05/07/idea-development-page-29/#mystical-and-other-alterations-in-sense-of-self-an-expanded-framework-for-studying-nonordinary-experiences-taves-2020 – at top of page, Find “Taves”.

Search site for Taves:
https://egodeaththeory.org/?s=taves

todo: add section for Taves article in my Moving Past Mysticism in Psychedelic Science page.

THE JAMES/STACE MODEL OF “MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE” IS WRONG AND UNSCIENTIFIC! SO MEQ, BASED ON IT, IS NOT SCIENCE

The problem isn’t the wording of the question so much as bad framing of entire MEQ.

The ENTIRE MEQ is mis-founded on an absurdly fantasized imagined presupposition about “mystical experience is positive” per Studerus’ intro of their 11 Factors article: “Not pleasant therefore not mystical.”

CEQ supposed to catch failures but is a broken wastebasket for the failures of the MEQ. The badness of the MEQ comes from same origin as badness of CEQ – they reflect each other in a bad way.

Scrap both of them and start over, this time, with a reality-based “science foundation” instead of James 1902 / Stace 1960 fantasy foisted as “The science foundation of our psychometrics”.

The Psychedelic Pseudo “Science” Community CONSISTENTLY IGNORES AND SUPPRESSES the Negative Mystical Effects of Psilocybin

  1. James 1902 FAILED to include negative mystical effects.
  2. Stace 1960 FAILED to include negative mystical effects.
  3. Pankhe 1962 MEQ/SOCQ/PES FAILED to include negative mystical effects.
  4. Richards 1975 MEQ/SOCQ/PES FAILED to include negative mystical effects.
  5. Griffiths CEQ 2016 FAILED to include negative mystical effects.
  • MEQ is garbage.
    • “Mystical experiences are positive. Negative experiences are by definition non-Mystical.” Charles Stang got Griffiths to admit on video that the MEQ is bullsh!t. Griftiths’ excuse: “We catch negative effects in the CEQ.” False. CEQ omits 18 of 21 Dread effects, instead delivering irrelevant worthless feeble giant Grief category. BUNK as F!
  • PES/SOCQ is garbage. SOCQ = MEQ + distractor items.
  • CEQ is garbage.
  • OAV is solid.

HRS has some decent negative effects (review them).

SOCQ doesn’t have any negative effects? Review them.

See Also

site map:
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/nav/#Psychedelics-Questionnaires

CEQ section in my “Q’airs References” page:
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2023/01/17/references-for-psychedelic-psychometrics-questionnaires/#CEQ

Here are all my CEQ articles: Is one of them simply a presentation of what the CEQ is? If so, possibly delete the present new page, and improve title of existing page in standard format per any list of my pages that summarize each q’air:

Most likely my main page:

Lacks toc!

That page has url:
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2022/12/16/the-challenging-experience-questionnaire-ceq-characterization-of-challenging-experiences-with-psilocybin-mushrooms-omits-category-threat-of-loss-of-control/

That’s most likely the basic page; check/ confirm/ retitle if so. At the top of that page (lacks TOC!), I wrote:
“Updated Assessment … Instead of expanding the present page, I started a fresh new page, planned title:
How Control-Loss Got Omitted from the Challenging Experiences Questionnaire (CEQ)“

Assessment: todo: important: add TOC to that page. Might be able to rework that page: move … first, in TOC, outline the desired/needed sections. Then rework body in that order. Or, keep that page as-is, develop this new page as a simple presenetation of what the CEQ is.

todo: link from each CEQ page to the Site Map section about CEQ.

todo: in site map page, create subsection for each q’air. Lacking! All jumbled together. do similar to Great Canterbury Psalter: for each 3 main folio images from Great Canterbury Psalter, i have a site map section, that first lists my main article about that image (ie q’air), followed by misc articles about that image (ie q’air).

For each q’air, check URL of my page; check title of my page; make uniform/consistent. So I can tell immediately which page is the main page for that q’air.

Links to the CEQ Articles on web

pending, see my other CEQ articles

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Author: egodeaththeory

http://egodeath.com

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