Cannabis, Psychedelics, and the Search for Gaming Immersion

Video games already alter attention, emotion, and the perception of time. A demanding competitive match can narrow a player’s focus, while an expansive role-playing game can make several hours seem to disappear. Some adult players are adding another variable to that experience by using cannabis, psilocybin, and other psychoactive substances while they play.

A new qualitative study involving 24 adult gamers from Italy and the United States examined why players combine psychoactive substances with recreational gaming.¹ Rather than treating every instance as addiction or indiscriminate intoxication, the researchers asked participants how they selected substances, what experiences they wanted, and how those decisions changed across games and social settings.

The resulting picture is more deliberate than the familiar image of someone getting high and casually picking up a controller. Participants described matching substances with particular genres, tasks, emotional states, and competitive stakes. Cannabis was used for everything from relaxation and immersion to managing frustration. Psychedelics, including psilocybin, were associated with more profound but less predictable changes in perception and the relationship between player and game.

Adult Gamers Are Chasing Lost Immersion

One of the study’s strongest themes was what researchers called “lost immersion.” Participants remembered childhood and adolescence as periods when entering a game world felt effortless. They could play for hours, become emotionally invested, and temporarily forget their surroundings.

That ability often weakened in adulthood. Work, family responsibilities, notifications, limited free time, and guilt about doing something “unproductive” made sustained attention harder to achieve. The games had not necessarily become less sophisticated. Instead, adult players brought more mental baggage into each session.

Some attempted to recreate their earlier absorption by changing their environment, choosing familiar games, playing late at night, or using psychoactive substances. Cannabis and psychedelics were described as potential shortcuts back to deeper emotional and sensory engagement.

This idea matters beyond substance use. It suggests that consumption may sometimes be compensating for an attention problem created by modern life. The substance is not necessarily the original source of immersion. It is being used to suppress distractions, change the player’s emotional state, or make a familiar game feel novel again.

Cannabis Became a Flexible Gaming Tool

Cannabis occupied a particularly broad role in participants’ accounts. Some used it with narrative-heavy role-playing games to deepen emotional involvement. Others paired it with open-world games because they felt it made landscapes more vivid and exploration more interesting.

Repetitive tasks presented another common use case. Gathering resources, improving a character, or repeatedly completing similar objectives can become tedious. Participants reported using cannabis to reduce boredom and make these slower activities more enjoyable.

Competitive gaming produced a more complicated pattern. Some players believed cannabis helped them regulate frustration, avoid impulsive decisions, or approach a difficult situation more reflectively. Others avoided it because slowed reactions and impaired coordination could undermine performance.

This variation supports the researchers’ concept of “situated modulation.” Cannabis did not have one consistent purpose. Its perceived value depended on the player, dose, tolerance, game mechanics, task, social environment, and desired outcome.

A broader review of cannabis and video gaming research similarly found that the relationship remains difficult to reduce to a simple cause-and-effect claim. Gaming frequency, problematic play, cannabis use, and shared personal risk factors can overlap without proving that one directly causes another.

How Substances Were Matched With Games

The study identified several recurring associations between game design and substance choice. These reflect participant reports rather than verified performance effects.

The table reveals an important distinction. Players were not merely choosing between being sober and intoxicated. They were attempting to engineer a particular experience. A substance that appeared useful during open-world exploration could become undesirable during a ranked match requiring precision.

Psilocybin Changed the Player-Game Relationship

Psychedelics played a smaller but distinct role in the study. Only a limited subset discussed using LSD, DMT, or psilocybin while gaming, so these accounts should be treated as exploratory rather than representative.

Some participants reported brighter colors, heightened sound, wonder, euphoria, or an intensified sense of entering another world. Others became detached from the game, unable to understand simple objectives, or reduced to watching events without feeling capable of directing them.

Psilocybin received one particularly notable mention. A participant who regularly microdosed it said the practice stabilized their general mindset rather than directly improving gaming. This is an important distinction. The account does not establish that psilocybin enhances performance, concentration, or mental health. It documents one person’s interpretation of their experience.

Interest in microdosing has expanded well beyond gaming. Recent population research suggests that psilocybin use and microdosing are becoming more common in the United States. Cannabis and psilocybin use also appear to overlap within some populations, reflecting how the two substances increasingly occupy adjacent cultural spaces. MyCannabis has previously examined this cannabis and psilocybin overlap.

However, the substances should not be treated as interchangeable. Research examining how psilocybin and cannabis affect the brain differently reinforces that each can produce a distinct pattern of cognitive and perceptual effects. Cannabis in the gaming study was often framed as an adjustable aid for relaxation or immersion. Psychedelics were more likely to transform the player’s entire relationship with the game, sometimes so dramatically that purposeful play became difficult.

When Deliberate Modulation Misfires

The desire to control an experience did not mean players successfully controlled it. Cannabis could increase anxiety, produce excessive detachment, cause sleepiness, or slow coordination. Psychedelics could make basic tasks incomprehensible or produce distressing dissociation.

The same session could therefore move from intentional modulation to diminished agency. Instead of helping the player shape an internal state, the substance could take control of the experience.

Several factors could determine whether the intended effect appeared:

• Dose and individual tolerance
• Game genre and task demands
• Competitive or social stakes
• The player’s mood and surroundings

These variables resemble the broader psychedelic concept of set and setting, where mindset and environment influence how an experience unfolds. Gaming adds another layer: the software itself becomes part of the setting. Music, visual intensity, narrative themes, social interactions, and mechanical difficulty may all shape the result.

Gaming Raises New Questions About Fairness

Competitive settings introduced ethical questions that were largely absent from casual play. Participants often regarded substance use as acceptable when playing privately but more questionable when rankings, tournaments, teammates, or reputations were involved.

Stimulants raised the clearest concerns because players associated them with alertness and reaction speed. Yet cannabis also complicated the boundary between impairment and enhancement. If a player believes it reduces panic or prevents reckless decisions, they may view it as functionally beneficial even if it slows other aspects of performance.

Unlike conventional sports, online games rarely have a practical way to identify substance use among recreational competitors. Players therefore created personal rules. Some avoided substances during tournaments or ranked sessions even when detection was unlikely. Fairness was negotiated according to context rather than determined solely by whether a substance was legal.

This issue will become more relevant as esports professionalizes and psychoactive products become more varied. Competitive organizations may eventually need clearer policies distinguishing ordinary caffeine use, prescription stimulants, cannabis, microdosing, and prohibited performance enhancement.

What The Study Cannot Tell Us

The research offers valuable first-person accounts, but it cannot determine how common these behaviors are or whether any substance objectively improves gaming. The 24 participants were self-selected, and all effects were self-reported. Researchers did not verify products, potency, dose, impairment, or substance-use disorders. The sample was also not designed to compare Italy with the United States.

Social desirability may have influenced the interviews. Participants could have emphasized purposeful use while minimizing harmful or chaotic experiences. The study also focused mainly on conventional PC and console gaming, leaving virtual reality, mobile games, and location-based experiences underexplored.

Its value lies elsewhere. The findings show that psychoactive substance use can become integrated into digital behavior in highly specific ways. Cannabis may be selected for exploration, emotional regulation, or repetitive tasks, while psilocybin and other psychedelics may alter the entire structure of the gaming experience.

That creates a new research question: if games are interactive environments capable of shaping altered states, how do their design choices interact with psychoactive substances? Answering it will require controlled research that measures performance, mood, perception, dosage, and harm rather than relying exclusively on recollection.

For now, the clearest conclusion is that gaming under the influence is neither universally enhancing nor uniformly destructive. It is a context-dependent practice in which attempts to deepen immersion can just as easily reduce the player’s ability to play.

References:

¹ Boldi, A., Gandhi, K., To, A., & Rapp, A. (2026). Using substances while playing: Players’ motivations, perceptions, and experiences with psychoactive drugs during recreational gaming. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 103924. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2026.103924