Apollo Psychedelic Harm Reduction Survey Study

May 01, 2025

Introduction:

It is well known that safety is critical to ensuring healing experiences, as well as high quality psychedelic experiences that result in short and long-term healing outcomes (1). In addition to adequate preparation for a psychedelic experience, hand-holding, placing hands on the shoulders, other consensual therapeutic touch techniques, as well as soothing music, are described in best-practice psychedelic trainings and protocols and are commonly used in clinical practice with psychedelic medicines (2-5).

While consensual soothing touch within the psychedelic medicine setting has been found to be highly therapeutic to achieve successful healing outcomes, it also poses potential issues of boundary violations such as the one incident that was reported in the MAPS Phase II MDMA-Assisted Therapy Trial that was cited by the FDA. The Apollo technology poses a solution to this issue by allowing patients the ability to experience most of the core physiological benefits of soothing touch on demand, and always under their control, without requiring another person, thereby eliminating the risk of touch-based boundary violations in the psychedelic therapy frame.

Furthermore, as the prevalence of mental illnesses, including substance use disorder, in the United States continues to rise significantly year-over-year (6,7), and most people diagnosed with a severe mental illness retain that diagnosis for life (7), there is a critical need for easier access (e.g. via telemedicine) to psychedelic therapies, such as Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP). While therapeutic touch traditionally delivered by a therapist cannot be delivered over telemedicine experiences, the Apollo wearable poses a potential solution to this problem by allowing patients to access the benefits of soothing touch before, during, and after the KAP session without relying on another human being to deliver it in person. The Apollo wearable is currently being used by in-person and remote healthcare providers around the United States to augment outcomes in KAP.

In 2019, users of Apollo Neuro, a new technology that delivers some of the benefits of soothing touch using gentle silent soundwave vibrations delivered to the body, began voluntarily reporting to the Apollo Neuroscience Research Team that they had been using the Apollo wearable in conjunction with psychedelic experiences. The initial reports provided showed substantial benefit from the technology across three primary domains:

Enhanced calm and anxiety reduction prior to ingesting a psychedelic substance.
Enhanced calm and enhanced feelings of control within the psychedelic experience to help improve one’s ability to navigate a challenging “bad” trip.
Extended benefits of the psychedelic experience in the weeks/months after the psychedelic experience

Upon receiving these initial reports, the Apollo Neuroscience Research Team decided to embark on a survey study to evaluate if these findings were replicable in a large real-world sample of hundreds of people.

Methods:

1000 people in total were recruited to participate in this survey study beginning in 2019. These participants self-identified as people who had already intended to use psychedelics in a recreational, explorational, or clinical setting prior to our team contacting them. No one was encouraged to use psychedelic medicines by the Apollo Neuroscience Research Team and no medicine or medicine experiences were provided by the Apollo Neuroscience Research Team.

Of the 1000 people recruited who were asked to use the Apollo wearable before, during and after their psychedelic experiences and answer three questions after their experience, 517 completed the study. 183 of these participants had their psychedelic experience in the setting of a ketamine clinic with a trained clinical provider. 334 of these participants had a “recreational” self-guided psychedelic experience or an “exploratory” guided psychedelic experience that was provided by a facilitator who was not a trained clinical provider.

Within a month of each participant’s psychedelic experience, they were asked three questions:

Did you feel that Apollo was helpful for providing calm and anxiety relief in advance of ingesting the psychedelic medicine?
Did you feel that Apollo was helpful during your psychedelic experience to enhance feelings of calm and a sense of control/agency that made it easier for you to navigate challenging situations or “bad trips”?
Did you feel that Apollo was helpful after your psychedelic experience to sustain the benefits you perceived from the experience.

Results:

Of the 517 participants who completed a psychedelic experience while using the Apollo wearable, and who completed the 3-question follow-up survey, over 90% of participants reported that Apollo improved the quality of their psychedelic experience.

Average reported Apollo use before an experience was 15 minutes. Average reported use of Apollo during the experience was 30 minutes.

90% of participants reported that decreased anxiety after the psychedelic medicine was ingested and before the psychedelic effects ensued.

95% of participants reported improved feelings of control/agency and calm during the experience when challenging subject matter came up or when they felt they were having a “bad trip”.

84% of participants reported that Apollo use following their psychedelic experience improved their ‘integration’ of what they learned during their experience. These participants also reported that use of Apollo following their psychedelic experience helped to sustain the benefits they perceived from the psychedelic experience.

Discussion:

While it has been known for several decades that safety is critical to ensuring high quality healing experiences, to include psychedelic experiences, that result in excellent and sustained benefit, there have been few new technologies or tools developed that focus on enhancing patient safety to improve clinical outcomes. In this pilot study, we sought to determine if the Apollo wearable technology, designed to enhance safety by modulating vagus nerve activity through the sense of touch, would be sufficient to improve the quality of individuals’ psychedelic experience.

Of the 517 participants who completed the study, 35% were using Apollo in a ketamine clinic setting with a trained provider, while the other 65% were using Apollo in recreational or explorational psychedelic settings. Interestingly, there was no significant difference in participants’ reports of the impact of Apollo between the different settings.

Significant improvements in subjective quality of psychedelic experience were reported across all three domains assessed (before, during, and after). Overwhelmingly, participants reported that Apollo vibrations helped them relax and feel calmer in advance of the medicine session, which they perceived to improve their experience by reducing apprehension anxiety. This benefit of calm carried over into the active medicine experience where participants found that challenging experiences or memories became less challenging to address with Apollo vibrations. Lastly, most subjects also reported that using Apollo after their psychedelic experience helped them to sustain the benefits of the experience, if for no other reason than that it reminded them of how safe they felt with the medicine onboard. Many participants volunteered that it was simply the memory of the positive psychedelic experience that the associated feeling of the Apollo vibrations brought back afterward that allowed them to tap back into what they were trying to learn or change and kept them engaged in their healing process.

Limitations & Future Directions:

This study is a pilot survey study and, as such, is subject to all of the standard limitations of such studies. That said, the results of this pilot study were so significant that it warrants further study of Apollo vibrations to improve the quality and safety of psychedelic experiences, in and outside of the clinical setting.

Following the analysis of these findings, the Apollo Neuroscience Research Team initiated two IRB-approved clinical trials in the psychedelic medicine setting. The first is a study of Apollo to sustain remission from PTSD following MDMA-assisted psychotherapy (8). The second is a study to improve outcomes in a group-therapy study of first-responders with PTSD undergoing ketamine treatment (9). Both of these studies are actively recruiting subjects. If you are a past participant in any MDMA-assisted therapy study conducted by MAPS, click here to find out if you are eligible to participate. Additional IRB-approved clinical trials of Apollo vibrations to improve psychedelic experiences are in development at this time.

References:

Tags:

Psychedelic, Research

Apollo Psychedelic Harm Reduction Survey Study

Apollo Psychedelic Harm Reduction Survey Study

Introduction:

Methods:

Results:

Discussion:

Limitations & Future Directions:

References:

Cart