Spatiotemporal Mapping of Online Interest in Cannabis and Popular Psychedelics before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Poland.
Psychedelics represent a unique subset of psychoactive substances that can induce an aberrant state of consciousness principally via the neuronal 5-HT2A receptor. There is limited knowledge concerning the interest in these chemicals in Poland and how they changed during the pandemic. Nonetheless, these interests can be surveyed indirectly via the web. We aim to conduct a spatial-temporal mapping of online information-seeking behavior concerning cannabis and the most popular psychedelics before and during the pandemic. We retrieved online information search data via Google Trends concerning twenty of the most popular psychedelics from 1 January 2017 to 1 January 2022 in Poland. We conducted Holt-Winters exponential smoothing for time series analysis to infer potential seasonality. We utilized hierarchical clustering analysis based on Wards method to find similarities of psychedelics interest within Polands voivodships before and during the pandemic. Twelve (60%) psychedelics had significant seasonality we proved that psilocybin and ayahuasca had annual seasonality ( Different seasonal patterns exist for psychedelics, and some might correlate with school breaks or holidays in Poland. The pandemic induced some changes in the temporal and spatial trends. The spatial-temporal trends could be valuable information to health authorities and policymakers responsible for monitoring and preventing addictions.