One thought about this and I'd actually consider myself fairly in tune and at peace with my inner self already, so I'd be curious to see how it could help me deal with some of my ruts I get in from time to time.
Alcohol definitely isn't helping
“Rut” and “alcohol” are two words that set off depression alarms. Medication and therapy — or if you’re opposed to medication, just therapy — help. I know from experience.
Edit: Not to be down on psychedelics at all —- I’m optimistic about the role of psychedelics in future depression treatment. It’s just that nearly everything about dosing for depression is anecdote and more mundane tools work in a large number of cases.
I have had therapy over the years, but one thing I was told was that it couldn't be depression because it's so infrequent. I'm more likely just getting sad at times.
Most of the time I'm pepper and optimistic, etc. I might just have a minor burn out from work or I start feeling like I'm not doing enough. Meditation has helped, along with going to the gym, but some times I burn out from that too like boredom (from doing the same thing over and over), and I don't know why
https://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/2192202... isn't a terrible place to start.
[0]: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/magic-mushro... [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29024808 [2]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-022-01661-0
I agree that N=34 seems low. The effect would have to be quite large to be detected and there may be a risk of Type M (magnitude overestimated) and Type S (incorrect sign) errors. The results should therefore be interpreted in the light of a power analysis.
The most likely biases and noise comes from experimental design and other factors related to the study.
In exploratory science doing two different studies with N=30 is much better than doing one study with N=60.
Personally and subjectively it did help me, I wasn't depressed but it did help with creativity and learning, I gained like 150-200 points on chess.com just from playing and reviewing games (rarely)
Care to elaborate why?
"However, we observed a trend towards impaired performance in some cognitive tasks (i.e., attentional blink and Stroop)... future research should also explore the potential impact of microdosing on aspects of human physiology that could compromise its long-term safety."
How hard is it to come off it?
> According to our findings, low doses of psilocybin mushrooms can result in noticeable subjective effects and altered EEG rhythms, but without evidence to support enhanced well-being, creativity and cognitive function. We conclude that expectation underlies at least some of the anecdotal benefits attributed to microdosing with psilocybin mushrooms.
And any geek who had The Way Things Work on the (rents'?) bookshelf as a kid would get a kick out of PIHCKAL and TIHKAL, the father of "officially done right" psychoactive synthetic experimental chemistry's two compendious ½-&-½ encyclopædiæ\tomes, each split down the middle: first the detailed, timestamped group dose controlled-environment reports with friends and colleagues (maybe mainly fellow accademicians from Cal. Berkeley), then the terse Chemistry-journal style synthesis-procedure lab-8nstr7ction recipe database and huge index of subtance-nicknanes.
I lived illegally for a time in a closet-sized office I rented in OAKtown; chill RockerChik[tm] who did the same down the hall told me about the guy's public funeral and his last gift (of which she accepted a dose to take home and try).
And although probably already discussed on yc, the only other mass-market book I've ever read the didn't pander or condescend to the reader by expecting technical symbols to scare us away is essentially all of the (central-core + a bit of stringstuff) math-and-physics base-knowledge you need, from prehighschool fractions through exterior\Clifford Algebra tensor calculus and 1-forms and things, to be able to attack the real literature like a grad student. Diagrams every other page or so, including his own invention of graphic symbols which is really the only reasonable (visible notational) way to manipulate general Tensors. Flip through it and all that exotic\fancy\mysterious mathematics formula gobbledygook is dense and enticing for kids who haven't seen multiple and path integrals and PDEs before, but the explanation is well written an holds your hand to actually bring you through it. It's like 2⅜+inches of trade-paperback goodness 1st 580?\850? or so pages mainly math and relativity, rest of 1300pp or so of mainly quantum physics and cosmology, by the guy (Nobel in Phy.,PhD was math) who had the first famous bet with Hawking, wasn't it? Sir Roger (Penrose). Only complaints: stupid 1st title word, and overambitious promise RE posting solutions for the ton of easy-through-WTF-level excersise footnotes. Great for every mathscience-nonaverse 6+yo competent English reader on your list who thinks actual details scare only sissies, and if nec. you can always put tl;dr here: I personally recommend those who can afford c.$US 20(newish) to buy and READ\BROWSE\REREAD\SHARE ppbk "The Road to Reality" BY [now Sir] Penrose, Roger (RE:pre-Higgsmass edition)
Microdosing that one alone would bring enormous benefits... "Ego death" is basically an axiom on all doctrines promising more fulfilling, meaningful lives.
Yes, psilocybin helps a lot on microdosing it... One-point anecdata.
folks are getting taught that the source of their problems is their “ego”, ignoring that we need a functioning ego to survive. it’s not something to be demonized or eliminated. rather, an opportunity to integrate that part of ourselves and our relationship to it, including any stories that we may be telling ourselves about the inherent pathology of ego.
please note i am using the term “ego” in a psychoanalytic sense, not in the pop-connotative sense of displays of narcissistic arrogance.
Certainly the CIA was trying to use psychedelics as interrogation tools and perhaps as part of a 'dirty tricks campaign' (secretly dosing politicians before speeches, etc.), and there was a lot of collaboration with various university psych departments in terms of research (students, prison inmates, etc. as research subjects) as well as in prostitution houses. This is all well-documented.
However, it really escaped from their control and had unexpected side effects. A good case example is that of Frank Olson, a bacteriological warfare specialist who was collaborating with the CIA in the MK-ULTRA program. After being dosed in a 'training session' with CIA members, he had apparent pangs of conscience (early 1950s) and wanted to quit the program. This was a period when the USA had an active biological weapons program, built in part on research results taken from the Japanese biological weapons program, and may have been testing biological weapons in North Korea as well. (This was all later exposed in the 1970s Congressional hearings, but at the time was top secret). It's quite likely that the CIA assassinated Frank Olson while claiming his death was a suicide, out of fear he would reveal all this to the public.
Hence, I doubt the central theme of your argument - psychedelics can have a wide variety of effects on individuals, and tend to be feared by authoritarians because of these unpredictable effects (abandoning religious belief or faith in authority is not an uncommon result). In addition, drug use is something humans have gravitated towards in every known society throughout recorded history, there's no need to invoke secretive government agencies and hidden motives to explain it.
If you think about it, a lot of the Silicon Valley advancement of the chip and subsequent computer revolution was driven by the early lsd/shrooms advocates. In a way they did become the new ruling class.
Issue with tech titans is that unlike oil, it (software) threatens to directly displace finance. So oil and finance do tussle ("who runs barter town?") but there are synergies. But finance is likely a subset of an abstract notion of 'software'. Lords of software threaten to displace those of finance. (If we lived in a SciFi world, Apple would be secretly building an armed forces with their mountain of cash by now :)
Eh, perhaps that was their motivation, but I'm not at all convinced that would have been the result. Though illegal, Psychedelics have been widely available for decades. Those results have failed to materialize.
I'd say it 'dies' during the trip as it is ripped from you. In my experiences however it took quite a dose to achieve that.
To me the folks warning to be careful about stress and things you avoid facing when tripping hard are dead-on.
Mushrooms have a way of cleansing the mind and soul, but that's if you are lucky,and you'd best be ready for it.
Usually it's just some cool visuals and good feelings.
1) Their dose got the participants a little high still (and thus impaired cognitive tasks)
2) Their study did not investigate long-term safety
Why would you jump to the conclusion that it is hard to come off of it?
2) exactly, the long term effects on a lifestyle are unknown
3) i'm asking, not jumping. personal experience and lack of long term studies
It seems by a cursory glance that most analyses done were of the latter kind, and I think then a study such as this, with low N, is expected to not show very much effect of any kind. (Since the intersubject variability and potentially also the natural intrasubject variability for most measured scales seem higher than any expected treatment effect).
I am almost certain that e.g. none of the approved and quite convincingly working SSRI:s would have shown any efficacy in a study with this design and similar N.
- Assume that a microdose either improves an outcome, or does nothing. Then, averaged over a large group, such random improvements would lift the group's outcome a little. It's a microdose worth taking.
- Assume that a microdose can both improve and worsen the outcome, or have no effect. If the experimental group's averaged results are indistinguishable from the control group's averaged results, it means that the microdose worsens the outcome about as often and / or as much as it improves it. This, to me. means that a microdose is a gamble not worth taking.
There is, of course, a difference between a microdose having no effect at all, or having an effect which can be either positive or negative. This difference is important for further research. For usage here and now, it's sadly irrelevant.
If a microdose only works when the person taking it knows it works, then it's basically the placebo effect. A good placebo can be useful, at least for commercial purposes.
This has always been the problem with psychedelics as a therapeutic approach. It's hard to reconcile being a responsible clinician and recommending a therapy with such mixed and often-negative results. They are in charge of a person's mental well-being in a way that people evangelizing psychedelic therapy don't seem to properly appreciate. If a patient is interested in that therapy, they might be a better candidate, but even then... if the results aren't great it's hard to justify.
Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with psychedelics for personal use, and I've seen them do wonderful things for people. But I've also seen them do horrific things to people and I feel like a lot of young people have a great trip and then immediately conclude that literally every human being NEEDS to go out and trip without any more consideration. That same sort of evangelism carries over to the microdosing realm. It may have a place! But personally, I've tried it with psiolocybin, and I found that typical microdoses have a very detrimental effect on my ability to focus.
And there may still be meaningful treatment effects, at least judging by current standard of care for many psychiatric ailments and how those have performed in studies.
Again, I'm quite confident that the effect of many current psychiatric standard of care treatments would never have been picked up by this study. Not because they don't work (at least somewhat), but simply because there is too much noise and natural variability.
That’s called cherry picking. Results are always noisy. You could give two groups of people the same tests on different days without any drugs at all and some subset would show “improvement”. If you start focusing on the individuals that show the result you want to see, you cherry-pick your way into false results.
This is a well-known way for researchers to abuse variable or noisy data sets to misleadingly show the result they want to show.
> I am almost certain that e.g. none of the approved and quite convincingly working SSRI:s would have shown any efficacy in a study with this design and similar N.
Thats not true. SSRI studies with ~30 people will show a trend toward improvement in the SSRI group that exceeds the placebo group. I think you’re confusing the different statistical measures.
This study showed that expectations and placebo effect were the predictor of micro-dosing success. The blinded group and unblinded group showed completely different results.
> That’s called cherry picking. Results are always noisy. You could give two groups of people the same tests on different days without any drugs at all and some subset would show “improvement”.
No, GP is talking about a matched pairs design. You look at the difference between the scores of very similar individuals by applying one treatment to each (active and placebo), or, applying both treatments to the same individual (in random order).
Cherry-picking would mean only using scores from selected individuals, whereas matching only emphasizes the difference.
The notion is that the difference between participants can mask the effect of the drug, such that comparing any individual participant to anyone but themselves is improper.
They had all participants on shrooms for 1 week, and on placebo for 1 week (order randomized), and compared the results.
Anecdotally, I've had a degree of short term success treating my depression with smallish doses of mushrooms, but I've never had the continuing access required for a microdosing regiment.
It'd be nice if the government were willing to come to the table on this, but alas.
That said, every time that I've had a months long lift, it hasn't been a small dose, but an epic dose that often cast me into a night of turmoil.
(Which would make the rigours of double-blind testing completely ineffectual.)
Get up early, do a workout, take cold shower, meditate and then pop a microdose shrooms, feels great. Microdosing is like steroids for meditation.
Especially helpful for the programmer logic types of people like me, gets you out of your head for some time and helps you connect with your emotions and body.
Microdoses of psychedelics are not impairing. On the contrary, they can improve performance, especially in abstract problem solving.
Also, I've experienced about 40 different psychoactive drugs, including both micro and megadoses of psychedelics. And my experience tracks with GP in that it does cognitively impair you. Maybe don't make blanket statements about people you disagree with, it doesn't make your argument look any stronger.
The dose was 0.5g of dried Cubensis mushrooms. Usually a microdose is 0.1-0.2g.
All the participants were healthy volunteers. There may be more noticable effects in people with depression or anxiety disorders, etc. Consider that antidepressants often have no effect in healthy volunteers.
Precisely. This experiment had nothing to do with microdosing. Half a gram is a light dose but it is definitely inebriating.
Sounds more like a specs of a DSL modem than a psychiatry paper. I certainly didn't expect to see Lempel-Ziv mentioned in a context other than compression.
> half a gram doses of cubes.
I don't think the studies designers really thought this one through.
0.3g is about the ceiling for a microdose of dried cubes, and even then, that's a touch high for most people.
The quantity was anything but microdoses though. Each time I had them the amount ranged from 6x to 10x individual dried caps (over a period of 4-5 hours each time).
I'm not sure about its impact on my creativity though, but it sure did not impact negatively.
I've taken magic mushrooms quite a few times, and it definitely had an impact on negativity right after and for many weeks.
For me, negativity was down regulated.
This might not be true of everyone's experience though.
> The reported acute effects were significantly more intense for the active dose compared to the placebo, but only for participants who correctly identified their experimental condition. [...] For all other measurements there was no effect of microdosing except for few small changes towards cognitive impairment. According to our findings, low doses of psilocybin mushrooms can result in noticeable subjective effects and altered EEG rhythms, but without evidence to support enhanced well-being, creativity and cognitive function. We conclude that expectation underlies at least some of the anecdotal benefits attributed to microdosing with psilocybin mushrooms.
So the creatures who can take flight in a light breeze are the ones who can sense the breeze. That sounds about right.
Well, clearly far-fetched from original research goals, and from what it means to creativity in particular.
In my experience, creative periods require a sustained abstainment of other info sources combined with a self-stimulating force and (sometimes) a controlled use of mind-altering substances (from coffee to full-dose mushrooms). So asking for creativity improvements on a small-sample, scope-constrained study is way too far-fetched from that.
/jealous.
> The reported acute effects were significantly more intense for the active dose compared to the placebo, but only for participants who correctly identified their experimental condition.
Does that 'correct identification' go both ways, psilocybin & placebo? If so I don't think they claimed a strong enough result!
That seems like a 'bigger' result to me than what's claimed. (Which is why I'm not sure I'm understanding it correctly.)
I absolutely refuse to try anything like this outside of an environment I have some level of control in or trust in the people around me(not the general public I.E: Bars, clubs, Vegas, etc).
Any advice on what to avoid for a first timer from any experienced person here?
I find attempts to study psychedelics with placebo control kind of comical. The positive effects are not due to a chemical change, they are due to a direct subjective experience [1][2]. It's like trying to placebo control the effects of reading a good novel or seeing a sunset.
But I guess this does help to dispel the similarly comical idea that a completely non-psychoactive dose of psychedelics can be beneficial.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8033615/#:~:tex...
[2] https://superbowl.substack.com/i/65186479/the-psychedelic-ex...
But this of course introduces more uncertainty, as you pointed out, so to have any conclusive results a much larger sample group would be needed, I think.
Also I agree with others that comparison with the baseline for each test subject, not just between the test group and control group, would be important.
(note - "in mice")
I think this research was not done in the US but in another country (not sure which one?), not sure if research norms or availability or what differ there.
I think there may be that if they isolated psilocybin, they could have missed other compounds that play a part in causing desired effects. Obviously this is a different substance than cannabinoids, but I think when it comes to plants it makes more sense to test it exactly how subjects use it rather than use synthetics.
edit: I hope I didn't cause offence to any mushroom - of course they are not plants, but I hope you get my point.
* https://www.vice.com/en/article/93a5x3/judges-deny-challenge...
This is the main reason with psychoactive mushrooms overall. You can't dose exact via bio material so overdosing happens regular and could be actually harmful.
Not really - its from the Greek for small, rather than a SI prefix in this context. If the suffix were quantitative then you might have a case, but we talk quite happily about microphones and microscopes. Microdose is useful because it is not conditional on a particular regular dose size, we just know it is much lower than usual.
In reality, in Ancient Greek the opposite of "micro" was "mega", i.e. "big" (so megameter vs. micrometer was a correct addition to the metric system in 1873, like also the name Micromegas, which was coined by Voltaire in one of his novellas), while "macro" meant "long", not "big".
("macro" is cognate with words from other European languages which mean slim/slender/thin/lean, only in Ancient Greek its meaning has shifted from "slim" to "long", replacing the older word for "long", "dolicho").
They're starting to, although they haven't funded a study on microdosing for depression.
> [October 2021] Johns Hopkins Medicine was awarded a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to explore the potential impacts of psilocybin on tobacco addiction. This is the first NIH grant awarded in over a half century to directly investigate the therapeutic effects of a classic psychedelic
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/newsroom/news-releases/...
Though the progress in the US/Canada makes me think that maybe in 15-20 years NZ can have a referendum and continue with prohibition.
Can you elaborate?
I'm not judging you for wanting to be high all the time, I've been there myself. But be intellectually honest and call it that, at least. Because it's not some kind of psychological panacea, and I wish people would stop implying it is.
And yes, I've tried it. It made me high, but generally I was far less productive than I would be taking stimulants for my ADHD instead.
I had some coworkers try microdosing several years ago.
They were convinced that they were smarter and more productive on those days. Meanwhile, the rest of us could clearly see that they were just operating slower than normal and had a weirdly positive response to even slight achievements. Eventually the illusion was shattered when the rest of us would casually guess when they were microdosing and call them out because they were making obvious mistakes, missing things, or being amazed at benign realizations.
And before anyone asks: Yes, they tried many different doses down to minuscule amounts.
In retrospect, this is actually the least surprising result: That taking a micro-dose of a psychedelic produces a micro-trip.
They end up overdoing, and overthinking about it and it all has a bad end.
And you claim it is the microdose that made you less productive?
I posit you need to take a microdose with your normal ADHD medication, otherwise the anecdote is meaningless even as a personal reference.
If it made you high, you didn't microdose.
But if you did all of those things without the shrooms you likely would still feel great.
Especially exercise which is scientifically proven to improve wellbeing unlike the shrooms.
> Microdosing is like steroids for meditation.
I feel like I see a bit of wanting it both ways from people who like microdosing. There are lots of reports, like in this study, that the practice slightly (but only slightly!) lowers performance in most tests. On one hand, that's a pretty good trade-off as far as psychopharmaceuticals go. On the other hand, that's never how advocates present it. It's never "I'm a little less sharp but a lot happier."
My personal view of the situation is that the traditional view that psychedelics push peoples' mental mindsets away from those that work best with capitalist models of productivity is correct. Stoners really don't make 'good workers' (though a good worker could still gain a much needed respite by getting a little stoned here and there). But actually that is good! A drug that had mild side effects and allows you to be released from the productivity-focused conditioning of our work-culture is a really useful tool. You just shouldn't focus your advocacy on the idea that these drugs should be promoted on the off chance they increase productivity: because the mean case is not going to.
Edit: A clearer way to state what I mean is - occasional stoners probably do make more balanced workers - but they probably don't do their best work while they are stoned (or micro-stoned) and trying to insist they do seems unlikely to be the argument that decriminalized psychedelics.
I found that when I was microdosing it made me way more mindful and apt to make "good/healthy" choices than normal. I think this is a tremendous benefit but for me very difficult to differentiate from a placebo effect.
The linked study seems to contradict you:
>> According to our findings, low doses of psilocybin mushrooms can result in noticeable subjective effects and altered EEG rhythms, but without evidence to support enhanced well-being, creativity and cognitive function. We conclude that expectation underlies at least some of the anecdotal benefits attributed to microdosing with psilocybin mushrooms.
Psychedelics give you a new map into reality. If nobody teaches you how to read the map, it's easy to get lost or misread it. Integrating a bunch of different maps can be very challenging.
Charitably, what they probably mean is that if we model god as the sum total of all experiences and all things, then it can be said that we are all aspects of divinity.
The tree recognizes itself as a tree and as part of the forrest.
I'm a very strident atheist and even I would claim that I have "found god" while high on mushrooms. And you and I both happen to be "it".
I'm not pointing at the institutional god. But I end up using the institutional words, because it's hard to find other words that describe it properly.
Alan Watts is the closest I've found that describes it without using religious phrases.
The logistical problem of getting access to these experiences if you wait until well after college is not insurmountable (especially with THC, today) but it definitely seems more like a project than just showing up on a Friday night to your extended social group.
Poor Paul Stamets ('the' mushroom guy of this era). From his writing it seems like half the people who want to talk to him want him to hook them up with psychedelics. It's hard to tell if he's playing up that ratio or playing it down. His standing answer is "I don't do that, I can't help you." He also mentions that the DEA has made him aware that they are aware of his existence.
“That led to being covered by a DEA [Drug Enforcement Administration] license to study psilocybin active mushroom species. So, I specialized in the taxonomy of those species, and then, because of the cultivation skills that I gained, I branched out into growing edibles and medicinals, and my mother was much happier.”
https://www.herbalgram.org/resources/herbalgram/issues/109/t...
or it can feel quite curious, new, refreshing, even liberating.
or anything else along that spectrum.
However, the effects of even a single trip can be quite profound and life changing.
In case you don’t have such person, for you first experience I would say that doing alone is better than doing with bad people or in crowded places. I would suggest tripping in a place you are comfortable with, with lots of blankets and pillows. For the first time I would avoid going outside, because even tho nature is astounding on trip, as a first time it could be a bit overwhelming. Prepare music that you like and gives good vibes to you. I personally prefer music without lyrics as those can be distracting. If you have a dog or a cat, know that they might act weird towards you, like if they are kind of scared. This is the setting.
The most important thing is that a trip is kind of like a roller coaster, once you get on it, you can’t get off until it finishes, meaning that you have to be open minded and ready to see and feel whatever your mind will show you. I personally like to think about people that I love in my life, and I explore the feeling inside of my body. This is the set.
If you are feeling like you are entering a thought loop, or negative thoughts, changing the setting (so changing music, going to another room) could help. At some point you will need to go to the bathroom. Be ready, the experience will be very weird, because the bathroom is usually smaller than other room, you are naked, and there are mirrors. For your first time I would suggest to avoid looking at yourself in the mirror, as the experience of seeing yourself aging or morphing could be quite disorienting.
If you need any more info there are subreddit that provide great source for everything you need. Have a safe trip!
Stay in a safe place, with a trust friend that is sober(a "tripsitter"). And start low, 1.75g dosage or so.
It can be an unpredictable experience, even in the right setting, so that is why traditionally, entheogens are always consumed in the presence of a shaman/guide.
Edit: How to find them? Go make friends with some artists or hippies. The pizza delivery guy with a crystal necklace? Ask him to hang out :)
An "experienced person" in this case will not help you because it means someone who's been doing drugs for a while and there is at least a chance that their cognitive function is impaired and that you shouldn't trust their judgement.
Either (1) it has no effect or (2) the strength and direction of the effect are random. Either of those qualities renders the intervention ineffective. You can’t justify giving a patient something that will have no effect, or will make them worse off half of the time when there are more effective options are on the table.
Of course this is comes with the caveat that the study is adequately powered to detect the strength of the effect you are looking for. That being said, there is plenty historical data for the placebo, so I don’t think that being underpowered because of misestimation of the background variance would be an issue.
As has been pointed out to you several times.
Science does not and cannot work by cherry picking.
Its about what I'd take if I wanted to enhance a visit to a museum or art gallery, or music production.
Its not what I'd take and try do a day of work.
I'm on mobile so I've only cursorily scanned the article. Looking at subfig E in figure 1, it seems that differences between active and placebo were minimal. I haven't checked their stats relating to those differences.
So I think the effect the authors found does seem small.
However, usual caveats: very small study, etc. I'd want to review the reliability and sensitivity of the questionnaires they used. Subjective experiences are of course difficult to capture reliably.
Having said that, and considering I've only scanned this briefly, it seems like a well designed study - for what it's doing. Adding the quantitative elements of EEG etc is nice.
The discussion section is good, the authors acknowledge several possible weaknesses and explore explanations.
So overall, looks interesting, but it's not definitive (and the authors don't claim it is). It's not a refutation of microdosing, it just adds to the literature, and perhaps offers things for future researchers to explore/control.
I hate these "two seemingly valid and contradictory ways of looking at it" things.
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/allg3/i_used_lsd_and_... (I see this is anecdotal as well)
Its hard to find serious papers about it because most of the time its due to "abuse" of drugs and (!) mixed consums.
Anyways, I had a friend who was really into mushrooms overall (not only psychoactive ones) and while he was pretty open to drug using he stated multiple times that overdosing can lead to bad trips and so called "hängenbleiben" (I dont now the english term, it means the trip never really stops).
In the former case, a positive outcome is expected and therefore negative outcomes are in a sense less tolerable, especially since a false positive would lead to people repeatedly microdosing over an extended period of time, to their long-term detriment.
In the latter case, a "negative experience" does not preclude getting the desired results. And an acute negative experience in a one-time dose may be tolerable when contrasted with the long-term severity of the pathology it is meant to treat.
These are not microdosing experiments though. The usual way it is handled is that you get a few weeks of CBT then you get half a dose and the following week you get a full dose followed by more weeks of CBT. There is no placebo effect here that's possible because, well, it is impossible for someone to believe they have taken a full dose of pscychodelic drugs and not feel anything. But you still have a control in this case because you have a group that goes through CBT and another group that goes through CBT + drugs.
In fact, from these studies there have been very little "bad trips", mostly I guess because you have the half-dose session and then the full dose session in a very controlled environment and so on. These experiments are obviously done quite responsibly.
So I think you're mixing things up a little bit and I would suggest doing a little more research in the topic. Psychodelic therapy, at least the kind that is being explored seriously is not really done through microdosing.
From what I recall, a low dose of methylphenidate is used as a control in many studies because it has some of the same side effects without the trip. For psychedelic-naive people who don’t really know what to expect, I could see it being an ok control. Once you’ve experienced a single high-dose trip though… yeah… you’re never going to trick someone with it.
That just means you can't possibly have a proper control. BIG difference.
That’s the key point. This person expects it to work so it works. They’re not adding it to their Morning Productivity Hacks Routine because they think it doesn’t work.
There is a concept of subgroup analysis in studies like these, but you have to be careful about how it’s done and what conclusions are drawn. If you simply select positive results and exclude negative results then even the placebo group would show great success.
This study showed that telling people that they were microdosing was more important for the perceived outcome than the micro dosing itself. In other words, placebo is key to making it work.
Where did zosima ask to do that? They mentioned that the variable of comparison should be changes from baseline metrics in treatment group vs changes from baseline metrics in control group. That would be a fair study, and isn't cherry picking.
True microdose alone: no noticable effect on concentration, and some worsening.
Subpsychedelic yet strong enough doses to have stimulant effects: significant effect, but working memory was somewhat impaired. Impulsivity also increased.
Various conventional but obscure RC stimulants: some were highly effective, even more so than D-amp or mph. But it wasn't possible to rule out long term cardiotoxic effects like valvulopathy, so I didn't stick to them for safety reasons.
Then I did some limited trials with said stims + a true microcode, this just made me extremely scatterbrained and I quickly discontinued.
Eventually I decided even if I found something, which I had, I couldn't safely use it long term anyway. I cleaned up my act long enough to get real meds.
Whilst I'd generally hate for a 1 meter bee to exist, it might be worth it just for the nerd joke.
So purely factually, a microbe is only 1/10000th of a bee
Luckily for you a rare sight - https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a4/Sa...
I know of maybe one or two people who gave themselves cognitive tests during their experience. I don't recall the results but I clearly didn't take them seriously since I'm still unconvinced. I don't know about you guys but I tend to do better if I'm given the same kind of test three or four times. So if I were doing this experiment and my results stayed steady, I'd objectively be losing capacity versus the control.
And a related anecdote: I once asked my psychologist to do an IQ test on me, mainly out of curiosity. She refused, basically giving the logic you did. We have no reason to believe your IQ is low, or even average, and if we did do a test, and at some future point we needed a test for actual diagnostic purposes(say if I had a stroke or something), it could taint the result.
So I'd say you're right on the money wrt the limited usefulness of doing these neuropsych tests repeatedly. Especially over short periods.
I have larger infrequent doses, and I'm doing so with decreasing regularity.
Although I guess you'd describe that as the binging form of addiction.
Other shamen ate the yellow-spotted mushrooms that were found deep in the hair thickets and said things like: ‘Hiiiiyahyahheya! Heyaheyayahyah! Hngh! Hngh!’ which certainly sounded magical.
Pismire said things like, ‘Correct observation followed by meticulous deduction and the precise visualization of goals is vital to the success of any enterprise. Have you noticed the way the wild tromps always move around two days ahead of the sorath herds? Incidentally, don’t eat the yellow-spotted mushrooms.’
Which didn’t sound magical at all, but worked a lot better and conjured up good hunting. Privately some Munrungs thought good hunting was more due to their own skill. Pismire encouraged this view. ‘Positive thinking,’ he would say, ‘is also very important.’
https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/childrens-article/the-car...
Don't eat the yellow-spotted mushroom, folks. I guess it's not trendy to say it, but the magical shamen have had one too many.
Threshold dose = dose at which effects can barely be perceived
Low dose = dose at which effects become definitely perceptible
The people in this study were taking something between a threshold dose and a low dose, given some interpersonal variability.
This incorrect use of "macro" in English appears to have started in the second half of the 19th century, when the study of the classical languages in school was already in regression.
I don't know any Greek or non-English European languages, but assuming what you said is accurate:
> ("macro" is cognate with words from other European languages which mean slim/slender/thin/lean, only in Ancient Greek its meaning has shifted from "slim" to "long", replacing the older word for "long", "dolicho").
> most English speakers now use the word "macro" incorrectly, which was my point, because they do not know Ancient Greek
Given that the Ancient Greek meaning is not the "original" meaning anyway, is there a reason to assume that the Ancient Greek usage is "correct" and modern English is "wrong"? How long do we have to go back in time, given that most of us don't have time machines?
Also, why would you draw the line between using existing "wrongly constructed" words and creating them? Aren't using words part of the creation process? Why don't you create alternate versions of words that are more correct? Wouldn't you say that those who allegedly created "wrong" words have the same consideration as you do (i.e. if they used the "correct" way to construct new words nobody would understand them)?
That does not mean that one should not be aware that the creation of such words was based on laziness and ignorance and one should not coin any new words of this series.
You say this, and yet you are writing English and not Proto-Indo-European. Curious!
Individuals around the world are still mostly allowed to use (or not) any word they choose. It may look like patchwork to you, but the importance of etymology of a word takes a backseat to its ability to successfully convey meaning.
what are you eating the day beforehand / how is your diet in general? (like, lots of greasy, heavy food the day before / day of, or more on the lighter, healthier side of things?) this can really impact a body’s response to mushrooms on a gastrointestinal level.
those being more fundamental, I would say - but on top of that, could consider a hot-water infusion with anti-emetic herbs like ginger. tends to be smoother on the GI (provided you haven’t filled your stomach contents as way as well). tends to come on more quickly as well.
something else to consider is that gastrointestinal distress with psilocybin can be an indication of unprocessed emotional material and / or trauma. there’s different ways to work with that, in that context.
I agree there's really no meaningful concept of "general impairment" unless you're talking about something more extreme like a brain disorder or heavy alcohol intoxication with global involvement leading to something like a coma or gross movement disorder.
These various neuropsych tests try to test something as specific as possible. Working memory for instance. Their development is a complicated field all on its own. And this is psychology, so it's good to keep the reproducibility crisis in mind and adjust one's credences accordingly.
There's a really cool painter whose name I forget who mainly does self portraits while under the effect of various substances. The one where he huffed computer duster for instance,is just a few meaningless lines on a mostly white canvas. That's a pretty good example of global impairment right there. And there's also sorts of paintings on psychedelics, showing varying degrees of visual impairment. Really recommend googling the guy if you want a very visceral way of visualising the various impairments brought on by psychoactive drugs.
This is becoming an unfocused rant so I'll cap it off here I guess.
But I’d say 99% chance no. I’d know the difference.
This is obviously talking about doses closer to mega dose than micro dose. Although as time went on, even small doses that wouldn’t get me much of a buzz would still ruin me for weeks afterwards.
That is insane
How is your brain not fried
I jest, but mostly I took reasonable precautions and stuck to things I was reasonably sure weren't harmful, or at least toxic. I've had some very bad times with the synthetic cannabinoid, though, and I don't wanna go into it other than to say: I was hella lucky not to have my brain fried. Happy to say I've gained a healthier relationship to drugs since then.
I've heard James Fadiman reporting twice that it is 10% of a recreational (1-3g) or therapeutic dose (3.0-3.5g), but certainly not 10% of a heroic dose. This study went with 0.5g which is 10% of what's considered a heroic dose.
The effective dose is considered to be 6mg if psilocybin or 0.6g of dried magic mushroom, thus the amount given in the study is very close to being detectable (and incidently was in most of the cases) which I don't think you can charaterize as a microdose. James Fadiman expressly stated a microdose would be a dose that you couldn't detect and would forget you had taken while going on about your day.
If one is taking 0.2-0.3g of dried magic mushroom this would be, without question, not getting high.
During my youth, I had strong trips with .5g and meh one's with a few grams, sure it's not the norm but it's not an exceptional occurrence either.
My experience told me that the stem of the smallest mushrooms are a lot stronger than those of the bigger one but that an heuristic not an hard rule.
If I wanted to microdose psilocin (for which psylocibin is a prodrug), I would order 4-AcO-DMT¹ fumarate (another prodrug for psilocin) from a reputable Canadian chemical supplier. It's almost identical to mushrooms, the difference being that it is predictable and somewhat easier on the digestive system.
1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O-Acetylpsilocin https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/4-AcO-DMT
I know some English names can go both ways like Evelyn or Shannon etc, but is Emily one of them?
[Edit: OK, I've heard people say that aspirin doesn't work for them, but what they meant was that they had pains that were too strong to respond to mere aspirin.]
A lot of the time, yes. For example, I have a bad physical reaction to aspirin -- it makes me vomit. I've tried several times over my life, and each time I had the same result. It does not work for me in the common use, plain medical sense of the phrase.
Also, just to be clear, I don't think you're saying that you have to be in a special frame of mind for psychoactive drugs to make a difference. For example, I've been told that homeopathy doesn't work for me because I "don't believe in it", but I'm pretty sure that a sufficient dose of psilocybin would get me just as high as anyone else (modulo tolerance), belief or no belief.
But, for example, I was told that homeopathy doesn't work for me because I don't believe in it. And I think what the OP says that it's OK if "it" (in this case, microdosing rather than homeopathy) doesn't work for you then that "is OK too" is something I hear the most not from people who find that, say, aspirin doesn't work for them but ibuprofen, or paracetamol, does; but rather what I hear from people who take a remedy that not only has no effect on others, but has no documented effect on most people and has no clear mechanism of action, other perhaps than the placebo effect (which I understand to be regression to the mean).
So that's why I'm skeptical. With normal medicine, drugs will have an effect on some people or others regardless of whether someone believes they will or not, but with alternative remedies, they will only have an effect on those who believe in them and we can only observe the effect by asking them how they feel (for example, no homeopathic remedy will ever reduce blood pressure).
Any neuroticism can bubble to the surface and you might find yourself obsessing over a bad habit you have instead of enjoying the mystery and pattern of the universe.
For example I’ve twice taken mushrooms while I was lonely. About 1 gram. In both cases I ended up just feeling an amplified sense of loneliness that was very difficult to handle. Another time, and this wasn’t particularly bad, but I ended up thinking about my parents dying (they’re still alive) and it was a powerful feeling. That was good though, because after that I began to put more effort in to seeing them and spending time with them.
But my point is that the experience is a powerful mental experience that is affected by what is on your mind. So they strongly recommend only doing a trip if you have a good mindset and a good setting to do so. Otherwise wait.
By the way the parent comment is correct. Psychedelics bring up a powerful feeling of connectedness with the universe. You feel like you’re seeing patterns of the matter around you and you feel one with it all. I’m not a mystical person but that’s how I’ve felt on a strong trip.
Whereas psychoactive drugs generally affect the actual underlying processes in the brain through various interactions with receptor, enzymes, or neurotransmitters.
I hope that distinction makes sense.
Whereas the OP (root of the thread) is talking about microdosing, which is, if I understand it correctly, taking drugs in an attempt to not get high, but get other benefits?
As to the "powerful feeling of connectedness with the universe", well, I've been drunk and I found that I loved everybody around me and I felt a strong emotional connection with total strangers. But, I was drunk. It's relaxing, it's disinhibiting, it's fun, it's making yourself deliberately and temporarily mentally impaired, why not? But there's nothing more to it.
In fact, I'd go as far as to say that the defining characteristic of intoxication, in my experience, is of being dumber than usual, which can be suprisingly enjoyable. Certainly not something to be desired as a constant state, though.
So I really don’t see it as “getting high”, and that’s why people call it a trip rather than getting high.
My point about the connectedness is that it’s not mysticism, that’s just how people really feel. Don’t misunderstand those descriptions as the person being more mystical than you. That’s how you’d feel on the right dose of mushrooms too.
To clarify, as far as I understand, "set and setting" matters when taking psilocybin to get high, but microdosing is taking psilocybin (or other similar drugs) to very deliberatly not get high.
So what does "set and setting" have to do with microdosing, and why doesn't it matter with aspirin, which also doesn't get you high?
Now I've never microdosed mushrooms, but it's not hard for me to imagine that this same concept applies, of actively pursuing a good experience, which can steer that experience in a good direction. It will just be at a much smaller scale.
For myself I think of this phenomenon as a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy (not meant as a judgement about others) which helps me to keep in mind that I'm the one in control (assuming doses are not excessively high, I think others in this thread call those "heroic doses").
