21 ms·

Microdosing with psilocybin mushrooms: a double-blind placebo-controlled study

307 points by freddier 4y ago

Cockbrand 4y ago
The TL;DR essence from the abstract: > 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.
- moravak1984 4y ago
  > 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. 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.
- Syzygies 4y ago
  > but only for participants who correctly identified their experimental condition. So the creatures who can take flight in a light breeze are the ones who can sense the breeze. That sounds about right.
yarg 4y ago
(It's strange that we're using the term microdose, even in scientific contexts - prefixes have meanings - it should be called a decidose.) 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.)
- timthorn 4y ago
  > It's strange that we're using the term microdose, even in scientific contexts - prefixes have meanings - it should be called a decidose. 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.
  - quickthrower2 4y ago
    What is the difference between "Low Dose" and "Microdose" though? I have heard the specific term Low Dose before.
    - carrychains 4y ago
      Generally, a microdose is supposed to be below threshold. In other words, imperceptible. A low dose can be above threshold. This study seems to be testing something most microdose adherents would refer to as a low dose.
    - eurasiantiger 4y ago
      Microdose = sub-perceptual dose 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.
      - carrychains 4y ago
        .5 is definitely a low dose for anyone who has experienced it more than a few times or an actual low dose at least once. Realistically, I'd expect only a first timer could possibly think .5 is imperceptible.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
Gimpei 4y ago
The N of this study is 34, but it’s probably multiple observation. How do you calculate power in this case? Is it just based off N, in which case, seems low…
- tmalsburg2 4y ago
  Power analyses for repeated measures designs are usually done with Monte Carlo simulations: you generate fake but plausible data sets with a hypothesized effect size, then analyze these data sets and count how often the effect is detected. 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.
- nabla9 4y ago
  Statistical analysis exploratory studies tho get some ballpark numbers. They didn't even estimate power in this case. If you have to rely on statistics to observe effect, the effect is small. 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.
Maursault 4y ago
Maybe the trendy hallucinogenic microdosers should try microdosing food, water, air, speech and constantly being the center of attention. It just isn't interesting giving credibility to a new ignorant generation rediscovering what was known in some cases 60-80 years earlier, in some cases thousands of years earlier. Rediscovery is not interesting. It is embarassing.
- aszantu 4y ago
  embarassing for whom?
- moravak1984 4y ago
  > and constantly being the center of attention. 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.
  - _wa6f 4y ago
    i find the notion of ego-death to often be quite misdirective. 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.
    - effingwewt 4y ago
      I think 'death' is a misnomer here. It doesn't kill it so much as force you to acknowledge and face it. 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.
nevershower 4y ago
I see the appeal of microdosing, but to me it renders similar to the kick you might get out of rebelliously sipping a pocket-flask at work. You get the mental boost of "letting loose" while impaired just below the radar.
- eurasiantiger 4y ago
  This is a common fallacy perpetuated by people who have only experienced the alcohol drug. Microdoses of psychedelics are not impairing. On the contrary, they can improve performance, especially in abstract problem solving.
  - geden 4y ago
    Apparently not, according to this study at least.
    - hinkley 4y ago
      And according to several other top level comments with anecdotes.
  - mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
    This study doesn't bear that out, nor have any other placebo-controlled trials. 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.
    - ace2358 4y ago
      This aligns with my experiences. Especially for me, how low my productivity was during the come down, which could sometimes last a week or four!
      - cdot2 4y ago
eurasiantiger 4y ago
Based on available literature, 0,5 grams of dried mushrooms is definitely not a microdose.
ivoras 4y ago
I have a feeling the hedonic treadmill is to blame.
- rco8786 4y ago
  Blame for what
EmilyHughes 4y ago
Been doing it for some months on & off, this shit is legit. Altough 0,5g has me tripping so I rarely dose above 100 milligrams. 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.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
  Yeah, drugs feel great, news at 11. If psychiatry was just a matter of giving people a constant buzz, it would be solved a century ago. 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.
  - eurasiantiger 4y ago
    Uh, so you took a break from your ADHD medication to microdose? 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.
    - nibbleshifter 4y ago
      - mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
    - mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
      No, I wasn't on medication at the time, couldn't get a script. I was looking for possible replacements, and a few psychedelics(LSD and 2C-B to name a couple) have psychostimulant properties. The idea was to try a few different regimens: 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.
schappim 4y ago
TL;DR (via GPT3): Microdosing with psilocybin mushrooms did not have any positive effects on well-being, creativity, or cognitive function. The only noticeable effects were subjective changes and altered EEG rhythms.
- thegreatdukd 4y ago
  What did you add as an input to GPT-3 and what was your prompt? Have you considered some smaller models like Longformer or Big Bird with fine-tuning on research papers?
OJFord 4y ago
Am I reading this right, from the abstract: > 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!
- feet 4y ago
  Some people may also just be more sensitive to serotonergics, therefore it's simply easier for them to identify
  - OJFord 4y ago
    But regardless of what enabled them to identify it - even if just a 50:50 guess, but a correct one - thinking they were on it (vs. thinking they were not) made it a significant enhancement? That seems like a 'bigger' result to me than what's claimed. (Which is why I'm not sure I'm understanding it correctly.)
    - mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
      You could see it that way. More intuitive to me though is that the ones who guessed correctly, had a stronger subjective effect, therefore were more successful in guessing. Does that make sense? I hate these "two seemingly valid and contradictory ways of looking at it" things.
    - austinjp 4y ago
      It is ambiguously worded, I agree. 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.
Gatsky 4y ago
I think this is saying that microdosing is mainly placebo effect, and otherwise doesn’t do much. This makes sense. All these participants took full dose psychedelics at some point, and thus had very strong associations.
- BossingAround 4y ago
  So far, as far as I know, that seems to be the prevailing scientific opinion, i.e. microdosing seems to be about as effective as placebo (at least microdosing of psilocybin).
  - bkitano19 4y ago
    I think the point of differentiating between the blinded and unblinded groups was to show that placebo alone does not account for the effects of microdosing.
iammjm 4y ago
I had some positive results with microdosing. I used the fadiman protocol for a whole month, ingesting about 0,1g - 0,2g self grown dried mushrooms, on an on-off-off-on basis.
anovikov 4y ago
It's very difficult to dose mushrooms properly, in real world, content of psilocybin in a particular bag of mushrooms may vary by a factor of 5 or more, plus it decays at speed hard to predict. Even proper taking of mushrooms is quite unpredictable - you can be blown away or hardly feel anything - and microdosing is always harder. Personally i don't like mushrooms for that reason. If you could eat more if the original amount turned insufficient that would be OK, but psychodelics just don't work that way.
iryntyis3 4y ago
Look into Reckful if you have any interest in this subject
magnat 4y ago
> These changes were accompanied by reduced EEG power in the theta band, together with preserved levels of Lempel-Ziv broadband signal complexity. 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.
kybernetyk 4y ago
The only thing I got from microdosing shrooms was a near death encounter with a bus. :)
- toxicFork 4y ago
  Can you elaborate please?
  - jstummbillig 4y ago
    Assumedly, they nearly walked in front of a bus after microdosing(?) shrooms. If not, ELABORATE PLEASE.
    - kybernetyk 4y ago
      yes, this. my awareness was somewhat diminished. but then again I had no proper way to really accurately microdose - so I might have taken too much. trying to accurately dose a natural product like mushrooms is rather difficult.
      - mmsnberbar66 4y ago
Kalanos 4y ago
sounds like a temporary anti-depressant, but a bad lifestyle choice
- BossingAround 4y ago
  > but a bad lifestyle choice Care to elaborate why?
  - Kalanos 4y ago
    Did you read the paper? "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?
    - BossingAround 4y ago
      The only thing you quoted is the tudy saying that: 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?
      - Kalanos 4y ago
        1) that's a prolonged effect, not just mid-high 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
honeybadger1 4y ago
I have been interested for quite some time to dabble with psilocybin but just haven't yet had the chance with buddies(outside of a work related traveling event) to do so. 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?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- lake_vincent 4y ago
  Yes, go find an experienced person to do it with. Microdoses are fine to do alone, but anything beyond that and you will want a guide. 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 :)
- toxicFork 4y ago
  From personal experience: Phone notifications, doorbells, cameras, recording or healthcare equipment, people with bad vibe
- ryanchants 4y ago
  Queue up your favorite good-mood music, or a just a tripping playlist from Spotify or similar. Music has a huge impact on trip feel for me, and I can normally adjust out of a difficult trip with a music change. Stay in a safe place, with a trust friend that is sober(a "tripsitter"). And start low, 1.75g dosage or so.
- YeGoblynQueenne 4y ago
  I would say that if you want to maintain your cognitive function at peak efficiency your best bet is to not do anything that has a chance to affect it negatively, like doing drugs. 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.
drekipus 4y ago
How does one even get contacts to consider this (in a safe manner)? 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
- jnovek 4y ago
  I know my posts on Hacker News are like a broken record, but have you considered talk therapy (if it’s available to you)? “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.
  - drekipus 4y ago
    Cheers, I appreciate that. 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
- ebb_earl_co 4y ago
  If you live in Canada, and specifically in Vancouver, there are de facto legal operating dispensaries for psilocybin [0]. If you don't live there, but live in the USA, some of said shops will ship products to USA. Now, I don't know if this hits your threshold for "safe", but seeing as the doses involved are quite low, one could argue that it would be safer than, say, starting a new (SSRI) antidepressant if you take into account long-term effects [1], side-effects, etc [2]. [0]: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/magic-mushroom-dispensaries-in-vancouver-1.6385792 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/magic-mushro... [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29024808 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29024808 [2]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-022-01661-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-022-01661-0
umvi 4y ago
Do mushrooms make you write incoherent ramblings on Facebook about how you are God and how everyone else is stuck in the matrix? Because I have 3 different friends who all started doing that after dabbling in psychedelics
- texasbigdata 4y ago
  No. Schizophrenia does. Probably a few other things.
- poulpy123 4y ago
  As far as I know it is a possible side effect of psychedelics indeed
- BossingAround 4y ago
  The perceived effects of psychedelics can be very strong. That is why it's recommended to take them with a professional, so as not to become delusional, e.g. being a god. However, the effects of even a single trip can be quite profound and life changing.
- kayza 4y ago
  It actually really does show you a „different reality“. It has different effects on different people, I assume. For me, it was quite eye-opening, in that it made me stop using cigarettes for example. But for others, it leads to those strange thoughts of living in the matrix or something
- jnovek 4y ago
  I’ve seen the observation that psychedelics evoke a sense of spirituality in people. I wonder if this is how people cope with that feeling of spirituality if they don’t participate in any organized religion?
  - _wa6f 4y ago
    it depends, of course. to experience a transpersonal / “spiritualized” angle into reality can be deeply challenging for non-religious, non-spiritual, or atheist folks. or it can feel quite curious, new, refreshing, even liberating. or anything else along that spectrum.
zosima 4y ago
In studies such as these with huge intersubject variability, and probably also quite large intrasubject variability from day to day on many scales, it makes sense to look at change from baseline for individuals in the various groups rather than just differences in raw scores between treatment groups. 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.
- nine_k 4y ago
  I don't see how this may be relevant to the usefulness of microdosing. - 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.
  - zosima 4y ago
    If the natural variability is high enough, then any effect will be hidden by it. Sure, we can say with some certainty that the effect of microdosing on most scales are not that huge. But we wouldn't have expected very large effect sizes anyway, because they are almost unheard off. (Unless the subjects become really severely impaired) 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.
danielunited 4y ago
Microdosing is great but not for everyone. It can actually increase your anxiety if you take too high a dose. Personally, I take a micro dose of LSD every other Friday, drink a cup of coffee and hit the gym. It does wonders. And definitely not addicting.
- goodoldneon 4y ago
  What's your dose and what are some of the benefits you get?
- InCityDreams 4y ago
  You're lucky you can repeatedly trust your source, and their measuring skills. /jealous.
  - CPLNTN 4y ago
    If you switch to RC there very reputable vendors in the EU
knbknb 4y ago
The study participants tried psilocybin (mushrooms) for microdosing (low dosing actually); but it seems to me that the more common practice is to use LSD for microdosing, at least according to the references #1,2,3 in the paper.
MrDresden 4y ago
Anecdotally in the past I have felt major differences in my mood right after and over the next few months since after taking mushrooms containing psilocybin (liberty caps locally picked growing in nature). 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.
- TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago
  It's not clear what you mean here? 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.
  - MrDresden 4y ago
    Since it wasn't clear; I noticed a clear positive impact on my mood but did not notice any measurable positive gains in creativity (nor any negative impacts).
whalesalad 4y ago
Psilocybin has truly saved my life. I micro 200-250mg of homegrown every few days.
frankfrankfrank 4y ago
I wish people better understood that their advocacy of and for drugs is and was pushed by the CIA to essentially deconstruct and damage a society that would otherwise organize and oppose the will of the ruling class. There is an interesting book that was recently released, The Poisoner in Chief that is a good introduction, even though it seems it is meant to also be a bit of a rehabilitation of a horrible human, Sidney Gottlieb.
- tananaev 4y ago
  Any links to support this theory?
- j_m_b 4y ago
  >that would otherwise organize and oppose the will of the ruling class 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.
- phonescreen_man 4y ago
  Are you suggesting the CIA pushed lsd/shrooms to alter society in a way that was beneficial for the ruling class, or they pushed society in a direction to ban those substances to keep people from organizing and becoming a ruling class? Or something else? 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.
  - eternalban 4y ago
    Hardly. Negotiations are continuing. Over in China, Ma was cut down to size. Earlier we had Gates' congressional woes before he found philanthropy Jesus, and Jeff's dirty laundry was all over internet. The last time something like this happened was with Oil. Rockefeller was integrated. A couple of centuries before that bankers were integrated. (There was a "glorious revolution" and that's what got serious European/English imperialism going.) 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 :)
j_m_b 4y ago
I'm sort of surprised they didn't extract/synthesize psilocybin directly and administer that. Decades ago, I grew a few batches of P. Cubensis. Even amongst mushrooms from the same rice cake, the dosage wildly varies. You could have a "trip" from a tiny mushroom or eat a handful of duds.
- jrochkind1 4y ago
  Same. Most psilocybin research I am familiar with synthesizes psilocybin, in part to be able to exactly control dosage, indeed. But it may also be to avoid dealing with illegal market? 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.
- entropie 4y ago
  > Even amongst mushrooms from the same rice cake, the dosage wildly varies 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.
  - h2odragon 4y ago
    Extracting from shrooms with ethanol is quite consistent, the psilocybin isn't very soluble so after a few days soaking you can be pretty confident that the ethanol has taken up all it can. for microdosing the ethanol probably isn't enough to worry about trying to take it back out of solution, drink .25 oz or so.
  - sowbug 4y ago
    Would you mind citing a case of harm caused by pharmacological effects of mushroom overdose? My own online research since your post found no such recorded instances, but perhaps we're using different terminology.
    - entropie 4y ago
      I actually cant, my knowledge is anecdotal. When I search around the web, there are articels that stating the same. Here is a (old) reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/allg3/i_used_lsd_and_shrooms_a_handful_of_times_and_now/ 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).
fallingfrog 4y ago
It improves your mood, which quiets down the internal critic always shouting at you that what you’re creating is a waste of time. That’s probably the actual most important benefit.
- CPLNTN 4y ago
  Exactly, from personal experience I would say the effect of proper micro dosing is very similar to the benefits that experience meditators report when asked
___2-__---_--__ 4y ago
Thanks for all the great info. EROWID was long before the decriminalization trend, the "right thing" to check before you trip\try any new subtance people might use for psychoactive effects. And many (including "heroic-to-crazy" sounding combinations) pharm-and-farm\forrest caffeine+substanceX etc. Look for "trip reports" section, if its still in business. 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)
gwern 4y ago
Note: the 2021 preprint version https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.11.30.470657v1.full https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.11.30.470657v1.... was also extensively discussed, so that is why this might sound familiar.
nibbleshifter 4y ago
> microdosing > half a gram doses of cubes. I don't think the studies designers really thought this one through.
- erokar 4y ago
  Agree, does seems high.
  - nibbleshifter 4y ago
    0.5g of dried cubes is more so a "museum dose". Not visibly impairing for me, but certainly can feel something. 0.3g is about the ceiling for a microdose of dried cubes, and even then, that's a touch high for most people.
  - hinkley 4y ago
    Pun intended?
  - Jolter 4y ago
    If you think the dose is too high, yet they found no significant effect compared to placebo, what would you expect would happen at a _lower_ dose?
    - nibbleshifter 4y ago
      0.5 grams of p. cubensis is a noticeable dose. Its not a microdose by any means, and usually will result in some impairment. 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.
jack_pp 4y ago
Considering micro-dosing either helps you or at worst it has no bad effects I don't see why you wouldn't try it if you had access to it and the legal aspect didn't hinder you. 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)
- jack_pp 4y ago
  To all those down-voting, I'm sorry but am I to believe n=20 studies when there's a huge replication crisis or hundreds of people who took the risk, tested it on their own and reported on it? I'm not saying studies are useless but just basing your beliefs on small studies like this is crazy to me.
Rackedup 4y ago
here even spores are illegal....
jerrygoyal 4y ago
I wish these academic articles also had TLDR section
- fumblebee 4y ago
  You mean, the abstract?
- mjlawson 4y ago
  That's the purpose of the Abstract. > 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.
mjfl 4y ago
Looks like they found no change on a wide variety of tests, like measurements of openness and creativity, except for an array of subjective, psychedelic experience questions like "Sounds influences things I see", "I see distorted shapes", etc.
kirsebaer 4y ago
Participants were required to bring their own psilocybin mushrooms. Probably because it can be expensive and difficult for researchers to get obtain and administer pharma-grade psilocybin. 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.
- josebrwn 4y ago
  >The dose was 0.5g of dried Cubensis mushrooms. Usually a microdose is 0.1-0.2g. Precisely. This experiment had nothing to do with microdosing. Half a gram is a light dose but it is definitely inebriating.
- standardUser 4y ago
  We need better terms for differentiating low doses and true microdosing. Half a gram is certainly a low dose, but I'd expect most people to feel at least some high.
superb-owl 4y ago
> 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 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/#:~:text=Finally%2C%20in%20a%20psilocybin%20study,again%20suggesting%20some%20specificity%20to https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8033615/#:~:tex... [2] https://superbowl.substack.com/i/65186479/the-psychedelic-experience https://superbowl.substack.com/i/65186479/the-psychedelic-ex...
- mlindner 4y ago
  "Experience" is a thing represented by chemical markers in the brain however. It's all electrochemical in the end. And I have heard first hand stories directly from people who used to use the stuff that it absolutely changed their personalities, i.e. brain damage which is a chemical effect.
SergeAx 4y ago
Skimming the abstract, my eye catched a mention of the "Lempel-Ziv". I know it's a name of algorithm used in early loseless file archivers (later replaced by Lempel-Ziv-Welch, which is used today in GIF image compression). Imagine my surprise learning that part of this algo is used now in biomedicine to measure complexity of brain activity. Truly, one never knows where things are gonna end up.

307 points by freddier 4y ago

The TL;DR essence from the abstract: > 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.

moravak1984 4y ago
> 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. 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.
Syzygies 4y ago
> but only for participants who correctly identified their experimental condition. So the creatures who can take flight in a light breeze are the ones who can sense the breeze. That sounds about right.

yarg 4y ago

(It's strange that we're using the term microdose, even in scientific contexts - prefixes have meanings - it should be called a decidose.) 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.)

timthorn 4y ago
> It's strange that we're using the term microdose, even in scientific contexts - prefixes have meanings - it should be called a decidose. 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.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  What is the difference between "Low Dose" and "Microdose" though? I have heard the specific term Low Dose before.
  - carrychains 4y ago
    Generally, a microdose is supposed to be below threshold. In other words, imperceptible. A low dose can be above threshold. This study seems to be testing something most microdose adherents would refer to as a low dose.
  - eurasiantiger 4y ago
    Microdose = sub-perceptual dose 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.
    - carrychains 4y ago
      .5 is definitely a low dose for anyone who has experienced it more than a few times or an actual low dose at least once. Realistically, I'd expect only a first timer could possibly think .5 is imperceptible.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]

Gimpei 4y ago

The N of this study is 34, but it’s probably multiple observation. How do you calculate power in this case? Is it just based off N, in which case, seems low…

tmalsburg2 4y ago
Power analyses for repeated measures designs are usually done with Monte Carlo simulations: you generate fake but plausible data sets with a hypothesized effect size, then analyze these data sets and count how often the effect is detected. 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.
nabla9 4y ago
Statistical analysis exploratory studies tho get some ballpark numbers. They didn't even estimate power in this case. If you have to rely on statistics to observe effect, the effect is small. 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.

Maursault 4y ago

Maybe the trendy hallucinogenic microdosers should try microdosing food, water, air, speech and constantly being the center of attention. It just isn't interesting giving credibility to a new ignorant generation rediscovering what was known in some cases 60-80 years earlier, in some cases thousands of years earlier. Rediscovery is not interesting. It is embarassing.

aszantu 4y ago
embarassing for whom?
moravak1984 4y ago
> and constantly being the center of attention. 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.
- _wa6f 4y ago
  i find the notion of ego-death to often be quite misdirective. 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.
  - effingwewt 4y ago
    I think 'death' is a misnomer here. It doesn't kill it so much as force you to acknowledge and face it. 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.

nevershower 4y ago

I see the appeal of microdosing, but to me it renders similar to the kick you might get out of rebelliously sipping a pocket-flask at work. You get the mental boost of "letting loose" while impaired just below the radar.

eurasiantiger 4y ago
This is a common fallacy perpetuated by people who have only experienced the alcohol drug. Microdoses of psychedelics are not impairing. On the contrary, they can improve performance, especially in abstract problem solving.
- geden 4y ago
  Apparently not, according to this study at least.
  - hinkley 4y ago
    And according to several other top level comments with anecdotes.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
  This study doesn't bear that out, nor have any other placebo-controlled trials. 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.
  - ace2358 4y ago
    This aligns with my experiences. Especially for me, how low my productivity was during the come down, which could sometimes last a week or four!
    - cdot2 4y ago

eurasiantiger 4y ago

Based on available literature, 0,5 grams of dried mushrooms is definitely not a microdose.

ivoras 4y ago

I have a feeling the hedonic treadmill is to blame.

rco8786 4y ago
Blame for what

EmilyHughes 4y ago

Been doing it for some months on & off, this shit is legit. Altough 0,5g has me tripping so I rarely dose above 100 milligrams. 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.

mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
Yeah, drugs feel great, news at 11. If psychiatry was just a matter of giving people a constant buzz, it would be solved a century ago. 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.
- eurasiantiger 4y ago
  Uh, so you took a break from your ADHD medication to microdose? 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.
  - nibbleshifter 4y ago
    - mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
  - mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
    No, I wasn't on medication at the time, couldn't get a script. I was looking for possible replacements, and a few psychedelics(LSD and 2C-B to name a couple) have psychostimulant properties. The idea was to try a few different regimens: 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.

schappim 4y ago

TL;DR (via GPT3): Microdosing with psilocybin mushrooms did not have any positive effects on well-being, creativity, or cognitive function. The only noticeable effects were subjective changes and altered EEG rhythms.

thegreatdukd 4y ago
What did you add as an input to GPT-3 and what was your prompt? Have you considered some smaller models like Longformer or Big Bird with fine-tuning on research papers?

OJFord 4y ago

Am I reading this right, from the abstract: > 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!

feet 4y ago
Some people may also just be more sensitive to serotonergics, therefore it's simply easier for them to identify
- OJFord 4y ago
  But regardless of what enabled them to identify it - even if just a 50:50 guess, but a correct one - thinking they were on it (vs. thinking they were not) made it a significant enhancement? That seems like a 'bigger' result to me than what's claimed. (Which is why I'm not sure I'm understanding it correctly.)
  - mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
    You could see it that way. More intuitive to me though is that the ones who guessed correctly, had a stronger subjective effect, therefore were more successful in guessing. Does that make sense? I hate these "two seemingly valid and contradictory ways of looking at it" things.
  - austinjp 4y ago
    It is ambiguously worded, I agree. 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.

Gatsky 4y ago

I think this is saying that microdosing is mainly placebo effect, and otherwise doesn’t do much. This makes sense. All these participants took full dose psychedelics at some point, and thus had very strong associations.

BossingAround 4y ago
So far, as far as I know, that seems to be the prevailing scientific opinion, i.e. microdosing seems to be about as effective as placebo (at least microdosing of psilocybin).
- bkitano19 4y ago
  I think the point of differentiating between the blinded and unblinded groups was to show that placebo alone does not account for the effects of microdosing.

iammjm 4y ago

I had some positive results with microdosing. I used the fadiman protocol for a whole month, ingesting about 0,1g - 0,2g self grown dried mushrooms, on an on-off-off-on basis.

anovikov 4y ago

It's very difficult to dose mushrooms properly, in real world, content of psilocybin in a particular bag of mushrooms may vary by a factor of 5 or more, plus it decays at speed hard to predict. Even proper taking of mushrooms is quite unpredictable - you can be blown away or hardly feel anything - and microdosing is always harder. Personally i don't like mushrooms for that reason. If you could eat more if the original amount turned insufficient that would be OK, but psychodelics just don't work that way.

iryntyis3 4y ago

Look into Reckful if you have any interest in this subject

magnat 4y ago

> These changes were accompanied by reduced EEG power in the theta band, together with preserved levels of Lempel-Ziv broadband signal complexity. 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.

kybernetyk 4y ago

The only thing I got from microdosing shrooms was a near death encounter with a bus. :)

toxicFork 4y ago
Can you elaborate please?
- jstummbillig 4y ago
  Assumedly, they nearly walked in front of a bus after microdosing(?) shrooms. If not, ELABORATE PLEASE.
  - kybernetyk 4y ago
    yes, this. my awareness was somewhat diminished. but then again I had no proper way to really accurately microdose - so I might have taken too much. trying to accurately dose a natural product like mushrooms is rather difficult.
    - mmsnberbar66 4y ago

Kalanos 4y ago

sounds like a temporary anti-depressant, but a bad lifestyle choice

BossingAround 4y ago
> but a bad lifestyle choice Care to elaborate why?
- Kalanos 4y ago
  Did you read the paper? "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?
  - BossingAround 4y ago
    The only thing you quoted is the tudy saying that: 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?
    - Kalanos 4y ago
      1) that's a prolonged effect, not just mid-high 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

honeybadger1 4y ago

I have been interested for quite some time to dabble with psilocybin but just haven't yet had the chance with buddies(outside of a work related traveling event) to do so. 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?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
lake_vincent 4y ago
Yes, go find an experienced person to do it with. Microdoses are fine to do alone, but anything beyond that and you will want a guide. 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 :)
toxicFork 4y ago
From personal experience: Phone notifications, doorbells, cameras, recording or healthcare equipment, people with bad vibe
ryanchants 4y ago
Queue up your favorite good-mood music, or a just a tripping playlist from Spotify or similar. Music has a huge impact on trip feel for me, and I can normally adjust out of a difficult trip with a music change. Stay in a safe place, with a trust friend that is sober(a "tripsitter"). And start low, 1.75g dosage or so.
YeGoblynQueenne 4y ago
I would say that if you want to maintain your cognitive function at peak efficiency your best bet is to not do anything that has a chance to affect it negatively, like doing drugs. 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.

drekipus 4y ago

How does one even get contacts to consider this (in a safe manner)? 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

jnovek 4y ago
I know my posts on Hacker News are like a broken record, but have you considered talk therapy (if it’s available to you)? “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.
- drekipus 4y ago
  Cheers, I appreciate that. 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
ebb_earl_co 4y ago
If you live in Canada, and specifically in Vancouver, there are de facto legal operating dispensaries for psilocybin [0]. If you don't live there, but live in the USA, some of said shops will ship products to USA. Now, I don't know if this hits your threshold for "safe", but seeing as the doses involved are quite low, one could argue that it would be safer than, say, starting a new (SSRI) antidepressant if you take into account long-term effects [1], side-effects, etc [2]. [0]: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/magic-mushroom-dispensaries-in-vancouver-1.6385792 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/magic-mushro... [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29024808 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29024808 [2]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-022-01661-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-022-01661-0

umvi 4y ago

Do mushrooms make you write incoherent ramblings on Facebook about how you are God and how everyone else is stuck in the matrix? Because I have 3 different friends who all started doing that after dabbling in psychedelics

texasbigdata 4y ago
No. Schizophrenia does. Probably a few other things.
poulpy123 4y ago
As far as I know it is a possible side effect of psychedelics indeed
BossingAround 4y ago
The perceived effects of psychedelics can be very strong. That is why it's recommended to take them with a professional, so as not to become delusional, e.g. being a god. However, the effects of even a single trip can be quite profound and life changing.
kayza 4y ago
It actually really does show you a „different reality“. It has different effects on different people, I assume. For me, it was quite eye-opening, in that it made me stop using cigarettes for example. But for others, it leads to those strange thoughts of living in the matrix or something
jnovek 4y ago
I’ve seen the observation that psychedelics evoke a sense of spirituality in people. I wonder if this is how people cope with that feeling of spirituality if they don’t participate in any organized religion?
- _wa6f 4y ago
  it depends, of course. to experience a transpersonal / “spiritualized” angle into reality can be deeply challenging for non-religious, non-spiritual, or atheist folks. or it can feel quite curious, new, refreshing, even liberating. or anything else along that spectrum.

zosima 4y ago

In studies such as these with huge intersubject variability, and probably also quite large intrasubject variability from day to day on many scales, it makes sense to look at change from baseline for individuals in the various groups rather than just differences in raw scores between treatment groups. 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.

nine_k 4y ago
I don't see how this may be relevant to the usefulness of microdosing. - 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.
- zosima 4y ago
  If the natural variability is high enough, then any effect will be hidden by it. Sure, we can say with some certainty that the effect of microdosing on most scales are not that huge. But we wouldn't have expected very large effect sizes anyway, because they are almost unheard off. (Unless the subjects become really severely impaired) 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.

danielunited 4y ago

Microdosing is great but not for everyone. It can actually increase your anxiety if you take too high a dose. Personally, I take a micro dose of LSD every other Friday, drink a cup of coffee and hit the gym. It does wonders. And definitely not addicting.

goodoldneon 4y ago
What's your dose and what are some of the benefits you get?
InCityDreams 4y ago
You're lucky you can repeatedly trust your source, and their measuring skills. /jealous.
- CPLNTN 4y ago
  If you switch to RC there very reputable vendors in the EU

knbknb 4y ago

The study participants tried psilocybin (mushrooms) for microdosing (low dosing actually); but it seems to me that the more common practice is to use LSD for microdosing, at least according to the references #1,2,3 in the paper.

MrDresden 4y ago

Anecdotally in the past I have felt major differences in my mood right after and over the next few months since after taking mushrooms containing psilocybin (liberty caps locally picked growing in nature). 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.

TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago
It's not clear what you mean here? 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.
- MrDresden 4y ago
  Since it wasn't clear; I noticed a clear positive impact on my mood but did not notice any measurable positive gains in creativity (nor any negative impacts).

whalesalad 4y ago

Psilocybin has truly saved my life. I micro 200-250mg of homegrown every few days.

frankfrankfrank 4y ago

I wish people better understood that their advocacy of and for drugs is and was pushed by the CIA to essentially deconstruct and damage a society that would otherwise organize and oppose the will of the ruling class. There is an interesting book that was recently released, The Poisoner in Chief that is a good introduction, even though it seems it is meant to also be a bit of a rehabilitation of a horrible human, Sidney Gottlieb.

tananaev 4y ago
Any links to support this theory?
j_m_b 4y ago
>that would otherwise organize and oppose the will of the ruling class 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.
phonescreen_man 4y ago
Are you suggesting the CIA pushed lsd/shrooms to alter society in a way that was beneficial for the ruling class, or they pushed society in a direction to ban those substances to keep people from organizing and becoming a ruling class? Or something else? 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.
- eternalban 4y ago
  Hardly. Negotiations are continuing. Over in China, Ma was cut down to size. Earlier we had Gates' congressional woes before he found philanthropy Jesus, and Jeff's dirty laundry was all over internet. The last time something like this happened was with Oil. Rockefeller was integrated. A couple of centuries before that bankers were integrated. (There was a "glorious revolution" and that's what got serious European/English imperialism going.) 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 :)

j_m_b 4y ago

I'm sort of surprised they didn't extract/synthesize psilocybin directly and administer that. Decades ago, I grew a few batches of P. Cubensis. Even amongst mushrooms from the same rice cake, the dosage wildly varies. You could have a "trip" from a tiny mushroom or eat a handful of duds.

jrochkind1 4y ago
Same. Most psilocybin research I am familiar with synthesizes psilocybin, in part to be able to exactly control dosage, indeed. But it may also be to avoid dealing with illegal market? 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.
entropie 4y ago
> Even amongst mushrooms from the same rice cake, the dosage wildly varies 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.
- h2odragon 4y ago
  Extracting from shrooms with ethanol is quite consistent, the psilocybin isn't very soluble so after a few days soaking you can be pretty confident that the ethanol has taken up all it can. for microdosing the ethanol probably isn't enough to worry about trying to take it back out of solution, drink .25 oz or so.
- sowbug 4y ago
  Would you mind citing a case of harm caused by pharmacological effects of mushroom overdose? My own online research since your post found no such recorded instances, but perhaps we're using different terminology.
  - entropie 4y ago
    I actually cant, my knowledge is anecdotal. When I search around the web, there are articels that stating the same. Here is a (old) reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/allg3/i_used_lsd_and_shrooms_a_handful_of_times_and_now/ 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).

fallingfrog 4y ago

It improves your mood, which quiets down the internal critic always shouting at you that what you’re creating is a waste of time. That’s probably the actual most important benefit.

CPLNTN 4y ago
Exactly, from personal experience I would say the effect of proper micro dosing is very similar to the benefits that experience meditators report when asked

___2-__---_--__ 4y ago

Thanks for all the great info. EROWID was long before the decriminalization trend, the "right thing" to check before you trip\try any new subtance people might use for psychoactive effects. And many (including "heroic-to-crazy" sounding combinations) pharm-and-farm\forrest caffeine+substanceX etc. Look for "trip reports" section, if its still in business. 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)

gwern 4y ago

Note: the 2021 preprint version https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.11.30.470657v1.full https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.11.30.470657v1.... was also extensively discussed, so that is why this might sound familiar.

nibbleshifter 4y ago

> microdosing > half a gram doses of cubes. I don't think the studies designers really thought this one through.

erokar 4y ago
Agree, does seems high.
- nibbleshifter 4y ago
  0.5g of dried cubes is more so a "museum dose". Not visibly impairing for me, but certainly can feel something. 0.3g is about the ceiling for a microdose of dried cubes, and even then, that's a touch high for most people.
- hinkley 4y ago
  Pun intended?
- Jolter 4y ago
  If you think the dose is too high, yet they found no significant effect compared to placebo, what would you expect would happen at a _lower_ dose?
  - nibbleshifter 4y ago
    0.5 grams of p. cubensis is a noticeable dose. Its not a microdose by any means, and usually will result in some impairment. 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.

jack_pp 4y ago

Considering micro-dosing either helps you or at worst it has no bad effects I don't see why you wouldn't try it if you had access to it and the legal aspect didn't hinder you. 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)

jack_pp 4y ago
To all those down-voting, I'm sorry but am I to believe n=20 studies when there's a huge replication crisis or hundreds of people who took the risk, tested it on their own and reported on it? I'm not saying studies are useless but just basing your beliefs on small studies like this is crazy to me.

Rackedup 4y ago

here even spores are illegal....

jerrygoyal 4y ago

I wish these academic articles also had TLDR section

fumblebee 4y ago
You mean, the abstract?
mjlawson 4y ago
That's the purpose of the Abstract. > 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.

mjfl 4y ago

Looks like they found no change on a wide variety of tests, like measurements of openness and creativity, except for an array of subjective, psychedelic experience questions like "Sounds influences things I see", "I see distorted shapes", etc.

kirsebaer 4y ago

Participants were required to bring their own psilocybin mushrooms. Probably because it can be expensive and difficult for researchers to get obtain and administer pharma-grade psilocybin. 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.

josebrwn 4y ago
>The dose was 0.5g of dried Cubensis mushrooms. Usually a microdose is 0.1-0.2g. Precisely. This experiment had nothing to do with microdosing. Half a gram is a light dose but it is definitely inebriating.
standardUser 4y ago
We need better terms for differentiating low doses and true microdosing. Half a gram is certainly a low dose, but I'd expect most people to feel at least some high.

superb-owl 4y ago

> 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 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/#:~:text=Finally%2C%20in%20a%20psilocybin%20study,again%20suggesting%20some%20specificity%20to https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8033615/#:~:tex... [2] https://superbowl.substack.com/i/65186479/the-psychedelic-experience https://superbowl.substack.com/i/65186479/the-psychedelic-ex...

mlindner 4y ago
"Experience" is a thing represented by chemical markers in the brain however. It's all electrochemical in the end. And I have heard first hand stories directly from people who used to use the stuff that it absolutely changed their personalities, i.e. brain damage which is a chemical effect.

SergeAx 4y ago

Skimming the abstract, my eye catched a mention of the "Lempel-Ziv". I know it's a name of algorithm used in early loseless file archivers (later replaced by Lempel-Ziv-Welch, which is used today in GIF image compression). Imagine my surprise learning that part of this algo is used now in biomedicine to measure complexity of brain activity. Truly, one never knows where things are gonna end up.