6 ms·

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

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.
EmilyHughes 4y ago
Trust me I tried all kinds of drugs and psychedelics are not the kind that get you hooked. Stimulants are especially addictive in my opinion. Psychs are the kind of drugs you say I have enough for a while if you overdo. On top of it they build tolerance immediately.
- dtx1 4y ago
  Can confirm, especially mushrooms. I had one trip on them and what my main take away was: It's exhausting to trip on mushrooms and after 4-5 hours I wanted to be sober again. I'll probably do it again in a few month but for me it's a whole-weekend kind of deal and hardly a party drug
  - EmilyHughes 4y ago
    It can be a "party drug" if you dose low, especially if you are chilling at a bar with friends. Just pushes you into a slightly better mood. I'll rather have a microdose with some beers than getting shitfaced drunk, feels subjectively healthier to me.
    - Thiez 4y ago
      Of course you could also just stop drinking after a few beers without taking additional drugs.
      - EmilyHughes 4y ago
        easier said than done. But you are right of course, that's where you want to go.
      - eurasiantiger 4y ago
        Of course, a few beers are much worse for you than a microdose of shrooms, so why choose the former?
  - fernandotakai 4y ago
    my main issue with mushrooms is how nauseous i get -- also, i lose all my appetite for at least 12h (last time, it took 24h for me to be actually hungry again).
henriquemaia 4y ago
That's an uncharitable reading. OP is just sharing what works with her/him. Which is ok. From what I understood from your comment, for you it doesn't. Which is ok too, as now you know yourself a bit better. Two personal experiments with very different outcomes. There's no need for moral judgments either way.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
  I'm not saying her experience is invalid. If it works for her, great. But there is this tendency of microdosing proponents to oversell what is effectively a high(nothing wrong with that, I love getting high) as some sort of profound self-help tool. It's a high. That's fine. Getting high can have positive effects too. Call it that, though.
  - davidgrenier 4y ago
    The paper stated James Fadiman as the source for the characterization of a microdose, it however failed to properly convey his point of view. 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.
    - EmilyHughes 4y ago
      depends on your individual sensitivity to psychedelics, 0.2 would be too much for me to go into work, no visuals but a head trip. I also know plenty of people who can take 0.5 and don't feel much.
    - nick__m 4y ago
nicoburns 4y ago
I get what you’re saying, but I think the GP may see being less productive as a positive thing (productivity not being a universal value)
pengaru 4y ago
> 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. If it made you high, you didn't microdose.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
  With even lower dose, no effect was present. See my response to one of the other replies.
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
> 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.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
  Yeah not sure what the source of this homeopathic type logic is. It's very strange, and applies to basically nothing else. So I'd like some pretty extraordinary evidence before I believe that taking deliberately ineffective doses of anything has any effect. And, good luck producing a dose-response curve...
- hinkley 4y ago
  I have often wondered this about people doing the napping versus sleeping experiment. Euphoria makes you feel like you know so much more than you do. 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.
  - mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
    There's studies on "brain training" apps like Lumosity that tend to show that all you're improving at is the specific test, not the underlying mental capacity like working memory. 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.
jokoon 4y ago
Yes, those drugs can't replace SSRI
shudza 4y ago
This. People need to stop looking for excuses and justification for wanting to experience drugs. I bet 95% percent of them 'missed out' doing it when it was age appropriate, and are just looking to scratch that itch while having a moral justification. They end up overdoing, and overthinking about it and it all has a bad end.

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.

EmilyHughes 4y ago

Trust me I tried all kinds of drugs and psychedelics are not the kind that get you hooked. Stimulants are especially addictive in my opinion. Psychs are the kind of drugs you say I have enough for a while if you overdo. On top of it they build tolerance immediately.

dtx1 4y ago
Can confirm, especially mushrooms. I had one trip on them and what my main take away was: It's exhausting to trip on mushrooms and after 4-5 hours I wanted to be sober again. I'll probably do it again in a few month but for me it's a whole-weekend kind of deal and hardly a party drug
- EmilyHughes 4y ago
  It can be a "party drug" if you dose low, especially if you are chilling at a bar with friends. Just pushes you into a slightly better mood. I'll rather have a microdose with some beers than getting shitfaced drunk, feels subjectively healthier to me.
  - Thiez 4y ago
    Of course you could also just stop drinking after a few beers without taking additional drugs.
    - EmilyHughes 4y ago
      easier said than done. But you are right of course, that's where you want to go.
    - eurasiantiger 4y ago
      Of course, a few beers are much worse for you than a microdose of shrooms, so why choose the former?
- fernandotakai 4y ago
  my main issue with mushrooms is how nauseous i get -- also, i lose all my appetite for at least 12h (last time, it took 24h for me to be actually hungry again).

henriquemaia 4y ago

That's an uncharitable reading. OP is just sharing what works with her/him. Which is ok. From what I understood from your comment, for you it doesn't. Which is ok too, as now you know yourself a bit better. Two personal experiments with very different outcomes. There's no need for moral judgments either way.

mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
I'm not saying her experience is invalid. If it works for her, great. But there is this tendency of microdosing proponents to oversell what is effectively a high(nothing wrong with that, I love getting high) as some sort of profound self-help tool. It's a high. That's fine. Getting high can have positive effects too. Call it that, though.
- davidgrenier 4y ago
  The paper stated James Fadiman as the source for the characterization of a microdose, it however failed to properly convey his point of view. 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.
  - EmilyHughes 4y ago
    depends on your individual sensitivity to psychedelics, 0.2 would be too much for me to go into work, no visuals but a head trip. I also know plenty of people who can take 0.5 and don't feel much.
  - nick__m 4y ago

nicoburns 4y ago

I get what you’re saying, but I think the GP may see being less productive as a positive thing (productivity not being a universal value)

pengaru 4y ago

> 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. If it made you high, you didn't microdose.

mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
With even lower dose, no effect was present. See my response to one of the other replies.

PragmaticPulp 4y ago

> 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.

mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
Yeah not sure what the source of this homeopathic type logic is. It's very strange, and applies to basically nothing else. So I'd like some pretty extraordinary evidence before I believe that taking deliberately ineffective doses of anything has any effect. And, good luck producing a dose-response curve...
hinkley 4y ago
I have often wondered this about people doing the napping versus sleeping experiment. Euphoria makes you feel like you know so much more than you do. 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.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
  There's studies on "brain training" apps like Lumosity that tend to show that all you're improving at is the specific test, not the underlying mental capacity like working memory. 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.

jokoon 4y ago

Yes, those drugs can't replace SSRI

shudza 4y ago

This. People need to stop looking for excuses and justification for wanting to experience drugs. I bet 95% percent of them 'missed out' doing it when it was age appropriate, and are just looking to scratch that itch while having a moral justification. They end up overdoing, and overthinking about it and it all has a bad end.