My point is that do-notation is comparable to macros since it is a kind of syntactic sugar. Monads on the other hand are a type (or design pattern, depending on

My point is that do-notation is comparable to macros since it is a kind of syntactic sugar. Monads on the other hand are a type (or design pattern, depending on perspective), not a kind of syntactic sugar. So you can't compare lisp macros to monads.