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Microdosing study shows the placebo effect of taking psychelics

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Re: Microdosing study shows the placebo effect of taking psychelics

#71

Post by tekromancr »

tekromancr wrote: post #69
__blockcipher__ wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sharing. I've never taken more than 3.5g of mushrooms, so not heroic, but even as little as 3g was enough for really profound life changes. 2g was just a fun experience and not much more. I've only done shrooms a handful of times but I think they're the best for actual transformative insight, whereas LSD (which I've done probably 30 times not counting microdosing) for me is much more just about the visual/…

> their most important organ Lolwut? Look, I really enjoy my penis. Ol' penie and me have been through a lot together. But it's not even in my top five list of most important organs. Like, gun to my head, I have to live the rest if my life without one of; dick, heart, liver, kidneys, brain, or dermis; I'm sorry but the choice is pretty obvious

Actually, this is kind of an interesting thought experiment.

If I wanted to really push it, it's WAYYY down on the list. Like, the choice between losing my dick and one of my fingers; fine the finger goes. Between penis and the whole hand though? Sorry willy. Two fingers? Can stand to lose them. Three? Depends if it's the same hand. Any four fingers? Junk is back on the chopping block.

Gallbladder? Dunno what that even does, but my sister had hers out and she seems fine, so I think I would go with that. Pancreas? Yea, I would rather have a pancreas than a shlong

Re: Microdosing study shows the placebo effect of taking psychelics

#72

Post by eurasiantiger »

jordan_curve wrote: post #66
mhh__ wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe if you have a particularly bad trip but everyone seems to have these horror stories and yet no one is one e.g. it's like the teacher saying about how the kid who leant too far back on his chair fell over and cracked his head open

Huh? Obviously if you dismiss all of the bad anecdotes and none of the good ones, you’re only going to have good anecdotes My mom’s brother went into psychosis during an acid trip and eventually schizophrenia. He killed himself when he was 24. I think hallucinagens are fun recreationally and clearly have the potential for positive therapeutic use, but let’s not pretend that it’s always positive, especially in uncontr…

These anecdotes are always sad, but you have no way of confirming whether they took a normal sized dose of actual LSD, or whether they took a shitload of some unknown research chemical. Also, as you wrote, set and setting are important and those are not described.

Re: Microdosing study shows the placebo effect of taking psychelics

#73

Post by eurasiantiger »

l0b0 wrote: post #28
bichiliad wrote: post #5

> Meanwhile, those who consumed the drugs but thought they were taking a placebo experienced no significant increase in wellbeing. It's wild that there was a part of this study in which people were told that they weren't taking a psychadelic, but they were taking a psychadelic.

I'm just going off of the title, but I would expect microdosing to naturally involve only small effects.

The thing is, psychedelics act on neurotransmitter systems that are very sensitive; a few micrograms change in dosage can be a VERY different experience.

Re: Microdosing study shows the placebo effect of taking psychelics

#74

Post by eurasiantiger »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #27
sxp wrote: post #16

There is a similar effect when consuming alcoholic drinks in social settings: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11469-020-00321-0 > “Our study confirms the benefits of microdosing,..." This is really horrible phrasing since normal the normal usage of the term "benefits" in this context would mean benefits relative to a placebo. In this experiments the benefits are zero since the LSD and control pills had the…

There are arguments that the placebo effect plays a large role in the observed treatment effects of psychedelics. One of the hallmarks of psychedelics is a (drug induced) sense of profundity and enlightenment. If you tell someone that they're about to have a life-changing experience, then you give them a drug that induces the feeling of a life-changing experience, it's likely that they'll walk away thinking they've h…

Dozens and dozens of SSRI studies were never published because they showed no effect compared to placebo. The drug companies selectively publish the 1 in 20 studies that do give a positive result.

It is essentially a scam: marketing addictive, mind- and behavior-altering drugs to desperate people who don’t know any better. The drugs don’t help, they just dull emotions and make you not care.

Re: Microdosing study shows the placebo effect of taking psychelics

#75

Post by porb121 »

wyqydsyq wrote: post #64
porb121 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The conclusions this "study" reached could also be arrived at by just reading what microdosing is. there's tons of anecdotal reports of people experiencing tangible benefits from subperceptual microdosing; this study is valuable in that it tests those hypotheses in a semi-controlled setting.

The thing is, those tangible benefits are all subjective and immeasurable. There is no way to measurably differentiate between someone feeling good because they're microdosing, or feeling good because they had a nice day, which is why data collected in this study would largely be just noise. I think that since a strong placebo (e.g. a tripper feeling good as a result of thinking they're going to have some LSD) alone…

> There is no way to measurably differentiate between someone feeling good because they're microdosing, or feeling good because they had a nice day, which is why data collected in this study would largely be just noise.

i can only read this statement one of two ways:

a) you don't think that such a difference can be measured at all, which is antithetical to the entire premise of RCTs and statistical power.

b) you don't think such a difference can be measured among microdosers because microdosing is such a small effect. but this is exactly why we need the study - how else could you know that such an effect could not be measured?

the initial hypothesis that microdosing could have an effect on mood (or some other cognitive) was not some crazy unsupported idea. it had plenty of anecdotal support, i think? some mechanistic evidence, and there are plenty of other supplements which can have non-placebo cognitive effects without noticeable bodily effects. for example, caffeine has thoroughly-demonstrated improvements on alertness and attention, even at doses where many people will not feel an increased heart rate or other physical effects.

Re: Microdosing study shows the placebo effect of taking psychelics

#76

Post by Talanes »

jordan_curve wrote: post #66
mhh__ wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe if you have a particularly bad trip but everyone seems to have these horror stories and yet no one is one e.g. it's like the teacher saying about how the kid who leant too far back on his chair fell over and cracked his head open

Huh? Obviously if you dismiss all of the bad anecdotes and none of the good ones, you’re only going to have good anecdotes My mom’s brother went into psychosis during an acid trip and eventually schizophrenia. He killed himself when he was 24. I think hallucinagens are fun recreationally and clearly have the potential for positive therapeutic use, but let’s not pretend that it’s always positive, especially in uncontr…

Even in the realm of unverifiable anecdotes, there is still a difference between a first party anecdote and a third-party anecdote. In the first party anecdote I only have to put my trust in one person, where in a third party anecdote I have to trust 2-to-infinity people.

For whatever reason, negative anecdotes seem to be overwhelmingly third person, at the very least all the ones in this thread have been.

Re: Microdosing study shows the placebo effect of taking psychelics

#77

Post by ranguna »

eurasiantiger wrote: post #73
l0b0 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just going off of the title, but I would expect microdosing to naturally involve only small effects.

The thing is, psychedelics act on neurotransmitter systems that are very sensitive; a few micrograms change in dosage can be a VERY different experience.

Apparently not

Re: Microdosing study shows the placebo effect of taking psychelics

#78

Post by ranguna »

themodelplumber wrote: post #15

Just from a look at the chart, it seems there is so a lot of room for qualitatively awesome effects from the drug itself, with the caveat being that it depends on the individual. The headline could be interpreted by some as "hey, the placebo is just as good as the real thing, losers" but this only seems likely to be true for some who are taking it, not all... ...Or am I misreading?

It seems that you missed the lower bound of the placebo group was way higher than the people that thought were not microdosing.

Re: Microdosing study shows the placebo effect of taking psychelics

#79

Post by amarant »

anm89 wrote: post #70
jordan_curve wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that psilocybin can potentially have positive therapeutic effects in controlled environments does not mean people “microdosing” experience those effects.

It doesn't mean they don't. And it's certainly makes it reasonable that those effects could exist.

No, but this study does seem to indicate they don't... So maybe they don't

Re: Microdosing study shows the placebo effect of taking psychelics

#80

Post by ranguna »

wyqydsyq wrote: post #49
asidiali wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So then why microdose if there is no measurable effect?

Because the only things it does tangibly effect are your mood and mental perspective, things that are entirely subjective and do not have concrete metrics that can be used for measurement, especially when comparing that between different subjects. The only really noticeable effect of microdosing is at the end of the day you might notice you feel it was a really good day and you're happy. The thing is though this isn'…

With that logic, we can disregard any statistical study that we don't like as "noise"
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