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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

#101
post #99
post #43

https://archive.is/cmA76

What is crazy is, trying to now view this on my mobile device required me to fill out a captcha, which I couldn’t even view because it wasn’t completely viewable on my mobile viewport. Without venturing a positive or negative opinion either way: I clicked the original article, couldn’t see the content without paying, so I left. Clicked the link to presumably bypass the paywall, and couldn’t pass the bot detection in…

Are you referring to the archive.is link or the original?

Re: Microdosing study shows the placebo effect of taking psychelics

#102
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…

I've taken acid with three people who I later found out suffered from schizophrenia, and in all three cases they had had psychotic episodes years before I had met them. The first of these three definitely went from normal-seeming to more and more intense over the course of taking acid with them - he even drew his own version of the famous schizophrenic cats in doodles on people's doors at university.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Wain#/media/File:Louis_w...

Re: Microdosing study shows the placebo effect of taking psychelics

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So then why microdose if there is no measurable effect?

No measurable effect is not the same as volunteer's perception of it's effect. A comprehensive psychiatric evaluation uses a series of smaller evaluations that includes a self assessment as well as other assessments for memory, speech etc [0][1]. [0]: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/treatment-tests-and-t... [1]: http://www.brooklynlearningcenter.com/services/what-it-consi...

Wouldn’t a comprehensive psychiatric evaluation be looking for some sort of markers, or metrics, to determine a known vs unknown state or evaluation result? Per your link, psych eval is to determine known disorders or other mental states. By definition, there has to be criteria.

You said, no measurable effect is not the same as volunteers perception of the effect. But wouldn’t that still be a measurable effect, by the volunteers perception?

Re: Microdosing study shows the placebo effect of taking psychelics

#104

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'…

Couldn’t you measure change in avg number of happy vs neutral or unhappy days over a set time period?

I guess that’d only be useful for yourself and not an objective measurement...

Re: Microdosing study shows the placebo effect of taking psychelics

#105
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would that invalidate the results? The study heavily builds on self-reported belief about group membership (placebo or treatment [microdose]) for each trial day. If someone believes they are on shrooms all the time while not, and their psychological parameters improve, it's placebo. If someone produces some arbitrary pattern of on-off while actually not on anything, that's just noise for the study. That's why the…

How many of the participants tested that their drugs actually contained the correct amount of the correct compound? I’m going to say few to none. This study seems very unreliable, and I wouldn’t count out the possibility that it is junk science published to drive down stock prices of psychedelic health companies.

> [...] and I wouldn’t count out the possibility that it is junk science published to drive down stock prices of psychedelic health companies. What's the supporting empirical support for this very complex claim?

One one hand I'm inclined to believe the study because it confirms the placebo effect. (Which is very well established, plus the theory and the data are simple. The result is completely in concordance with the regular ineffectiveness of most low-dose not-really-psychoactive medications - meaning how SSRIs and other anti-depressants are about as effective as placebo.) On the other hand it's also possible that the study is junk, like most studies.

> How many of the participants tested that their drugs actually contained the correct amount of the correct compound?

https://elifesciences.org/articles/62878

"The inclusion criteria were: >18 years of age, good understanding of English, intention to microdose with psychedelics, previous experience with psychedelics (either micro- or macrodosing), no use of psychedelic drugs from a week before the start until the completion of the post-regime timepoint (other than the study’s microdoses), and willingness to follow the study protocol."

Of course it's still citizen science. So who knows really.

Re: Microdosing study shows the placebo effect of taking psychelics

#106
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we're sharing unverifiable anecdotes about LSD, then I have one... A friends mother took LSD in the 80s and still gets nightmare flashbacks. Stay safe kids.

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

I know this isn't your point, but I actually did lean too far back in a chair and crack my head open on the table behind me. I had to go to the ER and get sutures.

Re: Microdosing study shows the placebo effect of taking psychelics

#107
post #101
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is crazy is, trying to now view this on my mobile device required me to fill out a captcha, which I couldn’t even view because it wasn’t completely viewable on my mobile viewport. Without venturing a positive or negative opinion either way: I clicked the original article, couldn’t see the content without paying, so I left. Clicked the link to presumably bypass the paywall, and couldn’t pass the bot detection in…

Are you referring to the archive.is link or the original?

The archive.is link gave me the captcha, so I’m referring to both.

Re: Microdosing study shows the placebo effect of taking psychelics

#108
post #101
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is crazy is, trying to now view this on my mobile device required me to fill out a captcha, which I couldn’t even view because it wasn’t completely viewable on my mobile viewport. Without venturing a positive or negative opinion either way: I clicked the original article, couldn’t see the content without paying, so I left. Clicked the link to presumably bypass the paywall, and couldn’t pass the bot detection in…

Are you referring to the archive.is link or the original?

He’s talking about the captcha on the archive link, as well as the paywall on the actual article. I have the same issue with the captcha on my phone.

Re: Microdosing study shows the placebo effect of taking psychelics

#110
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> negative anecdotes seem to be overwhelmingly third person Based on the anecdotes in this thread, I'm getting the impression that when you have a really bad trip, you don't make it back to tell the story in the first person. The only people left to tell are the observers.

The observers also have not made it to this thread. They would be second party. We are hearing from people who have heard from observers. At least two links of trust necessary.
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