Microdosing with psilocybin mushrooms: a double-blind placebo-controlled study • Hacker News Board

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

#231

Post by akaij » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 5:41 PM UTC

adrian_b wrote: post #217

detaro wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dictionary records what word means, today, in the english language.

Like everybody else, I also have to use the words with their current meaning, so I use frequently words like "macroinstruction", possibly abbreviated to "macro", or "macroprocessor". That does not mean that one should not be aware that the creation of such words was based on laziness and ignorance and one should not coin any new words of this series.

That approach seems overly prescriptive and is certainly overkill for creation and day-to-day use of non-critical words. For a word to be used widely, it has to go through a process of adoption.

Individuals around the world are still mostly allowed to use (or not) any word they choose. It may look like patchwork to you, but the importance of etymology of a word takes a backseat to its ability to successfully convey meaning.

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

#232

Post by peteradio » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 5:42 PM UTC

mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #207

peteradio wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microdosing isn't supposed to make you high. OP said they were taking /20 of a high dosing. So the assertion of "being high all the time" is sort of insulting.

I don't see how being high is an insult. OP didn't seem insulted to me.

I think incorrectly paraphrasing someone that misleads the conversation is insulting, perhaps that is a personal feeling of my own.

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

#233

Post by hinkley » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 5:45 PM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #167

mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 gen…

> 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 achi…

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.

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

#234

Post by YeGoblynQueenne » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 5:48 PM UTC

hackernewds wrote: post #221

mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Bit of a tangent here but I noticed you used "her" instead of the default assumption of "him". Is this a new practice?

I think that's because the OP's handle is "EmilyHughes". Is "Emily" a name that's common for males?

I know some English names can go both ways like Evelyn or Shannon etc, but is Emily one of them?

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

#235

Post by TranquilMarmot » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 5:48 PM UTC

IlliOnato wrote: post #161

j_m_b wrote: post #122

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.

It might be so that researchers investigate the common practice of "microdosing" and its effects, not necessarily (just) the effects of psilocybin low dosage. So they tried to closely emulate this practice, as it is done by users in real-life. But this of course introduces more uncertainty, as you pointed out, so to have any conclusive results a much larger sample group would be needed, I think. Also I agree with oth…

It would be nice if they were to study the effects of different doses of psilocybin directly. Could feed into possible depression treatments in the future... if somebody is trying to treat depression with psilocybin, they probably want a predictable dose that you can't really get eating mushrooms directly.

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

#236

Post by meaningjoj » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 5:49 PM UTC

Enginerrrd wrote: post #127

nine_k wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 indistingui…

>This, to me. means that a microdose is a gamble not worth taking. This has always been the problem with psychedelics as a therapeutic approach. It's hard to reconcile being a responsible clinician and recommending a therapy with such mixed and often-negative results. They are in charge of a person's mental well-being in a way that people evangelizing psychedelic therapy don't seem to properly appreciate. If a patien…

Keep in mind this is study is evaluating the claims that microdosing lead to specific outcomes such as enhanced wellness and cognitive enhancements, which people seek out while microdosing. That's different from using strong doses of psychedelics to, say for example, break entrenched thought patterns (addiction, depression, OCD).

In the former case, a positive outcome is expected and therefore negative outcomes are in a sense less tolerable, especially since a false positive would lead to people repeatedly microdosing over an extended period of time, to their long-term detriment.

In the latter case, a "negative experience" does not preclude getting the desired results. And an acute negative experience in a one-time dose may be tolerable when contrasted with the long-term severity of the pathology it is meant to treat.

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

#237

Post by hinkley » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 5:50 PM UTC

erokar wrote: post #186

nibbleshifter wrote: post #170

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

Agree, does seems high.

Pun intended?

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

#238

Post by eternalban » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 5:50 PM UTC

phonescreen_man wrote: post #133

frankfrankfrank wrote: post #117

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, Sidn…

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…

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 :)

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

#239

Post by hinkley » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 5:51 PM UTC

geden wrote: post #27

eurasiantiger wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Apparently not, according to this study at least.

And according to several other top level comments with anecdotes.

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

#240

Post by YeGoblynQueenne » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 5:54 PM UTC

effingwewt wrote: post #225

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an aside, I like to quote this passage from Terry Pratchett's The Carpet People: Other shamen ate the yellow-spotted mushrooms that were found deep in the hair thickets and said things like: ‘Hiiiiyahyahheya! Heyaheyayahyah! Hngh! Hngh!’ which certainly sounded magical. Pismire said things like, ‘Correct observation followed by meticulous deduction and the precise visualization of goals is vital to the success of…

Quoted post unavailable.

Hi. Have I recently posted a comment that used offensive language like "pure bullshit" in response to one of your comments, or have I in some other way shown disrespect to you?