LSD microdoses make people feel sharper, and scientists want to know how
theverge.com
theverge.com
https://www.gwern.net/LSD%20microdosing this article was posted on HN a few years back, and talks about an self-administered blind study of microdosing, which found limited benefits of microdosing, counter to most anecdotal examples.
So you could feel sharper, but really, you're probably doing much worse than when you're sober
There is no reason to think that LSD does not have some positive effects as well.
The dose has to be very small for any possible positive effect to not be outweighed by the harm.
In the UK that's seen as "very low". Other countries have different cultures around alcohol.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan...
There are problems with these numbers, because people tend to under-report how many drinks they've had, and how strong the drink was.
https://www.drinkaware.co.uk/research/data/consumption-uk/
> In 2015 in England, 55% of men said that they had drunk in the last year and that their average weekly alcohol consumption was no more than 14 units.
> 64% of women in England said that they had drunk in the last year and that their average weekly intake was no more than 14 units.
> In 2015, 11% of men and 7% of women in England said that their average weekly alcohol consumption was more than 14 units but no more than 21 units.
> In 2015 in England, 12% of men and 6% of women said that their average weekly alcohol consumption was more than 21 units but no more than 35 units.
> In 2015, 4% of men and 2% of women in England said that their average weekly alcohol consumption was more than 35 units but no more than 50 units.
This is important because there has been some publicity recently saying a drink a day is safe (mostly debunked now), or newspaper reports of the "benefits of red wine".
Here's one example of poor reporting: While we shouldn't increase the amount of pressure that pregnant women face (because they're already under considerable pressure) it's wrong to tell them that drinking wine daily is safe. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6078575#6079665
Source: https://www.xkcd.com/323/
These systems are incredibly complicated to prove anything in and we are so much more suggestible than we feel we are.
We can't even agree on what LSD should be increasing with microdosing, is it IQ, coding ability or concentration?
After trying it on myself 5-10ug / day for 6+ months, I think it's been incredibly beneficial.
The crux of it is that if you drop a full tab and pay attention, you'll notice LSD is extremely stimulating - far more than psilocybin. It has a very high level of dopamine receptor activation, which is why even 10 hours into a trip I would notice how different the quality of my attention was - in essence, it was far easier to simply be aware of what was going on.
(Note I have adhd-pi so that's part of why I think microdosing works for me)
In short, a microdose gives the dopaminergic stimulatory benefits, without being overwhelmingly twitchy. It produces a less linear style of thinking than amphetamines (adderall/vyvanse/desoxyn), but still increases general energy, focus, quality of attention etc. Colors feel a tiny bit sharper, visual acuity feels slightly enhanced, physical body control is significantly enhanced (I have far better posture and general neuromuscular control).
Obviously this isn't rigorous evidence, but hopefully it gives a general idea of why one would microdose.
One final thing - 25ug or even 15ug is far too much. IMO 10ug is the upper limit of what would be considered a microdose. My preference is 4-8 ug (obviously dosed as liquid)
It would be interesting if there were a study where bartenders were in some way blinded, perhaps needing to use specific bottles of mix for specific subjects. Some subjects in a group would be actors, intentionally /playing/ drunk, while others in the group would be real participants. In all cases subjects in the groups would be instructed to act as if the drinks were really alcohol, irrespective of if they were or not.
Though these are at beer level.
Kombucha often contains a low (< 1%) amount of alcohol.
A coworker of mine was recently carded when purchasing kombucha :P
http://blog.seattlepi.com/hottopics/2012/06/28/coke-pepsi-co... or original article (French) here: http://www.60millions-mag.com/2012/06/27/coca-pepsi-et-autre...
One of the LSD effects is an increase of production of dopamine in the brain. From this perspective alone, the microdosing might be on par with Ritalin, Nicotine, or Caffeine.
I was trying microdosing before I had diagnosis of adhd, and I feel that LSD works way nicer than Ritalin, and kind of comparable to Modafinil, in my case. Long term acid microdosing effects aren't well tested, so I wouldn't do it regularily, but still - it seems to work.
I'd love to see proper blind studies on this.
On the negative comments about Gwern's experiment, which failed to demonstrate any positive results, Gwern writes:
> The comments on my LSD microdosing experiment bring this out in dramatic relief: everyone is eager to find some flaw, no matter how improbable, which will let them dismiss the results completely and not update in the slightest bit. Will any of them do a better experiment to improve the claimed fatal flaw? Hell no! I can’t even except Fadiman here. While he didn’t give me any of the bullshit a lot of people did, I asked him before I posted it whether he or anyone else had attempted to replicate my experiment. No one had. To emphasize that: Fadiman is a trained psychologist who appreciates the need for systematic data collection + randomization + blinding with easy access to LSD who is keenly interested in microdosing inasmuch as he has done microdosing for decades while publicly professing its value, who understands & admires my procedure and has had at least half a year to replicate my experiment himself - and has not done so!
Like someone said, "if you see rocks glow, it's no longer microdosing".
Placebo effect has real effects. Micro-dosing: Unverified.
However lower potencies, specially in the decimal scale definitely have enough of the original remedy in them as to qualify as a microdose. If you start with a gram, then a 6x potentization will result in about a 1 micro-gram dose, which is about the same as being discussed in this article. And a lot of homeopathic remedies are administered at the 3x or 6x potency as well.
But even if most of microdosing is just a placebo effect, I think that's still amazing in itself. Even if you're not "physically tripping", you've willed yourself into a "more open" mental state, creating your own positive side effects.
One group gets decaf coffee with an LSD microdose
One group gets normal coffee.
Waltz in with coffee and donuts Dexter style each morning.
Monitor their output and mood for a month or so.
How are you controlling for which compound has which effects?
EDIT: Leaving aside the whole, you know, "Dosing your unsuspecting coworkers with acid" thing. Not very cool. Or legal (beyond the drug, itself).
Second of all LSD, has a bit of a stimulant "excitable" effect. So you might want to give them Decaf to compensate. You're right that it's a confounding variable though, and there's a good chance that people like me would be less productive because of the decaf, especially if the LSD dose was too small. https://erowid.org/chemicals/lsd/lsd_effects.shtml
0) https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/the-oral-history-of-the-b...
I'm reasonably certain that if someone slipped me something now, thanks to youthful experimentation I'd at least catch on to what was going on pretty quickly, but I can't imagine experiencing that with literally no frame of reference.
Thanks for commenting this - I would've skipped the article otherwise. Conventional medicine doesn't have any good options for women with such problems. Two of my passengers going take home from the emergency room were monthly sufferers of dysmenorrhea. One was "economically stressed", the other was on drugs (edit: prescriptions) that never allowed her cycles to normalize themselves.
Edit2: another was made suicidal with Depo-Provera...
I've started drafting 'the predicaments of doctors and patients', where I have something to say about the medical industry. Maybe I'd be able to finish it if I got some microdose LSD, lol.
Fadiman reads an email from a British art historian in
her 20s, long afflicted with painful, irregular
menstruation. “‘I only microdosed that one month. My
periods are regular. You have changed my life. Thank
you.’ I’ve been in psychedelic research a long, long
time, and no one’s ever considered or mentioned or
thought about the possibility that psychedelics had
anything do with menstrual periods, particularly
difficult ones. However, now that that bit of search
has happened, we started looking for it.” Twelve women,
he says, have reported improved menstruation after
microdosing.I have been very interested in this concept and approach as I know several people who could benefit from this - myself included.
Psychedelics are tools and are not to be taken lightly. As much as an advocate as I am for them I also agree that they're not for everyone.
Finally being able to have access to testing and experimentation we may discover even more capabilities.
However, what drives me crazy is how are we supposed to get the medicine? Especially in the case of LSD I am concerned of purity and risk of finding it.
It's a lot different now than it was in the 80's - at least here in the midwest. We no longer have the Grateful Dead and/or "family" providing clean sources. To make matters worse it's most likely the > 40 year olds crowd who would be interested in this but who is going to sell a 'mom or dad looking person' a hit of acid? Hanging out in the concert lot isn't what it used to be ;-).
Perhaps in places like Marin County there still is some availability. I hope so and I hope it once agains paints it's way across the country/world.
LSD is active doses < 100µg - there are almost no other substances active at these kinds of levels.
Currently there are variations of LSD that are becoming popular because of their legal stance. LSD is illegal but variations of it may not be - thus in some cases may be being passed off as LSD.
Even when there was lots of LSD around there was always the weird variations that just weren't very clean.
Often "family acid" was rated as the best. But the problem is every Tom, Dick, and Harry would swing their crappy acid as "family acid".
Most often you could determine good acid by the artwork on the print. Such as Alex Gray Jesus blotter, Alice and the Looking Glass, Flying Pyramids, etc.
So my point is - I just hope that what we're hearing as LSD is in fact good clean LSD.
The only way to tell with reasonable certainty of what you're getting is to have the product tested, ideally at multiple independent, high quality laboratories. Even then, if you're testing blotter or microdots, you're only going to know about the ones you tested, not about the rest of the batch. Properly shaken/stirred liquid should be better in that if one drop tested fine, the rest should be the same. But even then, if the substance easily separates out in the solution, you can't trust that either.
If anyone with a deeper knowledge of chemistry could speak about the effectiveness of testing, that would be welcome.
Here drug lab, I have an illegal drug. Can you test it for me and tell me if it is really the illegal drug I wanted?
"EcstasyData tests ecstasy tablets, powders, research chemicals, new pschoactive substances, and other street drugs through our DEA-licensed laboratory."[3]
You can also buy testing kits[4] for some drugs, like ecstasy, and do the testing yourself.
Looks like there is a test kit for LSD even.[5]
"Ehrlich's Reagent is a solution of hydrochloric acid, ethanol and p–dimethylaminobenzaldehyde. It can be used to positively identify LSD, helping rule out 25i-NBOMe, a highly toxic and extremely dangerous drug that is often misrepresented as LSD. Ehrlich's can also be used to identify other indoles. Contains enough reagent for approximately 50 tests."
I'm not sure if ruling out 25i-NBOMe is enough, though. Could there be other toxic substances that aren't caught by this test?
Still, some testing is much better than no testing.
[1] - http://www.ecstasydata.org
[2] - https://dancesafe.org/about-us/
[3] - http://www.ecstasydata.org/about_data.php
[4] - https://dancesafe.org/shop/
[5] - https://dancesafe.org/product/ehrlichs-reagent-testing-kit/
A little knowledge goes a long way, however. Tabs can only fit hundreds of micrograms to around a milligram (maybe a few mg's) on a standard sized blotter tab. This narrows down the # of potential active compounds massively. Also, LSD is active when swallowed immediately but nbomes aren't. So for a knowledgeable user it's not hard to avoid nbomes, but you will never be able to find out how much LSD is actually on your tab.
LSD might be pharmacologically active immediately, but not perceptually. It might take a while for the user to be sure they haven't eaten plain paper. Anyway, what is the "knowledgeable user" supposed to do when the substance they've taken isn't active immediately? Spit it out? By then it's too late. I really don't understand how this knowledge is supposed to help you avoid nbomes.
"you will never be able to find out how much LSD is actually on your tab"
Knowing what you're getting is great, but of secondary importance to making sure you're not getting poisoned.
The government should really step in, legalize it, and inspect the manufacturers and require testing, much like what is done in the legal medical industry now, with legal pharmaceuticals.
That process is itself currently far from perfect, and occasionally there are safety scandals even with legal pharmaceuticals, but it's still far better than the situation with illegal drugs now, when users have to seriously worry that their next dose will kill them because of potential toxic impurities that would all likelihood not be there if the drug was legal.
It's really upsetting that the government can stand by and just watch people suffer and die when they could be doing something to prevent it.
For testing, the only effective technique is GC/MS. But there is only one lab [REDACTED] knows of, which is the Spanish lab Energy Control. Unfortunately they are not always competent and often make routine errors in analysis.
LSD might not, but some toxins or impurities might, and those are the ones you most want to pick up in your test. So if you test just an unmixed portion, you might miss the impurities that are nonetheless there.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bromo_Dragonfly
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bromo_Dragonfly#Toxicity
[3] - https://erowid.org/chemicals/bromo_dragonfly/bromo_dragonfly...
If you are offered larger blotter paper, it is very likely to be one of the NBOMe drugs, which are also not so safe in comparison to LSD.
It's a good thing they have a bitter taste, and if your LSD has a bitter/metallic taste: spit! It shouldn't taste like anything and you don't want HPPD.
[REDACTED] has never tasted anything but paper on tabs, but some claim a metallic taste when there is none. The best protocol is to swallow the tab, in which case nbomes will not have an effect (they must be sublingually absorbed). There is little reason to take LSD sublingually although it is quite common among recreational users - which is again silly because if you swallow you can guarantee that nbomes won't affect you
It might be too soon to call this "medicine," a word with certain emotional associations. The article includes many interesting and intriguing anecdotes, but to date the described effects haven't been examined in a properly designed double-blind study (a study with two or more groups and no practical way for the subjects or experimenters to know which group is which[1]).
We must all remember that the placebo effect is particularly persuasive -- some would say confounding -- in the evaluation of mental states.
On the other hand, the so-called "war on drugs" has made it difficult to study these substances without legal entanglements, a factor that by itself may have held back legitimate research for decades.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blinded_experiment#Double-blin...
The history of medicine is full of examples of treatments being tested in the clinic long before any double-blind tests are made. Things like the first use of anesthetic spring to mind. If they had waited for double-blind studies that would have satisfied modern science, millions of people would have suffered for another hundred years without it.
The practice of testing treatments in the clinic continues to this day, with doctors prescribing medicines for off-label uses, and with even psychedelics being used in psychedelic therapy by psychologists brave enough to risk their careers and freedom to help people.
Ideally there would be double-blind studies on everything, but those studies cost an enormous amount of money, and in the case of psychedelics have to overcome enormous political hurdles. The cost rises astronomically when we're talking about large, statistically significant double-blind studies.
Furthermore, since a lot of psychedelics, like mushrooms and peyote, can be ingested directly from plants, and many others like LSD have long been out of patent protection, most pharmaceutical companies (which are usually the only ones with pockets deep enough to fund these kinds of studies) aren't interested, as they won't make a profit on something so easily available from other sources than themselves. That's not to mention the political hot potato of psychedelic research as a whole, which is still regarded with suspicion by much of the medical and political establishment.
In the meantime, some states have gone ahead and legalized medical marijuana and even recreational marijuana. This was often done by referendum, where voters got to decide, and how voters decided is a complete mystery. Did they take science in to account? Did they care about double-blind trials? Who knows? But considering the massive ignorance of science by the general public, it probably wasn't science that tipped the balance.
I suspect that if wholesale legalization of some currently illegal drugs does come, it will have little to do with science, and more to do with public perception change, and the dying off of old, rabidly anti-drug legalization opponents from another generation.
Very true in nearly all cases. Marijuana yielded to political pressure without Big Pharma having any easy way to make money from it. That may be the exception proving the rule, which I agree is a strong indicator of expected future events.
There could still be a big backlash against all this. I'm holding my breath waiting to see what the Trump administration and their supporters do.
As am I. The politically aware could simply point out how expensive the war on drugs is. In fact I have no idea why this isn't raised as an argument against it, and the incarceration at taxpayer expense of so many people for nonviolent offenses.
The answer to my quandary is probably that most conservatives aren't libertarians -- that being conservative doesn't necessarily mean a person wants to stay out of other people's lives and choices or reduce the cost of government.
But as a personal summary, LSD makes me smile and I feel like a better person. On it, I find myself preferring good life choices and productivity. Amphetamine gives me endless focus and nervousness-flavored mental energy, similar to too much coffee. As a bonus: Modafinil makes me almost angrily opposed to distraction and slacking off.
This reminds me of the effect of low doses of marijuana.
That is why I'm interested in microdoses because if it can reproduce that zen period vs. the initial freak out period then it could potentially be very beneficial.
My experience with LSD microdosing is that I still don't feel like programming, just like I don't with a higher dose. I feel like doing other things. People say "you're taking too much", yet when I try to take less, then I don't feel anything at all.
Very unpredictable. If I get the dose perfect (which might depend more on the state of me rather than the dose), then I'd liken it to a tiny dose of amphetamine -- it comes with the same sort of mental clarity.
If I take a little too much, like within 10ug or something, I'm even more useless at my daily tasks. For 12 hours. This vastly limits the therapy of any of its effects since you can never advance beyond however you feel in microdose space (whatever that is), and you can't take more when you need more power.
Is the dark web so prevalent that everyone in SF has their own sheet? My experience with proponents of microdosing in person is that they tried it a few times but never actually owned their own supply to experiment with.
My ultimate opinion is to reserve my acid for when I want to take a 1/4+ tab on the beach to enhance an experience, and to reserve amphetamine for productivity.
Bonus: amphetamine tolerance seems to change acid a bit for the worse, but I'm not sure how much of that is superstition which is too easy to accumulate around acid, which is why it's hard to evaluate microdosing.
I actually take both substances together, and find that the synergy is superior to either one by themselves. But it takes real commitment to have such a dosing protocol because most "normal" individuals do not/would not understand it
- It's going to be a somewhat creative/self-directed day
- Not likely to be a stressful day or a packed schedule
While microdosing my brain will wander a bit more than usual in different directions, which is good under low stress but not helpful under high stress. It can help me focus on work tasks enormously, but doesn't bring me the same rapid-paced obsessive productivity mindset as adderall would.
If I'm working and I know it's going to be a crazy day where I need to get 10 things done and can't afford to procrastinate or be otherwise distracted, I'd prefer adderall because it's more predictable in its effects on my focus.
If I'm not working, I don't consider taking adderall at all (unless I need to be awake for something like an overnight drive).
People should consider modafinil as well in cycling through different types of stimulants, I find it to have less of a physical effect compared to lsd or amphetamines.
[REDACTED] acquired LSD tartrate, made solution w/ everclear, and then diluted it such that one sip is roughly 4-8ug based on volume. That's the only real way to microdose yourself, although you could cut a tab into 20 pieces (depends on the lay but a skilled lay is evenly distributed. An unskilled lay will have massive hotspots and thus one would need to dissolve the tab in a solvent or cut it into n->infty pieces)
(Sorry I had to.)
Obviously not scientific, but great anecdotal discussion.
It's definitely important to hear as many perspectives on this as possible, and not to look at LSD or any other drug through rose-colored glasses.
With traditional doses, everyone agrees that set (mindset, or where you are mentally) and setting (where you are physically, and how the space around you is) play huge roles in what kind of experience you have. I wonder if the same is the case for LSD microdosing. Some people just might be unprepared for such an experience, and even at sub-threshold doses LSD might be exposing things they're not ready to handle on their own.
At one point, they say:
"I feel like I at least had a point where I was like, PJ, just do it, it’ll be fun. And I think that that’s an irresponsible approach to a really strong drug."
I would agree with that. These substances should be treated with the utmost respect, and maybe the way most microdosers casually use LSD is not respectful enough of its power and life-changing potential.
There was a study done last year that scanned the brains of volunteers, some given a placebo, and some given LSD, and the results were enough to convince me that this is a topic worthy of more research.
Not quite. If you look at that study, it was for hallucinogenic doses of LSD, not microdosing. Also, they didn't look at mental clarity/sharpness or anything similar.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysergic_acid_diethylamide#Leg...
The 4 day window between doses hinted at is pretty much required in order to have anywhere near the same effect with the same quantity so doing this in a regular way is more like 'regular chemical therapy' a couple times a week than a 'morning pick me up' like cofee
not sure how tolerance builds over the long run - so could be wrong here if it actually plateus; that said probably not the best idea to be on LSD every single day if even in small doses..
Also, tolerance is maybe the wrong word as it suggests that all effects are diminished. With psychedelics, pretty much all of them except DMT when microdosing, it seems more like this for continous microdosing without days off:
Day 3-4: Loss of the psychedelic "touch" in thought and perception, including associated creativity and easier ability to psychedelic thinking, now feels more like a stimulant without associated amphetamine bodyload
Day 5-6: Slight loss of clarity
Day 8-9: Further loss of clarity and beginning loss of energy and stimulation
Day 12-13: Sober state becomes indistinguishable from microdose - true tolerance sets in
Can you expand on that? Thanks. (:
Nervous energy would be a better word, I guess.
I know whenever I get into the office, I don't feel nearly as productive or good at solving problems as I do whenever I drink an energy drink or a coffee. Strictly anecdotal, of course, but still. Lots of talk about placebo.
I've been on/off it several times and now only drink green tea so I have a bit of experience here. I think ultimately it does nothing once I have a certain amount of tolerance. Worse, I do know it hurts my sleep quality significantly if taken anytime other than the morning or if too much is taken any time during the day. Sleep quality seems to be the elephant in the room for many white collar professionals, imo. So you may take caffeine to beat bad sleep but then caffeine may cause bad sleep, so its an ugly cycle while the whole time you're slowly becoming addicted to it.
That said, I've had good luck with ginseng as a morning 'pick me up.' Building tolerance to it seems slow as well.
Caffeine Withdrawal DSM-5 292.0 (F15.93)
Symptoms of caffeine withdrawal have been described since the early nineteenth century but have only recently been researched (Ozsungur, Brenn & El-Sohemy, 2009) . The DSM-5 explains that the most common symptom of caffeine withdrawal is headache. The headache is usually throbbing and sensitive to movement. Headache is the most persistent symptom of caffeine withdrawal and can last as long as three weeks. Changes in mood, such as depression and anxiety; difficulty concentrating and fatigue are also common and can occur without headache. Some patients experience flu-like symptoms such as nausea, vomiting and achiness (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Other symptoms include caffeine cravings and increased appetite (Juliano, et al., 2012) These symptoms begin within 12- 24 hours of caffeine cessation after prolonged daily caffeine ingestion (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). 96% of patients experience at least two symptoms during withdrawal (Juliana, et al., 2012) Symptoms often occur on weekends when individuals tend to sleep in and begin ingesting caffeine later in the day than normal. If caffeine cessation continues, symptoms can last as long as nine days, with headaches lasting as long as three weeks. Symptoms disappear almost instantly if caffeine consumption resumes. Because many people underestimate their caffeine consumption, symptoms are often unexpected and attributed to other causes, such as illness (American Psychiatric Association, 2013).
LSD is actually a much more relaxed experience. It's like working on something you really enjoy, on a sunny afternoon with no deadlines in sight, listening to jazz and sipping an iced cappuccino.
I'm gonna need you to back up that claim, because as far as I can see the positive contribution of coffee to society is pretty well-understood