Mood and cognition after low LSD doses: A placebo controlled dose-effect study
sciencedirect.com
sciencedirect.com
Anecdotally, I had a few coworkers go through a phase of LSD microdosing enthusiasm. From my outside perspective, this study matches what I observed: Vaguely better moods associated with increased confusion. They were more immersed in their tasks, but that was partially because even easy tasks were more difficult on their microdosing days.
The most concerning part of their experiment was how it distorted their own perceptions and judgment. They’d feel like they had arrived at great epiphanies or accomplished something impressive after solving trivial or obvious problems. They were convinced that their LSD days were full of breakthroughs and leaps forward, when in reality the drug was just making even small tasks feel like great victories. We politely hinted that they should stop when they struggled to keep up in meetings and conversations.
For another perspective, Gwern has some self trials with LSD that also showed some worrisome negative trends: https://www.gwern.net/LSD-microdosing
This sounds like extremely distorted cognitive behavior, when microdosing is "supposed to be" done at sub-perceptual levels (suggesting they weren't actually microdosing). Can you give some specific examples of the "great epiphanies", "making even small tasks feel like great victories", "they struggled to keep up in meetings and conversations" that you observed?
Pretty much the only circumstance that I think it is ok to take hallucinogens is when you believe you have adopted a negative approach in viewing reality, when you've gone down a cul de sac of sorts. If this is a day in day out experience perhaps a 'pattern interupt' is a good thing.
Hallucinogens can be a way appraise the world and enjoy its many manifest glories - daily I look at trees or clouds and am in admiration of the wonder of nature in this experience. So, in the right circumstances, if LSD et al help you break out and get closer to one's more natural, feral state, then great :)
I don't really agree with the rest of your post, but this i do think is probably the best usage of hallucinogens as far as therapy goes. I don't really think microdosing is the way to go about it. In my experience, that 'big reset' to harmful thoughts and patterns of actions is the primary benefit to theraputic hallucinogen use.
I liken it to when you've got like 50 apps open on a desktop, a few with memory leaks, CPU's running hard all cores, memory usage is at 100%, swap's totally used.
So you reset, everything shuts down and restarts, all that's running are the system init processes and memory's cleared and ready to go.
I don't really feel like microdosing is the best way to go about this and i'm not even sure if LSD is a very good drug for that. I've never really had any introspective experiences with LSD. They've just been kind of shallow and fun. Psilocybin on the hand gave me far more of a theraputic trip with one high dose. I tried the microdosing thing. It just made feel like I was stoned all the time.
With acid, it was always just fun. There wasn't really much introspection about it. It just made everything feel profound and fun. Whereas, especially mushrooms, but also a few other plant based substances, the trips always led to more self reflection and more positive changes post trip.
I like acid more. I wish i could get some acid as nice as i had years back now, but when i want to deal with real life issues or emotional problems, mushrooms are where i turn to. Acid is more for those times when i just wanna take a vacation for a few hours and go on a magical journey.
Anxiety and depression affects up to 20% of the population every year, and if I had to guess, I might speculate that number is higher for developers. (Many of us turn to computers to avoid people, which means less social support.)
Your cautious use of authority in the situation is warrented, to your credit. But even if every thing mentioned is actually the case, from a creative or learning point of view, I am not convinced this is the mild disaster you paint it to be. There are other factors in intelligence and brain activity, and some of those are the fertile soil of emergent invention or personality and character change. Some tasks are not well suited for creative people, maybe you need less creative people to struggle less in meetings?
"I'm actually way smarter, just only in the ways you can't measure" isn't falsifiable, and contributes to the reputation that psychedelic-advocates indulge in pseudoscience and word games rather than useful research.
However, I strongly recommend it for people who struggle with chronic depression or anxiety. Microdosing is a way to break rumination, the asshole uncle of meditation whose constant shitty thoughts in the back of your mind are the fuel that keep you feeling depressed or anxious.
LSD Microdosing is the Aspirin (and I use that word very intentionally, it is not a cure, it is relief) that lets you start to interrupt that cycle, which will give you back enough of your life that you can start to make other more long-lasting changes
This is it. It gave me enough of a bump to move forward in a positive direction. It's a good tool.
It seems like it could be an ativan for chronic depression or bi-polar.
My thoughts fundamentally change depending on if I'm up, down, or center. It'd be incredible to be able to give a "kick" to the negative thoughts a bit when I'm down.
I imagine it could be similar to klonipin for panic attacks - it doesn't fix anything, but it temporarily allows my mind to function (instead of spiraling), and allows me to work on treating the cause of anxiety.
I suppose that sort of thing also might lead to creative breakthroughs to brilliant people who have been stuck on problems for a long time, but lets face it -- while lots of developers are intelligent people, we aren't working at the edge of science. Deciding to throw in a Redis cache to speed up requests or something isn't a groundbreaking innovation.
I wouldn't recommend LSD to people with anxiety, as raises anxiety. I would _mildly_ recommend it to people who suffer with depression, but have a low level of anxiety. And yes: it does help break out of rumination cycles, and weaken old neural connections.
You make it sound like negative thoughts are the _cause_ of depression. This is not the case, although they are correlated: when you're depressed, you tend to have negative thoughts, which can drive you deeper into that very depression.
What I would recommend strongly to people with depression is a prescription anti-depressant (it can take a long time working with a good psychiatrist to find one). Possibly light smoking as well, if the person is otherwise healthy.
There is no silver bullet here. Certain people have certain imbalances in neural chemistry, and small doses of the right prescription drug can help correct that. For chronic symptoms, people have to be on the drug for a lifetime; for others, a few years.
Yeah, don't do that.
https://doubleblindmag.com/shrooms-vs-acid/
> In addition to the contrasting content of the experience, the onset, duration, and intensity of the trips are distinctly different. Psilocybin takes approximately 45 minutes for effects to be felt and lasts between four and six hours, with these effects peaking around two hours into the experience. Psilocybin highs are also sometimes described as “coming in waves” with emotions oscillating between extreme euphoria and bliss to anxiety and trepidation. There is also anecdotal evidence to suggest a mushroom experience and can be potentiated or re-invigorated by ingesting cannabis a few hours into the experience. Alternatively the effects of LSD can last around twelve hours and are typically reported to be more steady, gradually intensifying until a peak around two hours into the experience, plateauing, then gently declining from approximately seven to nine hours in.
Better mood: "I feel better because I've overcome the fear of LSD!" (also...adrenaline)
Ensuing confusion as the adrenaline subsides: "Why was there a fear in the first place? Am I doing it wrong? I don't feel like this was as scary as it was supposed to be. Did I take actual LSD? Maybe it was just a placebo that some jerk sold me! Maybe I didn't take enough? I have been working out lately and I ate an apple the other day. I should take a tiny bit more to find out. Wait, why am I so worried about all of this? I'm typically so chill. Was I drugged??"
Meanwhile, the rest of the team is staring at you waiting for your opinion on the new landing page, starting to look a little confused/worried - perpetuating your inner fears as you are now surrounded by confused, concerned people.
Don't do drugs kids. Why? Not because the drugs themselves are that bad (some are), but because there is so much social stigma around them that it is really hard to take a drug without psyching yourself out.
Or do drugs and enjoy the chaotic ride directly into homelessness as you find ways to rationalize it as "reduced rent living, a back-to-the-earth lifestyle, and non-materialism" to your friends - if you still have any.
Option 3: Continue reading articles on the internet that random internet strangers wrote explaining their experiences with drugs and ponder whether or not you should try them yourself
Edit: Y'all saying my post is just FUD. I think you have seriously misunderstood my tone and intent. The point is this article and ensuing discussion is about other people's experiences doing a thing that is "scary". Literally the entire topic and approach is built because people already have a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt on the subject.
My point isn't even about LSD directly, but about engaging in activities that have a very strong social stigma attached to them. If you think X is scary, then you have already built up years of conditioning to believe that X thing is a no-no - that FUD is intrinsic, and not my doing. The above train of thought is common for someone who start tip-toeing into drugs for the first time. They are usually completely fine physically. Great even. But frequently this leads to a little soul-searching and rethinking things in their lives. Which is a huge reason to do drugs for many people.
Source: Have used a variety of drugs and know many people who have as well.
TL;DR: You will most likely be fine, but shaken up by your own mind as you break past a mental barrier that you didn't know existed or why it exists in the first place. And the process of breaking past that barrier can disrupt your familiar routines and comforts, including: your job, home situation, and social life. None of this is inherently a "bad" thing. It is your life. Maybe losing that comfy SV paycheck is just what you need to grow personally, but how do I, or any else know what you need in your life? We don't. The three options I lay out are essentially me saying...":shrug_emoji: some people do well with drugs, other don't. Do what you want"
Edit: typos from mobile
Obviously don't bosh 300μg for the first time ever and head into the office at rush hour.
Isn't that just the thing about LSD it allows you to view things from a perspective that makes them look beautiful. It makes ordinary things look great.
It's not what you should take if you are truly trying to accomplish something, other than be able to change your point of view.
Problem with your co-workers may have been that they didn't assume they were on drugs, that of course it will affect your productivity when everything starts looking good enough already. That's what drugs are like, if you take drugs, be aware you will be under their influence.
LSD is not a "performance enhancing drug" like perhaps could be said about amphetamines. The effect of those is truly detrimental to your health. But they make you more productive. A fighter-pilot on amphetamine might shoot down 3 enemy planes and then get shot down themselves. Productive but not so healthy.
I don't drink very much these days.
I've found I get the same benefit from distance running. I can have anxiety-provoking conversations more easily if I've run 10 miles because I'm too tired to get upset.
In fact, as someone with anxiety and ADHD I've finally realized in my thirties that I basically need to exercise (almost) every day to get more usable hours out of my day.
I need to start doing more running. I do have ADD but the medications fuck with my heart, which means my life is difficult all the time. Sigh. The meds work so well... it really sucks being unable to use them (including the atypical ones)
I used to go for a run at lunch. Then my co-worker started complaining about how I was leaving my desk to get exercise. I'm still with that company but I hope for not much longer.
i'm so fucking depressed the last few days. i've applied for a lot of different jobs. I have a 'final' interview today with a job that I don't really want, but it's an avenue out of the toxic situation that I'm finding myself in and if I take it, I'll be able to do a couple weeks of vacation time between jobs that I badly need.
I've got so much going wrong right now I'm just feeling beat the fuck up.
Or if you're not a distance runner yet, it's okay to jog slow and take frequent walk breaks. In a lot of ways, volume is way more important than intensity.
My healthcare plan gave me a watch that reminds me to walk 500 steps every hour or so, and a daily goal of walking 10000 steps. That small nudge has made me way more consistent, because I'm a cheap asshole who likes the idea of saving $3 on my healthcare plan every day.
There was a study that says you make better car buying decisions if you do a crossword puzzle instead of sit there and think about buying a car. Same thing goes for technical tasks. I'm more productive if I walk around frequently, forget about my problems and come back to them with a clear head.
How often have you saved a day's worth of hard work by just doing something a slightly smarter way?
Walks give your subconscious brain time to chew through problems and solve them while you're not actively thinking about them.
I hope you get that new job. Having a non-toxic environment is more important than almost every other factor and I strongly recommend everyone leave their toxic jobs if at all possible.
& thank you. It's far from a dream job but it will buy some time.
Are you feeling better, or are you feeling euphoria from being punch-drunk tired all the time?
From the outside, the West Coast (I'm assuming... with great confidence) seems like a delusional bubble at (many) times.
Is that a bad thing? It's good to question social norms...as long as you're open to coming around to the idea that they might be well founded.
The workplace, meanwhile, is far, far from finished in development. I expect it'll be unrecognizable by the end of the century, and who knows what molecules might join caffeine?
As usual with gwern always an interesting article. I admit that I only skimmed but his experience seems to me very atypical. He talks very little about his experience with the 250μg dose, almost dismissing it. 250μg is a very strong dose for a first timer. I would be very surprised to get a meh reaction from anyone after such a first experience. He then took only a week for a tolerance break when the recommended amount is 2 weeks. Then for the experiment he ingested 25μg. I took that amount a couple of times (my first experiences) and while it's not the classic LSD experience you are in no way unsure if you are drugged or not.
I think he just got bad tabs...
He doesn't dismiss it. He writes:
> During the walk, I notice my body seems to be feeling ‘mechanical’ and my movements weaker, with my skin feeling like a flesh glove (if that metaphor makes sense), although at the same time, the bright sunlight and cool wind feel exceptionally vivid to my senses; I was reminded of when I went skydiving and on the way down, the world seemed to ‘pop’.
> One persistent problem was my jaw or neck muscles seemed to be rigid or clenching and I had to keep relaxing them or they would create a sort of want-to-vomit feeling, which was pretty strange when I focused on it. But I still wasn’t impressed by the experience.
> I happened to spend a little time cloud-watching, and I realized that the clouds were strobing like stop-animation as I focused on individual patches; in particular, I realized that I could force a visual flip (like the young/old woman optical illusion or the rabbit-duck illusion) from seeing a sky of blue with thin clouds to a roiling stormscape where the blue was the black, and the white clouds were just the illuminated underside. Quite interesting, and an unexpected figure-ground inversion. I also could temporarily force pareidolia by visualizing and willing the clouds to form claw or grasping hands or vaguely human-like shapes.
> Back home, I spent the next 2-3 hours listening to music by Explosions in the Sky tracks, which while planning I had thought would sound better on LSD. I was right - the experience was amazing. Lying in bed with my eyes blindfolded and just listening carefully, I have never followed the music so well, or been so moved emotionally or physically by it. My misanthropic soul was moved twice to tears.
There's no way he'd have those experiences with "bad tabs". I think you're mistaking his prose style here, which is attempting objectivity, with "dismissiveness".
I can totally relate to this. Simply going to the store on LSD to buy snacks can become like some kind of deeply symbolic adventure. I remember going “ghost hunting” on a high dose of mushrooms with my buddies which consisted of us marching around in the snow with beers in the middle of the night through downtown urban parks laughing our asses of at “no ghosts here. We’ll get em next time” etc. I once ate a perfectly ripe orange bell pepper and it was the sensory equivalent of an actual religious experience. I’ve balled my eyes out crying like a bitch on acid while watching a very cheesy and manipulative infomercial about supporting a kid in Africa for only one dollar a day.
One of the powers of psychedelics are their ability to transform basic tasks and cliches into meaningful experiences. Opening you mind to the wonders of the universe, of being alive briefly somehow and here. A bazooka joe bubblegum comic can become charged with more meaning than Finnegans Wake.
But I don’t see the value of microdosing. I actually find the practice a little repugnant? maybe that’s too strong of a word or not strong enough but I feel like the whole point of something like LSD is to enrich, deepen, unravel, perplex, and push forward that little spark of awareness inside. It’s not a performance enhancing drug like a creativity steroid for like power working at the office.
Since potency can vary a great deal between strains (one type of mushroom could be very intense at 2 grams [this is rare] while another maybe require 6, and so on) I recommend buying much more than you need at one time. Like 20 grams. Take two, see how it goes. Few weeks or whatever later take three grams. My experience From back in the day is that on average, 4 or 5 grams will usually do the trick. 5 grams of dry magic mushrooms usually tastes pretty gnarly so chew them up with a nice premium chocolate bar.
Be careful here. Make no mistake about it, magic mushrooms and LSD can definitely be a humbling, pants-shitting experience that one can’t merely nope out of. So exercise caution and don’t feel pressured to do too much at once.
If you really want it, buy 50x Salvia from a head shop. Fill a bong with the powder, use a torch lighter (the crystals release from the extract at a high temperature, regular lighter won’t be enough) inhale and hold the smoke in for 15 to 30 seconds. Exhale, take another hit. Inhale, hold, and be sure to send the funhouse gnomes my warmest regards.
[1] I can imagine someone being confused on psychedelics though, especially if it is their first time, but I doubt it would be much of an issue, and could possibly be reduced by reading more about the effects to know what they should expect and so forth prior to consumption.
If you are a mentally healthy person and want to take a trip to possibly open your mind up to new ideas and empathetic feelings, have at it.
Also the whole idea of micro dosing is a misnomer as the way acid works is by setting off a chain reaction along neural networks very simmilar to how the black widow spider's venom works. It is possible to suffer from or enjoy a chronic condition from micro dosing LSD simmilar to how second hand smoke or air pollution affects you but that is a real stretch.
I would like to know. Are there are any "micro dosers" out there that have NOT also at some point taken an larger dose at some time? I bet they don't exist.
That's a major reason I have so much trouble motivating myself to get anything done. Even after I finish something, it has no effect on my mood.
If I'm having trouble with something and suddenly circumstances change where I don't have to do it anymore, it actually is a big relief to me and thats the only time I feel an elevated mood after crossing something off a list.
It would be interesting to see if microdosing LSD somehow changes that or not.
A couple points:
1) the inclusion criteria include prior use of psychedelic substances 2) the exclusion criteria filters out people with a previous bad experience of having panic attacks/anxiety/etc
Those two factors alone are going to create a bias by including only people who are known to not have a negative reaction to the drug anyway, so if you've never dosed before, you cannot use this study to determine what your likely experience is. The study group is not reflective of you, and you might after dosing find yourself meeting the exclusion criteria.
Another point: 3) participants stayed drug free for 3 months before the study
This means that these results are less reflective of you if you continually microdose, as they do not account for tolerance etc over time.
I felt trapped in an awful PhD program (a well-known physics dept in the US) with an extremely toxic advisor. After years of getting yelled at for small mistakes with little or no feedback, insane hours (weekend/holiday meetings and deadlines) and zero growth I had completely lost any confidence. I became depressed, overweight, afraid to talk to people, etc.
I'm weary of drugs, even caffeine, but microdosing helped me regain some sense of direction and a bit of confidence to move forward. It is like simulated annealing as gwern describes. My mind was trapped in a minima and I needed a chemical shock to move it elsewhere.
As a side-note, I finished my PhD and am job hunting. Now, I'm exponentially happier around friends and family. I'm still rebuilding my confidence but I've stopped microdosing because I don't feel the need.
I've never taken a regular dose.
Did they just confuse "affect" with "effect" in the highlights section of something that got published in a journal?
Uncharitably, you might call it p hacking
https://research-compliance.umich.edu/controlled-substances-...
That said, the short-term tolerance curve is incredibly steep. What ends up happening with a lot of folks who microdose for extended periods is that they'll increase the 'micro' until they make a rounding error and then all of a sudden your desk is melting and your mouse has a half-minute delay. Best practices are to stagger days and take occasional three-to-four day long breaks.
I say this as a huge proponent of psychedelic research and use, but with the qualification that very few things are universally safe for all, so we really should be as open as possible to studying not only the benefits, but also concerns, that come with psychedelic usage.
> A more serious issue concerns other receptors that LSD activates. In particular, LSD is a potent activator of the serotonin 5-HT2B receptor. Activation of that receptor stimulates growth of cardiac ventricular and valve tissue.
You might want to be less aggressive when asking for citations in the future. Especially considering this is something you could have found in ~5 mins of googling.
Another minute of googling after your citation might lead to this
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4086739/
> You might want to be less aggressive when asking for citations in the future
Or perhaps we're providing encouragement by supplying two citations. ;-)
But it might not have been an aggressive intent. It might have been a consequence of anxiety, which I understand can be a consequence of micro-dosing LSD.
Why is it my responsibility to validate someone's vague claim?
Your first sentence — while the subject isn’t hard to research for yourself — was fine as it added to the potential of the conversation by encouraging people to cite sources; your second was unnecessarily combative and I’d argue intended to induce some shame response in the OC, and didn’t bring any benefit to the community at large.
I'd note that I wasn't the only person to note the aggression in your tone; I'm not intending to shame you for your choice of language, but instead to point out that there are at least two people here who cared enough to respond to you and let you know that it seemed overly aggressive, and that perhaps there are better rhetorical techniques to achieve the same end.
I'm sure others found your tone perfectly reasonable, but I can only voice my own view of how it came across, and how it seemed harmful, not conducive to, open discussion.
The idea is we're helping each other search the state space of the world for what's true.
After all, getting someone to always convince you of things that are true is a really high bar. That means that person is effectively a coach or tutor to you. Usually you have to pay someone to do that.
This method allows us to exchange small messages that hint at information in a certain direction.
I say this as someone who has two tabs of LSD in my fridge left and about 100 g of shrooms so you know I'm not an anti-entheogen dude.
Neither show long term correlation with lower long term health outcomes (typically the reverse) but with microdosing being more prevalent and science being able to study more of this above ground, I’m hopeful we will have a better answer to this eventually.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DrugNerds/comments/2mqqww/psilocin_... - which has a ton of assumptions in it, but is very forthright with those, is one of the better analyses I’ve seen on this topic, but if there’s more out there I’d love to see it.
The gist that I’ve gathered so far is that for most people, going with a Fadiman-esque approach (2x/week dosing), combined with anecdotal data gathered from researchers conducting surveys, seems to suggest that it’s not egregiously unsafe, at the least. But still certainly worth paying attention to - a big part of the reason I cycle in and out of microdosing - it’s too helpful for depression, anxiety and disconnection to abandon completely, but there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
IIRC (I haven't done LSD since 1987, although I used it quite a bit before then), it's not so much that LSD has an impact on the heart, it's the speed (methamphetamine) that's often added to LSD that can negatively impact heart function.
In fact, I don't recall any issues with tachycardia when using "clean" LSD, while that wasn't unusual on LSD with speed.
I'd add that negative interactions while under the influence of LSD (i.e., 'bad' trip) can certainly cause some tachycardia, as that circumstance can cause anxiety and fear.
However, as long as one remains in a supportive, positive atmosphere, that's generally not an issue.
I did a cursory look around and found this study[0] from July 2020 which did mention tachycardia in passing, but notes that:
"LSD use can lead to hypothermia, piloerection, tachycardia with palpitation, an elevation of blood pressure, and hyperglycemia.
The autonomic reactions listed above are not as significant as the mental and behavioral effects of LSD on the body."
However, it's not clear whether those responses were observed or self-reported. This is important since, as I mentioned, LSD is often (by those vending it, rather than end users) "enhanced" with methamphetamine and it's also unclear whether or not such responses are limited to 'bad trips' or not.
All that said, my experience is (obviously) anecdotal.
If there are other studies (sadly, since LSD is a Schedule 1[1] substance, studying its effects is rare, at least in the US) with more direct observations, I'd love to see them.
You can't add any significant amount of meth to a blotter, it's just too small, so this is not true. Also, speed is amphetamines but usually not methampthetamine.
Maybe you are thinking of cases where other psychedelics are sold as LSD and which can sometimes be stuff like DOx which is technically amphetamine but quite far from speed?
From Wikipedia:
> Due to its potency and much lower cost than so-called classical or traditional psychedelics, 25I-NBOMe blotters are sometimes misrepresented as, or mistaken for, LSD blotters.[17] Even small quantities of 25I-NBOMe can produce a large number of blotters. Vendors would import 25I-NBOMe in bulk (E.G 1 kilogram containers) and resell individual doses for a considerable profit
---
On the other hand, what do we mean by frequent here? You develop tolerance quite rapidly to LSD. DMT on the other hand, no tolerance whatsoever, nor cross-tolerance. It is fascinating, in my opinion.