Hacker News Reader

Comment by rank0 | Hacker News Reader

25 is a pretty fat dose. Seems excessive for a scientific study...

I always wonder how these people running the studies choose their doses. Do we want the participants to have a smooth/pleasant trip? Or have an white knuckle, ego-obliterating flight through space?

This reminds me of another study I read where participants were given 100+mg doses of liquid ketamine straight to the dome. The participants frequently k-holed.

Maybe the science says otherwise, but personal experience tells me you don't need to melt your fucking face to experience the anti-depressant effects of psychedelics. It can be destabilizing to some.

View on HN

25 is as they say 'medium-to-heavy dose'. It's not as excessively high as you make it sound and it isn't quite 'an white knuckle, ego-obliterating flight through space'

It's definitely a 'proper trip' but you are making it seem like a DMT breakthrough amount.

Yeah, agreed. I know mushrooms are highly variable in their psilocybin and psilocin content, but it’s generally around 1% of dried mass for cubensis from what I’ve read. So in this case that’s what, 2.5 grams of mushrooms about? That’s not nothing, but it certainly isn’t an ego death sort of dose. I know a lot of people that will take 3.5 grams for a typical “journey” when they’re seeking to get in there and do some internal work.

It seems like a perfectly fine dose for a study like this: not too overwhelming and not too small.

I guess we can agree to disagree. You can absolutely experience ego death in this range (or at least 'ego-shaking'). An 1/8th is pretty normal yeah for the typical recreational user, but I don't think that's a great benchmark for a science experiment. Lots of people have scary unpleasant experiences with an 1/8 or less.

Pharmaceutical grade psilocybin is gonna be a lot more potent than average street mushrooms.

Everyone has different bodies and react differently to drugs. I can assure you that 25mg is a heavy dose especially for those who are not experienced with psychedelics. My whole point is that some of these tests are being administered by scientists who have no experience with the drug, and maybe they should be more careful.

I would use different language to describe a DMT trip, but the imagery wasn't supposed to be the main focus of my comment. Just for an additional reference check out this old study and its take on dosage:

https://erowid.org/references/texts/show/5665docid5442

administered 20-70mg but eventually settled on "30 mg. as a standard, moderate dose". But'moderate' may mean many things. Leary, later in the same paper, says "Psilocybin produces temporary states of spiritual conversion, interpersonal closeness and psychological insight. Forty-five percent of the entire inmate group clearly underwent a mystical, transcendent, death-rebirth experience."

There's some research suggesting that the highest dose you can hit without inducing undue anxiety will be the most effective. As one might expect, this is similar to a tolerable recreational dose that most people would give themselves.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00213-011-2358-5

It would be really interesting to study the dose response curve in regard to a single thing like depression. Do microdoses or mild doses help more or less than a Zoom call with God dose?

For a medical use I'd be concerned about the unpredictability of the experience with high doses. A traumatic or chaotic trip could make depression worse or possibly trigger other latent psychological issues.

I imagine it would get really expensive real fast to test the whole range of, what, at least a few dozen substances? Are there any efforts to make running experiments cheaper and faster?

I totally agree with you, but on the other hand, am also interested in the related study question of: "What happens if we just melt some randos fucking faces off with shrooms?"

Will be interesting to read the paper

> Do we want the participants to have a smooth/pleasant trip? Or have an white knuckle, ego-obliterating flight through space?

A bit ignorant here. Isn’t this 25mg?

Or, is this a more concentrated dose than say normal shrooms where anywhere from 0.5-1-2g to even 5g would take you to the moon?

Seems reasonable to be honest.

The relationship between psilocybin and mushrooms is like the one between caffeine and coffee.

You might expect 35mg psilocybin from 1/8 oz of mushrooms, which is a pretty mid to high, all day trip dose. So 25mg is strong but definitely not "ego death" strong.

Psilocybin content varies wildly in street mushrooms. I don't think a comparison between pharmaceutical grade psilocybin and illicit uncontrolled mushrooms is very useful.

I've witnessed lots of people losing their shit after eating an eighth.

It's still the same substance. The main difference is that with street mushrooms there's risk the dosage will be much higher, and that risk isn't there with a properly measured dose in a study.

Yep same substance but you misunderstand my point.

The risk here is that street mushrooms usually are going to be LESS potent than people think. What happens now, is that people pull the random statistic out of thin air saying "well 3.5g is about 35mg psilocybin so 25mg is good for the study." In reality, this dosage might end up being much higher than many of the positive anecdotes about "eating an eighth". And again, there's a million horror stories that use that same 3.5g weight.

That's why its silly to compare pharma-grade psilocybin with anecdotal evidence of street mushroom potency.

Hmm.. I'd argue you need that 'melt-your-fucking-face' experience to truly experience breakthrough. But then again, people react differently to everything

Reply on news.ycombinator.com