Psilocybin microdosers demonstrate improvements in mood and mental health

Typical cohen's d effect size of antidepressants is 0.3. If the placebo is 75% of the response, that means a drug placebo has a d value of about 0.9. This study shows a d value of 0.39 for depression, which means it has about half the effect that we would expect to see simply from the placebo effect. So, either it is a very poor placebo, or the active ingredient has a negative effect on depression, or the participants weren't very depressed in the first place, or (more likely) we simply don't have a clue what the effectiveness actually is.

I've only done a handful of large doses, and even my therapist recommended it (and showed me some convincing experimental data). It's not a regular habit for me: maybe once or twice a year. Last year, I did a large amount of shrooms and just sat there and thought about things and ended up untying a really ugly knot of self hatred.

I think it's a good way to internalize therapy

I am planning to visit oregon in 2023 so I can receive therapy with psilocybin which hopefully has less negative side effects.

Edit: typo

There's no hidden knowledge or special secrets you learn about life from psychadelics. It can give you persistent/permanent hallucination disdorders.

In fact I recommend staying away from them and focusing reality-- improving yourself, your community, building something useful/interesting, etc.

If you do choose to waste your time and do psychadelics: Be very careful. Don't overdo it.

Today I have a thirty year marijuana habit that I can’t quit and now it’s being linked to the rise of schizophrenia.

Does anyone else feel the current topic of “MDMA medicine” and “mushrooms are medicine” may in fact be as wrong as “oxycontin isn’t addictive” was in the 90’s?

The frequency of reports of new “mushroom research”, and the number of “mushroom researches” itself, skyrocketed back in the days of COVID, and began to wander through quite “white” media, rather than youthful e-magazines, similar even in design to a rebellious teenage T-shirt.

As early as the summer of 2021, while monitoring the psychological news aggregators, I noticed that a clear upward trend in our world was becoming the idea of legalizing smth new. Not some stupidly smoking marijuana, no. At 2021 that already was a thing of the past, it’s already happened. Now hallucinogens, aka psychedelics, are taking the legalize movement by storm. One of prominent news at 2021 were as such: “Psilocybin provokes rapid growth of neural connections in the prefrontal cortex, study shows”. “Small doses of psilocybin and ketamine increase motivation and attention in outsider rats, new study shows”. “One of the new fronts in modern psychotherapy is psychedelic drugs”.

Today I revisited one of these aggregators, and found, that the density of “mushrooming media bombs” has increased even more. Here are the headlines from just the last month (!):

May 4, 2022: “Large study concludes that psilocybin is a ‘relatively safe’ drug, and serious reactions to it are rare and short-lived” original publication in Journal of Psychopharmacology.

May 10, 2022: “Cannabis users expect cannabis-assisted therapy for depression to be effective along with psilocybin” original publication - in Cannabis , also a peer-reviewed scientific journal, despite the name.

June 2, 2022: “New research sheds light on the mysterious process by which psilocybin can quickly relieve symptoms of depression” original publication in The New England Journal of Medicine and Nature Medicine.

It’s not hard to understand: if there’s research on a topic, it means there’s money allocated to it.

If a bunch of different universities (specifically regarding these publications - King’s College London, University of Oblani, University of Ontario, etc.) suddenly receive a bunch of money to research the same topic, it means that the topic has sponsors who are interested in publicizing it as widely as possible and involving the maximum number of researchers in it. And lets not forget, that every scientist who writes something about “mushrooms make you smart and relieve you from depression” already becomes somewhat hostage to his reputation and tends to defend the position he has expressed, just to keep his grant.

Of course, one can assume that this is actually bullshit and the result of “selective sampling statistics”. That there are actually a gigantic number of studies on all kinds of topics in the West all the time, and a bunch of journals publish their results every day.

Well, that’s a fair point, but there’s another piece of news that might suggest that my paranoia is not so unfounded. Large quote from publication about a very important event on WEF: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jun/01/psychedelic...

The appearance of a pavilion about healthy hallucinogens at the World Economic Forum a decade ago was as likely as the appearance of a pavilion about “healthy carnal love for minors” or “racial differences in the quality of intelligence”. Pedophilia and racism are total taboo, and so were drugs. Until recently.

So, with all the above, if something that used to be unthinkable suddenly appears without hiding, it means that the good old bulldozer-based Overton Window has come into motion with a screech.

By the way, weed was also promoted in the first 10 years of the legalize battle as a cure for depression. Now it’s recreational, chopping billions in sales, and in some places it’s already supplanting beer and whiskey.

Most of the crises, horrors and situations in our lives are not “organized,” but are “result of circumstances”. This does not in any way negate the stunning eloquence of the fact that drugs and the WEF have finally merged in physical reality and, more importantly, in the same media reality.

Exercise also improves your mood and mental health.