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Comment by mtlmtlmtlmtl | Hacker News Reader

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 generally I was far less productive than I would be taking stimulants for my ADHD instead.

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> 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 achievements. Eventually the illusion was shattered when the rest of us would casually guess when they were microdosing and call them out because they were making obvious mistakes, missing things, or being amazed at benign realizations.

And before anyone asks: Yes, they tried many different doses down to minuscule amounts.

In retrospect, this is actually the least surprising result: That taking a micro-dose of a psychedelic produces a micro-trip.

Yeah not sure what the source of this homeopathic type logic is. It's very strange, and applies to basically nothing else. So I'd like some pretty extraordinary evidence before I believe that taking deliberately ineffective doses of anything has any effect. And, good luck producing a dose-response curve...

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.

There's studies on "brain training" apps like Lumosity that tend to show that all you're improving at is the specific test, not the underlying mental capacity like working memory.

And a related anecdote: I once asked my psychologist to do an IQ test on me, mainly out of curiosity. She refused, basically giving the logic you did. We have no reason to believe your IQ is low, or even average, and if we did do a test, and at some future point we needed a test for actual diagnostic purposes(say if I had a stroke or something), it could taint the result.

So I'd say you're right on the money wrt the limited usefulness of doing these neuropsych tests repeatedly. Especially over short periods.

That's an uncharitable reading. OP is just sharing what works with her/him. Which is ok. From what I understood from your comment, for you it doesn't. Which is ok too, as now you know yourself a bit better. Two personal experiments with very different outcomes. There's no need for moral judgments either way.

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.

The paper stated James Fadiman as the source for the characterization of a microdose, it however failed to properly convey his point of view.

I've heard James Fadiman reporting twice that it is 10% of a recreational (1-3g) or therapeutic dose (3.0-3.5g), but certainly not 10% of a heroic dose. This study went with 0.5g which is 10% of what's considered a heroic dose.

The effective dose is considered to be 6mg if psilocybin or 0.6g of dried magic mushroom, thus the amount given in the study is very close to being detectable (and incidently was in most of the cases) which I don't think you can charaterize as a microdose. James Fadiman expressly stated a microdose would be a dose that you couldn't detect and would forget you had taken while going on about your day.

If one is taking 0.2-0.3g of dried magic mushroom this would be, without question, not getting high.

depends on your individual sensitivity to psychedelics, 0.2 would be too much for me to go into work, no visuals but a head trip. I also know plenty of people who can take 0.5 and don't feel much.

Mushrooms have so much variance that giving range like you did is almost impossible.

During my youth, I had strong trips with .5g and meh one's with a few grams, sure it's not the norm but it's not an exceptional occurrence either.

My experience told me that the stem of the smallest mushrooms are a lot stronger than those of the bigger one but that an heuristic not an hard rule.

If I wanted to microdose psilocin (for which psylocibin is a prodrug), I would order 4-AcO-DMT¹ fumarate (another prodrug for psilocin) from a reputable Canadian chemical supplier. It's almost identical to mushrooms, the difference being that it is predictable and somewhat easier on the digestive system.

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O-Acetylpsilocin https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/4-AcO-DMT

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?

Emil or Emlyn (Latin and Welsh) are similar male versions.

Assumption based on the username "EmilyHughes". Otherwise I would have used they/them or maybe a he/him would've slipped through, though I try to avoid that.

Does "if it works for you" also go for things like aspirin, antihistamines, antihypertensives, antibiotics, etc? I've never heard anyone say "if aspirin works for you then take it, but it doesn't work for me". I've only heard this kind of thing said for things like homeopathy, astrology, accupuncture, osteopathy, and microdosing, of course. Hence, I'm very skeptical.

[Edit: OK, I've heard people say that aspirin doesn't work for them, but what they meant was that they had pains that were too strong to respond to mere aspirin.]

psychoactive drugs are a whole different category. You bring your whole mental baggage with you when you take them, unlike aspirin.

How do you define "psychoactive"?

Anything that influences your psyche in an obvious way.

Isn't Aspirin psychoactive in the same way? I.e. it takes away pain, which influences your psyche in an obvious way.

You could argue that. there is no clear line of course, but most people would agree that a beer influences them more than aspirin or an antibiothic.

I see. To me, it is not very useful to talk about "psychoactive" substances, since sugar, caffeine, or nicotine are also "psychoactive". I would recommend the term "entheogens" in your original post.

Entheogen is even worse, that specifically means psychoactive drugs used for religious purposes. And guess what: nicotine is an entheogen!

It's nit psychoactive in the sense that is has any direct perceptible effect on the brain. It reduces inflammation, which can be perceived as less pain indirectly altering your mental state.

Whereas psychoactive drugs generally affect the actual underlying processes in the brain through various interactions with receptor, enzymes, or neurotransmitters.

I hope that distinction makes sense.

This is so disingenuous. Psilocybin directly affects levels of different neurotransmitters in the brain. Aspirin is an anti inflammatory.

It's not about disingenuousness, it's about the proper terminology. Caffeine is "psychoactive" yet very few people would say that you need to clear your mental baggage before you start drinking coffee.

It's a difference in the degree of effect. it seems there is some intentional focus on being pedantic and perfunctory.

Thank you for replying, but I would like to understand what "mental baggage" is and why it makes a difference. Why doesn't "mental baggage" affect aspirin?

Also, just to be clear, I don't think you're saying that you have to be in a special frame of mind for psychoactive drugs to make a difference. For example, I've been told that homeopathy doesn't work for me because I "don't believe in it", but I'm pretty sure that a sufficient dose of psilocybin would get me just as high as anyone else (modulo tolerance), belief or no belief.

Your prior mental state, past trauma, physical state and comfort, will have a significant impact on how your experience develops.

Any neuroticism can bubble to the surface and you might find yourself obsessing over a bad habit you have instead of enjoying the mystery and pattern of the universe.

Sorry, that sounds too mystical to me and I don't believe in the supernatural. I note you're not the OP though?

The phrase is “set and setting” meaning that it is strongly advised to only take psychedelics when you have a good mindset and a good setting. The thing about psychedelics is that you will have powerful mental imagery during the trip, that’s just how they work. So what is on your mind that day will affect what you think about, and with the power of psychedelics I’m told it could get scary or bad if you’re in a particularly bad mood.

For example I’ve twice taken mushrooms while I was lonely. About 1 gram. In both cases I ended up just feeling an amplified sense of loneliness that was very difficult to handle. Another time, and this wasn’t particularly bad, but I ended up thinking about my parents dying (they’re still alive) and it was a powerful feeling. That was good though, because after that I began to put more effort in to seeing them and spending time with them.

But my point is that the experience is a powerful mental experience that is affected by what is on your mind. So they strongly recommend only doing a trip if you have a good mindset and a good setting to do so. Otherwise wait.

By the way the parent comment is correct. Psychedelics bring up a powerful feeling of connectedness with the universe. You feel like you’re seeing patterns of the matter around you and you feel one with it all. I’m not a mystical person but that’s how I’ve felt on a strong trip.

Thanks for taking the time to explain, but if I understand correctly in the instances you relate, you were taking mushrooms specifically in order to get high, correct?

Whereas the OP (root of the thread) is talking about microdosing, which is, if I understand it correctly, taking drugs in an attempt to not get high, but get other benefits?

As to the "powerful feeling of connectedness with the universe", well, I've been drunk and I found that I loved everybody around me and I felt a strong emotional connection with total strangers. But, I was drunk. It's relaxing, it's disinhibiting, it's fun, it's making yourself deliberately and temporarily mentally impaired, why not? But there's nothing more to it.

In fact, I'd go as far as to say that the defining characteristic of intoxication, in my experience, is of being dumber than usual, which can be suprisingly enjoyable. Certainly not something to be desired as a constant state, though.

the importance of "set and setting" is almost universally known and easily verifiable. I've had terrible trips when stressed out and beautiful revelational ones when in the right frame of mind. shrooms are not as benign as alcohol. you're usually even less in control of your mental state, which can be both amazing and scary

I don't dispute the "set and setting" idea. I am asking why that makes a difference in the therapeutic or otherwise beneficial use of psilocybin and why it doesn't make any difference with other drugs like aspirin.

To clarify, as far as I understand, "set and setting" matters when taking psilocybin to get high, but microdosing is taking psilocybin (or other similar drugs) to very deliberatly not get high.

So what does "set and setting" have to do with microdosing, and why doesn't it matter with aspirin, which also doesn't get you high?

In the context of taking psychoactive mushrooms to get a proper trip, there are the concepts of a good trip, a bad trip, and steering your trip towards the former and away from the latter, based on your thought patterns and emotions (so actively pursuing the intent to have a good trip in your mind).

Now I've never microdosed mushrooms, but it's not hard for me to imagine that this same concept applies, of actively pursuing a good experience, which can steer that experience in a good direction. It will just be at a much smaller scale.

For myself I think of this phenomenon as a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy (not meant as a judgement about others) which helps me to keep in mind that I'm the one in control (assuming doses are not excessively high, I think others in this thread call those "heroic doses").

I just want to say that “getting high” is a very crude way of describing a mushroom trip. I don’t really take them to have fun. It’s more serious than that. I take them because there are long term mental health benefits when taken with the right set and setting. (Research supports this claim.) When I had those thoughts about my parents dying, it was a subconscious fear of mine coming up from my mind, and it caused me to change my behavior to call and visit my parents more.

So I really don’t see it as “getting high”, and that’s why people call it a trip rather than getting high.

My point about the connectedness is that it’s not mysticism, that’s just how people really feel. Don’t misunderstand those descriptions as the person being more mystical than you. That’s how you’d feel on the right dose of mushrooms too.

> Does "if it works for you" > also go for things like > aspirin, antihistamines, > antihypertensives, > antibiotics, etc?

A lot of the time, yes. For example, I have a bad physical reaction to aspirin -- it makes me vomit. I've tried several times over my life, and each time I had the same result. It does not work for me in the common use, plain medical sense of the phrase.

It's really common, AFAIK, in psychiatry. Try this try that, gotta "find the molecule that works for you, we're all different". I believe that is a common occurrence. In my experience when my general practitioner wanted me to try something, it kinda felt like a shot in the dark as to which one we were gonna try, to be reevaluated at a later time if we should go for another.

It is quite common for different people have differing responses to medications like aspirin, antihistamines, and antihypertensives. For example my brother and I both have bad seasonal allergies. My brother takes Claritin for his and gets relief from the worse of his allergies when he does. If I take Claritin it doesn't reduce the impact of my allergies to any noticable degree. If I take Zyrtec my allergy symptoms are mostly eliminated.

I think you're right and not all medicine works on everyone, but if one antihistamine doesn't work on you, then another one probably will. Like you say, one works on you, the other doesn't. That seems to be down to genetics, or some kind of biological characteristic, I guess.

But, for example, I was told that homeopathy doesn't work for me because I don't believe in it. And I think what the OP says that it's OK if "it" (in this case, microdosing rather than homeopathy) doesn't work for you then that "is OK too" is something I hear the most not from people who find that, say, aspirin doesn't work for them but ibuprofen, or paracetamol, does; but rather what I hear from people who take a remedy that not only has no effect on others, but has no documented effect on most people and has no clear mechanism of action, other perhaps than the placebo effect (which I understand to be regression to the mean).

So that's why I'm skeptical. With normal medicine, drugs will have an effect on some people or others regardless of whether someone believes they will or not, but with alternative remedies, they will only have an effect on those who believe in them and we can only observe the effect by asking them how they feel (for example, no homeopathic remedy will ever reduce blood pressure).

Trust me I tried all kinds of drugs and psychedelics are not the kind that get you hooked. Stimulants are especially addictive in my opinion. Psychs are the kind of drugs you say I have enough for a while if you overdo. On top of it they build tolerance immediately.

Can confirm, especially mushrooms. I had one trip on them and what my main take away was: It's exhausting to trip on mushrooms and after 4-5 hours I wanted to be sober again. I'll probably do it again in a few month but for me it's a whole-weekend kind of deal and hardly a party drug

It can be a "party drug" if you dose low, especially if you are chilling at a bar with friends. Just pushes you into a slightly better mood. I'll rather have a microdose with some beers than getting shitfaced drunk, feels subjectively healthier to me.

Of course you could also just stop drinking after a few beers without taking additional drugs.

easier said than done. But you are right of course, that's where you want to go.

Of course, a few beers are much worse for you than a microdose of shrooms, so why choose the former?

my main issue with mushrooms is how nauseous i get -- also, i lose all my appetite for at least 12h (last time, it took 24h for me to be actually hungry again).

are you consuming them on an empty stomach?

what are you eating the day beforehand / how is your diet in general? (like, lots of greasy, heavy food the day before / day of, or more on the lighter, healthier side of things?) this can really impact a body’s response to mushrooms on a gastrointestinal level.

those being more fundamental, I would say - but on top of that, could consider a hot-water infusion with anti-emetic herbs like ginger. tends to be smoother on the GI (provided you haven’t filled your stomach contents as way as well). tends to come on more quickly as well.

something else to consider is that gastrointestinal distress with psilocybin can be an indication of unprocessed emotional material and / or trauma. there’s different ways to work with that, in that context.

Lemon tek ;)

This anecdote has nothing to do with microdosing and is generally applicable to any short-term substance abuse.

That's hardly a counterargument. GP said you were high all the time, that's different from being addicted. There is some overlap, depending on the substance, but also significant difference. Think of nicotine, caffeine (addictive, but no high) vs psilocybin (high but arguably not addictive).

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.

I could argue it's condescending to be insulted on the behalf of someone who's clearly not insulted, but how is this useful? We're all adults here, feelings are boring and irrational and they don't advance the discussion at all.

you literally can't be high all the time on psychedelics (at least tryptamine-derived psychedelics) because of how quickly a complete tolerance to their effect forms at the 5ht2a receptors

I get what you’re saying, but I think the GP may see being less productive as a positive thing (productivity not being a universal value)

This. People need to stop looking for excuses and justification for wanting to experience drugs. I bet 95% percent of them 'missed out' doing it when it was age appropriate, and are just looking to scratch that itch while having a moral justification.

They end up overdoing, and overthinking about it and it all has a bad end.

Uh, so you took a break from your ADHD medication to microdose?

And you claim it is the microdose that made you less productive?

I posit you need to take a microdose with your normal ADHD medication, otherwise the anecdote is meaningless even as a personal reference.

No, I wasn't on medication at the time, couldn't get a script. I was looking for possible replacements, and a few psychedelics(LSD and 2C-B to name a couple) have psychostimulant properties. The idea was to try a few different regimens:

True microdose alone: no noticable effect on concentration, and some worsening.

Subpsychedelic yet strong enough doses to have stimulant effects: significant effect, but working memory was somewhat impaired. Impulsivity also increased.

Various conventional but obscure RC stimulants: some were highly effective, even more so than D-amp or mph. But it wasn't possible to rule out long term cardiotoxic effects like valvulopathy, so I didn't stick to them for safety reasons.

Then I did some limited trials with said stims + a true microcode, this just made me extremely scatterbrained and I quickly discontinued.

Eventually I decided even if I found something, which I had, I couldn't safely use it long term anyway. I cleaned up my act long enough to get real meds.

> 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.

If it made you high, you didn't microdose.

With even lower dose, no effect was present. See my response to one of the other replies.

Yes, those drugs can't replace SSRI

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