In other words, if you're desperate for an edge and willing to spend money, compromise your health and integrity for it, then you'll eventually move on from expensive bullshit like copper bands, to blood doping (in the case of sports). Right now, with the state of the "art", you're mostly just hurting yourself, but I think it's reasonable to assume that given the money and interest, it will be determined which drugs/methods do yield actual results.

If the attitude remains the same, "Anything for an edge," then when that comes you're going to be screwed as a group.

I personally am on the fence about LSD microdosing (and relatedly, most nootropics). There's evidence on both sides and much of it likely comes down to personal psychology and physiology.

I think we are going to have to accept the future where unenhanced humans are (largely) obsolete at the top (say, 0.1% or 0.01%), though: if it's not drugs, then it'll be cybernetic implants.

I think we might actually agree at a deeper level, and disagree how to address it: you seem to be interested in regulating the actions of people to prevent a tragedy of the commons situation, while I think we need to change the fundamentally exploitative economic structure that's precipitating the tragedy; I think both of us are more concerned with the coercive aspect of the problem than that people are doping.

I don't want people to be desparate for an edge, but I also think people have a fundamental right to burn brighter for less time if they want to. But I don't like the ratcheting of that becoming necessary for survival any more than you do.

I would dream of the kind of solution you're talking about... changing the landscape, but it's hard to imagine that happening in a positive way anytime soon. You're right in your conclusion about the right of people to push themselves, even to destruction. Imagine if the Curies had been told to quit with the experimentation by modern Health and Safety?!

The problem is... Japan. Look at what it's like to work in Japan. They have all of these ideas about what you need to do to be working "110%" (roughly translated). You stay late, leave after the boss, drink like a fish, and a bunch of other things that largely do not improve life or productivity. If the search for an edge were not so tightly bound with how work cultures change, permanently, it would be less of a concern.

Still, the solution, whatever it may be, is not regulating essential freedoms.

"The LD50 for the mouse amounts to 50-60 mg/kg IV (that is 50 to 60 thousandths of a gram of LSD per kilogram of animal weight upon injection of an LSD solution in the veins). In the rat the LD50 drops to 16.5 mg/kg, and in rabbits to 0.3 mg/kg. One elephant given 0.297 g of LSD died after a few minutes. The weight of this animal was determined to be 5,000 kg, which corresponds to a lethal dose of 0.06 mg/kg (0.06 thousandths of a gram per kilogram of bodyweight). Most animals die from a lethal dose of LSD by respiratory arrest. The minute doses that cause death in animal experiments may give the impression that LSD is a very toxic substance. However, if one compares the lethal dose in animals with the effective dose in human beings, which is 0.0003-0.001 mg/kg (0.0003 to 0.001 thousandths of a gram per kilogram of bodyweight), this shows an extraordinarily low toxicity for LSD. Only a 300- to 600-fold overdose of LSD, compared to the lethal dose in rabbits, or fully a 50,000- to 100,000-fold overdose, in comparison to the toxicity in the mouse, would have fatal results in human beings. These comparisons of relative toxicity are, to be sure, only understandable as estimates of orders of magnitude, for the determination of the therapeutic index (that is, the ratio between the effective and the lethal dose), is only meaningful within a given species. Such a procedure is not possible in this case because the lethal dose of LSD for humans is not known."

Just take a look at any fundamental neuroscience/brain biology textbook. I would guess that most likely continued microdosing would lead to downregulation and added stress on the pre and post synaptic neurons. Does this mean death? Probably not. Does it have long term effects? I'm not sure, I haven't read the research literature.

While it is just anecdote, the first person to synthesize the drug (and use it, and later practiced microdosing), Albert Hofmann, died from heart attack at the ripe age of 102 with a healthy mind.

The brain is an extremely delicate organ, or atleast that's what I would consider it. It relies on maintaining balance and uses negative feedback. In an effort to regulate brain activity, your brain will do things like down-regulation as an effort to bring your high activity brain (while on lsd) to a more normal level. I haven't looked into exactly what happens with LSD besides that it acts on serotonergic pathways, but sustained high activity can also lead to cell death.

Drugs are demonized in our culture but a lot of people can get a lot of benefits out of them, that includes steroids as well if you know what you are doing.

You don't make anyone any favors by spreading illegal drugs = health problems attitude.

Why is microdosing LSD compromising integrity?