On the negative comments about Gwern's experiment, which failed to demonstrate any positive results, Gwern writes:
> The comments on my LSD microdosing experiment bring this out in dramatic relief: everyone is eager to find some flaw, no matter how improbable, which will let them dismiss the results completely and not update in the slightest bit. Will any of them do a better experiment to improve the claimed fatal flaw? Hell no! I can’t even except Fadiman here. While he didn’t give me any of the bullshit a lot of people did, I asked him before I posted it whether he or anyone else had attempted to replicate my experiment. No one had. To emphasize that: Fadiman is a trained psychologist who appreciates the need for systematic data collection + randomization + blinding with easy access to LSD who is keenly interested in microdosing inasmuch as he has done microdosing for decades while publicly professing its value, who understands & admires my procedure and has had at least half a year to replicate my experiment himself - and has not done so!
Like someone said, "if you see rocks glow, it's no longer microdosing".
One group gets decaf coffee with an LSD microdose
One group gets normal coffee.
Waltz in with coffee and donuts Dexter style each morning.
Monitor their output and mood for a month or so.
I'm reasonably certain that if someone slipped me something now, thanks to youthful experimentation I'd at least catch on to what was going on pretty quickly, but I can't imagine experiencing that with literally no frame of reference.
How are you controlling for which compound has which effects?
EDIT: Leaving aside the whole, you know, "Dosing your unsuspecting coworkers with acid" thing. Not very cool. Or legal (beyond the drug, itself).
Second of all LSD, has a bit of a stimulant "excitable" effect. So you might want to give them Decaf to compensate. You're right that it's a confounding variable though, and there's a good chance that people like me would be less productive because of the decaf, especially if the LSD dose was too small. https://erowid.org/chemicals/lsd/lsd_effects.shtml
0) https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/the-oral-history-of-the-b...
So you could feel sharper, but really, you're probably doing much worse than when you're sober
One of the LSD effects is an increase of production of dopamine in the brain. From this perspective alone, the microdosing might be on par with Ritalin, Nicotine, or Caffeine.
I was trying microdosing before I had diagnosis of adhd, and I feel that LSD works way nicer than Ritalin, and kind of comparable to Modafinil, in my case. Long term acid microdosing effects aren't well tested, so I wouldn't do it regularily, but still - it seems to work.
I'd love to see proper blind studies on this.
http://blog.seattlepi.com/hottopics/2012/06/28/coke-pepsi-co... or original article (French) here: http://www.60millions-mag.com/2012/06/27/coca-pepsi-et-autre...
Though these are at beer level.
Kombucha often contains a low (< 1%) amount of alcohol.
A coworker of mine was recently carded when purchasing kombucha :P
There is no reason to think that LSD does not have some positive effects as well.
These systems are incredibly complicated to prove anything in and we are so much more suggestible than we feel we are.
We can't even agree on what LSD should be increasing with microdosing, is it IQ, coding ability or concentration?
After trying it on myself 5-10ug / day for 6+ months, I think it's been incredibly beneficial.
The crux of it is that if you drop a full tab and pay attention, you'll notice LSD is extremely stimulating - far more than psilocybin. It has a very high level of dopamine receptor activation, which is why even 10 hours into a trip I would notice how different the quality of my attention was - in essence, it was far easier to simply be aware of what was going on.
(Note I have adhd-pi so that's part of why I think microdosing works for me)
In short, a microdose gives the dopaminergic stimulatory benefits, without being overwhelmingly twitchy. It produces a less linear style of thinking than amphetamines (adderall/vyvanse/desoxyn), but still increases general energy, focus, quality of attention etc. Colors feel a tiny bit sharper, visual acuity feels slightly enhanced, physical body control is significantly enhanced (I have far better posture and general neuromuscular control).
Obviously this isn't rigorous evidence, but hopefully it gives a general idea of why one would microdose.
One final thing - 25ug or even 15ug is far too much. IMO 10ug is the upper limit of what would be considered a microdose. My preference is 4-8 ug (obviously dosed as liquid)
It would be interesting if there were a study where bartenders were in some way blinded, perhaps needing to use specific bottles of mix for specific subjects. Some subjects in a group would be actors, intentionally /playing/ drunk, while others in the group would be real participants. In all cases subjects in the groups would be instructed to act as if the drinks were really alcohol, irrespective of if they were or not.
The dose has to be very small for any possible positive effect to not be outweighed by the harm.
In the UK that's seen as "very low". Other countries have different cultures around alcohol.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan...
There are problems with these numbers, because people tend to under-report how many drinks they've had, and how strong the drink was.
https://www.drinkaware.co.uk/research/data/consumption-uk/
> In 2015 in England, 55% of men said that they had drunk in the last year and that their average weekly alcohol consumption was no more than 14 units.
> 64% of women in England said that they had drunk in the last year and that their average weekly intake was no more than 14 units.
> In 2015, 11% of men and 7% of women in England said that their average weekly alcohol consumption was more than 14 units but no more than 21 units.
> In 2015 in England, 12% of men and 6% of women said that their average weekly alcohol consumption was more than 21 units but no more than 35 units.
> In 2015, 4% of men and 2% of women in England said that their average weekly alcohol consumption was more than 35 units but no more than 50 units.
This is important because there has been some publicity recently saying a drink a day is safe (mostly debunked now), or newspaper reports of the "benefits of red wine".
Here's one example of poor reporting: While we shouldn't increase the amount of pressure that pregnant women face (because they're already under considerable pressure) it's wrong to tell them that drinking wine daily is safe. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6078575#6079665
Source: https://www.xkcd.com/323/
But even if most of microdosing is just a placebo effect, I think that's still amazing in itself. Even if you're not "physically tripping", you've willed yourself into a "more open" mental state, creating your own positive side effects.
Placebo effect has real effects. Micro-dosing: Unverified.
However lower potencies, specially in the decimal scale definitely have enough of the original remedy in them as to qualify as a microdose. If you start with a gram, then a 6x potentization will result in about a 1 micro-gram dose, which is about the same as being discussed in this article. And a lot of homeopathic remedies are administered at the 3x or 6x potency as well.
https://www.gwern.net/LSD%20microdosing this article was posted on HN a few years back, and talks about an self-administered blind study of microdosing, which found limited benefits of microdosing, counter to most anecdotal examples.