I know a guy who was "microdosing" acid. He started small, but in the end was taking a couple of tabs a day, I guess trying to chase the enhancements. He was also smoking a bunch of weed at the same time.
It cooked his brain and he's lucky he didn't end up in a psych ward. He's stopped now (not by choice) and he's slowly coming back to normal.
I'm not writing this to dissuade people from microdosing, or from drugs in general (I'd be a massive hypocrite if I did). But to note that when left up to their own devices with drugs, some otherwise incredibly intelligent people will fall victim to the drugs. I've seen people (a lot who should've known better) get wiped out by basically every different type of drug. Weed, alcohol, Xanax, MDMA, amphetamines, LSD, ketamine, etc.
HN likes to talk about the positive effects of drugs, which there are when used responsibly, but for a certain percentage of the population, they'll fall victim to their impulses. It's easy to say that if you make rules and stick to them you'll be fine, but when you start to form a habit, you start bending and breaking those rules.
Microdosing implies being consistent. Most people have trouble with doing anything consistently because they consciously choose to do so.
For me drugs have been quite helpful. They have taught me about:
1) Some extreme emotional states.
2) Some extreme cognitive states.
3) They serve as a benchmark in emotional intensity when I encounter extreme experiences that are not facilitated by drugs (e.g. falling in love, exercising a lot or meditating very deeply).
4) They teach me a thing or two about my YouTube/gaming addiction or any addiction really.
5) If you're not careful they do mess up your mind, but our alcoholic culture is contributing to that for at least 50% in my experience. In all fairness, alcohol is drugs, anyone who disagrees is playing a dangerous game of definitions and of health.
6) The effect that believe and interpretation has on our actions. Sometimes one can think extreme things, and if you follow through on those thoughts, then your actions become extreme as well. This is why one needs a tripsitter.
But I didn't learn these things through microdosing. I learned them by doing it occassionally, once per half a year would be a lot. I do have the fortune of being in one of the best places in the world for it (The Netherlands) and having the ability to get things tested beforehand (this is something our government is doing right).
My point with this story is: while a part of my family has been going to total shit because of drugs (I am surprised they are alive, though friends of my family aren't -- alcohol poisoning), for me, they have been a very useful tool. Starting experimentation 15 years later than your average family member definitely helps.
I feel that drug experimentation done well is like bouldering. Yes, you fall, but it's on a soft cushion. Drug experimentation not done well is like, real life rock climbing without a carabiner. It's like bouldering, but a lot higher and no safety cushion.
> In all fairness, alcohol is drugs, anyone who disagrees is playing a dangerous game of definitions and of health.
No, alcohol is arguably much worse. Lets put aside health effects, and even related issues like deaths from drunk driving. The more insidious issue, is that in many parts of society, alcohol is a required component of social interaction. Many standard human activities, including dating, networking, enjoying art, even religious gatherings, all include some aspect of alcohol. None of these activities strictly requires alcohol, it's just that we've been conditioned over tens, hundreds, or thousands of years to accept it.
In contrast, illegal drugs have the benefit of being anti-social. Almost by definition, illegal drugs are substances that are not tolerated in society. Accordingly, doing illegal drugs provides a level of agency, it's a behavior you decided to do rather than one that has been forced upon you. It's an assertion of your free will.
Alcohol and drugs are entirely different. One is a choice and one is a law.
Fair point, I made the same observation in my usage of it. Though, I wasn't conscious enough of it to make that point, so thanks!
Here's my story about that observation (I think we should be a bit more open about this, and since I'm Dutch, at least my government won't pursue me for the following story).
At one point, I was taking a bit too much weed. And I was shocked, I smoked maybe once per week at best and it was more likely that I was smoking twice per month. This has been my peak in my life.
Yet, I still felt really messed up by it, what gives?
It turned out, that I didn't count all the nights of alcohol:
1. Every week 1 time with my GF's family. We would get very tipsy on average.
2. Every week 1 time with friends and/or GF. We would get tipsy on average.
3. Every week 3 to 4 random beers in between.
It also turns out that I didn't count the occassional psychedelic trip, once every 4 months.
It also turns out that I didn't factor in my occassional sleep deprivation.
It's kind of like calculus: a lot of a little bit is a whole surface, and this was a whole surface of misery and the worst offender was alcohol, closely followed by weed.
The issue was: cutting down on alcohol.
Cutting down on weed was easy, very very easy because I also found out when I might want to use it and those occassions happen rarely. Cutting down on occassional legal psychedelics (again, The Netherlands) was also easy. I'm slowly fixing my sleep issues as well.
Cutting down on alcohol was a lot tougher. I've managed to cut my consumption down by 50%. My other forms of drug consumption are cut down by 90%! It takes (and still takes) a lot of effort to just do 50% with alcohol. I have to say no, when people enjoy and smile and I just want it too. Fortunately, I quite like my sober self, and have to remind myself how being very tipsy feels (I find it quite unpleasant). So that helps, but I find it quite hard and that worries me. It would've been easy if we didn't have an alcoholic culture.
You were correct up until you said that illegal drugs are anti-social. They are certainly not. Many individuals, for better or worse, bond over drugs. On the extreme side, you have opium and crack dens, and on the other side you have cannabis-- probably the most social drug there is.
I think it depends on the perspective you take. From the perspective of "I decide to do a drug, because I want to experiment with it" is an assertion of free will. However, if you have a friend being a bit pushy with weed, then it isn't. Or if you somehow stumble upon a community that you click with and they invite you to do it, then it also isn't full assertion of free will, IMO. In order for it to be an assertion of free will, you need to take the decision when no one else is around and then just look for an opportunity to experiment later on in life.
That's what I did with psilocybin. And I have experienced the amazing effects of it, but man the dark side can be damn dark. I get why enough people are extremely against drugs. It's because things can become very dark and one should not forget that this is the case for a great enough group of people.
> You were correct up until you said that illegal drugs are anti-social. They are certainly not. Many individuals, for better or worse, bond over drugs.
I was using the term more narrowly. By "anti-social", I meant not accepted by society. I didn't mean it prevents you from socializing.
He was doing this for probably a month or two, every day I guess.
As for what it did to him. He started getting memory loss and delusional memories (thinking something happened when it didn't), as well as thinking he was "on another level" to everyone and nobody understood him. Nobody understood him because nothing he said made sense. He'd try talking to people and the sentences just didn't make sense. He'd keep getting stuck in loops or go off on weird tangents, which is normal while tripping, but even when he hadn't taken any acid in like 12 hours he'd still be stuck in these loops and tangents. He was basically unaware of reality, and unaware of what was happening to his mind and his psyche. People tried to help him, but he was completely unaware of the damage he was doing to himself and unwilling to accept from others that he might be harming himself.
He makes a lot more sense when talking now (it's been about a month), but he's still not all there.
I feel like part of the problem is that people don't consider "party" drugs like acid or MDMA as particularly harmful or addictive, so they're less aware when they start to use them in harmful ways. At least with benzos (Xanax, Valium) or amphetamines, people are usually aware that they're addictive and harmful when overdone.
> I feel like part of the problem is that people don't consider "party" drugs like acid or MDMA as particularly harmful or addictive, so they're less aware when they start to use them in harmful ways. At least with benzos (Xanax, Valium) or amphetamines, people are usually aware that they're addictive and harmful when overdone.
If someone considers powerful psychedelics to be party drugs, they're already making a grave mistake.
I disagree about benzos or amphetamines, I have had to force wean many people off of both classes of drugs after developing nasty addictions that their rewired brains would easily write off as benign.
Acid and many other psychs, unlike benzos or amphetamines, are not chemically addictive. It's entirely psychological. Their addiction profile in general is much better than most other classes of psychoactive drugs.
I would wait a few more months for your friend's brain to finish reregulating itself now that it's not receiving daily blasts of serotonin. Simarly to SSRIs which inhibit the reuptake of serotonin, which doctors generally recommend an adjustment period of a few months when beginning or ending a prescription. He could get 100% better. Or at least 99%. Psychologically he may have made some permanent changes to the way he thinks about the world. But his memory and all that should come back OK.
That said... a few tabs a day for months is crazy and we've never done any research outside of maybe MKUltra which has tested the effects of such a long and intense daily regiment. This really needs to be done so that everyone can be more safe.
The study shows what the participants were microdosing with. A subset of the people were shown microdosing psilocybin, with an average of 0.3g per person.
That can't be the case, as 300mg of psilocybin would be a devastating dose. Even 30mg is a sturdy dose. Obviously, they must mean 300mg of mushroom matter, but it doesn't say if it is dry weight or wet weight.
Anyway, it will be nice when someone can do a double blind study of microdosing and get some real data to work with.
They didn't specify if it was wet weight, but remember that most people don't ingest wet shrooms and by default just use dry weight. 300mg of wet weight likely wouldn't even provide a threshold dose.
Partially agreed - tolerance is strong but 300mg of psilocybin is a huge amount. Mushrooms tend to be 1% or so psilocybin by weight, so that’s like an ounce. People don’t typically eat an ounce of mushrooms. Upper dose tends to be 1/4 of that.
Specifically: if you're eating an ounce of mushrooms on the regular, then you are no longer 'micro' dosing, and there's a non-zero possibility that you are working on an article for Rolling Stone and just forgot.
I think the weakness of this study is that it's still all self-reported. I know a lot of people who would label themselves "productive" who I might not consider productive in an objective sense.
Not entirely true. By my reading, there were a number of psychometric tests done at the beginning and end of the period, finding some effects on attitude and focus that appeared uncorrelated to the self reported results.
Perhaps, but measuring productivity by lines of code is a problem only if there are incentives tied to the metric: if you have a system with other incentives and have two people working in the same language, lines of code is a perfectly reasonable way to judge the productivity of a programmer.
Nope. Things can be solved any number of ways. Often a simple solution with minor changes is better than a quicky designed bandaid with 10 times the LOC
It can be a metric, but it doesn't indicate productivity by itself.
It's hard to use even correlated to other metrics, but loses its value if compared out of context and without knowing the code quality
Indeed it is well-known (albeit apocryphally for most), mostly as the source of the rejoinder "the plural of anecdote is not data" which is rather more well-known among those who do analytics and is more correct at least in regards to the common definitions of "anecdote."
FWIW, I tried microdosing LSD for a while(I'm a programmer and was working from home). I found it to be negative to neutral. I'm probably suffering from ADHD and was looking for increased focus. I didn't find it. I was also a heavy pot user at the time though.
I found it was way too easy to take too much, or to start to feel the effects enough and then want to take more. Even when I kept the dose low, I don't think it led to any increase in productivity. I felt better, sure, but I was looking to get a more permanent sense of accomplishment rather than a short term mood boost.
Same here. Microdosing seems like a waste of LSD. On a full hit you at least get some strange ideas and it is a fun trip overall. That being said, for me personally as far as productivity goes, 2-3 days after the trip are the best.
Modafinil is much better suited for productivity. But it fucks up my routine and temper.
Yeah, I tried modafinil(well, armodafinil) when I was waiting to get my sleep apnea treated. I've used it a few times since. It's sometimes helped with getting things done, but I have enough anger and irritability issues normally which I don't want to exacerbate.
>"Milken Institute 2019 Global Conference, where I moderated a panel in front of a standing-room-only crowd: Psychedelics: Mind-Enhancing Methods to Well-Being.
The entire video can be found here[1]. If interested in my personal goals and thinking about the space, check out the first two minutes. The panelists then provide a great overview of the science, investing opportunities, anecdotal personal benefits, legal challenges, and much more. I think it’s one of the more comprehensive panels ever done on the subject."
For me personally, the fun effect of psychedelics in any dose is a total repulsion of alcohol and junk food for perhaps a day or two after dosing. Only want to eat salads, fruit, veggies. I wonder if anyone else also noticed that.
In my experience, it's fairly common with LSD. I went vegetarian for about 6 months after a good trip once.
I don't know if mescaline is different, if it was my experience level, or set & setting, but I had no problem eating a pepperoni pizza while experiencing some really nice visuals.
Nope, I've found the complete opposite. I just love abusing the shit out of my body though. I can't actually remember the last time I tripped without other substance though, usually I'm drinking and using other drugs too.
I definitely take the Hunter S Thompson approach to psychedelics, rather than the Timothy Leary approach.
> No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride...and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well...maybe chalk it up to forced consciousness expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten.
Agreed, I have noticed the same. Since my first trip I stopped drinking and smoking completely, started to cook most of my meals, making sure it only has the "right" stuff. Started to sleep more without a pillow, because I had this weird thought that "comfort cripples".
Same here! During or After (lasting for 2 or 3 days) a microdosis LSD, I do not like to drink any alcohol..
It is for me the most recognizable thing of microdosing
Can someone tell me about the heart risks involved? I eat a lot of mushrooms and would love to continue doing so, but have been worried a bit about the 5-HT2b talk I’ve heard around.
This is still an open question. There are a couple of studies that small regular doses of psilocin in rats and regular huge doses of MDMA in humans may or may not cause heart issues.
The effect of microdosing shrooms is kind of incredible in my limited experience (just a few consecutive days).
It definitely stimulated my creative side and caused me to spontaneously work on tasks I'd been putting off and some I'd forgotten completely long ago.
I didn't even realize those effects until after the fact, when reflecting on the past few days and realizing I'd done all sorts of unlikely tasks, and it was all desirable stuff I'd intended to get done at eventually.
It also makes me far more extroverted, which is a mixed bag. I'll casually and confidently strike up conversations with total strangers in public as if we're long-time friends, something I don't typically do at all.
I am in a slump, can't get much work done and I lack focus. I can't stop wasting time and browsing and reading useless stuff I forget in the next 10 minutes.
For the sake of science I will try microdosing lsd today (I have 1 tab handy from a rave a few months ago). I have never tried it, though I have tried shrooms several times.
I'll report back my observations in a few days.
I fix this type of stuff with mild moderate exercise (walking for an hour with my grandpa, for example) or breathing meditation (Anapana), not mindfulness meditation though (Vipassana).
I have never taken any drugs besides alcohol and tobacco but I keep getting more interested in psychedelics. Not sure if that will be a mistake (especially since they are illegal here) but I'm considering that. It seems way more interesting than the other drugs in general.
I’m not sure where where you are but there are a whole host of “Research Chemicals” or RCs that are functional analogues to the more common psychedelics and are in a legal grey area (ex: 4-HO-MET) Also mushroom spors are perfectly legal to buy/posses (in the US) for research purposes.
Do your safety research (erowid, psychonautwiki) and purchase from a reliable source (the internet is your friend) and you will have a very interesting time.
> There have been no published empirical studies of microdosing and the current legal and bureaucratic climate makes direct empirical investigation of the effects of psychedelics difficult.
Dear people who believe that it should be your choice what you do with your own womb: please apply the same ethics to your synapses, and exercise them accordingly in the voting booth.
1- "pro choice" and "pro drugs" most likely correlate already I'd say the opposite is also true.
2- The argument is different.
The question underlying abortion is about the status of the unborn baby. Is it a separate life that needs to be protected by law or is it part of you. If it is part of you at first, when does it become an individual?
The question about drugs is about self harm. Should we let people harm themselves? To what point drug use is considered self harm? How should we categorize drugs (most people agree that heroin is bad, psychedelics are more debatable)? Are substance bans effective?
I certainly don’t think it’s strictly about self harm on the individual side either; there are tons of substances which are lethal and perfectly legal to buy (they just generally aren’t “fun” to consume).
Yes, and politics are always more complicated than our group homogenization bias suggests.
Until recently it was pretty hard to find any politician outside of the libertarian party who would even go on the record as being pro cannabis, though former house Speaker Boehner now works for the industry. But if you look at public intellectuals, there have been lots of conservatives opposed to both abortion on demand and drug prohibition. As far as I know both have been the editorial position of National Review for decades, and William F Buckley was quite vocal on the moral failings of the war on some drugs.
Theocons like Pat Robertson have been calling for cannabis to be regulated like alcohol for over a decade.
The Mercer family, who were the primary funders of Trump and Bannon-era Breitbart are certainly pro-life. They also are the single largest donors to MAPS in support of the FDA trials on MDMA therapy for PTSD.
I doubt most people support legalizing LSD. "Most middle-class college-educated young adults, especially those in tech fields, support it" might be more accurate. For example, a recent bill to legalize marijuana in NJ failed earlier this month, and I would be very surprised if more people supported acid than weed.
What are you trying to say here? That compqring "pro-drug" with "pro-choice" is a straw man? For one thing, I don't thing it is- there does seem to be a corralary. For another, it's important to be mindful of the fallacy fallacy, that is, a logical fallacy doesn't necessarily invalidate a conclusion. I'm not saying that was your intent, but would be curious if you could explain.
It cooked his brain and he's lucky he didn't end up in a psych ward. He's stopped now (not by choice) and he's slowly coming back to normal.
I'm not writing this to dissuade people from microdosing, or from drugs in general (I'd be a massive hypocrite if I did). But to note that when left up to their own devices with drugs, some otherwise incredibly intelligent people will fall victim to the drugs. I've seen people (a lot who should've known better) get wiped out by basically every different type of drug. Weed, alcohol, Xanax, MDMA, amphetamines, LSD, ketamine, etc.
HN likes to talk about the positive effects of drugs, which there are when used responsibly, but for a certain percentage of the population, they'll fall victim to their impulses. It's easy to say that if you make rules and stick to them you'll be fine, but when you start to form a habit, you start bending and breaking those rules.