Sometimes hyped The benefits of microdosing – regular use of small amounts of psychedelic drugs, such as lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) – could be overestimated, new research suggests this week. The study found that people who microdosed experienced psychological benefits, including a better sense of well-being, but that these benefits were not substantially different from how others felt when they took a placebo. The results of the experimental study indicate that at least some of the positives of the microdose can be attributed to the placebo effect, but the study has its own warnings.
Psychedelic drug treatment has emerged as a promising approach to improving people’s mental health in recent years. Some studies have suggested that drugs such as LSD and psilocybin – the main ingredient in magic mushrooms – may help treat anxiety and depression, especially when combined with therapy. Other research has found evidence of positive changes in the brain cells of animals or humans when exposed to psychedelics, further consolidating the case for a real biological benefit. One method of using these drugs is microdosing, which happens when people take much lower doses than recreational ones on a regular basis.
Much of the evidence for the benefits of microdosing has been based on real-world observations or anecdotal experiences, however, that come with its limitations. Symptoms of self-reported people taking a medicine will improve, for example, even if the medicine did not. treated the underlying condition that causes these symptoms. A clear way to overcome the limits of anecdotal evidence is through a placebo-controlled study, but these studies are generally expensive and time-consuming and resource-intensive. This is especially true for micro-dosing studies, as these drugs are still illegal in many countries, and scientists have to go through obstacles to use them for research.
The authors behind this new study, published In eLife on Tuesday, they decided to take a unique approach to conducting their placebo-controlled study. They enlisted the help of people who already microdose regularly, and then helped them perform the experiment on their own.
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These citizen-scientists were instructed on how to do the placebo-controlled experiment so that they did not know if they were taking a placebo or the real medicine (mainly LSD, but some also took psilocybin). This included inserting the drug, which was in powder form, into opaque gel capsules, then inserting these capsules and placebo capsules into sachets containing a four-week supply. Some envelopes contained nothing but placebo, others contained a mixture of both placebo and medicine.
All the envelopes had a QR code attached that would allow researchers to know the contents of each envelope and the specific order of the pills taken that week, but not the volunteers. Some of the study subjects were randomized to microdose two of the four weeks and received placebo in the other two weeks, and some received placebo all the time. During the study, all volunteers periodically completed surveys about their current psychological state.
Overall, 191 people completed the experiment, making it the largest placebo-controlled study of its kind, according to the authors. Micro-dosing volunteers reported psychological improvements from baseline, including reduced anxiety and a better sense of well-being, but so did people who took placebo and, in general, there were no significant differences between all three groups.
The findings suggest that the anecdotal benefits of microdosing can be explained by the placebo effect, the authors wrote.
There are some important caveats to these findings. First, the study found a small but statistically significant difference in some outcomes when comparing the placebo group with the microdose group; these included improvements in mood, energy and creativity. But researchers say there is a common explanation for this. About 72% of the time, better than chance, the volunteers were able to guess exactly whether they were taking a placebo or a medication. So it is possible that their expectations of feeling better will increase when they correctly suspected that they were taking the medicine as opposed to placebo, which means that their blindness was not entirely infallible.
Also, the study could not control variables such as purity or actual dose of microdosing because it was based on typical medications that volunteers were already using (on average, users reported taking 13 micro-doses).grams of LSD per dose, but the authors could not test how much of the active ingredient people took). And while they tried to make sure that people adhered to the instructions they were given, the very nature of the study meant that they had less control over the fact that everything was followed correctly. Regarding the ethics of this research, the authors said that they only contacted self-identified micro-files and did not collect any personally identifiable information from them other than their e-mail (the study was approved by an external committee).
It is also worth noting that psychedelic drugs are studied and taken for mental health in different ways, and microdosing is just one approach. Some researchers have argued that the intense experience of taking psychedelics (either in relatively large microdoses or macrodoses), along with guided therapy, does offer the clearest benefits to people, for example. In 2019, the drug ketamine was adapted in an FDA-approved treatment for depression. It is given in lower doses than when it is given recreationally and under medical supervision, but it can also be a higher dose than what people would take alone during microdosing.
Importantly, the authors also note that the study volunteers were generally healthy, with only 7% having a current mental health diagnosis. So they do not ignore the possibility that microdosing will continue to be useful for people who are facing it mental illness.
Of course, no study should be seen as the last word on any subject, especially when it is based on an experimental approach. However, the authors hope that their unique study project can be used in the future for other difficult areas of research in which it is difficult to include a placebo control. An immediate benefit could be the cost, as this study required only about 1% of the funds normally used to conduct a clinical trial. Other possible applications for this approach include studying CBD, nootropics and nutrition, they wrote.