I would think that the efficacy of microdosed LSD and other psychedelics would be increased in those who are already familiar with fuller range of the substances effects.

I microdose ergolines occasionally and I enjoy it. I have not microdosed LSD yet, only HBWR alkaloids..mostly because LSD is such a gem I don't want to put it towards that yet.

I guess we totally could do a proper double-blind test here on the Nexus, with multiple volunteers.

Can you design a study? I thought the same. The most expensive part would be sending in LSD samples for testing.

As far as I know, Gwern (however you might feel about him personally) is the ONLY person who has attempted to use placebo controls and blinding procedures to investigate microdosing, and for that, I take my hat off to him. Given how much set and setting influence our relationships with psychoactives, and the demonstrable power of the placebo effect, it seems silly to me that people are holding up their own, casual experimentation as 'data' for microdosing.

Plenty of people believe passionately that all kinds of New Age treatments make them feel better, even when the effects fall apart under experimental conditions (looking at you, homeopaths).

If it works for you, that's awesome: it totally works for me, I love it, it really helps with my OCD, but I acknowledge that it could be placebo.

Gwern may have the opposite problem: he comes off in this as pretty anti-psychedelic (or at the very least, spounts the kind of masturbatory 'rationalism' that might predispose him to discount psychedelic effects).

Until we can get a sizable population taking a controlled dose of a known drug under placebo controlled, double-blind conditions, I think the jury will have to remain out on the question of microdosing.

Blessings
~ND

Results back from EC! The stuff is good I only have one major hurtle to overcome before my first dance with lucy.

Great!

People who want to experiment:

ehud

Any more?

That's awesome. What dosage do you plan on using?

...there is no solid evidence of what the dose-response curve would be for microdosing, even just the basic shape, much less specific dose levels that someone could tell me that my dose was all wrong and worthless. And it’s such a convenient fully-general excuse, a no true Scotsman: “Xμg didn’t work for you? Must’ve taken the wrong dose! Try again with [more/less]!” (But one man’s modus ponens is another man’s modus tollens…)

Try again? Well, it is the obvious second experiment, trying multiple levels of doses (eg. 1, 2, and 3ml doses). But I’m not doing a second one: it took something like 6 months to get any level of certainty with the dose I was using, and if I bought more tabs, then that’s even more opportunity to argue that I bought bunk LSD or that the tabs differed in dose etc. Given that I didn’t see any benefits, I simply cannot justify taking more time to explore a potential supplement which failed the first test. It doesn’t begin to pass the cost-benefit/VoI test for me.

There are a number of other problematic issues, imo, but I'll leave it at this. Honestly, this reads (to me) as the work of someone more interested in showcasing their "analysis", statistical models, and experimental design than anything else. It looks like he had fun doing it, but his preemptively defensive position on several of the obvious flaws exposes, imo, pretty severe bias (or at least defensiveness ).

I admit that his reasoning is often flawed, especially with the dosage argument. It is very likely however, that what he had was LSD (assuming he was being honest when discussing how the LSD came into his possession). I don't think that the entire experiment was worthless. It does suggest that if we were to run a microdosing trial, we ought to use more than 10ug.