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[–]gwerngwern.net[S] 26 points27 points  (32 children)

Summary of the writeup:

Some early experimental studies with LSD suggested that doses of LSD too small to cause any noticeable effects may improve mood and creativity. Prompted by recent discussion of this claim and the purely anecdotal subsequent evidence for it, I decided to run a well-powered randomized blind trial of 3-day LSD microdoses from September 2012 to March 2013. No beneficial effects reached statistical-significance and there were worrisome negative trends. LSD microdosing did not help me.

[–]shobble 22 points23 points  (1 child)

Overall looks well planned and executed, although one thing I didn't see was any mention of confirmation/quantification of the actual drug.

That is, what steps did you take to confirm that what you had was:

  • An actual drug
  • LSD
  • ~300ug of LSD

There's a mention that the blotter-paper format restricts the set of active drugs due to substrate capacity, but there are others active below that limit, including some NPS "research chemicals" often sold as LSD.

I vaguely recall from reading about Silk Road that there were some serious initial problems with purity/scams, especially for LSD, and end-user test groups formed to report on presence/purity, but even assuming that, and a strong vendor reputation, it seems like it might be a weak link in an otherwise well-performed experiment.

[Note that outside a well-equipped & licensed lab, I'm not actually sure how you'd go about accurately assessing blotter dosage. A simple reagent test like the Ehrlich would go some way towards confirming presence.]

Edit: Oops, didn't realise you had disqus comments on there, many of which raise the same issue.

Storage does indeed seem to be quite significant, and you're hostage to the dilligence of all the intermediaries and their storage and shipping methods as well.

But in spite of the "must be kept in pitch-black, freezing conditions, preferably interstellar space" majority opinion, there are some examples of reasonable precautions resulting in >50 year sustained potency. (I wish they'd saved a bit to have properly analysed though)

[–]gwerngwern.net[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I vaguely recall from reading about Silk Road that there were some serious initial problems with purity/scams, especially for LSD, and end-user test groups formed to report on presence/purity, but even assuming that, and a strong vendor reputation, it seems like it might be a weak link in an otherwise well-performed experiment.

I've tried to address that issue in http://gwern.net/LSD%20microdosing#dosage

Storage does indeed seem to be quite significant

http://gwern.net/LSD%20microdosing#degradation

[–]pstuart 2 points3 points  (14 children)

Seeing this after seeing another posting recently on the subject is making me curious about trying this myself (if I can ever get the stuff now that SR is gone and I don't hang with that crowd anymore).

I recall your experiments with Adderall (to busy to re-read and confirm), but iirc, the impact on you was often not noticeable. For me it is night and day, but unfortunately so are the side effects so I can't use it anymore.

I mention this because it's pretty clear that body chemistry differs so much that it really seems to be a case by case basis for a these types of drugs, and maybe this is a repeat of this.

Anyway, I really appreciate your work and look forward to more insights from you.

[–]gwerngwern.net[S] 7 points8 points  (13 children)

I recall your experiments with Adderall (to busy to re-read and confirm), but iirc, the impact on you was often not noticeable. For me it is night and day, but unfortunately so are the side effects so I can't use it anymore.

I mention this because it's pretty clear that body chemistry differs so much that it really seems to be a case by case basis for a these types of drugs, and maybe this is a repeat of this.

That's one explanation, yes. Another explanation is that the difference is solely one of blinding. Until you've done Adderall blinded yourself, how do you know that the Adderall really is affecting you differently than me?

[–]pstuart 1 point2 points  (5 children)

First and foremost, I'm not looking to find fault in your methodology or even results. It's just that this is an area of interest to me and I think that there are nuances to this, e.g., age, genetics, environment. It's nice to chat with like-minded people :-)

I lack the rigor and only have ancecdata. But my tolerances have changed for a lot of things: caffeine, sugar, alcohol, thc, etc. Drugs have changed the way the effect me now vs. before, so why not differently between two entirely different people?

I'll try and do a simple blind test and let you know.

[–]gwerngwern.net[S] 4 points5 points  (4 children)

I'll try and do a simple blind test and let you know.

I look forward to it. Despite all my efforts, the number of people doing blind tests can probably be counted on a single hand.

[–]pstuart 4 points5 points  (1 child)

I have both Ritalin and Adderall (both prescribed to me). The side effects which made me stop (sleep troubles, excess salivation, general edginess) makes this test have real consequences for me, so I'd like to do it as correctly as possible for as little as possible.

Do you have guidelines for what would be an acceptable protocol that would minimize the trial period? (as well as making it as "untainted" as possible)?

I lack your rigor and focus (and have family/work distractions), so making this as brain dead simple as possible would be nice.

[–]gwerngwern.net[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have both Ritalin and Adderall (both prescribed to me). The side effects which made me stop (sleep troubles, excess salivation, general edginess) makes this test have real consequences for me, so I'd like to do it as correctly as possible for as little as possible.

I don't really follow what you want to do here... If the side-effects for you are so bad, then what are you contemplating testing the Ritalin/Adderall for?

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

I'm the OP of yesterdays thread and I decided to continue my testing in a one day on one day off pattern. I looked at your site and while most of it is over my head, it's pretty sexy and while I lack the knowledge I'm interested in a more scientific approach - that I will unfortunately have to balance with the therapeutic goal I'm aiming at.

I do self ratings for mood (I had three consecutive 10 when the years high was a single 9) and I've kept a log for every single day so far. What kind of data or tests should I record additionally?

I want to do blind tests similar to your method. I take random dose and check that same evening if it was placebo, then I take LSD the next day, if not I take nothing. Is this flawed? I'm pretty confident I can tell a dose from placebo, but it would be nice to see.

[–]gwerngwern.net[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I do self ratings for mood (I had three consecutive 10 when the years high was a single 9) and I've kept a log for every single day so far. What kind of data or tests should I record additionally?

The question I would ask here is what sorts of activities do you do which could be measured or quantified? For example, do you waste a lot of time on the Internet? Then you could install something like RescueTime or Leechblock into your web browser and record how much time you spend in the 'waste' category. Do you do classwork? You could record how many hours studying. Do you use Anki or Mnemosyne? They record a lot of statistics, and I use one in OP. Do you value cognitive performance like working memory? Then you could use dual n-back or quantified-mind.com

I can't really be any more specific than that without knowing more about your life and what would be useful to measure. For me, it's easy: I already collect sleep data and find it interesting, so I test that. I already do spaced repetition for studying various topics and care about my mental performance, so I test that. And so on.

[–]feignrmk 1 point2 points  (5 children)

Until you've done Adderall blinded yourself, how do you know that the Adderall really is affecting you differently than me?

Well because adderall has been given to a shitton of individuals in randomized double blind conditions and been shown to have a statistically significant effect. So while that's still only probabilistic, I think we can all agree that it's pretty solid.

This is like asking "until you've felt water blinded yourself, how do you really know that it feels wet?"

[–]gwerngwern.net[S] 0 points1 point  (4 children)

Well because adderall has been given to a shitton of individuals in randomized double blind conditions and been shown to have a statistically significant effect.

Yes, but which effect? There are many things one could be measuring in those studies.

[–]feignrmk 1 point2 points  (3 children)

Sure, but without picking out any particular studies, I would say that if they are worth anything at all, then they would be rather specific about which effect in particular is being measured, and against what standard.

I guess my point is, we "know", as well as we possibly can, that adderall has a certain effect on focus and attention span. You could always try to replicate a blind experiment with it for yourself to confirm or deny that effect on you in particular, but it's going to be hard to control all the important variables, like how much of some particular enzyme you have available at that moment, and the results aren't going to generalize at all.

[–]gwerngwern.net[S] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Sure, but without picking out any particular studies, I would say that if they are worth anything at all, then they would be rather specific about which effect in particular is being measured, and against what standard.

Yes, and those were generally not things I was measuring.

[–]feignrmk 0 points1 point  (1 child)

I see. I haven't seen your self-study on adderall so I was just going by the original comment that summarized your findings that the "impact" of adderall on you was "not noticeable". I'd like the check it out though... can you link me to it?

[–]sixfourch 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well, probably because most people are comparing amphetamines to nothing as opposed to comparing amphetamines to caffeine plus a finely tuned nootropic stack.

[–]_julain 1 point2 points  (4 children)

That's interesting, I had very different (and unscientific) conclusions from you. I did, however, take 2.5 times as much as you. The threshold dose of LSD is ~10ug, so it's possible your LSD was weaker than expected. If you have the opportunity, try ~25ug and see what happens.

[–]gwerngwern.net[S] 0 points1 point  (3 children)

If you have the opportunity, try ~25ug and see what happens.

It's unlikely that I'm going to bother. VitaCat's tab should've been no lower than 200mcg, which is still above that threshold. Generally, biological 'thresholds' aren't some magic binary switch where 10mcg does nothing whatsoever and 11mcg is day and night difference - they're just slopes that incline faster in that region. If I saw zero positive effect, on a large sample size, at 10-12mcg, why would I expect a huge difference on 25mcg especially when the base evidence for LSD microdosing is so weak and questionable?

[–]_julain 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Total uneducated guess, but perhaps the D2 agonism increases quickly as the dose goes up? I find it very stimulating at that dose, but I have taken lower doses and have not noticed any sort of stimulation.

[–]gwerngwern.net[S] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Hard to know what the true dose-response curves look just, even just their shape. It's such a convenient no-true-scotsman response, and a fully general excuse: X didn't work for you? Must've taken the wrong dose!

[–]_julain 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, not much research has been done unfortunately :/ and I never criticized you of doing something wrong. I suggested that since I didn't get positive effects at a low dose but I do at a higher dose, maybe you should try the same.

[–]sixfourch 1 point2 points  (8 children)

What's your response to the comment on that page regarding the molecular degredation of LSD? How exactly was the LSD stored?

For a molecule as volatile as LSD, it seems hard to believe a dose purchased in October would be anywhere near viable in February.

[–]gwerngwern.net[S] 1 point2 points  (7 children)

I think the claims of that comment are completely wrong. See http://gwern.net/LSD%20microdosing#degradation

[–]sixfourch 0 points1 point  (6 children)

This doesn't seem to be a valid link?

[–]gwerngwern.net[S] 0 points1 point  (5 children)

Force a refresh.

[–]sixfourch 0 points1 point  (4 children)

Why do you assume drug supply chains can't go from lab to end user in around a week? It'd just be mail each way.

[–]gwerngwern.net[S] 0 points1 point  (3 children)

You must be used to pretty fast mail. Suppose I ship across a border (there's not a chemist in each and every country, after all), to a dealer, without using ultra-expensive completely-unanonymous priority shipping, to a dealer who can then sell reasonable quantities to his customers. How does this all get done in a week? The package will be in Customs for a week, easily, never mind all the other steps.

[–]sixfourch 0 points1 point  (2 children)

But LSD is incredibly hard to purchase, even in the US where there are presumably chemists that produce it, so for all we know that's really what happens.

There are no cartels smuggling LSD across borders in submarines. The Wikipedia article on William Pickard says that his shipments were either picked up or mailed to his buyers.

I think the conclusions of this experiment are correct (I wouldn't expect sub-active doses of very many things to have significant effects), but I do think you're being overly defensive about this particular validity threat. In perfect laboratory conditions designed to maximize the lifetime of LSD, it still decays; if you didn't know about this ahead of time and take precautions, I doubt that it would be stable in the long term.

Did you know about the instability of LSD before attempting this, and take precautions while handling and storing it to prevent it from degrading?

[–]gwerngwern.net[S] 1 point2 points  (1 child)

There are no cartels smuggling LSD across borders in submarines. The Wikipedia article on William Pickard says that his shipments were either picked up or mailed to his buyers.

And if you read the testimony, nothing in it indicated the use of fast mail, and given the details of how they get their bulk LSD shipments to Peta, who himself was not dealing to end-users, it seems clear that we are talking multiple months, not days, between Pickard synthesizing some LSD and it being consumed by a user.

In perfect laboratory conditions designed to maximize the lifetime of LSD, it still decays

In the urine study cited, it decays only a few percent even under conditions vastly more hostile than mine was exposed to. Kept in the dark, Erowid found LSD hadn't degraded much over half a century. What is the actual decay under perfect laboratory conditions?

Did you know about the instability of LSD before attempting this, and take precautions while handling and storing it to prevent it from degrading?

Yes.

[–]sixfourch 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Did you know about the instability of LSD before attempting this, and take precautions while handling and storing it to prevent it from degrading?

Yes.

Okay, I presume you've researched this more exhaustively than I have and are probably right about everything discussed in this thread.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the summary. I went through a 3 year period micro-dosing a few times a week, spaced out to avoid tolerance. I'll admit, my dose was probably bigger than yours but not by much. I dosed just above threshold of noticing effects, a light little buzz to inspire contemplation, lift mood, shift perspective. I achieved a lot of personal growth in that time and made great gains in my musicianship. I'm not very scientific though. That's all.

[–]griffer00 7 points8 points  (4 children)

Interesting self study!

You might consider that any opposite effect is due to compensatory factors kicking-in after repeated dosing. There's a reason why it's very difficult to trip multiple days in a row without needing to substantially increase your dose.

In the future, you might consider substantially paring-down the amount of writing. A lot of what is written is good, and directly relates to the experiment goals; on the flip side, there's also a lot that needs to go if you want to keep your audience engaged. As a scientist, I wanted to see the rationale, method, results, and discussion... but I had to really wade-through some minor and major digressions to find what I wanted.

Also, some of your terminology is borderline inaccurate. Your study design can't be blind unless you ask someone else to prepare your doses or placebos for you. Instead, I'd say that the study is a data-supported case study... but that's just me. I'm a stuffy academic.

The other thing I'd worry about is that your stats tests are for samples drawn from a population. Here, you're treating each day as a participant, but it still doesn't really fit the assumptions underlying the t-test. Also, I'm not convinced that all your analyzed variables are a great fit for this stats test. I could be wrong, but I didn't see any evidence that your dependents had normal, non-skewed distributions, which would help me verify this. Regardless, you might consider looking into the following tests: chi-square, Fisher's exact test, non-parametric t-test... and if you're particularly brave, nonlinear mixed effects modeling.

Another idea, to mitigate the potential compensatory effects to the drug. Space your doses three days apart. Make sure you're dosing at the same time each day, and taking your measurements at the same time too. However, make sure that you space dosing so that you're collecting an equal amount of measurements from each day of the week. This will help control for day-specific factors that could affect your data (e.g. if you are only recording during school or work days, this might affect how tired or creative you feel).

You might also consider exploring dose-response curves to get an idea of the most effective dose for the explored benefits. Some benefits might not emerge until higher doses... some might peak at a low dose, then begin trending downward at higher doses... honestly, you never really know. Here, you took a crack at dosage, but that's a lot of work to end up with mixed results. If you can establish dose-response relationships, your next study will be much more well-honed, and more likely to support your hypotheses. You could choose a dose that overlaps with the rising or peak phases of all your dose-response curves.

In general, I'd say that you're on to something here. I don't disagree with your methodology, but you will need to spend some time wringing the subjectivity out of this approach if you plan to repeat it. I can give you some more specific pointers if you'd like -- just PM me.

[–]gwerngwern.net[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

You might consider that any opposite effect is due to compensatory factors kicking-in after repeated dosing. There's a reason why it's very difficult to trip multiple days in a row without needing to substantially increase your dose.

Microdose enthusiasts don't think this (they claim tolerance is an issue for the big psychedelic doses), and in any case, don't the 6 days between microdoses (I take a microdose on day 1, 2 & 3 are also part of the experimental group, then I take a placebo dose on day 4, 5 & 6 are also part of the control) minimize this concern?

Your study design can't be blind unless you ask someone else to prepare your doses or placebos for you. Instead, I'd say that the study is a data-supported case study...

I disagree. The study was blind because I did not know what I was taking and it was placebo-controlled. How could it be more blind?

The other thing I'd worry about is that your stats tests are for samples drawn from a population. Here, you're treating each day as a participant, but it still doesn't really fit the assumptions underlying the t-test.

If you're curious, you can look at the analysis & data yourself: http://gwern.net/LSD%20microdosing#source-code

Because this is a cross-over design with repeated AB pairs, I could legitimately treat this as a repeated-measures situation and use a paired t-test. But it's not like using a regular two-sample t-test is going to change anything - a paired t-test is more powerful than a two-sample t-test, so we know in advance what the two-sample will say: it will just give even more non-statistically-significant results than the paired did.

EDIT: I switched from repeated t-tests to multivariate regression & MANOVA. Didn't change much.

I didn't see any evidence that your dependents had normal, non-skewed distributions, which would help me verify this.

I could check that, yeah.

Regardless, you might consider looking into the following tests: chi-square, Fisher's exact test, non-parametric t-test... and if you're particularly brave, nonlinear mixed effects modeling.

I actually try chi-squared, buried in the source code, to see if it differed much. (It didn't. Ordinal logistic regressions don't differ much either.) I've used some non-parametric t-test analogues in the past, but I don't expect the dependents to significantly violate the assumptions (go go CLT!). However, I am not going anywhere near nonlinear mixed effects modeling because I don't understand MLMs well enough to add in nonlinearity as well. (As it is, I suspect my MLM code in the final section is completely wrong.)

Make sure you're dosing at the same time each day, and taking your measurements at the same time too.

The doses were at more or less the same time each day (right after getting up), and all the measurements were done at consistent times (except the spaced repetition scores, but I've already investigated time-of-day effects in my spaced repetition performance and they are trivially small both in my dataset and in a multi-million-review dataset of thousands of Mnemosyne users)

However, make sure that you space dosing so that you're collecting an equal amount of measurements from each day of the week.

The paired blocking should've ensured there was no day-of-week bias.

You might also consider exploring dose-response curves to get an idea of the most effective dose for the explored benefits. Some benefits might not emerge until higher doses... some might peak at a low dose, then begin trending downward at higher doses... honestly, you never really know. Here, you took a crack at dosage, but that's a lot of work to end up with mixed results. If you can establish dose-response relationships, your next study will be much more well-honed, and more likely to support your hypotheses. You could choose a dose that overlaps with the rising or peak phases of all your dose-response curves.

Yes, it's theoretically possible that doses might be an issue. But my problem is that even with a dose-response curve, I should have seen something in the results. Given that I didn't see anything, I simply cannot justify taking even more time to explore a potential supplement which failed the first test. It doesn't begin to pass the cost-benefit/VoI test.

[–]Atlas_Sky 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Im going to do a study where I take a double blind dose of placebo or a microdose every three days for a month. I'm a cognitive science major and have sympathy for the scientific rigor, even though the sample size will obviously be 1. Do you have any recommendations of positive affect, creativity, reaction time, or other tests I could take? More importantly, which statistics test should I use and what are the merits of each? I've done chi-square tests before but none of the others

[–]griffer00 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Hey, let me get back to ya on this. Try not to commence before we chat some more about this.

[–]Atlas_Sky 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks. PM me.

[–]relbatnrut 3 points4 points  (5 children)

Fascinating, as always. Thanks for the write-up.

My speculation as to why some people experience very positive effects - psychedelics are amplifiers of expectations, and if you expect x, you may experience x (not quite placebo, in that the substance is amplifying). If you go into it with no expectations either way, you may not experience anything worth noting. So maybe microdosers are playing with placebo in a way that makes it real? Just a thought.

You really can't dismiss the value of a trip without having tripped, though. It's like doing a thorough write-up and study of sex, and then dismissing it as not worth it from a logical perspective. Some things must be experienced to understand.

[–]gwerngwern.net[S] 2 points3 points  (3 children)

So maybe microdosers are playing with placebo in a way that makes it real? Just a thought.

I would never call placebo effect not 'real'. I would call it closer to an optical illusion: it's a real, reproducible, unavoidable effect which can real-world consequences (if an optical illusion hides a hole you fall into and break your leg in, it may have been an illusion but your leg is still broken). It's just not what one thinks it is, and may behave differently. For example, there's not much reason to expect your average drug's effects to change a whole lot over time, since even if they tolerate, they'll still have some effects; but a placebo effect could disappear entirely.

You really can't dismiss the value of a trip without having tripped, though. It's like doing a thorough write-up and study of sex, and then dismissing it as not worth it from a logical perspective.

FWIW, I used the other tab to trip, both because I wanted to and as a way of checking the tabs' potency. It was quite an experience. I wrote it up, but I'm not really comfortable sharing it publicly yet.

[–]relbatnrut 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Points well taken regarding placebo.

And I'm glad! I'll be very interested to read if/when you decide to share that writeup.

[–]KMuadDib1 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I would enjoy reading your write up about your experience with a full dose.

[–]feignrmk 10 points11 points  (11 children)

Cool to see some statistical rigor applied here, but to be honest I think your philosophical perspective on the psychedelics is kinda flawed. You quote Sam Harris at length, throwing around words like "dualism" and accusing people of being "dualists", without even so much as an analysis of how their thinking is 'dualistic', or what that even means. It seems not to occur to Harris (and perhaps yourself), that one could talk about "Mind at Large", without thereby positing any kind of mind/body dualism whatsoever.

Harris says, and you seem to endorse:

But these drugs can also produce mental states that are best viewed in clinical terms as forms of psychosis.

But this is not true. Who can possibly say what the "best view" of psychedelic effects is, especially given how little we know about them? The "psychotomimetic" model of psychedelics has been out of date for decades. But even if I were to accept that this is actually the "best view", what is "psychosis", exactly? Wikipedia gives us:

Psychosis is the term given to the more severe forms of psychiatric disorder, during which hallucinations and/or delusions, violence and impaired insight may occur.

But empirically speaking, the vast majority of people under the influence of psychedelic drugs are not prone to violence, and "impaired insight" is demonstrably the exact opposite of what these substances can do when administered properly.

To write off any non-normal psychological state as "psychosis" reflects a profound bias in worldview. It pathologizes that which is not well understood, in favor of understanding it better. It privileges a learned, conditioned mode of being as the "correct" mode of being, without an awareness of its conditioned nature. You can see this bias all throughout your writing,

the brain in a very unusual state, malfunctioning in many respects

...

So the trip itself is of little direct value

...

And LSD? Perhaps doses large enough that you become so creative that you start seeing what is not there are analogous to turning the temperature up a thousand degrees: the frantic annealing may hit upon some remote undiscovered great idea (eg. PCR) but this will usually just throw away all one’s current good results in favor of some random dreck.

Your whole attitude of engagement with the subject is one of lack of experience and clear bias. You seem to have built a straw-man out of psychedelic proponents and are focusing your energy to disprove a bunch of nebulous "extravagant and unjustified" assertions, which coincidentally, we never actually get to hear. Just who is this philosophical tirade directed against, exactly, and to what specific claims are you responding?

The whole introduction to your experiment is typically fundamentalist in that it feels extremely defensive, but only against a bunch of totally vague and unelaborated views. And then in rejection of these, you posit your own completely speculative notion of what it is that the psychedelics do to the mind, without even having ever tried them yourself, and even in contradiction to some recent neuroscience. It makes it kind of hard to continue reading, honestly...

[–]gwerngwern.net[S] 2 points3 points  (9 children)

Just who is this philosophical tirade directed against, exactly, and to what specific claims are you responding?

I am responding to the claims about microdosing benefits. If you don't like the background section - skip it!

[–]feignrmk 6 points7 points  (8 children)

I am responding to the claims about microdosing benefits

What claims in particular? Because there's several paragraphs of your background section that seem to be attempting to defend the physicalist viewpoint from some "dualist" threat which it seems you attach to various psychedelic proponents. You quote people at length and spend all this time and energy trying to establish up front that psychedelics support your physicalist worldview, in contradistinction to some (unknown) "extravagant and unjustified" assertions by people who you never even name. You come out swinging against an invisible opponent.

The problem isn't even so much that the philosophical issues you bring up are treated unskillfully, it's that your treatment of the issues displays a clear bias with regard to a subject area in which it is well known that bias plays a profound roll in the outcome of results.

If you don't like the background section - skip it!

You started a report about a scientific experiment with a poorly constructed philosophical position. If you didn't want to engage with people on those ideas, maybe YOU should have skipped them... For all your statistical rigor, the basic viewpoint underpinning your experiment, as expressed in your own words, lacks real conceptual rigor.

Edit: I should be clear, I think it's really awesome that you did this experiment, and I think more experiments like this need to be done. I just think it's clear you came into it with a lot of conceptual baggage, so to speak, which is something that has plagued the field for literally decades. We don't really possess a good paradigm yet for dealing with the psychedelics, and unclear thinking about concepts like "physicalism" and "dualism" and "mysticism" and the like are not going to help that situation.

[–]gwerngwern.net[S] 2 points3 points  (7 children)

What claims in particular?

All the microdosing claims? The ones in the Fadiman talk I link and excerpt? In the Fadiman book I link? In the 4 Reddit pages I link, the Bluelight thread, the Silk Road thread? If you aren't clear on what the general thrust of the microdosing claims are, I don't think you're reading very well.

For all your statistical rigor, the basic viewpoint underpinning your experiment, as expressed in your own words, lacks real conceptual rigor.

How? For just one second, please ignore the background section. How does my experiment "lack real conceptual rigor"? Exactly?

[–]feignrmk -1 points0 points  (6 children)

If you aren't clear on what the general thrust of the microdosing claims are, I don't think you're reading very well.

As I said, I stopped reading after the introduction, so I'm glad to hear that your thoughts do go on to address specific claims about specific uses of LSD. All of my critique has been aimed at your background overview, however, where you put up a one-sided fight against caricatures of "dualism" and "mysticism".

For just one second, please ignore the background section. How does my experiment "lack real conceptual rigor"? Exactly?

I didn't say your experiment lacked conceptual rigor, I said that the viewpoint underpinning it did. That viewpoint is expressed in the background section. Therefore you are asking me to explain how your reasoning is bad while ignoring the bad part of your reasoning...

Also I just wanted to point out my edit to my last comment... I think it's awesome you did this and I don't mean my criticism to tear it down or be overly negative.

[–]gwerngwern.net[S] 4 points5 points  (5 children)

As I said, I stopped reading after the introduction

ಠ_ಠ

[–]feignrmk -2 points-1 points  (4 children)

Your introduction establishes the paradigm from which you are approaching this issue. I have pointed out some pretty serious flaws in your paradigm. The types of scientific questions we ask, and the methods we chose to go about answering those questions are directly determined by the paradigm in which we are working. Therefore, if I can see immediately that your paradigm is flawed... what is the point of even engaging with the rest of the work until the underpinnings have been sorted? And since you've just completely refused to engage with me on these topics, I can't see much reason why I should continue with your research. I have articulated why I believe it to be flawed from the very outset, and you haven't responded to any of that. So... it shouldn't be a surprise that I'm not slogging through the rest of your work.

[–]gwerngwern.net[S] -4 points-3 points  (3 children)

Your introduction establishes the paradigm from which you are approaching this issue. I have pointed out some pretty serious flaws in your paradigm. The types of scientific questions we ask, and the methods we chose to go about answering those questions are directly determined by the paradigm in which we are working. Therefore, if I can see immediately that your paradigm is flawed... what is the point of even engaging with the rest of the work until the underpinnings have been sorted?

Bullshit. I asked you to show how the philosophical background, your so-called 'underpinnings', cast any doubt on the scientific work I was doing, how the background might 'directly determine' flaws in the experiment.

You have signally failed to do so and done nothing but offer excuses and waste my time rather than actual on-topic criticisms. I have engaged with you repeatedly waiting for the promised observations, and gotten nothing.

You are bad at thinking and should feel bad. I am done with you.

[–]feignrmk 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I asked you to show how the philosophical background, your so-called 'underpinnings', cast any doubt on the scientific work I was doing

Actually you asked me specifically to IGNORE the background...

[–]feignrmk -3 points-2 points  (1 child)

You are bad at thinking and should feel bad. I am done with you.

Haha, says the guy who won't even respond to my points. That's rich, really.

Anyway, at best your work shows that one person with a clear bias in thinking (who won't even attempt to address those biases) was unable to detect statistically significant quantifiable benefits with LSD microdosing. This should come as a shock to absolutely no one, and should be regarded as exactly the kind of non-result that it is.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (2 children)

There have been two self-experiment reports in r/drugs within the last 2 months which where quite interesting too. I'll dig them up later.

[–]gwerngwern.net[S] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

I thought I linked both of them?

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm sorry, I was reading your article on the bus and arrived at my stop before I got to those links and just felt like contributing :). I'll take the time to go through the article once I am home (busy day) since I am planning on a microdosing experiment myself, I have done a few shroom microdosing experiments in the past.

[–]spaceman_grooves 1 point2 points  (4 children)

good job gwern. have you had that 200ug+ barnburner yet?

[–]gwerngwern.net[S] 2 points3 points  (3 children)

Yes.

[–]spaceman_grooves 0 points1 point  (2 children)

im happy. writing it up should be an interesting challenge, hope you accept it

[–]gwerngwern.net[S] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

I already did, shortly afterwards. (I knew the longer I waited, the more worthless the memories were, and that I would regret not writing it up at all.) I'm just not posting it publicly.

[–]spaceman_grooves 0 points1 point  (0 children)

come on, the public wants to see the pink baby's face beyond that icily empirical facade!

I've noticed your analyses (especially this one) deal heavily with questions of value. I'd be interested to hear how the trip changed your thinking on the subject. But your life is your life so no pressure

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (6 children)

I want to try this experiment myself, but I can't find LSD. All anyone has around here is 2CI.

[–]OptionalAccountant 1 point2 points  (5 children)

2c-I in powder form or 25-I-nbome on blotter? I have tried microdosing with 25-I , around .25 mg , and I had a nice day, increased colors, but it gave me a mild hallucinogenic headspace which was not conductive for school.

[–]feignrmk 4 points5 points  (2 children)

.25mg of 25i-NBOMe is not in any way a "microdose". That's a fully active low dose.

[–]OptionalAccountant 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Meh it definitely felt like a microdose. Nothing strong at all, felt alert and had positive side effects, but at the same time I felt "off". 25i dosages seem to increase exponentially rather than linearly. So small doses don't do much, but when you get to large doses, 1.8 mg is much different than say 2.0 mg. You can't take one blotter and think "if I take another it will be twice as strong", no it will be more than twice as strong.

Plus aren't lsd microdoses like 25 micrograms? That's a fourth of the normal 100 microgram standard dose. .25 mg 25i is 1/4 the standard 1.0 mg dose.

I actually think the blotter I took may have been dosed at .8 mg, so maybe I micro dosed at .2 mg. I just know I took a quarter of a blotter.

[–]feignrmk 1 point2 points  (0 children)

25ug of LSD is what I would call a threshold dose. Typically ~10ug is considered a "microdose" of LSD.

It also may be that 25i is not very suitable for microdosing. I mean there's not even any guarantee that LSD is actually beneficial this way... so who the hell knows if 25i does anything helpful for you in low doses.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

I was told it was liquid. I didn't get any because the effects aren't the same as LSD.

[–]OptionalAccountant 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ah then it is probably 2c-I. I tripped on 2c-I as my second hallucinogen not long after first trying lsd. It is a completely different drug of a different class (phenethylamine), but they share some similar effects and pharmacology. I love phenethylamines and am a big fan of Alexander shulgan. The effects are different, but it is still a very fun and insightful drug (much more so than the new 25-I-nbome). At first, my friends and I could only describe it as a mix between lsd and MDMA, but this is terribly inaccurate.

[–]Xerxero 0 points1 point  (0 children)

After reading this I give it a shot as well. Dissolved 1 drop of high quality liquid LSD (~100ug/drop) in 1 ml water. Took about 0.1ml about 5 min ago. (8:05am) Will report back later on

Edit:Lolz for too potent lsd. Might me more then 100ug/drop or I dosed wrong. Anyways slightly tripping, no real OEV same CEV. Overall mood lift but with light headache. Work (Software engineer) goes quite well. Problem solving is def there and the fun in in doing so.

[–]herman_gill 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Did you store it in a dark glass bottle? That might have helped with the light degradation if any occured at all.

[–]tarandfeathers 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Here is my experience. No study can deny the amazing effects I perceived.

[–]gwerngwern.net[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

As I say elsewhere, I would never deny that the effects are real. What I deny are your interpretations about the causal sources of those effects.