[ad_1]
(Shutterstock)
Thomas Anderson, University of Toronto and Rotem Petranker, York University, Canada
We have just conducted the very first pre-recorded scientific study on the microdosing of psychedelic substances and obtained very promising results.
We compared people who microdose – that is, who take a psychedelic substance like LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) or "magic" mushrooms (psilocybin) in very small amounts – with those who do not. key measures of mental health and well-being.
More specifically, we found that microdosors performed better in terms of wisdom, openness and creativity.
The microdosers also scored lower on the measures of dysfunctional attitude and negative emotionality, which is very promising.
Subtle changes, no hallucinations
Psychedelic microdose can mean taking 5 to 20 micrograms of LSD, 0.1 to 0.3 grams of dried mushrooms containing psilocybin or very low doses of more exotic substances, such as 1P-LSD, ALD-52 or 4-AcO-DMT.
Whatever the substance, the microdose involves a dose so small that the individual experiences only subtle changes, not hallucinations. People do not "stumble" on a microdose; they go pretty much all day, whether to study at school, to go to work or to take care of children at home .
(Shutterstock)
No scientific studies have been published on whether microdosing works or not, but despite this, microdosing for self-improvement and mental health has hit the media.
For example, a 2016 article in wired The magazine described microdosing young professionals in San Francisco and Silicon Valley to reinforce their creativity, focus and competitiveness.
Ayelet Waldman attributed his increased well-being to microdosing at A very good day: How microdosing made a huge difference in my mood, my marriage and my life. More recently, Michael Pollan's How to change your mind has drawn mainstream attention to psychedelics.
Superior wisdom and creativity
No experimental studies have evaluated psychedelic microdosing, and neither do we.
Randomized placebo-controlled trials are needed to talk definitively about the effects of microdosing. In the meantime, we have been studying the experiences of people who were already microdosing.
Our investigation examined the relationship between psychedelics in microdosing and mental health. We recruited participants online, particularly in the Reddit microdosing community.
We interviewed our study participants about their microdosing patterns by asking them to complete certain questionnaires. As avid supporters of open science, we have openly shared all our documents and can find them here. Our results will soon be published in Pharmacology and you can access the pre-print here.
We found that microdosers had a higher score on "wisdom," but wisdom is a hard thing to define. In this context, "wisdom" involves considering multiple perspectives, learning from mistakes, being in tune with emotions and people and feeling a sense of connection. Using this definition, the microdosers were "wiser".
They were also more creative and open. If wisdom is delicate, creativity is even more so. In this case, creativity meant finding unusual uses for ordinary household items: a brick and a knife. Microdosers have proposed more useful, unusual and unique uses for these objects. It is a well validated measure of divergent thinking, although it is certainly not the absolute goal of creativity.
(Shutterstock)
The microdosers also obtained lower results on the measures of dysfunctional attitude and negative emotionality. What does it mean?
Well, dysfunctional attitudes and negative emotions (or neuroticism) are bad. Dysfunctional attitudes are beliefs such as "my value as a person depends greatly on what others think of me" or "if I ask a question, it makes me look inferior". None of these values is true and it is unhealthy to believe they involve vulnerability to stress and depression.
Microdoseurs have less endorsed these unhealthy beliefs. Similarly, a strong negative emotion means a greater likelihood of having a mental health disorder and microdoseurs a lower negative emotion.
A fascinating future for clinical science
Our results are promising. As promising as they seem, we do not know if microdosing caused none of these differences.
Perhaps people with better mental health were more likely to experience microdosing, or perhaps there is an unknown cause that has made people more likely to microdose and be creative. .
At this point, we simply do not know what caused the differences between the groups, but simply that these differences existed. We need to conduct controlled laboratory studies to find out.
Our preliminary work also shows that users report the disadvantages of microdosing. For example, some people found that microdosing increased anxiety and mood instability; The increase in pain, pain and gastrointestinal disorders was also relatively common.
The most common disadvantage was that microdosing is illegal. Have we forgotten to mention that? Yes, psychedelics are totally illegal!
LSD and psilocybin have been made illegal in the 1971 UN Convention on Psychotropic Substances and still are. The exact laws differ depending on where you live, and using similar substances can sometimes be a legal gray area but, overall, microdosing makes you a criminal.
What we need now are controlled laboratory experiments – randomized, placebo-controlled trials of psychedelic microdoses to test safety and efficacy. Microdosing research, alongside full-dose psychedelics, promises a promising future for clinical science and the study of human fulfillment.
Thomas Anderson, PhD student, University of Toronto and Rotem Petranker, doctoral student in clinical psychology, York University, Canada
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
[ad_2]
Source link
