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AAfter a few years of bubbling just below the surface, psychedelic drugs are experiencing their last moment of acceptance by the public, thanks to microdosing.
Residents in Denver voted in May to ease regulations on psychedelic mushrooms, while research on MDMA explains how it can help people with mental illness and PTSD. Another drug, DMT, has been shown to reduce clinical anxiety in rats.
At the same time, groups as disparate as Silicon Valley executives and British suburban mothers support psychedelic microdosing as a kind of productivity toolkit. However, scientific research is only beginning to catch up with anecdotes about its benefits. Keeping a drop of psilocybin in your body all day can have benefits such as increased concentration, energy and creativity, but this is just the beginning, and a rigorous study could reveal more about the practice, including its negative effects, according to scientists
What's a microdose?
Microdosing – taking a tiny amount of medication – is more popular among psychedelics like psilocybin, which is the main active ingredient in magic mushrooms or CBD, which is more socially acceptable.
A "small" dose is usually between 1/20 and 1/10 of a recreational dose. Even at this dose, psychedelics have acquired the reputation of inducing "smart drug" effects. So much so that healthy people have turned to them to improve their creativity or improve their mood.
What are the effects of microdosing?
A survey published in July in the International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology note that of the 1,116 respondents who microdose, the main motive of the microdose was the performance improvement: "boost productivity … increase concentration, energy levels and creativity and induce a positive mood" have all been cited in studies in recent years.
In a different survey of 278 microdosers, also published in July, about 26.6% reported an improvement in mood. At the same time, 14.8% reported an improvement in concentration. But there were disadvantages: 18% reported a physical discomfort and 6.7 reported a slight increase in anxiety.
"This framework is intended to inform researchers and clinicians, while experimental research in microdosing begins in earnest in the coming years," write the results of the survey published by the researchers. Harm Reduction Journal.
The fact is that there is not a lot of research on microdosing. But that could change, say the scientists.
Kim Kuypers, Ph.D., researcher at the University of Maastricht who studies the effects of psychedelics on creativity, mood and empathy, tells reverse that she thinks that the benefits of microdosing deserve serious study.
She says as much in this criticism of which she is the co-author, which was published Sunday in Journal of Psychopharmacology.
"Rigorous placebo-controlled clinical trials need to be conducted with different low doses of the drug to determine if there is any evidence of microdoseur claims," write Kuypers and co-author David Nutt, Ph.D. Imperial College London.
It could be the next medicine for people
"I think we should really look at the anecdotal claims," said Kuypers. reverse by e-mail on Monday. "We want to make it clear that the scientific evidence on microdosing and its effects is really meager and that research is needed. It may be the next medicine for people (with ADHD, cluster headaches), but that may not be the case.
Kuypers has worked with extensive experience in psychedelic research, badysis "designed to answer the questions that future scientific studies must answer, and to provide guidelines for these studies".
Does microdosing work?
The idea behind microdosing is that the effects are "sub-perceptual". This means that you are supposed to take a dose low enough to not interfere with normal life, but it still has an effect on productivity, concentration and creativity.
But do these surveys prove that microdosing works? In their paper, Nutt and Kuypers claim that the stories went beyond the hard evidence.
In the very first study of microdosing on LSD controlled by placebo, published in 2018, microdosing has changed the way people perceive time, but it has not been badociated with any significant changes in concentration, mental health, or perception.
On the other hand, some studies have evaluated the experiences of people who already microdose – one from the Netherlands showed that microdosing seemed to improve fluid thinking.
Kuypers tells reverse that she has just completed a study that will be published later this year on the effects of LSD on creativity, memory and attention, and these results suggest that the highest microdoses of LSD (20 micrograms ) have improved the attention, but also altered the working memory.
These placebo-controlled studies can help dissociate the hype around microdosing effects, Kuypers said.
"Placebo-controlled studies are underway, that's the only way to check if the claims are real," she writes.
The most important point of criticism, Nutt conveyed to reverse by e-mail on Monday, there are barriers that prevent us from understanding microdosing. These roadblocks are not helped by the fact that if microdosing is fashionable, it is still illegal in the United States.
We hope to inspire better designed studies and also try to convince regulators to be more understanding.
"We want people to know how limited microdosing research data are," said Nutt. "We hope to inspire better-designed studies and also to get regulators to be more understanding of this type of research by reducing the regulatory burden for sub-psychedelic doses."
What are the risks of microdosing?
Psychedelics have been used by humans for thousands of years. For example, ayahuasca, a beer containing DMT, has a long history of use for religious purposes in South America. Cultural history in this sense "demonstrates a lack of serious adverse events," write Kuypers and Nutt in their article, but that does not mean that microdosing is safe. Doing too much with psychedelics usually has costs. (Do not forget that 6.7% of microdosers reported a slight increase in anxiety in one study.)
In 2011, when a team of scientists from Purdue University and the state of Louisiana administered rats with repeated low doses (but not microdoses) of LSD, they found that rats exhibited negative behavioral changes, such as "an increase in aggression or a depressed appearance".
We do not know if this will have long-term consequences
They argued that angry rats could be an animal model for psychosis and not caused by withdrawal. In humans, unethical experiments conducted by the CIA in the 1950s and '60s, involving long repeated doses of LSD causes lasting psychological harm to participants unwittingly. And for people with underlying psychiatric conditions, a commentary attached to this paper indicates that we still do not know what additional risks microdosing might pose.
What are the long-term effects of microdosing?
Kuypers and Nutt add that there may be a theoretical link with heart risks. These concerns are based on the idea that psychedelics activate serotonin receptors in the brain, an effect that can damage heart valves in the long term.
In the 1970s, the Fen-Phen dietary drug, which repeatedly inundated the body with serotonin, was finally withdrawn from the market after it was shown to be badociated with complications of heart valves. But so far, the team has found that she did not have proof that it was a real problem with psychedelics.
As Kuypers points out, the main disadvantage of our understanding is that we do not know what would happen if someone repeatedly took microdoses from a psychedelic drug for an extended period of time.
"We do not know if this will have long-term consequences," said Kuypers. "That's why I want to discover the exact effects of a microdose on a psychological but also biological level in order to understand for what symptoms it could work and not to" sell "it to everyone as a cognitive stimulant . "
What promise does microdosing have?
In addition to the promise that psychedelics already hold for a variety of mental health problems, psychedelic microdosing also has its attractions outside the world of "smart drugs."
The call, Nutt says, comes down to the dosing schedule and the idea that you might be able to take advantage of the therapeutic effects of a psychedelic, without having to stumble. In this sense, he envisions a future in which they can possibly be chronically taken – much like the SSRIs (drugs to treat depression) that could be taken every day to manage a condition like depression.
"It's plausible, but as a different mode of treatment from acute psychedelics to simple megadose," says Nutt.
This future can only be opened if more serious work is done on psychedelics – and especially on microdoses. The promise, and certainly the excitement, is there. But it may take a few years before all the evidence can catch up with the hype.
Partial summary:
Goal: This critique paper is designed to answer questions that future scientific studies must answer and to provide guidelines for these studies.
Approach: Due to its proximity to potential clinical use approval and short-term pharmacokinetics, we focus primarily on psilocybin. Psilocybin would be, besides lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), one of the two most frequently used psychedelic for microdose. When relevant and available, data on other psychedelic drugs are also mentioned.
Conclusion: In conclusion, although most anecdotal reports focus on the positive experiences of microdosing, future research should also focus on the potential risks of (multiple) administrations of low-dose psychedelics. To this end, (pre) clinical studies including biological parameters (heart rate, receptor turnover and occupation) as well as cognitive parameters (memory, attention) must be conducted and will provide a better understanding of the negative consequences that a microdose may have. .
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