By Carla K. Johnson, Associated Press
The microdosage is gaining popularity with a new breed of health seekers. These self-experienceds take a very small amount of psilocybin or LSD fungi to try to reduce anxiety, stress and depression. Some say that practice gives them access to joy, creativity and connection that they cannot get otherwise.
It is not a full -fledged acid journey – or even close. If you see visions, it’s not a microdosis. People who don’t do it every day. Instead, they take tiny doses by intermittentness, depending on a schedule or when they believe it could be beneficial.
A small study suggests that all the psychological advantages come from user expectations – the placebo effect. But science is still new and research is underway.
The substances are illegal in most places, but the wave of scientific research focused on the advantages of supervised hallucinatory experiences prompted Oregon and Colorado to legalize psychedelic therapy. Opening more from the door to the microdosage, a handful of cities have officially ordered the police to make psychedelics a low priority for the application.
What are people who report microdosis?
“I started the microdosage and in a few months, I had a general feeling of well-being that I had not had for so long,” said the veteran of the Marine Corps Matt Metzger.
He cultivates his own mushrooms in Olympia, Washington, where psilocybin was decriminalized. Taking small amounts of psilocybin helps to face the SSPT, he said.
In Loveland, in Colorado, Aubrie Gates said that psilocybin in microdosage had made a better parent and improved his creativity.
“It makes you feel viscerally in your body a new way of being, a healthier way of being,” said Gates. “And so instead of thinking with your conscious mind,” oh, I need to be more present “, you feel what it is to be more present.”
What does science say about microdosage?
These types of claims are difficult to measure in the laboratory, say that scientists studying microdosage.
To start, belief is so important for experience that empty capsules can produce the same effects.
In a study involving microdose people, participants only knew afterwards if they had spent four weeks taking their usual microdosis or placebos. Psychological measures improved after four weeks for everyone in the study, whether they took microdoses or empty capsules.
“It seems that I was taking placesbos throughout the trial. I am completely amazed, ”wrote one of the study participants. “It seems that I have been able to generate a powerful experience of” altered consciousness “based only (on) waiting around the possibility of a microdosis.”
Scientists have not found any lasting effects on creativity or cognition.
A small study found lights of a small doses of LSD on vigor and exaltation in people with light depression compared to a placebo.
“This can only work in some people and not in other people, it is therefore difficult for us to measure it in laboratory conditions,” said neuroscience researcher from the University of Chicago, Harriet de Wit, who led research.
The potential has prompted an Australian company to conduct early tests of LSD microdoses for serious depression and in cancer patients with despair.
Meanwhile, few rigorous studies on psilocybin microdosage were carried out.
Psilocybin mushrooms are most often used among psychedelic drugs, according to a report from the non -partisan rand research group. Rand estimates that 8 million people in the United States used psilocybin in 2023 and half of them reported microdosage the last time they used it.
A few words of prudence on the microdosage
Even microdosage defenders warn that long -term effects have not been studied in humans.
Other warnings: unregulated products from shaded sources could contain harmful substances. And taking it accidentally too much could cause disturbing sensations.
The Fireide non -profit project provides free telephone support for people during psychedelic experience and has received hundreds of calls on microdosage.
“People can simply call to deal with their experience,” said project founder Josh White, who microdose the Iboga and the LSD of the plant to “continue to deepen the insight of my life” which he has acquired in a psychedelic experience in its own right.
Balazs Szigeti from the University of California San Francisco, who studied microdosage, said that could be a way to exploit the placebo effect for personal advantages.
“It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy,” said Szigeti. “People who are interested in microdosage should try microdosage, but only if they are enthusiastic about it, if they have a positive expectation on the advantages of the microdosage.”
The Department of Health and Sciences of the Associated Press receives the support of the scientific and educational group of the media from the medical institute Howard Hughes and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Originally published:
California Daily Newspapers
