Psychedelics and microdosing have become extremely fashionable.
I’ll remind you that what is fashionable is not always wise to partake in…
A placebo-controlled study published in PLOS ONE in 2019 tracked the experiences of 98 microdosing participants. From its abstract:
Analyses of pre and post study measures revealed reductions in reported levels of depression and stress; lower levels of distractibility; increased absorption; and increased neuroticism.
Statistically according to the self-reporting of the participants, the microdosing resulted in…
- Decreased feelings of depression and stress.
- Decreased mind wandering.
- Increased absorption; a type of focused attention characterised by deep involvement with particular aspects of subjective experience… Individuals with high levels of trait absorption are likely to report intense engagement with nature and aesthetic involvement with art
- Interestingly, a small increase in trait neuroticism was observed. Which is a little unexpected, nobody really wants to be more neurotic.
- Microdosing appears to intensify emotions both positive and negative. Which sounds good if you’re just going to be happy all the time, but if you’re going to have normal ups and downs in your mood microdosing will make the negative feelings more acute. The researchers postulate that this explains the uptick in neuroticism.
- Microdosing did not result in greater creative thinking, mindfulness, sense of agency or overall quality of life.; which are mindset characteristics that we all probably want to cultivate more of.
Microdosing seems to be a pretty mediocre stimulant of the type of mindset we want! Nootropics, like the adaptogens, diminish depression and stress. Cognitive enhancers like the Racetams diminish mind wandering. It seems that nearly every benefit offered by microdosing is offered by Nootropics or mindfulness practice. With microdosing, the juice is just not worth the squeeze, Nootropics are a whole lot cheaper than microdosing and microdosing involves procuring and consuming illegal drugs. You can’t buy credible, trustworthy LSD or psilocybin (verified as pure with a certificate of analysis) from a reputable e-commerce store online that stands behind the quality of its product. The only way to get it is to send cryptocurrency anonymously to some criminal out there lurking in the underworld of the internet.
