The benefits of LSD microdosing simply outweigh the placebo effect

For years now, tests with LSD and other psychedelic drugs have suggested that ‘microdoses’ of the products can offer people a range of psychological benefits, with the potential to help treat depression and other mental health illnesses.

The idea that these long-controversial drugs could improve people’s mood, psychology and creativity has emerged as an exciting new pattern in medical research – but according to a new study, the benefits they claim may not be which are similar to these materials.

In what has been described as the largest placebo-controlled trial of psychedelics to date, researchers found that the positive psychological effects associated with psychedelic microdosing may be just a testament to the placebo effect.

The placebo effect is a strange phenomenon where people seem to get a medical benefit even when they have not taken a placebo, such as a sugar pill that does not contain a medically active substance.

While there is debate about the mechanisms that power the placebo effect, researchers suggest that the phenomenon is linked to people’s expectations: if people think something might affect it on them, that belief in itself can lead to various psychological effects that may alter their experience.

In the new LSD study, the same may have been taking place.

Researchers from Imperial College London employed 191 volunteers: people who were already familiar with psychedelics microdosers.

In an online ‘self-blind’ trial – in which participants did not know what was inside the capsules they were taking – half of the microdoses group applied LSD, and the other half acted as controls, taking capsules that looked similar but contained placebos.

Over four weeks, participants took their schedule of secretion capsules (either LSD or placebo), while completing surveys on how they were feeling, and performing mental tests on it. -line.

The results eventually showed that those taking LSD microdoses felt better after taking their pills, significant improvements in psychological measures of well-being, mood, life satisfaction, and paranoia.

However, the same benefits were seen in the people taking the placebo pills, with no significant difference seen between the two groups.

“Our results are mixed: on the one hand, we saw the benefits of microdosing in a wide range of psychological measures; on the other hand, similar benefits were seen among participants taking place,” says the first author the study Balázs Sziget, research associate with the Imperial College Psychedelic Research Center London.

“These findings suggest that the benefits are not because of the drug, but because of the expected placebo-like side effects.”

“It surprised many participants who said they experienced positive effects while taking the placebo after the study found that they had not been taking the real drug.”

This isn’t the first time researchers have studied the neural nexus between psychedelics and placebos, but the researchers say they are the first to study a placebo-controlled study of the harmful effects which is at microdosing again.

Based on the results, the experiment seems to confirm the commonly reported descriptive reports that the action of LSD microdosing provides positive psychological benefits – only it suggests that the improvements are not. that “as a result of microdosing drug action, but are explained by the placebo effect”.

That said, small differences in some psychological measures were observed between the two groups, although the researchers say the effect sizes were small, with clinical and practical value debating.

“In summary,” the authors conclude, “these results strongly suggest that the actual contents of capsules did not confirm differences between the conditions, but credits about their content. “(The original weight.)

The researchers confirm that their self-inflating test – in which participants mixed their own capsules at home to take part in the experiment – comes with some limitations, acknowledge that the results are not as rigorous as data from a routine clinical trial.

But there is no denying the potential impact of these findings, which shows that we cannot underestimate that the placebo effect may influence the results of contemporary psychedelics study – and in a very depressing way.

“An empty pill with strong beliefs / intentions will do almost everything,” one amazing participant, who only took placebos in the experiment, told the researchers.

“You put spirituality in an empty pill here … wow!”

The results are reported in eLife.

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