Benefits from ‘Microdosing’ Could Just Be Placebo
People who claim they derived benefits from ‘microdosing‘, very small quantities of psychedelic drugs may simply be explained by the placebo effect, a new study has found.
The illegal nature of the drugs used for microdosing posed a problem for the study: not only did it make it unethical for researchers to obtain the drugs themselves and distribute them, but also participants knew what they were taking because they had obtained the drugs themselves. so participants mixed their own supplies of pills with a number of placebo pills, thereby blinding themselves to the trial.
Those participants taking the real psychoactive drugs and those unknowingly taking the placebos reported similar psychological benefits. “Our results are mixed: on the one hand, we observed microdosing’s benefits in a wide range of psychological measures; on the other hand, equal benefits were seen among participants taking placebos,” explained study lead author and Balázs Szigeti, Research Associate at Imperial College London.
“These findings suggest that the benefits are not due to the drug, but rather due to the placebo-like expectation effects. Many participants who reported that they experienced positive effects while taking the placebo were shocked to learn after the study that they hadn’t been taking the real drug.”
Although the results are not as reliable as a placebo-controlled study due to the black market origin of the drugs, the team cautioned, it nevertheless reflected ‘real world’ microdosing and was inexpensive.
“The successful execution of this study could inspire similar studies in a broad range of scientific or medical contexts,” said senior author David Erritzoe, Clinical Senior Lecturer in Psychiatry at Imperial College London. “Accounting for the placebo effect is important when assessing trends such as the use of cannabidiol oils, fad diets or supplements where social pressure or users’ expectations can lead to a strong placebo response. Self-blinding citizen science initiatives could be used as an inexpensive, initial screening tool before launching expensive clinical studies.”
Source: News-Medical.Net
Journal information: Szigeti, B., et al. (2021) Self-blinding citizen science to explore psychedelic microdosing. eLife. doi.org/10.7554/eLife.62878
