Daily Archives: July 18, 2021

The beefy armed guard at the door of the Church of Entheogenic Plants chuckled at the sight of me, and I guessed what he might be thinking: Whats that 60-something lady doing here?

It wouldnt have been unreasonable to wonderand not just because everyone else waiting to pass through the metal detector that day last winter was roughly 40 years younger than I. Vice News has called the Oakland, CA, church, also known as Zide Door, Americas most prominent magic mushroom club, implying that its religious decor is a ruse to evade state and federal laws against selling psychedelic drugs. In accepting contributions for strains of shrooms with names like Blue Meanies and Penis Envy, Zide Door claims the same exemption that lets the Navajo legally ingest peyote, a traditional sacrament.

Ruse or not, that hasnt offered much protection. In August 2020 police raided the premises and seized about $200,000 worth of cash and drugs. Pastor David Hodges told me he planned to sue the city government for violating his congregants religious freedom.

Potentially breaking the law was not my only concern when it came to trying magic mushrooms. I was an unusually suggestible child in the 1960s, when well-meaning parents scared their kids straight with stories about acid trippers who went blind from staring at the sun, mistook a baby for a turkey and stuffed it in the oven, or woke up convinced theyd turned into a glass of orange juice. In the late 1970s, when many of my college pals were experimenting, I declined even to smoke weed.

But last February, I was standing in front of the church out of desperation, hoping that psilocybin, the active ingredient in mushrooms, would relieve my excruciating pain. I was in my 12th week of a siege of cluster headaches, and I felt as if a Lilliputian with a tiny ice pick were jabbing at the back of my right eye for an hour each day, starting at 5 a.m.

Cluster headache is a rare disorder, estimated to affect roughly one or two in 1,000 people (migraines are at least 120 times as common). Theyd plagued me for a month or so every two years since 2005, and usually prednisone knocked them out. But this time the only thing that brought even brief respite wasno jokesnorting cayenne pepper, which made me sneeze until I felt as if I might pass out. I also worried that it might be corroding the inside of my nose.

Im far from the only person seeking out these long-demonized drugs for medical reasons. Using LSD, psilocybin, and MDMA (Ecstasy) to relieve suffering appears to be on the rise. While most self-experimenters use psychedelics to enhance well-being, a portion self-medicate preexisting mental health conditions, wrote psychiatrist Adam Winstock, M.D., in the Global Drug Survey. His annual polls of more than 500,000 people suggest that the use of LSD and psilocybin among respondents has roughly doubled over just the past five years. An honorary clinical professor at the Institute of Epidemiology at the University College of London, Dr. Winstock joins other experts in comparing the drugs favorably with prescription antidepressants. The benefits are really clear for patients, he says. They want things that work, work quickly, and dont require them to take medications every day.

If youve ever had cluster headaches, you know why theyve been called suicide headaches.

Americans interest in hallucinogens was supercharged by Michael Pollans 2018 best seller, How to Change Your Mind. A year later, Johns Hopkins launched a $17 million center to study a variety of illicit-drug therapies that showed promise in treating disorders such as depression, trauma, anorexia nervosa, tobacco addiction, and even post-treatment Lyme disease. Researchers are excited, even as psilocybin and LSD continue to be classified as Schedule I substances, which are seen as having no medical use, a high potential for abuse, and unacceptable risks even under professional supervision.

But if youve ever had cluster headaches, you know why theyve been called suicide headaches. People in the midst of an attack are believed to die by suicide at roughly three times the rate of the general population, and sufferers describe the attacks as more painful than childbirth, gunshot wounds, and kidney stones, according to University of West Georgia psychology professor Larry Schor, Ph.D., who has conducted a large survey of cluster-headache patients (and suffers from them himself). On average, cluster-headache patients take more than five years to be properly diagnosed, after which even prescribed drugs may fail. Early on, I tried taking sumatriptan, a drug for migraine headaches, and at first it was helpful, but then made my headaches worse, sending me to an emergency room three times. As this latest attack stretched on, I knew I had to try something new.

Researchers first investigated the potential therapeutic benefits of psychedelic drugs in the 1950s and 1960s, when hundreds of Americans, including actors Cary Grant, Rita Moreno, and Jack Nicholson, joined a series of supervised experiments in California. (Grant credited acid with helping him control his alcohol use and cope with the long-unexplained disappearance of his mother when he was a child.) The backlash began after Harvard lecturer Timothy Leary and psychologist Richard Alpert (who became known as Ram Dass) championed wider use of LSD and psilocybin, with Learys call to turn on, tune in, drop out becoming a slogan of the counterculture. President Richard Nixon branded Leary the most dangerous man in America and in 1971 launched the war on drugs.

These days, the hope is that psychedelics may help the many millions of Americans who suffer from depression and other serious mental disorders, particularly when nothing else has worked. The National Institute of Mental Health estimates that 17.3 million U.S. adults have at least one major depressive episode each year, while up to 30% dont receive sufficient help from mainstream anti-depressants. PTSD affects nearly 8 million people, including more than half a million U.S. veterans, while 40 million adults have anxiety. (Some of these rates were higher during the pandemic.) Researchers have been studying psychedelics to alleviate cluster headaches since 2006, but I learned of them through an activist patients group called Clusterbusters, which has touted their use since 2002.

Amid all the hoopla, some people may get a boost from just the idea of psychedelics: More than 60% of participants in a 2020 study said theyd experienced mind-altering effects after taking a placebo. Still, researchers have gathered sufficient evidence of psilocybins power to convince the FDA in 2019 to classify it as a breakthrough therapy for two types of severe depression. That fast-tracked it for approval, similarly to how esketamine (related to ketamine, an illegal party drug) was OKd for treatment-resistant depression that same year.

The treatment of PTSD may be the next potential boon: Some scientists have found MDMA both safer and more effective in treating trauma than conventional antidepressants. In May, a major study published in Nature Medicine provided new evidence along these lines, and late last year Rick Doblin, executive director of the nonprofit Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), predicted that MDMA-assisted psycho-therapy for PTSD could win federal approval as soon as next year.

Its not clear just how psychedelics might supply mental and emotional benefitsor, in my case, relieve physical painbut scientists have some ideas. Studies suggest that psilocybin and other psychedelic drugs affect levels of serotonin, a neurotransmitter and hormone involved in regulating mood. MDMA is believed to activate receptors for oxytocin, a peptide linked to trust and bonding, possibly helping soften trauma sufferers defensive shells. So far the explosion of discoveries has involved small studies that need to be expanded and replicated. Yet the drumbeat of positive developments has likely helped increase official tolerance in some parts of the nation.

Many jurisdictions are considering rewriting their laws on psychedelics. In May 2019, Denver became the first U.S. city to decriminalize psilocybin mushrooms, and Oakland, CA, followed suit. Voters in Oregon and Washington, DC, have approved the therapeutic use of psilocybin, while California lawmakers recently took up a bill to decriminalize some hallucinogens. The trend is familiar: Whereas barely 20 years ago cannabis was outlawed everywhere in the United States, today 36 states and four territories have legalized it for medicinal purposes. (Decriminalization doesnt make a drug legal. It simply reduces penalties associated with it. Selling psychedelics is still illegal everywhere, and possession of them can lead to federal prosecution that could result in up to a year in prison and $1,000 or more in fines.)

Of course, breaking the law isnt the only risk involved. Some recreational magic mushroom users have reported frightening bad trips, panic attacks, seizures, and hospitalizations. Scientists and drug aficionados alike warn against casual use, and participants in psychedelic studies to date have all been carefully screened and supervised, with researchers rigorously excluding subjects with preexisting conditions such as heart trouble, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder. I really worry about people in a time of crisis choosing to take psychedelics without supervision and making themselves worse, says Dr. Winstock, whose surveys indicate that approximately 8% of LSD and psilocybin users had a bad experience over the past year.

Still, in reporting a story for the Washington Post, I learned that many scientists regard psilocybin as one of the least toxic and addictive of all recreational drugs, and that the reports of bad trips involved much larger doses than the therapeutic amount for my cluster headaches. In severe pain, I decided to give it a try.

Psilocybins chemical structure is similar to melatonins, says Yale University neurologist Emanuelle Schindler, M.D., Ph.D., referring to a hormone that regulates circadian rhythm and is taken supplementally for insomnia as well as headache prevention. It is also akin to triptans, which are prescribed to treat one headache at a time. Psilocybin has a longer-term effect, though, notes Dr. Schindler, who is currently working on a study on its effects for cluster headaches.

Over the years, Clusterbusters members have offered invaluable support to Dr. Schindler and other scientists, recruiting patients for their studies and providing them with information from their self-treatment with psychedelics. In 2004, the group convinced Harvard researchers to conduct a pioneering study on psilocybin and LSD. The Harvard team gathered testimonies from 53 cluster-headache patients, most of whom said the drugs had helped. John Halpern, M.D., a psychiatrist who led the Harvard study, told me he has since seen many patients go from being incapacitated to having as close to a functional cure as you can get. The two drugs may prove to be the best we have to offer to cluster-headache patients, he adds, although legally we cant offer them.

The only psychedelic-ish effect that I noticed was that my dogs face was utterly gorgeous.

I followed Clusterbusters recommended protocol of taking small amounts of psilocybinmore than microdoses, but short of what would lead to trippingbrewed in a multi-ingredient tea containing lemon, honey, vitamin C, and a little instant coffee, with three doses spaced five days apart. The first time I didnt feel anything remarkable until the next morning, when I had a more-awful-than-usual headache: the slap-back side effect the website had warned me to expect. Over the next five days, however, I noticed that there were two days when I didnt have a headache at all.

Maybe a little overconfident, I overestimated with my second dose. Twenty minutes after sipping the tea, I found myself staring for half an hour at our backyard pistache tree, which seemed to have grown beckoning silvery branches. I felt as if I could see the tree breathing, which was wondrous. I was back to myself within a couple of hours, and the next morning I had another slap-back headache. But the two mornings after thatnothing. For the rest of the week, the headaches were milder.

Then I took my third dose, measuring carefully this time. The only psychedelic-ish effect that I noticedreally noticedwas that my dogs face was utterly gorgeous. Then I fell asleep next to my husband. I woke up to yet another fierce headache the next morning, but the morning after that I had zero pain. Zero again the next day, and the next. Two months have now passed without my having a single headache.

As the psychedelic-therapy revolution matures, there have been calls to ensure that its potentially powerful benefits are accessible to all. That will require some significant change considering that Black people are much more likely than white people like me to be arrested for possession of any drug, even after decriminalization.

Equity of access to these drugs will address the burden of disease we know is greatest among people of lower socio-economic status, who have higher rates of depression and PTSD, says Dr. Winstock. MAPS has trained scores of therapists of color to prepare for the time when treatment with them becomes legal.

In the meantime, research continues. It doesnt strike me as weird that the same molecule used by someone in a bedroom listening to Pink Floyd can also be a healing drug, says Dr. Winstock. He says that psychedelics capacity to disrupt existing brain networks and allow new pathways and new ways of thinking is why they can have wide potential in so many different conditions.

As for me, I cant say whether my cluster-headache siege ended on its own or whether using shrooms really did do the trick. But I do know that Ive got a plan if the headaches returnand that Ill never look at our pistache tree the same way again.

This article originally appeared in the August 2021 issue of Prevention.

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'I Tried Psychedelics to Treat My Debilitating Cluster Headaches' - Prevention.com

A second California Assembly committee on Tuesday approved a Senate-passed bill to legalize possession of psychedelics like psilocybin and and LSD. But new amendments that add limits on allowable amounts of the substances is creating controversy among advocates.

The Assembly Public Health Committee advanced the legislation, sponsored by Sen. Scott Wiener (D), in a 8-4 vote. This comes weeks after the Public Safety Committee approved the measure.

Wiener has spent significant energy building support for the reform proposal as it has moved through the full Senate and now two Assembly committees, including by holding a recent rally with military veterans, law enforcement and health officials.

SB 519 would remove criminal penalties for possessing numerous psychedelicsincluding psilocybin mushrooms, DMT, ibogaine, LSD and MDMAfor adults 21 and older.

Our racist and failed war on drugs and war on drug policy approach has done nothing to make us safer, Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D), who presented the bill on behalf of Weiner, said ahead of the vote. But its led to massive public expenditures, torn apart communities, deeply impacted brown and black communities and did nothing to make drug use safer or reduce overdoses. Indeed, the opposite is true.

Its time we stopped this failed mass incarceration strategy and acknowledge that not all substances are harmful or dangerous, she said. In fact, quite the opposite has been found of psychedelics.

Now, as a result of changes approved by the latest panel, the bill includes language laying out the limits for what is an allowable personal possession amount for each substance. Thats led Decriminalize Nature (DN), a group thats worked to enact psychedelics reform across the country, to call for the tabling of the legislation.

Setting allowable amounts is just a creative way to say when can law enforcement arrest you, DN argued.

In a letter about its boards recent decision to switch from a supportive position on the legislation to neutral, DN listed several reasons not to include the possession limits provision. Beyond enabling law enforcement to penalize people possessing certain amounts of entheogenic substances, it also said the measure has sacred value for communities whove used them for centuries and local decriminalization initiatives without possession limits have had no negative impacts.

But other advocates say they are taking a practical position on the revision, accepting the possession limits in the interest of advancing the reform through a legislature that may otherwise defeat the bill if it contained no such restrictions.

David Bronner, CEO of the soap company Dr. Bronners who has contributed considerable financial resources to reform efforts across the country, is one such advocate.

As always, do we let the perfect be the enemy of the good? he said in an email. Senator Wiener is doing an amazing job for us, and we are able to preserve the essential goal that people can heal in ceremony together, and legally produce and consume quantities of the medicine adequate for community-based healing. And theres nothing stopping local city level efforts that have no limiting language whatsoever.

Bronner said that stakeholders discussed the changes extensively, and Decriminalize Nature had full chance to input and review, and we all would have been beyond psyched if their eloquent defense of not having any limits whatsoever could convince the Health Committee chair, but it was unlikely and it hasnt.

As passed in committee on Tuesday, these are the prescribed limits for personal possession that would be legalized:

-2 grams of DMT

-15 grams of ibogaine

-0.01 grams of LSD

-4 grams of mescaline

-2 grams of the controlled substance psilocybin or 4 ounces of a plant or fungi containing the controlled substance psilocybin.

-2 grams of the controlled substance psilocyn or 4 ounces of a plant or fungi containing the controlled substance of psilocyn

-4 grams of MDMA.

It should be noted that while personal possession limits would be imposed under the revision, facilitators could have aggregate amounts for group use, meaning they could possess the allowable amount for each individual involved in a ceremony. And when it comes to personal cultivation, there would not be any limits.

SB 519 still represents protection of community-based healing and the quantities of medicine involved, which is the crucial goal, Bronner said.

Responding to accusations from DN that the possession limits are part of a plot to help deep-pocketed investors corner the market for psychedelics, Bronner said there are no backroom deals going on and that DN has been fully looped real time as weve been navigating this.

While social sharing would have been allowed under the bill as introduced, those provisions were also reframed in the new committee amendment to provide for facilitated or support use so that people could provide the substances to one another in a group context.

The new amendment adopted on Tuesday also requires the state Department of Public Health to develop harm reduction education for the substances.

In the prior Assembly panel, Wiener supported a committee amendment that removed ketamine from the list of psychedelics included in the reform. Thats in addition to a series of technical revisions that were made to the legislation.

The fullSenate approved the bill last month. It now heads to the Assembly Appropriations Committee as its final stop before potentially heading to the floor of that chamber. If approved there, it will have to go back to the Senate for concurrence on recent changes before it can be sent to the governors desk

Wiener has described its prospects going forward as very challenging, but he made the case at a recent press event that it is a necessary policy change to advance mental health reform and end criminalization.

Under the measure, the state Department of Public Health would be required to establish a working group to study and make recommendations regarding possible regulatory systems that California could adopt to promote safe and equitable access to certain substances in permitted legal contexts. Those recommendations would be due by January 1, 2024.

For psilocybin specifically, the legislation would repeal provisions in California statute that prohibit the cultivation or transportation of any spores or mycelium capable of producing mushrooms or other material that contain the psychoactive ingredient.

Thebilloriginally included record sealing and resentencing provisions for people previously convicted of psychedelics possession offenses, but that language was removed in its last committee stop prior to the Senate floor vote as part of an amendment from the sponsor.

Marijuana Moment is already tracking more than 1,100 cannabis, psychedelics and drug policy bills in state legislatures and Congress this year. Patreon supporters pledging at least $25/month get access to our interactive maps, charts and hearing calendar so they dont miss any developments.Learn more about our marijuana bill tracker and become a supporter on Patreon to get access.

Wiener said the reasoning behind that deletion was that the policy ended up generating a huge price tag based on a fiscal analysis, but it could be addressed in separate legislation if the main bill passes.

Speaking at an event hosted by the Psychedelic and Entheogen Academic Council (PEAC) last month, the senator said advancing the legislation would be first step toward decriminalizing all currently illicit drugs.He reiterated that point on Monday, stating that this bill is one step in the direction of ending the failed war on drugs.

While the bill is being described by lawmakers and advocates as simple decriminalization, the official legislative analysis of the proposal states that it would make lawful the personal possession of these substances.

If the bill does ultimately clear the Assembly, it still remains unclear whether Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) would sign itthough the governor has long been an outspoken critic of the war on drugs.

Wiener backed the prior ketamine-related amendment in an effort to build support for the legislation.

There are disagreements within the psychedelic world on it, the senator said at a meeting with activists last month. My view as you keep things in until you have to make a give, and thats one that we could potentially give on. You dont want to spontaneously give on things without getting some ability to move the bill forward as a result.

Mescaline, a psychoactive compound derived from peyote and other cacti, is another controversial psychedelic.

It was specifically excluded from the bills reform provisions in peyote-derived form, but the possession of the compound would be allowed if it comes from other plants such as the Bolivian Torch Cactus, San Pedro Cactus, or Peruvian Torch Cactus.

That decision on the peyote exclusion was informed by native groups who havestrongly pushed back against decriminalizing the cactifor conservationist reasons and because of its sacred value for their communities.

Meanwhile, a group of California activists announced plans earlier this year to put aninitiative to legalize the use and retail sale of psilocybinon the states 2022 ballot. That group, Decriminalize California, said that it would first work to convince lawmakers to pursue reform and then take the issue directly to the people if the legislature fails to act.

The psychedelics effort in the California legislature, whichWiener first previewed back in November, comes as activists are stepping up the push to enact psychedelics reform locally in cities in the state and across the country. The bill notes those efforts in an explanation of the proposal.

The Northampton, Massachusetts City Councilpassed a resolutionin Aprilto deprioritize enforcement of laws against the possession, use and distribution of a wide range of psychedelics such as psilocybin and ayahuasca. Its the third city in the state to advance the policy change, followingSomervilleandCambridge.

These are some of the latest iterations of a national psychedelics reform movement thats spread rapidly sinceDenver became the first city to decriminalize psilocybin mushroomsin 2019.

Besides the cities in Massachusetts, four othersOakland,Santa Cruz,Ann ArborandWashington, D.C.have also decriminalized possession of plant-and fungi-based psychedelics.

In Oregon, Novembers election saw the passage of a historic initiatives tolegalize psilocybin mushrooms for therapeutic purposesand more broadlydecriminalize possession of all drugs.

The governor of Connecticut signed legislation recently that includes language requiring the state to carry out a study into the therapeutic potential of psilocybin mushrooms.

Texas also recently enacted a bill to require the statestudy the medical benefits of psychedelics for military veterans.

A New York lawmaker introduced a bill last month that would require the state to establish an institute to similarly research the medical value of psychedelics.

In Oakland, the first city where a city council voted to broadly deprioritize criminalization of entheogenic substances, lawmakersapproved a follow-up resolutionin December that calls for the policy change to be adopted statewide and for local jurisdictions to be allowed to permit healing ceremonies where people could use psychedelics.

After Ann Arbor legislators passed a decriminalization resolution last year, a county prosecutor recently announcedthat his office will not be pursuing chargesover possessing entheogenic plants and fungiregardless of the amount at issue.

The Aspen, Colorado City Councildiscussed the therapeutic potential of psychedelics like psilocybin and proposals to decriminalize such substances at a meeting in May. But members said, as it stands, enacting a reform would be more better handled at the state level while entheogens remain strictly federally controlled.

Seattle lawmakers also recently sent a letter to members of a local task force focused on the opioid overdose epidemic, imploring the group toinvestigate the therapeutic potential of psychedelicslike ayahuasca and ibogaine in curbing addiction.

Biden Selects White House Drug Czar Who Helped Implement State Marijuana Program And Touted Medical Benefits

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia/Workman.

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California Bill To Legalize Psychedelics Possession Advances Again, With New Amendments That Add Limits - Marijuana Moment

Researchers at Macquarie University are seeking people who microdose with magic mushrooms to see if reports of performance enhancement and improved mental health will show up in brain scans and biomarkers.

In the spotlight: The research team hope to recruit around 80 people who currently microdose with psilocybin, the active ingredient in 'magic mushrooms'.

Cognitive psychologist Dr Vince Polito will put psychedelic microdose users through a series of tests while imaging their brains, to uncover the neurobiological, physiological and performance impact of low-dose psychedelic drugs.

The study (which has formal ethics approval) will use magnetoencephalography (MEG) to record brain activity, and look for biomarkers, in one of the worlds first neuroimaging studies to independently assess the impact of low doses of hallucinogenic drugs.

Polito is working with three other Macquarie University scientists Professor Paul Sowman, Professor Dick Stevenson and Professor Gilles Guillemin, along with Dr Paul Liknaitzky at Monash University.

Participants will be part of a double-blind, placebo-controlled study, using their own supply of psychedelic substances.

The team hope to recruit around 80 people who currently microdose with psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) to take part in two lab-based sessions that will investigate the impact of the drug.

Psilocybin remains a prohibited (Schedule 9) substance in Australia, and despite recent applications to the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) to have psilocybin rescheduled as a controlled medication, it is only available for research under certain very limited conditions.

Participants will be part of a double-blind, placebo-controlled study, using their own supply of psychedelic substances, Polito says.

Microdosing is a recent phenomenon where users take a very low dose of psychedelic substances, semi-regularly.

Counter culture: Writer and icon Ken Kesey (pictured) was involved in early psychedelic research with Dr James Fadiman, one of the leaders in the field.

Some people will microdose every three or four days, while others might microdose perhaps several times a month, Polito says.

But microdose users arent seeking a short intense hallucinogenic high, and want to avoid changing their perception or consciousness through the drug.

Instead, they hope these regular tiny doses will prompt long-term improvements, help them think more clearly, become more creative and productive, and expand their mental and emotional health.

Polito says that a microdose is typically one-tenth or less of that used to prompt a hallucinogenic state, with users adjusting their dose to make sure they dont experience noticeable visual effects.

Psychedelic substances used by microdosers include psilocybin mushrooms (commonly called magic mushrooms), LSD, peyote, MDMA and ketamine but Polito says this study will focus on psilocybin which is one of the most commonly used hallucinogens.

There were hints around the 1980s of people trying low dose regimes, but it has only really caught on in the past six years or so, Polito says.

Weighing in:Participants in a survey of microdosers were mostly male and university educated, with an average age in their late 30s.

One of the leaders in the field is US scientist and researcher Dr James Fadiman, who was involved in early psychedelic research with well-known cultural icons of the time including the writers Ken Kesey and Stewart Brand.

Fadiman continued his interest in the field of psychedelic research despite its prohibition, and his 2011 book included a small section about people who had claimed health benefits from microdosing, Polito says.

A few years later, in 2015, a Rolling Stone article on microdosing sparked international interest and since then there have been thousands of articles, websites and internet groups dedicated to exploring microdosing.

We expect to find if there is really something physiological happening, or if it is all just people's expectations and beliefs that are driving their responses.

Polito says that the surge in microdosing popularity has coincided with (and is likely partly related to) the growth of the dark web, or hidden areas on the internet harbouring illegal online marketplaces, which make it far easier for people to access psychedelics.

But Polito says that researchers are in catch-up mode.

Online spaces like Reddit and Facebook have huge microdose communities, with probably tens of thousands of people out there experimenting with low-dose psychedelics, but the first scientific papers only came out in 2018.

Polito is one of the early scholars in this field, and his research on microdosing published in 2019 reported the results of a survey that ran from April 2016 for a year, tracking 63 regular microdosers over a two-month period.

He found some surprising results and a cohort very different to stereotypes of recreational drug users.

Participants were mostly male, with an average age in their late 30s, mostly employed or in fulltime education, and around 70 per cent were university educated.

People claim a broad range of benefits from microdosing, reporting that it helps with their attention and focus at work, with their social relationships, it helps their mood, their mental health, and with creativity across a whole range of different domains, he says.

While he says that the breadth and variety of these claims of microdose miracles may seem remarkable and somewhat unlikely, the popularity of microdosing has co-incided with a surge in interest in the use of high-dose psychedelics to treat a range of mental illnesses including PTSD, depression, anxiety and substance use disorders.

The compelling results coming from the high dose research suggests that the reintroduction of psychedelics may have a massive impact in psychology and psychiatry in the near future; and it also suggests there could be a plausible explanation for the positive effects of low-dose psychedelics.

Most research into microdosing to date has relied on users own reports to investigate such effects as improved mood or reduced stress, which could be subject to a placebo effect.

'Magic' v fact: Dr Vince Polito (pictured) says people claim a broad range of benefits from microdosing, but he wants to find out what exactly is happening in the brain.

Politos team will use a self-blinding research protocol developed by Imperial College London, where participants are mailed two coded gel capsules in a kit designed to let them fill one with their regular microdose, the other with a placebo, without viewing the different capsules.

On each of two laboratory visits, participants will take one capsule, record the code, and proceed with the tests not knowing until the study has been completed, whether they took the placebo.

We will get people to do some psychometric tasks and behavioral tasks while we use a scanner to really look in detail at what's happening in people's brains, he says.

The researchers will also take a blood sample and look for different biomarkers that might indicate various effects of psychedelics.

We expect to find if there is really something physiological happening, or if it is all just people's expectations and beliefs that are driving their responses, he says.

While the team's optimistic target is 80 candidates, Polito candidly admits theres little certainty about how many people will sign up.

We need to find people who are already microdosing, he says, adding that anecdotal evidence suggests there are plenty of microdosers in Sydney.

We hope to encourage enough to come and have their brain scanned for science."

Dr Vince Polito is a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Cognitive Science.

Interested in signing up? More information:https://www.microdosingstudy.com/

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Psychedelic microdosing study to reveal what really happens in brains - Macquarie University