Bizarre, branché, moderne – L’ADN on the microdosing trend in 2019 (Henrik interviewed by Mathilde Ramadier)

Mathilde Ramadier: Interview with Henrik Jungaberle on Microdosing for L’ADN”Bizarre, branche, moderne” – weird, trendy, modern (English)The French author Mathilde Ramadier lives in Berlin and the South of France. She writes for magazines and papers like Huffington Post, Le Monde, Libération, L’ADN, Socialter, StillPoint Magazine. In this piece she interviewed Henrik on a recent microdosing study that he co-authored and his general thoughts on psychedelics and psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy.You just conducted an online study with 2700 participants who microdosed. What did it reveal?Henrik Jungaberle: If we take a closer look to people and focus on data, the first thing that we found out is that a very few of them actually are in a self-optimization business for becoming better workers or entrepreneurs. In our study, 80% of the people told us that they were taking it for dealing with deep depression. It is self-medication.One of the authors of a recent study conducted in Baltimore, , said « we might now be able to call it placebo dosing ». But we need to rethink placebo, too. Anthropologist Daniel Moerman.  calls it « meaning response »: the way that our neurocognitive system starts making sense of stress by activating the body. And there are a lot of effects when it comes to placebo. A study by Dr. Ted J. Kaptchuk, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and director of the Harvard-wide Program in Placebo Studies and the Therapeutic Encounter (PiPS showed that even when you tell people that you give them a placebo, they feel positive reactions. Microdosing is also a bizarre trend because a lot of people don’t microdose even if they claim to do so – often theyminidose or don’t know exactly about their dose.Can we talk about a social trend ?Henrik Jungaberle: Yes. When we organize science talks on microdosing, the room is bursting — because newspapers talk a lot about it (since the first articles from the Silicon Valley) and also because a lot of people are really keen to have a full psychedelic experience but are afraid. So the « micro » prefix before « dosing » makes them think they can try it. Also, there is not always personal motivation that drives people, but also the hype and social norms.Some studies also have shown that there are no negative effects in the short term …Henrik Jungaberle: No, that is not true. There are a few people that reacted adversely. In our online study they were up to 20% to report that at least on one day of microdosing they felt fear, had signs of panic attacks. We cannot be sure that they really microdosed, it is difficult to know exactly how much they took. A lot of people say they want to take 10 to 15 micrograms of LSD. But many probably take 20 … 40 micrograms and for some that would already count as a dose comparable to a psychedelic experience. More than the half stopped the experience between the third and the sixth week: they were not convinced. And those who are convinced tell it to the media.Would you say that those who are convinced also belong to higher socioprofessional categories?Henrik Jungaberle: There are many social strata involved. A large part of the mass phenomenon concerns people who self-medicate. We also had entrepreneurs from creative art businesses and the digital industry. They seem to profit in terms of creativity and innovation. Or course, if you are a creative person who knows what to do with your hands and you train your brain to get yourself into a state where you can get creative ideas, it is pretty likely that positive effects will happen. After having met a lot of people microdosing, and after that online study, I think that most of the phenomenon is based on expectations and a love for the topic of psychedelics: after all it is freaky, fancy and sounds modern. Then there are people suffering from the side effects of common psychiatric medications, who are desperately looking for alternatives. For some of them it seems to work.In that case, do you think that legalizing psychedelics as a medication would be a good idea ?Henrik Jungaberle: Let’s legalize medicines if we have a sound evidence base for it. We have nothing about microdosing. I often talk about drug policy and drug regulation. We should not just legalize something. We have to collect knowledge about it.… One of the goals of the MIND Foundation?Henrik Jungaberle: It is important to demonstrate in the clinical field that substances like psilocybin can become part of the already existing system and create sustainable effects. It has not been sufficiently shown yet. Then of course we need a legal and safe space where people can do it under supervision of doctors or facilitated by other health professionals. We are not only interested in «patients». A lot of people take these substances and feel well, they have no larger side effects, on the contrary, they seem to experience long lasting beneficial effects. We should also create spaces where people can take the self-exploration out of their private homes into a more social culturally sound space, where they can find some conversion partners and help if they need some. I am skeptical on microdosing until somebody tells us or shows us that it works for a larger proportion of people.Do you think that Berlin is the perfect place for those experimentations ?Henrik Jungaberle: Berlin is the “perfect place for tripping”, if people are looking for a city with like-minded others.  ! But the context in every experience with altered states is very important. Context is a social situation that is safe, or unsafe, where there are people who influence what you do, where you have existing ideas on psychedelic experiences that would help you having a good experience with it…Henrik Jungaberle: There are party contexts, recreational use, there is the more self-explorative psychonautic use, where people take it at home alone or in small groups, there are self-exploration contexts that are more like ayahuasca ceremonies with a person facilitating it,  there is underground therapy and above the ground therapy, mostly in university hospitals at the moment — and each of these contexts need its own guidelines and rules.That is not easy to understand for people. Humans are not machines which can take a pill and have an predictable effect. We are relational animals, contextual beings.So the same causes not always cause the same effects?Henrik Jungaberle: No, it is very variable and the psychedelic experience in itself is variable from person to person. There is an age effect, an effect for those who are already experienced… When you consider people who took LSD or psilocybin, you always get a proportion who has not experienced the visual phenomena that have been so well depicted by artists. They just don’t see it. Their experience is emotional. We should write more about the variety of effects that it does to people.