Jim Fadiman, the veteran psychedelic researcher after whom the protocol is named, strongly rejects MindBio’s findings and trial design. Because, Fadiman believes, the patients were given an active caffeine placebo, their reported benefits may not be due to a pure placebo effect, but to the actual psychoactive properties of that drug.
“Double-dummy is a very appropriate word,” sneered Fadiman, 86. “What I do know is that if you consume enough caffeine, you won’t get depressed!”
Fadiman points to MindBio’s first, Phase 2a study, recently published in the journal Neuropharmacology, Which led to markedly different conclusions. This was a non-blind, so-called “open label” study, meaning that the patients definitely knew that they were being given micro doses of LSD. The study found that there was a 59.5 percent reduction in MADRS scores, an effect that lasted for six months. It also found improvement in stress, rumination, anxiety and quality of life of the patient. Fadiman says this reportage is consistent with his own research on microdosing. “Their prior studies with LSD were amazing,” says Fadiman. “I have collected literally hundreds of real-world reports over the last few years that validate those findings.”
MindBio’s take is based on science. “We are struck by the significant difference between the open-label phase 2a trial results and the phase 2b trial results,” they say. “But this is the nature of good science – a properly controlled trial will yield appropriate results. Our Phase 2b trial was of the highest standard, a triple-blind, double-dummy, active placebo controlled trial. I have not seen any other psychedelic trial that has gone to this extent to blind and control a trial.”
Despite these findings, some microdosing true believers don’t seem particularly shaken. In 2017, author Ayelet Waldman (best known as the author of mother-track Mystery Series of novels that follow the adventures of stay-at-home mom-cum-spy Juliet Applebaum) published a really nice dayA diaristic account of her own experiments using microdosing to treat an incurable mood disorder. She tells WIRED that she’s not particularly bothered by the implication that the positive changes in her mood may have been simply due to placebo. “In my book I took very seriously the possibility that what I was experiencing was the mother of all placebo effects,” says Waldman. “I wrote about it several times in different chapters and finally decided it didn’t matter. The important thing was that I felt better.”
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