Can micro doses of magic mushrooms over an extended period of time sharpen ones focus It seems so as studies have shown.
It also seems to home in on offending thought paterns with lots of ah ha moments,(I have done way more auhuasca, than shrooms so I can't tell which is doing what from my own personal experience).
I think that a steadfy small micro dose of shrooms would act on them collectively till finally big groups of people start wakeing up from the delusion and leave and while in the process they would naturally get some type of retribution for years of being suckered into giving them free labor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychedelics_in_problem-solving_experiment
Psychedelic agents in creative problem-solving experiment was a study designed to evaluate whether the use of a psychedelic substance with supportive setting can lead to improvement of performance in solving professional problems. The altered performance was measured by subjective reports, questionnaires, the obtained solutions for the professional problems and psychometric data using the Purdue Creativity, the Miller Object Visualization, and the Witkins Embedded Figures tests. [1] This experiment was a pilot that was to be followed by control studies as part of exploratory studies on uses for psychedelic drugs, that were interrupted early in 1966 when the Food and Drug Administration declared amoratorium on research with human subjects, as a strategy in combating the illicit-use problem. [2]
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[hide]Procedure [ edit ]
Some weeks before the actual experiment, a preliminary experiment was conducted. It consisted of two sessions with four participants in each. The groups worked on two problems chosen by the research personnel. The first group consisted of four people with professional experience in electrical engineering, engineering design, engineering management and psychology. They were given 50 micrograms of LSD. The second group consisted of four research engineers, three with background on electronics and one on mechanics. They were given 100 milligrams of mescaline. Both groups were productive in ideation but, according to Fadiman, the fact that the participants didn't have actual personal stake in the outcome of the session negatively affected the actualization of the ideas. This is why the actual study focused on personal professional problems that the participants were highly motivated to tackle. [3]
The experiment was carried out in 1966 in a facility of International Foundation for Advanced Study, Menlo Park, California, by a team including Willis Harman, Robert H. McKim, Robert E. Mogar, James Fadiman and Myron Stolaroff. The participants of the study consisted of 27 male subjects engaged in a variety of professions: sixteen engineers, one engineer-physicist, two mathematicians, two architects, one psychologist, one furniture designer, one commercial artist, one sales manager, and one personnel manager. Nineteen of the subjects had had no previous experience with psychedelics. Each participant was required to bring a professional problem they had been working on for at least 3 months, and to have a desire to solve it.
Commonly observed characteristics of the psychedelic experience seemed to operate both for and against the hypothesis that the drug session could be used for performance enhancement. The research was therefore planned so as to attempt to provide a setting that would maximize improved functioning, while minimizing effects that might hinder effective functioning. [4] Each group of four subjects met for an evening session several days before the experiment. They received instructions and introduced themselves and their unsolved problems to the group. Approximately one hour of pencil-and-paper tests were also administered. At the beginning of the day of the experiment session, subjects were given 200 milligrams of mescaline sulphate (a moderately light dose compared to the doses used in experiments to induce mystical experiences). After some hours of relaxation, subjects were given tests similar to the ones on the introduction day. After the tests, subjects had four hours to work on their chosen problems. After the working phase, the group would discuss their experiences and review the solutions they had come up with. After this, the participants were driven home. Within a week after the session, each participant wrote a subjective account of his experience. Six weeks further, subjects again filled in questionnaires, this time concentrating on the effects on post-session creative ability and the validity and reception of the solutions conceived during the session. This data was in addition to the psychometric data comparing results of the two testing periods.
Results [ edit ]
Solutions obtained in the experiment includes:
- a new approach to the design of a vibratory microtome
- a commercial building design, accepted by the client
- space probe experiments devised to measure solar properties
- design of a linear electron accelerator beam-steering device
- engineering improvement to a magnetic tape recorder
- a chair design, modeled and accepted by the manufacturer
- a letterhead design, approved by the customer
- a mathematical theorem regarding NOR gate circuits
- completion of a furniture-line design
- a new conceptual model of a photon, which was found useful
- design of a private dwelling, approved by the client
- insights regarding how to use interferometry in medical diagnosis application sensing heat distribution in the human body
From the subjective reports, 11 categories of enhanced functioning were defined: low inhibition and anxiety, capacity to restructure problem in larger context, enhanced fluency and flexibility of ideation, heightened capacity for visual imagery and fantasy, increased ability to concentrate, heightened empathy with external processes and objects, heightened empathy with people, subconscious data more accessible, association of dissimilar ideas, heightened motivation to obtain closure, visualizing the completed solution.
The results also suggest that various degrees of increased creative ability may continue for at least some weeks subsequent to a psychedelic problem-solving session.
Several of the participants in this original study were contacted recently, and although long past retirement age, they were self-employed in their chosen fields and extremely successful. [5]
Related research [ edit ]
In the overview of the experiment, Harman and Fadiman mention that experiments on specific performance enhancement through directed use of psychedelics have gone on in various countries of the world, on both sides of the Iron Curtain. [6]
In the book LSD — The Problem-Solving Psychedelic, Stafford and Golightly write about a man engaged in naval research, working with a team under his direction on the design of an anti-submarine detection device for over five years without success. He contacted a small research foundation studying the use of LSD. After a few sessions of learning to control the fluidity of the LSD state (how to stop it, how to start it, how to turn it around) he directed his attention to the design problem. Within ten minutes he had the solution he had been searching for. Since then, the device has been patented by the U.S., and Navy and Naval personnel working in this area have been trained in its use. [7]
In 1999 Jeremy Narby, an anthropologist specialiced in amazonian shamanism, acted as a translator for three molecular biologists who travelled to the Peruvian Amazon to see whether they could obtain bio-molecular information in the visions they had in sessions orchestrated by an indigenous shaman. Narby recounts this preliminary experiment and the exchange of methods of gaining knowledge between the biologists and indigenous people in his article Shamans and scientists. [8]
In 1991, Denise Caruso, writing a computer column for The San Francisco Examiner went to SIGGRAPH, the largest gathering of computer graphic professionals in the world. She conducted a survey; by the time she got back to San Francisco, she had talked to 180 professionals in the computer graphic field who had admitted taking psychedelics, and that psychedelics are important to their work; according to mathematician Ralph Abraham. [9] [10]
James Fadiman is currently conducting a study on micro-dosing for improving normal functioning. [11] Micro-dosing (or sub-perceptual dosing) means taking sub-threshold dose, which for LSD is 10-20 micrograms. The purpose of micro-dosing is not intoxication but enhancement of normal functionality (see nootropic). In this study the volunteers self-administer the drug approximately every third day. They then self-report perceived effects on their daily duties and relationships. Volunteers participating in the study include a wide variety of scientific and artistic professions as well as being student. So far the reports suggest that, in general, the subjects experience normal functioning but with increased focus, creativity and emotional clarity and slightly enhanced physical performance. Albert Hofmann was also aware of micro-dosing and has called it the most under-researched area of psychedelics. [12]
Since the 1930s, ibogaine was sold in France in 8 mg tablets in the form of Lambarène, an extract of the Tabernanthe manii plant. 8 mg of ibogaine could be considered a microdose since doses in ibogatherapy and -rituals vary in the range of 10 mg/kg to 30 mg/kg adding usually up to 1000 mg. [13] Lambarène was advertised as a mental and physical stimulant and was "...indicated in cases of depression, asthenia, in convalescence, infectious disease, [and] greater than normal physical or mental efforts by healthy individuals". The drug enjoyed some popularity among post World War II athletes, but was eventually removed from the market, when the sale of ibogaine-containing products was prohibited in 1966. [14] In the end of 1960's The International Olympic Committee banned ibogaine as a potential doping agent. [15] Other psychedelics have also been reported to have been used in similar way as doping. [16]
http://psychedelicsource.wordpress.com/tag/microdosing/
Sub-doses of 10 to 20 micrograms allow me to increase my focus, open my heart, and achieve breakthrough results while remaining integrated within my routine. While a full dose requires that I carefully plan my surroundings, on a sub-dose I am fully able to navigate all manner of logistics and social interactions. I would venture to say that my wit, response time, and visual and mental acuity seem greater than normal on it. I utilize a sub-dose about six days each month and sometimes more often if I am engrossed in a project requiring extraordinary focus.This has been my practice for more than ten years, and it has facilitated my success working in mainstream and independent media, staff-level positions in government and publishing dozens of pieces journalistic work.
I am not saying that I wouldn’t have done any of this without LSD, but I am saying that I wouldn’t have done all of this without it. The practice of sub-dosing transforms my work from being work to being creative play.
I’m a naturally persuasive person able to enlist others in my vision but never more so than when I am enhanced by a sub-dose. Therefore, I find it essential to my work as a grant writer and coalition builder to open myself in this way. One of my standard responses to the question “How are you doing?” from a colleague is to reply that I am doing “soaringly well.” It really sums up what it feels like to perform my work while sub-dosing: it’s somewhat like flying.....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concord_Prison_Experiment
The Concord Prison Experiment was designed to evaluate whether the experiences produced by the psychoactive drugpsilocybin, derived from psilocybin mushrooms, combined with psychotherapy, could inspire prisoners to leave their antisociallifestyles behind once they were released. How well it worked was to be judged by comparing the recidivism rate of subjects who received psilocybin with the average for other Concord inmates.
The experiment was conducted between 1961–1963 in Concord State Prison, a maximum-security prison for young offenders, inConcord, MA by a team of Harvard University researchers under the direction of Timothy Leary, which included Michael Hollingshead, Dr. Allan Cohen, Dr. Alfred Alschuder, Dr. George Litwin, Dr. Ralph Metzner, Dr. Gunther Weil, and Dr. Ralph Schwitzgebel, with Dr. Madison Presnell as the medical and psychiatric adviser. The original study involved the administration ofpsilocybin to assist group psychotherapy for 32 prisoners in an effort to reduce recidivism rates.
Records at Concord State Prison suggested that 64 percent of the 32 subjects would return to prison within six months afterparole. However, after six months, 25 per cent of those on parole had returned, six for technical parole violations and two for new offenses. Few short-term projects with prisoners have been effective to even a minor degree. [citation needed] In addition, the personality testscores indicated a measurable positive change when pre-psilocybin and post-psilocybin results were compared. [citation needed]
http://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/15711469