The placebo effect “is scientific and real.” Psychedelics may just supercharge it

“Psychedelics were never found to be especially useful as brainwashing tools,” says Dr Strassman going deep as per usual, “you have to want to be healed… or to become an assassin.”

He continues during his Vital lecture on contemporary research, “Sure, there’s neuroplasticity and neurogensis. But why’s the experience is so rich? That intensity is down to the activation of the placebo effect. Which is scientific, biological, endocrine and inflammatory.”

Microdosing trials struggle to distinguish between placebo and psychedelic. But this only compounds the theory, he grins.

The Strass went big on his theory that psychedelics replicate the placebo effect at ‘Psychedelic Neuroscience Symposium 19’ celebrating the University of Michigan’s breakthrough DMT research.

“Effective placebos have to be rare, costly, foul-tasting or ideally all three”

He pointed out how recent trials had highlighted psychedelics’ powers of suggestibility, and the importance of set and setting, plus how in his own 1990s DMT tests “We found that ultimately people’s experiences represented simply more of who they already where. The nihilist became more nihilistic, the software designer saw the origin of information bytes.”

“Panaceas work through suggestibility. What if we’re talking about a ‘super placebo’ here? That’s why the integration process is so important. If you’re forming new neurons you want them in the right direction. How you occupy your mind after psychotherapy is important. If you watch violent hardcore porn you’re going to get a different result than meditating in the forest for a week.”

Another fan of the placebo effect – and not just in drugs – is advertising guru and UK columnist Rory Sutherland.

“Placebos really do work because that’s how our minds work”

The Ogilvy agency wallah’s favourite anecdote is how in some other countries painkillers are marketed for specific ailments – back pain, headache – despite being identical products. Yet they work better, because of the placebo effect. 

“Yes, I know it’s bullshit,” he wrote, “But that’s the peculiar thing. We instinctively respond to things which are inefficient. Effective placebos have to be rare, costly, foul-tasting or ideally all three. In manners, in art, in friendship (in advertising, too) we are drawn to the unnecessary, the effortful or the extravagant. If rationality and efficiency were all that valuable in evolutionary terms, accountants would be really sexy.”

Interior designer and thinker Charles Leon speaks about how placebos work even better if you tell the subject they are a placebo. “It suggests the ability of the brain and mind to heal is much more powerful than we give it credit for. Feelings can be inherited, whereas reasons have to be learnt. For instance, we are born with a fear of snakes. Experience may teach us why, but the reaction is first. Placebos really do work because that’s how our minds work.”

Although I prefer to think of it as unleashing the true power of the human imagination, it would be the ultimate trickster gag if psychedelics simply empowered the placebo effect. The joke’s closing punchline being that there is one set of substances that are famously straightforward to tell from a placebo.