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But while the students, Thomas Anderson and Rotem Petranker, compared microdosers (current and former) against controls (no microdosing experience whatsoever), their study lacked a placebo arm, making it hard to prove cause and effect.

This isn’t the 'tune in, drop out' counterculture of the '60s

Now the duo — and their newly launched University of Toronto Centre for Psychedelic Studies — are preparing what could be the first Canadian study of its kind, a new randomized trial that will compare placebos to measured doses of psilocybin, the principal psychoactive compound found in certain types of fresh and dried mushrooms.

To help cover the cost of equipment and participant expenses, they’ve launched a GoFundMe page (backers who donate $100 or more will receive a free “Psychedelic Scientist” T-shirt). They’re also working with an interested philanthropic donor, and looking for a manufacturer of medical-grade psilocybin. “These things are expensive and there’s not really government funding for this kind of research, yet,” says Anderson, a cognitive neuroscience PhD student and the centre’s research director.

Microdosing, says Petranker, the centre’s associate director, has become like a new religion — one based not on a god but on a desire for self-enhancement. With almost 40,000 users subscribing to the microdosing subreddit alone, clearly thousands are experimenting with (still very illegal) sub-hallucinogenic hits of acid and mushrooms in the hope of feeling less depressed, less anxious, more focused and more present in the moment, a practice The New York Times has likened to an “illicit, chemical form of yoga.”