short version - sure, the effects of psychedelics on mental health (PTSD, depression) are an interesting thing worth studying, but lol at the placebo effect.
In 2020, University of Toronto Mississauga psychologist Jay Olson published what must be the funniest psychedelics study to date: He convinced a bunch of sober undergrads that they were high on psychedelics. The scientists gave each participant a pill, then had the group of them hang out in a big room staged to look like a chill party, with low lights, trippy paintings, beanbag chairs, a book by Timothy Leary set on a meditation cushion on the floor, and a DJ playing ambient music. The study employed nearly a dozen confederates—people who were in on the researchers’ gambit—to further sell the illusion: A psychiatrist and more than half a dozen researchers donned lab coats and hovered at the edges of the party, an arrangement suggesting that they were supervising the high undergrads. The room even featured a (fake) security guard. Olson and his colleagues trained other confederates to basically seem high; one such confederate with naturally large pupils just went up to people, saying, “Hey, your pupils are huge—are mine like that?”
Sixty-one percent of participants reported feeling something—seeing colors moving, getting a slight headache, feeling “very, very relaxed,” or experiencing “waves” of the high. One reported they were having trouble understanding what others were saying, and another said exactly what you’d think a high guy lounging in a beanbag chair would say: “The way we live is too active … too fast for me.”
