Placebo can be incredibly strong when taking low dose psychedelics, especially for inexperienced users. You begin to focus on normal parts of reality as if they aren't part of your usual experience.
At the microdose level the obvious hallucinatory effects of psychedelics are not present, so I'd imagine those without prior experience with psychedelics wouldn't immediately realize they had taken an SSRI or a psychedelic.
The above comment study is pretty interesting, points to equivalent effectiveness.
Yeah, it was interesting that they phrased the conclusion negatively:
> On the basis of the change in depression scores on the QIDS-SR-16 at week 6, this trial did not show a significant difference in antidepressant effects between psilocybin and escitalopram in a selected group of patients. Secondary outcomes generally favored psilocybin over escitalopram, but the analyses of these outcomes lacked correction for multiple comparisons. Larger and longer trials are required to compare psilocybin with established antidepressants.
For no significant difference in outcome, I'd much rather have two psilocybin sessions versus daily SSRI use.
If it's correctly microdosed the acutely noticed affects should be very close to placebo.
For lsd this is generally under 15~20ug, though 5ug/10ug is generally what people dose at.
These dosages aren't well established with "proper studies" but I can say that people documenting there experiences seem to establish this pretty well. The psychonauts wiki is a good place for this type of information
Are these doses small enough that you don't notice the immediate effects?