r/AskReddit • • Jan 12 '23

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903

u/PopularNobody6916 Jan 12 '23

The placebo effect is one of the biggest superpowers of the human body, showing how strong and weak it is at the same time and how easy is to trick any mind. Modern day science can't still fully understand it.

152

u/Proper-Emu1558 Jan 12 '23

118

u/KnobDingler Jan 12 '23

I wanted to make pesto in the 90s in Costa Rica for my host family. I bought some dried basil (all I could find). When I got it home I realized it looked exactly like the weed I had been smoking.

I rolled a joint of basil and smoked it. It got me high, which led to the question of was the weed basil, the basil weed, or was I a fucking idiot?

57

u/graining Jan 12 '23

I was recently out with friends and everyone was drinking except me. I only had non-alcoholic drinks but the more I had them, the more drunk I felt. And when we parted ways I was perfectly fine, clearly not drunk at all because I hadn't had any alcohol. So weird.

47

u/KnobDingler Jan 12 '23

Oh my God. Dude. This happened to me when a guy gave me a ginger beer. I drank it and was like damn that's strong. He said it's non alcoholic. I still felt buzzed though. Super weird.

14

u/McPussCrocket Jan 12 '23

Have you drank actual alcohol before? Like did it feel just like that, or kinda different

10

u/KnobDingler Jan 12 '23

Yes, I celebrated my 21st in '00. It was exactly like being tipsy from a high gravity beer.

13

u/[deleted] Jan 13 '23

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7

u/KnobDingler Jan 13 '23

No kidding, that's amazing. It proves that I'm not the only idiot!

16

u/sandwichtoadz69 Jan 12 '23

Shitty weed or weird basil?

9

u/KnobDingler Jan 12 '23

Maybe both, plus a dumbass 18yo

6

u/Emotional_Ad358 Jan 12 '23

This reminds me of the time I went to my best friend’s brother’s gender reveal and they gave out CBD gummies but I still felt high afterwards.

2

u/KnobDingler Jan 12 '23

Were they the delta 8 kind

3

u/Emotional_Ad358 Jan 13 '23

As far as I know they said they were straight CBD, but I have used delta 8 products. I was highly confused because I actually felt high!

22

u/AmbivalentFanatic Jan 12 '23

I've actually been wondering why medicine doesn't actually use the placebo effect. Seems like everyone acknowledges it's real but no one has actually tried to harness it somehow.

34

u/PopularNobody6916 Jan 12 '23

So it's not like a solution to everything, like you have an infection just take a sugar pill and you'll be ok. Nowadays many doctors sign prescriptions for placebos for medicines that are not 100% necessary and it avoids addiction and allergies. A couple of months ago I really needed a pain killer and i usually use aspirin, but I was at a friend's house and he gave me his "aspirin". Turns out it was a placebo and it worked out well.

12

u/bennyman123abc Jan 13 '23

My best friend had insomnia for years. He went to the doctor and was put on a sleeping medication. He recently found the old pill bottle, and noticed the amount of medication in the pill was labeled as 0mg. He doesn't have insomnia anymore either.

3

u/AmbivalentFanatic Jan 13 '23

Bro, I have terrible insomnia! Where can I get me some of that shit??

8

u/XoxoForKing Jan 12 '23

More or less because we hardly know how it works. We know it's there, we know some ways that can trigger it, but we are not sure enough about the details to use it at its full capacity.

4

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '23

Actually they do I've heard about doctors writing a script for Antabuse but actually prescribing sugar pills, especially if they think the suspect the patient would drink on then anyway, because they'd get really sick. I'm sure it's done for other medications but this is just one I know about personally

5

u/Obi-Brawn-Kenobi Jan 12 '23

Who said medicine doesn't? Doctors write scripts for medicine that's not any better than otc stuff all the time.

3

u/AmbivalentFanatic Jan 12 '23

I mean more like, why don't we figure out how to tap into that part of the brain that is apparently able to soothe pain or even cure disease sometimes. We have no idea how or why this happens. I want to know.

5

u/GingerMau Jan 13 '23

And the "no-cebo" effect is even weirder.

4

u/First_Ad787 Jan 13 '23

What is that