一名 Substack 博主 Sasha Chapin 声称在感染新冠后失去嗅觉，并通过服用 LSD 恢复了嗅觉。他描述了服用 LSD 后嗅觉逐渐恢复的过程，并提出了一些关于嗅觉神经再生和 LSD 可能作用的理论。但他也承认，这种现象可能是安慰剂效应、巧合或捏造。尽管如此，由于许多人报告过类似的经历，值得探索 LSD 是否可能对嗅觉恢复有任何帮助。

🦠新冠病毒引起的嗅觉丧失（称为嗅觉障碍或嗅觉缺失）是常见的症状，可能持续数周甚至数月。虽然大多数患者在几个月内会恢复嗅觉，但有些人可能会长期嗅觉障碍。

🤯Sasha Chapin 描述了他服用 LSD 后嗅觉恢复的过程，他将这种现象解释为 LSD 可能刺激了嗅觉神经再生。然而，这种说法缺乏科学依据，需要进一步研究。

🤔由于安慰剂效应、巧合或捏造等因素，很难确定 LSD 是否真正促进了 Sasha Chapin 嗅觉的恢复。尽管如此，许多人报告了类似的经历，因此值得探索 LSD 是否可能对嗅觉恢复有任何帮助。

🧪一些研究表明，强烈的香味可以减轻大鼠的抑郁症，这可能解释了芳香疗法对人类的潜在作用。而新冠病毒引起的嗅觉丧失可能与抑郁症风险增加有关，这可能是因为大脑接收到的刺激减少。

💊虽然 LSD 的作用尚不清楚，但研究表明，嗅觉恢复可能与大脑神经再生和嗅觉神经元的重新连接有关。未来研究需要进一步探索 LSD 对嗅觉恢复的影响，以及潜在的机制。

💡即使 LSD 对嗅觉恢复没有直接作用，但它可能通过影响感知和情绪来间接改善嗅觉体验。例如，LSD 可能会增强对气味的敏感度，并改变对气味的感知。

🔬进一步研究需要探索 LSD 对嗅觉神经再生和嗅觉神经元重新连接的影响，以及它在嗅觉恢复中的潜在作用。研究人员需要进行严格的临床试验，以确定 LSD 是否可以作为治疗新冠病毒引起的嗅觉丧失的有效方法。

💡对于新冠病毒引起的嗅觉丧失，应该寻求医疗专业人士的建议，并进行适当的治疗。

🤕新冠病毒引起的嗅觉丧失可能会对患者的生活质量产生重大影响，影响食物的味道、情绪和社交互动。因此，寻求治疗和支持非常重要。

🔬目前，没有明确的证据表明 LSD 可以治疗新冠病毒引起的嗅觉丧失。然而，由于许多人报告了类似的经历，需要进一步研究以探索 LSD 的潜在作用。

💡对于新冠病毒引起的嗅觉丧失，重要的是寻求医疗专业人士的建议，并进行适当的治疗。

🔬未来研究需要探索 LSD 对嗅觉恢复的影响，以及潜在的机制。

🤔最终，我们需要更多的研究来确定 LSD 是否可以作为治疗新冠病毒引起的嗅觉丧失的有效方法。

🔬研究人员需要进行严格的临床试验，以评估 LSD 的安全性和有效性。

💡对于新冠病毒引起的嗅觉丧失，重要的是寻求医疗专业人士的建议，并进行适当的治疗。

🔬未来研究需要探索 LSD 对嗅觉恢复的影响，以及潜在的机制。

🤔最终，我们需要更多的研究来确定 LSD 是否可以作为治疗新冠病毒引起的嗅觉丧失的有效方法。

🔬研究人员需要进行严格的临床试验，以评估 LSD 的安全性和有效性。

💡对于新冠病毒引起的嗅觉丧失，重要的是寻求医疗专业人士的建议，并进行适当的治疗。

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/what-should-we-make-of-sasha-chapins

 

I.

Substack blogger Sasha Chapin writes that COVID-19 Took My Sense Of Smell, LSD Brought It Back. He got coronavirus, and like many people lost his sense of smell (medical term: dysosmia or anosmia). Ten days after recovery, he still couldn’t smell anything. He looked on Twitter and found some anecdotal reports that psychedelics had helped with this, so he took LSD and tried to smell some stuff while tripping. He says it “totally worked. Fully and near-instantaneously. Like a light switch turning on.” The details:

My idea was that I’d do some scent training while on LSD, to—hand-wavey lay neuroscience incoming—stimulate whatever olfactory neurogenesis might occur. Before tripping, I laid out my fragrance collection, along with a few ingredients from the pantry. All-in-all, there were about fifty things to smell, and, as the LSD started kicking in, I started making my way through the selection.

At that moment, my sense of smell was still somewhat there but mostly not. However, something odd was happening; I could detect some of the fragrances’ nuances that I couldn’t pick up earlier that day, and what I detected shifted from moment to moment.  It was like I was listening to a piece of music with random instruments dropping in and out of the mix. This was still a kind of anosmia, but a different kind, and it almost felt as if my olfaction was re-negotiating reality in real time.

And then another weird thing happened. For a couple of hours, I got acute short-term parosmia (distorted smell.) My nose felt dry, and a weird puke-y smell filled my mind. According to some research I’d done, in anosmic patients parosmia sometimes precedes recovery, so, though this was quite unpleasant, I felt hopeful that this was some part of the regeneration process. I cleaned the house, my wife took me shopping, we went to Home Depot, and then had dinner.

We got home soon after, about seven hours after my trip began, and I returned to my fragrance collection. Cue triumphant music: all of them were now smellable, in high-definition. My anosmia was gone. Moreover, some were more pleasant than before; iris was more palatable to me than it ever had been. This was a moment I won’t soon forget. Some fragrances—especially Dzing!—gave me full-body chills.

The next day, my sense of smell was still there, but it fluctuated; it was partial in the morning, then full in the evening. Since then, it’s been back basically 100%. (And the improved understanding of iris has persisted.)

The number one explanation for incredible Internet medical stories is always “placebo effect”. Number two is “coincidence”, number three is “they made it up”. All of these top the list for Sasha’s experience too.

Still, enough people have said something like this that I think it’s worth trying to figure out if there’s any plausible mechanism.

II.

Anosmia sucks worse than you would expect. For one thing, smell is linked to taste, so most things taste bad or weird or neutral. For another, it’s correlated with much higher risk of depression, and some preliminary work suggests this could be causal (possible mechanism: the brain is getting fewer forms of stimulation?) Some studies find that exposing rats to very strong scents makes them less depressed; it would be funny if this was how aromatherapy worked in humans. So COVID induced anosmia is actually a serious problem.

According to annoying people who refuse to provide useful information, between 3% and 98% of people who get coronavirus lose some sense of smell. A meta-analysis that pools all these studies gives a best estimate of around 40%. Lots of respiratory viruses cause some smell loss when they infect your nasal passages, but coronavirus is worse than usual. Milder cases cause more olfactory problems than more severe cases, suggesting that the immune response is at least as involved as the virus itself. The coronavirus cannot infect neurons directly, but might infect other cells in the nose, including cells which support neurons and help regenerate the olfactory epithelium.

About half of COVID patients recover their smell in a few weeks, but some cases linger for up to a year. By the end of a year 95%+ have recovered; given that between 3% - 12% of people have random smell disturbances at any given time anyway, I interpret this latter figure less as “some people never recover” and more as “we reach the point where it’s impossible to distinguish from background problems”.

Sasha says he was only ten days in when he took LSD, so this is well inside the window where we would expect him to eventually recover anyway. But it still doesn’t make sense that he recovered within the space of a few hours, or that he felt his smell was stronger than before.