Why is it effective?

This is the wrong question. The right question is "Is it effective"? From your own DD:

LET ME BE CLEAR - zero point zero research has been done on the effectiveness of microdosing

there is NO research on the topic YET

I'll be honest not proven

This DD relies on five HUGE leaps of logic:

1. Psychedelics are an effective treatment for a whole host of physiologically unrelated illnesses like obesity, anxiety, depression, and apparently sadness (which is an emotion, not a disease).

• The OP said repeatedly that these are unproven. Unless these ideas are proven, none of the other things can happen.

1. Psychedelics will be proven to treat those things and have regulatory approval to be used.

• Regulatory approval requires lots of steps, including proven effectiveness, proven safety, and financial motivation. Mushrooms are cheap, you can buy them for a buck a pound. How much does a pound of Prozac cost? A lot. So if you're a drug maker and you can spend a billion dollars marketing proven, effective Prozac or a billion dollars lobbying for approval of a cheap-as-dirt therapy with limited financial upside, where are you putting your money? These things MAY be effective and they MAY be safe, but who is going to take them to market? Not likely to be a large and experienced company, which makes this a tremendous uphill battle.

1. The psychedelic effectiveness will supersede existing treatments so much that they take over meaningful market share from other proven therapies

• These treatment may be effective and may be safe. But are they MORE effective and SAFER than existing treatments? Because if the answer to BOTH question is "no" then there's really no market. We have treatments for many of these mental health problems that are proven and have been optimized over decades. Unless psychedelics are BETTER, then the market for them becomes astonishingly small. Patients don't want to start on third and fourth line treatments, they start on first line treatments, and this ain't it.

1. The mental health treatment sector will increase because... reasons that aren't clear

• "Mental health" problems aren't new. The DD suggests that companies are motivated to optimize your mental health to optimize your productivity. Are they doing this today? Does your job, reader, subsidize your medications or gym membership or therapist bills? If no, why would you assume they'll do it in the future? You can make economic arguments, but unless something is going to change about financial motivations in the future, it's meaningless.

1. All of this will happen on a timeline that is relatively fast (this is BSB, not personal finance Canada).

• Maybe all of these things happen. Are they happening in 2021? Before 2023? No. Maybe before you die. Maybe. But I don't need money when I'm dead.

The market for these drugs is astonishingly small. The only proven market is recreational use. Cannabis recreational use in Canada is a sub billion dollar industry. Is the psychedelic industry bigger than cannabis? Not even close.

These investments are highly speculative and driven by hype, not reality. In ten to twenty years it'll be a different story. These are long-game investments, not short-term payoffs.