In spring of 2023, I conducted a drug trial hoping to create a pill that strengthens the human imagination. Specifically, I asked if a substance with no active ingredient could make your imagination stronger by taking it. My pills would all be placebo, but the subjects would know this. I used Smarties.
To recruit for this trial, I posted videos on Instagram that raked in about a hundred participants. Of these, 80 agreed to give me their home mailing address so I could ship a week’s worth of pills for them to put in their mouths. Eighty people did this.
Personally, I was not doing well. Having abruptly moved out of the home I’d shared with a partner of six years, I was couch surfing in Highland Park and pulling this weird shit as a distraction. Mailing my followers RX bottles with exactly seven Smarties gave me a sense that things were going to be OK.
Each package was mailed with a hand-sewn booklet, which posed 10 daily questions meant to gauge imaginative strength and tone over the course of a week-long trial. The cover featured a brief but serious contract:
I, [your name], hereby agree to answer each question as truthfully as possible — not try to be funny — and sincerely contribute to a science endeavor.
I agree to take the imagination supplement Ember Pills once daily for seven days, starting Friday March 24 (or the next possible date).
I agree to submit my results at the end of the trial, by sending pictures of this questionnaire to emberpills@gmail.com. I freely enter into this study for the good of the human race.
I am not a duck.
I remember bursting into tears at the post office because I’d used the self-serve kiosk to ship all 80 packages (at a cost of about $600), only to find out from the clerk that I’d used incorrect postage and they’d all be sent back to me (which was… nowhere). She must have gathered that I had nothing else in this world, because she ran out and stopped the USPS truck to retrieve all 80 packages and help me correct the postage. Save the Post Office!
The questions were to be rated at a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being untrue and 5 being straight facts. They were:
- Today I experienced the color yellow
- I had more thoughts today
- Today I noticed trees
- Today I felt virile and sexy
- I forgive the presence of advertising
- I have the desire to make a cartoon
- Today I played with my food
- I am comfortable with my mortality
- Conflicting ideas can be true together
- Today, I honestly believe that this medication works
Out of 80 participants, 15 actually submitted their results. This is the first important piece of data: despite enrolling themselves, confirming their interest in writing, and providing their home address (I could find you), only a rough 20% of participants followed through on their commitment to developing their own imaginations. Think of the trash island of unused gym memberships floating through our collective subconscious. The dry quinoa in my cupboard passed up nightly for takeout. etc.
But I’m one to talk. Because although the results were manageable, I didn’t collate the data I received. I thought about collating the data. I downloaded Fiverr to hire someone to collate it. I listed “collate the data” on my daily to-do list. But instead, I shelved it.
Until now.
The year is 2025. I am no longer couch surfing, and in fact have a lovely one bedroom in Echo Park. It’s great. Anyway, enough about my wild success. For whatever reason, about a month ago I felt a pull to revisit the Ember Pills project, and finally determine whether my hypothesis holds water. I’d never followed up with the study participants, convincing myself that collating was “math” and therefore “hard.” But in the glamorous light of not being homeless and desperate, I remembered that it’s literally just a scatter plot which I’ve been able to do since I was 12. Food! Glorious food.
Before revealing any conclusions, I decided to do the trial myself. Like the Vaseline guy who ate Vaseline every day and said Vaseline saved his life, I figured I needed to have a personal stake in the drug’s miraculous properties. Then I could drop my data off at the pool, and — finally — submit my findings to Scientific American.
Before I tell you what happened, I want to take a moment to appreciate how good this idea is: an imagination supplement that contains no active ingredient, thereby making your imagination stronger. It’s perfect. You might think it’s dumb, but actually it’s really smart, and you are dumb.
Further, having grown up in a homeopathic household with a deep paranoia towards Western medicine supplanted by the practice of “sweating it out” (from scarlet fever to parasites), I know first-hand the tangible results of consuming something you believe to be effective. All cultures contain symbolic healing practices, and a lack of proof from clinical trials does not constitute a lack of potency for a salve, swallow or activity believed by a person to be, quote, “medicine.”
To this point, while sitting at my kitchen table graphing these results on parchment paper against a lightbox to the lilts and swells of Tchaikovsky, I was struck by the almost unbelievable results of a few trial participants. So radical were their reported benefits that I would have been tempted to accuse them of quackery had they not signed a contract specifically promising they are not a duck. All of this is to say, whatever the results of my trial, it will be ultimately up to You to decide if Ember Pills work.
So without further ado, here are the results of the first clinical trial to investigate whether Ember Pills make your imagination muscular and buff:
THE RESULTS
Fifteen people submitted all pages of the questionnaire. One participant painted over so much of it that gathering their data proved impossible. With that person’s results subtracted and the addition of my own, we have a pool of 15 people’s experiences with Ember Pills.
METHODOLOGY
For each person, I created a file of 10 charts. On each chart, I tracked the respective progress of a question. This took a lot of paper and was very annoying to do.
Then I combined everyone’s progress on 10 final charts, to look for trends. My plan to look for trends was to see if a bunch of the lines seemed to clump together in a shape.
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Today I experienced the color yellow
Radically inconclusive. While all but one participant arrived at 60% or more experience of “yellow,” the week itself was turbulent with a weird spike at day three. Someone experienced the color “yellow” a five out of five every fucking day? Guys.
(My personal results on this question were also vague. One day mid-week I had a vibrant experience of gold on the leaves of an avocado tree.)
2. I had more thoughts today
Here we see weirdly cohesive results for a question that I will admit does not make sense. What is “more”? More than the day before? Or more than was usual, prior to taking the medication? Oddly, no one seemed to have a problem with this, with most people landing at 80 to 100% “more thoughts” and two people being honest.
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Today I noticed trees
What the hell.
It was around this time that I made my first ground-breaking discovery: I did not actually know how to collate data. It is not just a scatter plot. No, in order to see trends I would have to average all of the answers and present THAT visually. Which, as you will agree, is math.
Indeed, even if the layering of lines represented clear trends, it was proving impossible to see which lines were which, because I drew them all in black ink. Had I used colored pencils we might be getting somewhere, but alas!
It became suddenly clear to me that these weeks of effort would not be producing quantifiable scientific results at all, and instead would publicly prove that I don’t remember Statistics 101 and am just someone who likes playing with a light box. This marked a low point in the Ember Pills drug trial.
However, there was nothing to do but persist.
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Today I felt virile and sexy
Despite my flawed methodology, you have to admit this one is a success. As we can almost kind of see, people who reported an initial spike in sexiness on days two and three seemed to pay for their hubris with a scattered and confused finish in the middle, while those reporting more gradually arrived at a high on days five through seven. Powerful stuff.
(Unfortunately, I was not one of the winners in this category)
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I forgive the presence of advertising
I have respect for the complete divide on this one. I must note, however, the cluster on day two around the middle. It seems that no matter where people began their trial, on day two they faced confusion and changed their stance. Could this be because there isn’t a suggestion as to which answer is correct? As in, SHOULD we forgive the presence of advertising? Would intolerance be more righteous, or curiosity? To me, the extremely divided responses at the end of the week represent a success. Everyone is thinking for themselves here. Good news for Ember Pills.
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I have the desire to make a cartoon
While my followers probably skew towards the creative industry, that doesn’t mean they always feel like it. I’m happy to report a clear and obvious jump in participant’s desire to make a cartoon over the course of just one week of taking Ember Pills. That’s awesome, guys. Hell yeah. I cannot wait to see your cartoons.
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Today I played with my food
For whatever reason, I am the most proud of those who made upwards progress in this category. Food is a daily necessity, and making it fun is not just a reliable way to incorporate imaginative function into the day, but is also an accessible form of rebellion. Playing with our food is the first thing beaten out of us by the Judeo-capitalist machine, predating sexual repression by a good eight years or so depending on when you started masturbating.
(I’m pleased to report I really aced it in this category myself.)
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I am comfortable with my mortality
There is little explanation for the high levels of serenity reported off the bat by nearly two-thirds of participants, a number which only went up by the week’s end. You could say that this is because people who would give me their home address and put things I mail them into their mouth are not afraid to die.
However, my hunch is to attribute these numbers specifically to the people who completed the study, as willingness to play a new game and commit to follow-through represent — to me — an awareness that life is short. All in all though, Ember Pills themselves seem to have little to do with acceptance of death.
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Conflicting ideas can be true together
Once again, a shockingly enlightened cohort which is unhelpful for evaluating the medication itself. However, I’m struck by the exodus of those who reported a two on day one moving up to a three by day seven. A slight increase by the non-believers, a good sign.
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Today, I honestly believe that this medication works
A glowing victory. Disgusting success.
CONCLUSION
In painstakingly drawing out the data, I developed a real love for the handful of people who took this study seriously. They each spent a week of their lives playing a game with me, for fun and for free. The comments they wrote in their booklets were touching, for example one participant noted:
“As the days went by, I pictured my imagination as an increasingly large body of water. Day 1: a pool. Day 7: as best as I can picture a sea.”
Others pointed out the leading nature of the study’s design. One noted this on day seven, saying:
“After a few days I realized I can suggest anything — [and] subconsciously look for it. Usually find it”
(However, in reviewing his results I couldn’t help but notice he failed to play with his food even once.)
You too may be tempted to attribute these results to the power of suggestion, confirmation bias, or people just trying to be nice. But let’s re-examine the contract signed by all participants prior to the study:
“I hereby agree to answer each question as truthfully as possible — not try to be funny — and sincerely contribute to a science endeavor.”
This is important because we are not really playing if we have already written off the game as a joke. Calling something a joke is the fastest way to pull the plug on its life support. Indeed, in taking a silly idea way too seriously, I rebuilt my own faith.
My life is radically different now than it was two years ago when I mailed Smarties to people on Instagram. I have the house I imagined. I have the partner I imagined. I have the job I imagined. In fact, I’m at a place where it’s time to learn how to imagine even more. Is this the law of attraction? Or is it perhaps the power of putting candy into an RX bottle, designing an original clinical trial, and finding people who want to play this game with me? Where two or more are gathered, there I Am.
In conclusion, my belief is that — regardless of trends in the questions posed — Ember Pills work in a mysterious way. (For example, towards the end of my trial I had good dreams two nights in a row! This is unprecedented, as I normally have apocalypse stress dreams like a normal person.) I believe the medication requires more testing before being submitted for FDA approval, but shows promise as a cure for writer’s block, impotency, political radicalization, and maybe even Alzheimer’s. I am mailing a copy of these findings to Scientific American, and hope to hear back within two business days.
(Photo Credit: Sophie Prettyman-Beauchamp, with graphic design by Anya Good)