How to microdose psilocybin and psilocin mushrooms

You may have heard of microdosing – the practice of taking tiny quantities of non-toxic mushrooms such as with the hope of gaining some kind of nootropic brain boost. People who microdose claim it makes them more productive, more creative and more focused. Others have used microdosing in an attempt to self-medicate health conditions such as depression, ADHD, chronic pain, migraine or cluster headaches.

Psychedelics have returned from the fringes and entered the mainstream in a huge way, whether through successful ballot initiatives, on the stock market or in Silicon Valley. But today, it’s not profoundly visual, earth-shattering trips like the ones that inspired Steve Jobs to create the iPhone that are being hyped. It’s microdosing.

Microdosing involves regularly consuming a small, sub-perceptual amount of a psychedelic substance, such as psilocybin mushrooms or LSD.

But when it’s endorsed by the likes of Joe Rogan and Gwyneth Paltrow (let’s not forget the $145,000 she had to pay for suggesting you put rocks in your vagina), it’s fair to start asking tough questions. Microdosing is trending as companies ideate products for legal markets that have yet to exist, but what do scientists have to say about it?

Preliminary Literature Suggests Positive Outcomes

Early studies, reviews and anecdotal reports suggest microdosing with psychedelics may have the potential to help with performance enhancement (including increased creativity and efficiency), symptoms of depression, greater pain relief, and even Alzheimer’s disease. While this is promising, the vast majority is based on surveys. (Only within the last few years have scientists begun to explore the concept of microdosing with actual clinical trials.)

Support For Mental Health And Substance Use

In February, a study published in the journal Psychopharmacology relied on the results of an international survey to find out whether mental health and substance use disorders could be improved with microdosing.

Conducted in 2018, the online survey asked respondents about their use of microdosing psychedelics for therapeutic purposes, and if it led to positive outcomes. Of 1,102 participants, 57 % of which had been previously diagnosed with a mental health disorder, 39% said that improving their mental health was their main reason for microdosing with psychedelics. (It’s worth noting that of this subgroup, 85% said they had tried tried other medications or received counselling prior to microdosing.)

Twenty-one percent said they microdosed to help with symptoms of depression, while 7% said they were self-medicating for anxiety. Another 9% had other mental health conditions they were seeking to treat, and 2% were microdosing to help them stop using other substances.

Results showed that 44% said microdosing improved their mental health significantly, with 50% saying they were able to successfully stop taking antidepressants and almost 40% saying the same about psychiatric meds. Nineteen percent said microdosing resulted in “no perceived changes” to their mental health, and just 1.3% reported that microdosing made their mental health “somewhat worse.”

What Makes A Microdose?

Another study published in the same journal and conducted in a similar manner (this time with 909 participants) compared survey respondents who had microdosed with LSD, psilocybin, or both with a group that had not microdosed at all. Of the group of microdosers, most reported using an average of 13 micrograms of LSD or 0.3 grams of psilocybin on a one-day-on, two-days-off schedule.

Researchers found that microdosers were significantly less likely to report a history of substance use or anxiety disorders than those that did not microdose, while microdosers were more likely to have reported recent recreational substance use than their non-microdosing counterparts.

Users Say Benefits Outweigh Challenges

The Global Drug Survey 2019 offered a subsection of questions on microdosing to nearly 7,000 respondents who reported psychedelic use. This data was used in an October 2020 study published in Psychopharmacology, which concluded that “the perceived benefits associated with microdosing greatly outweigh the challenges.”

“Our results suggest a partial replication of previously reported benefits and challenges among the present sample often reporting enhanced mood, creativity, focus and sociability,” the study reads. “Counter to our prediction, the most common challenge participants associated with microdosing was ‘None’.”

Still, the conclusions in each of these papers are of a similar tone: double-blind, controlled studies are needed to make concrete conclusions.

Clinical Trials Are In The Works, But Are Few And Far Between

While respected institutions such as Johns Hopkins and NYU conduct placebo-controlled clinical trials using larger doses of psilocybin (one ongoing trial at Johns Hopkins is looking at the effects of psilocybin on anorexia and another study on depression), trials employing microdosing are not common.