Powerful substances in tiny amounts An interview study of psychedelic microdosing

This qualitative interview study (n=21) investigated how people approach psychedelic microdosing and found that people mostly followed a dosing regimen recommended by James Fadiman and reported that it enhanced their mood and cognitive performance.

Abstract

“Aims: This article presents a qualitative interview study of people who microdose with psychedelic drugs, which means that the user takes about one tenth of an ordinary recreational dose.

Design: Respondents (n = 21) were recruited at several Internet fora for individual interviews via private messaging. Every participant was male, and the median respondent was in his 30s with a stable job and relationship and extensive entheogen experience.

Results: Respondents tended to experiment with microdosing in phases, reporting mostly positive consequences from this form of drug use. Reported effects included improved mood, cognition, and creativity, which often served to counteract symptoms especially from conditions of anxiety and depression. There were also reports of various challenges with psychedelic microdosing, and some did not find the practice worth continuing.

Conclusion: The study obtained evidence of a group of users taking small doses of psychedelics not for the purpose of intoxication but to enhance everyday functioning. While the study’s findings are not generalisable, they may inform subsequent investigations with research questions and hypotheses.”

Author: Petter G. Johnstad

Summary

In this study, people who microdose with psychedelic drugs reported mostly positive consequences from this form of drug use, including improved mood, cognition, and creativity. There were also reports of various challenges with psychedelic microdosing, and some did not find the practice worth continuing.

Microdosing with psychedelic drugs is growing in popularity, and has roots going back to 1970s psycholytic therapy and indigenous healers and shamans. It has been reported in the media that microdosing with LSD improves concentration and problem solving.

No published research on psychedelic microdosing has been done to corroborate these anecdotal findings, but psychiatric researchers have observed therapeutic effects from full doses of psychedelic drugs on depression and anxiety around life-threatening disease, and on substance dependence.

Microdosing of psychedelic drugs has not yet been reported to result in negative health reactions in anyone, but the anecdotal evidence currently available indicates that this use of psychedelics is promising for some of the health benefits claimed for psychedelics while incurring minimal risk for mental health complications.

Researchers have identified the growing use of enhancement drugs, especially among university students, and have long regarded them as a problem in sports. They are an aspect of a broader range of enhancement technologies, including cosmetic procedures, cyborg prosthetics, and genetic enhancement.

Researchers have characterized enhancement drug use differently, including as “abuse”, “functional drug use”, and “substance abuse”. The social acceptance of enhancement drugs depends on the cultural authority of medical experts.

Some researchers have noted that media reports about enhancement drugs tend to exaggerate their use and overemphasize their benefits.

Terminology

In this article, microdosing is used exclusively in the context of psychedelic drugs, but some respondents mentioned microdosing experiments with cannabis, which are not usually classified as psychedelics.

Study design

Current and former microdose users of psychedelic drugs were recruited for interviews via a variety of Internet fora dedicated to discussions of various psychedelic experiences. Two-pronged recruitment strategies were employed on seven different user fora.

Several users tried microdosing without any noteworthy effect, and three did not respond to the private message. The remaining 21 gave their informed consent to participate.

Because psychedelics are generally illegal, only a minimum of demographic information was requested. Of the 17 respondents, every respondent was male, the median age was early 30s, and five were students, nine were in full-time employment, and two were unemployed/disabled.

The Internet was a good way to recruit participants for this study, as each of the 21 interviewees made valuable contributions and must be regarded as highly appropriate for the study. However, participants recruited on the Internet probably have more education and higher incomes.

Interviews were conducted asynchronously and Internet-mediated, and were conducted on a semi-structured basis. The advantages of using email to convey interviews include a possible increase in honesty and self-disclosure, as well as the elimination of transcription errors, and there is no overall negative impact on data quality.

How much experience do you have with microdosing and what effects do you get?

Participants were interviewed about their microdosing practices and the effects of microdosing on their bodies. Thematic analysis was used to identify areas of agreement among the participants and to construct themes that represented areas of interest.

The study emphasised participant anonymity, and participants communicated via anonymous messaging that protected their identity at least from the researcher. Their IP addresses would have been accessible to the forum service provider, but this would not have served as a privacy concern.

The emphasis on anonymity entailed that signed consent letters could not be obtained, but minors were unlikely to pass themselves off as adults to gain access to the study.

Microdose regimen

Respondents generally regarded microdosing as being compatible with most everyday activities. They used psilocybin-containing “magic mushrooms” and lysergic acid diethylamide for microdosing, as well as Salvia divinorum, Amanita muscaria, Peganum harmala, Echinopsis pachanoi, and cannabis.

Doses of LSD and Psilocybe cubensis mushrooms were usually about a tenth of a full dose. Some respondents took up to a quarter of a full dose, but this was not considered compatible with work and everyday activities.

Experienced microdosers typically dosed one to three times per week, although some reported dosing daily. There were conflicting reports on tolerance build up from daily microdosing and about the impact of microdose tolerance on full doses.

Experienced therapeutic effects

Respondents reported positive effects from microdosing LSD and psilocybin, including benign influence on states of depression and anxiety, and therapeutic effect for pain management and a range of conditions including obsessive-compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, narcolepsy, and migraines.

Experienced enhancement effects

Respondents commonly reported positive effects from microdosing on energy, mood, and cognition, which allowed them to function better in everyday life even without specific health issues.

Some respondents reported having a “bad trip” after combining psychedelic microdoses with alcohol, cannabis or MDMA, and others reported having a sustained relief from anxiety lasting up to a week.

The respondents agreed that psilocybin and LSD had different effects, and some had developed a preference for one or the other.

Reported challenges

Despite the general emphasis on subtle benign effects, several respondents reported encountering uncomfortable situations when attempting to microdose psychedelic drugs.

Some respondents found that microdosing could exacerbate certain conditions or symptoms, while others expressed uneasiness over the fact that the impact of long-term use remains unknown.

A few respondents mentioned insomnia as a problem after taking a microdose of LSD, and this was connected to the feeling of overstimulation from LSD microdoses.

Discussion

This study explored how “ordinary” users of psychedelics approach psychedelic microdosing. The findings have no claim to general validity.

In this study, people used LSD and psilocybin-containing mushrooms as microdoses, and reported positive effects with few side effects. They used microdoses as mood and cognitive enhancers, and reported parallels with the use of cognitive enhancement drugs among healthy individuals for performance improvements.

Some respondents in this study reported having a therapeutic motivation for psychedelic microdosing, such as to treat conditions of anxiety or depression. This is consistent with reported effects from full doses of psychedelic drugs on conditions of depression and anxiety.

The lack of a clear distinction between therapy and enhancement is echoed in this study, where respondents used psychedelic microdoses to lift themselves out of a state of relative limitation into a state of higher functioning.

Some respondents experienced no effects from microdosing at all, while others emphasised that microdosing is no miracle cure. It is important to investigate whether the effects of microdosing psychedelics remain positive over time.

Overdosing and insomnia are the most commonly reported challenges with microdosing. Clinical applications of microdosing might solve this problem by supplying standardised microdoses, but would have to trust their clients not to take several doses at the same time.

The few negative reports about microdosing in this study were not apparently a result of overdosing, and there is no obvious explanation for their occurrence. Some people may experience distinctly unpleasant effects as a result of microdosing, but it is not clear whether this is abuse or functional drug use.

Psychedelic microdosing may be a social phenomenon, reflecting a change in the cultural authority of medical experts, as more people use the Internet for medical advice and feel empowered to take personal responsibility for their medication needs.

There are no published studies on microdosing, and the results of this study are consistent with anecdotal reports of therapy and enhancement. There is no way to differentiate between drug effects and positive or negative expectation effects (placebo/nocebo), but the results offer insight into how “ordinary” users of psychedelics approach microdosing.

This study found that psychedelic Internet users are reflective, knowledgeable, and capable of expressing their views. It is unknown whether this segment of Internet-active users is representative of the general psychedelic-using population, but their participation would be an asset to any study.