Microdosing psychedelic substances is surely not a new practice. Many of the individuals who have practiced microdosing, which involves taking very small amounts of drugs to reap certain benefits without the feeling of tripping or being high, will argue that it can be highly beneficial.
Still, research surrounding psychedelics is only just beginning to ramp up. We’ve seen plenty of recent studies affirming how psychedelic-assisted therapy, involving larger doses of substances under the guidance of trained physicians, can work to treat conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder and addiction, but up until recently, studies on microdosing were slim to none.
But as psychedelics and plant medicine continue to move into the mainstream, we may be on the verge of finally uncovering some scientific evidence surrounding the benefits of microdosing. One recent study affirms what many have said for years regarding psilocybin microdosing: It found that microdosing psilocybin could make people more resilient to stress and reduce compulsive behavior.
Even the study’s abstract notes that anecdotal reports are “often highly biased and vulnerable to placebo effects.” Still, researchers sought to find out exactly what effects small, repeated doses of psilocybin may have on the mind.
To investigate, researchers administered microdoses of psilocybin to rats. They found that rats tolerated the repeated low doses of psilocybin well, without losing pleasure for their day-to-day activities, increased anxiety or altered locomotor activity. Rather, the repeated doses of psilocybin led to increased resilience against multiple injections, which would typically cause stress to the animals.
The researchers also noticed that the small doses of psilocybin reduced the frequency of self-grooming, which researchers measured as a proxy for human compulsive actions.
The study’s findings are preliminary and have yet to be validated in human trials, though it does show promise for the potential of microdosing and validates some of the claims that people who are already actively microdosing have made regarding the practice. Authors stated that these findings “”establish a well-validated regimen for further experiments probing the effects of repeated low doses of psilocybin.”
They also admit that the results “further substantiate anecdotal reports of the benefits of psilocybin microdosing as a therapeutic intervention, while pointing to a possible physiological mechanism.”
While research on microdosing psilocybin and other psychedelics is admittedly limited, that’s not to say it doesn’t exist.
One recent study looked at the relationship between authenticity and microdosing, proposing that the practice could actually make individuals more easily act as their true, authentic selves. They collected assessments from 18 microdosers in the Netherlands across a one-month observation, for a total of 192 observations.
Authors found that “on the microdosing day and the day thereafter, state authenticity was significantly higher,” and “the number of activities and the satisfaction with them were higher on the day when participants microdosed, while the following day only the number of activities was higher.” According to the authors, both “the number or activities and the satisfaction with them were positively related to state authenticity.”
Another observational study followed psilocybin microdosers and non-microdosing comparators for approximately 30 days and found “small- to medium-sized improvements in mood and mental health that were generally consistent across gender, age and presence of mental health concerns, as we all as improvements in psychomotor performance that were specific to older adults.”
Authors of this study pointed to the need for further research, namely citing the lack of placebo-controlled studies to limit bias on this subject.
“The potential that psilocybin microdosing may provide a means to improve depression and anxiety clearly points to the need for further research to more firmly establish the nature of the relationship between microdosing, mood and mental health, and the extent to which these effects are directly attributable to psilocybin,” they said.
