Your Guide to Microdosing for Anxiety and Depression
During the day, 30-year-old Mercedes was a workaholic, regularly clocking 80 hours a week at her computer with freelance work, most of which she did from her bed. At night, she threw herself into drinking and recreational drug use with more or less the same intensity she displayed at her job. Both addictions served the same function: to keep her distracted, 24/7. “I wasn't taking care of myself. I wasn't fun to be around,” she says of that period.
She suffered from years of anxiety, depression, self-harm, and disordered eating and was eventually diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. “I got very sick and reached that level of burnout where I was like, ‘I can't do this anymore. I hate everything that I know how to do, and I don't know what to do next.’” As it turned out, “next” was something entirely new: microdosing.
Mercedes is one of a growing number of people who are self-medicating with psychedelics like LSD and psilocybin mushrooms to aid in everything from concentration and creativity to alleviation of chronic anxiety and depression. People who microdose are typically thinking seriously about their health, but taking psychedelic drugs comes with a stigma, and it's still a controversial — as well as illegal — form of treatment. Here’s everything you need to know about microdosing, including why people do it and what doctors have to say about its safety and side effects.
Microdosing 101: The Basics
Simply put, microdosing is the practice of taking a very small amount of a drug. While the term can be applied to the use of nearly any substance, mainstream use of the word typically refers to psychedelics and hallucinogens
According to the Third Wave, a group dedicated to educating people about microdosing and changing mainstream perceptions about psychedelics, the most commonly microdosed substances are as follows:
LSD: LSD, or lysergic acid diethylamide, is a powerful hallucinogenic drug made from a chemical in rye fungus.
Psilocybin Mushrooms: Also known as magic mushrooms or shrooms, “psilocybin mushrooms” is actually a term that refers to any of the more than 180 species of fungi that contain psilocybin (or its derivative, psilocin), a naturally occurring psychedelic compound.
Folks who microdose take such a small amount of these drugs that their hallucinogenic effects are virtually imperceptible. A typical protocol involves taking the small dose every three days for a period of one or two months. For LSD, a microdose is usually between six and 20 micrograms (or about 1/16th and 1/5th of a single tab), and for psilocybin mushrooms, it’s about 0.1g of dried, powdered mushrooms, according to The Third Wave.
How Is Microdosing Different From a Full-On Trip?
To understand how it works, you first have to understand how psychedelics affect the human mind. LSD and psilocybin mushroom trips are often life-altering experiences. Those who have experimented with these drugs (both recreationally and in controlled settings) frequently describe experiencing states of euphoria along with audio-visual synesthesia, which means seeing sounds, for example, or smelling colors, and a shifting sense of reality.
Science has an answer for why psychedelics have this effect on people: They work on a part of the brain known as the parahippocampal retrosplenial cortical network, which is thought to play a role in controlling our sense of self, or ego. “When you take psychedelics, you loosen up and reduce the egoic experiences of identity and self, and it allows people to feel more connected, not only to themselves but to people and to the environment,” Michael D. McGee, the chief medical officer at The Haven at Pismo, an addiction treatment center in California, tells Allure.
Those who microdose, on the other hand, don’t report experiencing a radically altered state of reality or mystical awakening. However, some do report small changes in perception, but these changes are very subtle, like colors appearing a little brighter. In other words, the effects of microdosing are more or less what you might expect: much less intense versions of the effects of a trip.
Mark Gober, the author of An End to Upside Down Thinking, says psychedelics may play a key role in unlocking the secrets of how the human mind works. “It’s a much more subtle effect, but people report things like just being slightly less anxious or more creative," Gober says.
Why Is Microdosing Illegal?
Like LSD, psilocybin and psilocin are classified as Schedule I drugs in the U.S., which means that there is not currently an accepted medical use for the substances and they are considered to have a high potential for abuse. Interestingly, the mushrooms themselves are not scheduled, even though their derivative hallucinogenic drugs are.
Unlike LSD, psilocybin is currently being studied for therapeutic purposes. According to the Third Wave, regulatory bodies like the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have loosened rules ever so slightly about using psilocybin in controlled research trials in recent years, allowing it to be studied more than any other psychedelic.
Can Microdosing Help Anxiety and Depression?
Psychedelics went largely unstudied for years, but in August 2018, researchers published a study that suggested microdoses of “magic truffles” (the underground portion of psilocybin mushrooms) increased both divergent and convergent thinking — two forms of thinking associated with creativity and problem-solving. While psychedelics’ true impact on creativity and productivity remains to be seen, there’s actually far more evidence that they could be useful in treating mental health issues — particularly anxiety, depression, and PTSD.
“Psychedelic research has been shown to have positive effects on depression and anxiety," says psychiatrist and addiction specialist Neeraj Gandotra, who serves as the chief medical officer at the Delphi Behavioral Health Group. “There have been numerous studies utilizing psychedelics like psilocybin and ketamine, both of which have been shown to improve anxiety symptoms and, in the case of ketamine, be a rapid-acting agent for suicidality. So there is some evidence supporting the idea of a psychedelic medication for being used in a controlled environment to treat anxiety disorders.”
Alex Dimitriu, a physician, agrees that LSD and other psychedelics’ impact on the serotonergic system play a role in its effectiveness in treating anxiety and depression, but he also suggests it may be something more than that. “Even SSRIs that people take now don't just work on one little part of the brain. They work on every part of the brain — almost like a shotgun blast. Somehow, in that process, we hit on a target that helps. The same is true, I think, with LSD,” he says.
Let's Talk About Safely Microdosing
In the short term, at least, there are no real dangers or side effects inherent to microdosing itself. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t still dangers associated with the process.
The biggest risk that microdosers take is the decision to take an illegal drug. “I think that there is an implied risk with any illicit substance,” Gandotra says. “When people buy heroin and cocaine, they don't know what they're really getting. Unfortunately, this is part of that transaction — you are placing trust in someone you don't know.”
Mercedes says the question of how to safely source psychedelics is the most common one she’s asked in her work with the Third Wave. She doesn’t have a perfect answer. She says that finding trusted sources takes time and an investment in the psychedelic community — something that can be frustrating for people who are completely new to the scene and who want to try microdosing but can’t figure out how to safely get started.
Do Doctors Recommend Using LSD or Mushrooms to Treat Anxiety and Depression?
The short answer is no, doctors and psychiatrists don’t recommend microdosing — at least not in its current form. In addition to the risks assumed by sourcing an illegal drug, Gandotra points to the potential for building a tolerance and accidentally taking too much of the substance in question, even if your intention is to microdose.
“Unfortunately, tolerance develops and doses have to go up to produce the same effect over time. That's where the risk truly lies,” he says.
Even doctors and psychiatrists who are the most excited about the therapeutic potential of psychedelics agree that self-medicating is a dangerous prospect. Dimitriu urges anyone set on trying microdosing to embrace the buddy system. “You need a flight instructor,” he says. “Why are you getting in an airplane without a copilot when you haven't flown before? That really holds true, I think. You need some sort of support.”
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