How Microdosing on Psychedelics Could Help With Anxiety & Depression (A Study)

A new 2021 study argues that adults, who microdose on psychedelics, experience lower levels of anxiety and depression, and overall perceived mental health benefits.

We are currently seeing a boom in psychedelics consumption. If during the last century, substances such as LSD, psilocybin, and ayahuasca were seen as taboo, today, things have changed. An increasing number of consumers, such as singers, actors, mindfulness teachers, CEOs, and so on, have been openly speaking about their experiences with some of these hallucinogens. Even, some of these people were reported to have been investing heavily in the industry.

One celebrity that immediately comes to mind is Joe Rogan with his podcast The Joe Rogan Experience. Rogan is widely known for his firm and somewhat controversial views on politics, religion, social norms, and culture as a whole. Amongst these topics, and one that Rogan can’t get enough from, is, inevitably, psychedelics. There are quite a few episodes of his that are mainly dedicated to the subject. Here are some of them — #782 Rick Doblin, #1121 Michael Pollan, #1133 Dennis McKenna, and, of course, #1227 Mike Tyson. Although his other episodes are clearly not related to hallucinogens, Rogan always seems to be ready for a discussion on the subject.

Apart from famous podcasts and talk shows, the topic of psychedelics seems to have rapidly spread through and over the mindfulness community, with an increasing number of mindfulness teachers and practitioners now openly sharing their presumably life-changing experiences with the drugs. As more and more renowned and respected people start to openly discuss each others’ psychedelics encounters, more curiosity will be generated by the wide public, which further generates interest from the scientific community in the form of various studies and research.

One of the most recent such studies is one led by the University of British Columbia’s Okanagan campus. A group of 8703 participants was selected for the study — 4050 of the people were self-selected microdosers and 4653 of them were non-microdosers. LSD and psilocybin (the active compound in magic mushrooms) were the main psychedelics used, with the latter one being the most commonly used — amongst 85% of the participants.

What the Study Found

Let’s find define what microdosing is: it’s the consumption of doses ranging from 1/10 to 1/20 of an original recreational dose. When it comes to psychedelics, microdoses are usually taken several times a week, following a pre-defined schedule. Microdoses are also defined as “ doses of psychedelics that do not impair normal functioning and are predominantly sub-sensorium.”

UBC’s study is currently the largest-known study on microdosing to date. The tests consisted of the differences between microdosers and controls on depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms among participants “with mental health concerns and examines the relationship between motivation for microdosing and mental health.”

Along with classical microdosing, there is a practice called stacking, which involves the deliberate consumption of mixtures of different psychedelics. However, generally, the positive effects reported due to stacking are mainly anecdotal, rather than empirical. Nevertheless, this method was amongst the ones used in the study. The microdosers that used psilocybin were more likely than LSD users to combine their drug with other substances. The most popular substance used for stacking (these types were the same for both LSD and psilocybin) was Lion’s Mane mushroom with 39% (1575 users), niacin with 18% (727 users), and cholocate with 5% (217 users). When it came to depression, anxiety, and stress, whether one stacked or not, made no difference. However, those who opted for stacking were more likely to endorse Enhancing Creativity and Enhancing Learning.

Also, the non-microdosing group had similar demographic and mental-health characteristics, which constituted a distinct contribution to the findings of the paper in order to understand microdosing and its mental-health implications. “Specifically, approximately one-third of our respondents reported concerns related to mental health and substance use, and, among participants who reported such concerns, microdosing was associated with reduced depression, anxiety and stress symptom severity.”

“In addition, participants who reported mental health concerns were also more likely to report mental health-related motives for microdosing, whereas those who did not report mental health concerns, were more likely to endorse motives related to enhancing learning and creativity. Taken together, this pattern of associations suggests that a considerable proportion of those who microdose do so with therapeutic intent to treat mental health symptoms and conditions, and that those who do so appear to be slightly less symptomatic of depression and anxiety than their peers who report similar mental health concerns but do not microdose.”

Moreover, the study found out that microdosers were less inclined to consume alcohol and nicotine regularly and were even more likely to abstain from the former one entirely.

“In light of the status of alcohol being among the most harmful psychoactive substances from both a personal and public health perspective, the association between microdosing and low levels of alcohol use appears congruent with the broader health and wellness accentuating motivations for microdosing.”

Limitations

According to the authors of the study, this examination of a large international sample of adults highlighted the “prominence of therapeutic and wellness motivations for microdosing psychedelic drugs and identified lower levels of anxiety and depression among microdosers relative to controls.”

Nevertheless, the study, as most of the work on psychedelics and microdosing, has its limitations, which should be taken into consideration before jumping to concrete conclusions. Further research in the field is needed to determine even better the psychological and physiological impact of these substances and practices. More meticulously controlled clinical trials are needed in order for researchers to understand the potential risks and benefits of microdosing on hallucinogens. Unfortunately, the current widespread use of microdosing has outpaced the research in the field, thus posing many unknowns and requiring further research.

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If you are further interested in psychedelics and mental-health, I recently wrote about whether smoking can damage your brain cells, and how psychedelics could become the “new weed.”