Tiny doses, large samples: the largest microdosing study to date.

Original Publication

A new study published in Nature: Scientific Reports This added to the growing number of studies reporting the effects of sub-hallucinogenic microdoses of psychedelic compounds. Previous findings were unclear and contradictory, as we described in a previous blog post . So, what does this new article examine and what does it add to the body of knowledge?

The international research team – led by scientists from the University of British Columbia, alongside, among others, Beckley/Maastricht collaborator Kim Kuypers; Pam Kryskow, medical lead for Roots To Thrive Ketamine Assisted Therapy program; and renowned mycologist Paul Stamets – used the world's first mobile app to collect psychedelic microdosing data, the Microdose.me , developed by Quantified Citizen to allow researchers to conduct observational studies on people who microdose psychedelics, collecting data safely and allowing participants to perform research and assessments without the need for in-person visits to a laboratory or clinic.

This new approach meant that researchers were able to recruit the largest sample of participants in any psychedelic study to date, with over 8,500 participants from 75 different countries. Participants were asked whether or not they were microdosing and if they had any psychological, mental health, or dependence concerns. Mental health was assessed using the DASS-21 scale to obtain measures of depression, anxiety, and stress levels.

When these scales were compared between microdosers and non-microdosers reporting mental health problems, microdosers were found to exhibit lower scores on all three, indicating that microdosing may be beneficial for the treatment of certain mental health conditions.

However, there are some important caveats that should be considered before drawing any conclusions. One important point of confusion is that people who use microdoses typically do not limit their use to small doses, and therefore the vast majority of participants were mixed users of micro and macrodoses. As a result, it is difficult to separate the contribution of microdosing to mental health from that of full doses. Since the number of participants who only had experience with microdosing was very small, the authors decided instead to compare the larger subgroup of people who reported mixed use of psychedelics with a group that used only large doses. They found that mixed users had better mental health scores than those who used only full doses. These results suggest that microdosing may have an important role to play in mental health management. alone or when used in combination with higher doses. Future studies should attempt to clarify the extent to which microdosing is effective on its own, possibly by more accurately characterizing lifetime exposure to large doses.

Another interesting observation was the lower use of alcohol and tobacco among the microdosing group. This finding is consistent with previous studies that have reported healthier lifestyles in psychedelic users (e.g., Teixeira et al 2021 ), but the extent to which it relates to microdosing more specifically still needs to be demonstrated. Furthermore, given the higher incidence of alcohol abuse in rural areas, and the lower percentage of microdosers there, it would be interesting to compare substance use within a subpopulation of urban/suburban residents.

Although these findings are generally positive and have been received with some optimism, they have generated controversy. Some cited the lack of placebo control and the absence of any mention of the effects of expectation in the article as reasons to dismiss the results. While it is certainly possible that the observed benefits are due to the placebo effect, this was outside the scope of the article, which aimed to compare the practices, motivations, and mental health of microdosers and non-microdosers. Furthermore, the article addresses response bias which is more relevant than placebo or expectation effects in the context of cross-sectional projects.

It is important to keep in mind that this research was purely observational. As a result, the data were self-reported by the participants, using a standardized and widely used scale. This means there was less experimental control than would occur in a laboratory-based study. However, one benefit of this approach is that these researchers were able to investigate microdosing in an ecologically sound manner. Participants reported the effects of their microdosing practice in the real world using their own preferred doses and times, rather than a dosing regimen specified by an experimenter. Non-microdose users were encouraged to participate, and the relative ease of participation meant that many submitted data during the study period. Although contrasting these two groups provides intriguing data, due to the observational nature of the research,

Participant bias is also an area of ​​concern, since subjects self-selected for inclusion in a microdosing study and are therefore more likely to hold positive opinions about the practice. This is, unfortunately, a widespread problem in the field of psychedelic science at the moment, and it is difficult to address in a study of this type. But it is worth noting that, while it is widely accepted in the field of psychedelic research that the mindset with which people enter a psychedelic experience (one's 'set') plays a key role in its quality and outcome, this same mindset is being disregarded as expectancy bias when it comes to lower doses. Perhaps it's time to stop creating an illusory dichotomy between microdoses and full doses and, instead, acknowledge their similarities.

Other noteworthy findings included the apparently widespread use of a practice known as 'stacking' - More than half of the microdosing sample reported combining their psilocybin microdoses with other non-psychedelic substances, such as Lion's Mane mushrooms or chocolate. However, this was not found to have any influence on mental health outcomes.

Despite certain limitations, this work makes a solid contribution to the understanding of microdosing and its real-world use, including its combination with other substances – a widespread but poorly documented practice to date. It uses a substantially larger sample of microdosers than has been examined by previous research and, in addition, a large and comparable group of non-microdosers for comparison. Despite promising findings of improvements in depression, anxiety, and stress with microdoses, it is important to recognize, as the authors do, that the effects on the severity of psychiatric symptoms were only small, although statistically significant.

It's easy to forget that, in the words of Amanda Feilding, we are at the very bottom of understanding the effects of psychedelics, and there is a widespread eagerness to reach the summit. This is slow, however, and observational studies like this one, with a large number of participants, are a good starting point to climb even higher.

At the Beckley Foundation, we are convinced of the value of such 'grassroots' approaches to psychedelic research, and we will be collaborating with Quantified Citizen and the international team of researchers involved in this study on the second implementation of microdosing. remote Microdose.me research platform. As with any update, this new version will fix some existing bugs, including the implementation of a new placebo control procedure.