Can Microdosing Support Mental Health?

The buzz about microdosing psychedelics began around 2015, with a wave of news stories about Silicon Valley entrepreneurs using the practice to enhance focus, creativity, and problem-solving. Bestselling books like Michael Pollan’s 2018 How to Change Your Mind also helped bring psychedelics back into the public consciousness. And though psychedelics are still largely illegal, recent decriminalization efforts have made them significantly more accessible.

Today, there’s growing interest in the potential of psychedelics for mental health. While the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research (CPCR) at Johns Hopkins University has primarily focused on how larger, therapeutic doses of psychedelics can help relieve PTSD symptoms and assist terminally ill patients with their fear of dying, an increasing number of people are seeking general mental health support through microdosing.

Billy Hauser, a 58-year-old film director in Nashville, turned to microdosing in 2021 to help manage his depression. (Hauser is a pseudonym used to protect his medical privacy.) He had been taking selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) like Prozac since he was in his 30s, but he hated the side effects, including unwanted weight gain.

He also questioned how much they were truly helping. “The dosage just kept getting upped, and the effect just became more negligible,” he explains.

Unlike the numbing consistency of SSRIs, microdosing psilocybin brought a noticeable lift to his days, he says. “It’s like taking a photo on your phone and then increasing the brightness — everything just looks a little brighter.”

 

What is Microdosing?

Microdosing involves consuming tiny doses of psychedelic substances. Whereas larger doses of psilocybin can induce visual and auditory hallucinations, altered time perception, and profound changes in mood and thought patterns, microdoses tend to gently enhance mood, focus, and an overall sense of well-being — without impairing normal functioning.

“Microdosing has no classic psychedelic effects,” explains James Fadiman, PhD, coauthor of Microdosing for Health, Healing, and Enhanced Performance. “There are no therapeutic breakthroughs, no angelic visitations, no realizing that you’re part of the divine everything.”

Instead, many people simply notice that they engage in the tasks of daily life with greater clarity and ease.

A microdose is generally defined as a tenth to a twentieth or less of a standard, hallucination-inducing dose. A standard psychedelic dose of psilocybin is 2 to 3 grams of dried mushrooms; microdoses generally range from 0.1 to 0.3 grams.

Some describe a microdose as “subperceptual,” but that’s not always the case. Even if a dose is nonintoxicating, it may cause perceptible shifts in focus or mood. Many people notice a mildly stimulating effect, like you might get from a cup of coffee.

In The Microdosing Guidebook: A Step-by-Step Manual to Improve Your Physical and Mental Health Through Psychedelic Medicine, nurse practitioner C. J. Spotswood, PMHNP, emphasizes that the concept of microdosing psychedelics is not new. “Many believe that microdosing has been practiced by Indigenous cultures for centuries for different reasons,” he writes.

While the practice itself may be old, the scientific understanding of microdosing is still young. Yet what researchers are learning is promising.

 

The Science of Psilocybin

When you take psilocybin, your body rapidly converts it into a psychoactive substance called psilocin. Psilocin activates serotonin receptors and changes how brain regions communicate with each other. Some regions become more active and connected; others grow quieter.

MRI studies have shown that psilocybin disrupts a particular area of the brain known as the default mode network (DMN). “The default mode network is a collection of circuits and hubs in the brain that … is the closest approximation of our ego or self,” explains Scott Shannon, MD, cofounder of the Psychedelic Research and Training Institute, in a 2020 interview with functional medicine physician Robert Rountree, MD, that was published in Alternative and Complementary Therapies.

“When we wake up from sleep or if we are knocked unconscious and we come back, [the DMN] reboots up to tell us who we are, … what we are worried about, our biases, our prejudices, our preferences, our failures, and our insecurities. It is really our inner narrative.”

The DMN is closely associated with rumination and self-focus. “When [it’s] amplified, people become depressed, obsessional, and even totally dysfunctional,” Shannon adds. “When the default mode network [is] dialed down — which occurs with meditation — it often results in a sense of peace, tranquility, ease, and positive mood.”

This quieting of the DMN may be one reason many people report that standard doses of psilocybin give them a greater feeling of interconnection: It helps loosen the grip of self-involved rumination.

Most psilocybin research has focused on the impact of large therapeutic doses delivered under supervision from medical and psychiatric professionals. Microdosing is different in both its approach and its goals, emphasizing regular support over major breakthroughs. Whereas macrodosing’s effects can be profound and transformative, the effects of microdosing are subtle.

They’re also more difficult to scientifically validate. There are few randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled studies on microdosing. Fadiman notes that the practice of modern microdosing is less than 15 years old.

The legal status of psilocybin creates stringent research requirements that are easier to meet in single-day, supervised, high-dose psychedelic experiences, like those performed at the CPCR.

At present, most academic microdosing studies have been observational or survey-based, producing evidence of limited quality. This research has broadly found that people who microdose report enhanced mood, increased creativity, improved focus, and heightened emotional well-being compared with those not taking a dose.

In several placebo-controlled studies, the placebo produced comparable mental health benefits. This suggests that expectations might be driving many of microdosing’s benefits.

Some research, however, contradicts this notion. A review of 19 placebo-controlled studies published in 2024 in the Journal of Psychopharmacology found that “microdosing with … psilocybin leads to changes in neurobiology, physiology, subjective experience, affect, and cognition relative to placebo.”

 

Microdosing for Mental Health

Some people have turned to microdosing as an alternative to antidepressant or antianxiety medication. Unlike SSRIs, which can mute both positive and negative feelings, microdosing seems to reduce negative emotions while enhancing positive ones. It also may have fewer side effects.

Anecdotal reports suggest that microdosing may also ease the process of tapering off SSRIs, offering support during withdrawal and helping to maintain emotional balance.

In 2019, Fadiman partnered with Sophia Korb to run an open-label, nonclinical microdosing study involving 1,700 respondents from 59 countries. Among the responses were reports from people who had struggled to wean themselves from their medications before succeeding with the help of microdosing.

“Microdosing is a totally different model of system improvement versus symptom suppression,” Fadiman says. He stresses that people should still closely follow their physician’s instructions when tapering off SSRIs, even if their symptoms seem to improve right away.

In clinical high-dose psychedelic experiences, much emphasis is placed on intention, mindset, and setting. This involves consciously articulating goals or expectations for what you hope to explore, heal, or achieve during the experience; nurturing a calm and open state of mind; and ensuring you’re in a safe, comfortable, and supportive setting.

Because microdosing is integrated into daily life, these elements — especially setting — may be less of a focus. But Spotswood notes that, rather than simply taking a pharmaceutical approach to microdosing and passively expecting it to produce its effects, having a more mindful and reflective relationship to the process can lead to profound and lasting results.

This is especially so if you’re working with the support of a therapist or guide. Journaling, group therapy, one-to-one therapy, or even regular check-ins with fellow microdosers can all be useful.

“I think psychedelics are part of our future [in psychiatry], because they are going to move us from this supportive model to this evocative model, where we are really honoring and valuing the psyche in a much deeper and more profound way,” notes Shannon.

Still, microdosing is not a panacea, and it won’t be right for everyone. Certain populations of people will be helped by it, and for others, it will be an experiment that may or may not help.

For Hauser, the eight months he spent microdosing brought a sense of connectivity and receptivity. “It helped me get in touch with myself and notice things in a different way,” he says. “It’s not the entire solution to everything, but it’s a fantastic tool.”

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