As you sit behind your desk, you may start to feel a little tingling sensation or a slight increase in awareness of things around you at the office, things that you didn’t notice before. Words might appear brighter or sharper on the screen. And perhaps not so much changes around you but how you experience it changes quite a lot, you feel alive and quite present in your body. (Mishra 2020, p. 42)

This is an excerpt of an interview that Swasti Mishra (2020), one of the ChemicalYouth ethnographers, had with young professionals in Amsterdam who were self-experimenting with microdoses of lysergic acid, also known as LSD, and psilocybin, the active ingredient of “magic mushrooms.” During the ChemicalYouth project, we observed that microdosing with psychedelics was emerging as a new trend among students and young professionals. Popular media such as Forbes, Vice, Rolling Stone, and Marie Claire published stories on this trend, with titles such as: “Micro-dosing: The Drug Habit Your Boss Is Gonna Love” (Dean 2017), “Interview With a Corporate Banker Who Microdosed His Way to the Top” (Fisher 2016), and “Can Very Small Doses of LSD Make You a Better Worker?” (Woods 2016).

O’Bryan Tear, a psychedelic researcher from the United Kingdom, defines microdosing as:

taking a very small amount of LSD or magic mushrooms with the aim of boosting creativity, productivity or mood. So it does not give you a full recreational experience. It keeps you engaged and relatively sober, but it helps you work better and more productively”. (BBC London News 2018)

Nina, one of Mishra’s interlocutors, explains it as follows:

It’s not like taking a full dose….the tiny dose counteracts the “airy-fairy” psychedelic effect, and it lets you take advantage of the focus, the creative ways you can make new connections between different pieces of information, and even simply the good mood it puts you in. (Mishra 2018, p. 1)

In this chapter we explore this burgeoning practice of microdosing and three ways of gathering data to understand its effects: analyzing users’ narratives, collaborating with users to aggregate user accounts, and organizing clinical experiments. In the first way, users’ narratives show how they “do” microdosing, what they want to achieve by using these substances, and what they do to prevent or reduce harm. Mishra (2020), for example, examined the narratives of microdosers in Amsterdam, and followed their collaborative self-experiments over time. Some members of our team have also reviewed reports on microdosing in popular media and online, a form of “virtual ethnography” (see Krieg et al. 2017; Hupli et al. 2019). A second way of understanding the effects of microdosing is through the gathering of data that can aggregate users’ experiences; such data has been generated through collaborations between researchers and users, and is reviewed here. Finally, a third way is through clinical trials that compare the effects of psychoactive substances with those of placebos. These studies use a “blinding” strategy, an administrative procedure that ensures that participants don’t know if they are being given a psychoactive substance or pharmacologically inert one; in this way, researchers hope to unravel what the “real,” that is material, effects of microdosing are.

In the conclusion, we reflect on the ways that the practical wisdom (Boothroyd and Lewis 2016) generated by young people in collaborative microdosing experiments is linked to larger scale surveys and trials that aim to generate scientific evidence on benefits and risks of microdosing. We outline the modes of “knowing” that these surveys and placebo-controlled studies produce, how they lead to re-articulations of chemicals efficacy and reflect on the ways it can be understood as regulation from below, a concept that we discussed in Chapter 2, and will further elaborate in Chapter 9, the concluding chapter.

A Brief History of Microdosing

People who engage in and study microdosing often mention Albert Hofmann, admired for his self-experiments with LSD. Hofmann was the first to synthesize the drug in 1938, when he worked for the pharmaceutical company Sandoz. He was exploring the alkaloids present in a fungus called ergot (used traditionally by midwives to induce labor). When synthesizing LSD he was interrupted in his work by “unusual sensations” due to ingesting a small amount accidently. He went home to lie down, reporting later that “in dreamlike state, with eyes closed. … I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors” (as quoted in Pollan 2019, p. 22). In his 1979 memoir LSD: My Problem Child, Hofmann describes a series of self-experiments that followed and includes excerpts from his lab journals, such as this one from April 4, 1943:

4/4/43. 16.20: 0.5cc of ½ promil aqueous solution of diethylamide tartrate orally = 0.25 mg tartate. Taken diluted with about 10 cc water. Tasteless. 17.00: Beginning of dizziness, feeling of anxiety, visual distortions, symptoms of paralysis, desire to laugh: Supplement of 4/12: Home by bicycle. From ca. 18:00-20.00 most severe crisis. (Hofmann 1979, p. 48)

Reflecting back on that day, he then comments that:

Here the notes in my laboratory journal cease. I was able to write the last words with great effort. … I had to struggle to speak intelligibly. I asked my laboratory assistant, who was informed of the self-experiment, to escort me home. We went by bicycle, no automobile being available because of wartime restrictions. (Hofmann 1979, p. 48)

Based on these self-experiments Hofmann (1979) concluded that LSD was a psychoactive substance with “extraordinary properties and potency” (p. 51). In 1947, Sandoz started marketing LSD (under the brand name Delysid) as a psychiatric drug.

James Fadiman was one of the first researchers to explore the effects of LSD on creativity, when he was still a graduate student at Stanford University in the 1960s. He designed an experiment to determine whether psychedelics could facilitate problem-solving of a technical nature. As Fadiman (2011) recalls:

others had done work with artists—but we took on a different challenge. Could we use these materials and get people to work on highly technical problems. … We began this really gorgeous study with senior research scientists from a number of companies. We told them that we’d assist them in their most pressing technological problems, particularly if they were really stuck. (p. 233)

The experiments conducted by Fadiman and others in this first wave of psychedelic research gave users structured guidance during their “trips,” including preparation in the form of “flight instructions.” These helped users “set” how they would navigate their experiences during the trip; for example, the “setting” of being in a safe place, accompanied by trip “sitters” helped ensure users that they would be supported if they experienced anxiety, fear, or adverse physical effects. The Spring Grove Group, which conducted research to find out if LSD could help alcoholic patients overcome their addictions, established the following setting: LSD treatment was done in a comfortable room, with a sofa, carpet, flowers, and a good sound system. Music was played throughout the session, and the trial subject was given eyeshades, allowing the patient to retreat into their imagination. A therapist guided the experience and helped subjects feel cared for, encouraging them to go with the flow of the drug-induced effects (Oram 2014).

Fadiman’s research into the creative potential of LSD stopped in 1966, when the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) declared LSD a scheduled drug. One of the main reasons for this declaration was the alleged “misuse” of the drug for recreational purposes by young people in the Sixties’ counterculture. Despite not being able to complete the study, Fadiman concluded that the scientists who had participated in the experiment were pleased with the results: the drug had in fact helped them solve technical problems. One scientist even won a major scientific award (Fadiman 2011).

Indeed, early on in the history of LSD, the substance came to be heralded for its aid stimulating technological breakthroughs. John Markoff, a co-fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, where I have written much of this book, suggests that the use of LSD to promote creativity had far-reaching consequences, stimulating the innovations that emerged from Silicon Valley in the 1960s and 1970s (see Markoff 2005). Steve Jobs, a dropout from college who experimented with drugs and was part of the youth counterculture in the 1960s, told him that, “taking LSD was one of the two or three most important things he had done in his life” (Markoff 2005, p. 21). Kary Mullis, who received a Nobel Prize for inventing the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), a revolutionary technique for multiplying tiny amounts of DNA for use in genetic research, similarly attributed his innovation to his LSD use. In an interview for a BBC documentary, he explained how psychedelic experiences helped him imagine how DNA works:

I wasn’t stoned on LSD at the time, but my mind had learnt how to get there. I could sit on the DNA molecules and watch the polymers go by. And I didn’t feel dumb about it. I felt like that’s just the way I think, I put myself in all different kinds of spots. And I learnt it partially, I would think, this is again my opinion, through psychedelic drugs. (Eagles 1997)

When Jobs and Mullis experimented with LSD, microdosing was not yet popular. In an online interview with Dutch microdosing enthusiasts, Fadiman explained “with a high dose, set and setting is as important as the drug” (Microdosing Netherlands 2019). In contrast, he says, “with micro-dosing, unless your outerworld is terrible, it does not seem to matter much … Because its effect are so subtle, set and setting are far less important.” The idea that LSD could be safely used at very low dosages is the innovating force behind microdosing.

Fadiman (2011) proposed a schedule of one day of microdosing, followed by two days off, and repeating the cycle starting on the fourth day. In the interview, Fadiman recalls that he proposed this schedule not as a standard practice, but as a tool for users to observe what microdosing did for them: “we wanted people to, on the third day, to experience how they feel without the substance, and reflect on the difference between ‘on and off.’” He said that after one month of trying out this schedule, microdosers should be able to determine what works best for them. In The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide, Fadiman (2011) quotes a man named Charles, who used this schedule:

The protocol I followed had me take a micro-dose one day, then carefully observe any ongoing or lingering effects the second day, and the give myself the third day completely off. By going slow, you give yourself a chance to really know, to really observe what is different, why it is different, and how you can best take advantage of it. … I’ve found that I’ve had some brilliant outbursts (at least they seemed brilliant to me) with respect to both work and personal creative projects. (p. 200)

This guide also describes the experiences of a woman named Madeline, who attested to the creative potential of microdosing. A documentary maker from Manhattan, married with a four-year-old child, Madeline says she has to review 50 hours of film footage and “knit it together in a story arc,” and that when microdosing she feels deeply connected to her work: “I barely come up for air for the next five hours because I am so sincerely enjoying what I’m doing” (Fadiman 2011, p. 202).

A similar narrative is reported in the popular women’s magazine Marie Claire, which ran a story entitled “Why Power Women Are Micro-Dosing LSD at Work” (Malone 2016), in which a woman named Karen Smith, a 32-year-old who lives in Chicago, explains in detail how she made capsules and dosed psilocybin. Karen is enrolled in a data science graduate program after working for 10 years in a tech startup. Confronted with cold Midwest winters, and having quit cigarettes and marijuana, she was looking for something else to improve her mental well-being. Her husband had read about the beneficial effects of psilocybin on the forum-based website Reddit (which at the time had a forum on microdosing with over 9000 subscribers). The couple was offered some “magic” mushrooms—psilocybin containing-mushrooms—from a friend, which they ground up in a spice grinder. They bought empty capsules on Amazon, and packed them with the powder: 10 micrograms for Karen’s husband and half that amount for Karen. They took a capsule every few days for four months. Karen started feeling better and became very efficient. In Karen’s words, “It gives you fresh eyes … for programming or figuring out algorithmic stuff. It made me really productive in a motivated way.” An added benefit was that Karen got a lot of household chores done.

Microdosing Narratives

In the earlier use of LSD, preparation mattered—users were given “flight instructions” and trip sitters guided the experience. The stories that we reviewed suggest that microdosing has little to do with managing preparation or setting as a runway for an unpredictable flight. Instead, it involves material work, as presented in the story of Karen—preparing capsules, cutting blots, and weighing—as well as attending to schedules that ensure the productive insertion of microdosing into a day’s schedule. Figure 8.1 provides an example of such a schedule from Mishra’s fieldwork. Note how it includes timeslots for meditation, sleeping healthy eating, and a reflecting on the success of the day’s work.

Fig. 8.1
figure 1

(Source Photo Swasti Mishra, November 2017, Amsterdam)

Inserting microdosing into a “Superman” day

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Trip sitters are not seen as necessary for microdosing. Instead users keep records of their own experiences themselves, many of them inspired by Albert Hoffman’s laboratory notes. The narratives we examined suggest that microdosing had positive experience on users’ moods and creativity, but that adverse events that interfere with the capacity to work could also occur. They also show that users compared the pros and cons of a range of substances (LSD, mushrooms, mescaline) for different tasks at hand. Finally, users commented on other medical benefits on microdosing, including their potential in the treatment of ADHD.

JingShu, one of Mishra’s informants developed a scale to record the effects of microdosing over the course of 30 days, see Fig. 8.2. She divided effects into three categories: sexual, positive, and negative (each with their own summative indicator). She judiciously tracked various emotions and her work productivity, rating them on a scale of one to ten, and noting possible side effects.

Fig. 8.2
figure 2

(Note Retrieved on May 24 2020 from https://microdosing.nl/i-microdosed-on-psilocybin-for-30-days-and-tracked-its-lasting-effects/. Source Photo from Mishra [2020, p. 37])

The 30-day observations of JingShu

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Her positive mood indicators included being present, peace, joy, love, passion, confidence, acceptance, courage, celebration, and gratitude. Over the course of the 30 days, her scores on positive affects became higher. She tells Mishra that she was impressed by the “non-stickiness” to both positive and negative events that occurred in her life (Mishra 2020, p. 37).

There are many such individual reports of experiences with microdosing on online forum-based sites such as Reddit (used by Karen) and drug-using focused sites like Erowid (2020). Erowid is an “experience vault,” which is filled through decentralized user engagement (Liu 2012, p. 25) via voluntary submissions, and which is managed centrally by two experienced drug users (named “Earth” and “Fire”) who screen and edit reports before they are published on the website. Our analysis of user reports on Erowid shows that most of the participants in the experience vault are young (average age 23) and male (86% of reports are from men; 14% from women).1 While Erowid accepts reports on a wide range of drugs, the most commonly mentioned substances are mushrooms (N = 1715) and LSD (N = 1168). “Microdosing” was the most mentioned term in the LSD reports, which attests to the popularity of this practice.

An example of such a report is entitled “Psychedelic Microdosing: A Surprising ADHD Fix” (Erowid 2020). This report concerns 1P-LSD, a synthetic modification of LSD. “Designer drugs” such as 1P-LSD have emerged in this underground drug-use culture as a way of avoiding drug regulations that have defined LSD itself as illegal. The user who wrote up the experiences with 1P-LSD does not self-declare his/her age or sex, but does give his/her weight (60 kg) and the dose used (6 ug), while proposing a dosage scheme that consist of 1/16 rather than 1/10 of the regular dosage, and reports that he/she did not experience any side effects:

I had been trying out magic mushrooms (or rather magic truffles) with… “interesting” results. But they are of tremendously repellent taste, and the reliable occurrence of nausea makes them unfit for daily utilisation. It was only then that I found out about 1P-LSD, a novel lysergamide that had entered the market only this very year and, being not yet statutory regulated, was being sold legally across Europe (and in some countries, still is). After reading up on it, I came to the conclusion that, judging by the majority of reports out on the interwebs, its biochemical response was indiscernible from that of its famous twin, LSD-25 [The drug that Sandoz branded as Delysid, which was taken off the market in 1966]. Excitedly, I ordered a sample from a research alchemist.

A period of experimentation followed, and I had some profound experiences with this substance … the real revelation was the unexpected attenuation of my ADHD symptoms. Not only was I able to focus much better, both at work and university. Mood swings and impulsive behaviour basically vanished. During conversations, it has become easy for me to subdue my urge to interrupt, instead patiently listening to the other person and replying in a concise and considerate manner.

Addendum: I have shared my find in my local ADHD support group. Several others have reported back with comments such as “helpful effects” “better concentration and general condition,” “less thought racing,” “less irritable” etc. One group member, who happens to be an alcoholic, happily recounted that each day he is microdosing, the urge to open yet another beer vanishes, and he will not even finish his first one.

Addendum 2: To better assess the effects of 1P-LSD, I reverted back to Ritalin for a day while working on a very concentration-demanding job. In direct comparison, inattentivity is decreased to a similar extent with 20mg Ritalin as is with 6mcg 1P-LSD. In my opinion though, Ritalin does not feel quite natural, while the LSD does. It is just a more pleasing remedy.

This user turned to a new chemical (1P-LSD) that was similar to LSD, reporting not only on its effects but also on their research process; this suggests that, like many reporters on Erowid, this user is an experienced “psychonaut” (a user who tries out new designer drugs on a regular basis to examine the altered states of consciousness that the substances generate, see Berning and Hardon [2016] and Langlitz [2012]). This user was interested in trying out microdosing to be more creative and productive, as well as in doing research and connecting to others to share their experiences, especially with fellow ADHD sufferers.

Video reports of experiences with microdosing are also posted on YouTube, a platform that makes it easier to share the material aspects of “doing” microdosing and “real time” effects. Aleksi Hupli and Moritz Berning, who both participated in the ChemicalYouth project as ethnographers, used the YouTube Data Tool developed by the Digital Methods Initiative of the University of Amsterdam to explore these visual demonstrations of users’ techniques (Hupli et al. 2019). The search, conducted in June 2016, resulted in 115 videos—six of which accounted for 92% of approximately 1 million total views. Subsequent extractions in November 2017 (N = 351) and October 2018 (N = 447) revealed a surge in video postings.

One of the two most popular videos, Your Mate Tom, presents Tom who consumes mushrooms in front of his camera, which the video declares are “props” (perhaps to avoid legal repercussions). Fifteen minutes after consumption Tom reports not feeling high but instead calm, despite his heart rate being slightly elevated. He says he feels “a bit chill, a bit calm, like I had one little tiny drag of a joint” (as quoted in Hupli et al. 2019, p. 133). He also tells his audience about an adverse event that happened when he took “three little mushrooms” on his way to the university to study for an exam and he “started to feel a bit funny,” anxious and having mild visual distortions. Attesting to a need for cautious dosing, he says “that’s what I get for not actually getting scales and measuring it. That’s what I get for just estimating” (quoted in Hupli et al. 2019, p. 133).

Another highly viewed video, posted by PsychedSubstance, also calls for cautious dosing, suggesting that a person should first take half of the threshold amount; then, if they don’t feel anything, slowly increase the amount by 25–50% until they “hit 1.5 of the threshold” (Hupli et al. 2019, p. 133). The video further recommends using a test kit, with a link to purchase it in the video description, to verify the purity of LSD. PsychedSubstance recommends that dosing every other day would be ideal,2 since the body builds a tolerance to classical psychedelics immediately.

PsychedSubstance also compares the effects of different psychedelic substances, saying: “I can speak from personal experience being on mescaline microdose right now that it feels extremely similar to being on LSD microdose” (quoted in Hupli et al. 2019, p. 134). He tells the audience that his thoughts run a lot smoother on mescaline than on LSD, and that he experiences more auditory enhancement when using mescaline; when using LSD, in contrast, he experiences more visual enhancement.

Aggregating Experiences

The online platforms where users exchange experiences are convenient virtual spaces for academic researchers to engage with users and learn from their experiences. Efforts to aggregate user experiences confirm the observations of individual users: microdosing enhances creativity and elevates moods. But, the studies also point to adverse effects, and contra-indications for use.

Johnstad (2018), from the University of Bergen, engaged online users in a qualitative microdosing study. He posted an online thread that, after describing the purpose of the study, asked for input. He then approached users who reported on their microdosing practices via the private message function. Through open-ended, qualitative interviews he accumulated a great deal of data. Twenty-one respondents (all male, average age 30) agreed to be interviewed. Johnstad (2018) reports that his respondents reported positive health benefits, including feeling less depressed and anxious, though a few respondents experienced no effects at all and therefore stopped doing in. The participants in Johnstad’s study, like many of the users referred to above, were interested in comparative efficacy. Some reflected on differences between LSD and mushrooms, as expressed by one informant: “LSD is just more practical for work and play, bounding energy and target mentality. Mushroom microdoses are more of a personal and ‘fresh’ interaction with the universe” (Johnstad 2018, p. 46). Despite general agreement on the lack of intoxication produced by microdoses, some respondents did report adverse events. They attributed these to taking a slightly higher dose, referred to as a “mini-dose,” or to timing the use incorrectly, which resulted in tripping and having difficulty performing the tasks at hand. As one of Johnstad’s (2018) respondents reported:

I was feeling very tired and had a martial arts class to attend for the first time, so I didn’t want to make a bad impression. This was my second time microdosing [mu]shrooms, and I dosed around 0.25–0.35 gram a few hours before in an attempt to peak well before the class and still just be stimulated and in a good positive mood for it. This backfired massively as I had a large meal around the time of dosing and it really kicked in once I got to the class. I found it very hard to follow instructions. (pp. 46–47)

Others reported insomnia after microdosing late in the day, and some also said that, after microdosing for a while, benefits faded and mental health conditions were exacerbated.

Fadiman and Korb (2019a, b) encouraged people who contacted them for advice to send reports of their experiences, using a Google form and a dedicated website (microdosingpsychedelics.com). They describe this work as “citizen science, a social agreement where researchers enlist those members of the public with an interest in a particular topic or issue to upload their own observations or local experiments into an unrestricted database” (Fadiman and Korb 2019a, p. 321). In citizen science, participants are not study subjects, but collaborators. The collaboration involved the researchers providing information on what they knew about the practice, and participants filling in Google forms, which, in addition to daily mood check-ins, included a modified version of the Positive and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS; see also Watson and Clark 1988). Over 18 months, 4000 people wrote in asking for information, and 843 responded to the request to fill in a Google form.3

Thus, the majority of people who were asked to join the study did not do so. This may have happened for many reasons: perhaps they decided not to microdose. Or perhaps they did try it, but stopped because it didn’t work for them. Or they liked the effects, but didn’t want to spend time participating. Fadiman and Korb (2019a) note that they had discouraged volunteers who appeared disorganized, were experiencing a bad period in life, as well as those with a history of psychosis, acknowledging that their findings were, therefore, not necessarily representative of the population of users:

It is entirely possible that a sizeable percentage of the general population, were they to microdose, would experience no discernable effects. Another significant percentage might have a sufficiently negative experience such that they would not be inclined to continue or contribute a research report. (Fadiman and Korb 2019a, p. 322)

Those who did participate were asked to evaluate the following 23 affects (along with quality of sleep and pain):

  • Attentive: paying close attention

  • Focused: able to direct specific attention

  • Depressed: generally unhappy or despondent

  • Clear: free of unpleasantness or confusion

  • Guilty: feeling regret for doing something wrong

  • Proud: having a sense of achievement

  • Irritable: feeling easily annoyed

  • Strong: feeling able to cope with difficulties

  • Ashamed: feeling shame for doing something wrong or foolish

  • Interested: wanting to be involved in something

  • Jittery: feeling agitated and edgy

Note that the list includes positive and negative affects in random order. Using this scale, Fadiman and Korb (2019b) found that 52.5% of the people who participated in the study experienced a relative improvement in the positive affects, and 31% experienced a decrease in negative affects. Overall, they reported elevated moods, and they found that microdosing was helpful for their productivity. A number of respondents said that they had been more creative, which they underscored by sending some of the art and music that they had crafted (Fadiman and Korb 2019b, p. 121). Interestingly in this large-scale survey, a substantial number of participants preferred microdosing to the use of ADHD drugs such as Ritalin for improving their productivity and focus, echoing the reports on Erowid (see above).4

Fadiman and Korb’s “citizen science” approach aims not only at demonstrating benefits but also making microdosing safer. They write: “we tried to give the best and safest current information as we went along in these aggregated self-reports” (Fadiman and Korb 2019a, p. 327). Based on the data collected in their study, they advised lowering the suggested dose from 1/10 to 1/20 of a regular dose, warned that people with a red-green colorblindness could experience visual distortions for a number of days after discontinuing use, and warned of interactions with medications, such as lithium. They also called for more research: “The next steps are for research institutions to turn our search into research, establish safe methods and protocols, and scientifically verify or invalidate the claims we see in our inboxes and hypotheses we and others generate” (Fadiman and Korb 2019a, p. 322).

Academic researchers have been taking on this challenge in different ways. Here we present the findings from two such studies, one using an online questionnaire—an approach similar to that of Fadiman and Korb—and another extracting data from a real life microdosing event.

In 2018, the University of Maastricht’s Department of Neuropsychology and Psychopharmacology conducted an online survey focusing on the benefits of microdosing on creativity, cognitive flexibility, and well-being (Hutten et al. 2019). Their online questionnaire was advertised to microdosers through online fora. The researchers received responses from 1116 respondents, largely young and male (18 years and older; 84% men; 14% women), of whom 80% were currently microdosing. The researchers report that performance enhancement was the most important stated purpose for microdosing. Enhanced creativity and enhanced mood were the most commonly reported positive effects. Psilocybin and LSD were the most used substance; dosing schedules varied. Around one-fifth of the respondents said that they had stopped microdosing completely, and one-third said they had stopped using at least one kind of psychedelic substance. Reasons given for stopping included doubt about efficacy and negative physical and psychological experiences (these are not specified in the study).

Researchers from the Brain and Cognition Institute of Leiden University, the Netherlands, in collaboration with the Psychedelic Society of the Netherlands, did a natural experiment at a microdosing event to assess the extent to which creativity is enhanced through microdosing (Prochazkova et al. 2018). Participants were asked to complete tasks to assess their creativity-related problem-solving skills, once before taking a microdose and once around 1.5 hours after taking a microdose. This timeframe was chosen because self-reports in the Erowid archive of user experiences suggest that effects of mushrooms peak between 30 and 90 minutes of use.

Out of 80 attendees at the event, 38 volunteered to participate in the experiment (23 men and 15 women, average age 31). In this experiment the amount of mushrooms was adjusted to their weight. Attendees with low body weight were given 0.22 grams, those with average weight 0.33 grams, and those with high body weight 0.44 grams, but participants were also free to adjust. The dosage was calculated based on the definition of microdosing as 1/10 of a recreational dose. The researchers also analyzed the presence of psychedelic alkaloids in the mushrooms, such as psilocybin.

The researchers report an increase in divergent idea generation, flexibility, and originality scores. The tests used included the Picture Concept Task, which measures visual creativity; it involves finding an association between several images. It also included the Alternative Uses Task, which is used to measure the possible uses of an object. The researchers write that the benefit of this study design is that it is done in a natural setting, but the disadvantage is that use is less controlled than in a laboratory, and that there is no control group. As a result, they do not know if the improved scores on creativity after using mushrooms are due to other factors, such as the learning that took place in the pre-mushroom-use tests, or the expectation that mushrooms increase creativity. Moreover, a positive mood and thrill of being part of the collective experiment could have influenced the test results. These researchers from the Brain and Cognition Institute of Leiden University were concerned with the “confounding” influence of users’ expectations, a concern that set them apart from the first wave of psychedelic researchers, who explicitly aimed to create a positive expectation in order to enhance the effects of the psychedelic substances. In their scientific report on the experiment, the researchers emphasize that “future studies should seek to validate our findings using a lab-based randomized double-blind placebo-controlled experimental design” (Prochazkova et al. 2018, pp. 3409–3410).

Collaborative Trials

In the hybrid communities of users and academic researchers that participate in such online studies, there is an emerging call to study if the effects of microdosing are “real” through placebo-controlled controlled trials. A research group at the University of Maastricht has conducted a critical review of existing “evidence,” finding that future studies need to examine whether there is an “expectation” effect (Kuypers et al. 2019). While microdosing is associated with positive effects in existing observational studies, these studies are of users who take the substances for the express purpose of increasing performance and creativity, and thus may expect positive effects. The researchers recommend “rigorous placebo controlled clinical studies with different low doses of the drug to determine whether there is any evidence for the claims being made by microdosers” (Kuypers et al. 2019, p. 1046). They also stress that, at the time their review was published, only one study had followed a double-blind, placebo-controlled protocol to look at the effects of microdosing LSD (see Yanakieva et al. 2019). This relatively small study (only 48 subjects were enrolled) reported a limited effect: a delay in time perception after the administration of single microdoses of LSD.

The UK-based Beckley Foundation, the founder of which openly admits to having benefited from experiences with LSD in the 1960s, is committed to supporting researchers who seek to generate more reliable evidence. On its website the foundation states:

Although many underground adherents attribute a variety of psychological and physical benefits to microdosing, including enhanced mood, focus, and cognition, or even reduced pain, there is a dearth of reliable evidence of the benefits—or indeed any potential health effects—of the practice. (Beckley Foundation 2017)

Together with researchers from Imperial College in London, the Beckley Foundation is engaging users in the production of such reliable evidence. At the time of writing this book, the study was recruiting participants who already engaged in microdosing, or who were about to participate in a naturalistic self-blinding study, which would allow for the collection of more reliable evidence (see Fig. 8.3, the recruitment advertisement).

Fig. 8.3
figure 3

Recruitment advertisement on the Beckley Foundation website (Beckley Foundation 2017)

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The website for the study contains a guide on how to carefully prepare microdoses and make capsules, which are either a placebo or a microdose, and how to pair the capsules up with QR codes in envelopes that are then randomly allocated over testing days, see Fig. 8.4.

Fig. 8.4
figure 4

(Source Screenshot from the self-blinding manual [Imperial College London 2020])

The placebo and microdose capsules that users are expected to prepare themselves

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Szigeti, one of the Imperial College researchers explains why “blinding” is necessary in an informational YouTube video entitled “Is Microdosing Placebo? The Self-Blinding Study” (b1987307 2019), which the Beckley Foundation links to on its website. He cites a pyramid of evidence, pointing to randomized controlled trials at the top of the pyramid and individual case reports at the bottom (Fig. 8.5).

Fig. 8.5
figure 5

(Note the comfortable, home-like surroundings in which Szigeti presents the state of the evidence. Source Screenshot by Anita Hardon, January 2020, the Netherlands)

Szigeti arguing for the need for more reliable evidence (b1987307 2019)

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Szigeti argues that, at present, “There is no evidence for microdosing, but also no evidence against it.” Why don’t the many user stories and results of observational studies count as evidence? He argues that the observational studies that have been done so far don’t provide evidence because they do not account for the expectation effect. A self-blinding placebo-controlled study can provide more rigorous evidence, he suggests.

As we mentioned above, in the past, psychedelic researchers sought to cultivate a positive effect by setting expectations. The “flight instructions” developed by these early researchers were designed to produce specific kinds of positive effects, including capacities to problem solve as well as therapeutic efficacies. Preparing for such desired effects was considered as important as the consumption of the substance. Today, those engaged in microdosing, in contrast, appear intent on measuring the materials effects of LSD and mushrooms, purified from the influences of set and setting. Why is this so? To some extent, we can attribute self-blinding trials to the prohibition of psychedelics. Microdosing would be much easier if the substances used were studied, regulated, and allowed on the market. “Reliable” evidence from randomized controlled trials could help producers file for regulatory approval of microdoses of LSD and psilocybin for specific indications, such as ADHD.

Hubs of Concern and Collaboration

Toward the end of the ChemicalYouth project, I attended a talk on microdosing at the Trimbos Institute, a Dutch institute for mental health. Trimbos runs the Dutch Drugs Information and Monitoring Services (DIMS), which has observed an increase in microdosing of psychedelics because users increasingly come to DIMS to have their LSD tested. In the Netherlands, microdosers are in the luxurious position of living in a country where the use and sale of magic mushrooms is legal, and the quality of LSD can be tested through one of the 31 drug testing sites in the country (see also Chapter 2).

The speaker was a moderator of microdosing.nl, an online forum for Dutch microdosing enthusiasts. He presented a protocol similar to the cautionary approach proposed in the PsychedSubstance video, advising users to start with a very low dose and then gradually increase it to find one’s “sweet spot.” Following this session, I explored the Dutch website of microdosing.nl and found the very interesting interview between two young moderators and Fadiman, mentioned earlier in this chapter (Microdosing Netherlands 2019). In this interview, Fadiman emphasizes that online surveys of experiences are important, because they provide insights into what the substances can do. He also notes that scientists want to have clear biological endpoints; scientists like stuff that they can measure. But, he asks, can clinical trials be designed to measure the effects of microdosing? How do you measure having a good day or a productive one? What constitutes a good day will differ from person to person. People report working well, eating healthily, and even forgetting that they took a pill. How to measure such a range of effects?

The Dutch moderators asked Fadiman to reflect on users’ embrace of microdosing to enhance their moods, creativity, and productivity. They ask: “Wouldn’t it be better to have a good day without a supplement?” Fadiman responds: “The answer is: do you really need an apple? Or is there any point in having wine with your meal?” He points out that as far as is known today microdosing is safe. So why not take it? The Dutch moderator ends the discussion by comparing microdosing to cycling: “We all do it and don’t want to live without it. We know there can be a danger, you assess the risk, you watch the traffic.”

How popular microdosing had become was clear at the 2017 NextWeb conference for Tech innovators and start-ups, which was held in Amsterdam with 15,000 attendees from all over the world. The program included Paul Austin one of the leaders of the Third Wave—an online hub for responsible psychedelic use. Austin told the audience that microdosing can help business leaders excel, because it allows them to be creative, adaptable, patient and present: “It’s about this sense of being in the zone. In the zone, present, in the moment. Microdosing psychedelics can do this, sex does this, extreme sports do this, being really engaged and focused and dedicated on a project that you really love does this” (Aronov 2019, p. 711).

In contrast, there is the more cautious conclusion of JingShu, interviewed by Mishra. More doubtful on the need for microdosing after trying it out for 30 days, Jingshu says, “I was quite skeptical of the mentality of optimization in this fast-paced, competitive world: what are we optimizing ourselves for?” (quoted in Mishra 2020, p. 37).

In Conclusion

This chapter describes how users and researchers have been exploring the effects of microdosing in three different ways, each of which generates different ways of “knowing” the substances. First, user narratives focus on a plurality of creativity, focus, and productivity-enhancing effects of these chemicals. They describe how users incorporate microdosing in daily schedules, attend to diets, and adjust dosages. Moreover, we observed users comparing the effects of different psychedelic substances, aiming to tailor the choice of substance to the task at hand. The online peer-to-peer sharing of experiences, support and co-creation of knowledge “constitutes an emergent and constantly evolving form of practical wisdom” (Boothroyd and Lewis 2016, p. 293). This chapter shows how, in a second way of exploring effects, researchers build on this practical wisdom in designing studies that seek to aggregate user experiences. These observational studies seek user collaboration through online fora and real life events to augment understanding of how the effects of microdosing are moderated by underlying conditions (such as anxiety and colorblindness), and interactions with other medicines. These researchers do not see this as conclusive evidence, but rather point to issues that need to be explored further: To what extent do the positive experiences just reflect placebo responses? Most users stop after a while—so what do we know about long-term effects? Does tolerance build after microdosing for a long time? The third way to study the effects of microdosing are randomized controlled trials. These aim to test if the effects of microdosing are “real,” that is caused by the psychoactive substance used in the microdosing practice. The evidence generated by such studies depends on the “endpoints” chosen and the biological markers used.

While the first two ways of exploring microdosing are aimed at “improving” effects by trying different microdosing schedules, dosages and diets, and aggregating experiences through observations, the third way of doing research is aimed at “proving” effects through trials (Mol 2006). Improving through tinkering allows users to adjust dosages, experiment with diets as adjuncts to the treatment, and determine how best to embed microdosing in daily routines (Mol and Hardon 2020). It also allows users to adjust the microdosing regime to the work at hand: to perform during a job interview a different kind of microdosing is called for, than when aiming to solve a technical puzzle in the privacy of one’s study.

Such tinkering is not possible in clinical trials which are designed to “prove” the effects of standardized treatments using pre-defined endpoints, while filtering out any “expectation” effects. Proving through clinical trials, however, has as advantage that if sufficient experiments have been done, the evidence can be submitted for review to the food and drug authority.

Though it is too early to tell, randomized controlled trials could prove that microdosing does indeed have specific beneficial material effects. But this does not mean that microdoses of LSD or psilocybin could immediately enter the market. Food and drug authorities will demand results from large-scale “phase 3” trials, which are expensive, and may be reluctant to review new indications for psychedelics, because these drugs were used recreationally in large doses in the past, resulting in its scheduling in the 1960s.

However, it can be done. The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, a nonprofit organization based in Santa Cruz, California, received the green light from the US FDA to do phase 3 placebo-controlled trials of MDMA (a drugs which has also been used for recreational purposes) for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder, and in 2019 the association published positive results from these trials, which led to FDA approval to expand access to this treatment (Mithoefer et al. 2019).

Could researchers win such approval for the use of microdoses of LSD and/or psilocybin for creativity and productivity? It seems unlikely, because here the indications are not medical. But let’s assume that large-scale trials were done, and that, as was the case for MDMA, the results were positive. Hypothetically, this could convince authorities that microdosing is effective, and that microdoses of LSD and/or psilocybin can be used safely. If this happens, the substances will be re-“informed,” changing from illegal recreational substances to medicines for cognitive enhancement. We expect that, if this happens, microdoses would be incorporated into the vibrant online market for drugs used to enhance cognition, referred to as “nootropics.” Web-based shops sell supplements such as “Rise,” a daily nootropic for memory, and Sprint, a nootropic for energy and focus. HVMN (pronounced ‘human’), the company that makes Rise and Sprint, “believes that the human system can be quantified, optimized and upgraded” (Angel 2018, p. 67). Given the wide range of positive user experiences, companies like this one are likely to be interested in adding microdoses to their product lines. If this happened, Karen and other users would not have to go through the material work of making capsules, weighing chemicals, and testing for purity. They could simply buy their preferred substance online.

That the products would be available in standardized forms, with precise advice on how to take it, does not mean that tinkering would end. Whether LSD and psilocybin are approved or not, users will continue to tinker with diets, dosages and schedules relying on shared practical wisdom online, which has been augmented with insights from surveys and trials. The chapter shows how throughout the different kinds of collaborative experimentation and every day tinkering the properties of LSD and psilocybin evolve—new benefits emerge, dosages are adjusted, and cautionary tales shared. The practice is fluid, and ways of knowing are always emergent (Hardon and Sanabria 2017; Mol and Hardon 2020). The peer-to-peer sharing, and collaborations with researchers make up a dynamic form of regulation from below, which acknowledges the experiences of users, and helps refine the practice so as to maximize a wide range of benefits, and prevent harm.

ChemicalYouth Ethnographers

Swasti Mishra is an anthropologist with interest in the intersections of health, drugs, biomedicine, and society. She completed her PhD under the ChemicalYouth project, at the University of Amsterdam. Her doctoral research focused on the generation and circulation of knowledge about psychedelic drugs, including from clinical trials, psychiatric practices, and public health centers, as well as their non-medical use in office spaces or festival venues, primarily situated in the United States and the Netherlands. She is currently part of a research project on the assessment of public health emergency preparedness across the European Union Framework contract with European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (Fig. 8.6).

Fig. 8.6
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Swasti Mishra

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Lisa Krieg studied cultural anthropology at the University of Heidelberg, and defended her PhD on social memory in Germany in 2016 at Utrecht University. She joined the ChemicalYouth team as a virtual ethnographer, and conducted research collaboratively with other team members on digital archives of drug experience reports, working on platforms such as Erowid and Wikipedia. Currently, she works at the University of Bonn on human-nature-technology relations (Fig. 8.7).

Fig. 8.7
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Lisa Krieg

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Moritz Berning focused on mixing classical and virtual ethnographic research, trying to balance the limitations that come with each approach. For the ChemicalYouth project, he explored how risk is approached and managed with regard to old and new psychoactive substances. These included situational practices at festivals or clubs, as well as refined social mechanisms of testing substances in virtual spaces (Fig. 8.8).

Fig. 8.8
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Moritz Berning

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Aleksi Hupli has been trained as a medical anthropologist by the University of Amsterdam (2013) and as a sociologist by the University of Helsinki (2014). He is currently finishing his PhD in sociology at the University of Tampere focusing on cognitive enhancement drug use among student populations. He has also coordinated the Global Drug Survey in Finland since 2017, is a board member of the Finnish Association for Humane Drug Policy and Legalize NL, serves as the president of the Amsterdam Society of Medical Social Scientists, and is a member of the Finnish Bioethics Institute (Fig. 8.9).

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Aleksi Hupli

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Notes

  1. 1.

    We developed an interactive website (https://chemicalyouth.org/visualising-erowid/) that provides insights into more than 9480 users’ reports.

  2. 2.

    This dosing rationale differs from that proposed by Fadiman, who suggested that the second day be microdose-free, in order to experience what it is like to not be affected by the substance. Fadiman’s advice was aimed at supporting research into the effects of microdosing, by contrasting substance-free days with those affected by the microdose.

  3. 3.

    Three hundred and sixty-six people sent in one day of data; 137 sent in data for more than one day and less than a week; 340 sent in data for longer than one week.

  4. 4.

    The advantage of microdosing LSD over ADHD drugs was also discussed by Mishra’s (2020) interlocutors, who said that on LSD they didn’t experience “the comedown of other stuff”; they also pointed to cost advantages, arguing that in the Netherlands microdosing was “even cheaper in the long run, though it depends on how you source it of course. An LSD tab cut into eight pieces is just five euros divided by eight, while Ritalin off-label you get for five euros per pill” (p. 42).