Make a little bit go a long way

Dropping LSD can be a profound, illuminating, and restorative experience. It’s also not always the best idea on a Tuesday afternoon. 

For those interested in some of the benefits of LSD without going NSFW, there’s microdosing: ingesting a sub-perceptual dose (an amount you shouldn’t consciously notice) of a psychedelic like LSD. The upshot is to enjoy select cognitive and emotional benefits but skip the more psychedelic or intoxicating effects. 

Here’s why you might consider microdosing and how to do it.

Why Microdose?

Many microdosers report increased creativity, focus, and energy, along with greater empathy and ability to navigate and nurture relationships. Some even report reduced anxiety and depression.
While research is so far scarce and preliminary, studies do back up many of the benefits reported anecdotally: “Findings show that both LSD (5–20 mcg) and psilocybin (<1–3 mg) have subtle (positive) effects on cognitive processes (time perception, convergent and divergent thinking) and brain regions involved in affective processes,” concludes this study from August 2020.  

The literature around psychedelics as treatment for depression and anxiety is so far cautious, but promising enough to motivate further investigation. The report continues: “…while it is yet unclear whether psychedelic microdosing is of therapeutic value for depression, the aforementioned effects on selective processes suggest that low doses of psychedelics could play a role in depression by inducing some kind of cognitive flexibility, which might lead to decreased rumination.”

These tests show that microdosing LSD doesn’t merely produce a placebo effect, but makes a tangible impact on subjects’ brains: “These preliminary findings show that a very low dose of LSD, which produces negligible subjective changes,” that is, consciously noticeable effects, “alters brain connectivity in limbic circuits.”

The findings of another study, this time a 2018 survey of 1000 people from 59 countries, suggested “…that spaced but repeated microdoses were followed by improvements in negative moods, especially depression, and increases in positive moods. Increased energy, improved work effectiveness, and improved health habits were observed in clinical and non-clinical populations.”

So it’s clear that microdosing LSD is doing something, and that something is often beneficial.