Microdosing psychedelics: Motivations, subjective effects and harm reduction

Microdosing psychedelics — the practice of taking sub-perceptual doses of substances such as LSD or psilocybin on a regular schedule, typically to improve mental health, wellbeing, or cognitive performance — has attracted substantial media attention and a growing self-reported user base. Despite this interest, empirical research into the motivations, dosing practices, perceived benefits, and potential harms of microdosing has remained sparse, with the evidence base largely anecdotal at the time of this study. This context coincided with renewed clinical investigation of psychedelics at standard therapeutic doses, including regulatory breakthroughs for psilocybin and the first phase III trials for anxiety and depression. This study aimed to characterise the real-world practices and experiences of people who microdose psychedelics through an international online survey, with particular attention to motivations, short-term perceived benefits, unwanted effects, and harm reduction strategies.

The Psychedelic Experiences Survey was an international online cross-sectional questionnaire conducted in late 2018, targeting current or recent psychedelic users including those who had microdosed. Recruitment was conducted via psychedelic community email lists, online discussion forums (including the microdosing subreddit), psychedelic non-profit organisations, and paid social media advertisements. Participants were eligible if they had microdosed a psychedelic in the preceding 12 months. Comparisons were made between participants who reported exclusively microdosing LSD/1P-LSD and those exclusively using psilocybin. Principal components analysis was applied to derive reliable scales capturing perceived benefits and unwanted effects. The Severity of Dependence Scale was included as a screen for potential adverse consequences of psychedelic use. Statistical analyses were conducted in Stata v13.0 using t-tests, chi-square tests, and multivariate modelling.

The sample of 525 participants had a mean age of 34.5 years and was predominantly male (73.5%), university-educated (52.8%), and based in the United States (48.2%). The most common primary motivation for microdosing was to address mental health or substance use concerns (40.4%), which was reported more frequently among psilocybin users than LSD users (47.1% vs 32.1%, p = 0.001). Personal and spiritual development was reported by 31.2%, and cognitive or professional enhancement by 18% of participants. Most participants had been microdosing for six months or fewer. Principal components analysis yielded three reliable benefit domains: improved mood and anxiety, enhanced connection to people and environment, and enhanced cognitive and other performance. Unwanted effects were similarly structured across three factors: potentially perceptual or psychedelic effects, anxiety effects, and unpleasant physical effects. Psilocybin users reported higher physical effects scores than LSD users. Common harm reduction practices included not microdosing when feeling unwell (31.0%), avoiding alcohol (30.8%) and caffeine (23.8%), and avoiding driving (20.3%). A quarter of participants reported regularly microdosing before important work or study events.

The finding that mental health improvement was the primary motivation for most participants — with psilocybin users more likely than LSD users to report this motivation — reflects the broader cultural context of psychedelic research and suggests that many people are self-treating symptoms of depression, anxiety, and related disorders outside clinical frameworks. The diversity of perceived benefits across mood, social connection, and cognitive domains is consistent with anecdotal reports, though without placebo controls these effects cannot be attributed causally to the microdose. The authors highlight that most participants experienced unwanted effects at least occasionally, and that a notable minority regularly microdosed in high-stakes contexts (e.g., before work or study) or combined microdosing with cannabis. The absence of significant dependence scores is consistent with the known low-addiction-liability profile of classic psychedelics. The authors call for controlled longitudinal studies to establish efficacy, optimal dosing schedules, and the long-term safety of regular microdosing.

This international survey characterises the real-world microdosing landscape, finding that mental health and wellbeing improvement is the most commonly reported motivation, and that perceived benefits span mood, social connection, and cognitive performance domains. Whilst unwanted effects were reported by a majority of participants at some point, serious adverse outcomes were uncommon. The evidence base for microdosing remains limited, and controlled trials are needed to determine whether the benefits reported by self-selecting users are attributable to the pharmacological effects of sub-perceptual psychedelic doses.