Microdosing involves taking a 10th of the recreational dose of psychedelic drugs such as LSD and psilocybin. Photo / Getty Images
Gwyneth Paltrow has always seen herself as something of a bellwether in the world of wellness. As far back as 2004, Paltrow introduced the world to the ancient Asian art of cupping when she showed off the telltale circular bruises on her upper back at a New York premiere.
Since then — mostly via her wellness website, Goop — she's bought us vaginal steaming, conscious uncoupling and even once claimed that nobody would have heard of yoga if it wasn't for her.
Continuing with her theme, in a recent interview with the New York Times, Paltrow said: "When we [Goop] talk about something incendiary, I always see in six months other people starting to write about it, and 18 months later, businesses popping up around it."
So, what's the next gluten-free or conscious uncoupling, asked her interviewer? "I think how psychedelics affect health and mental health and addiction will come more into the mainstream," she replied.
Paltrow's comments follow a new study on rats from the University of California that found evidence that small doses of hallucinogenic drugs could have therapeutic benefits, including a reduction in the symptoms of anxiety, depression, OCD and pain. Microdosing LSD has been used for a while among a growing number of Silicon Valley professionals who claim that taking it in small doses offers a "productivity hack", making them sharper, more creative and less stressed.
One of Silicon Valley's biggest stars — the late Steve Jobs, creator of the iPhone — once said that taking LSD was "one of the two or three most important things I have done in my life". He went on to say that Bill Gates, his biggest tech rival, would have been "a broader guy if he had dropped acid".
Microdosing involves taking a 10th of the recreational dose of psychedelic drugs such as LSD (which is the most commonly microdosed drug) and psilocybin, more widely known as magic mushrooms.
Its proponents say that, while a regular dose of LSD can powerfully alter your mood and cognitive processes, and cause hallucinations, small doses can heighten alertness and creativity and can help with things such as stress, anxiety and even PMT.
Or in the words of English countess Amanda Feilding: "Microdosing just adds a little sparkle. It loosens your state of consciousness a little, but not to the point it's perceptible. It's like a psychedelic vitamin."
In 1998 Lady Feilding founded the Beckley Foundation, a charitable trust that promotes drug policy reform. Feilding was introduced to LSD in 1965 — before it had been criminalised — and says: "I was studying comparative religion and mysticism and found LSD fascinating. Then I realised, at a lower dose, it could improve mood health, thinking and creativity. It became a major interest of mine, especially its potential to be used in a very low non-toxic dose."
However, in 1966, LSD was made illegal in the UK and US. The following year it was criminalised in New Zealand.
"Ayelet Waldman, the American novelist who at the time was a magistrate who had never broken the law, told me when I met her that she had become quite depressed and had writer's block," says Feilding. "She discovered microdosing, and within a month wrote her bestselling book, A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life." In it, she talks of putting 10 micrograms of acid under her tongue every three days for a month.
"The US, in particular California, is very interested in microdosing right now," says Feilding. "It's particularly caught on in Silicon Valley, the thinking powerhouse of the world. They're very forward-thinking with their health and interested in peak performance, and I know several high-up people who have taken up microdosing quite enthusiastically. These are people behind some of the big breakthroughs of our time."
She won't name them, of course, because microdosing is still illegal. However, LSD is about to enter more scientific trials to see if there is any evidence whether its medical effectiveness, displayed during the Fifties and Sixties, holds true today against the more rigorous standards of modern science.
"We're currently studying psilocybin [magic mushrooms] for depression," says clinical psychologist Rosalind Watts, who works for the psychedelic research group at Imperial College London. "In the last study, with a small sample size, we saw a significant reduction in depressive symptoms. We are now in the middle of a larger study, comparing psilocybin to antidepressant medication.
"Microdosing is interesting, but there haven't been many scientific studies yet. A 'self-blinding' microdosing study (part of the Imperial Beckley research programme) is under way, where voluntary participants who are currently or planning to start microdosing with LSD track their own progress. It will be a while before robust scientific evidence can shed more definitive light on microdosing. Until then, it's too early to say. But the model for microdosing has potential for creative mood management, PMT, anxiety and a whole host of things.
"One of the interesting things with psychedelics is they may work on something much deeper down. In other words, mental health problems — from eating disorders to depression — may share similar roots. We hear sufferers feel disconnected from other people and the world around them and psychedelics may help with that disconnect. But we need studies to answer those questions.
"However, research into psychedelics ground to a halt in the Sixties. Psychedelics showed promise as therapeutic treatments in the Fifties but soon became tarnished due to a number of factors, including irresponsible recreational use. Hopefully, this is starting to change now, thanks to a new wave of modern psychedelic research which in the UK was spearheaded by Amanda Feilding, and my colleagues at Imperial, David Nutt and Robin Carhart-Harris."
However, Watts says that LSD and other psychedelics can be unsafe in an unsafe setting or where the purity of the drug isn't known, or if they're taken alongside other drugs or alcohol. During trials, she sits with study participants during their trips, as they can elicit very strong emotions.
"These emotions can be beneficial in a therapeutic context but could be frightening and counterproductive otherwise," she adds.
Feilding's trial is about to test 25 volunteers who will take microdoses of LSD, fill in psychological questionnaires and play the Go. "It's a no-luck Chinese board game involving pattern recognition," she says, "and I've found that it [LSD] has improved my playing of Go over the years.
"However, much more research is needed on the effects of LSD, and hopefully this study will start the conversation again."
By Vince Polito, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Cognitive Science, Macquarie University
Microdosing means regularly taking very small doses of psychedelic substances such as LSD or psilocybin (magic mushrooms) over a period of weeks or months. The practice has made countless headlines over the past couple of years, with claims it can improve health, strengthen relationships and increase productivity.
These claims are surprising because microdosers take doses so small there are no noticeable effects. These can be just 1/20th of a typical recreational dose, often every three or four days. With such small amounts, microdosers go about their daily business, including going to work, without experiencing any typical drug effects.
Previous research suggests microdosing may lead to better mood and energy levels, improved creativity, increased wisdom and changes to how we perceive time.
But these previous studies have mainly involved asking people to complete ratings or behavioural tasks as one-off measures.
Our study, published today in PLOS One, tracked the experience of 98 users over a longer period — six weeks — to systematically measure any psychological changes.
Overall, the participants reported both positive and negative effects from microdosing, including improved attention and mental health; but also more neuroticism.
As you would expect, there are many legal and bureaucratic barriers to psychedelic research. It wasn't possible for us to run a study where we actually provided participants with psychedelic substances. Instead, we tried to come up with the most rigorous design possible in the current restrictive legal climate.
Our solution was to recruit people who were already experimenting with microdosing and to track their experiences carefully over time, using well validated and reliable psychometric measures.
Each day we asked participants to complete some brief ratings, telling us whether they had microdosed that day and describing their overall experience. This let us track the immediate effects of microdosing.
At the beginning and end of the study participants completed a detailed battery of psychological measures. This let us track the longer-term effects of microdosing.
In a separate sample, we explored the beliefs and expectations of people who are interested in microdosing. This let us track whether any changes in our main sample were aligned with what people generally predict will happen when microdosing.
There are five key findings.
1: A general positive boost on microdosing days, but limited residual effects of each dose.
The idea is that each microdose, every three or four days, has a residual effect that lasts for a few days. The daily ratings in our study do not support this idea. Participants reported an immediate boost in all measures (connectedness, contemplation, creativity, focus, happiness, productiveness and wellness) on dosing days. But this was mostly not maintained on the following days.
2: Some indications of improvements in mental health.
We found that after six weeks, participants reported lower levels of depression and stress. We recruited people who were not experiencing any kind of mental illness for the study, so levels of depression and stress were relatively low to begin with. Nevertheless, ratings on these measures did drop.
3: Shifts in attention.
The microdosers in our study reported reduced mind wandering, meaning they were less likely to be distracted by unwanted thoughts. They also reported an increase in absorption, meaning they were more likely to experience intense focused attention on imaginative experiences. Absorption has been linked to strong engagement with art and nature.
4: Increases in neuroticism and some challenging experiences.
Not everyone had a good time microdosing. Some participants reported unpleasant and difficult experiences. In some cases, participants tried microdosing just once or twice, then didn't want to continue.
5: Changes do not entirely match people's expectations.
People have strong expectations about the effects of microdosing. But when we looked at the specific variables participants most expected would change, these didn't match up with the changes actually reported by our microdosers. Two of the biggest changes microdosers expected were increases in creativity and life satisfaction, but we found no evidence of shifts in these areas. This suggests the changes we found were not simply due to people's expectations.
There are promising indications of possible benefits of microdosing, but also indications of some potential negative impacts, which should be taken seriously.
It's important to remember this was an observational study that relied heavily on the accuracy and honesty of participants in their reports. As such, these results need to be treated cautiously.
- Additional reporting: The Conversation
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