A study of 278 real-world microdosers built a catalog of both the benefits and the challenges people report
A 2019 study collected written reports from 278 people who microdose LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, or both, and sorted what they said into a shared list of the benefits and the downsides they experienced.
Microdosing means taking psychedelic doses too small to cause a full trip. Reports say it helps, but little research had catalogued what real microdosers actually experience — the good and the bad. Researchers gathered written reports from 278 people who microdose LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, or both, recruited mostly through online microdosing forums, and sorted their answers into a shared list of benefits and challenges. Benefits included better mood (about 1 in 4) and sharper focus (about 1 in 7). Challenges included physical discomfort (nearly 1 in 5) and more anxiety (about 1 in 15). The result is a map of both sides, meant to guide future studies — not proof that microdosing causes these effects.
Using a grounded-theory approach, the authors developed the Microdosing Benefits and Challenges codebook (MDBC) from the open-ended reports of 278 microdosers (mean age 27.8, SD 8.9; 237 male, 31 female, 10 other), recruited primarily through microdosing subreddits on Reddit. Respondents listed up to three benefits and three drawbacks of microdosing with importance ratings, and two coders independently categorized every response. Beneficial outcomes included improved mood (26.6%) and improved focus (14.8%); challenging outcomes included physiological discomfort (18.0%) and increased anxiety (6.7%). Probing substance-dependent differences, psilocybin-only microdosers rated the benefits as significantly more important (median = 87.83, SD = 15.76) than LSD-only microdosers (median = 76.67, SD = 14.59).
The authors state they employed no experimental manipulation or longitudinal component, could not control for substance purity, schedule, or dose, nor for prior experience with full-dose psychedelics, and could not account for recall bias or placebo effects. They also note the sample's generalizability is limited to modern Western populations. Beyond their own caveats, this was a self-selected online convenience sample recruited mainly through Reddit — skewing younger, predominantly male, and white or European — and the outcomes were retrospective self-reports rather than measurements taken over time, so the design cannot show that microdosing itself caused the reported effects. The coded percentages reflect how often an outcome was named, not a measured rate of effect. It is a general-population community sample, not veterans or a clinical group. The authors declared no competing interests.
In this codebook study of 278 microdosers, beneficial outcomes included improved mood (26.6%) and improved focus (14.8%), and challenging outcomes included physiological discomfort (18.0%) and increased anxiety (6.7%) (Anderson et al., 2019).
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