Microdosing
“It’s not that I’m suicidal. It’s just that some days I wouldn’t mind getting hit by a bus.” This was a reoccurring thought I used to have. I don’t feel this way anymore, and haven’t for a while, but this was the overall looming despair that was felt when I wasn’t contemplating suicide. I don’t know what it was, but life just felt pointless and empty. It was probably a combination of trauma and skewed brain chemistry that had me feeling the general malaise that filled my waking hours. That is, until I began to eat psychedelic mushrooms.
When I was first introduced to mushrooms in my late teens it completely changed my world and the way I saw it both literally and philosophically. I had noticed a lasting change in my depression and anxiety in the following days of a trip, but I didn’t think much of it. I was also experimenting with other things, so the lasting benefits were most likely negated or overridden by some other foreign chemical, but that was the first time I noticed the “afterglow.” I continued eating mushrooms to explore the caverns and depths of my mind. I gained insight into myself and the world around me and life itself. These experiences were all done with high doses of mushrooms. I had no idea back then that there were such amazing benefits in just eating a little microdose of them.
First off, if you’re new to this or haven’t heard of this yet, microdosing is taking very small doses of psychedelics for medicinal purposes. In my particular case, I am utilizing psilocybin. Psilocybin is the precursor to psilocin which is the psychoactive compound in what’s commonly referred to as “magic mushrooms” or “shrooms” that causes visual, auditory, time, and thought pattern distortions that are colloquially called a “trip.” Psilocybin acts on serotonin receptors in a similar way that serotonin does. There have also been trials that show psilocybin can regrow brain cells, or what is called “neurogenesis,” and we’ve known for a long time that they create new neural pathways in the brain, which is called neuroplasticity. These benefits come from large doses (macro doses) and even from very small doses aka microdoses. The term microdosing gets misused a bit, which is understandable since this has only been gaining traction in mainstream culture and the scientific community in very, very recent years. However, it’s not necessarily a new thing, because there have been people in the past who preached the benefits of psychedelics like mushrooms, LSD, DMT, and mescaline, but they were not taken seriously by society and academia despite the centuries upon centuries of use by ancient cultures for medicinal purposes and spiritual rituals.
Microdosing should have imperceptible effects for the most part. If you feel the “trip onset” feeling, which is a kind of light-headed confusion, or if you get the giggles or a body high then you took too much. That’s more of a low dose. It is beneficial for you and can be fun, but it isn’t to be confused with a microdose. A microdose should be about .2 of a gram, possibly .3 depending on your body type, but from my experience anything higher than that can start to induce other feelings of the mushrooms.
There are some different schedules that are advisable to adhere to, and you can find which one works best for your life situation. Just listen to your body. It will tell you what it needs. This is also a practice of listening to our bodies because that is something very foreign to many of us. Many of us were never really taught to pay attention to our bodies and the signals they are sending us. Most regimens or what some refer to as “protocols” are typically a few days on and a couple days off. I would assume that is so your brain chemistry can return to baseline to operate from again, as well as for it to not become dependent on outside sources, because our brains can tend to get lazy, and stop producing neurochemicals when we are providing them artificially. It can happen with things as innocuous as melatonin. I think another reason for taking some time off in between doses may be to operate at a new slightly higher baseline and establish homeostasis.
For me, I was alternating between four days on/three days off and three days on/two days off. I switched between those two schedules to keep my brain from identifying a chemical pattern. I was doing this consistently for the first few months. My body and mind eventually started telling me that I could dial it back a bit, so I would skip a week, then would eventually skip two weeks or so until the microdosing became very sporadic. I would take long breaks then return back to it for a week or so before a longer stretch of abstaining. I began to notice that the lessened depression and anxiety, and increased focused was retained during the longer stretches of not ingesting psilocybin. I was eventually only doing a regimen when I felt my intuition pointing me in that direction.
I used to only take one microdose a day, and it would be maybe an hour after waking up with a cup of coffee. Later I tried experimenting with taking it in the morning with coffee, so I can still set the day off with some positive momentum, but would then take a second dose later in the afternoon. I then started to test out taking my second dose around noon, and then taking a third dose around five or six pm. That kept the doses about five hours apart from each other, so each additional dose caught the tail end of the other. If you decide to take another dose or multiple doses in a day then you need to make sure you are spreading them out far enough. Taking them too close just stacks or sort of layers the milligrams, which takes it from a microdose to a smaller dose. When that happens, you’re not totally screwed. You’re not going to trip. You’ll just get minimal perceivable effects that may be enjoyable, and after they fade, you’ll have learned a little more about your threshold for psychedelics, which will be useful for dialing in your microdosing regimen.
Taking the second dose tends to help with a bit of extra energy in the afternoons after a long day of work, and helps leave work at work, so I’m able to be more present at home. I noticed it made me dream a bit more than normal if I took it too late in the afternoon. I typically don’t dream much or very vividly since I smoke herb daily, but it seemed to counteract that. I started taking a second dose later in the afternoon to intentionally induce dreaming, and it was incredibly reliable. Smoking cannabis tends to work nicely with micro dosing, especially when it comes to trying to comb through and process memories, because mushrooms seem to bring up things I thought were forgotten, but were actually tucked away in dusty, water-logged boxes in the corner of my mind. I like to try to get a couple large doses of psilocybin in a year as well to further facilitate the healing process. Whereas microdoses help on the day-to-day level and have long term benefits over a longer period of time (small amounts over the course of several weeks or months), macro doses can fit a lot of healing or processing in a shorter period of time (a large amount all at once), and can still have ever-lingering benefits, but it could be very overwhelming depending on the dose.
Doses of mushrooms can vary due to the particular strain of fungi because they have different potencies, and a person’s body size can influence dosage as well, but they can typically be classified as micro, low, moderate/recreational, or high/heroic doses. Microdoses are up to .3, and low doses can be .4 of a gram to 1.5 grams. Low doses of mushrooms can often times give you the giggles and a body high where you just feel light on your feet and amazing. You may feel a little high too, or you may feel a little more relaxed, and clear headed. The effects are noticeable, but you’re not really tripping yet.
Around the half eight (1.7 gram) to two grams point is where it begins to be recreational. Here is where you can start getting much more of a trip. This is where you can start to have visuals like trails, emerging or moving patterns, and noticeably different thoughts. Auditory distortions begin to happen around this point. So, a recreational dose I would say would be from about 1.7 grams to 3.5 grams. Around the eighth mark (3.5 grams) is where things can start to get intense and possibly overwhelming. Auditory distortions and hallucinations as well as lots of enhanced colors, especially purples and greens, fractals, geometric patterns, objects shifting in size, things multiplying and morphing, and other kind of indescribable visual phenomena thrown together with a wild distortion of time, new thoughts and thought patterns, and a whirlwind of emotions where you can feel the energy of people around you and the energy of the surroundings as well …oh, and did I mention a loss of appetite, and yawning even though you’re not tired? This is where things get weird.
Four grams and higher can be considered heroic doses where the aforementioned effects are amplified exponentially, and this is where you sometimes might feel like you’re going to die or not make it out of the trip. This is also where ego death and a lot of uncomfortable introspection takes place. It sounds scary and it is, but it always seems so silly afterwards… well, maybe not after your first time experiencing an intense trip. Your first time you may think you just made it back to reality by the skin of your teeth. Once you become more experienced it becomes more routine, yet always new. High doses can be very uncomfortable or be very enlightening or both, but should probably be avoided in large groups of people. They should always be treated with respect, and your setting and intentions should be taken into consideration. It is wild how much your mind can bend during high dose trips then just return to somewhat normality after an intense six-to-eight-hour journey. All you need afterwards is some water, good food, some time to reflect on the journey, and a good night of sleep. The following day you feel right as rain.
Mushrooms don’t just solve your problems like, “I tripped balls, and now I’m healed!” Mushrooms may make you aware of an underlying issue or unresolved problem, or it can help you to accept an issue, idea, or situation that you’ve been struggling with. It can also create new ways of thinking about something with a fresh perspective. It can make certain revelations clearer as well. They can also give you a greater appreciation for things or people in your life or even for life itself. However, the real work comes after the trip. You have to ruminate on it, and put it into action. You have to step forward and fall back. You have to try. Change doesn’t just come. It follows the work.
The catch is that you never know what you’re going to get with a trip. Sometimes you get one of those insights listed above, other times you may get a combination of revelations and break throughs, and then there are times in which you get none of those things. Sometimes it’s just a mind-blowing, visually stimulating, nonsense giggle fest, whereas other times is an introspective rewiring session. Trips can be fun, relaxing, and sometimes scary. Even the overwhelming mind-benders that rattle you to your core can have benefit, meaning, and can be immensely transformative. Mushrooms can show you heaven and they can show you hell. The benefit of mushrooms over other drug therapies is that the revelations, epiphanies, or transformative thoughts stick with you for a long time. They take residence in your mind. You don’t forget them the next morning like certain profundities that you might have drunkenly stumbled upon while having a deep conversation with a friend or partner.
I feel as though they have helped tremendously with my overall anxiety and depression. My emotions are much more level and controllable on a regular basis even without psilocybin. They helped with finally quitting drinking after so many years. They have helped me recognize negative thought patterns and behaviors, and they’ve helped me become a better, less destructive person. And, mushrooms have undoubtedly boosted and contributed to my appreciation for nature and space. I still micro dose to help with anxiety and depression, but the main reason for micro dosing currently is the strong potential for neurogenesis, and the definite benefits of neuroplasticity. There has been a tremendous amount of scientific research recently that is confirming the long-lasting benefits that psilocybin has on the brain. I figure the least I can do is try to heal the damage from years of reckless partying and spills on the skateboard, and to try to become a more empathetic, self-aware person all while having fun doing it.
*Disclaimer: Psychedelic mushrooms are not 100% safe. They should not be ingested if one has an underlying psychosis or have immediate family members with a history of psychosis.
