UBCO study finds microdosing can temporarily improve mood, creativity

(Press-News.org) A new UBC Okanagan study found that people who microdose psychedelics feel better on the days they take them—but those boosts don’t seem to last.

This suggests, says Dr. Michelle St. Pierre, that perceived benefits may be acute rather than long lasting.

Dr. St. Pierre is a post-doctoral psychology researcher with UBCO’s Irving K. Barber Faculty of Arts and Sciences. She recently published a study in Psychopharmacology that tracks the daily experiences of people who microdose with psychedelics.

Microdosing involves ingesting small amounts of a psychedelic substance, commonly psilocybin mushrooms or lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD).

“Most doses vary from one-tenth to one-twentieth of a recreational dose,” Dr. St. Pierre says. “Typical practices alternate varying proportions of non-dosing days to limit the rapid tolerance that can develop with so-called classic psychedelics such as psilocybin and LSD. Anecdotal reports suggest that this may also be intended to leverage residual effects that could carry over to non-dosing days.”

While interest in microdosing has grown rapidly, she notes that scientific research has only emerged over the past 15 years. This means popular use has outpaced the scientific support to back it up.

Using data from the Microdose.me project, the world’s largest international daily diary study of real-world microdosing, Dr. St. Pierre says the findings show people tend to feel more connected, creative, focused and productive on days they microdose, as well as increased wellbeing and contemplation. However, these effects didn’t appear to persist on non-dosing days.

“Microdosing appears to lift mood and mental functioning on the days it’s practiced, but not necessarily beyond that,” she adds. “These findings help clarify when and how microdosing effects are felt.”

More than 1,435 microdosers from 49 countries participated in the study. Each morning, participants were asked if they had microdosed and rated how they felt across variables such as connectedness, contemplation, creativity, focus, productiveness and wellbeing.

The research team also examined whether these day-level effects varied across factors such as gender, mental-health history, the substance being microdosed, and whether participants had previously taken larger doses of psychedelics.

Dr. St. Pierre explains that the results were consistent across nearly all groups.

“The only meaningful difference we observed was among people with a history of taking larger psychedelic doses, who showed slightly higher microdosing-day increases in creativity,” she says.

This pattern aligns with emerging evidence that full-dose psychedelic experiences may enhance creativity. One interpretation, Dr. St. Pierre notes, is that microdosing could “reactivate” or build upon these prior effects, though this idea remains speculative.

“We need future research designed specifically to test whether microdosing can amplify or extend the impacts of larger-dose psychedelic experiences,” she adds.

Overall, the study adds daily-level precision to a growing body of research suggesting microdosing may enhance wellbeing and cognitive performance—although in a short-term, day-specific way. While the results are an extension of earlier work, Dr. St. Pierre says this remains an observational study and further research is needed to separate expectation effects from genuine pharmacological changes.

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