James Fadiman has been professionally involved with psychedelics for over 60 years and is known as the father of modern microdosing, having developed the first protocols regarding dosage and scheduling to ensure safety, prevent tolerance, and maximize results.
Jordan Gruber has written, ghostwritten, and edited over a dozen books in a wide variety of fields, including psychology, spirituality, finance, and personal development. He has been close friends with Fadiman since 1990. He contributed to Fadiman’s The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide and then later co-authored Your Symphony of Selves with Fadiman.
What’s the big idea?
Microdosing has been rapidly gaining attention, and science has struggled to keep pace. Of the research that is out there, much of it fails to answer common questions or is simply too technical to be of much use to laymen. That’s why experts James Fadiman and Jordan Gruber knew it was time to create a guide that demystifies the value and usage of subthreshold psychedelic regimens.
Below, co-authors James Fadiman and Jordan Gruber share five key insights from their new book, Microdosing for Health, Healing, and Enhanced Performance. Listen to the audio version—read by James and Jordan—in the Next Big Idea App.
1. Resources for microdosing are in demand.
Interest in micro dosing began to skyrocket about a decade ago. In 2023 alone, there were three million Google searches for the term. Reports have been released by what we call participatory citizen scientists from 81 countries, and there has been widespread growth in training, teaching, coaching, and research.
Given our roles in this particular field, we felt it would benefit the curious public if we created a resource with the best information available about responsible micro dosing. Thus, we wrote this book to help people decide whether micro dosing could be beneficial in their lives.
2. Microdosing is not what many people think it is.
Far too many people think microdosing is a small version of a high dose, but it is totally different. Pretty much everything in the literature about high doses of psychedelics does not apply to microdosing at all. With microdosing, you typically take one-tenth to one-twentieth of a full recreational dose of a classic psychedelic—usually psilocybin-containing mushrooms or LSD. This low of a dose is called a subthreshold dose, which means the experience will be far below the level of what typically happens when someone takes a full recreational dose. There is no wild visual imagery and no major or sudden changes in thought or feeling.
“Pretty much everything in the literature about high doses of psychedelics does not apply to microdosing at all.”
Typically, no one will be able to notice that you took a microdose of something. You may even find that you yourself have forgotten that you took something until you realize how well your day went. Taking a low dose while adhering to a conservative protocol or schedule (that includes regularly taking time off) demonstrates the point that a micro dose of something compared to a macro dose may as well be a completely different substance.
Microdosing benefits normal people by improving their skills and capacities, and it alleviates suffering from a variety of mental illnesses. It has led to improvements in a range of physical conditions, including migraines and long COVID. While we don’t know exactly how it works to provide so many different benefits, we do know that it improves inflammation and neuroplasticity and returns people to a healthier sense of self. People just feel better.
3. Access to information about microdosing is tricky.
Many people don’t know why it’s important to keep the dose low, skip days between doses, and take time off. There is also a lack of common knowledge about what substances are inappropriate for microdosing. We’ve worked hard to think through this issue and how to present our conclusions best.
Most of the information and research available does not answer the most frequent questions being asked. And most of the existing research is hard to find in the first place, and quite technical. We found that most people with questions were already experimenting and reporting their results even though they couldn’t access the larger picture. We were startled at how many people wanted to learn and share the information. There are over 275,000 people on Reddit’s microdosing subreddit alone, but they have no guideposts to distinguish the truth, quality, or usefulness of the information being posted.
4. Science is catching up with the evidence on microdosing for health.
The larger picture includes information on an A through Z of over 35 different mental and physical medical conditions. We include information about ADHD, anorexia, anxiety, asthma relief, and autism. We include binge eating, bipolar disorder, body weight, cannabis reduction or quitting, cerebral palsy, cluster headaches, colorblindness, the common cold, depression, eczema, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, and epilepsy. That’s just A through E.
“Perhaps we are at the beginning of microdosing acceptance by conventional medicine.”
Additionally, conventional research has been lagging behind what is known from thousands of reports about individual health conditions. Microdosing has not yet been well described by science, yet thousands of reports from participatory citizen scientists begin filling in the larger picture. For example, there was no research about the effects of microdosing on late pregnancies, birth, and breastfeeding. Yet we were able to spend a solid ten pages in the book reporting on the very first survey ever, which included hundreds of women’s reports.
5. Microdosing benefits healthy people too.
Microdosing has been used for thousands of years for various purposes. Perhaps we are at the beginning of microdosing acceptance by conventional medicine. But also, healthy people are using it to improve many areas of functioning in their lives, like sleep, sex, sports, diet, writing, music, coding, and accelerated learning. Additionally, people tend to feel better about themselves and others, and to make better decisions naturally.
These are not pharmaceuticals. They are not single-symptom medications. They are much closer to vitamins, which is why they affect the whole body and a host of systems in different ways. This is a fundamental shift from what we know about the effects of higher doses of psychedelics.
Improving physical and mental health conditions is of interest to almost everyone, but so are areas of performance, wellness, and flow. We believe we will see the enthusiastic adoption of microdosing by practitioners of all sorts of creative and physical endeavors.
To listen to the audio version read by co-authors James Fadiman and Jordan Gruber, download the Next Big Idea App today:
