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Microdosing For Depression Appears To Work About As Well As Drinking Coffee 48

Posted by BeauHD from the good-news-and-bad-news dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: About a decade ago, many media outlets -- including WIRED -- zeroed in on a weird trend at the intersection of mental health, drug science, and Silicon Valley biohacking: microdosing, or the practice of taking a small amount of a psychedelic drug seeking not full-blown hallucinatory revels but gentler, more stable effects. Typically using psilocybin mushrooms or LSD, the archetypal microdoser sought less melting walls and open-eye kaleidoscopic visuals than boosts in mood and energy, like a gentle spring breeze blowing through the mind. Anecdotal reports pitched microdosing as a kind of psychedelic Swiss Army knife, providing everything from increased focus to a spiked libido and (perhaps most promisingly) lowered reported levels of depression. It was a miracle for many. Others remained wary. Could 5 percent of a dose of acid really do all that?

A new, wide-ranging study by an Australian biopharma company suggests that microdosing's benefits may indeed be drastically overstated -- at least when it comes to addressing symptoms of clinical depression. A Phase 2B trial of 89 adult patients conducted by Melbourne-based MindBio Therapeutics, investigating the effects of microdosing LSD in the treatment of major depressive disorder, found that the psychedelic was actually outperformed by a placebo. Across an eight-week period, symptoms were gauged using the Montgomery-Asberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS), a widely recognized tool for the clinical evaluation of depression. The study has not yet been published. But MindBio's CEO Justin Hanka recently released the top-line results on his LinkedIn, eager to show that his company was "in front of the curve in microdosing research."

He called it "the most vigorous placebo controlled trial ever performed in microdosing." It found that patients dosed with a small amount of LSD (ranging from 4 to 20g, or micrograms, well below the threshold of a mind-blowing hallucinogenic dose) showed observable upticks in feelings of well-being, but worse MADRS scores, compared to patients given a placebo in the form of a caffeine pill. (Because patients in psychedelic trials typically expect some kind of mind-altering effect, studies are often blinded using so-called "active placebos," like caffeine or methylphenidate, which have their own observable psychoactive properties.) This means, essentially, that a medium-strength cup of coffee may prove more beneficial in treating major depressive disorder than a tiny dose of acid. Good news for habitual caffeine users, perhaps, but less so for researchers (and biopharma startups) counting on the efficacy of psychedelic microdosing. "It's probably a nail in the coffin of using microdosing to treat clinical depression," Hanka says. "It probably improves the way depressed people feel -- just not enough to be clinically significant or statistically meaningful."
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Microdosing For Depression Appears To Work About As Well As Drinking Coffee

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  • With a whopping 89 test subjects, this a far cry form an end-all study.

    But, I've got to say that the findings of this study support my hypothesis. That is that shrooms don't fix your shit.

    We also already have some proven and highly effective depression medications.

    • Doing anything at all helps depression to some extent, since depression is partially about being unable to form a satisfactory self-narrative about your ability to handle your problems.

      By taking some steps to combat your depression (regardless of their inherent level of efficacy), you see yourself as someone who is doing something that might lead you to a better future. Just knowing/thinking that can help reduce feelings of hopelessness.

      Yes, it's the placebo effect; but for depression, where self-perceptio

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by PPH ( 736903 )

        Probably correct. But all of the (valid) studies of microdosing psychedelics as treatments for depression or PTSD have involved sessions supervised by trained professionals. Instead of popping a few caps of 'shrooms and catching a jump seat ride on in a commercial airline cockpit.

        To many people have developed false senses of expertise with regards to dosing themselves. But that is one sign of an addicted brain just trying to justify another hit.

        • Psilocybin and LSD aren't addictive. I don't mean that they aren't addictive like stoners will say weed isn't addictive because weed is only psychologically addictive. Psilocybin and LSD are not habit forming. At all.

          People who take psilocybin or LSD for depression take a single dose and it cures them for about 6-18 months. They they might take another single dose.

          In rare cases they might take 2-3 doses over a month, which have to be spread apart anyway because the drugs don't work if you take them two days

      • Hawthorne effect? Having someone observe you and participate in a cool trial is probably going to do something for depression, even without the addition of psychedelic drugs

    • This study supports your conclusion at the micro-dosing level and only for LSD, not psilocybin.

      I suspect microdosing doesn't work at all.

      There is alot of evidence that macro-dosing does help people with conditions like PTSD when combined with thearpy, but the inherent risk that a trip goes sideways probably means that it's always going to be an underground thing and not something that enters mainstream medical use.

    • I'm not sure how you can conclude that microdosing psilocybin doesn't work when the study was for microdosing LSD. That's like saying that a study on Keflex effectiveness proves penicillin isn't effective.

      I'll present you with a different hypothesis: There is no chemical cure for depression. Antidepressants mask symptoms of depression enough to allow the people who take them to address the underlying causes of their depression. Fadiman and Stamets both assert that radically increased neuroplasticity is the

      • A lot of serotonin is stored in the large intestine and mediated by gut flora [harvard.edu]. So if antidepressants aren't that great, and if the microdosed psychedelics get to those bacteria ... maybe you'd be better served by the party in your pants?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      89 participants give you a very reliable average case evaluation.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jhoegl ( 638955 )
      Medication is only to help you get through an episode or issue, maintaining depression is on the individual. Maintaining works better than drugs, and working on those should be the goal.

    • I agree with you about the study. Too small. I also find the idea of comparing a hallucinogen vs a placebo to be very dubious, as you can't really do this as a double blind test, even with a low dose. Micro dosing isn't meant to be such a low dose that you don't notice it whatsoever.

      Psilocybin can be extremely effective for depression and generalized anxiety disorder in some patients, even in cases where the patient is treatment resistant to SSRIs, SNRIs, antipsychotics, etc. A single dose can act as a mira

  • Have they tried millidosing? (Score:3)

    by rossdee ( 243626 ) on Saturday January 31, 2026 @10:00AM (#65960764)

    Micro is 10^-6

    • If you took 1mg of LSD, you'd be taking leave from the universe for 24 hours...

      A recreational dose is 100ug.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Ry-Fi ( 7117519 )
        What rossdee is obviously referring to is microdose being a poorly named term if it's intended to mean a fraction of a regular dose. It should be decidose or centidose at most, with even millidose being off by at least an order of magnitude. In this respect, microdose was obviously coined by someone who didn't know SI prefixes and just thought micro meant tiny. In terms of absolute dosages of substances like LSD though, sure, we're talking ug, so microdose would be correct in that context, and certainly
    • From the summary it looks like they're MEGA dosing - "ranging from 4 to 20g, or micrograms".

      Either there was a typo, or someone made a big mistake.

      A city attorney made a similar mistake - he misread micrograms as milligrams and improperly charged my wife with a DUI. It was a good thing I noticed the error!

  • So, difficult to comment. But I wonder why they would use a caffeine pill as a placebo.
    A placebo is supposed to have no effect. Caffeine certainly does. My husband is unable to sleep if he ingested even small quantities of it.

    I gather this is an "active placebo". But caffeine is known to have many beneficial effects in a lot of people. So perhaps something else should have been used that doesn't.

    • So, difficult to comment. But I wonder why they would use a caffeine pill as a placebo.
      A placebo is supposed to have no effect. Caffeine certainly does. My husband is unable to sleep if he ingested even small quantities of it.

      I gather this is an "active placebo". But caffeine is known to have many beneficial effects in a lot of people. So perhaps something else should have been used that doesn't.

      Didn't read the blurb, did you? It's literally in what was posted:

      (Because patients in psychedelic trials typically expect some kind of mind-altering effect, studies are often blinded using so-called "active placebos," like caffeine or methylphenidate, which have their own observable psychoactive properties.)

    • It would seem that doctoring the blind would be an oxymoron, but I do understand the reasoning, and why it has to be something more than a sugar pill.

  • Your old man drinks coffee.

    You gotta do something that seems like its transgressive in some way and sticking ut to the man, somehow.

    • Also you are probably already drinking coffee and it wasn't doing any good...

      Also was that a weird dig against young people or a failed attempt to sound hip? Legitimately I cannot tell.

  • My depression grows worse when anxiety grows worse. I've reduced anxiety by occasionally using a small amount of legal Delta-8. Small amount means:
    5mg, overnight, 1x a week.

    Immediately the next day, I feel calmer, which means I don't fret about shit, blow things out of proportion, and it helps over-all continuing anxiety by keeping it low.

    Depression kicks in when anxiety is high long enough for me to realize I'm not gaining any ground, and I start shutting down rather than deal with it.

    I'm on over 12 presc

    • You can try magnesium for depression. It's up to 40% effective (active placebo is 30%). Take it for 3 weeks. It'll work by then if it's working for you. Worked for me. My depressive thoughts slowly melted away until I suddenly realized I hadn't thought about suicide within the past few days. Perhaps you're on an edge and your anxiety makes you cross over. It's unknown if the anti-depressant effect is from a lack of the mineral itself or from it's anti-inflammatory properties.

      For auto-immune issues, t

  • confounding "scientist" (Score:3)

    by spaceman375 ( 780812 ) on Saturday January 31, 2026 @11:18AM (#65960852)
    LSD and Mushrooms are radically different. There are many other psychedelics, each very unique. This guy knows he used LSD, yet he makes many statements where he generalizes his conclusion to all psychedelics. This is NOT science. He may as well test a birthday cake and then tell everybody all breads are bad for you. I do think there is something to the idea. If psilocybin actually does work in small doses (small does not mean so small you can't feel it at all, and this dose was tiny), then his sloppy conclusion will mean many people won't get a valuable treatment. I suspect bias: He wanted this conclusion.

  • âoe observable upticks in feelings of well-being, but worse MADRS scoresâ

    Feeling better > assessment values. Develop a better assessment.

  • Assumptions of uniformity etc. (Score:3)

    by John Allsup ( 987 ) on Saturday January 31, 2026 @11:32AM (#65960864) Homepage Journal
    I fear with Mental Health we are falling into the trap of assuming people are more uniform than they are. For any aspect of health other than the brain, we can e.g. assume for the most part that two different people's biceps work in roughly the same way, two people's kidneys work in roughly the same way, two peoples blood likewise (though one must take care with e.g. blood type). This is the case even up to the level of individual neurons, which basically sum their inputs and ping if a threshold is exceeded. But when things depend upon how those 80bn neurons are configured, this changes. We hit a combinatorial explosion of possibilites, far too numerous to contemplate having any kind of representative sample of them. So scientific approaches that assume a representative sample will fail when one cannot ignore the complexity of the brain and the degree to which two different brains, even if trained on identical training sets (and with each person's life taking a different course, we don't even have that), can be wired very differently.

    Just my thought at least. So when it comes to efficacy of microdosing, it's a case of either do the experiment or don't. But it may not be possible to predict the effect of Alice microdosing, given only observations of what happened when Bob and Charlie did. It may, but one should be careful not to assume a uniformity that isn't there.
  • Wired knows computers--not psychoactive substances.
    https://www.erowid.org/ [erowid.org]

  • â¦only macrodosing helps my depression. Iâ(TM)m usually really good for several weeks after.

  • wouldn't this be like an article on tobacco by the tobacco industry?

  • The fact that when presented with a substance that may improve your depression it does, doesn't prove that using coffee will have the same effect when not presented as a placebo. The body expects something to improve, and it does, but only when it's consumed with the medical trappings.

    This seems to be why homeopathy makes a real difference to some patients, despite there being nothing in the liquid actually prescribed and consumed. The body responds to the medical trappings - and heals itself a bit, or some

  • I have no doubt that LSD isn't useful for this purpose. I've tripped enough to know that LSD and psilocybin are only superficially experientially similar. LSD is the more abstract, clinical, unfeeling third cousin. And she doesn't know when the party is over, but that's unrelated...

  • Obviously I'm pretty ignorant here but surely placebo effect is pretty significant in depression, if you're only considering subjective feedback? If you're being given something you're told is LSD and it's only caffeine, you'll still probably have a pretty good time, ask any drug dealer
  • homeopathy to mental health treatment!

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