Psilocybin mushrooms are grown in Littleton, Colo. The use of psychoactive drugs is increasing in popularity in the US
Image Hyoung Chang/Denver Post/Getty
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Image Hyoung Chang/Denver Post/Getty
Psychedelics have entered the mainstream in a big way: Investors have poured billions into potential medical treatments, scientific research is on the rise and public sentiment signals rising acceptance.
But major data sources on drug use have large gaps when it comes to psychedelics, making it difficult to measure exactly how consumption is changing and in what ways.
Two reports out this week offer some much-needed data points about common psychoactive options. Together, they suggest that mushrooms containing psilocybin are now the most popular choice. And many people choose to microdose, using a fraction of their usual dose, rather than taking a full trip.
“We know that microdosing has become a cultural phenomenon, but all surveys of drug use do not ask about dosage,” said Eric Leas, an epidemiologist at the University of California, San Diego, whose research was published on Friday in the JAMA Health Forum.
The study tracked the history of internet searches for microdosing – a proxy for public interest – and found a 1,250% increase since 2015. And searches for psilocybin began to surpass LSD in 2019.
Meanwhile, a separate report from the non-partisan RAND Corporation estimates that about 3% of the American public – about 8 million adults – have used psilocybin in the past year, making it the most popular hallucinogen by 2023.
The fact that psilocybin uses other popular psychedelics was a “surprise” to Beau Kilmer, who heads the RAND Center for Drug Policy Research and is the lead author of the study, which was published this week.
The runner-up is MDMA, or ecstasy, at just over 1%, followed closely by LSD. The report is based on a nationally representative survey of around 4,000 people and explores the policy implications of changing attitudes towards psychedelics.
The impact of decriminalization on microdosing
Nearly half of those who tried psilocybin last year said they opted for the microdose, a trend that has caught on in many circles, including tech workers and suburban moms.
While there is no universal definition of microdosing, Kilmer said it is often considered to be in the range of 1/10 to 1/20 of a full dose.
Some users dabble in mushrooms. The majority of psilocybin microdosers in the past year said they had taken the drug on only one or two occasions, while only about 11% said they had taken the drug for more than six days.
More than half said they consumed “whole, fresh, or dried mushrooms,” nearly a quarter took in “processed form” like chocolate bars, and about 14% imbibed tea or drink.
The increase in online curiosity about microdosing is related to changes in laws or policies related to cannabis and psychedelics.
“There is a stepwise increase to where the more and more liberal the country got for core use, the more microdosing interest you see in the country,” says UCSD’s Leas.
For example, the top states were Oregon and Colorado, two states decriminalized plant-derived psychedelics, although Oregon has recently ruled in some of its legal reforms around the use of the drug.
This type of data analysis has proven to be a reliable indicator for other drugs that have been researched in the lab — including new cannabis products such as Delta 8 — and, Leas said, “usually correlates very well with product sales.”
Are ‘shrooms the new party drug?
Research shows that the availability of psilocybin has increased in recent years, said Joseph Palamar, an epidemiologist at NYU Langone Health who found that drugs for the fungus have increased in recent years.
Palamar is cautious about drawing too many conclusions from internet browsing history about whether people use the drug, but he says the study is a necessary effort to fill a blind spot in the epidemiology of psychedelic use.
“We are trying to collect some information to find out what happened. In the end, it will be good if we can reconcile the data, but it is very difficult,” he said.
Palamar researches trends in drug use in New York City’s nightlife scene – a population that is considered a bellwether for changes in the general population.
“We’ve found that the use of psilocybin is increasing, more than any other drug,” he said, “I think it’s interesting because I usually think of ecstasy and ketamine, I never think of shroom as a big party drug.”
A study published a few years ago estimated that approximately 5.5 million adults have used hallucinogens in 2019 and the use of LSD in all age groups has increased from 1% to 4% since 2002. enthusiasm and media coverage, said Dr. Deborah Hasin, who led the study and is an epidemiologist at Columbia University.
“We need better epidemiology,” he said, “so that we know exactly what people are using, under what circumstances they are using it, how they got the drug and what they know about what they are doing.”
Not only does the national data collected by the federal government not include information on psychedelics, but for whatever reason, it doesn’t explicitly ask whether people have used psilocybin recently, Kilmer said. “This is very important information to evaluate the size of the market and start thinking about some of the health consequences, whether it’s benefits or risks.”
A booming and understudied market
When asked why they use psilocybin, the top three reasons given by respondents to the RAND survey were: pleasure and social enjoyment, followed by mental health, and personal development and existential exploration.
Dr. Joshua Woolley, director of the Psychedelic Translational Research program at UCSF, said microdosing is a much different model than what is rigorously studied in psychedelic clinical trials to treat various mental health conditions.
That tends to be very structured around some form of psychotherapy and involves giving very high doses.
“We don’t know much about microdosing,” Woolley said.
A recent review of the evidence suggests the practice can improve mood and cognition and that the drug is safe in this context; However, others who have analyzed the data say it is too early to “draw any conclusions” about the efficacy or safety of microdosing.
Kilmer believes the U.S. has reached an inflection point regarding psychedelics as several states and localities are taking different approaches to loosening laws and policies regarding the substance, which remains illegal under federal law.
The market for psychedelics is very different from that of marijuana—much smaller and primarily driven by infrequent users—but Kilmer sees clear parallels in the situation.
“It reminds me a lot of where we were in 2012 (with marijuana),” Kilmer said, “Now it’s time for the federal government to decide: Do they want to get involved and shape what the state market is? Or do they want to stand on the sidelines and just watch?”
