Nordisk alkohol- & narkotikatidskrift : NAT
April 1, 2024
Ioana Pop, Jannis Dinkelacker
5 citations
On days when people take a very small, non-hallucinogenic dose of a psychedelic (microdose), and on the following day, they report feeling more authentic—more true to themselves in the moment. Over one month, 18 microdosers in the Netherlands provided 192 daily self-reports. On microdosing days, both the number of activities people engaged in and their satisfaction with those activities increased; on the next day, only the number of activities remained higher. Greater activity number and satisfaction were each linked to higher state authenticity. The authors suggest that authentic feeling and behavior may help explain the improved health and well-being previously linked to microdosing.
Social Science & Medicine
February 22, 2024
Ioana Pop, Erwin Gielens, Hannah Kottmann et al.
4 citations
Online discussions about microdosing psychedelics on the r/microdosing subreddit center on practical "how to" topics, serving as essential information hubs for the general population. Analysis of public submissions using structural topic modeling identified 16 distinct topics that fall into clinical, human enhancement, and self-medication narratives. The Covid-19 pandemic influenced the prevalence of discussion topics, suggesting that individuals may turn to microdosing as a means of self-medication during heightened stress and uncertainty. These findings highlight the role of online communities in facilitating self-medicalization and self-medication practices.
Journal of Psychedelic Studies
January 17, 2023
Ioana Pop, Jannis Dinkelacker
4 citations
Microdosing—taking repeated sub-threshold doses of serotonergic hallucinogens—was expected to increase emotional diversity (emodiversity), but the opposite occurred. Over 28 days, 18 experienced microdosers reported their emotions five times daily via experience-sampling. On microdosing days, positive and overall emodiversity were significantly lower, with participants feeling more awe, shame, and less joy. Cumulative microdosing showed no effect on any emodiversity measure. The findings suggest microdosing may heighten the centrality of specific emotions, thereby reducing emotional balance.
Journal of Psychology & Clinical Psychiatry
August 1, 2023
Jannis Dinkelacker, Ioana Pop
3 citations
Microdosing psychedelics—taking amounts too small to alter perception—is often reported to boost cognitive performance, but a remote testing study of 17 participants using a neurocognitive battery found no significant improvement or decline in processing speed, sustained attention, inhibitory control, set shifting, working memory, visual memory, or verbal memory on microdosing days or the day after. The results suggest that any perceived enhancement may stem from psychological rather than neurocognitive effects. Remote cognitive testing could facilitate larger, cross-cultural studies by easing participant burden.
Journal of Psychedelic Studies
September 11, 2023
Ioana Pop, Erwin Gielens, Hannah Kottmann
1 citation
An analysis of posts on the Reddit community r/microdosing from 2013 to 2020 identified two distinct narratives among users: a spirituality topic and a scientific topic labeled 'neuro-cognition.' These topics rarely appeared together in the same user's contributions, indicating that spiritual and scientific narratives are largely segregated within the community. The findings demonstrate the value of text analysis for revealing the cultural frameworks that surround the practice of microdosing psychedelics.