Microdosing six-month retrospective — what changed, what didn't

Six months of microdosing. I kept detailed notes throughout — daily ratings of mood, energy, focus, and social ease on a 1-10 scale, plus qualitative notes. Looking back at this data now is more interesting than any single session could have been.

What Actually Changed

The clearest signal: emotional reactivity decreased. Not mood elevation — my average mood scores barely changed. But the variance reduced. The bad days became less bad. The catastrophic interpretation of minor setbacks became less automatic.

Second signal: something I can only describe as increased cognitive patience. The frustration response to difficult tasks — the urge to close the tab, to avoid, to procrastinate — became quieter. I completed projects I'd been avoiding for months. I don't know if this was psilocybin or the placebo of commitment to a protocol.

What didn't change: creative output, social confidence, or anything I'd call "productivity" in the conventional sense. The creative enhancement people describe didn't show up in my data.

The Expectancy Problem

Around month 3, I ran a two-week experiment where I replaced some doses with placebos (dried ginger in identical capsules) without keeping track of which was which. My daily ratings were indistinguishable between dose days and placebo days. This was humbling.

What it suggested: the daily benefits I felt weren't dose-day specific. Either the effects are cumulative and persist through non-dose days (which is consistent with some research), or expectancy was responsible for more of my experience than I'd assumed.

Protocol Adjustments Over Six Months

I started at 0.2g and reduced to 0.15g after experiencing what felt like slightly too much stimulation. At 0.15g, dose days feel genuinely sub-perceptual — I have to look at my log to remember whether I dosed that day.

I took two extended breaks (one by choice, one due to travel logistics) of 3-4 weeks each. Coming back after breaks, the first week or two felt noticeably more effective — consistent with tolerance reset.

Month Six Conclusion

The protocol produced changes I value, with uncertainty about their mechanism. The emotional regulation improvement is real and has persisted through my current pause (month 7, no doses). Whether this is a lasting neurological change or a behavioral pattern I developed alongside the protocol is genuinely unclear.

I'd do it again with one change: more rigorous blinding from the start, to better separate expectancy from pharmacological effect. The Szigeti self-blinding protocol provides a framework for this that I wish I'd used from month one.