Excerpt from Playboy.com, November 6th, 2020
When most of us think of psychedelics, the last thing that comes to mind is increased energy, focus and range of motion while working out or competing in sports. But in microdoses that are as little as one-twentieth of a full “tripping” dose (around 3 grams of mushrooms or 120 micrograms of LSD), athletes are taking psilocybin mushrooms and LSD out of the woods and into the gym to enhance athletic performance and take their training to the next level.
In 2018, strength and conditioning coaches D.J. Murakami and Tom Mountjoy began pairing their daily movement practices with microdoses of psilocybin mushrooms. They were blown away by the results they experienced: more energy, confidence and flexibility in their workouts, plus the sensation of getting lost in time while working out. After sharing their personal experiences with each other and their tens of thousands of Instagram followers, Murakami and Mountjoy formed The Emptiness Lab, an online community for athletes around the globe to share their microdose-and-training experiences. The group quickly evolved into an amateur research study of nearly 20 athletes who microdosed to enhance their workouts. The eclectic group of yogis, endurance runners, weightlifters and personal trainers provided weekly self-reports on their performance, mood, sociability, libido and other more traditional athletic metrics such as strength and flexibility.
Pursuing a flow state is a popular reason people microdose, whether they’re athletes, artists or programmers. The concept of a flow state, where mental chatter quiets down and you can become absorbed in a task for hours without noticing the time go by, was first recognized by psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi in 1975. While the mechanism is still quite mysterious to researchers, high doses of psilocybin and other psychedelics have been shown to reduce activity in the “default mode network”—the brain’s future planning and self-referential thinking center. Scientists aren’t certain about whether microdosing has the same default mode network effect, but a 2019 study on microdosing found participants experienced “significant reductions in mind wandering,” which the authors wrote could “reduce distractibility and increase capacity to focus on the task at hand”—two of the most important components of flow.
Yet finding a flow state via microdosing remains extremely dose-specific. While the optimal “subperceptual” microdose for boosting athletic performance varies among individuals, the effect is meant to be extremely subtle. McCall and Murakami both describe microdosing around 0.1 to 0.25 grams of psilocybin mushrooms for their workouts, sometimes slightly more depending on the activity. (An average recreational dose is closer to two or three full grams.) Mountjoy recommends starting low, around 0.115 grams, and working up from there. Doses higher than 0.25 grams or so can throw training goals out the window, especially when it comes to routine tasks like repetitive workouts. This is the main reported negative side effect from athletes when they accidentally take more than a microdose: Their concentration and coordination can quickly go from optimized to impaired. But for some, beginning to trip slightly is a small price to pay for athletic gains.
