LSD increases sleep duration the night after microdosing

Summary & key facts

Researchers ran a carefully controlled trial with 80 healthy adult men who took either a very small LSD dose (10 micrograms) or a fake pill every third day for six weeks. Using a commercial sleep tracker and about 3,200 nights of data, they found that the night after people took the LSD microdose they slept about 24 minutes longer than the placebo group. The extra sleep did not come with changes in measured sleep stages or daily activity. These results show a real change in how much sleep the body needed after microdosing in this group, but the study only included healthy men and does not tell us whether this is helpful or safe for others.

Key facts:

• The study had 80 healthy adult men who self‑administered either a 10 microgram LSD microdose or a placebo every third day for six weeks.
• Participants wore a commercial sleep and activity tracker, giving about 3,200 nights of recorded sleep for analysis.
• On the night after taking the microdose, people in the LSD group slept about 24 minutes longer than people who took placebo.
• There were no changes in the proportion of time spent in different sleep stages, and physical activity did not change between groups.
• The trial was designed so people were randomly assigned to LSD or placebo and neither participants nor researchers knew who got which until the study ended, which makes the results less likely to be explained by expectation alone.
• The study only tested healthy adult men, so the findings may not apply to women, people with sleep problems, or long-term use.

Abstract

Microdosing psychedelic drugs at a level below the threshold to induce hallucinations is an increasingly common lifestyle practice. However, the effects of microdosing on sleep have not been previously reported. Here, we report results from a Phase 1 randomized controlled trial in which 80 healthy adult male volunteers received a 6-week course of either LSD (10 µg) or placebo with doses self-administered every third day. Participants used a commercially available sleep/activity tracker for the duration of the trial. Data from 3231 nights of sleep showed that on the night after microdosing, participants in the LSD group slept an extra 24.3 min per night (95% Confidence Interval 10.3-38.3 min) compared to placebo-with no reductions of sleep observed on the dosing day itself. There were no changes in the proportion of time spent in various sleep stages or in participant physical activity. These results show a clear modification of the physiological sleep requirements in healthy male volunteers who microdose LSD. The clear, clinically significant changes in objective measurements of sleep observed are difficult to explain as a placebo effect. Trial registration: Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry: A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of repeated microdoses of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) in healthy volunteers; https://www.anzctr.org.au/Trial/Registration/TrialReview.aspx?id=381476 ; ACTRN12621000436875.

Topics

Neurotransmitter Receptor Influence on Behavior Psychedelics and Drug Studies Sleep and Wakefulness Research

Categories

Clinical Psychology Psychology Social Sciences

Tags

Alternative medicine Anesthesia Clinical trial Computer science Confidence interval Internal medicine Medicine Operating system Pathology Physical therapy Placebo Randomized controlled trial Sleep (system call)

Substances

LSD

Conditions & symptoms

Poor sleep