10 Million US Adults Microdosed Psychedelics Last Year, New Report Shows

Microdosing psychedelics went mainstream in America in 2025. Not with glow sticks and dance floors, but with calendar reminders, coffee mugs, and people quietly chasing a steadier mood during the Wednesday slump. A new RAND study says nearly 10 million U.S. adults—about 3.7 percent—microdosed psychedelics last year, favoring tiny, sub-perceptual amounts over technicolor odysseys. The headline lands like a shot of cold espresso: microdosing psychedelics isn’t fringe; it’s a habit stitched into daily life, threading through tech offices, art studios, kitchens, and late-night home offices where the Wi-Fi blinks and the mind won’t quit.

What the numbers say, without the mysticism

RAND’s researchers didn’t ask people if they saw God. They asked what they actually did. Among adults who used psilocybin in the past year, 69 percent microdosed at least once. For MDMA, it was 65 percent. LSD, 59 percent. In a press note, lead author Michelle Priest put it plainly: tiny doses have become a big deal for people trying to tweak creativity, well-being, or mental health without taking the elevator to the top floor. The survey drew from 10,122 adults between September 9 and October 1, 2025, with a margin of error of ±1.33 points—a sober methodology for a subject better known for kaleidoscopes and myth. The mechanics of microdosing—intentional, measured, sub-psychedelic—are the opposite of reckless. That doesn’t make it risk-free, but it does tell you where the center of gravity has moved: incremental mood engineering over radical escape, policy conversation over taboo.

The most-used compounds—and a surprise mushroom cameo

• Psilocybin: 11 million adults used it in 2025.
• MDMA: 4.7 million.
• Amanita muscaria: 3.5 million.
• Ketamine: 3.3 million.
• LSD: 3 million.

Psilocybin leading the pack isn’t shocking. But Amanita muscaria—those red-capped, white-spotted fairy-tale mushrooms—crashing the top tier? That raised RAND co-director Beau Kilmer’s eyebrow, and fair enough. Amanita isn’t psilocybin; it rides different chemistry and a different risk profile, a reminder that the “psychedelics” label covers a messy pantry, not a tidy spice rack. Still, the center of the story remains the microdose: tiny amounts, controlled timing, goals as modest as a nudge toward focus or emotional ballast. Beneath the data is a cultural pivot away from the old binary—sober or blasted—toward a spectrum that policy has barely begun to map. RAND’s own policy analysis in recent years has basically said: Washington can sketch the contours of a sensible system now—or watch a patchwork of states do it in bits and pieces and then try to retrofit order later. You don’t need to be a policy wonk to know which path is easier to walk.

Policy moves like a game of chess, only everyone’s playing a different board

Look wider and you see the familiar American tangle: markets emerging faster than regulations, culture sprinting while statutes stretch and yawn. Since 2019, dozens of localities have deprioritized enforcement against certain psychedelics, while Oregon built supervised psilocybin services and Colorado greenlit both facilitated use and personal possession of other compounds. Whether you think that’s visionary or reckless depends on your priors—and your appetite for a laboratory of democracy. The larger drug-policy weather pattern is shifting, too. Hemp and cannabis sit in adjacent storm tracks. Retail booze interests are petitioning Congress for runway on hemp rules—see Alcohol Retailers Push Congress To Delay Hemp THC Ban While Regulations Are Crafted—even as prohibitionists are pouring resources into rolling back reforms via ballot measures, as documented in ‘Dark Money’ Anti-Marijuana Group Is Bankrolling Ballot Measures To Roll Back Legalization In Multiple States, Records Show. States are testing edges: some float voter-driven legalization—see Hawaii Lawmakers File Bills To Put Marijuana Legalization On The Ballot For Voters To Decide—while others tinker with compassion-focused fixes like allowing hospital use for the gravely ill, as in Delaware Lawmakers Consider Bill To Allow Medical Marijuana Use In Hospitals By Terminally Ill Patients. Different substances, similar questions: who gets to access what, under which rules, and who profits or pays when the rules change.

The takeaway behind the tidy stats

Microdosing psychedelics doesn’t fit the old narratives about excess or moral panic. It’s small, deliberate, and—judging by RAND’s estimates—common. That should steer the conversation toward smart guardrails: product standards, accurate labeling, honest education, real-world outcomes research, and clinical pathways where appropriate. Pretending the trend doesn’t exist won’t make it safer. Codifying a thoughtful system might. For now, the country is improvising: agencies inch, markets sprint, and people quietly test what works for their brains and their lives. You don’t have to love it to see the writing on the wall. If you’re navigating this evolving landscape and want lawful, cannabinoid-forward options that play by the rules, take a look at our shop here: https://thcaorder.com/shop/.