LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) is one of the most potent psychedelics on Earth, it’s most commonly used recreationally, but research has also proven its potential as a therapeutic tool, even at low, sub-perceptive doses (called microdoses) .
In the last decade, researchers have conducted clinical trials to examine the effects of LSD on health conditions like addiction, PTSD (and other trauma-related illnesses), and cluster headaches .
Psychiatrists & researchers have also studied the effects of LSD-assisted psychotherapy in cases of existential anxiety related to life-threatening diseases .
However, there’s one potentially beneficial aspect of taking LSD that has not been explored in great detail – its capacity to help encourage healthy sleep.
Summary of Microdosing for Sleep
- The standard LSD microdose ranges between 8–25 micrograms.
- Microdosing LSD can increase dreaming time by increasing the duration of REM sleep .
- Microdosing LSD won’t make you wake up feeling more restful.
- Microdosing doesn’t carry a significant risk of side effects.
What Is Microdosing?
Microdosing is the practice of taking sub-perceptual doses of a psychedelic substance, like LSD or psilocybin, to solely experience subtle changes in mood and perception without experiencing cognitive impairment.
Regarding LSD, a microdose can mean taking only 1/10 or 1/20 of a standard recreational dose (∼80 mcg).
The idea behind microdosing is that users hope to experience extremely mild physiological changes, benefit from the substance’s therapeutic effects, and still do their everyday activities.
Users regularly report heightened moods or a greater sense of calmness and clarity during the day.
How Does LSD Affect Your Sleep?
A few studies on the effects of LSD on sleep have shown that LSD may increase the duration of the physiological process of sleep achieves many functions in the body, from helping to regrow damaged neurons to building bone tissue.
Doses of 7–22 mcg of LSD have been shown to prolong the REM phase of the sleep cycle .
In theory, this could help you spend more time dreaming each night, improve your ability to memorize information, and improve your problem-solving capacities during the day.
Increasing REM sleep is useful for a few reasons:
- Lucid dreaming — people who practice lucid dreaming may have a greater chance of achieving lucidity with longer REM cycles.
- Dreams help us consolidate memories — they’re integral to the learning process and are especially helpful with memorization-type learning.
- Dreaming is essential for mental health — they help us maintain our mental schema.
It’s important to note that when talking about the potential benefits of LSD on sleep, we’re specifically talking about microdoses.
The Stages of Sleep
The sleep cycle is divided into four main stages (or phases), each with different characteristics, such as changes in muscle tone, brain wave patterns, and eye movements .
- Stage 1 Light Sleep (Non-REM)
- Stage 2 Light Sleep (Non-REM)
- Stage 3 Deep Sleep (Non-REM)
- Stage 4 REM Sleep
Some scientists include two additional stages to account for some of the transitory stages between REM sleep and deep sleep.
In the 90 minutes after you fall asleep, your body slowly drifts from light sleep (Stages 1-2) into a deeper sleep (Stages 3-4). Eventually, it enters into a REM cycle, meaning “rapid eye movement.”
During REM sleep, you’re dreaming, your eyes flutter quickly, and your brain does most of its mental and intense work. At the same time, you are asleep, processing memories, allocating resources, and assigning the day’s events into long-term memory.
Each of the REM cycles gets longer throughout the night, starting around 10 minutes long and eventually becoming longer than an hour.
If you have been awoken suddenly and felt groggy and almost delirious, you were probably right in the middle of REM sleep.
So, when considering how microdosing could affect our sleep, the key is understanding how microdosing LSD can affect our REM sleep.
