I Tried Microdosing To Ease The Crushing Anxiety Of Menopause

In fall 2022, my mental health took a serious one-two punch in the solar plexus. I had recently published a book about my son, who died of an opioid overdose in 2015. Though I knew Holden struggled with anxiety and depression and used alcohol and smoked pot regularly, I had no idea about the extent of his substance use disorder. His death was a cataclysmic shock. Talking about Holden on the book tour was challenging, but after seven years of writing and working with my therapist, I had perspective, and I thought I had the skills to keep my emotions from unravelling. Then the super-fun combo of grief and menopause anxiety chopped me down like a tree. 

In mid-November, my husband Cam and I went to a Christmas party where I started crying in the bathroom and couldn’t stop. The crying lasted for three days, which I spent either in bed or bingeing Netflix, basically catatonic. Dark thoughts ricocheted, and a strange, jagged squeezing gripped my chest. I wore the same sweaty clothes for weeks and hid from my friends and family. It was the closest to insane I’d ever felt, which, after the death of a child, is saying something. Eventually, I got up and took the dog for a walk, but I knew I was in trouble.

Many of the menopausal women I know are walking around feeling either like garbage or that they are losing their minds, or both. We may look competent, but inside, it’s a shit show. For me, the powerful cocktail of grief, trauma and the menopause symptoms caused by plummeting estrogen turbo-charged the physical and mental aspects of my breakdown. The anxiety that rode shotgun with the hot flashes came as a big surprise. I spoke with my family doctor and consulted a private hormone clinic. I had tried every option on the mental health menu: SSRIs (which didn’t ease the panic and had included brutal withdrawal in the past), talk therapy (helpful but expensive), hormone therapy (which took the edge off), yoga, meditation, forest bathing, various apps, costly supplements, breath work and energy healing where a lovely woman waved her hands over my body while reciting a string of questions and numbers (I actually liked that one, it calmed me). Trying to act fine and carry on was exhausting.

In mid-December, we were invited to a small dinner party. We accepted, but the idea of sitting around “catching up” made me feel like I might turn to sand and dissolve under my chair. I hauled myself out of bed, brushed my hair, and pulled on a long black dress. Standing in the snow outside the house, I strangled the neck of a wine bottle with my fingers and told my husband, “I will cry if anyone says ‘How are you?’” 

“Just lie like everyone else,” he said. 

Over the hummus, I confided in a lifelong friend and hiking buddy about my depression. She nodded and told me her son had started microdosing psilocybin for the post-concussion depression that had forced him to drop out of college. With the mushrooms, she said, “it stopped being so much work just to feel normal.” More importantly, he’d been able to focus enough to finish the degree he’d put on hold. “After all the therapies he’s tried,” her teary eyes reflecting the Christmas lights, “the mushrooms have been a game changer.”  

The fist in my chest tightened. I wanted to feel better, but how could I turn to illicit drugs for relief when that was what had killed my son? The hypocrisy, or was it irony, of the idea felt deeply problematic. 

I’d heard about expensive “macro trips” where people ingest huge amounts of psilocybin mushrooms with some kind of guide or shaman present. The participants raved about the inspiring insights and healing that resulted from their trips, but the idea of hallucinating with a bunch of strangers sounded terrifying. In my already frayed mental state, the bad trip scenario was a big concern. Those with a family history of psychosis or who are taking certain psychiatric medications may not be good candidates. 

A friend who had wrestled with paralyzing grief after the death of her husband had gone to a local studio and, after ingesting what she called an “heroic dose” of magic mushrooms, swam for seven sensual hours in thunderous song and her own guttural wailing before giving birth to what she called “a 12-pound grief baby.” As we walked our dogs in the forest near my house, she described her trip—which included a human-sized stick bug watching over her and, eventually, an extraordinary sense of euphoria—then smacked her palms together and said, “And that’s it. I know he’s still with me and that I can be okay without him.” 

As my mental health tipped toward dangerous, I wondered if there was a way to “be okay” without the giant bugs. 

Microdosing is defined as the consumption of very low, sub-hallucinogenic doses—a fraction of a recreational dose—of psychedelic substances, a classification which includes psilocybin (commonly called magic mushrooms), ketamine and LSD. Meaning you can still make dinner and sit through boring meetings. A 2021 paper in the journal Nature found that psilocybin microdosers demonstrate lower levels of anxiety and depression compared to non-microdosers and observed improvements in mood and mental health at one month relative to non-microdosing controls. Okay, this sounded promising. 

A note in my journal from December 16, 2022 reads: The windshield is covered with mud. Very dramatic. But the metaphor describes how life looked from the inside. I was having trouble seeing a way through, and I was out of options.

According to the Microdosing Institute, an organization whose mission is to merge ancient wisdom with modern science to ensure the safe, conscious and effective microdosing of psychedelics, comparing the use of high doses of psychedelics to microdosing is akin to “comparing a hurricane to a fresh breeze.” The Institute also notes that microdosing stretches the positive effects of the drug over a period of time, resulting in “significantly less disturbance, allowing you to integrate the universal insights more subtly during your daily life.” No mention of psychedelic colours, irreversible psychic harm or insects.

Because I was understandably freaked out about using unregulated—and so far illegal—street drugs, I ordered some purportedly lab-tested psilocybe cubensis capsules online. At least, that’s what the website claimed. Currently, using psilocybin is illegal unless authorized by Health Canada—there have been some exemptions for “special access” to treat serious or life-threatening conditions for which conventional therapies have failed. I live in Vancouver, the land of decriminalization, where a few grey-area shops openly sell many types of psychedelics. As ground zero of the overdose crisis, the police seemingly have bigger problems on their hands.

Christmas was not great. My husband, my daughter and I did the tree and gifts and turkey, but I felt like one of those placeholders at the Oscars, fake smiling while waiting for it to be over so I could stop sitting up straight and lie down on the floor. I vacuumed up the pine needles and tucked the stockings away in the crawl space. 

December 29 Feeling dismal. Such low energy I can’t even unsubscribe from the Peloton newsletter. Happiness meter 5/10. Mail-order shrooms still haven’t arrived. Ugh. We decide to go to the Medicinal Mushroom Dispensary on Hastings. As I filled out the “membership form,” the next customer in line asked for “A bottle of LSD, please.” Where am I? I buy 25 mg and 50 mg capsules of dried “Golden Teacher” so I can gradually up my dosage and “find my sweet spot.” $33.50 for 10 capsules, which will apparently last me three to five weeks. Red-eyed clerk won’t tell me where the mushrooms are grown. “Locally, is all I can say.” 

My doctor and I have been through a lot together. When I told him about my plan to microdose he just nodded and said, “Let me know how it goes.” Cam and I stopped for lunch, and I washed a 50-mg capsule down with a glass of house white.

I crawled back into bed with my laptop, looking for scientific proof that microdosing could help me heal. There wasn’t much. After an early heyday of research into how psychedelics might help mental health—including many studies conducted at Saskatchewan’s Weyburn Mental Hospital in the 1950s—they were classified as Schedule 1 drugs by the FDA in 1970, alongside marijuana, cocaine and heroin. Canada’s Narcotic Control Act also classified them as dangerous drugs with no medical value. Globally, psychedelics research ground to a halt.

Every current article I read suggested a variation on the same theme: psychedelics look promising but there’s no hard evidence. One study in the journal Psychopharmacology suggested that there is a relationship between microdosing and mental health, including lower dysfunctional attitudes and negative emotionality and higher levels of open-mindedness and wisdom.

With way too many protocols online, the user guide I received from the Mushroom Dispensary seemed easiest to follow: Twice per week, starting low, then increasing by 25 mg “until you find a dose that is beneficial.” Apparently, this was a choose-your-own-adventure situation. There is about 1 percent of psilocybin in dried mushrooms, meaning a 100 mg capsule holds 1 mg of psilocybin, which is structurally similar to serotonin. I decide to take the green capsules on Sundays and Wednesdays, the same days I slap an estrogen patch on my ass. 

January 2 75 mg. Twitchy headache behind right eyeball. No “feelings.”

January 7 100 mg. Headache again. More energy. Not so dark. Out of bed and able to read and work a little. Less distracted. Fewer looping thoughts.

Insomnia, headaches, increased anxiety and nausea are some of the common side effects of microdosing. But given the improved mood, I could live with it. 

Dr. Leah Mayo, the Parker Psychedelics Research Chair at the Mathison Centre for Mental Health Research and Education, the Hotchkiss Brain Institute and the Department of Psychiatry at the Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary tells me psychedelics work with the default mode network (DMN)—our habitual thought patterns—to disrupt negative self-referential thoughts and open windows of opportunity to intervene with different types of thinking or therapy. In a July 2021 study, Yale researchers showed that a single dose of psilocybin given to mice prompted an immediate neurobiological change that lasted for at least one month, spurring neural growth lost to depression. The mice showed behavioural improvements and increased neurotransmitter activity. 

That depression causes my neurons to actually die seems unfair, but learning they can regenerate feels optimistic. I pictured neural saplings sprouting in my brain. And my negative thought dead-ends being rerouted onto more positive highways. Maybe I was hallucinating.

January 11 100 mg. Busy few days with deadlines. Higher workload. Better energy. Able to cope and not cry. No nap!

January 15 125 mg. Unfocused. Hazy. A bit anxious. Echoing inner voice. Thumb typing is terrible—full of mistakes. I’m not saying I wouldn’t “operate machinery” right now, but the carpet does feel extra spongy under my bare feet, and the trees seem VERY green outside the window. Headache and a bit nauseous. 125 mg is too much for me. 

January 18 Roll back to 100 mg. 

February 5 100 mg. Nice energy today. Went for a long walk with the dog. Notice that I’m enjoying the forest with no fear of predators—men or bears. I typically live with a constant undercurrent of terror. I know this is PTSD from Holden’s sudden death. Every time Cam leaves on his motorcycle, I plan his funeral. Today anxiety dialled back to around six out of 10—no funeral plans. Huge improvement.

Scientists don’t use actual dried mushrooms for their case studies; they use psilocin, one of the compounds in mushrooms that is responsible for hallucinations. Dr. James Fadiman, known as the “Father of Microdosing” for his long-term research, has said that when microdosing, “information seems to travel better through the body. It seems to put the wrong connections back in the right place.” This is the neuroplasticity everyone’s going on about. 

Over the next few weeks, I noticed I was able to move from having no thoughts to brighter ones more easily. I went from avoiding eye contact with the dog to googling how to make almond milk. 

Because of the online reading I’d been doing, my algorithm began filling with everything mushroom-related: psilocybin capsules, teas, chaga chocolate, Moms on Mushrooms—a growing group of women using tiny doses of psilocybin to ease the anxieties and stress of parenting—and “trip coaches.” Was microdosing simply enjoying a zeitgeist like Goop’s heartthrob vibrator or Martha Stewart’s CBD gummies? Or was there something very good, life-altering even, to be found in the complexity of the relationship between psilocybin and our wounded, COVID-bruised, climate-fried, sad human psyches? 

Mayo, for one, wants us to pump the breaks around the rush to legalize and commercialize psychedelics. “I see things moving so quickly that I worry we're not going to be able to catch up and provide the data that are needed by the time it’s open access to everyone,” she says. “As a boring academic, I sometimes get a little uncomfortable with a very capitalistic approach.”  

She mentions several small studies that suggest psychedelics can be very helpful in treating substance-use disorders, depression and maybe even eating disorders. But she wants the research to lead the way before psychedelics are available on every street corner, like cannabis. She tells me the next step is large, properly designed, properly controlled trials to see if they are actually effective for these uses because—particularly when you’re talking about very vulnerable populations—you don’t want to over-promise and under-deliver. “There’s nothing worse than someone who’s been through round after round of different interventions, and nothing’s worked. And they think that this is going to fix everything. And then if it doesn’t—now what, where’s that person left?” 

I can’t help but think of Holden and the thousands of substance users who could possibly benefit from these psychedelic treatments with proper support and counselling. I want it to be true. Even now, eight years after Holden’s death, I’m still trying to prevent it from happening. 

Mayo mentions a trial at the Imperial College of London, which found that the placebo effect may be at work. In a summary of its findings, the authors noted that future trials need to be able to control for placebo effects because of the trendy nature of microdosing, which can manifest in expectancy, confirmation bias and social pressure for the participants, potentially leading to false-positive results about the drugs’ efficacy. This happens with SSRIs too. If you know you’re taking them, you feel better. “So it’s really difficult for people to separate what they’re expecting based on all the stuff they hear versus what the drug actually might be doing,” Mayo says.

When I suggest she’s a bit of a party pooper, she laughs. “Literally, that’s my job. I’ve come to embrace it.” But I wonder about the placebo effect, too. Do I want so badly to feel better that I’m talking myself into it? 

On the other hand, there’s Dr. Pamela Kryskow. One of the founding members of the Psychedelic Association of Canada—and also a clinical instructor at UBC and an adjunct professor and medical chair of the Post Graduate Certificate in Psychedelic Assisted Therapy at Vancouver Island University—she wants to speed up the process of decriminalizing psychedelics and returning them to full medical use. “In health sciences, there is a 17-year on average implementation gap between the time we know something works and the time it actually gets to patients,” she says. “We’re trying to squish that down.”  

At a non-profit clinic called Roots to Thrive, Kryskow treats patients with psychedelic-assisted therapy (PaT), including those with opioid use disorder. She explains how she and her team offer patients long-term group support to go deep into their trauma and then help them integrate it into their lives. “Then the trauma heals, and the use of substances disappears.” 

Kryskow connected with acclaimed American mycologist Paul Stamets and professor Dr. Zach Walsh to build a more comprehensive microdosing study by asking microdosers to document their personal reactions, in real time, through an app called microdose.me. The idea was to gather data on many mental and physical health metrics such as depression, anxiety, PTSD, reaction time, memory and sexual health. “And then let’s get it out there to people who are microdosing and find out what’s working.”

February 7 Today I did the dishes for the first time in weeks, read about the neurobiology of psychedelic-assisted therapy (PaT), and perhaps most importantly, had sex with my husband before he went to work.  

From his office at the University of British Columbia Okanagan, Walsh, a professor of psychology and the app’s principal investigator, tells me he would have been happy to have 1,000 participants. There are now 9,500 active participants from 84 countries. Traditionally, therapies are developed in a lab, tested for their effectiveness through clinical trials, then put out to the population. In this case, it’s the opposite. “We’re finding that people are taking these medicines, and we’re lagging behind in terms of science. I think it’s important that we follow their lead and try to provide the best evidence that we can for the safety and, potentially, the effectiveness of these medicines.” 

February 9 Joined microdose.me. Filled out 37 (not kidding) questionnaires related to creativity, mindfulness, sociability, sexual health, empathy and cognitive health on my phone. Took over an hour. 

The detailed questions made me realize how low I’d sunk. The “satisfaction with life” scale asked me to respond to the statement: In most ways my life is close to ideal. I wished there was a “ha ha” option but could only answer “Disagree.” 

I tell Walsh about one article I’d read, which referred to microdosing as “a large social experiment that is messy and inconclusive.” He laughed. I asked if he felt it could help women manage menopause-related concerns like depression and anxiety. Though Walsh seemed optimistic, he drew the line at making any claims based on preliminary research. The farthest he’d go? “Right now, SSRIs are the primary thing that tends to get prescribed for mood alterations around [menopause], and maybe there should be more options.”

A few weeks later, I was able to work at my desk all day—something I hadn’t done in 18 months. I was scared the improvement might be short-lived. I’d had healthy stretches before. 

Mayo had explained this hype cycle. “There’s some sort of peak, and then you fall into the trough of disillusionment, and then the plateau of productivity,” she says. “But somewhere in the middle is where you’re really going to end up. And it’s just hard to tell where we are now with psychedelics. People are looking to scientists to give them advice. And if you’re conflating your role as a scientist with your strong belief that this might be a new big thing based on your personal opinion, I think that’s where it can get a little bit dangerous.” 

February 22 100 mg. After a couple of days of low energy, I get my bangs trimmed and have the strange urge to reach out into the world. I text no fewer than seven different people to see how they are and what they are doing. Something is making me interested in being a human in the world again. 

March 1 100 mg. Waking up at about 3 a.m. and not able to fall back to sleep. I’ve also been having extremely vivid and warped dreams. Like, tiny babies falling out of my vagina that look like rabbits and stepping on them. 

March 20 100 mg yesterday. Back from a busy conference and am shockingly fine. Recovery consisted of two rest days, not a week in bed. Decide to do a meditation with the Calm app. As soon as “Tamara” said to “find a comfortable seat,” I remembered trying to meditate in December and telling her to fuck off because sitting up was asking too much.

March 22 I seem to be more effortlessly productive. I upload tax documents for the family and don’t even cry or complain. I’m noticing less effort to achieve more and the desire for a clean house and an organized workspace. Which I honestly did not give one hoot about for the last several months.

March 28: 100 mg golden teacher + lion’s mane capsule + niacin 350 mg (in my B complex), four days in a row, then three days off. 

On March 31, I attend a talk entitled “How Psilocybin Mushrooms Can Help Save the World.” Paul Stamets tells the crowd of 2,500 “psychonauts,” many of whom are wearing some form of tie-dye, that psychoactive plants have been used for religious and medicinal purposes for at least 7,000 years in many cultures around the world. Indigenous plant medicines for healing are not illicit drugs to be afraid of, he says—they are ancient plant medicines that we’re just beginning to catch on to. 

Resembling a happy garden gnome in his signature mycelium hat, bushy grey beard, and wireframe glasses, Stamets cites a mounting body of evidence that shows the use of psilocybin lowers rates of anxiety, depression and violence in inmates, and that it is the only substance that seems to offer an effective treatment for opioid use disorder. He claims psilocybin makes people nicer, and I nod my head with the crowd. He also mentions that combining psilocybin with lion’s mane mushrooms and niacin supplements in what’s known as the “Stamets Stack” can produce a multi-pronged benefit of mental sharpness. I decide to give it a try.

April 1 In our bright kitchen making tea, I tease Cam about not being able to find his keys. He says there’s a change in my humour—that I haven’t been funny for a long time. He says the quickness in my wit is back. He’s right, I can feel the synapses firing.

A reminder blips to once again answer the microdose.me questionnaires. It’s been two months since I first filled in what felt like millions of questions and three months of microdosing.

Q: How interested have you felt in the past month?
A: Quite a bit.

Q: How scared have you felt this month?
A: Very slightly or not at all.

I answer the well-being quiz with the now familiar 1-through-10 rating system. I am joyful: 7. I am feeling positive: 8. I am feeling content: 7.

But not so fast, lady. The next week I hit what may have been the trough of disillusionment Mayo referred to. I can’t seem to get my mind to focus, I feel anxious, and the insomnia is back. The Stamets Stack was hitting more like a winter gale than a spring breeze. For me, it seems, less is more—twice a week turns out to be my sweet spot. And anyway, as recommended in the pamphlet from the Mushroom Dispensary, it’s time for a break: “The body quickly develops a tolerance for psilocybin. Taking it too often produces a rapidly diminishing effect.”

Maybe it’s the brighter spring days, but I start feeling energized, upright and somehow protected—as if there is a gauzy filter between me and the agony of life. I can still see the mess we’re in, it just doesn’t hurt anymore. When I walk down the street, I make eye contact and say hello to strangers. I meet a friend for lunch wearing the red shoes I haven’t worn in years, since before Holden died.

My dinner party friend was right; for me, psilocybin has been a game changer. In fact, I’m so confident in the value and safety of my new fungal friends that I go back to the dispensary and buy some capsules for our daughter, to help with her ADHD. A 2022 study in Neuroscience Applied found microdosing may improve symptoms in adults with ADHD, but that more placebo-controlled research was needed. At 19 and studying for university finals, she says 50 mg makes her feel less anxious. Soon she will be older than her brother ever got to be. 

But the velvet armour microdosing has offered me does not come without its glitches. Why do I get to feel better? Why couldn’t Holden have had the same chance to experiment, and feel settled in his skin, to zing us with his laser-sharp sense of humour, and find joy in his connection to nature and others, to explore his extraordinary creativity? If Holden had been given the time to meet someone like Dr. Kryscow and benefit from science, support and time to heal, maybe he’d still be here. But even that thought doesn’t stick around too long—it’s a sunny day, and I’m going to plant my garden.