Microdosing and Macrodosing From a Healthy Selves Perspective
This article shares personal and philosophical perspectives and is not intended as medical, psychological, or legal advice. Microdosing and macrodosing practices may involve health and legal considerations that vary by individual and location. If you choose to explore these topics, please do so responsibly and with guidance from a qualified professional.
As human beings, we all have selves, parts, or subpersonalities, with selves being defined in Your Symphony of Selves (Fadiman and Gruber, 2020) as self-states, or recurrent patterns of mind-body chemistry, perception, cognition, intention, and behavior in a human being. These selves are real and often have agendas that conflict with common sense or the rest of our selves, and you can’t simply get them to go away or stop impacting your life by banning or exiling them.
If you are familiar with IFS (Internal Family Systems, created by Richard Schwartz), Voice Dialogue (pioneered by Hal and Sidra Stone), Psychosynthesis (founded by Roberto Assagioli), or the work of G.I. Gurdjieff, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, or Dr. Jean Houston and her notion of polyphrenia, then the idea of different subpersonalities, selves, minds, or parts will not be new to you. What distinguishes Your Symphony of Selves is our questioning of the assumption that we are all born with a single “self” that is our actual, true, real, essential, high, spiritual self. We find that this “single self assumption”—that we are or ought to be a single self—is a central yet largely unexamined cultural belief of modern Western culture. By setting this belief aside, we can see that throughout our lives we move through different patterns or constellations of selves. Instead of chasing the illusion of a single “true self,” we can recognize that we are—or can be—a symphony of harmonious selves, and thereby become healthier, happier, and more effective. Mental health, then, comes from being in the right mind at the right time.
When undertaking a psychedelic microdosing protocol—on the popular Fadiman protocol, for example, you have a dose day on every 3rd day, then after 6 or 8 weeks take off a couple of weeks—enhanced value and sense-making results from having a healthy-selves-informed perspective. In the beginning of the experience, on any given dose day, there may be some level of goal or intention setting, or inspirational focus. By adding in a healthy selves worldview, you can explore the different intentions and aspirations of your different selves. What might some of your different selves hope to get from microdosing? What beneficial changes might some of your parts help you achieve? If you journal, you can write down a few lines from the different perspectives of different selves and have fun with it. Or simply tune in mentally and emotionally to sense the ways different selves might benefit from your microdosing practice.
In the middle of the experience, real-time navigation on any given dose day can be amply assisted by an awareness of healthy multiplicity. If, for example, you are having a really great day and getting a ton done, you might at some point simply check in with your selves and see if there’s a part of you that would like to come out and play or that needs special attention.
What about getting “switched” into or stuck in a “triggered” self—the wrong mind at the wrong time? Typically, with microdosing, you may become more aware of your ordinary constellation of selves and the parts you move in and out of, and you might see some shifting of the emphasis in terms of which parts of you are dominant. But at the proper microdosing dose range, you’re very unlikely to get “stuck” in a difficult or dysfunctional self.
Finally, at the end of the psychedelic microdosing experience comes “integration,” which means taking the effects, experiences, and insights you’ve had and finding a way to fully ground them and incorporate them into your life. This can happen ongoingly, at the end of any given dosing day, or on a weekly schedule, or after a period of several weeks before taking off two or three weeks (which is what most microdosing protocols call for). Many people prefer journaling of some type to capture and reflect on the insights they’ve had, but speaking with a friend or coach will also do the trick.
For this integration process, a healthy selves worldview provides a powerful lens through which to evaluate and metabolize one’s experience. If you take the time to look at things from the perspectives of your different selves, you can learn a great deal about the totality of who you are and how your constellation of selves functions. Which of your parts or selves derived the most benefit from your microdosing? Which might have felt a little bit out and would like more attention as you continue to microdose or begin another round? It only takes a little bit of curiosity and time to explore the benefits of the healthy selves perspective when microdosing in this way, but doing so can yield valuable realizations.
An understanding of healthy human multiplicity is also one of the cornerstones of psychedelic macrodosing integration. Whether it’s solo work, a facilitated experience, or a shamanic initiation, an awareness of the healthy selves paradigm can prove enormously valuable. Since large doses can be difficult in intense, challenging, and deeply personal ways, having an awareness of the more useful map of the human being that the healthy multiplicity paradigm provides better prepares us to address whatever might arise.
Specifically, whether in the middle of a macrodose or in the integration come-down phase,
if something intense has arisen—a repressed trauma, a strong memory, a part of who someone is that they are not ordinarily aware of, or a self that is experiencing physical or emotional pain in real-time—the healthy multiplicity worldview enables the self in question to get the real-time attention, processing, and care that it needs. If you don’t understand or believe in the reality of selves, and a particularly unexpected, vivid, or controversial self comes to the fore, and the existence of that self becomes debated and its own issue, this will distract and detract from the ability to work effectively with this self in real-time by holding space for it, engaging in dialogue, and treating it with love and respect.
Your selves are real, unique, and have innate value, and can’t be suppressed forever. Understanding this gives you greater flexibility in seeing and working with them whether you are macrodosing or microdosing, and can lead to profound insights and significantly improve overall satisfaction and outcomes.
Jordan Gruber, JD, MA, founded the early online Enlightenment.Com community. After practicing law at Cooley Godward and focusing on IP law at NASA’s Moffett Field, and working at GNOSIS Magazine, Jordan became “the Practical Wordsmith,” a writer, ghostwriter, editor, and writing coach specializing in transformational modalities and practices. Jordan has helped create cutting-edge works on everything from forensic audio and financial services to health, wellness, psychology, and spirituality. Recent editing credits include Cindy Lou Golin’s The Shadow Playbook (2023), Scott Rogers’s The Mindful Law Student (2022), and Lawrence Ford’s The Secrets of the Seasons (2020).