Translated from our German original by AI. The German text was researched, written, and edited by the Psychedelia Foundation team and remains the authoritative version.
Around 9.5 million adults in the United States microdosed psilocybin, MDMA or LSD at least once in 2025, roughly 3.7 percent of the adult US population. The figure comes from an analysis of the 2025 RAND Psychedelics Survey, which questioned 10,122 adults aged 18 and over in a probability-based, nationally representative sample between 9 September and 1 October 2025.
Psilocybin was the most widely used of the eleven substances covered. The researchers estimate that around 11.1 million adults used psilocybin in the past year. MDMA and MDA followed with around 4.7 million, Amanita muscaria (fly agaric) with about 3.5 million, ketamine with around 3.3 million and LSD with just under 3 million. The figures are self-reported and were extrapolated to the adult US population using population weights.
Among adults who used psilocybin in the past year, 69 percent reported microdosing at least once in that period. For MDMA the figure was 65 percent and for LSD 59 percent. That does not mean these people microdosed regularly: what the survey recorded was whether a quantity defined as a microdose had been taken on at least one day.
For psilocybin the researchers estimate around 216 million days of use within one year, about 102 million of them, roughly 47 percent, involving microdoses. For MDMA they estimate around 62.5 million days of use, about 26.5 million of them microdosing days. For LSD they estimate around 21 million days of use, about 8.6 million of them microdosing days.
The roughly 9.5 million microdosers are not the same group as the 11.1 million psilocybin users. The first number refers to people who microdosed at least one of the three substances, psilocybin, MDMA or LSD. The second covers everyone who used psilocybin, at any dose. Of the estimated 9.5 million microdosers, around 16 percent had microdosed more than one of the three.
RAND works with a broad definition of psychedelic substances, taking in MDMA, Amanita muscaria and ketamine alongside classic psychedelics such as LSD, psilocybin and 2C-B. The authors also note that the survey says nothing about the efficacy or health effects of microdosing, and that microdosing was asked about in detail only for psilocybin, MDMA and LSD.
