Jon Stewart 'Would Love' To Try Microdosing Psychedelics

This article by Jon Stewart was originally published on Psychedelic Spotlight, and appears here with permission.

The comedian publicly expresses interest in the mental health treatment trend the same day as Paul Stamets' massive microdosing study results were published.

Add Jon Stewart to the long list of celebrities who are warming up to psychedelics as mainstream culture continues to embrace the mental health benefits of psychoactive substances. 

The comedian and former Daily Show host kicked off the most recent episode of his podcast, The Problem, with the proclamation: “I really wanna microdose!”

“I would love to,” he said in a conversation with the show’s head writer, Chelsea Devantez, who was also very enthusiastic about the practice of consuming regularly scheduled psychedelic doses so low that there is no noticeable impairment of the senses.

“Honestly, doesn’t it sound great? I kinda wanna do it,” Devantez said. “It cures your depression with just a tiny bit of shrooms.” 

“Hey, can we get a microdose for shrooms sponsor?” she asked, prompting Stewart to joke, “Today’s podcast is brought to you by psilocybin! Psilocybin: just don’t have it on an empty stomach.“

The conversation (at least what was included in the edit) was brief, and they quickly moved on to the subject of the day, the problem with guns and domestic abusers, but serves as just another example of the normalization of psychedelics that we’re seeing across the media spectrum.

If Jon Stewart is serious about his desire to give it a shot, he and Devantez could read our handy, 5-step guide to microdosing psilocybin. Since they’re both writers, the most essential component of a successful microdosing practice—journaling—should come pretty easily to them.

No matter how sincere Stewart was being in that moment about his desire to try microdosing psilocybin, the episode dropped this past Thursday, the same day as promising results of one of the most significant microdosing studies ever to be conducted were published in Scientific Reports.

It was the first to identify associations between microdosing and reduced severity of symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress among adults with reported mental health concerns. “The present results add to prior research that has identified positive associations between microdosing and mental health,” the researchers said after evaluating the microdosing practices, motivations, and mental health of self-selected microdosers and non-microdosers.

“Carefully controlled clinical trials are required to more confidently elucidate the potential risks and benefits of psychedelic microdosing, however, the present findings suggest that microdosing psychedelics does not appear to be associated with increased acute negative outcomes, even among potentially vulnerable groups such as those with mental health concerns.”

Although microdosing is an ever-growing trend, which even moms are getting on board with, evidence supporting the benefits—boosted creativity and productivity, reduced anxiety and depression—has been largely anecdotal thus far. However, more studies are underway to test the effectiveness and refine a practice that psilocybin advocate and mycelium expert Paul Stamets has fully endorsed. In fact, Stamets was one of the individuals involved in this most recent landmark study on the subject.

“Using @QuantCitizen app available at http://microdose.me, our team worked for more than two years gathering data on more than 8,000 people, and within this set there is a surprising balance of more than 4,000 non-microdosers compared to more than 4,000 microdosers,” he wrote on Instagram last Thursday with the link to the findings. “We hope this data will be useful for informing physicians in designing clinical studies.”

Meanwhile, in Oregon—the first U.S. state to legalize psilocybin for supervised medicinal use while decriminalizing psychedelics—a survey revealed 86% of adults interested in psilocybin services are interested in microdosing.