Believers say microdosing psychedelics helps them. Scientists are trying to measure the claims

Microdosing is gaining popularity with a new breed of health seekers. These self-experimenters take a very small amount of psilocybin mushrooms or LSD to try to reduce anxiety, stress and depression. Some claim the practice gives them access to joy, creativity and connection they can’t get otherwise.

This isn’t a full-blown acid trip — or even close. If you see visions, it’s not a microdose. People who microdose don’t do it every day. Instead, they take tiny doses intermittently, on a schedule or when they feel it could be beneficial.

One small study suggests any psychological benefits come from users' expectations — the placebo effect. But the science is still new and research is ongoing.

The substances are illegal in most places, but the wave of scientific research focused on the benefits of supervised hallucinatory experiences has spurred Oregon and Colorado to legalize psychedelic therapy. Further opening the door to microdosing, a handful of cities have officially directed police to make psychedelics a low priority for enforcement.

“I started microdosing and within a couple of months, I had a general sense of well-being that I hadn’t had in so long,” said Marine Corps combat veteran Matt Metzger.

He grows his own mushrooms in Olympia, Washington, where psilocybin has been decriminalized. Taking small amounts of psilocybin helps him cope with PTSD, he said.

In Loveland, Colorado, Aubrie Gates said microdosing psilocybin has made her a better parent and enhanced her creativity.

“It makes you feel viscerally in your body a new way of being, a more healthy way of being,” Gates said. “And so instead of just like thinking with your conscious mind, ‘Oh, I need to be more present,’ you feel what it feels like to be more present.”

These kinds of claims are hard to measure in the lab, say scientists studying microdosing.

For starters, belief is so important to the experience that empty capsules can produce the same effects.

In one study involving people who microdose, participants didn’t know until afterward whether they had spent four weeks taking their usual microdose or placebos. Psychological measures improved after four weeks for everyone in the study, regardless of whether they were taking microdoses or empty capsules.

“It appears that I was indeed taking placebos throughout the trial. I’m quite astonished,” wrote one of the study participants. “It seems I was able to generate a powerful ‘altered consciousness’ experience based only (on) the expectation around the possibility of a microdose.”

Scientists haven’t found lasting effects on creativity or cognition, according to a review of a handful of small placebo-controlled trials of microdosing LSD.

One small study did find glimmers of an effect of small LSD doses on vigor and elation in people with mild depression when compared with a placebo.

“It may only work in some people and not in other people, so it makes it hard for us to measure it under laboratory conditions,” said University of Chicago neuroscience researcher Harriet de Wit, who led the research.

The potential has spurred an Australian company to conduct early trials of microdoses of LSD for severe depression and in cancer patients experiencing despair.

Meanwhile, few rigorous studies of psilocybin microdosing have been done.

Psilocybin mushrooms are the most often used among psychedelic drugs, according to a report by the nonpartisan Rand research group. Rand estimates that 8 million people in the U.S. used psilocybin in 2023 and half of them reported microdosing the last time they used it.

Even microdosing advocates caution that the long-term effects have not been studied in humans.

Other warnings: Unregulated products from shady sources could contain harmful substances. And accidentally taking too much could cause disturbing sensations.

The nonprofit Fireside Project offers free phone support for people during a psychedelic experience and has received hundreds of calls about microdosing.

“People may call just to simply process their experience,” said project founder Josh White, who microdoses the plant iboga and LSD to “continue to deepen the insight about my life” that he gained in a full-blown psychedelic experience.

Balazs Szigeti of University of California San Francisco, who has studied microdosing, said it may be a way to harness the placebo effect for personal benefit.

“It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Szigeti said. “People who are interested in microdosing should give microdosing a try, but only if they’re enthusiastic about it, if they have a positive expectation about the benefits of microdosing.”

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Matt Metzger, a Marine Corps combat veteran, harvests and places Psilocybe cubensis mushrooms into a dehydrator to prepare for microdosing Wednesday, March 26, 2025, in Olympia, Wash. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Matt Metzger, a Marine Corps combat veteran, harvests and places Psilocybe cubensis mushrooms into a dehydrator to prepare for microdosing Wednesday, March 26, 2025, in Olympia, Wash. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Matt Metzger, a Marine Corps combat veteran, displays an instant rice bag used to grow mushrooms for microdosing psilocybin Wednesday, March 26, 2025, in Olympia, Wash. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Matt Metzger, a Marine Corps combat veteran, harvests a Psilocybe cubensis mushroom to dehydrate to make into powder for microdosing in capsules, Wednesday, March 26, 2025, in Olympia, Wash. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Psilocybe cubensis mushrooms grown to harvest for microdosing sit in a plastic box Wednesday, March 26, 2025, in Olympia, Wash. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Marine Corps combat veteran Matt Metzger harvests mushroom to dehydrate to make into powder for microdosing in capsules, Wednesday, March 26, 2025, in Olympia, Wash. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Capsules for microdosing psilocybin made by Marine Corps combat veteran Matt Metzger are pictured Wednesday, March 26, 2025, in Olympia, Wash. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Marine Corps combat veteran Matt Metzger, who grows his own mushrooms for microdosing psilocybin, displays prepared doses in packets Wednesday, March 26, 2025, in Olympia, Wash. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Marine Corps combat veteran Matt Metzger, who grows his own mushrooms for microdosing psilocybin, poses for a portrait Wednesday, March 26, 2025, in Olympia, Wash. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Marine Corps combat veteran Matt Metzger, who grows his own mushrooms for microdosing psilocybin, poses for a portrait Wednesday, March 26, 2025, in Olympia, Wash. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Marine Corps combat veteran Matt Metzger, who grows his own mushrooms for microdosing psilocybin, poses for a portrait Wednesday, March 26, 2025, in Olympia, Wash. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Matt Metzger, a Marine Corps combat veteran, displays Psilocybe cubensis mushrooms Wednesday, March 26, 2025, in Olympia, Wash. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Marine Corps combat veteran Matt Metzger poses for a portrait with a plate of mushrooms that he grows himself for microdosing psilocybin, Wednesday, March 26, 2025, in Olympia, Wash. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

NEW YORK (AP) — Sean “Diddy” Combs’ former girlfriend, the R&B singer Cassie, took the witness stand in his sex trafficking trial on Tuesday, a day after prosecutors showed jurors video of the music mogul beating her in a hotel in 2016.

Testimony in the trial began Monday. Prosecutors told jurors that, for years, Combs used his status as a powerful executive to coerce women into abusive sexual encounters and became violent if they refused.

Here's the latest:

Jealousy was cited during opening statements Monday as a source of much of what occurred between Combs and Cassie. Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Johnson elicited from Cassie that she and Combs were seeing other people at times.

In the beginning, Cassie said, she was “insanely jealous.” She said that resulted from being “super young.”

“I didn’t get that he was him. As he would say, ‘I’m Puff Daddy. Puff Daddy has many rules. Likes the company of women,’” she recalled.

She said that as time passed, she came to believe “more often than not” that they were in a monogamous relationship. “He expected that of me so I assumed it was the same.”

She said Combs told her: “I’m not dealing with anyone else. It’s just us.”

She said Combs would get abusive over the smallest perceived slights — if she wasn’t smiling at him the way he wanted, or if he thought she was acting like a brat.

“You make the wrong face and the next thing I knew I was getting hit in the face,” she said.

Cassie said that if she didn’t respond to his call right away, there would be incessant calls until she did and Combs’ staff, including security workers, would join in the pursuit.

The numerous photographs included a photograph of the boat in Miami. Another photograph depicted the fledgling couple at a strip club in New York on Halloween 2007, shortly after the trip to Miami. Another picture showed them in the back of a car at the beginning of their relationship, Combs arm wrapped around her.

“I was just enamored by him. We were just having a good time. It was really fun, at this point,” she said.

Cassie noted that, early on in their relationship, they weren’t public about it. She said Combs had expressed concerns about perceptions, given that his company was also producing her music.

After that, she said, she felt closer to the rapper and producer, started spending more time with him, and thought, at the time, that they were in a monogamous relationship.

In hindsight, she said, she knows that wasn’t the case. Asked why, she responded: “Sean Combs had many girlfriends.”

After the Las Vegas trip, Cassie said, she was invited by Combs to hotels in New York where they’d talk about music projects and albums.

When Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Johnson asked what else happened at hotels, Cassie took a deep breath and said she was introduced to the “idea of oral sex” at the hotels.

Cassie also noted that Combs is 17 years older than her and that she was “sexually inexperienced” when they first got together.

She said she eventually had sex with Combs on a boat during a trip to Miami. She said she had wine in the afternoon and then Combs introduced her to ecstasy for the first time.

After touching on the violence and “freak offs” that are central to the federal charges, Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Johnson returned to eliciting biographical and historical information about Cassie, including when she first signed to Bad Boy Records in early 2006.

She said her interactions with Combs, who owned the label, were platonic at first. But then he kissed her during her 21st birthday trip to Las Vegas in the bathroom of his hotel suite. “I was just really confused at the time,” she said. “And young.”

Elaborating on why she felt it was so difficult to refuse Combs’ demands, Cassie reiterated her fears of violence and blackmail videos from “freak offs” being disseminated on the internet.

“Sean is a really polarizing person, also really charming,” Cassie said. “It’s hard to really be able to decide in that moment what you need when he’s telling you what he wants. I just didn’t know. I didn’t know what would happen.”

She would take deep breaths and sometimes paused as she spoke.

When the prosecutor questioned her about “freak offs,” she said she was barely 22 when Combs first asked her to do them. She said she was “confused, nervous, but also loved him very much.”

Asked how she felt when Combs first proposed engaging in a “freak off,” Cassie said: “I just remember my stomach falling to my butt. Just the nervousness and confusion in that moment.”

She said she didn’t feel like she could say no to Combs because she “didn’t know what ‘no’ could be, or what ‘no’ could turn into,” which she said she learned could include violence and blackmail threats.

“Sean controlled a lot of my life, whether it was career, the way I dressed, everything, everything. I just didn’t have much say in it at the time,” Cassie testified.

“Freak offs” were the highly orchestrated sex parties which she said stemmed from Combs’ interest in voyeurism. They would entail hiring an escort and “setting up this experience so that I could perform for Sean,” Cassie said.

Shown still images from the now-infamous 2016 security camera footage of Combs beating her at a Los Angeles hotel, Cassie said prior to the altercation: “We were having an encounter called a ‘Freak Off’ and I was leaving there.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Johnson started questioning of Cassie by asking her age, which is 38, and her occupation, which she said is “musician, an entertainer.” She said she was in a relationship with Combs for just over 10 years.

Cassie testified that her relationship with Combs ran the gamut from good times to arguments and physical altercations.

“If they were violent arguments, it would usually result in some sort of physical abuse and dragging, just different things,” Cassie told jurors.

She testified that Combs would mash her head, drag her, kick her and stomp her in the head when she was down.

Asked how frequently Combs became violent with her, Cassie softly responded: “Too frequently.”

A judge ruled that her husband, Alex Fine, can be in the courtroom for most — but not all — of her testimony.

Judge Arun Subramanian, acting on a defense request, said Fine must leave the courtroom when questioning turns to Cassie’s allegation that Combs raped her in 2018.

That’s because Combs’ lawyers say they may call Fine as a witness later in the trial in an attempt to discredit Cassie’s allegation.

Prosecutors argued that Fine is part of the emotional support system for Cassie, who’s pregnant with their third child and should be in the courtroom when she testifies.

In open court, a lawyer for Combs asked that Cassie’s husband not be allowed in the courtroom while she testifies because he might be called as a witness.

Combs’ trial resumed Tuesday with the hip-hop mogul’s lawyer questioning Daniel Phillip, a male stripper who says he was paid to have sex with Cassie while Combs watched.

Defense lawyer Xavier Donaldson pointed to Phillip’s past statements to federal prosecutors as he attempted to show inconsistencies in his recollection of events. Donaldson finished his cross-examination after suggesting Phillip had developed a crush on Cassie and wanted to isolate her from Combs so he could be with her romantically. Phillip denied that but admitted: “I was attracted to her. If she ever gave me the chance to date her, I absolutely would have.”

Once Donaldson was finished, a prosecutor asked Phillip more questions, underscoring the witness’ earlier testimony that it was Combs who directed his sexual activity with Cassie.

Judge Arun Subramanian acknowledged that in his opening remarks about whether sexually explicit videos and images expected to be shown to the jury during testimony by R&B singer Cassie should be viewed by members of the media.

He said that while a lot had been handled under seal before the trial, “we are now in trial and there is a heightened First Amendment concern.”

During the discussion about whether sexually explicit videos should be available for viewing by members of the media, attorney Robert Balin told the judge on behalf of media outlets that news organizations weren’t interested in reporting “something salacious” and were not seeking copies of the exhibits.

He also suggested as an alternative that a group of pool reporters could be allowed to view the exhibits.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Johnson argued against letting media outlets see sexually explicit videos, saying there was good legal precedent to keep such materials out of the public record.

Combs’ attorney, Marc Agnifilo, said there was no aspect of the videos that was not “in the nature of adult pornography.” He said they all contained images of people who are nude having sex or about to have sex.

On behalf of news outlets, attorney Robert Balin told the judge the First Amendment is “at a zenith” in this type of case and that it was important that the “people, though the press, be able to see justice is being done.” He said the best evidence of whether sexual acts that were recorded were coerced — as prosecutors allege — was the videos themselves.

Cassie, a key prosecution witness expected to testify Tuesday, met Combs in 2005 when she was 19 and he was 37. He signed her to his Bad Boy Records label and, within a few years, they started dating.

In her 2023 lawsuit, Cassie alleges Combs trapped her in a “cycle of abuse, violence, and sex trafficking” for more than a decade, including raping her and forcing her to engage in sex acts with male sex workers. Combs settled the lawsuit the next day.

Among other things, Cassie alleges Combs raped her when she tried to leave him and often punched, kicked and beat her, causing injuries including bruises, burst lips, black eyes and bleeding. She also alleges that Combs was involved in blowing up rival rapper Kid Cudi’s car when he learned Cudi was romantically interested in her, and she alleges that Combs ran out of his home with guns when he learned Suge Knight, a rival producer, was eating at a nearby diner.

Judge Arun Subramanian says he’s inclined to grant a request by media organizations to view what a defense lawyer described as pornographic videos that will be shown to the jury as evidence in the case.

But he’s giving the parties another day to make submissions on the matter. The judge says he needs to balance privacy issues of the witnesses and defendant with the rights of the public to know what’s happening during the trial.

Since his September arrest, Combs has been held at a federal jail in Brooklyn.

Judge Arun Subramanian has granted Combs permission to wear regular clothes in court, instead of jail garb.

He is allowed up to five button-down shirts, five pairs of pants, five sweaters, five pairs of socks and two pairs of shoes without laces.

On Monday, he sported a gray sweater and a white button-down shirt. Because hair dye isn’t allowed in jail, his normally jet black mane is now mostly gray.

Under federal court rules, no photos or video of the trial will be allowed. Courtroom sketches are permitted.

Testimony will continue with the cross examination of a male stripper who says he was hired by Combs and his girlfriend — R&B singer Cassie — to have sex with Cassie while Combs watched and sometimes directed what should happen.

A defense lawyer said he expects to question the witness, Daniel Phillip, for about an hour.

Daniel Phillip is set to retake the stand when court reconvenes on Tuesday.

Phillip told jurors that Combs was coy about his identity when they first met in 2012 at a Manhattan hotel.

The rap star wore a ball cap, obscured his face with a bandana and claimed to be in the importing and exporting industry, Phillip said.

The witness testified that it wasn’t until a subsequent encounter at a different hotel when Combs revealed who he was, answering the door in a suit and peacoat.

The judge presiding over the racketeering and sex trafficking trial of hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs said last week there was no evidence to back up his lawyers’ claim he was treated differently because of his race.

Judge Arun Subramanian said Combs had shown no evidence of discriminatory effect or intent based on his race, when his lawyers made their arguments in Manhattan federal court in February. In a separate written opinion, the judge also refused to suppress evidence in the case.

The lawyers had written that the prosecution was unprecedented because, “most disturbingly, no white person has ever been the target of a remotely similar prosecution.”

The judge agreed with arguments by prosecutors that the extent of criminal conduct by Combs from 2004 to 2024 — when he was alleged to have overseen a racketeering enterprise that enabled him to sexually abuse women — was enough to separate the case against him from other prosecutions.

“It’s the severity of what Combs allegedly did — not his race — that mattered,” the judge wrote.

▶ Read more about the judge’s ruling

Another possible topic for discussion between attorneys and the judge this morning could arise over an argument by media organizations that some recordings to be shown to the jury involving sexual activity should not be sealed.

The media outlets include ABC, CBS, NBC, The Associated Press, Business Insider, National Public Radio, Newsday, The New York Times, the New York Post, Reuters, New York Magazine and The Washington Post. The plan was for the jury to view the recordings, but not the public.

The media outlets say a viewing of the recordings is necessary because they could play a “central role” in determining the guilt or innocence of Combs. Lawyers for him say the sexual activity is a glimpse into the swingers lifestyle and not evidence of crimes.

A lawyer for R&B singer Cassie, who’s expected to testify Tuesday, opposed the media request, saying the news organizations cited no legal precedent for unsealing “videos depicting coercive sex acts.”

Lawyers for the three-time Grammy winner say prosecutors are wrongly trying to make a crime out of a party-loving lifestyle that may have been indulgent, but not illegal.

Prosecutors say Combs coerced women into drugged-up group sexual encounters he called “freak-offs,” “wild king nights” or “hotel nights,” then kept them in line by choking, hitting, kicking and dragging them, often by the hair.

The prosecutor said Combs last year brutally beat another woman — identified only as Jane — when she confronted him about enduring years of freak-offs in dark hotel rooms while he took other paramours on date nights and trips around the globe.

The sex parties are central to Combs’ sexual abuse, prosecutors say. Combs’ company paid for the parties, held in hotel rooms across the U.S. and overseas, and his employees staged the rooms with his preferred lighting, extra linens and lubricant, Johnson said. Combs compelled women, including Cassie, to take drugs and engage in sexual activity with male escorts while he gratified himself and sometimes recorded them, Johnson said.

▶ Read more about the allegations

But the lawyers are supposed to meet a half hour earlier to resolve any last-minute legal issues in advance of testimony from the government’s star witness: R&B singer Cassie.

She’s likely to begin testifying by midday. Cassie, whose legal name is Casandra Ventura, was intertwined with the hip-hop power broker for 11 years. Her lawsuit and allegations of sexual abuse in 2023 ignited the scrutiny that led to federal charges.

The public knew Combs as a larger-than-life music and business mogul, but in private, he used violence and threats to coerce women into drug-fueled sexual encounters that he recorded, a prosecutor said Monday in opening statements at Combs’ sex trafficking trial.

”During this trial you are going to hear about 20 years of the defendant’s crimes,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Johnson told the jury.

Those crimes, she said, included kidnapping, arson, drugs, sex crimes, bribery and obstruction.

Combs’ lawyer Teny Geragos, though, described the closely watched trial as a misguided overreach by prosecutors, saying that although her client could be violent, the government was trying to turn sex between consenting adults into a prostitution and sex trafficking case.

Geragos conceded that Combs’ violent outbursts, often fueled by alcohol, jealousy and drugs, might have warranted domestic violence charges, but not sex trafficking and racketeering counts.

▶ Read more about the first day of the trial

Witnesses began testifying this week in the trial for one of the biggest music moguls and cultural figures of the past four decades.

The trial is expected to last at least eight weeks in all. Here’s a look at some of the details:

The R&B singer Cassie could testify as soon as Tuesday in Combs sex trafficking trial, as the Bad Boy Records founder faces charges that he orchestrated a deviant empire of exploitation that forced women into drugged-up sex parties called “freak-offs.”

Cassie, whose legal name is Casandra Ventura, has been at the center of Combs’ stunning downfall. She sued him in 2023, alleging years of abuse. A surveillance video made public last year showed Combs beating her at a Los Angeles hotel in 2016. CNN aired the video last year, leading Combs to apologize.

The video, which was played for jurors, shows Combs wearing only a white towel, punching, kicking and dragging Cassie in a hotel hallway.

Israel Florez, a former security officer at the hotel, testified Monday that he came across Combs while responding to a call about a woman in distress, and found Combs sitting in a chair with “a devilish stare.” Florez said Combs offered him a stack of money and said “Don’t tell nobody.”

▶ Read more about the trial so far and Cassie’s expected testimony

Sean Diddy Combs, left, stands as his defense attorney, Teny Geragos, gives her opening statement to the jury on the first day of trial in Manhattan federal court, Monday, May 12, 2025, in New York. (Elizabeth Williams via AP)

Sean Diddy Combs listens during opening statements on the first day of trial in Manhattan federal court, Monday, May 12, 2025, in New York. (Elizabeth Williams via AP)