Thread: Microdosing Before Bed

Serotonergic psychedelics, like LSD, Psilocybin mushrooms, DMT, and mescaline would probably have more negative effects than good, even at threshold doses. The problem here is their specific neuropharmacology. All serotonergic psychedelics have something in common: they act as partial or full agonists of the 5-HT2A receptor (a serotonin subreceptor... the 5-HT stems from serotonin's chemical name 5-Hydroxytryptamine). Partial agonist functionally activates a receptor up to a certain threshold, at which point it stops the receptor from activating/firing. It still remains bound to the receptor, however, preventing serotonin from binding to the receptor and causing it to fire. Thus, it acts as an antagonist after that threshold is reached. A full agonist, of course, simply activates causes a neuron to fire. LSD is also an agonist at the dopamine D2 receptor, along with DMT at D1, and a1 and a2 (adrenergic receptors). Dopamine, Serotonin, Norepinephrine, Histamine, and for the most part, Acetylcholine are all part of the wakefulness promoting system of our brains. There is a sleep promoting system as well, and while being awake, they are constantly at odds with each other. When asleep, with the exception of dopamine (for what reason dopamine neurons continue firing is somewhat less understood despite dopamine's clear effects on wakefulness and stimulation) and acetylcholine in specific locations during REM sleep. Histamine, Norepinephrine, and Serotonin neurons go more and more silent during the night, seeing very modest rises in activity during REM sleep. Acetylcholine is just about the only neurotransmitter you can mess with out of this group and not suffer from sleeplessness or significant deficits in dream stability and being prone to waking up very easily, along with affecting the length of REM cycles and the suppression of REM sleep.

Along with the pharmacology fully supporting this, a psychedelic experience is typically very stimulating. I know you're talking about microdosing, but assuming there aren't really any of the negative repercussions I already discussed, it's likely you won't experience an advantageous and interesting novel dream experience either because of how little it's actually doing. Now, acetylcholine is where the money is at, provided you don't take so much of a substance that would increase or enhance acetylcholine neurotransmission that it is too stimulating, which would then cause the same issues the psychedelics or any stimulant would cause. The number of acetycholine neurons firing increases significantly during REM sleep, which is why you are more easily able to remember having a dream during REM sleep and the dream is more stable, lacking the nonsensical fragmentation of dreaming that takes place during NREM sleep. This is why people taking choline+galantamine experience such success with lucidity, dream stability, and recall. Choline is a precursor to acetylcholine, and galantamine is a nicotinic acetylcholine receptor allosterioc potentiating ligand (which means when acetylcholine is bound to a receptor, it increases the strength of the signal) as well as an inhibitor of the acetylcholinesterase (which is an enzyme that breaks extracelluar acetylcholine down).

If you want to experiment with substances that would help in a similar way to galantamine, look up nootropics. Most nootropics function in some way by increasing the neuronal firing of acetylcholine. If you do decide to experiment, just remember that the sought-after nootropic and dream effects reverse and actually get worse if you take too much (worse than if you hadn't taken anything), and can also lead to suicidality and depression. If you take the proper dosages though, you should see benefits.