RAND survey: about 11 million US adults used psilocybin in 2025, and most past-year users microdosed
The RAND Corporation has published results from its 2025 Psychedelics Survey, a probability-based, nationally representative survey of 10,122 US adults fielded in September 2025. It is the most detailed national picture of psychedelic use to date, and the first to measure microdosing on a national scale.
Key findings
- Psilocybin was the most commonly used of eleven psychedelics measured, with an estimated 11 million adults using it in 2025, ahead of MDMA (4.7 million), Amanita muscaria mushrooms (3.5 million), ketamine (3.3 million), and LSD (3 million).
- Among past-year psilocybin users, 69% reported microdosing at least once; the figures were 65% for MDMA and 59% for LSD.
- An estimated 10 million US adults microdosed psilocybin, LSD, or MDMA in 2025.
- US adults reported more than 200 million days of psilocybin use in the past year, and nearly half of those days involved microdosing rather than full doses.
Why it matters
Federal surveys such as the National Survey on Drug Use and Health track hallucinogen use broadly but do not distinguish microdosing from full doses. RAND's findings suggest that a large share of psilocybin use in the United States is now sub-perceptual, which has implications for harm reduction messaging, for policy debates in states considering regulated access, and for research priorities, since controlled evidence on microdosing remains thin. The high prevalence of Amanita muscaria use is also notable, because that mushroom is toxicologically unrelated to psilocybin and carries different risks.