What is a baseline?

Your baseline is your personal "normal" — the default state of your mood, energy, cognition, creativity, sleep, and overall well-being when you haven't taken any psychedelic substance (or any other substance that significantly alters your state).

Establishing a clear baseline before starting a microdosing protocol is one of the most important — and most overlooked — steps in the practice. Without knowing where you started, you can't meaningfully assess where you've gone.

Why baseline matters

1. Objective assessment

Without a baseline, evaluating microdosing effectiveness becomes entirely subjective and vulnerable to bias. You might feel like microdosing is helping, but without data, you can't distinguish genuine improvement from expectancy effects, seasonal mood changes, or other confounding factors.

2. The moving goalpost problem

Human memory is reconstructive, not reproductive. After 4 weeks of microdosing, your memory of how you felt before will be distorted by how you feel now. A recorded baseline prevents this retrospective bias.

3. Identifying what actually changed

A detailed baseline helps you see which specific areas microdosing is affecting. Maybe your mood improved but your sleep didn't. Maybe your creativity spiked but your anxiety stayed the same. Without baseline data, these nuances are invisible.

4. Dose calibration

Your baseline is the control condition in your personal experiment. By comparing on-days, transition days, and off-days against your pre-protocol baseline, you can make informed decisions about dose adjustments.

How to establish your baseline

Duration

Track for at least 7–14 days before taking your first microdose. Two weeks is ideal — it captures natural day-to-day variation and provides a more reliable average.

What to track

Daily metrics (1–10 scale):

Mood
Energy
Focus / concentration
Creativity
Anxiety level
Social connection
Sleep quality (rate the previous night)
Physical well-being

Weekly metrics:

Overall life satisfaction (1–10)
Stress level (1–10)
Sense of purpose or meaning (1–10)

Qualitative notes:

General observations about your typical patterns
Times of day when you feel best/worst
Recurring thoughts or emotional themes
Physical health notes (chronic pain, digestion, energy patterns)

Tools

Spreadsheet — simple, flexible, good for data analysis
Tracking app (like MicrodosingDiary) — purpose-built, easy to use
Paper journal — great for qualitative observations

Important: Track honestly

Don't inflate or deflate your baseline to "leave room" for improvement. The whole point is an accurate snapshot of your current state.

Using your baseline

During your protocol

Compare on-day and off-day averages to your baseline averages
If on-day average mood is 6.5 and baseline average was 5.5, that's a meaningful signal
If the difference is less than 0.5, the effect may be within normal variation

Between protocol cycles

Has your baseline shifted after a complete cycle + rest period?
If your new baseline (measured during the break) is higher than your original baseline, microdosing may be producing lasting changes
If it returns to the original baseline, the effects may be acute only

When deciding to continue or stop

Compare your current baseline to your original baseline
This is the most honest measure of whether microdosing has made a lasting difference

Common baseline mistakes

Skipping it entirely — the most common mistake. Without a baseline, you're guessing.
Tracking for only 1–2 days — not enough to capture natural variation
Starting during an unusual period — illness, vacation, crisis, or major life events create an unrepresentative baseline
Being inconsistent — tracking at different times each day introduces noise
Forgetting qualitative notes — numbers alone miss the richness of your experience

Baseline