Paul Stamets on health: what the evidence says · JRE #1385

“you add 100 to 200 milligrams of niacin. Now, if someone tries to get high by taking 10 times as much, they'll have like two grams of niacin. This is flushing niacin, vitamin B3. And that flushing niacin will give you such an irritable reaction of skin itching”

What the evidence says

Stamets is describing his self-created 'Stamets stack' (psilocybin, niacin, and lion's mane mushroom), a microdosing protocol he has promoted publicly but which has not been tested in any published clinical trial. The niacin flush reaction he describes is real and well documented: niacin doses in the gram range (well above the 100-200 mg microdosing amounts he cites) commonly cause a prostaglandin-mediated flushing, itching, and burning-skin reaction, and this effect is dose-dependent, per the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements. However, no peer-reviewed research has examined whether adding niacin to psilocybin functions as a deliberate abuse deterrent, and no clinical or pharmacological literature supports the specific mechanism or intent Stamets describes. The claim mixes an accurate, independently documented pharmacological fact (niacin flush is real and dose-related) with an unstudied, self-promoted behavioral hypothesis (that this flush reliably deters someone from taking a larger psilocybin dose). Current status: the flush mechanism itself is well-supported, but the abuse-deterrent framing and the broader 'Stamets stack' protocol remain unverified and unsupported by clinical evidence.

1. Niacin - Health Professional Fact Sheet · government