The CodexField ManualTolerance
Tolerance & Recovery
Psilocybin tolerance builds in hours and decays in days. This page explains the curve and lets you estimate where you stand after a recent dose.
⚠ Heuristic, not medicine
The model below is a community heuristic, not a clinical formula. Individual recovery varies. The number this page gives you is a guide, not a green light — and certainly not a substitute for the dosing basics.
§ 01How Tolerance Develops
Psilocybin acts primarily on the 5-HT2A serotonin receptor. After a single moderate-to-large dose, those receptors downregulate: the cell internalises them, and the concentration available for binding drops. The result is that a second dose taken the same day or the next produces a much smaller subjective effect — sometimes nothing at all.
The receptors return to baseline as the cell synthesises and re-presents them. The popular rule of thumb is a half-life of roughly three days: at day three, tolerance is about halved; at day seven, only about twenty percent remains; by day 14, recovery is functionally complete.
This timeline is a heuristic, not a measurement. The clinical literature on psilocybin tolerance is thin — most of what we think we know comes from reported experience and analogy to LSD. Frequent dosing, larger doses, and recent use of other classical psychedelics all extend the recovery curve.
§ 02Calculator
Inputs
Estimated state
Tolerance remaining
Equivalent dose today
2.92 g
To match the prior trip’s intensity.
Same dose, felt
1.37 g
If you re-took the prior dose today.
Dose multiplier
×1.46
Fully recovered in
9.0 d
Heuristic model: half-life 3 days, full reset at 14 days. Individual recovery varies.
§ 03Recovery Timeline
The model behind the calculator, expressed as a table. Day zero is the moment you took the prior dose; sensitivity is what fraction of a fresh-baseline trip you would experience if you re-dosed at that point.
| Day | Tolerance remaining | Subjective sensitivity | Dose multiplier |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 (immediate) | 100% | 0% | wait |
| 1 | 79% | 21% | ×4.85 |
| 2 | 63% | 37% | ×2.70 |
| 3 | 50% | 50% | ×2.00 |
| 5 | 31% | 69% | ×1.46 |
| 7 | 20% | 80% | ×1.25 |
| 10 | 10% | 90% | ×1.11 |
| 14 | 0% | 100% | ×1.00 |
§ 04Cross-Tolerance
The 5-HT2A pathway is shared with the other classical psychedelics. A recent dose of any of them blunts psilocybin to varying degrees, and a recent psilocybin dose blunts them. The calculator above assumes the prior dose was psilocybin; if it was something else, treat the timeline as a lower bound.
- LSDStrong cross-tolerance in both directions. A recent LSD trip blunts a psilocybin trip and vice versa for several days.
- MescalineCross-tolerance documented but less complete than with LSD; partial blunting for ~3–5 days.
- DMT (oral / ayahuasca)Some cross-tolerance reported via shared 5-HT2A pathway. Smoked DMT is widely reported to bypass tolerance, but the literature is thin.
- 2C-x family, NBOMesCross-tolerance expected via 5-HT2A; treat a recent dose of any classical psychedelic as functionally equivalent for tolerance purposes.
- MDMA, ketamine, cannabisDifferent receptor profiles. No meaningful psilocybin cross-tolerance, though acute interactions are a separate concern.
§ 05Practical Guidance
The honest answer to “how long should I wait?” is longer than the receptors need. Two weeks between meaningful doses is a defensible floor. Monthly or less often is what most careful users settle on.
Chasing the prior trip by multiplying the dose is the most common place a tolerance calculator goes wrong. If the prior trip was already the dose you wanted, taking a 2× equivalent on day three does not produce a 2× version of that trip — it produces a more scattered, body-loaded, less coherent version, with the same ceiling on insight. Tolerance to the subjective intensity recovers faster than tolerance to the side-effect load.
If the calculator tells you to wait, wait. If it tells you a 1.2× dose will match, consider taking the original dose instead and accepting a slightly milder experience.
§Sources & Further Reading
- PsychonautWiki — Psilocybin tolerance & cross-tolerance
- MAPS — Psilocybin research overview
- Madsen et al. (2019) — 5-HT2A receptor occupancy & subjective effects
The calculator’s exponential-decay model is a community heuristic with no rigorous clinical validation. If you find better evidence, the page is editable by community contribution — send it with a citation.