Microdosing LSD - The Trendy Productivity Boost
Everybody’s suddenly talking about “Microdosing LSD” for higher productivity. Rolling Stone, VICE, Forbes, and Redditt have been all over the topic since late 2015. Time Magazine and The Huffington Post covered it early in 2016. I’m so out of the loop on trends in drug culture that I missed out until I read about it on Digg.com a few days ago.
Sarah Rense’s article “Should You Take Acid (a Very Small Amount) Before Work?: Micro-dosing is illegal. It's also really good for work flow.” - Just came out in Esquire Magazine on November 18 - http://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/health/news/a50825/micro-dosing-lsd-effectgs/
Rense says: “Micro-dosing LSD entails a thought process adjustment or a brain refresher, not a mind-altering hallucination trip. It has been floated as an alternative to Adderall: You get focus and clarity, with the added bonus of creativity, to produce a "flow" that improves efficiency.”
I have always shared Mr. Mackey's “Drugs are bad” school of thought, having watched too many people flush jobs and marriages down the toilet with a drug addiction.
I have also shared Cartman's negative views on hippie nonsense, which is what I assumed was all the glazed over marmalade sky descriptions of an expansion of consciousness really amounted to... But I'm one of the few who listened to Nancy Reagan and just said no to drugs. I've never tried any myself. So I admit I have little basis on which to judge the experiences of others - maybe I’m closed minded – maybe some people can handle mind-altering drugs and not increase the amounts until they’re hopelessly addicted.
Noreen Malone wrote an article at Marie Claire on November 17 titled “Why Power Women Are Micro-Dosing LSD at Work: It's a different type of career high. - http://www.marieclaire.com/culture/news/a23669/power-women-microdosing-lsd/
Malone describes a woman who said: “After some research, her husband bought psilocybin (psychedelic) mushrooms from a friend, ground them up with a Cuisinart spice grinder, and separated them into gel capsules ordered from Amazon. The dosage was precisely measured and precisely tiny: 10 micrograms for Smith's husband and about half of that for her, which is just below the threshold of what would normally make a user "trip." She took the homemade pill with a glass of water and waited. A few days later, she swallowed another one.
For the rest of the winter and into the spring, Smith (not her real name—she's concerned that the illegality of her self-medication could compromise her career) and her husband continued to take tiny doses of magic mushrooms every few days while going about their daily lives. Smith didn't see swirling wild colors or shifting shapes. She didn't feel as if the trees and sky were sparkling magically at her. She didn't imagine that she saw God. Instead—along with shaking off those winter blues—she became very, very efficient. "It gives you fresh eyes," she says, "for programming or figuring out algorithmic stuff. It made me really productive in a motivated way. Whatever mental block that was stopping me from doing something would disappear."
Alanna Kelter had an article in October called “Inside The World Of Microdosing With Magic Mushrooms & LSD” - http://www.collective-evolution.com/2016/10/05/inside-the-world-of-micro-dosing-with-magic-mushrooms-lsd/ - in which she wrote:
Microdosing is an emerging trend among young professionals, particularly amongst the Silicon Valley set. If you are unfamiliar with this term, it means to take small amounts of psychedelics during the day in order to enhance focus, creativity, patience, and connection to others. The purpose is not to get high — a microdose is roughly one tenth of what would be considered a full dose — and the benefits certainly seem to greatly outweigh any potential side effects.
Many people are taking prescription drugs for the same purpose, but these come with a lengthy list of side effects and often leave users feeling groggy and tired. The potential for addiction here is high, too.
But these issues are virtually nonexistent with magic mushrooms or LSD, and both drugs are thought to increase your overall mood and problem solving skills, while also reducing anxiety.
According to WIRED, who covered this story, proponents of micro dosing, “including software engineers, biologists and mathematicians – say that it induces a ‘flow state’, aids lateral thinking and encourages more empathetic interpersonal relations.”
History Of Microdosing
Albert Hofmann synthesized lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) in 1938 and took what is now considered the first intentional LSD trip in 1943. He regularly micro dosed during the last few decades of his life. Called the father of psychedelics, he lived to be 102 and found that consuming small amounts of LSD clarified his thinking, according to Dr. James Fadiman. Fadiman has been researching psychedelics since the 1960s and authored The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide, which recognizes that the practice of microdosing for those silicon Valley types is driven by the same impulse that leads otherwise healthy individuals to take prescription medications like Ritalin and Adderall — to gain a competitive advantage in business.
“What you get is the best parts of Adderall with none of the side effects. You function better physically and mentally. You find the office jerk bearable and you’re more compassionate about the flaws of others,” he says. “You feel you’ve had a pretty good day.”
I tried looking up the negative side effects of microdosing LSD – the problems, the health risks – but I’m not finding any articles mentioning problems. The drug is illegal, so most people who experiment with it (illegally) aren’t publicizing their results. Results are even more likely to go unreported if the results are problematic. The 10mg dose is too small to measure accurately through reasonable laboratory methods. Small doses which are almost too small to measure may also produce minimal and barely perceptible results – which makes the experiment of microdosing very susceptible to the placebo effect, in which users want and expect certain feelings so they create them internally and believe them to be a legitimate effect of the drug. As with any drug, including legal medications, there may be a tendency to increase the dosage and lengthen the period of usage – which could potentially take someone from experiment to addiction.
I’m not recommending this for anyone. But my brief online research suggests that those who microdose LSD consistently report mild positive effects similar to the boost of productivity and clarity and creativity one might expect from other legal stimulants. Which is far better than my initial “drugs are bad” mentality expected…