A Really Good Day(15)

There’s a story my husband tells about me, how, late one night in Los Angeles, we were driving up a nearly deserted street when we saw a car pulled half on the sidewalk, its doors gaping open. A man and a woman were struggling beside the car. I screamed at my husband to pull over. Before he had even rolled to a stop, I was out of our car and reaching out a hand to the woman.

“Do you need help?” I asked her.

“Yes!” she said.

Her husband shouted, clawed at her, but I grasped her hand in mine and yanked her free. Then I pushed her into our car and jumped in behind her. I was eight months pregnant.

That is definitely something my mother would have done. I’m proud of helping that woman. I’m proud that, like my mother, I have tried to integrate public service into my career and my life. And yet the characteristics I share with my mother, even the most positive ones, have always worried me. Competent, reliable, and helpful far too easily topple into pushy and critical (as my children would attest). In thinking about my relationship with my mother, I realize that that anxiety has colored—even damaged—my relationship with her. My own insecurity and self-loathing have somehow become all knotted up with my feelings toward her. Fearing our similarities has made me occasionally ungenerous with her, overbearing when I should be compassionate, distant when I should be engaged. I’m always willing, even eager, to help and advise her, but before today I rarely just listened to her, without judgment.

The ease with which I was able today to express compassion and concern without trying to push a solution on her is surprising. I wonder, is it possible that the LSD is making me a better listener?





* * *




* ?Okay, more than a little. A lot bossy.





Day 5


Transition Day

Physical Sensations: None.

Mood: Started out activated, but calmed down.

Conflict: At first a little prickly, but nipped it in the bud.

Sleep: Woke early but felt well rested.

Work: Worked well. Not in the flow, but not struggling, either.

Pain: Almost none!





Today, though I woke up feeling a little irritable, I managed to assert control before losing my temper with the kids or flaming anyone on the Internet. Impulse control? Me? Can this really be happening?

My persistent failure to control my impulses is one of the main reasons I keep trying different therapies. I want to increase the time between psychological trigger and reaction. I need only as long as it takes to take a single breath, enough of a hesitation to activate my superego and soothe the immediate agony of id. A moment to stop and ponder the question: what is the sensible reaction to this provocation, not the most pleasurable?

Having grown up in a family of yellers, I am far too prone to top-volume reactions to provocation. My mother yelled at me; I yell at my kids. I’ve always thought it was merely a conditioned response, but I have lately come to realize that I do it because I enjoy it. The yell, the angry e-mail, the snarky tweet, the sarcastic comment, all provide a momentary release of tension that feels really good. It is like the joy of scratching an itch until it bleeds. The pain is the point. It erases the irritation. For a moment. But then the itch returns, worse than before, and soon you’re wearing long pants in August because you’ve got scabby legs.

On the first day of this experiment, when I felt I was noticing the world around me in more detail, I had an idea that the microdose of LSD might be slowing me down in the best possible way. I hoped that, as it heightened my ability to pay attention to my surroundings, it might also help me become capable of resisting the impulse to act. Isn’t that exactly what mindfulness promises? By paying attention, we will increase our self-control. We will find ourselves able to stop and think.

This morning, when I managed, despite feeling irritable, not to blow up at anyone, I began to believe that, though it’s obviously too early to tell, it’s at least possible that my hopes will be realized. The question, or at least one of them, is how.

I turned to a psychopharmacologist to find out what is going on in my brain when I consume the microdose. He told me that LSD is an agonist, a stimulator, of the 5-HT2A serotonin receptor. Antidepressants also act on 5-HT receptors, including 5-HT2A, but they work by inhibiting the reuptake of serotonin, causing it to remain in synapses longer. Because serotonin is one of the neurotransmitters thought to be most closely linked with feelings of wellbeing and happiness, the theory behind SSRIs is that having serotonin sit around longer, with your synapses marinating in it, makes you feel better. By contrast, when a psychedelic drug stimulates 5-HT2A receptors, that leads to the stimulation of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), which my psychopharmacologist friend described as “like Miracle-Gro for your brain. It stimulates growth, connections, and activity.” A psychiatric researcher described the neurological effects of LSD to me this way: “By activating the 5-HT2A receptor, you increase the transmission of glutamate.” Glutamate is the neurotransmitter most responsible for brain functions like cognition, learning, and memory. Though they’re talking about two different substances in the brain, the two doctors are essentially saying the same thing. BDNF and glutamate are interrelated. Psychedelics enhance neuroplasticity, the ability of the brain to grow and change, by increasing the level of BDNF in the brain and by increasing glutamate activity.

Can this enhanced neuroplasticity, this stimulated growth and connectivity, be what’s causing me to be less impulsive? Rather than slowing me down, can it be making me more reflective and thus better able to control my anger? Can that be what’s making me feel better? Two Swiss researchers at the Neuropsychopharmacology and Brain Imaging Research Unit at the University Hospital of Psychiatry in Zürich published a paper in 2010 that suggests that this is possible. In “The Neurobiology of Psychedelic Drugs: Implications for the Treatment of Mood Disorders,” Franz X. Vollenweider and Michael Kometer reviewed forty years of LSD, psilocybin, and ketamine research in the context of “modern concepts of the neurobiology of psychiatric disorders.” They concluded that psychedelics may well be useful in treating mood disorders, depression, OCD, and anxiety. A British feasibility study published in the Lancet in the spring of 2016 found that psilocybin not only reduced depressive symptoms but also anxiety and anhedonia.*1