A Really Good Day(5)

I read Fadiman’s memo, I reread his book, I researched, and I considered. The idea of becoming a “self-study psychedelic researcher” felt ridiculous. I am the mother of four children. I am, to use my children’s gibe, “totally basic.” I wear yoga pants all day, I post photos of particularly indulgent desserts on Instagram. I am the mom surreptitiously checking her phone at Back to School Night, the woman standing behind you in Starbucks ordering the skinny vanilla latte, the one getting a mammogram in the room next to yours, the one digging through her too-full purse looking for her keys while you wait impatiently for her parking spot. I am a former attorney and law professor, a law-abiding citizen. A nerd. If a cashier hands me incorrect change, I return the excess. I don’t cheat on my taxes, don’t jump the turnstile in the subway, don’t park in handicapped spots. I write and lecture on the criminal justice system; I don’t regularly commit crimes.

But I was suffering. Worse, I was making the people around me suffer. I was in pain, and I was desperate, and it suddenly seemed like I had nothing to lose. I decided to try a one-month experiment. I would follow James Fadiman’s protocol, taking a microdose of LSD every three days. I would carefully track the results, keeping notes of the effects. Because I am a writer, I would write these notes up in a form that might be useful not just to myself or to Fadiman, but to others curious about the potential therapeutic uses of microdosing. I would also use this month to learn more about psychedelic drugs and to think deeply about what brought me to try something so unusual, so desperate. A single month out of fifty years. What harm—or what help—could there be in that?





* * *




*1 ?Lately, we’ve started going to a more traditional kind of couples therapy, in which we each try to recruit the therapist to take our side against the other. She’s annoyingly neutral—Switzerland in sensible shoes.

*2 ?The single audience member, a malodorous gentleman slumped in a rear seat, woke up halfway through the reading, gazed at me with pity, and trundled his shopping cart heaped with beer bottles out the door.

*3 ?Other than the time I was fired for cursing out a sexist boss. But I’d waited until my last week of work before taking on the guy. He was such a complete and utter shitheel that I consider that experience an example of forbearance rather than (or perhaps in addition to) loss of control.

*4 ?Incidentally, alcohol seems to act on the same receptors, so a glass of wine can have the same effect. As appealing as was the idea of spending a week of every month in a mild state of inebriation, I opted for the pills.

*5 ?Or maybe the mushrooms weren’t magic at all. I didn’t hallucinate, and who wouldn’t become dizzy spinning on a tire swing? It’s possible that all I ate was a handful of dried shiitakes dipped in cow manure.

*6 ?The safety range is the span of difference between a therapeutic dose and a toxic one. If the safety range is narrow, then someone can easily overdose.





Day 1


Microdose Day

Physical Sensations: Heightened awareness.

Mood: Excited. Nervous. Delighted.

Conflict: Who, me? Even the idea seems absurd.

Sleep: Hard time falling asleep. Woke up early.

Work: Astonishingly productive, lost track of time.

Pain: My shoulder—frozen for the past year and a half—is killing me.





Today I took my first microdose. My senses are ever-so-slightly heightened, a feeling all but unappreciable, so perhaps it’s psychosomatic, though that word carries little meaning when anything that might be happening to me right now has inevitably to do with the interaction of mind and body. I feel a tiny bit more aware, as if my consciousness is hovering at a slight remove, watching me tap the keys on my keyboard, rub my ankles together, sip a mouthful of tea and swallow it. The trees look prettier than usual; the jasmine smells more fragrant.

It suddenly occurs to me that I feel mindful, a feeling I have tried to achieve through meditation, though I always come up with zip. I am finding it a little bit easier to notice both my thoughts and my body moving through space. Though, even as I write this, I fear the sensation has passed.

Even more thrillingly, for the first time in so long, I feel happy. Not giddy or out of control, just at ease with myself and the world. When I think about my husband and my children, I feel a gentle sense of love and security. I am not anxious for them or annoyed with them. When I think of my work, I feel optimistic, brimming with ideas, yet not spilling over. There’s nothing hypomanic about this mood. My mind is not racing. I feel calm and content. Surely, the results cannot be evident so quickly? This is, in all likelihood, nothing more than the placebo effect. But even if it is all in my mind, even if the mood passes, I am grateful for this respite.

When I woke up this morning, I crept out of my house to the place where I hid the little cobalt blue dropper bottle that contains my microdose of diluted LSD. Careful not to hold it up to the light (LSD degrades when exposed to ultraviolet light—ironic, considering all the black-light posters users have stared at while feeding their heads), I shook the bottle a few times, filled the dropper, and carefully deposited two drops under my tongue.

This was certainly not the first time I had tried an illegal drug, though I have never been what you would call a regular drug user. I smoked marijuana a few times in high school, a dozen or so times in college, once or twice as an adult, and then not again until I was prescribed medical marijuana (I live in California), first to end my dependence on the sleeping pill Ambien and then to ease the pain of a frozen shoulder. I have used MDMA six or seven times.*1 In college, I tried cocaine twice, and those mushrooms that purported to be magic once. All together? More than some people my age, less than Presidents Obama and Bush.