How microdosing led to ‘A Really Good Day’

Ayelet Waldman is candid personified. An eclectic author, essayist and screenwriter, she is no stranger to controversy by honesty. Known famously for her essay that stated that she loved her husband, novelist Michael Chabon, more than her kids and led her to pose a defence on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Waldman is known to write and speak unapologetically about things often left understated and unsaid. And once again, her latest book opens up an important but contested discourse: the conjunction of psychedelic drugs and mental health.

When Waldman found herself depressed, bogged down worse than ever by a mood disorder, she took a bold step to experiment with what she has called a misunderstood drug. The result is her tellingly titled book, A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage and My Life. This memoir captures her 20-day experiment of microdosing with LSD, a forthright discussion of her struggle to fight her disorder.

The mention of psychedelic drugs traditionally conjures up an image of altered mind-states, of counterculture and the hipsters, of hallucinations and the dangers. Beyond these conventions, however, a contrary trend is emerging, not amongst the alternative, but among working professionals going about their day: the ingestion of miniscule doses of psychedelic substances such as Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD) and psilocybin mushrooms. This ‘microdosing’ is an understudied but notably rising phenomenon that involves doses that are too small to induce perceptual changes and visuals, but merely enhance senses, aid daily work and anxiety, and, as preliminary research now indicates, have possible benefits for dealing with mental disorders.  

Waldman’s story details an unusual step in a contentious direction. It is a candid account, researched and informative, but most prominently personally insightful. Following the microdosing research by psychologist James Fadiman and procuring a vial of the magic liquid from an ultimately reliable “Lewis Caroll”, Ayelet Waldman began her month-long journey down the rabbit hole. For her, it was an attempt to relieve the suffering, and save her marriage and family, an attempt she deems preliminarily successful.

Here she speaks about the experience, psychedelics and mental health, the War on Drugs and the untapped medical potential, and her views about recreational psychedelics for her children. 

“I just decided to give it a shot one day. I said okay, well, I can’t feel worse, but maybe I can feel better.”

To begin with, how did this endeavour start? What led you to microdose?

Well, it started really from a place of desperation. I have a mood disorder. It’s a mild mood disorder, but closely related to my menstrual cycle. When I became premenopausal, I couldn’t take the medicine regimen that I had been using effectively until that time. Nothing was working, and I was getting more and more depressed, and eventually, I found myself sinking into a pretty intense depression, kind of the worst ever. My medications weren’t working.

I had been hearing a lot about [microdosing], and the research on psychedelics and depression was really compelling. So I just decided to give it a shot one day. I said okay, well, I can’t feel worse, but maybe I can feel better.

And you said in your book that you weren’t really into recreational drugs and certainly not counterculture…

I’ve used lots of drugs, but not recreationally. I’ve used marijuana, but medicinally. I used it a little bit in high school and college, but nothing like a lot of people I knew. I’ve used MDMA as a therapeutic tool with my husband, but recreational drug use is not my thing. I’m not interested in that. I don’t condemn people who do, but I just don’t find it interesting.

The dosing [here] is therapeutic. There are no sensory results, so there would be no recreational element to it; purely therapeutic. That was the only thing I really cared about.

Mental health is the big concern here. You mention in the book that medication really takes a toll on people, and there’s trial and error and adverse side effects. Would you say psychedelics have medical potential vis-à-vis current medication?

I think that they have tremendous potential. I don’t think that they are going to be ultimately profound. I think that the initial research seems to show that they are quite different in terms of side effects and profiles from SSRIs, but I don’t think that we’re really going to know that till we actually have some real research out there, which I am confident we are going to have soon.

I found it better than the medications that I have used. For me personally, it was better than the medication I used… I think it elevates mood, I don’t think it’s a stabiliser. There were definitely days when I felt more irritable than normal, but nothing like the antidepressants that I had been prescribed, which made me really irritable.

And were you apprehensive of any dangerous adverse effects?

I wasn’t, because there aren’t any really. Initially, I was quite [apprehensive] actually, because I had sort of bought this mythology about the dangers of psychedelic drugs. But if you actually do the research, LSD is among the safest.

Having been a Federal Public Defender and taught a course at UC Berkeley about the legal and social implications of the War on Drugs, you are quite familiar with the legal aspects of drug use. Were you worried about any legal consequences with your experiment?

Well, I was very worried as soon as Donald Trump became president, that’s for sure. I think Jeff Sessions is one of the most retrograde Attorney Generals we’ve had in a really long time. Everyone else in the world has reached the conclusion that the War on Drugs is ineffective, that it causes much more harm than it prevents, that it in fact enhances the chances of people using drugs, that it is responsible for the opioid epidemic, that the only people enriched by it are drug dealers. But Jeff Sessions, he’s never met a drug he didn’t want to criminalise. That made me very anxious, for sure.

What are your views on decriminalisation for mental health benefits and the War on Drugs?

Well, my view is that all drugs should be decriminalised. I think that criminalising drugs does nothing but make the problem of drugs worse. In terms of [mental health] specifically, I absolutely think that there is no doubt that we need to decriminalise psychedelic drugs and to begin a process of evaluation of their potential therapeutic effects. All of that research is complicated by the fact that it’s criminal.

“It didn’t make me better than I am, but it made it easier for me to be the best that I can be.”

Microdosing seems to be a rising trend, notably among working people at places like Silicon Valley for enhanced efficiency. Why do you think that might be?

It’s purely anecdotal, but I feel it makes it easier for you to focus and also makes you a little more creative. I’m a writer. My best days as a writer are creative days, and this allows me to access by best days more frequently. It didn’t make me better than I am, but it made it easier for me to be the best that I can be.

I think [the rising trend] has to do with everybody looking for a way to be better, stronger, faster. So I if your issue isn’t depression but your issue is looking for a way to enhance productivity and creativity, it can be really subjective. I’m just not very interested in it personally. I mean, sure, I think it’s great that my productivity and my creativity is enhanced, but really, I just want to stay alive.

A lot of our audience is young university students, and that’s an age people tend to be curious about recreational drugs. What would you say of drug experimentation at this age and time?

I have four kids, my oldest is 23, and my youngest is 14. My attitude towards drugs is probably different from the attitude of most parents, even though in my family, there are cases of drug abuse. I think that different drugs do different things, and there are drugs that are safer than other drugs. So when I’m talking to my kids about using drugs safely, I try to be very honest with them about what drugs are safer than others, how important it is to test your drugs so that you know that you’re actually taking what you think you’re taking, what you have to do if you are taking a certain drug to maximize your safety. We’re not a cloistered Amish family; my kids are growing up in Berkeley, California, in a community where there is plenty of drugs available. I know they’re going to smoke pot. So my agreement with them is that they’ll defer as long as possible.

The danger comes from hypocrisy, right? I feel like I’m more likely to keep my kids from developing a dangerous drug addiction by keeping the lines of communication open and giving them the kind of information that they can hopefully use to make good choices. I think that prohibition, just as its destructive to the country, is destructive to the family.

What has been your biggest takeaway from this experience?

My experience was overwhelmingly positive. It worked better than any medication I had tried in the past. For me, it was a complete vindication of the drug and of my experiment. Personally, I know that I felt better than I ever have in my life. I mean, if it was the placebo effect, I wish I could get it some other way. I wish I could take another sugar pill to give me the same results.

The only problem was that it’s illegal. There is no doubt in my mind that I would still be taking it if it were not illegal because it was so incredibly helpful. That being said, it was a trial and until there’s real research done on the drug in the dose that I was taking it, we can’t really assess whether my experience was, perhaps, the result of the placebo effect. We just won’t know until we do research that evaluates that.

This interview has been edited and condensed.