This Doctor Says LSD Makes You A Better Worker, So Work Is Gonna Be Super Interesting Tomorrow

Some say a healthy breakfast of a smoothie of lemongrass, kale, mango, chia seed, aloe vera and cayenne pepper provides you with plenty of energy and focus for your tasks. Meanwhile most agree that coffee is the best stimulant that will propel you through a tough Monday morning. A study is claiming that psychedelic drugs will assist you make your workday easier and more productive, but there’s a catch.

It was only a couple months ago that science claimed that psychedelics were as safe as playing soccer. Now there is another good doctor who contends that psychedelic drugs make people happier at their job (duh) as well as a more prolific worker, but only when taken in extremely small doses.

It’s called microdosing, and psychedelic researcher Dr. James Fadiman popularized the idea in his 2011 book The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide: Safe, Therapeutic, and Sacred Journeys.

Here’s a definition from AlterNet via Raw Story:

“Microdosing, refers to taking extremely small doses of psychedelics, so small that the affects [sic] usually associated with such drugs are not evident or are ‘sub-perceptual,’ while going about one’s daily activities. It’s being done by anyone from harried professionals to extreme athletes to senior citizen businesswomen, and they’re claiming serious benefits from it.”

The article suggests that a mere 10 to 15 micrograms can provide “increased focus, emotional clarity, and creativity.”

Fadiman gave a speech at the “Horizons: Perspectives on Psychedelics” conference in New York City in 2011, and explained the benefits of microdoses of LSD:

“The rocks don’t glow, even a little bit. But what many people are reporting is, at the end of the day, they say, ‘That was a really good day.’ You know, that kind of day when things kind of work. You’re doing a task you normally couldn’t stand for two hours, but you do it for three or four. You eat properly. Maybe you do one more set of reps. Just a good day.”

In the end, isn’t that what we’re all searching for, “just a good day?”

He claims that the participants in the study functioned normally in their work and relationships, but with increased focus, emotional clarity, and creativity. One physician reported that microdosing put him “in touch with a deep place of ease and beauty.” Woah, woah, woah. I don’t mind the sandwich artist at Subway downing some shrooms before his shift, but I’m not so sure that I’m on board with surgeons slicing me open as he’s tripping balls on LSD.

These results are not yet peer-reviewed.

An unnamed 65-year-old woman from San Francisco who has been microdosing with psilocybin mushrooms for 35 years told Phillip Smith at AlterNet, “I just took a tiny sliver and found that it made me alert and energized all day. I wasn’t high or anything; it was more like having a coffee buzz that lasted all day long. It makes my days so much better! My mood improves, my energy level is up, and I feel like my synapses are really popping. I get things done, and I don’t notice any side-effects whatsoever.”

The father of LSD, Swiss scientist Albert Hofman, is also a fan of microdosing and said, “LSD would have gone on to be used as Ritalin if it hadn’t been so harshly scheduled.”

There apparently is even enhanced performance for athletes who are microdosing. James Oroc, author of Tryptamine Palace: 5-MeO-DMT and the Sonoran Desert Toad, suggests, “LSD can increase your reflex time to lightning speed, improve your balance to the point of perfection, increase your concentration until you experience ‘tunnel vision,’ and make you impervious to weakness or pain.”

It all makes sense now, I always wondered how Bill Walton was so great.

[RawStory]