By Sarah Souli

Some years ago, standing in a Brooklyn kitchen surrounded by entirely legal mind-altering substances — ground coffee, bottles of wine, loose rolling tobacco — a friend of mine said something that’s been seared into my brain:

“Drugs are an integral part of the human experience.”

It was said so nonchalantly, by someone who doesn’t even like smoking weed, that I couldn’t come up with a single follow-up question. That one, simple statement removed the politics, economics, and social guilt associated with drug-taking. And, of course, she was totally correct.

"Dr. Ronald Siegel (1989) suggests that the human urge to intoxicate is so strong that it is the fourth most primal instinct after hunger, thirst and sex"

Wrote the authors of a 2007 University of Cambridge dissertation on the medical history of psychedelic drugs.

"He argues that people all over the world have historically always used psychoactive substances and that the desire to take mind-altering drugs is inherently programmed into our biology as a natural drive."

Psychedelic plants have been used by people in Mexico and Guatemala since at least 300 BC; much earlier, around 7000 BC, indigenous people in those areas built temples to mushroom deities. Australian aborigines, Amazon Indians, and Kalahari desert Bushmen all used pharmacological plants; over in the southwest United States, Navajo tribesmen smoked peyote during spiritual ceremonies.

For the past century or so, much of the conversation around drugs has been centered on how to curb this biological drive: all-natural and man-made psychedelics, such as LSD, magic mushrooms, MDMA, ecstasy, and ketamine were marked Class A illegal substances in 1971. (Ironically, these drugs were first used to treat depression). The U.S. spends an annual $78 billion on the so-called War on Drugs; in Mexico, militarizing the drug war has led to a dramatic increase in the country’s homicide rate.

In much of the world, people still hold derogatory images of drug users. Societal shame places the onus on drug-users — who now constitute about a quarter of a billion of the world’s population. “Under a prohibitionist regime, a person who uses drugs is engaging in an act that is illegal, which increases stigma. This makes it even easier to discriminate against people who use drugs, and enables policies that treat people who use drugs as subhumans, non-citizens, and scapegoats for wider societal problems,” notes the Global Commission on Drug Policy in a 2017 report.

But in the past few years, there's been a growing amount of interest - and acceptance - in recreational drug use in Western countries. Marijuana laws across Europe and North America have relaxed; Portugal (home to the House) decriminalized all drug use back in 2001.

Most interesting of all, there’s been renewed and enthusiastic interest in the use of psychedelics. Taking small amounts of psychedelics, known as micro-dosing, is treated as the "life hack du jour" in Silicon Valley.

Micro-dosing means that instead of consuming a full portion of a mind-altering substance, you take just a little bit, generally every three days. The term was introduced by American psychologist and researcher James Faidan in his 2011 book The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide. Low doses of psychedelics are meant for “problem-solving,” unlike moderate hits for therapeutic purposes, and large amounts for spiritual highs.

“Despite so much interest in the subject, we will don't have any agreed scientific consensus on what microdosing is - like what constitutes a 'micro' dose, how often someone would take it, and even if there may be potential health effects,” Professor David Nutt, Chair in Neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London told Newsweek in July. But while a minority of users report feeling anxious or sick, the majority of recreational users describe their micro trips with overwhelmingly positive emotions. (Nutt’s colleague at Imperial College, Robin Carhart-Harris, has been doing groundbreaking research on micro-doses in treating depression.) And a Leiden University study found that microdosing on mushrooms “allowed participants to create more out-of-the-box alternative solutions for a problem.”

“I’m generally more conscious of my environment, much more appreciative and grateful. In terms of thinking, I’m much more focused, my mind is calm and clear, very reflective, and I like to spend time with myself without feeling lonely,” one recreational user, who asked to remain anonymous, told the Journal. “In that sense I would say I think more creatively because I’m able to control my mind much more on an abstract, meta-level that allows me to put things into context differently.”

The most common drug to micro-dose (and the one Faidan has conducted the most research on) is LSD. The drug was discovered by Swiss chemist Dr. Albert Hoffman, who started microdosing in his 70s. He lived to be 102, and was still giving, by all accounts, lucid, multi-hour lectures in his 100th year. That’s one of the more interesting benefits of microdosing: it brings out qualities that are beneficial to the workplace.

“I’ll take some this Wednesday, because my business is expanding and I’m designing that day. Microdosing will help with the creative side,” a forty-year-old, UK-based woman named Chloe told The Irish Times. “I’ll take some on Thursday, because I’m trying to upskill one of my managers and it helps with my human interaction and empathy. But if I knew I was going to be sitting at home doing the bookkeeping and looking at spreadsheets for hours, I wouldn’t microdose — I’d get distracted.”

As microdosing becomes more mainstream, psychedelics are inching into the for-profit world. Synthesis, a start-up based in Amsterdam, leads legal, medically-supervised retreats for people who want to "catalyze creative breakthroughs" and "improve confidence."
U.S. and UK companies like Compass have made the news for securing FDA breakthrough medication status for psilocybin (a naturally occurring prodrug in mushrooms) in the treatment of depression. In Los Angeles and Silicon Valley, its increasingly common for execs and techies to take microhits of LSD to gain new insights into financial deals. But perhaps the biggest benefit from microdosing is outside of the capitalist cycle.

“A very common effect of microdosing, or psychedelics in general, is that people understand how nature teaches us to 'just be'
…This is very counter to our overly capitalistic view that seems to state: the more you produce, the more you’re worth,” Amanda Schendel, the leader of Women in Psychedelics and founder and CEO of The Buena Vida Psychedelic Retreats, told Girlboss earlier this year.

"We've learned that we have to earn love by somehow being worthy. Psychedelics teach us that we are love and can create it from within."

At the very least it’s something to think about with your Monday morning cup of coffee.

Sarah is a freelance journalist based in Athens. Her work has been featured in The New Republic, The Economist, The Guardian, Vice, and others. She is a contributing writer to the Journal of Beautiful Business.