Psychedelics work on brain receptors that moderate serotonin but in a different capacity. They also increase glutamate, a chemical associated with cognition. Since LSD is now an illegal drug, there is no recent clinical research into its utility or its long-term effects. For now, microdosing remains the province of “biohackers”—those obsessed with trawling Reddit for ways to optimize their bodies. While Waldman is not a member of this community, her battle with premenstrual dysphoric disorder had her verging on suicidal, and she could no longer time her SSRIs to her menstrual cycle, as advised by her doctor, when she stopped getting her periods regularly.

Having read Fadiman’s book, she tracked down a dropper bottle of LSD from a friend of a friend, an elderly professor whom she calls “Lewis Carroll” in her book. The pages toggle between history and personal, with hilarious diary entries that read like Bridget Jones adapted for the neurotic Northern Californian.

Waldman, a former criminal defense attorney,is no longer using LSD for fear of being incarcerated. She now relies on nootropics (or “smart drugs”) and is writing about another hot-button issue: America’s poor record of believing rape victims, for a Netflix series she is working on with her husband. While putting on her makeup for a television meeting, she chatted on speakerphone about her life-changing experience under the influence.

How long ago did the events of the book take place?

I can’t tell you that and here’s why: There’s a statute of limitations on the possession of LSD. Before the election, I was like, “Oh, nobody is going to prosecute me, but [Attorney General nominee] Jeff Sessions. . . . Of all Trump’s appointments, Sessions is the one who scared me the most—okay, the environment, we’re all dead. [Laughs] But there was consensus that we needed drug reform; that’s gone now. I hired a criminal defense firm and I asked them, “What’s the worst that can happen?” They said most likely nothing will happen, but if the government wanted to prosecute me for possession of LSD, they could imprison me for something from three to eight months.I’ve been trying to figure out what my next book is. Damn you, Piper Kerman!

You describe a heightened ability to slow down and pay attention while microdosing. In the age of mindfulness mania, it’s funny to think about this woman in Berkeley practicing a very different sort of mindfulness.

Maybe it’s the exact same kind of mindfulness, but you just get it in a pill? We’re in this mindfulness craze but there is something to it. I’m currently in dialectical behavioral therapy—it’s like CBT [cognitive behavioral therapy] but there’s this concept of this four-part process that happens when you have stimulus. Let’s say, something on Twitter outrages you: You have emotion, then a thought, then an impulse to act, and then an action. What the microdosing allowed me to do is open up and have space between these components. Never before in my life was I able to have such impulse control. It’s hard talking about it; I miss it.