My co-worker and I decided to try microdosing LSD after reading on the internet that it makes you more productive, creative, energised, less anxious, and nicer to be around. We also heard from a friend of a friend who told us that microdosing on acid was the only thing that helped his chronic back pain, and that he took it every day. Other people say that they microdose acid for depression and anxiety. You take a tiny amount - around a tenth of a regular acid trip - so that you don’t feel any of the psychedelic effects normally associated with the drug.

Ayelet Waldman, a novelist and former federal public defender, wrote about her experience microdosing LSD for the New York Times. She claims that it helped her through a bout of depression, enhanced her “mental equilibrium,” and saved her marriage.

We had both taken acid several times in the past, and enjoyed it, so we didn't think anything bad could happen. We got some acid off a friend and gave it a shot. We didn’t even try it at home first - we went straight to trying it at work. Here’s what happened:

Sheila

The first day we tried it I woke up feeling pretty ok. I took the microdose at 8:40 in the morning. At 10:40 I felt normal, but by 11 I think I was feeling something. I felt good but not in a trippy way. When I was talking to my co-worker I felt slightly overwhelmed emotionally, but it’s difficult to know how much of this is psychosomatic. I did a whole lot of boring paperwork I’d been putting off for a long time. When I got home I felt like waves of love and affection were flowing out of me towards my boyfriend, which happens sometimes, but not all that often.

I am lucky and don’t suffer from depression or an anxiety disorder, so I don’t know if the acid affected me in same way it might have affected somebody with one or both of those things. I tend to be quite hyperactive anyway, so I’m not sure if I got a boost in energy or not. It could have just been psychosomatic. There were times, about an hour after I’d taken my microdose, that I found myself getting creepily enthusiastic in a meeting or conversation, or over excited about my work. As far as I know, my workmates didn’t notice me acting differently on the days I had taken the microdoses, though some of them knew we were trying it out.

We took the acid every three or four days for about two months. I don’t know if my overall productivity went up or not. Some days I’d get a tiny rush off the acid, and go home feeling like I had had one of the best days of my life. Other times it didn’t seem to do anything much at all.

Sometimes, rather than feeling relaxed and creative, I felt anxious and sweaty.

We examined the tabs of acid we were snipping our microdoses off. They were pale pink and slightly blobby looking. We thought perhaps the distribution of acid on the blotting paper was uneven, and that some of our microdoses may have been ineffective or not real. We started thinking we were wasting what could have been a couple of proper trips.

I decided to take a bit more acid at home one day to see if it was real, and not just a tiny bit of paper. I took about a 6th of a tab. Things started out fine. I did some housework and began folding my laundry. Then it got weird. I wasn’t exactly tripping, but I did feel an unhealthy closeness to the clothes I was folding. It felt like we were connected. My folding slowed way down. I stopped and took some photos of some of my folding. Then I had to lie down for a bit.

I concluded that it was, indeed, real acid we’d been taking. I picked up my phone, went on Youtube, and searched for “trippy” videos. I watched them for a long time, and found many of them overwhelming.

I don’t know from our thoroughly unscientific experiment if microdosing acid is something I’d recommend, but I would like to keep doing it myself in the future. The bursts of energy and well-being were nice, if inconsistent. I’m writing this on a microdose of acid and I feel fantastic.

Gary

I came into work one day and my co-worker proposed trying microdosing. After doing some research on it (read: consulting the Reddit community) I approached the microdose experiment in much the same way as I approached my first trip on LSD: anxiously and with trepidation. I wasn’t so much afraid of the unknown, like I was on my first actual trip, but more the fact that we were taking it at work. It made my palms sweaty and mind run wild with the thought of what might happen.

30 minutes after taking it I had an internal debate about whether what I was feeling was psychosomatic or the LSD taking hold for real. I was overcome with a feeling of excitement as the nerves took a back-seat. I was thoroughly engaged in what I was doing; I felt motivated and intrigued by the banal activity I was doing, something I had experienced on few occasions before, and I put that down solely to the effects of the microdose.

Some of the other days I felt significantly less happy with it. When I was hoping to make use of it, it let me down and felt overwhelming, distracting, and impairing. During those periods I got no work done and had to catch up with what I’d missed in the days in between our doses, which were roughly every three days.

I’ve heard some people claim that microdosing has revolutionised their lives and, while I tend to be skeptical when it comes to such claims, the overall experience made me think that this would be something that I could commit to, if only it was practical to do so for the near future.