A Really Good Day by Ayelet Waldman

Author:Ayelet Waldman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2017-01-10T05:00:00+00:00

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*1  Frustrated at never being able to figure out which silver Prius was mine, I put a second Obama sticker on the bumper, because having only one made it indistinguishable from the rest. I suppose, if I really wanted to make it easier to find, I’d slap a National Rifle Association sticker on it.

*2  Interestingly, research shows that walking in nature, especially among tall trees, reduces anxiety and depression as effectively as SSRIs (Rachel Hine, Carly Wood, and Jo Barton, Ecominds: Effects on Mental Wellbeing, an Evaluation for Mind [London: Mind, 2013]). The Japanese even have a name for this: shinrin-yoku, or “forest bathing.” Their Ministry of Health encourages it as a stress reliever; to my knowledge, they’ve yet to weigh in on the added benefit of a tiny dose of a psychedelic drug.

*3  In an odd coincidence, on the way home from Fadiman’s house, I just happened to be listening to an episode of a podcast called Reply All, in which a producer and one of the hosts attempted their own weeklong microdose experiment, with decidedly mixed results. They initially experienced some benefits, but soon became anxious and uncomfortable about keeping the protocol a secret from their colleagues. If my kids are suspicious of my newfound good spirits, I can only imagine how quickly grown podcast employees might catch on. One of the producers became more animated than normal, even hypomanic. He also managed, one day, to take a double dose, which meant he was out of the range of the sub-perceptual and into the perceptual. He did this on a day when he was taking a long and dull road trip. Set and setting, people—they’re everything when it comes to drug experimentation.

*4  Of course, government approval and clinical supervision hardly guarantee safety, as we learned in January 2016, when one person died and five others were hospitalized during a clinical trial of a French pharmaceutical meant to treat anxiety, motor disorders, and chronic pain.

*5  See, e.g., Robert Glatter, M.D., “LSD Microdosing: The New Job Enhancer in Silicon Valley and Beyond?”; Chris Gayomali, “Forget Coffee, Silicon Valley’s New Productivity Hack Is ‘Microdoses’ of LSD”; etc., etc., ad nauseam.

*6  Andrew Leonard, “How LSD Microdosing Became the Hot New Business Trip.”

*7  What some people call “nootropics.”

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