- [Chase] So when's the last time you took acid?
- Actually, yesterday morning.
- [Chase] Some people would be surprised
that a mom would take drugs on a regular basis.
- That's good, I'm covering it quite well.
(laughing)
- [Chase] Taking a tiny amount
of what have long been considered recreational drugs
is known as microdosing,
and it's the latest trend.
- There are claims it can improve creativity
and concentration, but not many studies have been done
into the effects of microdosing,
and it's illegal.
- [Chase] Office workers are trying it for efficiency,
parents for anxiety, and Silicon Valley tech bros
are using it as the latest productivity hack.
- You can put microdoses of LSD in your cereal,
and people will call you a pioneer.
- [Chase] But does this tiny hit of psychedelics
actually work, or is it all just in our minds?
(upbeat music)
- [Teresa] This is my middle age mom-ness
with my Vera Bradley pouch.
- [Chase] I love it.
(Teresa laughing)
- My name's Teresa, I'm a mom,
and I work in tech.
I grew up on the East Coast in North Carolina.
Born into a pretty conservative family.
Maybe I was dropped off by hippies, I don't know,
'cause I completely didn't turn out that way.
- Microdosing LSD, like Teresa is doing
may be popular now,
but the drug has a long and complicated history.
It begins in 1938 when a Swiss chemist
by the name of Albert Hoffman
created LSD by mistake.
He then ingested it five years later for the first time.
And from there the drug took off.
By the late 1940s, LSD was being studied around the world
and used for psychological therapy.
The study of psilocybin mushrooms soon followed.
In the 1950s, the CIA used LSD
in hopes of discovering mind controlling properties.
Yeah, that didn't pan out.
In the 60s, while psychedelics gave birth
to the counter-culture movement.
At that time, LSD was legal.
But stories of bad trips, a volatile political climate,
and the beginning of the war on drugs
led to it being outlawed.
And the conversation began to shift
from the drug's potential benefits,
to its perceived harm.
- America's public enemy number one is drug abuse.
- There is nothing grownup or sophisticated
in taking an LSD trip at all,
they're just being complete fools.
(crowd cheering)
- [Chase] Shockingly, outlawing LSD
didn't actually stop people from doing it,
and experimenting with it.
But the current trend of taking microdoses
to unlock creativity and crank up productivity
really took off in 2011,
when James Fadiman published his book,
"The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide".
- Since it became illegal, 26 million Americans
have tried LSD.
- Fadiman said the regular use
of small doses of psychedelics,
usually one tenth of a recreational dose,
had the ability to boost mood,
and increase productivity,
without the perception altering effects.
- I was introduced to microdosing about a year ago.
After having children,
I had been on and off anti-depressants
for about 10 years.
The anti-depressant I was taking
kind of takes you out of the lows.
But it really doesn't like spark creativity.
I sometimes will do microdosing
when I have to be in a very intense social environment
where I feel like I really have to be up.
It kind of helps me get me out of my shell,
and a little less self conscious.
It's all the great effects of psychedelics,
without the, what I would call,
the debilitating effects.
- To be clear, this is illegal.
And because of that, Teresa and other microdosers
are largely doing it on their own.
And because it's illegal,
understanding its potential benefits
has long been put on the back burner.
But the conversation is shifting,
and it's opening the door to early studies,
like one being led by Dr. David Erritzoe,
a clinical psychiatrist at the Imperial College London.
He's found a way to navigate around the system
to study the drugs anyway.
And he's doing it legally.
- We are not doing any sort of controlled clinical trial.
We are doing online prospective naturalistic surveys.
So we are basically tapping into real people's real use
of their own drugs.
- Dr. Erritzoe is asking participants
to use their own drugs in their own home,
and set up their own experiments.
Then report the results back to his team.
- We are making this sort of intermediate trial
that's between completely uncontrolled survey,
and a clinical trial.
- This is not a lab-based clinical trial.
Conditions aren't carefully controlled,
and it relies on self reporting.
But Dr. Erritzoe hopes his study,
due to be published in 2021,
can help kickstart the science
and be the seed for proper trials.
- Whether or not the microdosing
will perform better than placebo,
we don't know.
A lot of people don't respond to conventional therapies
for depression, for anxiety,
for post-traumatic stress.
I'm curious about, does it work?
What does it work for?
How do we optimize it?
How do we make it safe?
And then they can generate hypothesis for future funding,
for proper trials on a larger scale,
if it turns out that it looks promising.
- [Chase] In the meantime,
advocates for microdosing like Teresa
say they will continue to do it,
because it's transformed their lives.
- It does change your mind.
It breaks down these barriers.
I think in modern society,
we're really hitting up against those established
sort of social norms.
And I think that's scary for a lot of people in our society.
- There are so many people suffering mental health.
It can potentially help millions of people,
and therefore it is important
to get extra tools in our toolboxes
in terms of ways of trying to address it and help people.
- Microdosing helped me find clarity over the past year.
I was just sort of resigned to the fact that
maybe my career had like gone into like a low gear.
It really gave me the next level energy
to sort of fight those assumptions.
Thinking about ways to move forward,
and be more creative versus dwelling on the past.
- Thanks for watching.
For more Dope Science content,
check out our website.
And subscribe to Freethink for more content every week.
And if you want to learn more about Dr. Erritzoe
and the work he's doing,
go to selfblinding-microdose.org.