The Silicon Valley avant-garde have turned to LSD to increase their productivity

> Every three days Nathan (not his real name), a 27-year-old venture capitalist in San Francisco, ingests 15 micrograms of lysergic acid diethylamide (commonly known as LSD or acid).

> Nathan first started microdosing in 2014, when he was working for a startup in Silicon Valley. He would cut up a tab of LSD into small slices and place one of these on his tongue each time he dropped.

How does he know?

How does he know it's actually LSD, or only LSD?

How does he know how much is in a tab?

How does he know whether it's evenly distributed across the tab, and that one microdose is actually 15 micrograms of LSD?

I've been giving some serious thought about what future work might look like w.r.t drugs. The narrative seems to be that people in creative professions like artists, singers etc as well as people in high stress circumstances like traders need to indulge in hard drugs to keep doing valuable work. I wonder if these drugs are required by these professions, or if its just placebos to fool their brains into being creative. Whatever the real reason might be, if taking drugs becomes normal...

this is an issue ive seen raised a lot lately and something a mycologist friend of mine has been championing for years, being a curious cat i decided to experiment with it and while it offers some benefits id personally argue that its not as effective as the likes of modafinil or ADHD medication such as amphetamines or methylphenidate.

it also comes with the extra added issue that its very easy to accidentally end up having taken too much, unless you happen to be a very well equipped chemist then youre probably not the one measuring your doses not to mention the potential variability of effects between different synths of the chemical

during my experiment i think one tab must have been slightly higher dosed than the others resulting in a small "i need to get the hell out of here now!" moment in the supermarket, not enough that anyone would have noticed and it was gone pretty quickly but it highlighted the potential shortcomings of a chemical thats so potent and can much more significantly alter your perception than straight stimulants can.

There have been several previous articles about micro-dosing in the Bay Area. One woman was using LSD microdosing instead of traditional anti-anxiety drugs. A fifth to a tenth of a dose seems to have an extremely mild calming effect. There have also been studies of using psychedelic drugs to treat PTSD. More research is probably a great idea. I wonder if there's some way to make it legal to study so the science can provide reliable data.

Given the long history of news organizations making this sort of thing up, although usually about teenagers, I'd give this a pretty low odds of being a real trend. Particularly given the handful of personal accounts, and no attempt at looking for real world data like emergency room visits.

My personal observation from living here, is that the drug/alcohol use is pretty typical, outside of burning man, except for some people suffering from Overwatch addiction.