A Really Good Day

by Ayelet Waldman

  My work, however, went beautifully.

  Albert Hofmann, discussing his first planned LSD experience, wrote, “There was a change in the experience of life, of time. But it was the most frustrating thing. I was already deep in the LSD trance, in LSD inebriation, and one of its characteristics, just on this bicycle trip, was of not coming from any place or going any place. There was absolutely no feeling of time.”

  I’m taking a tiny fraction of what Hofmann did, and I haven’t tried to ride my bike, but I can say with some authority that a change in the experience of time isn’t exclusive to bike riding while on a massive dose of LSD. Today, as on the two prior Microdose Days, I became so immersed in my work that I didn’t notice time passing. Getting lost in work, what’s known as “flow,” is one of the most exciting things about the process of creating. Conceived by the Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, flow is the state of “intense emotional involvement” and timelessness that comes from immersive and challenging activities. Flow can happen when you are creating art or computer code or when you are scaling a mountain. It’s a gift that arrives rarely, when you are most focused and present.

  It is its elusive nature, I believe, that makes flow so compelling. I remember learning about operant conditioning as a college freshman in my Intro to Psychology class. If a rat pushes a lever and gets kibble every time, it will soon grow sated. But if the kibble drops only occasionally, and on no discernible schedule, the rat will keep pushing the lever long after she otherwise might have stopped. Creative flow is the artist’s kibble. Having experienced it once, you want it again, and the fact that it doesn’t always happen makes it all the more precious and tantalizing. You keep coming back to the desk (or the easel or the instrument), day after day, in the hope that the gift might suddenly reappear.

  I am hardly the first person to find a psychedelic drug useful in inspiring flow. Since prehistory, people have ingested mind-altering substances as creative inspiration. These substances, from peyote to iboga to soma and ayahuasca, have inspired works of art that attempt to describe both the mystical and the mundane—though, in the case of ayahuasca, I am told the state of creative flow usually alternates with less welcome flow at either end of the digestive tract.*1 Aldous Huxley, the English writer and philosopher and author of Brave New World, deserves the credit for instigating or at least popularizing the use of psychedelic substances as part of the creative endeavor in the Western world. In his book The Doors of Perception, a profoundly influential work of psychedelic literature, Huxley narrates his experience of taking mescaline. About the potential creative value of psychedelics, he writes, “To be shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception, to be shown for a few timeless hours the outer and the inner world, not as they appear to an animal obsessed with survival or to a human being obsessed with words and notions, but as they are apprehended, directly and unconditionally, by Mind at Large—this is an experience of inestimable value to everyone and especially to the intellectual.” Huxley used LSD, even going so far as to have his wife inject him with the drug on his deathbed. He did not, however, believe that LSD and other psychedelics should be widely available. Their use, he felt, should be limited to those engaged in artistic, intellectual, or mystical endeavors.

  Most of us are well aware of the legacy of psychedelic experimentation in music and art. We know Lucy’s in the sky with diamonds and the piper’s at the gates of dawn. What’s less well known is that a variety of scientists and technologists have used LSD as a catalyst for innovation. For example, Francis Crick, co-winner of the 1962 Nobel Prize in Medicine for the discovery of the structure of the DNA molecule, reportedly experimented with LSD while working on the problem. Though he never confirmed the rumors, friends insist that he told them he actually conceived of the double-helix shape during an LSD trip.*2

  The biochemist Kary Mullis, co-winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1993 for his work on the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique, was, unlike Crick, frank both about his use of LSD and about how using the drug helped him in his work. He is widely quoted as having said, “Back in the 1960s and early ’70s I took plenty of LSD. A lot of people were doing that in Berkeley back then. And I found it to be a mind-opening experience. It was certainly much more important than any courses I ever took.” In a BBC documentary, Mullis further stated, “What if I had not taken LSD ever; would I have still invented PCR? I don’t know. I doubt it. I seriously doubt it.” Steve Jobs attributed his creative genius in part to LSD, considering his experience using the drug to be, according to the journalist John Markoff, who interviewed Jobs for his book What the Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry, “one of the two or three most important things he had done in his life.”

  In an interview with CNN, a Cisco engineer named Kevin Herbert comfortably discussed his use of LSD as an aid in solving intractable engineering problems. He told the reporter, “There was a case where I had been working on a problem for over a month, and I took LSD and I just realized, ‘Wait, the problem is in the hardware. It’s not a software issue at all.’ ”

  Jim Fadiman was himself one of the early researchers into the link between psychedelic drugs and creativity. As an undergraduate at Harvard, he studied with Richard Alpert, a young, charismatic psychology professor who, along with Timothy Leary, was an early proponent of both the study and the use of psychedelic drugs in the United States. After he graduated from college, Fadiman met up with his professor on a balmy spring evening in Paris, at an outdoor café. Alpert shook a small pill from a glass bottle into the palm of Fadiman’s hand and changed the course of his life.

  The drug was psilocybin, and it caused Fadiman to realize that “there was something about human interaction that [he] had been missing.” Fadiman had what he describes as a classic mystical experience. “I realized I was more than myself, more than Jim Fadiman. My personality was only one part of who I am.” When Fadiman and I had a chance to sit down and discuss the ramifications of this mystical experience on the course of his life, he smiled and said, “How ya gonna keep ’em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree?”

  In the wake of that experience and others that followed, and inspired by a letter from the draft board delineating the courses of action available to young men of military age during the Vietnam War, Fadiman enrolled as a graduate student in psychology at Stanford. He was, he told me, unhappy about getting a degree in a subject that no longer interested him just to avoid the war. While leafing through the course catalogue in search of classes more inspiring than those in his own department, he came upon a course called Human Potential, taught by a professor of electrical engineering named Willis Harman. His interest piqued, Fadiman tracked Harman down in his office. He asked if he could take the class, but was informed that it was already oversubscribed.

  “I’ve taken psilocybin three times,” Fadiman said.

  Harman stood up, walked across the office, and closed the door.

  Harman could not, in the context of Stanford, be open about his psychedelic experiences, but Fadiman could. Harman hired him as his teaching assistant.

  Fadiman’s dissertation was titled “Behavior Change Following (LSD) Psychedelic Therapy,” but its true topic was much more far-ranging. He was interested in understanding the nature of creativity itself, and whether psychedelic drugs could inspire and enhance it. Fadiman became a fellow at the International Foundation for Advanced Study, run by Harman, a privately funded research facility. The “facility” was no more than a suite of offices above a beauty parlor, but it had a USDA permit to perform clinical studies of psychedelic drugs. Stanford and its surrounding areas were then, as now, home to innovators in aeronautics, engineering, and the nascent field of computers, and Harman, Fadiman, and their colleagues wanted to see if psychedelics could enhance creative problem-solving in professionals in those highly technical fields.

  They recruited senior research scientists from different local companies as subjects, and aske
d them to bring with them to the sessions at least two different problems on which they had been working without success for at least three months. These subjects were executives at Hewlett-Packard, fellows at the Stanford Research Institute, architects, and designers. Among them were the people who would design the first silicon chips, create word processing, and invent the computer mouse.

  Fadiman and his colleagues administered one-hundred-microgram doses of LSD to the subjects and guided them through the next hours as they puzzled over their intractable problems.*3 The subjects worked on their problems and took a variety of psychometric tests. The results were striking. Many of the subjects experienced flashes of intellectual intuition. Their performance on the psychometric tests improved, but, more important, they solved their thorny equations and problems. According to Fadiman, “A number of patents, products, and publications emerged out of that study.”

  In the spring of 1966, Fadiman had just given a dose of LSD to four participants in his seventh research group when he, like other researchers around the country, received a letter from the Food and Drug Administration notifying him that the status of his LSD experimental drug exemption had been changed. This change in status resulted in the immediate termination of his research permit. Fadiman read the letter, and then glanced at his colleagues. “I think we got this letter tomorrow,” he said. Their research subjects had started to trip, and they had better things to do than worry about the FDA.

  All together, twenty-eight scientists, artists, and innovators participated in these guided LSD experiences at the International Foundation for Advanced Study. What Fadiman finds most fascinating about the study is something that he realized only in retrospect. Though the participants went on to do groundbreaking work throughout Silicon Valley and farther afield, making critical discoveries, founding major corporations, and fundamentally changing the world, none underwent any profound mystical experience during the experiment that caused them to change their lives. Fadiman theorizes that this is because of the way LSD operates on the brain. The drug provides a remarkable clarity of focus. It inspires transformation not globally but in the object of your intention. If, for example, you take the drug in a psychotherapeutic set and setting, you will focus on personal issues and may gain insights relevant to your emotional life. If you take the drug anticipating a spiritual experience and in a spiritually encouraging environment, you may have a transcendent mystical experience that causes you to re-evaluate your place in the universe. If, however, you focus on a specific intellectual problem, it is there that your insights will reside. This theory is fascinating, and deserving of further research, but though Fadiman and Harman published the results of the study, their officially sanctioned research ended that day.

  Authorized experimentation with LSD and other psychedelics by scientists, engineers, inventors, and artists ended when the drug was criminalized in the late sixties, but underground experimentation continued, albeit on a lesser scale. Similarly, recreational use of the drug continued. According to U.S. government surveys, between four and five hundred thousand new users of LSD self-report every year, even though the drug has been illegal for decades. Certainly, use continued in some form in Silicon Valley; it has surged in popularity in recent years.

  I discussed the use of psychedelics in Silicon Valley as a tool to enhance creativity and problem solving with Tim Ferriss, investor, entrepreneur, and best-selling author of The 4-Hour Workweek. When I asked Ferriss why he thinks psychedelics continue to be used by tech entrepreneurs, he attributed it to an obsessive focus on innovation, combined with a drive to achieve. Silicon Valley is, he said, “an ecosystem that rewards achievement incredibly well, but it is oftentimes devoid of appreciation on a personal level.” He described sitting at dinner with half a dozen company founders, each worth hundreds of millions of dollars, “and they’re more miserable than anyone you’ve met.”

  People in tech are researchers and problem solvers, Ferriss said. They search for solutions to their problems, both professional and personal. It makes sense that, when trying to resolve both their personal unhappiness and their periodic creative impasses, they would notice the early research on psychedelics and the anecdotal evidence of current users. They are all hackers at heart, trying to expand the computing capabilities of their own gray, lumpy wetware so that they can be the next Steve Jobs.

  There is also, Ferriss told me, a third driver to this experimentation. “You have in general a very socially liberal agnostic or atheistic community. For those people, there’s still an innate or intellectual drive to find something bigger, greater. Psychedelics are a tool to explore the mystical or religious in private.”

  I’m not looking for anything big or great. I just want to take greater pleasure in my life. I want to work better, be a more patient and supportive mother and wife. I have so very little interest in mysticism and religion. God’s got enough on Her plate without having to meddle in my hallucinations.

  * * *

  *1  You might not consider any work of art worth that particular price of admission, but I’ve been known to risk diarrhea for a dish of ice cream.

  *2  Presti, whom I trust implicitly, doubts this story. But it’s such a good one! Couldn’t we just pretend it’s true?

  *3  Incidentally, Harman, Fadiman, and their two colleagues designed the protocol for the experiment while themselves on an LSD trip.

  Day 8

  Transition Day

  Physical Sensations: None.

  Mood: Almost euphoric. Happy with my work, life, family. A really good day.

  Conflict: None.

  Sleep: Fell asleep easily. Slept seven hours.

  Work: Cooking along.

  Pain: Mild.

  It’s been over a week now, and either this experiment is working or the placebo effect is a mighty force. I feel so good I don’t care which of those is true. No, that’s not true. I do care, because if it’s purely a placebo, then I could get the same effect without committing a crime. Though the quantity of LSD in my little cobalt blue bottle is minuscule, under both California and federal law I could be arrested and charged with possession. I could face a one-to-three-year sentence in state court and up to a six-month sentence in federal court. Obviously, this would not be good; redheads look terrible in orange. Oh, and I’d miss my kids and my husband. Still, all things considered, I have been remarkably blasé about the criminality of this experiment, even though I know that mere drug possession is prosecuted in this country with the same vigor as drug trafficking. Our jails and prisons are full of people whose only crime was to possess drugs; a shocking number of them were caught not with heroin or methamphetamine or another drug of addiction, or even with LSD, but with marijuana. More than 40 percent of arrests for drug possession in this country are for a drug that 19.8 million of us have used in the past month.

  The war on drugs has resulted in a massive increase in the size of our prison population. According to the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to sentencing reform, fully half of federal prisoners are serving time for drug offenses, and “the number of drug offenders in state prisons has increased thirteen-fold since 1980.” The vast majority of these are neither violent offenders nor kingpins but low-level offenders guilty of doing little more than what I did yesterday.

  And yet I am so little at risk of prosecution that I am not only taking LSD but writing about it. Why? Because the sad fact is that my race and class make prosecution less likely.

  As Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, told me, “The war on drugs and the war on crime are the most recent manifestation of an impulse to punish, control, and exploit poor people of color which will surface repeatedly in our country until we are willing to face our racial history.” Our interminable drug war has from its inception set its sights firmly on the poor and the brown. The first drug laws, the anti-opium laws of the 1870s, were directed at Chinese immigrants, never mind that the country was full of white middle-class laudanum addicts, tipp
ling from their dropper bottles all day long. Early in the next century, support for the laws criminalizing cocaine was ginned up by claims that “drug-crazed Negroes” were destroying white society and murdering white women. Southern senators, unperturbed by their wives’ opioid addictions, believed that cocaine made black men superhuman, even that it made them immune to bullets. When the first drug czar, a man named Harry Anslinger, wanted to criminalize marijuana, he appealed to people’s biases against immigrants from Mexico, claiming that the drug made Mexicans sexually violent. William Randolph Hearst jumped on this bandwagon, warning again and again in the pages of his newspapers about the dangers of the Mexican “Marihuana-Crazed Madman.” This demonization continues today.*1 White people are five times as likely to use drugs as African Americans, yet African Americans are incarcerated for drug offenses at ten times the rate of whites.*2 The racism of the drug war has been the single most important driving factor in the ever-escalating incarceration of people of color in the United States.

  When I was an attorney, I experienced this arbitrary and unjust system firsthand. Though I practiced in the federal courts and should have been dealing only with large-scale drug conspiracies and offenses, I represented many defendants, most of them people of color, who faced draconian sentences for relatively minor offenses. One in particular stood out from the rest. My client, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, was charged with the distribution of methamphetamine. A man of compromised intellect, he had been hired by a local drug dealer to schlep a box of methamphetamine from one place to another. The dealer, however, turned out to be a DEA confidential informant. My client was looking at a sentence of more than fifteen years, with a ten-year mandatory minimum.

  In the federal system, sentences are not left to the discretion of judges. They are calculated in accordance with the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, promulgated by the United States Sentencing Commission. Before the Sentencing Guidelines, a defendant’s sentence depended in large part on the judge to whom his case was assigned. End up in the court of a judge with a capacity for empathy and you might walk away with probation. Be assigned a hard-ass and you might spend the rest of your life in jail. And guess whom the hard-asses were most likely to punish? Race and class bias were rampant under that system. By removing judicial discretion, the Sentencing Guidelines and the mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes passed by Congress were intended to rid the system of sentencing disparities. Instead of a judge’s individual assessment of a case, a crime, or a defendant, the Sentencing Guidelines and mandatory minimums require that charges and sentences be determined primarily by a single factor: the quantity of drugs bought or sold.