Taking Acid At Work Might Make You a Better Person

Some researchers think daily microdoses of acid can help make you happier, more creative, and more empathetic. This week on Reply All, two members of the staff take small doses of acid for a week. Secretly. At work.​

On the Internet, there are dozens of recorded 911 calls made by people who are really, really high. For instance, here's one from a man whom the police later found surrounded by Doritos and Chips Ahoy:

If you're high and freaking out, calling 911 is not always the best idea, because the cops might charge you. Fortunately though, there's actually another place you can go for help if you're having a bad trip: a website called Tripsit.me. 

You can click through the site to a chatroom, where a volunteer TripSitter will assist you. They'll ask what drugs you've taken and how much. If they can establish that you're not in physical danger, then they'll focus on just trying to help you calm down.

One of these TripSitters calls himself Reality. (It's a David Bowie reference, but of course if you're really high, it's comforting to have Reality confirm your existence.) Reality has tricks he falls back on to help people relax: he'll tell you to get a glass of water, or he'll send you to a website where you can move a virtual orb around in water. He'll get you to listen to some songs by the band Emancipator.

The conversations Reality has with these high strangers are often very intimate. Once people calm down, they just want to talk, and during those talks, they can realize things about themselves they never had before. Sometimes those realizations are pretty dark: People realize that they've done bad things to people they love, or that they're alcoholics. But other times these realizations are more positive. Reality has seen a lot of people on psychedelics, for example, experience a childlike sense of wonder. He's seen them express this extreme sense of generosity, towards others and themselves.

This thought — that psychedelics can affect people in positive, healthy ways — isn't unique to Reality: It turns out there's a lot of research being done on the therapeutic uses of psychedelics. These experiments are restricted by the government, so today the official studies are mostly for people facing terminal illnesses.

But more secretly, Jim Fadiman has spent decades researching how acid can help people with their everyday problems: make them happier, more creative, nicer. Fadiman is a "psychedelic elder"—he was an official LSD researcher back in the 1960's, but his studies were cut short when the US government banned psychedelics. In the decades that followed, Fadiman developed something new: a kind of LSD experience that doesn't get you high, but still unlocks those good parts of you. 

It's called microdosing. Fadiman says that taking just a very small amount of LSD regularly can make you a sharper, healthier, and more empathetic person. Fadiman has people keep detailed journals on their microdosing experiences. A number of people say microdosing has helped with their depression or anxiety. However, continuing government restrictions mean that Fadiman hasn't been able to conduct any peer-reviewed studies on microdosing. To figure out if it works, you basically just have to try it.

And so, this week on Reply All, two members of the staff take small doses of acid for a week. Secretly. At work.

Subscribe to Reply All on iTunes or with your favorite podcaster, visit our website or just listen on Soundcloud.

You can also subscribe to Reply All's RSS here.