Will Microdosing LSD Make You a Better Worker—or 'Just' a Happier Person?
James Fadiman and Jordan discuss their new book Microdosing for Health, Healing, and Enhanced Performance. And why Trump and RFK may accelerate the legalization of psychedelics.
You've probably heard about microdosing, which involves taking a small, "sub-perceptual" dose of psychedelics like LSD or psilocybin on a regular basis to ward off depression, anxiety, and chronic pain—or to optimize focus and boost energy.
My guests on the latest Reason Interview podcast are James Fadiman and Jordan Gruber, authors of the new book Microdosing for Health, Healing, and Enhanced Performance.
Fadiman is a Stanford-trained research psychologist who has been working with psychedelics since the early 1960s, when he first encountered Richard Alpert, later to become known as Ram Dass, one of the most important countercultural figures of the postwar era. Jim popularized the concept of microdosing over a decade ago and he’s just published an excellent guide to its history and practice with coauthor Jordan Gruber.
We talk about the mechanics of and theory behind microdosing, its promise and limits, and how it fits into the larger psychedelic renaissance that has been flowering for most of the 21st century. And we discuss the prospects for legalization and cultural normalization of psychedelics under the Trump administration. The short version of that last topic: The prospects are incredibly good, even if Donald Trump is about the last person you think about when you think about psychedelics.
Here are the topics we cover in a very fun, serious, and wide-ranging conversation, which includes a discussion of Fadiman and Gruber’s early book, Your Symphony of Selves, a very interesting challenge to traditional and conventional understandings of how we think about our consciousness.
Scroll down further to watch on YouTube or listen on Apple, Spotify, and SoundCloud.
And if you live the New York area, come out to a live taping of this podcast on April 8, when I’ll talk about Jeff Singer, a surgeon and health care policy analyst, about patient autonomy in our medical system.
1:19 — New book: Microdosing for Health, Healing, and Enhanced Performance
5:12 — How Fadiman discovered microdosing
8:10 — How Gruber began microdosing
8:57 — Microdosing is similar to a vitamin protocol
11:17 — MDMA, ketamine, and cannabis work differently
12:50 — Microdosing for depression
16:02 — Other conditions microdosing could help alleviate
19:09 — Is microdosing for life?
21:17 — How to quantify the efficacy of microdosing
30:14 — Psychedelics and drug law
37:30 — Psychedelic-assisted therapy
39:40 — Psychedelics and their benefits are nonideological
46:15 — Fadiman and Gruber's 2020 book: Your Symphony of Selves
53:45 — Drug legalization under Donald Trump
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