A Really Good Day

A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life by Ayelet Waldman        Hardcover: 256 Pages          (Aleta L.)

Ayelet Waldman is an author, mother, and former public defender and law professor. This book is a true story about her struggle with a severe mood disorder; though she never received a lasting diagnosis, she went through years of treatment with common pharmaceuticals. These mostly didn't work, or if they did, temporarily and with terrible side effects. In addition to feeling bad most of the time, she was alienating her family and friends, and her suffering felt endless.  This desperation led her to the surprisingly positive research on the use of  psychedelic drugs for therapeutic purposes, and she decided to try it out on herself.  She had a truly simple goal: to see if she could have justone really good day.

Microdosing is a method of taking drugs in tiny, sub-perceptual doses, for therapeutic purposes, usually every other day or so. Though most of the drugs used for microdosing are illegal, there exists an underground of practitioners of the psychedelic that she managed to tap into, and she had a vial of "Lewis Carroll" liquid LSD sent anonymously to her mailbox. Waldman shares with us her month-long experiment, documenting how her mood, physical state, and motivation were affected by the tiny dose she took every third day. She then writes entertainingly about her life and previous experiences with illegal drugs (few and far between), her relationships with her kids, husband, and parents, her professional life, and her direct experience with drug policy in the United States – she recounts specific drug cases she defended, and the stories are heartbreaking. She has a convincing take on the destructiveness of this country's attitudes and laws about illegal drugs, particularly for disadvantaged populations.  Her account of the history of psychedelic drug use is fascinating, covering the invention of LSD, to its popularity and notoriety mid-20^th century, to its eventual banishment,  not only from public use, but from scientific research as well.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book – it’s part anecdotal musing and part no-nonsense social commentary, and Waldman is hilarious and utterly serious in just the right amounts.  Her research is thorough and honest. The question she raises about why we have legal access to so many harmful, ineffective substances, and no access to relatively harmless, effective ones, is extremely important; as is the more philosophical question about why our own consciousness isn’t ours to explore however we see fit. She does a fantastic job trying to answer these, and issues just a little hope that some sanity might enter our approach to drugs in this country, sooner than later.  Quite a few books about the subject of psychedelic therapy  have come out recently, mostly by fairly mainstream authors; something is in the air, and this book is a good place to find out about it – highly recommended!