Dosing Creativity

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Drug-craft On the configurations of psychedelic efficacies Mishra, S.

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Download date:06 Oct 2021 Chapter 1 Dosing Creativity

Besides alcohol, I don’t really use drugs and have little interest in them, but this microdosing – for work, being creative, for being focused and effective… its increased use by Silicon Valley professionals – it did catch my attention. You research drugs, what do you think about it? I would like to try it someday. (Informal conversation, Amsterdam 2017) This is what Jan said to me, on an afternoon at my research institute in Amsterdam, as we bumped into each other by the department’s coffee machine. Jan’s curiosity about microdosing is exemplary of a widespread narrative about psychedelics that

I encountered often during my fieldwork. In this paradoxically,narrative, the by efficacy the impossibility of psychedelic to perceive substances their is effects,so extraordinary as “sub-perceptual that even minimal doses” doses– allow – defined, for a

effects are said to be readily harvested to increase productivitybeneficial transformation. and enhance creativityThese almost in cognitive unnoticeable work through microdosing practices. As I proceeded to

attributed to psychedelics, one of the major challenges itstudy posed the was beneficial about transformationshow to think ethnographically that are being

543935-L-bw-Mishra and attend to practices that reach far beyond a well-delineated community of practice. Pinning such a broad narrative down is not an easy task. It travels across different contexts – from psychedelic sciences to the worlds of business and medicine, from countercultures to academia and policy makers – and gets reproduced and transformed each time, with varying emphasis on what matters within a given context. To understand this, it is useful to begin with the popularity of the narrative that stimulated Jan to ask me my opinion by the department coffee machine. The main argument at its core is that small doses of psychedelics can increase creativity. As this argument spreads through the mainstream media, it comes to highlight one particular version of the efficacy of psychedelics. This is the version of microdosing told in the control rooms of Silicon Valley, the contemporary ascendant node that is funneling our networked world. Indeed, most of my informants would share with me articles they had found online or that had popped up in their social network feeds, recounting one or another variant of this story about the benefits of microdosing. Reaching powerful, respected, and authoritative outlets – and often thanks to the authority that Silicon Valley itself represents – this narrative has spread widely. It tells, as the Financial Times reports, of “how Silicon Valley rediscovered LSD - A new generation of San Franciscans believes the drug makes them more creative,” while simultaneously exploring it as a way to boost productivity and overcome mental health problems. It does so by weaving this story into the modern Promethean dream of ongoing heroic innovation. The popular bestseller Stealing Fire alludes to this when it dubs microdosing a “shortcut” to be used “to solve

543935-L-bw-Mishra Figure 1.1 How Silicon Valley rediscovered LSD (Kuchler 2017)

critical challenges and outperform the competition” (Kotler and Wheal 2017; p. 6). Riding the hype of the “untapped” or “superhuman” potential that Silicon Valley entrepreneurs allegedly enroll, the attention that microdosing is receiving in the public sphere hinges upon its impact on creativity. The core argument around enhanced creativity has an added dimension: the possibilities that microdosing opens up for work and productivity, together with its beneficial effects onmood , are often linked, though less directly, to future potential uses of these drugs in biomedicine. The entanglement of creativity and mood with work and productivity in such narratives features a desire to make efficient use of psychedelics and to optimize human potential, thus capturing psychedelic creativity within the realm of modern Western rationality and its ramifications in post- Fordist capitalism. In other words, psychedelic drug efficacies in such narratives emerge at the intersections of very specific kinds of work (in particular, what is increasingly called cognitive labor), different logics around the use (or avoidance) of psychopharmaceuticals,

543935-L-bw-Mishra and experimentation with the possibility of improving one’s situation and surroundings. Despite this strong connection with the forms of capital that dominate the lives of many of the youth I focused on, this narrative is seductive: even with its dystopian twists, the Silicon Valley dream, its economic possibilities, and its peculiar projection as a global creative hub, are setting a trend. It is a heroic narrative that is inspiring the life trajectories of many – far beyond the borders of California. Even for those more critical of such framings and their representation in public discourse, the promise of enhancing attention, mood, and creativity – through the microdosing of psychedelics – is enticing. To all of this, add the fact that, as many of my Dutch-speaking informants told me, “even Dutch news is covering [microdosing] now!” This far-reaching discourse that spans science, popular media, counterculture, law, and professional productivity portrays microdosing as a practice with unique qualities, something that pushes the horizons of what may be considered acceptable nonmedical, personal drug use. In this realm, microdosing comes to have a range of practitioners, from novices to extremely regimented, competent, and experienced users of psychedelic drugs. Additionally, those who may be averse to the use of (recreational/illegal/nonmedical) drugs, such as Jan, nevertheless feel compelled or at least interested. Nevertheless, if this potential does carry over from public discourse into personal practices, it does so with many deviations from the script of the articles that Jan and other informants read. This in turn raises the question of how to handle practices that travel along less clearly delimited or rigorously controlled structures, like the microdosing of psychedelics by users and their circulating anecdotes. One way is to build an infrastructure around these practices that

543935-L-bw-Mishra provides a more controlled examination of such scripts. Life scientists engaged in studying the health benefits of psychedelics have taken such practices onboard and, might I say, have creatively diversified their attempts to assess the circulating claims surrounding microdosing. This includes designing controlled clinical studies that incorporate innovative ways to test increased creativity and productivity beyond the existing psychological measures. Furthermore, in attending to the growing trend in collective user experimentation, researchers have designed “self-blinding”1 monitor-it-as-you-experiment microdosing studies, which include participants filling in questionnaires and performing tests at home or wherever they are. These studies have also turned their attention to understanding what might, for instance, be the long-term physiological negative impact of such regular intake of psychedelics (Kuypers et al. 2019). Although this approach might give relevant answers to the ways in which psychedelics function pharmacologically, it should not be confused as speaking to that which entirely defines what is relevant and at stake in the case of microdosing. It is my contention that the rapidly growing sphere of microdosing is rife with contrasting values that serve to provide relevance to such practices. These values serve a purpose that goes beyond what may be captured in an experimental proof. This is in line with the way in which historians of science and technology, such as Donna Haraway (in Nicholas Gane’s 2006 published interview with her), have articulated the relevance of knowledge-generating practices and the technologies they incorporate. Haraway defines such endeavors as something which “…re-does its participants.

1 See the remarkable work of the Beckley Foundation on getting https://beckleyfoundation.org/ amicrodosing-lsd/ scientific hold ). on the anecdotal giant that microdosing’s efficacy has become (

543935-L-bw-Mishra It reaches into you and you aren’t the same afterwards. Technologies rearrange the world for purposes, but go beyond function and purpose to something open, something not yet” (ibid., 154). With this premise, I turn to the dosing of creativity, and productivity, in order to learn about the practical elements that shape the change that is imagined through microdosing. In this regard, rather than testing the “efficacy” of psychedelics in various doses and the controlled performance of users, and searching for its proof, my inquiry shifted to understanding the various tests that microdosing stands as it enacts creativity, happy moods, and productivity. If the rise of self-improvement techniques, and thereby the improvement of work performance, in the 20th century was overshadowed by a unique, perhaps dependent, relationship to all sorts of pharmaceuticals, does psychedelic microdosing provide a different route? And is this promise of improving everyday life perhaps that which goes beyond pharmacological fixes? My interlocutors in this chapter were young professionals and avid microdosing enthusiasts, whom I followed in the Netherlands. The kinds of professions they engaged in ranged from academic to corporate worlds, requiring and posing varying skills and demands in their everyday work lives. However, they did share one seemingly banal trait: that of performing seated desk work, which included some sort of writing, typing, reading, and thinking – or engage in sorts of work which is increasingly deemed ‘highly skilled’ in today’s world . Whether this work was performed in a clearly demarcated professional space such as an office or library, or a more personal space such as a secluded corner in the home, it was nevertheless distinct from and dynamically related to more personal life activities, such as seeing friends, relaxing, engaging in sports, sharing dinners, and so forth. Amid these dynamics is the story I tell of how

543935-L-bw-Mishra these respondents engaged with and entertained the idea of microdosing. This chapter employs the dosing of psychedelics as a methodological device to learn about the material and everyday lived reality of users, and how this provides the conditions for creativity to emerge as a valuable facet of careful self-experimentation with psychedelics. In what follows, I foreground three different elements that help to enact microdosing toward materializing some very locally specific efficacies. The first section underlines how the element of substitution is implicit in making sense of and engaging with microdosing. I highlight the importance of the ways in which the dosing of psychedelics relates to other available modes of improving everyday performance, such as coffee and Ritalin. In the second section, I focus on users who seek to critically and collectively learn from peers. In the process, they share and grapple with the circulating anecdotes, and incorporate notions of a malleable brain, while understanding the beneficial effects of psychedelics. Here, I examine the relevance of an emergent self which is based on persevering past the use of drugs, and which relies on the notion of trainable brains, thus expanding the potential of what bodies are capable of beyond the use of psychedelics. In the last section, I consider users’ efforts toward discerning the situational intricacies of dosing psychedelics. Here, I examine how sensing the sub-perceptual dose, which is necessitated by users’ awareness and engagement with their surroundings, works as an ordering device for making microdosing efficacious. In my research, these three elements crucially shaped the practices and considered efficacies of avid microdosers. They provided the material possibilities for creativity, good mood, and productivity to be composed and harnessed together. Understood in this way – through the possibility that microdosing offers of improving

543935-L-bw-Mishra everyday lives, and with its own particular kinds of demands and aspirations – I argue for a consideration of its efficacy as something that is both shaped by the pursuit of creativity, and which cannot be entirely reduced to a particular definition of it. To this end, I approach the following elements that characterized the material infrastructure of self-improvement for my interlocutors, in order to examine how microdosing follows, diverges from, and/or meets the same pitfalls of improvement projects, as it promises a better, alternative model for drugs, bodies, and their emergent configurations.

Substituting In the user practices I followed, psychedelics never appeared as isolated entities with stand-alone

sense of them. Psychedelics were part of broader processesbenefits, not that even aligned in the users’the work accounts on self, when body, making and mind with the intake of psychoactive substances. One of my key interlocutors in this chapter is Jochem, who at the time was a master’s level neuroscience student.

about the psychedelics and other pharmaceuticals heHe was keenexperimenting to learn thoroughly with; this –characteristic as he defined wasit – common among most of the interlocutors in this chapter. He would read up on the neurochemical effects, browse through online user reports, and sometimes even boldly discussed the topic with his academic supervisor, without making it obvious that he was experimenting himself, “to gain the opinions of a psychedelic skeptic.” In a similar vein, he would listen to podcasts where people were critically skeptical about psychedelics, and the whole evolving genre of ‘biohacking.’ All of this formed part of his

543935-L-bw-Mishra self-experimentation with psychedelics. One of the

we started discussing microdosing was: “So, LSD isfirst like comments coffee 2.0, of hisor Ritalinthat I vividlywithout remember a comedown.” when This comparison is deeply embedded in the process that engenders users’ approaches to psychoactive stimulation in their everyday lives. This process suggests an appreciation of psychedelic effects, either in contrast to other substances and practices aimed at creativity/productivity, such as Ritalin and mindfulness, or through their partial substitution.

and Ritalin use that are relevant to this discussion on substitution.Let us very brieflyBrought revisit to Europe those aspectsin the early of coffee 17th century, coffee is widely used by urban workers to this day, appreciated not only for its delightful taste, but for its psycho-stimulant effects such as enhanced focus, energy, and alertness. Beyond the appreciation of coffee as a psycho-stimulant, it is also known to cause jitteriness, nausea, and a racing heartbeat when consumed to excess. Even among regular coffee drinkers, these symptoms of excess consumption are not appreciated. Nevertheless, coffee has come to be one of the most widespread and acceptable forms of drug, which may be taken to enhance alertness at work and to improve everyday life performance. It can be openly talked about as an aid for increasing focus and alertness, and as a component of functioning well – or terribly – on a given day. Ritalin, on the other hand, falls at the other end of the spectrum of notoriety, where it is infamous as a prescription drug for its off-label misuse by university students and professional workers in order to be more productive and less distracted (Keane 2008). During my research, I found that

543935-L-bw-Mishra even those who had a medical prescription from their doctors also avoided admitting that they were taking Ritalin to manage their cluster of psychiatric conditions, let alone calling it a medication. Handling different substances, it appears, even if they have the similar function of improving focus, mental clarity, and alertness, exceeds a simple valuation of their functionality. The manner of use and experimentation

ofcomprises use, LSD, an coffee, integral and aspect Ritalin of reaping may have their nothing benefits. in common.Consider Take, this:for instance, depending the use on of the LSD configuration at a “hippie” party, a romantic coffee date between two people, and a prescription dose of Ritalin for ADHD given to a ten-year-old having troubles at home and school. The

relations between these drug practices. It provides opportunitiespractice of microdosing, for LSD to however, become entertainssimilar enough specific to coffee and Ritalin to enter into the game of tweaking focus, alertness, and mental clarity, and yet it is quite different as it summons quite different socio-material practices around it. How users actively participate in the generation of these differences emerges as the

these substances. key thatUnsurprisingly, shapes the variousa qualitative efficacies comparison attributed toof

comparisons to be drawn by my interlocutors across the “subjectivevarious psychoactive effects” of compounds.drugs was one As ofI followedthe first Jochem’s and his friends’ experimentations with microdosing, focus and alertness were presented to me as entwined with productivity; namely the ability to read many articles and books, and to expand the scope of their research. But this was not just a quantitative achievement; they wanted to be sure

543935-L-bw-Mishra that they had understood things well, and that they were making progress. Some would get rather upset if they re-read their work from a day when they had consumed a stimulant, and it appeared “dull” or “not as fabulous as I had thought.” This tension between achieving a lot and achieving it well persisted throughout the experimentations with different drugs, which led to practical and subtle comparisons that users would draw. As Jochem once explained, “On Ritalin, I can have a super tunnel vision, can read a book, few articles

my apartment and feel like I am rocking it. But I also feeland Ifinish get a bitmy speedy, term paper slightly in self-centered,one day, and arrogant.”still clean Another of his friends jumped in and mentioned how it was quite easy to spot if someone was “on Ritalin”: Often on Ritalin, you forget about the world around you. You would generally not want to communicate much with colleagues around you, but if in case you must, it’s not the most pleasant for you or for your listeners. People would start this endless chain of thoughts, leading from one topic to another, a mass of information just unloaded on you, and giving you no space or time to talk. It might even be very interesting, the depth and reach of the topic a person is covering, but it is also quite annoying. You feel like telling this person, get over yourself, or give me some space.

And another of their friends mentioned:

Oh, I have been this person, with a stiff jaw, containing my awkward awareness of how I probably appeared and yet uncontrollably overtaking a conversation. With microdoses of LSD there is a general state of being calm and playful, you can achieve a lot on a given day, but you are

543935-L-bw-Mishra differently present and participate in a more playful way with the reality around you. For Jochem and his fellow experimenters, these comparisons revolved around the excesses that surround the practices of tweaking focus and productivity. For instance, how do you behave towards people around you when you are “in the zone”? Users who take into consideration the sense of presence towards others immediately prefer the sense of focus while microdosing with psychedelics over that of Ritalin. Others wonder if they should try to reduce their normal dosage of Ritalin to a microdose. In both cases, the selection of LSD over Ritalin or converting the normal available dose to a microdose exhibits a sense of care for the outward relational ability of the inwards-focusing person. For users, another point of contrast between drugs was in terms of a qualitative assessment of the days on which they did not use drugs. Here, users drew distinctions between Ritalin and LSD, as they experimented with different psycho-stimulants, in terms of how they felt the day after. The “problem” with Ritalin, which I was told time and again, is that after a session of “hyper-focused productive outlet,” there is a feeling of “comedown.” The comedown, for many, involves a feeling of slight sadness, low mood, and depressive thoughts. For some, the feeling involves pain in the jaw, for others it means feeling “emptied out.” Another long-term interlocutor and a social science master’s student at the time of my research pointed to a “particular kind of focus” he developed through LSD microdosing that was different to that of Ritalin, and furthermore, on LSD he “never really felt a comedown.” Monitoring the sense of sadness and exhaustion following Ritalin use went along with worrying about the potential long-term consequences of the drug. These worries were further intertwined with

543935-L-bw-Mishra risks to the cardiovascular system, the immune system, and memory; none of which was necessarily proven or a given fact, but enough to spark interest in experimenting with something safer, something “less heavy” or “less unhealthy.” The sense of safety that emerged through concerns around individual health permeated valuations of drug benefits in a way that extended personal concerns into the configuration of specific drug use. To begin with, users concerned themselves with a sort of dependency2 rooted in the manner of taking Ritalin. For them, this was more distinctive than the way in which they used psychedelic microdoses. Those who appreciated the sense of focus that Ritalin brought them said that they either took it every day or a few times a week. Having had the chance to try microdosing, which was “occasional” (once every three to four days) and in very tiny doses, provided a point of ethically deliberative contrast between the approaches governing the two drugs. For Alex, Ritalin was a go-to drug when he knew he needed to focus and get work done. But it would not lead him anywhere, he did not learn how to focus or be curious and attentive; rather, he was merely managing his attention span, and for this he always depended on Ritalin. In the case of LSD and its situated exploration

2 All the effects I present here are those that were discussed by my interlocutors in light of making sense of their various everyday practices. I do not mobilize a standard pharmacological the users’ description comes close to it. The topic of, addiction definitionto personal/ of dependency,non-medical even use thoughof drugs at in times, a pharmacological as in this case, sense did not emerge from my research. I consider this neither solely a matter of a drug’s pharmacology nor the personality of the users I studied. Nevertheless, it is important to point out whose internal mechanisms of ‘self-regulation’ are abundantly thatsupported most of by my a informants“multiplicity would of meaningful fit in the category roles” (Decorte of users 2001) in everyday life. Or see, (Reinarman 2013).

543935-L-bw-Mishra by psychedelic enthusiasts, there persisted a sense of learning to cultivate focus in a way that went beyond LSD; it re-oriented users to develop their own internal qualities and potential. Some users referred to a little “afterglow” brought about after a day of LSD use, and of having had a “fulfilling” day, which opened up an introspective space. Here, they reflected on the desire to be more attentive to what “they put in their bodies,” and sometimes they wondered if what they were eating “is unhealthy for the environment.” These reflections also tied into experimentations with sobriety and not using (other) psychoactive stimulants. Among my informants, this abstinence ranged from coffee and chocolate to Ritalin and also LSD, and further extended to wanting to refrain from “excessive consumption” in general. How sustainable or damaging are these products, wondered some users. As not using became a part of assessing what to use, many of my informants had come to quit coffee to help them wake up, to abstain from chocolate for their afternoon sugar-rush, and to appreciate LSD as an intermediary tool not to be used in the long-term. Jochem had previously used Ritalin for several months and had countered the comedowns through a combination of “mindfulness meditation and healthy eating habits.” In my conversations with Jochem, he further explained that he was not expecting something to magically appear in his work that would prove that he was being more creative, but he assumed and wanted to exploit the potential that being “hyper-focused” and “in the zone” could bring about. While he was aware of the links between “hyper-focus” and “creativity” being made in the life sciences literature, he emphasized that he believed that it was not limited to LSD microdosing, and wanted to achieve these benefits at the intersections of several different practices. The particularity of the substitutive process that

543935-L-bw-Mishra shapes LSD microdosing as coffee 2.0 reveals an endeavor to animate performance-related alertness to include a sense of calm, to focus but not be self-centered, to be productive but not to feel exhausted or drained the day after, particularly not in a way that can be attributed to and simply located in the event of drug use itself. This is an element of the creative endeavor related to LSD, where its experimenters grapple with how to behave at the workplace, how to take care of their health, and how to open up to the ethical stakes that shape their use of substances and their surroundings.

Persevering selves past drugs, and trainable brains Microdosers stand to use psychedelics in

breakthroughs and technological advancements, from Stevea field Jobs replete to Lynn with Margulis. anecdotes I would around often hear scientific praise for what psychedelics might be able to do. Let us visit one such instance that embodies this particular psychedelic sensibility. It is about the use of LSD by Kary Mullis. Having repeatedly heard his name during

went to look up this famous case, and stumbled upon themy fieldworkBBC documentary both in the where US and he thewas Netherlands, interviewed I after having received the Nobel Prize (Eagles 1997). The documentary shows the moment when the representative of the Nobel Committee announces: “Dr. Kary Mullis and Professor Michael Smith, On behalf of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences I wish to convey to you our warmest congratulations for your outstanding accomplishments and ask you to receive the Nobel Prize from the hands of his Majesty the King…” The background voiceover states:

543935-L-bw-Mishra “Biogeneticist Dr Kary Mullis had won the Nobel Prize for inventing PCR, a revolutionary technique for multiplying tiny amounts of DNA for use in genetic research, a creative breakthrough he claims came from psychedelic drug use.” The scene then shifts to a short interview excerpt with Mullis after he had received the prize: PCR is another place where I was down there with the molecules. I wasn’t stoned on LSD at the time, but my mind had learnt how to get there. I could sit on the DNA molecules and watch the polymers go by. And I didn’t feel dumb about it. I felt like that’s just the way I think, I put myself in all different kinds of spots. And I learnt it partially, I would think, this is again my opinion, through psychedelic drugs. If you have to think of bizarre, PCR was a bizarre thing. It changed an entire generation of molecular biologists, in terms of how they thought of DNA. It scared a lot of people, and they said “It will never work,” because they didn’t like the answer, which was – if it does, it’s gonna change my life. I said: “Yes, it’s gonna change my life and give me a Noble Prize, and I can deal with that.” You know my life is one long thing and I don’t know what, I mean I don’t do experiments often, and did think like, what would [have happened] if I had not taken LSD ever? Would I have still invented PCR? I don’t know. I doubt it, I seriously doubt it. In this interview, Mullis positions LSD in relation to the mental explorations of his research object, DNA. In “sitting on the DNA” and “watching the polymers go by,” and by “training the mind to go places,” he was able to piece together various elements of what he knew in a manner of intellectual exploration that he deemed peculiar to psychedelics. Anecdotes such as these lay out an idea of the

543935-L-bw-Mishra mind and perception that intersects with notions of brain mechanisms3 in popularly circulating media images from neuroscientific works on psychedelics. A key example here are the widely circulated whole brain images from the Beckley/Imperial Psychedelic Research Programme in London. In 2016, the project’s researchers published their results on the possible brain mechanisms involved in LSD activity, detected through the use of the latest neuroimaging techniques (Carhart-Harris et al. 2016).

particularIn their to LSD. findings, This corresponds the researchers to a high assert level that of connectivitythese brain between scans are different reflective brain of regions a phenomenon that are otherwise highly segregated, resulting in a malleability that may be utilized to reshape neural networks. In other words, if habits and behaviors are coupled with certain neural pathways, they may be rewired under such a psychedelic brain state. Such changes could be correlated with the experimental therapeutic effects, but these changes are not limited simply to mental health disorders; rather, they may also be facilitated to bring about mental improvements. In this study, the researchers therefore underline that this ‘opportunity’ of malleable brain connection is not just therapeutic, but may also be used to instill ‘childlike creativity’ and could help us to ‘know more about consciousness.’ Both of the examples above – the malleable mind that perceives a lot more than usual and spectacular whole brain images of cerebral activity on psychedelics – are crucially also linked to experimentation with high doses. The dosages on which Mullis got “stoned” were occasionally as high as 1000 micrograms, and

3 See Langlitz (2007) on the explanatory gap between mind and brain and psychedelics.

543935-L-bw-Mishra Figure 1.2 Increase in brain connectivity after LSD (right), compared to placebo (left). As presented on the Beckley Foundation website.

into psychedelic effects through recent whole brain scansthe dosages are 75 thatmicrograms. characterize In any the case, scientific they all curiosity qualify as beyond microdoses (ranging between 3 and 20

clinical experimental realm, such ‘spectacular’ effects ofmicrograms psychedelics in myhave fieldwork). spurred Undoubtedly,curiosity regarding in the whether these mechanisms would still be relevant in microdoses, and whether the related cognitive

microdosing protocol. impactsToday, would this indeed possibility benefit users of if makingthey followed novel a connections between disparate entities, of ‘rewiring the brain,’ should be viewed as a crucial condition for valuing microdosing. However, as we turn to users and avid experimenters of microdosing, it becomes increasingly important to acknowledge that the givenness of such effects is not something to be tested, but rather utilized in order to enact what

543935-L-bw-Mishra the malleability of the mind, brain, and body makes possible. From quite early on in my research, the dialogue between newbies and experienced users at the user-led gatherings I attended set the stage for valuing a kind of everyday perseverance and its material impact on mind, body, and self. The two major strands of concerns I heard were about “not feeling anything” despite following a regimented protocol for thirty days, wondering whether “perhaps it’s all bullshit” and a waste of time, or that macro-doses – very large doses that catalyze a “complete explosion of reality, losing sense of everything around oneself,” in other words “brain entropy” – was a better way

creativity and productivity. The more experienced usersto reap would the benefits underline of psychedelics,the fact that includingmicrodosing work is different, that it requires patience and a different kind of engagement with psychedelics than macro-doses. Another one of my key interlocutors for microdosing, Nico, who was part of an expanding network of microdosing experimenters, underlined the “trainability” of the brain, mind, and body as a central value in everyday life; a value that he embraced in his approach to microdosing. When we met, Nico was a licensed practitioner in psychotherapy, and had been working with neuro-feedback as a mental health professional for the last ten years. In one of our interviews, he stated:

I have seen many cases where people have had life- changingI find large insights psychedelic on them. doses But extremely what do beneficial.you do to

The reason right now why I like microdosing more isactually because benefit of fromits focus them oron sustain conscious these everydaychanges? practice. The brain is malleable, you can make new pathways, but you have to make the changes.

543935-L-bw-Mishra In this sense, the difference for me is you arriving at Mount Everest with help or with practice, and

promising yourself that you would practice to climb athen little becoming every day, satisfied every day, that knowing you did thatthat. you Or, mightabout never climb Everest. Microdosing takes away the thrill of perhaps the immediate learning curve you can have on macro-doses, but it reminds you, no matter how big or small the lesson you have learnt, if you don’t practice it, you will forget it. And that these doses and their interference in the everyday is so little that they can be accommodated in the normal routine of people’s lives. The notion of tiny doses which may be accommodated in everyday life resonates with the notions around optimization that are so pervasive

optimize one’s own capabilities was widespread amongin the fieldmy informants, of microdosing. a few of Yet, the while most the experienced desire to ones pushed this concern one step further. Over time, they shifted away from optimizing themselves, and towards engaging in microdosing as a way to respond to the constrictions and openings in their context

Jingshu, another interlocutor of mine who presented meand with surroundings. a detailed piece This she shift wrote is well on her exemplified microdosing by experimentation. When it came to microdosing, she underlined her skepticism around the commercial undertones in the messages around microdosing in the media in particular, as well as the need for optimization in general. About such narratives, she states: “I was quite skeptical of the mentality of optimization in this fast-paced, competitive world: what are we optimizing ourselves for? For the careers we have long lost passion about? For bosses or relationships that we otherwise can’t tolerate?” (Zhu

543935-L-bw-Mishra 2019). She eventually followed a thirty-day protocol, inspired by the popular favorite among those curious about microdosing , Ayelet Waldman’s A Really Good Day (2017). Over the course of these thirty days, she divided her emotions into positive and negative categories. She judiciously tracked and rated various emotions and her work productivity on a scale of one to ten, and noted possible side effects. During the course of microdosing, however, what became more important to her was the “non- stickiness” to both “positive” and “negative” events. These ranged from cancelled appointments to

on these occurrences, she would quickly move on to compliments to financial gains. Rather than dwelling around her. Jingshu also attributed this shift in personalnoticing thecapacities “beautiful to “moving trees and past flowers” my dopamine- present reward system making me crave pleasure.” What initially started as an experiment in which she tracked the positives and negatives, quickly shifted to something that made her more capable of being “curious and spacious” towards “all feelings.” This helped her to train her “feeling-body” to get more “in touch” with her emotional life, rather than being paralyzed or overwhelmed by so-called “negative” feelings. Furthermore, this sort of bodywork was enhanced by the manner of tracking it. For this, she stated: I also realized from my data that anxiety actually often co-existed with peace, joy, and connection on the same day. This has fundamentally changed my previous assumption that “anxiety ruins a whole day” into “I can still have a wonderful day while being anxious”. With this shift in perspective, I had much more space living with anxiety and would

543935-L-bw-Mishra Figure 1.3 Jingshu’s daily record (Zhu 2019)

543935-L-bw-Mishra actively meet the needs behind it, which are usually connection, self-empathy and patience. (Zhu 2019). Consequently, the tracking did not simply help her to make microdosing meaningful, but also to sort out her emotional ups and downs after the microdosing experiments. By maintaining the habit of keeping track of her emotions, she compared the

in her own words, this helped to avoid a situation wherebymood fluctuations her “brain while could on easilyor off catastrophizemicrodosing. Andthe drop [in the mood] and then make [her] panic or regretful.” Her brain did not catastrophize her mood drop in part because of the possibility that tracking opened up for her, but also in part because Jingshu had learnt to treat herself more tenderly if she noticed a high score on the negative feelings. The insights she had on microdosing were not new; she had had such insights before while practicing other “good habits,” from meditation and yoga to “non-violent communication or circling [interpersonal mediation].” These insights included a “softening of the inner critic” that often guides

Figure 1.4 Tracking emotions (Zhu 2019)

543935-L-bw-Mishra judgments on psychosocial and spiritual health against the standards of categories such as “love,”

microdosing helped her to embody them more deeply:“joy,” and “The “flow-state” very act of in collecting such practices. these However,data has also become an emotional-awareness and self-care practice,” she stated. Moreover, she asserted that she

for such categories, and the way she related to these categoriesdeliberately changed did not over set a time. fixed criterion or definition Previously, only working my ass off for 3 hours and producing a super satisfactory article deserved a 7

the same to an hour of highly focused, relaxed and pleasantin the flow house state, cleaning. but now I would generously give

This last “limitation”, if seen from a larger perspective than empirical research, is not necessarily a drawback. Microdosing changed the way I relate to myself and to the world, to the extent that day by

person [as] months ago. The feeling of deep content replacedday the “I” the filling harsh in voices, the data so isthat no the longer previous the same “so-

Figure 1.5 Tracking emotions (Zhu 2019)

543935-L-bw-Mishra so” things became something I celebrate with a 9 or 10 at the end of the day.

To me, such growing compassion towards myself

data. It invites us perfectionists to make a choice: to beatis just yourself as meaningful up for notas creating achieving perfectly the improbable scientific

10,After or tofour change months the definition of training of 10? her (ibid.) ‘mindbody’ in this way – which incorporates and propels the brain pathways relevant to the insights that Jingshu experienced through microdosing – she stated that “Microdosing is like riding a bike with training wheels; now that you can ride without your hands even, why do you want to go back to the wheels, unless it’s for some childlike fun?” And, in relation to enhanced productivity, she further stated that: Contrary to my skepticism, the enhanced productivity and gained energy didn’t turn me into a working machine. It simply made me create more quality content with less time, enjoy the meaningful

freedom and power [in] this paradox: I can produce morework now, itself, yet and I choose chill in to the do less. rest (ibid.) of the day. I find The trainability of brains, bodies, and selves that is ascribed to microdosing becomes valuable as the doses reconcile with the everyday organization of users’ daily lives. It entails a focus on sustaining learning through many different practices, such as mindfulness, neuro-feedback, exercise, and

milder, yet progressively improving and long-lasting, changespsychedelics. that may The support efficacy the of microdosingvision provided lies by in larger-dose anecdotes. However, the goal is not to arrive at such a possibility, but rather to actively

543935-L-bw-Mishra create a trajectory that makes use of the malleability of the embodied brain and of oneself. In the case of

of microdosing lies in part in moving past need for optimization,Jingshu and some intertwined other informants, with the persistent then, the trainingefficacy of the self, made so central in hegemonic popular discourse such as that which characterizes Silicon Valley.

Sensing Similar to the emphasis in this blogpost (see Figure 1.6), most avid microdosers underline the subtlety of sensory shifts such as “brighter” colors and the “richer” taste of food. This appreciation of subtleties guides the approach to processing the facts regarding possible neurochemical changes. If one is

Figure 1.6 Blogpost articulating the sensory aspects related to psychedelics (Eliason 2016).

543935-L-bw-Mishra able to maintain such an open attitude and perceive reality in a slightly more enhanced way in the longer term, this may bring about brain changes that could help one to perform in a more creative way. The users’ accounts point to a training process where the brain is malleable and is helped to make novel connections. But this ability to make connections does not rely on “eureka” moments. It involves a subtle valuing of day-to-day changes, including subtle intermittent doses. It seeks a long-term, slow transformation which is mobilized through the shared understanding of and experimentation with drug use. In this sense, these users are as much interested in their microdosing endeavor to learn about the effects of the drugs as they are in witnessing their internal bodily capacities expand through careful attention and training. As another interlocutor of mine once said: As you sit behind your desk, you may start to feel a little tingling sensation or a slight increase in things that you didn’t notice before. Words might appear brighterawareness or of sharper things around on the you screen. at the And office, perhaps not so much changes around you but how you experience it changes quite a lot, you feel alive and quite present in your body (personal conversation, 2016). Sensing subtle bodily stirrings is part of learning to be affected while microdosing. And as users learn to be affected and to appreciate these sensations, they shape the conditions for microdosing to be valuable. As I followed Nina and Michael, they were very clear about the value of the “tingling sensations” and subtle bodily stirrings mentioned above. As Nina emphatically noted, “It’s not like taking a full dose.”

543935-L-bw-Mishra Michael added, “Yeah, with a full dose you are gone. You know, what did [Timothy] Leary say: ‘Turn on, tune in, drop out?’” Nina emphasized that microdosing is not at all like that. The tiny dose counteracts the “airy-fairy” psychedelic effect, and it lets you take advantage of the focus, the creative ways you can make new connections between different pieces of information, and even simply the good mood it puts you in. “Without the comedown of other stuff, like Modafanil and Ritalin,” she added. “It’s even cheaper in the long run, though it depends on how you source

Euros divided by eight, while Ritalin off-label you get it of course. An LSD tab cut into eight pieces is just five When I made arrangements to observe one offor fivetheir Euros microdosing per pill.” sessions, it became clear how careful they were in planning their enhanced workday. As Michael told me, “Cutting those small tabs isn’t easy!” Drops are easier to dilute, but are also harder to come across. In fact, many of the stories

really microdose. Another interlocutor of mine, Sjef, whileof my organizinginformants arevealed microdosing that itwork is quite session difficult with to a friend, told me that he had realized too late that their dose – “less than a real dose” – was still too large, meaning that they both ended up being too high. “It was a bit ridiculous,” Sjef recalled. “We were so happy and laughing … and everything was slightly surreal. It was absurd to be at the library, so we left. We had to go for a walk.” Too large a dose, and working is impossible; too small a dose, and the substance might not do anything at all. And even when the dosing is just right, my informants also spoke about the work to be done on oneself in order to be able to navigate and make the best of the session.

543935-L-bw-Mishra It became increasingly evident that the kinds of sensations that are valued in relation to microdosing

but are in a constant interplay with the surroundings inare which not limited the microdosing to reaping the is benefitsdone. Dosing of microdosing, too much is not necessarily seen as problematic or considered a disruption to the creative process that microdosing aims to bring about, but it is deemed problematic in relation to the conditions of use. Let us consider another day when Nina and Michael microdosed at the library, and something similar to what Sjef described above happened to them. As Michael described: This day, I guess we took a little too much. Not nearly a full dose, a tiny, but certainly not a microdose.

bursting out in joy and laughter, and I told myself, ohNina no startedno no, laughing,no airy-fairy first psychedelic smiling and experience, then just I took it to BE EFFECTIVE! I myself went out for a walk, she just had to go home and read, because it was ridiculous, absurd how much she was laughing, too much enjoying everything around her. I went for a walk instead. And after a while, slowly resumed working, when I felt the sensations were manageable to focus on work. Even though “good mood” is highlighted in the media discourses in relation to the creative process that microdosing may bring about, users aim to strike a balance between a good and a too-good day. This is highly intertwined with the question of what setting this “good” is to be harnessed in. Laughing becomes unproductive, out of context, and distracting at the library, but a simple shift in the environment, from the library to taking a walk outside, may help to realign laughter with a good focus. This simple vignette reveals that chemical-sensorial tweaking through drugs is materially and irreducibly intertwined with the

543935-L-bw-Mishra norms and bodily capacities implicit in any particular setting. In this case, the particularities are shaped by the supposedly cognitive work performed by bodies trained as static devices or even mere interfaces for the labor market, which privileges internal, mental, intellectual, or computational activity. This description bears a resemblance to the kind of daily bodywork that María Carozzi (2005) brings to light when considering the mind-body dynamics of laboring academics. While academics often imagine themselves as talking minds, doing simply cognitive labor, their work environment turns out to require a lot of body work as they focus and manage their attention – personally and interpersonally. Carozzi emphasizes that academic work presented as purely mental work is enmeshed with and requires a “selectively conscious body” (ibid., 26). This particular training in sitting, reading, and selectively working with sensorial stimulation while doing academic or

is primarily silent and invisible, makes itself quite evidentother work in the in case an of office microdosing. environment, work which

are made to be selectively aware, and to sense their surroundings,To understand consider the the specificity following of description how bodies of

one too many coffees and the feeling of pressure onShilla’s the everydaybladder, that work she at her might office. have For to Shilla, take drinking one too many bathroom breaks, is disturbing. It is a sensation which is “distracting.” It is not so much the thought of what she might need to cook, or common, everyday nuisances that are always present, but she needs a certain kind of bodily ease, which is easily disturbed by her having to use the bathroom too many times. However, on the days when she is microdosing, when

543935-L-bw-Mishra she subtly feels sensations that are in part related to her microdosing, she attends to them in relation to her creative endeavor. New sensations hitherto not felt are in this case not distracting. They are geared towards “creativity” and focus. It may happen that she might leave her desk a few times to walk around. However, this case of leaving the desk is not the same as having to go to pee one time too many, but is another example of the calibrated forms of thinking, writing, and working, which have come to be known as primarily mental, intellectual forms of labor; a kind of labor that assumes that the work to be performed does not require much bodily training – while in fact entrenching a unique type of mind body relation. The articulations of tingling sensations, as described in the above section, help to train the act of sensing in a way that may be accepted in a context in which the senses may be selectively stimulated. And training, it turns out, is not just a matter of learning to feel the sensations while microdosing, but it also

Figure 1.7 Schedule for a microdosing day (Mishra 2018)

543935-L-bw-Mishra shapes and re-organizes the activities around it in a subtle manner. Below, for instance, is an amalgam of a schedule I drew up based on many of my informants’ insights. Attending to the concerns that emerge in

microdosing, and rearticulating microdosing each the specific instances and contexts of one’s own informants brings to light dynamics that exceed thetime narrow to its differentnotion of configurations, optimization employed the work in of the my discourses of Silicon Valley. This becomes clear, for example, in Stefan’s words: My main problem is this perfectionism I have, and I have been working on it through mindfulness, but microdosing also helped a lot with it. For instance, let’s say I have an introduction and it is just bullet points. For me still the hardest thing would be sometimes to put these bullet points into sentences that I would be happy with. It could sometimes take me an hour or two to write one paragraph, and it would so happen that I would sometimes cut two or three paragraphs anyway. LSD helped with the

werecreative just outpour smooth. in Mythe innersense constantthat things critic felt [was]fluid, quiteand my silenced. writing Perhaps flow could it has easilyto do with emerge. the fact Things that these substances might increase neural connectivity or even help regenerate brain cells. I am sure you are aware of those studies, right? But even if these are just preliminary studies, personally the impact on [my] tendency to over-polish, write something perfect, my mind chatter just stops and I feel very

muchWhile in “calm,”the “flow.” “peace,” “silence,” and “inner chatter” provide immediate tools to train and orient bodily sensations, the understanding of neural

543935-L-bw-Mishra connections is an invisible process, which is made material and real through brain images; these

their microdosing. Among microdosers, these verbal andimages visual then indicators intersect of withbodily how processes users are configure a part of assessing and translating the effects regarding the issues that they seek to improve, for instance “perfectionism.” The uncertainty around a causal force, supportive of the relationship between these indicators and the problem of perfectionism, is not problematic as long as users can see improvements in the sought-after issue. As long as they can progressively learn to handle, appreciate, and exploit

and contexts brought about by microdosing, its relevancethe interconnected can persist. reconfigurations of bodies, drugs, Along these lines, Stefan told me: I had some crazy superman days on psychedelics. Eight to ten hours at the library being super productive. Getting so much stuff done, being really happy with the product, with the article. And then going home, jumping on the bicycle, or putting on my trainers and having a hardcore workout

prepared for the marathon. Coming back home and cookingor running a beautiful ten, fifteen, dinner twenty and watching kilometers, an amazing while I movie and asking myself, holy shit what a day! And besides all this achievement, keeping this meta- awareness: for instance, the physiological arousal of LSD helped to lower my pain threshold, the pain was in the background, but didn’t exhaust or stop me, and I felt quite fresh afterwards, and I could have even kept going. But to stop and tell myself, or friends would caution you and remind you of things you maybe ignore on LSD. For instance, I don’t feel hungry because I took acid, really but I should eat, cook a healthy dinner. My knees don’t really hurt,

543935-L-bw-Mishra but they usually do when I normally run, so I should stretch after my run and assess my knees. This section began by showing how the effect of microdosing, as claimed by proponents within Silicon Valley for instance, is the enhancement of the self, its optimization – especially in cognitive labor. And yet, the activities of my informants show how, in practice, this does not actually rely so strongly on the idea of working on a stable and given self through a stable substance. What emerged as crucial in their practices was the possibility of rearticulating the

and surroundings together, by attending to, and configurations that link and transform bodies, drugs, their – often subtle – transformations. learning to be affected by, such configurations and

Conclusion: Materialities of improvement Dosing psychedelics in everyday life with the promise that they might enhance one’s capabilities remains an enticing narrative that has gained a lot of media attention. In moving away from the hedonistic, pleasure-seeking subject to one who abidingly engages in her or his civic duties, this makes talking about drugs more accessible, and opens up possibilities to speak about drugs at the workplace. I began this chapter by presenting the range of media and social attention that the phenomenon of microdosing psychedelics has gained. I touched

in providing proof of the truth about this ongoing mainstreaming.upon how this inThe turn credibility calls for that scientific cognitive expertise tests, brain scans, and diligent tracking might provide to

543935-L-bw-Mishra back up the fascinating anecdotes that are circulating has a potential to rearrange how the functionality of psychedelics has so far been understood. This sets the stage for what brains, selves, and drugs are capable of. In this chapter, however, I have rather paved the way for taking into consideration the everyday worlds of users, which are equally, if not more, relevant compared to the pharmacological functioning of psychedelics in shaping how microdosing comes to matter to them. I wondered whether these attributes are more than simply a given waiting to be examined, and are rather progressively being shaped by such inquiries. In such a scenario, rather than assessing what individual users and drugs are truly capable of, the attention shifts to the material conditions that shape the demands of being capable. The users’ practices of microdosing with psychedelics that I discussed in this chapter are shaped by the materialities of improving one’s everyday life conditions. Thus my aim has been to reveal various elements that shape the landscape of the imperative to improve. As it turns out, with regard to the efforts geared towards improving everyday performance, the proof that LSD might increase focus, calm, and maybe also creativity is not the central driving force of the microdosing practice. If psychedelics become intertwined with creativity, then they do so together

and worlds, which are already implicated in various with different configurations of narratives, practices, users’ lives. Users actively engage in comparisons that includekinds of assessments beneficial effectsof how andthey everydayphysically effortsfeel, how in they relate to their work and to people around them, but also how they approach the very consumption of

543935-L-bw-Mishra a psychoactive for self-improvement. In this chapter

and becomes attentive to all elements that shape the valuationI underlined of psychedelics a process of against substitution existing that practices. reflects This process is sensitive to the fact that new drugs are not simply added to users and their lifestyles (based on a function), and they do not simply replace other drugs or practices that co-exist in the landscape of improvement in which users are embedded. Rather, they require users to entertain and then re-assess the possibilities ascribed to a drug practice; in this case, through experimentally contrasting and working with the practical constraints of microdosing. The co- existence of a multitude of practices centered around the improvement of performance and everyday worlds calls for social science researchers to attend to the (micro)dosing of psychedelics, together with the logic of substitution, through which creativity acquires relevance. It is through the co-existing logics of substitutive processes that shape the enhancement of selves and bodily capacities that the novelty of microdosing is appreciated. Second, users incorporate and enact a version of self, and of the brain, to which they attribute malleability. They are inspired by larger doses and brain images, and simultaneously adapt this information to the practical constraints of what microdosing has to offer. This involves shifting away from the idea that entertains a vision of a breakthrough in problem solving through large psychedelic doses and entropic effects in the brain, towards training a brain that is progressively, through sustained learning, engaged in making new neural pathways. This sense of learning is, once again, consolidated together with techniques directly aimed at focusing and creative

543935-L-bw-Mishra work, but also with the microdosers’ own landscape of self-exploration, such as mindfulness, yoga, or circling. And if this manner of learning joins the ongoing efforts toward crafting a more skilled brain- body-mind dynamic, then in some cases, the use of drugs might just be a mere intermediary tool toward crafting the right conditions. These are the conditions

(self)-improvement endeavors. In these cases, what psychedelicsthat call for continuous do to the bodyreflexive is never engagement done alone. toward In fact, even the body/self is not treated as a stable thing

as the attention is shifted to the ongoing relational transformationswhich preexists psychedelics that microdosing and is modified (together by them,with other activities) might bring. Third, I examined how such skillfulness of brains and bodies involves the task of learning to be affected. Users learn and seek ways to understand how to experience microdoses through techniques shared in collective gatherings where experienced users teach novices what they can expect when microdosing, as well as by using shared tips and tricks from YouTube videos and online surveys. They also actively incorporate what they learn from experimenting with microdosing into the selective manner of sensing that they are already practicing, such as performing seated desk work or appreciating the nature around them, and also when taking breaks from work. The axis created by the abovementioned storylines of psychedelic creativity stretches from what may be considered the ultimate Fordist dystopia of maximized brain functionality at the service of transcorporeal corporate capital, to the ultimate cyberpunk dream of an ongoing, plastic, embodied spiritual resistance to capitalism and its rationalistic

543935-L-bw-Mishra entrenchment. In between these are the slippery relations of practices of self-growth in cultural economies that privilege cognitive work, performed by bodies that are silenced in the background. These are relations which shape, for instance, the very aim of harvesting and channeling neural potential

discourses); despite their prominence, though, dominantfor innovation discourses and profit are hardly (such asever in mainstreamreproduced exactingly in people’s lived realities as they transform upon encountering local idiosyncrasies. My engagement here has been to navigate the contrasting ways through which these cases relate, in order to strategically articulate how my informants mobilize microdosing both with and against the popular tendency, sometimes turning their attention away from the idealized ‘improvement’ and sometimes succumbing to it. What emerges as crucial though is a manner of tinkering which demands a responsiveness toward local and material constraints with regard to the ongoing engagement of improving oneself and one’s surroundings. In this sense, attributing microdosing’s growing popularity and foothold to simply being a matter of the pervasive neoliberal powers that govern cognitive work and personal engagement, and which swallow psychedelics into the same exploitative realms that inform them, does not capture the situatedness and the materiality of the relations through which people transform what microdosing has to offer for them. In this sense, this chapter does not offer yet another framing of individual responsibilization in the face of the corporate and socio-political privileging of the supposedly knowledge producing, mental forms of labor. Instead, it concentrates on

543935-L-bw-Mishra practices in which the effort to improve expands and crosses received notions of the self, the social, and the naturalness of their surroundings. Despite

of drug functioning, and corporate framings of the potentialmicrodosers’ of the reliance drugs, the on importance scientific of understandings both schemes of proof here is secondary to the force of the pragmatic and contextual desire to improve. This improvement is grounded in local and material practices, and as such it can never be stabilized once and for all. Instead, it requires ongoing experimentation with adaptability, and it works through the constant rearticulation of

configurations of use that I traced here.

543935-L-bw-Mishra