
The Silicon Valley avant-garde have turned to LSD to increase their productivity - lacaua
https://www.1843magazine.com/features/turn-on-tune-in-drop-by-the-office
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a3n
> Every three days Nathan (not his real name), a 27-year-old venture
> capitalist in San Francisco, ingests 15 micrograms of lysergic acid
> diethylamide (commonly known as LSD or acid).

> Nathan first started microdosing in 2014, when he was working for a startup
> in Silicon Valley. He would cut up a tab of LSD into small slices and place
> one of these on his tongue each time he dropped.

How does he know?

How does he know it's actually LSD, or only LSD?

How does he know how much is in a tab?

How does he know whether it's evenly distributed across the tab, and that one
microdose is actually _15_ micrograms _of_ LSD?

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pm90
I've been giving some serious thought about what future work might look like
w.r.t drugs. The narrative seems to be that people in creative professions
like artists, singers etc as well as people in high stress circumstances like
traders need to indulge in hard drugs to keep doing valuable work. I wonder if
these drugs are required by these professions, or if its just placebos to fool
their brains into being creative. Whatever the real reason might be, if taking
drugs becomes normal...

~~~
FullMtlAlcoholc
For those industries you mentioned, I don't think drugs are used orimarily for
their creative effects as much as for stress relief and coping.

~~~
imesh
I think a certain percentage of the population does drugs and that's just how
it is. It doesn't matter if your a lawyer a welder or unemployed, people like
drugs.

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warsharks
this is an issue ive seen raised a lot lately and something a mycologist
friend of mine has been championing for years, being a curious cat i decided
to experiment with it and while it offers some benefits id personally argue
that its not as effective as the likes of modafinil or ADHD medication such as
amphetamines or methylphenidate.

it also comes with the extra added issue that its very easy to accidentally
end up having taken too much, unless you happen to be a very well equipped
chemist then youre probably not the one measuring your doses not to mention
the potential variability of effects between different synths of the chemical

during my experiment i think one tab must have been slightly higher dosed than
the others resulting in a small "i need to get the hell out of here now!"
moment in the supermarket, not enough that anyone would have noticed and it
was gone pretty quickly but it highlighted the potential shortcomings of a
chemical thats so potent and can much more significantly alter your perception
than straight stimulants can.

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true_tuna
There have been several previous articles about micro-dosing in the Bay Area.
One woman was using LSD microdosing instead of traditional anti-anxiety drugs.
A fifth to a tenth of a dose seems to have an extremely mild calming effect.
There have also been studies of using psychedelic drugs to treat PTSD. More
research is probably a great idea. I wonder if there's some way to make it
legal to study so the science can provide reliable data.

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nitwit005
Given the long history of news organizations making this sort of thing up,
although usually about teenagers, I'd give this a pretty low odds of being a
real trend. Particularly given the handful of personal accounts, and no
attempt at looking for real world data like emergency room visits.

My personal observation from living here, is that the drug/alcohol use is
pretty typical, outside of burning man, except for some people suffering from
Overwatch addiction.

~~~
nailer
Hrm, it's been around in tech for a few years. There's a Cisco Fellow (ie,
well decorated internal employee) who wrote a good chunk of IOS that openly
uses LSD for programming, and everyone up the to the CEO knows this.

