The Work Trip

In hip San Francisco, innovative office workers have found a new way to boost productivity: microdosing psychedelic performance enhancers during their 9-5. But can taking LSD really make you a better employee? To test the theory, one MH writer decided to trial his own weekday trip from the (relative) safety of his desk. This is what happened.

- Tom Ward

IT’S 10AM FRIDAY MORNING and as the MH editorial team sits down for its daily meeting, every one of my thoughts is focused on the tab of LSD I’ve just ingested. None of my colleagues knows I’ve taken it and I am as yet unsure what its impact on my day – my career – will be. This isn’t a ploy to lose my job, nor have I simply started the weekend early. If pioneering researchers in the US are to be believed, lysergic acid diethylamide – LSD to you and me – is simply the latest in a string of unusual products claimed as workplace aids. According to one Harvard researcher, by taking a miniscule amount at my desk I’m opening my brain up to receive ideas, improve focus and sharpen creativity. But this is no mere nootropic. Get the dose wrong, or approach it in the wrong frame of mind and I may well be freaking out not just at my workload, but at the elephants carrying my belongings in their trunks as they float through my office and out the door.

To find out what this means for my – for our – workplace prospects, I set out to microdose LSD once every four days, over the course of two working weeks and record the results. Would I unlock the hitherto untapped potential of my brain, entering a swirling mental vortex in which words fly past my eyes as my fingers spark against the keyboard?

Would the Pulitzer board be lining up to canonise my next weight-loss feature? And would I finally understand the ending of Mad Men? To paraphrase the late psychedelic pioneer Timothy Leary, I decided to turn on, tune in and find out.

THE MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR