A Productive Person’s Guide to a Little Bit of LSD

In the mid-1700s, Benjamin Franklin developed a strange habit: Almost every morning before he began to work, he’d stand at his window, nude, taking an “air bath.” Franklin was no exhibitionist: He was a Revolutionary Era life hacker determined to optimize his happiness and output through ritualized, self-administered experiments on brain and body. As human impulses go, the drive to self-improve is just as fundamental as the need for sex or food; these days, the internet can help you find your air bath and improve upon multitudes of problems—and even introduce you to some you never knew you had.

Few understand this better than Ayelet Waldman, a 52-year-old novelist, essayist, and former federal public defender who’s turned mining her own well-being and psychological landscape into a part-time job. A Really Good Day ($25.95, Knopf) is the document of her boldest effort to fix herself: taking “microdoses” of LSD, a practice she discovered in a 2011 book by psychedelic researcher James Fadiman. According to his guidelines, microdosers should take 10 micrograms of LSD every three days, a quantity well under the threshold at which a user experiences hallucinations. If they do this, microdosing proponents claim, they’ll be rewarded with an improved mood, deeper insights, and unprecedented focus and creativity.