University lecturer, 40, ‘microdoses’ psychedelic drugs

‘I feel alive’: University lecturer, 40, who ‘micro-doses’ tiny amounts of psychedelic mushrooms says drugs encouraged her to split with husband and makes seeing family more fun

• Microdosing involves taking tiny amounts of psychedelic drugs to improve mood
• Lindsay Jordan, 40, university lecturer from east London, says it ‘freed’ her 
• Business owner and mother have also revealed how it has changed their lives  

A university lecturer says taking tiny amounts of psychedelic mushrooms makes her feel ‘alive’ and even helped her make the life-changing decision to end her marriage.

Lindsay Jordan, 40, who self-medicates an LSD-style drug called 1P-LSD, is one of the thousands of Britons who now ‘microdose’. 

The microdosing trend started in San Francisco just under a decade ago with people taking around a tenth of the amount of drugs needed to get a ‘high’. 

Experimenting with Class A substances such as LSD and magic mushrooms, people found they could self-medicate anxiety, depression and low mood with a ‘micro dose’ of about 10 or 20mg. 

With dozens of support groups offering advice on how to start microdosing on social media, the trend has spread to Britain where London lecturer Lindsay Jordan uses an LSD-style drug called 1P-LSD. 

With dozens of support groups offering advice on how to start microdosing on social media, the trend has spread to Britain where London professor Lindsay Jordan uses an LSD-style drug called 1P-LSD

Under the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016, 1-propionyl-lysergic acid diethylamide was made illegal to sell or import, but legal to possess. 

She told The Guardian after doing some research she decided to start taking a tenth of a full 1P-LSD dose every three days for month.

She told the newspaper: ‘I felt unusually alive. Lights looked sparkly. I felt delighted. 

‘After the first month, I tweaked it so that dose days coincided with, say, visiting family. I enjoyed playing with the kids more when I was microdosing.’

The senior lecturer, who lives in Hackney, east London, says it has improved her time at work and encouraged her to split up with her husband.

She added: ‘Microdosing contributed to the end of my marriage because it led to me seeing what I should be doing with my life. I want to devote my energies to serving my students and my lovely friends. We both feel much freer now.’ 

Experimenting with Class A substances such as LSD and magic mushrooms, people found they could self-medicate anxiety, depression and low mood with a ‘micro dose’ of about 10 or 20mg

Ms Jordan said: ‘I felt unusually alive. Lights looked sparkly. I felt delighted. ‘After the first month, I tweaked it so that dose days coincided with, say, visiting family’

A mother called Rosie and a business owner called Chloe also told the newspaper of their experiences with microdosing.

Rosie often takes her microdoses after she drops her children off at school and says it reduces anxiety and restores a good level of confidence. 

Chloe, from Yorkshire, buys LSD from the dark web so she can microdose. She says it has helped her since suffering a traumatic mental breakdown.  

A 2018 study found microdoses of psychedelic drugs could induce a state of unconstrained thought without the so-called ‘bad trips’ that often come with high doses of such substances.

According to research, people who took a small amount of the substance had more ideas about how to solve problems and came up with more original ideas.

Chloe, from Yorkshire, buys LSD from the dark web so she can microdose. She says it has helped her since suffering a traumatic mental breakdown. File image used 

The research was led by Luisa Prochazkova from Leiden University in the Netherlands.

It is the first study of its kind to experimentally investigate the cognitive-enhancing effects of microdosing.

Researchers looked at how a microdose of a psychedelic substance affected the cognitive brain function of 36 people.

During the experimental phase, participants were set three tasks before and after they consumed on average 0.37 grams of dried truffles – less than half the weight of a paperclip, which weigh around one gram on average.

The tests assessed their convergent thinking (the identification of a single solution to a problem), their fluid intelligence (the capacity to reason and solve new problems) and their divergent thinking (the ability to recognise many possible solutions). 

After taking the microdose of truffles, scientists found that participants’ convergent thinking abilities were improved.

Participants also had more ideas about how to solve a presented task, and were more fluent, flexible and original in the possibilities they came up with.  

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