While higher doses of psychedelic drugs such as LSD and psilocybin cause trippy visual hallucinations, lower doses may not cause the same impairments, anecdotal reports suggest. 
 
 Editor's Note: This article was updated at 5:15 p.m. E.T. 
 
 For Martijn Schirp, it's a way to make an ordinary day just a little bit better. 
 
 A former poker player and recent graduate in interdisciplinary science in Amsterdam, Schirp has been experimenting with a new way to take psychedelic drugs: Called microdosing, it involves routinely taking a small fraction of a normal dose of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) or magic mushrooms (the latter is legal to purchase in coffeeshops in Amsterdam but not the former). 
 
 Microdosing has gained a cult following amongst a small group of hallucinogen enthusiasts like Schirp, who now writes at HighExistence.com. Proponents report improvements in perception, mood and focus, minus the trippy tangerine trees and marmalade skies normally associated with psychedelics. 
 
 Schirp said he prefers to microdose when he's immersed in creative or contemplative activities, such as writing, painting, meditating or doing yoga. 
 
 "It's like the coffee to wake up the mind-body connection. When I notice it is working, depending on the dosage, time seems to be slowing down a bit, everything seems covered with a layer of extra significance," Schirp told Live Science in an email. 
 
 Given his positive experiences with higher doses of psychedelics, "microdosing offered a way to get a taste of this without [the experience] completely overwhelming me," Schirp said. [Trippy Tales: The History of 8 Hallucinogens] 
 
 But while the effects Schirp and others describe are plausible from a physiological perspective, microdosing is uncharted territory, said Matt Johnson, a psychologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, who has studied the behavioral effects of psychedelic drugs. Scientists have yet to run a clinical trial to assess the effects (or lack thereof) of microdosing. Johnson added that taking a smaller dose of a psychedelic is safer than taking a large dose, but the way people tend to do it — regularly taking small doses every several days — could have long-term side effects. 
 
 Just a little bit 
 
 The idea of taking small doses of psychedelics has been around for a while. The inventor of LSD, Albert Hofmann, was known to microdose in his old age and told a friend that microdosing was an under-researched area. But microdosing gained greater visibility when James Fadiman, a psychologist and researcher at Sofia University in Palo Alto, California, described it in his book "The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide" (Park Street Press, 2011). 
 
 Since then, Fadiman has received about 50 anecdotal reports from microdosers around the world. Most report positive, barely perceptible shifts while microdosing, Fadiman said. [Images: Scientists Analyze Drawings by an Acid-Tripping Artist] 
 
 "What people say is that whatever they're doing, they seem to be doing it a little better," Fadiman told Live Science. "They're a little kinder, a little bit nicer with their kids." 
 
 People with creative jobs report improved focus and an ability to enter the state of flow more easily. Some report a desire to eat healthier or start meditating, Fadiman said. 
 
 "It's like they tend to live a little better," Fadiman said. 
 
 Still others report taking the teeny doses of psychedelics for psychiatric conditions, said Brad Burge, the director of marketing and communications at Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies in Santa Cruz, California, where scientists study the effect of psychedelics on medical conditions such as PTSD. 
 
 "I've heard anecdotally of people using it for depression, seasonal affective disorder, anxiety, OCD [obsessive compulsive disorder]," Burge told Live Science. "With microdoses, the point would be to create subtle changes in people's psychopharmacology or experience, in much the same way as most traditional pharmaceuticals are used now." 
 
 Plausible mechanism, no evidence 
 
 The effects people report with microdoses of LSD, psilocybin, DMT or other "classic" psychedelics aren't completely implausible, Johnson said. All of these drugs work by activating a particular receptor in the brain known as the serotonin 5HT-2A receptor. This receptor fuels the release of the "feel-good" brain chemical, serotonin, which creates a domino effect in the brain that leads to many other brain changes. 
 
 At high doses, these drugs temporarily, but radically, reshape brain networks; for instance, one study found that magic mushrooms create a hyperconnected brain. But antidepressants like Prozac also target serotonin receptors, so it's possible that a low, constant dose of a psychedelic might work in a similar manner, Johnson said. [11 Odd Facts About Magic Mushrooms] 
 
 Still, there's absolutely no evidence to suggest microdosing works as people claim it does, Johnson said. The effects described are so subtle — on par with having the caffeine in a cup of coffee — that they "fall within that category of barely perceptible, and it's right in the range where people can so easily fool themselves," Johnson told Live Science. That means microdosing is particularly susceptible to the placebo effect, in which people taking a sugar pill who believe they're taking a drug report perceptible effects, he said. 
 
 To prove that microdosing has an effect, psychedelics researchers would need to do a double-blind study, in which neither the people administering the drug nor the recipients know whether a particular participant is getting a microdose of a psychedelic or something inert, like a little sugar dissolved in water, Johnson said. Some groups of people are allegedly doing these trials — but because LSD is illegal, and is only approved for research use in a few small trials in a few locations, all of these people are off the grid and not publicizing their efforts, Fadiman said. 
 
 Unknown side effects 
 
 What's more, microdosing could have side effects, Johnson said. The few microscopic grains of LSD — just 10 micrograms — typically used to microdose are too tiny to measure even on a professional laboratory scale, Johnson said. To get around this, people who microdose typically take a blotter paper laced with one hit of LSD, soak it in water and then drink some of the water. But since LSD is an illegal substance procured on the black market, there's really no way to know exactly what you're getting, Johnson said. 
 
 Even in the lab, with carefully measured doses of drugs administered in a controlled environment, Johnson has found substantial variation in the way that people react to the same dose. Combined, those two uncertainties mean people may not be able to reliably microdose, he said. 
 
 "Someone might be expecting a kind of sparkly day, just a really productive day at work — and next thing you know, they're grasping hold to their office chair wondering why the world is dissolving," Johnson said. 
 
 Schirp, for instance, has occasionally had negative microdosing experiences. 
 
 "At times, the experience was still too overwhelming to be productive — I just wanted to lay down or take a walk," Schirp said. 
 
 Beyond that possible experience, the long-term risks of the drug are unknown. The risk of taking a single, tiny dose of LSD or psilocybin is going to be smaller than the risk of taking one big hit, Johnson said. But even the most dedicated psychonauts don't typically trip daily or even weekly, Johnson said. By contrast, people who are microdosing report using the drugs every three or four days, he said. 
 
 Such frequent use could have unknown, long-term side effects, he said. 
 
 "You're tinkering with the system that is involved with depressive systems, but in unexplored ways," Johnson said. 
 
 Editor's Note: This article was updated to correct the spelling of Martijn Schirp's name. 
 
 Follow Tia Ghose on Twitterand Google+. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science. ||||| Some researchers say outlawing drugs like marijuana and ecstasy hinders research into their medicinal properties. 
 
 Restricting the use of psychoactive drugs in research represents the most serious case of scientific censorship since the Catholic Church banned the works of Copernicus and Galileo, some scientists say. 
 
 In a paper published online today (June 12) in the journal Nature Reviews Neuroscience, a group of researchers argues that drug laws enacted in the United States and the United Kingdom during the 1960s and 1970s have hindered vital research into the drugs' functions and therapeutic uses. 
 
 The laws were designed to prevent drug use and drug harm, but they failed to do that, said paper co-author David Nutt, a psychopharmacologist at Imperial College, London. "The unintended consequence is they've really impeded research and development," Nutt told LiveScience. [Trippy Tales: The History of 8 Hallucinogens] 
 
 Nutt and his colleagues focused on three classes of drugs restricted by national laws and international conventions: cannabis (marijuana), MDMA (ecstasy) and psychedelics. Three United Nations treaties from 1961, 1971 and 1988 put a legal system in place for controlling the use of these psychoactive drugs, both for recreational or research purposes. 
 
 Prior to these restrictions, studies investigating these drugs had demonstrated important therapeutic uses, the authors argue. Marijuana has long been used medicinally and can be used to relieve pain and muscle spasms in people with AIDS and multiple sclerosis, for example. Ecstasy has been found to help treat post-traumatic stress disorder and help couples improve communication in their relationships. And LSD, or acid, has been used to treat alcoholism, Nutt said. 
 
 Aside from medicinal uses, Nutt and colleagues say psychedelic drugs can play a role in probing the nature of consciousness, because they induce changes in the conscious state. The drugs activate a receptor in the brain called 5HT-2A, which is most prevalent in the brain's outer layer, or cortex, in areas involved in sensation and emotion. 
 
 "We cannot understand the brain if we're not studying drugs," Nutt said. 
 
 The restrictions were designed to protect against the drugs' perceived dangers, but these dangers are overstated, and are often less severe than those from alcohol, Nutt and his colleagues write. The regulations make it almost impossible to conduct the research necessary to challenge these perceptions, Nutt said. 
 
 Because of the illegal status of these drugs, finding funding to study them can be very challenging. What's more, the drugs are not easy to obtain — standard chemical manufacturers don't produce them, and the cost for custom synthesis is prohibitively high. For example, the researchers, in their paper, cite a company in Boston that produces psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, at a cost of $12,000 per gram (0.04 oz). 
 
 Nutt is one of the few scientists doing research on these psychedelic drugs, and his findings have "opened up a whole new way of how the brain works," he said. 
 
 From a scientific standpoint, research on psychedelic drugs was deemed important before the drugs were banned in the early 1960s. Robert F. Kennedy once questioned the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), saying, "if [clinical LSD projects] were worthwhile six months ago, why aren't they worthwhile now?" Still, the bans went ahead. 
 
 The restrictions aren't absolute, however. Seventeen U.S. states have legalized marijuana for medicinal use, and in Colorado and Washington, marijuana is now legal for personal use. Still, researchers face many hurdles in obtaining and working with marijuana and other drugs. 
 
 "It's time for scientists to stand up and change things," Nutt said. 
 
 Follow Tanya Lewis on Twitterand Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook& Google+. Original article on Live Science. ||||| A psychedelic drink used for centuries in healing ceremonies is now attracting the attention of biomedical scientists as a possible treatment for depression. Researchers from Brazil last month published results from the first clinical test of a potential therapeutic benefit for ayahuasca, a South American plant-based brew. Although the study included just six volunteers and no placebo group, the scientists say that the drink began to reduce depression in patients within hours, and the effect was still present after three weeks. They are now conducting larger studies that they hope will shore up their findings. 
 
 The work forms part of a renaissance in studying the potential therapeutic benefits of psychedelic or recreational drugs—research that was largely banned or restricted worldwide half a century ago. Ketamine, which is used medically as an anaesthetic, has shown promise as a fast-acting antidepressant; psilocybin, a hallucinogen found in ‘magic mushrooms’, can help to alleviate anxiety in patients with advanced-stage cancer; MDMA (ecstasy) can alleviate post-traumatic stress disorder; and patients who experience debilitating cluster headaches have reported that LSD eases their symptoms. 
 
 Ayahuasca, a sacramental drink traditionally brewed from the bark of a jungle vine (Banisteriopsis caapi) and the leaves of a shrub (Psychotria viridis), contains ingredients that are illegal in most countries. But a booming ayahuasca industry has developed in South America, where its religious use is allowed, and where thousands of people each year head to rainforest retreats to sample its intense psychedelic insights. 
 
 Depression drink? 
 
 The brew has been studied by anthropologists, social scientists and theologians, but clinical research on ayahuasca has been limited to observation of its effects in mice and rats, and in healthy human volunteers, including brain-imaging studies and retrospective surveys of past use. 
 
 For the latest study, researchers led by Jaime Hallak, a neuroscientist at the University of São Paulo, Brazil, gave one mild dose of ayahuasca to six volunteers who had been diagnosed with mild to severe depression that was unresponsive to at least one conventional antidepressant drug. None had drunk ayahuasca before. 
 
 After their drink, the participants sat in a quiet, dimly lit room. Physicians used standard clinical questionnaires to track their depression symptoms. Improvements were seen in two or three hours (though the psychedelic effects of an oral dose take around five hours to wear off)—a rapid effect, as conventional antidepressants can take weeks to work. The benefits, which were statistically significant, continued to hold up in assessments over the next three weeks. Three of the participants vomited, a common side effect of ayahuasca, but otherwise the procedure was well tolerated, Hallak says. 
 
 “It is a proof of concept of what so many ritual ayahuasca users already know: ayahuasca can help one feel extra well, not just during the experience, but for up to days or weeks after,” says Brian Anderson, a psychiatrist at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved in the study but has published papers on the drink’s potential. “The relationship between ayahuasca’s psychedelic effects and its therapeutic effects needs to be empirically studied,” he says. 
 
 James Stone, a psychiatrist at King’s College London who has studied the effects of psychoactive drugs on the brain, says that the study is interesting but should be viewed with caution because it had no placebo group. “Placebo response is a well-documented effect in clinical trials of antidepressants,” he says. “The only things that can really be concluded from this study are that it is tolerated by patients with depression, and in these people did not seem to have any serious side effects following a single dose.” 
 
 It is biochemically plausible that ayahuasca could treat depression—its plants contain compounds that alter the concentrations of the mood-regulating neurotransmitter serotonin in the brain—as do commercial antidepressants. These compounds include the hallucinogen N,N-dimethyltryptamine, which binds to serotonin receptors, and also the chemicals harmine, tetrahydroharmine and harmaline, which are thought to inhibit an enzyme called monoamine oxidase A and so prevent the breakdown of serotonin and other neurotransmitters. 
 
 “It is possible that ayahuasca and other serotonergic psychedelic drugs, such as psilocybin, may be useful as antidepressants for particular subsets of patients in the future,” says Stone. “We await the results of well-designed, random controlled trials to determine clinical effectiveness.” 
 
 Further trials are under way. Draulio de Araujo, a neuroscientist at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte in Natal, Brazil, and a co-author of the study, says that his team has already treated 46 (out of a planned 80) patients in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study of ayahuasca and depression that began in January 2014. “We hope to finish it by the end of this year,” he says. 
 
 This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on April 6, 2015. ||||| It's quite a trip to visit maverick pharmacologist Dr Alexander Shulgin and his collaborator and wife, Ann, at their rustic home in California. It is a warm secluded place far from the UK's current controversy over drugs, fuelled by newspaper campaigns to legalise cannabis backed by Richard Branson, by Kevin Williamson's book Drugs And The Party Line (a scathing attack on drugs policy printed on hemp) and the Scotland Against Drugs campaign. 
 
 Sasha Shulgin, as he introduces himself, is the proud godfather of Ecstasy, the hit drug of so many raves. A respected chemist, his relationship with the substance started surprisingly long ago, in the 1970s, when a colleague sent him the 1912 German patent for what was then a little-known drug called methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA). He synthesised and tested the orphan compound - Merck, the drug company, had never used it commercially - and has been raving about it ever since. Three years ago, for example, it was Sasha's expert testimony that led Spanish authorities to categorise it as one of the least harmful drugs. 
 
 Sasha has invented about a hundred other mind-altering substances, no mean feat since there may only be around 200 synthetics out there, not counting nature's own hallucinogens - magic mushrooms, peyote cacti, toad venom and the red beans of the Arizona and New Mexico Indians, among others. And for decades Sasha, 72, and Ann, a 66-year-old writer and researcher originally from New Zealand, have also imbibed psychedelics. In the name of science, they have taken assiduous notes on their trips, especially the benefits, ranging from increased self-awareness, compassion or spirituality to relaxation and great sex. 
 
 Indeed their 'Farm,' as they jokingly call the shambolic place, has been the site of years of radical group research. After they had worked up a new mind-expanding compound, they would bring in eight or so fellow believers - from physicians to psychologists, scientists to businessmen - to test it and record their reactions. Until recently, however, the Shulgins were barely known beyond the world of government-controlled psycho-pharmacology. 
 
 Their white wooden home, with a panoramic view to the east, sits atop the dry hills that stretch inland from the college town of Berkeley. Suburban drivers whiz down the four-lane road at the end of narrow Shulgin Road, so named because Sasha's family has owned the land since leaving Russia 50-odd years ago. 
 
 For more than 15 years, Sasha held a rare government licence allowing him to study and synthesise illegal drugs. He has testified as an expert on both sides of drug trials and wrote the classic reference book on US law and drugs, Controlled Substances: Chemical And Legal Guide To Federal Drug Laws. Then, six years ago, and to the dismay of the authorities, the Shulgins declared their love of psychedelics and belief that all drugs should be legal. 
 
 Adamant that their life's work should never disappear, they published a landmark book, the 1,000-page, oddly-titled Pihkal: A Chemical Love Story. The acronym stands for Phenethylamines I Have Known And Loved, and refers to a drug family that includes Sasha's beloved and already-illegal Ecstasy or MDMA. It contains recipes for 180 mind-bending chemicals and notes on the 'highs', often with artistic references and Ann's Jungian take on experience. Pihkal gained a cult readership, although the recipes are gobbledygook for amateurs. In its third print run, it has sold more than 21,000 copies, which is remarkable for a self-published book. 
 
 The Shulgins are now in the news again. To the fury of drug officials on both sides of the Atlantic, they have just published a second book, Tihkal: The Continuation, which covers the 'tryptamines' from toad venom and magic mushrooms to LSD. In the first month, they sold 3,500 copies through their Transform Press in Berkeley, a figure boosted by a rave review in New York's Village Voice. At a certain point, they say they will simply publish it on the Internet as they did with Pihkal. Their aim is not to make money but to release the psychedelic genie from the bottle by disseminating their know-how irreversibly. They give copies out, only asking you to pass them on to others who might be interested. 'It can't be exterminated now,' says Sasha. 
 
 Perhaps it's not surprising that the late Timothy Leary said the Shulgins are among the century's most important scientists. And Albert Hofmann, the inventor of LSD, is a friend with whom Sasha co-wrote the introduction to a 1977 book on hallucinogens by Aldous Huxley entitled Moksha, from the Hindu term for spiritual awakening. 
 
 Drug-induced states, argue Sasha and Ann, are so intrinsic to human nature that the use of intoxicants such as tobacco, opium, cannabis, coffee or alcohol can be traced back to the dawn of time. They advocate legalising all drugs, addictive or not. It should be a matter for personal choice, they say, something that is taxed but as available as tobacco and booze. Drug-related crime would drop, drug-fighting money would be saved and drug use might even fall without the attraction of illicitness. The only laws needed, Sasha says, would be to prevent people driving when high, drugging someone else without their permission, or giving substances to children. Drug users who get into trouble should be helped, not treated like criminals, adds Ann, as are people addicted to valium or alcohol. 
 
 Shulgin with his wife Ann at their home in Lafayette, California, USA in 2002. Photograph: Anthony Pidgeon/Redferns 
 
 Has this argument become truly prophetic, a much-needed scientifically-informed salvo in a one-sided debate? Perhaps spiritual awakening, relaxation and chemical freedom should be within everyone's grasp, especially since life is so harsh. Or is the Shulgins' view well-intentioned but irresponsible - a sort of heroin chic for middle-class libertarians, another take on Andre Breton's 'derangement of the senses' from two utterly charming but idiosyncratic advocates? After all William Burroughs, trying to kick junk, tracked down the psychedelic 'ayahuasca' in South America in the hopes of substituting a new addiction. The 'yage' ceremonies were like night-long raves. But he later asked if dropping acid is like opening a door: once you've found it why keep reopening it over and over again? On a sunny afternoon, Sasha and Ann serve sandwiches and cake on their patio. In the middle of the table, next to the potato salad, is a Bolivian cactus growing in a pot. It's hallucinogenic rather than decorative, something you learn is true of almost every plant within a stone's throw of their house. 
 
 Sasha's pharmaceutical calling came in, of all places, Liverpool. Two decades before the psychedelia of the 1960s, his epiphany was nothing to do with the Beatles' Yellow Submarine or Lucy In The Sky with Diamonds. He was in the US navy and had been whisked to hospital for an emergency operation. 'Goofed up' on Royal Navy rum, morphine and a barbiturates, he says he was given orange juice and was so convinced he was being re-drugged, he fell unconsciousness for too long. 'It was the ultimate placebo effect,' he recalls excitedly. 'I got interested in how you can modify the mind, how you can find out what's going on.' For years, Sasha worked as a scientist at Dow Chemical, although he had taken a psychedelic, mescaline, back in the 1950s. 'I saw colours I had never seen before,' he says. 
 
 Ann, who experimented with mescaline-laced peyote at around the same time, adds: 'It opens up doors you wouldn't even know were there otherwise. It was a very extraordinary, sacred experience - everything you look at is infused with light.' On the way to Sasha's laboratory, he points out an acacia tree with psycho-active bark - DMT, often the source for an intoxicating snuff in the Caribbean and South America - and a mint used by Mexican Indians that he says often gives the user an 'out of body' or astral experience. 
 
 His lab is cobweb-entangled and autumn leaves are piled in the corners. Drawers are crammed with beakers and test-tubes. On the wall near an old fireplace is a Voodoo doll Sasha says he uses to invoke a certain copper reaction. 
 
 What about bad trips? I ask 'Oh, they're real,' he replies. 'Even in the research group, we'd have idiosyncratically-sensitive people.' Once, a friend became temporarily paralysed on one of Sasha's creations, 5-TOM. 'A pretty heavy-duty experience,' says PIHKAL. 'The consensus is that it wasn't worth the struggle.' The war on drugs, he says, is a waste of money, more to do with political control, profit-making and fear of the unknown than medical or social concerns. 'Is MDMA a dangerous drug?' he fumes. 'It's been used so much in the UK, and there's been one death in a million.' 'Recreational' heroin at your local off-licence? 'It's highly addictive, but perhaps not quite as much as tobacco,' he says. 
 
 Think about recreation, says Ann. 'Re-creation. Young people grow up in big cities, they have to be so street-wise and untrusting. At a rave, that can drop away, leaving a sense of sharing and commitment with people they just met.' As if on cue, one of their fellow researchers drops by. Tony Sargent is a retired chemist who used to run radiology experiments at the respected Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. He's now a wine-maker, and is dressed with a casual conservatism- quite a contrast to Sasha with his Einstein hair and baggy ethnic-patterned shirt. They talk about psychedelics and how pharmacologists used to describe them as creating a temporary psychosis. Sasha is recalling a scan on the brain activity of schizophrenics, or 'schitzies' as he calls them. But surely you can't liken taking a drug voluntarily to a psychosis that can condemn someone to a life of isolation? Later, Ann will announce that a new crate of cacti has arrived. One of the Shulgins' means of staying ahead of the authorities is to work with psycho-active substances that are not yet categorised or outlawed. They are preparing their third book, tentatively called Qihkal, the 'Q' standing for quinolines, the hallucinogenic substance in cacti. Since many of the plants originate in Central or South America, they are not properly classified by Western botanists let alone pharmacologists. 
 
 A few days later, we talk on the phone. The Shulgins are excited about reports from a forum for police on 'more pragmatic approaches' to substance abuse at the conservative Hoover Institution, at Stanford University. Former Secretary of State George Shultz and Nobel economist Milton Friedman had told the police that America's war on drugs is a failure that has led to massive, cruel imprisonment, inner-city destruction and widespread drug gangs that thrive on high profits and violence. 
 
 For all their shamanistic talk, the Shulgins have experienced the war on drugs first-hand. Twice in 1994, US agents searched their home and lab, in part because drug officials were livid about the publication of Pihkal. Unable to halt the Shulgins' books because of the First Amendment, the authorities instead fined them Dollars 25,000 and made Sasha relinquish his drug-handling licence. 
 
 They might have had cold feet sooner had they known his dedication. Sasha estimates he has popped 200 or so psychedelics not of his own invention. And he has invented 100 or so psychedelics, some potent enough to get street credibility or to be used by maverick psychotherapists - 2C-B, DOM or STP, the now-illegal DOB and DOI. Ethical and sincere in his beliefs, Sasha tried them first on himself, as did Hofmann with LSD and Salk with the polio vaccine. With a subversive-sounding chuckle, he makes a final charming quip: 'Oh, so many drugs and so little time.' So little time indeed, and there must quite a few out there who wish his calling were inventing a vaccine for Aids.
– Some users of LSD like taking tiny amounts of the hallucinogenic drug—often by drinking acid-laced water—to experience subtle benefits like increased focus, creativity, or friendliness toward people, LiveScience reports. "It's like the coffee to wake up the mind-body connection," says former poker player Martijn Schirp, who now writes for HighExistence.com. "When I notice it is working, depending on the dosage, time seems to be slowing down a bit, everything seems covered with a layer of extra significance." Schirp says he embraced the practice, called "microdosing," because it gave him a chance "to get a taste of this without [the experience] completely overwhelming me." But any possible long-term risks are unknown because, as Medical Daily notes, LSD remains an illegal drug that's rarely tested. "The unintended consequence is they've really impeded research and development," a psychopharmacologist told LiveScience a couple of years ago. "We cannot understand the brain if we're not studying drugs." According to one psychologist, LSD does mimic antidepressants like Prozac by freeing up the brain's "feel-good" chemical, serotonin, so microdosing may work as advertised. It's been around for years, too: LSD inventor Albert Hofmann microdosed in his old age, and the practice is described in James Fadiman's 2011 book The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide. Yet even Schirp admits it's not always positive: "At times, the experience was still too overwhelming to be productive—I just wanted to lay down or take a walk," he says. (Recent studies on psychedelic drugs downplay the risk of psychosis and note possible anti-depressant effects.)