Jaime Diaz was recently interviewed by KIRO news about the new trend of tech workers micro-dosing LSD to boost creativity.
Tech workers use LSD to help expand creativity
By: KIRO 7 News Staff
Updated:
LSD and high tech seem like opposites, but KIRO 7 discovered some workers are turning to the drug, which hit a high in popularity in the '60s, to increase their problem-solving ability and creativity.
Instead of a full dose, they're microdosing.
Paul Austin is the founder of the company The Third Wave and calls himself a microdosing coach.
"So microdosing is the act of consuming really low doses of psychedelics, usually on a two-times-per-week basis, for a period of a month or two months," according to Austin.
Austin told KIRO-7 he's done it, by taking 1/10th of a normal dose.
"I was looking for something that could help with creativity, that could help with entering a flow state, that could help with a process of building my business," said Austin.
He's studying the impacts and making a business of helping others maximize their experience with the controlled substance.
"For creativity, to help with problem-solving, to give them a little more energy. It's kind of to get another extra edge in what they're doing," Austin said
The popularity of LSD microdosing caught the attention of UW psychology professor Jaime Diaz .
Diaz is behavioral pharmacologist and wrote the book "How Drugs Influence Behavior." He's been teaching at UW for 40 years.
"There's the danger that someone's going to take too much LSD," explained Diaz, "You're already in micrograms, and so microdosing LSD is very difficult to do."
Diaz told KIRO-7 he's very interested in the science of what LSD does to the brain.
Read the entire article and watch the video here .