#once again im starting to have trouble distinguishing between am i just too mad or am i just finally realizing how fucked shit was

[ko-eko-ev-go-ms]

Have a random personal vent lol

Ik I gotta work on shit and have a whole convo but like how tho???? Like???? I’m so mad???? And I’m probably just gonna get madder???? And like they aren’t doing anything so like???? And like you can’t just message someone out the blue and be like “hey I’m mad so fuck you actually”, like that’s so shitty???? Hhhhh. It is difficult to have a reasonable and healthy confrontation when you have no models for what that looks like, especially when upset and like???? It’s not like I’m gonna stop being upset so it’s not like I can just leave convo to cool off bc I’m just gonna be mad????

#thoughts #oni talks #oni vents #also why tf do i have to do so much work on this shit and like ive tried to express and just nothing happens #and like ik its on me to communicate and use my words and shit like thts part of my upsetness at them #and obviously im also my own person responsible for my own decisions on how ive been handling things #but also???? that doesnt absolve them either tho????? #and its like how many times do i have to say something like jst idk ik its a 2 way street and i need to do shit and hold myself accountable #but also so do they tho???? and im just???? so mad abt everything???? #and i cant tell anymore if its like ok bc im so mad and resentful i wonder if im just being petty #but also maybe im so angry for a fucking reason???? #idk im also rereading old convos and its just making me angrier #like ik i gotta do something but idk wtf tht something is #i also feel shitty bc i feel like a huge hypocrite but at the same time tht makes me more mad #bc ik i have problems and shit and ive been working on it so like??? maybe also do tht??? #but also once again hypocritical just a little but just???? HHHHHHG #and im so mad tht i feel like my previous apologies were bad bc actually fuck you #once again im starting to have trouble distinguishing between am i just too mad or am i just finally realizing how fucked shit was #also @ past me u wrong ffs #also tbh its been harder to be nice and friendly and check in bc i feel dishonest bc im so mad but then that makes me feel bad #its hard to be nice and patient w someone when you are actively mad at them

[tri-to-be]

What they don’t tell you when deciding on doing your first Ironman.

Once you have been bitten by the endurance bug, some of us decide to go for the holy grail in Triathlons; the Full Ironman distance of 3,8km swim, the 180km on a bike followed by the full marathon.  Most people will never experience anything like this and many of us are attracted by the dream that is presented by the marketing guru’s of IronMan and Challenge alike.  After realizing it will take a good 6 months of training - and clearing that with those around you such as your family that won’t see you anymore on most weekends as you will be out training somewhere - you decide to go for it.

The average Full Ironman distance registration fee is just under US$ 1,000.  This gives your between 8 to 17 hours of suffering on race day and about 400  lonely training hours which will cost you another US$ 1,000 or more in coaching fees. Throw in your travel at US$ 500 - 2,000 (domestic or international travel) and your physio due to some injuries, bike maintenance, outfits, wetsuits, new shoes and you are on a roll financially. And since we are already digging deep lets make sure we have top bike gear for at least another US$ 5,000 to get us over the finish line. Yes, triathlons can be one of the most expensive sports i know that does not involve engines or live animals (although sometime the athletes are difficult to distinguish)  For this  investment,  you get the satisfaction knowing that you have an “Iron Will” (TM) according to IronMan promo video’s, are a focussed achiever in life, get a trinket medal and bragging rights for life.  In other words, you can set your mind to ZERO and just keep going and going like the Energizer Bunny only to prove that you can be part of the “elite” finishers. The entire dream has been pre-created and is echoed by many triathletes, especially those who have never done an Ironman.

Ironman is indeed all in the mind. and the less you use your mind the easier it becomes because the more your grey cells start wondering if that strange feeling in your calf could become the end of your race, the more likely it will happen.  Unlike in the game of golf where your mind is like a roller coaster because you earn instant satisfaction of a great shot and depression after a flunked one, Ironman has not much to offer along the way.  Somehow it is boring as you are not really racing but controlling mind and body to keep the pace at max.  Its easy to slack off as your mind wonders off and lowers the pace. A simple pass of a biker or runner  might bring you back to your senses, but you know that at some point that person is likely to do the same to you as we all vary in pace at different times. Ironman is the ultimate race not against yourself, but against your mind and of course your training.

What is interesting is how the mind works on long distances.  I am sure the body fuels some of the thought but in the end, I noticed that the things around me, or rather distracting me, are the ones that keep me going.  I find myself riding and worrying about my knee when it started feeling tight and since my muscles are getting sore, the next thought is about how to even start the run and complete that full marathon. Suddenly my attention is grabbed by a pothole I need to avoid, then I notice the scenery which I vividly enjoy and promptly I am back in good shape.  This - in various forms - happens numerous times.   Aside from that, we are being bombarded with quotes like “this too, will pass”, “just get this over with” and “just take it as another training day”  But we know that once we are in those final kilometers everything will be forgotten and emotion with “I did this” will draw us past the finish line for a few seconds of fame as they call our name as we approach the famous red carpet.  Yes, me too i have dreamed many times of hearing the words, “Marcel; you are an Ironman”. Or so I thought.

But let’s backtrack a little to discuss the months before the race, and start with the training plan.  First, the excitement fuels the first phase your training, where you have to relearn the way you run and bike.  This is where you start to go long and easy, doing things differently and of course enjoy waking up at 6am every day to get that part out of the way. It was fun seeking my hotels during my many business trips and qualify them as “training Hotels”  Who has the right pool size, or a park where we can run.  I even blogged about it in Trip Advisor and rated some hotels purely on Triathlon training capabilities.    The next stage that follows about 3 months inwards was that of fatigue.  The training gets boring, your body is getting tired and your mind is looking for excuses. It was getting harder  to wake up and getting sleep was deemed a higher priority leaving the trainings to the evening with work distractions on your mind and finding every shortcut along the way.  It was getting truly tough.  This is also the period where suddenly minor injuries creeped up such as rotor cuff pains making swimming a real struggle for me.  What followed was logical; depression.  the “I am not ready” phase slowly overtakes and you wonder why no progress what made for weeks  until something makes you realize you are really full of shit and gets you out of that cycle.  My great friend and triathlete Daniel Schwalb, who actually got me on a bicycle 8 years ago that started this madness, and dragged me to my first sprint, reminded me during my whining and ranting about the famous Rule#5 of the Velominati ; “Harden the F@&* up!”.

From there on you are just 6-8 weeks out and you are getting excited again.  This is where you do you long (and super boring) bricks, runs and rides and realize that after each training you have plenty of energy left.  Recovery feels like a breeze and the 70.3 distance feels like a run in the park.  Its an amazing feeling of fitness strength.  At this point you are cautious to avoid any kind of injury as you have come this far already, then in the Taper weeks you wonder if this is the right  thing to do and why you should’t push for that last bit… but I believed in my Coach Tabitha Bond and she was just spot on on what would work for me.

On race day i had no clue if I was going the complete this and the only thing I had going for me was to believed Tabitha that I was ready.  My conservative estimates came out to 16 hours so i would have an hour to spare before cut off.  I had never ran a marathon before the IM, not even during the training where it stopped at 35km.  I had no clue what to expect next.  The horn sounded, and the familiar swim battle, took place.  It would be a 1,9km swim around the 1,8 km long Jetty and back.  I took an easy pace with long strokes, focussed on my rotations and lightly added my legs to pivot.  I made sure I stayed the course (straight) which did not always work as planned, but it was good enough, and the “with sighting” drills paid off.  after the u-turn around the jetty the adrenaline kicked in again that made me care less about the chafing caused by the wetsuit.  I got close, hit the beach and started making my way to transition… A guy next to me asked for the time (I had decided beforehand not to care as it is what it is) and saw 1:15. I was amazed and happy and dashed to T1… I was on a roll and felt great!.  Once on the bike I knew I had decided on a conservative safe pace (28kmph) and just kept it for 6:30 hours making sure I focused on my nutrition above all.  I ate, I drank, stopped to pee and I peddled. There is really little excitement in this part of the race at all (and I love cycling!). Arrived in T2, I seriously start worrying about the bike-to-run which has caused me and others great trouble in the past for many kilometers. Again a glimpse on the watch and it showed a flat 8:00 total time whilst dashing out of the transition. That would leave me a whopping 9 hours to finish the run.  OMG!  The smile continued and the run was smooth from the beginning short of some minor pains in the lower abdomen, nothing i couldn’t manage. After 10k of mainly conservative running with some short brisk walks I checked for the first time my Heart Rate which to my amazement was 112!  I cursed myself for being conservative and had limitations in my mind and picked up the pace from there.  I stopped for a Red Bull after 20km and kept increasing the pace.  I was going to be early!  It was getting dark and cold now. At 40km a pain hit my knee and despite all efforts, running was over.  but who cared! Yes this added 20-30 minutes to my time but I was well within my race targets and only this joint, not the rest of the body, was giving me a sign of struggle.  Now here in the story I will add that I weighed 104kg at the start of the race.  As a heavy set and overweight (and medically borderline obese with a BMI of 36) athlete my knees are obviously suffering.  Moving close to the finish the familiar thought of making sure you look good for the photo started coming and once the carpet was in sight, I high five’d my way to the finish line.  The victory was bitter sweet despite arriving 2 hours ahead of my expected scenario.

What happened next you don’t hear about either.  I read in an article that during an Ironman, an Age Grouper research has shown that many of the organs age by about 40years in comparison during the race.  It recovers in just a few weeks but it takes a hit.  For me I could no longer read my phone text without glasses which thankfully restored within a day.  I also had bladder issues where I could not hold my pee for a long time - Ithis recovered as well but took about a week.  Wether that was because of the salt intake or a combo of others I will leave to the scientists.  my knee recovered in just days and after a week I started some simple training again.

As today I am an Ironman and for that I feel proud,  However, I don’t feel as gratified as I would expect myself to be.  I felt like going for a super long walk, not a race of any kind.  Maybe unless you are in a higher league of racing, but a 70.3 offers all the right excitement for a triathlon. the Full only offers your the right to show you are physically awesome, at a huge cost on your body, family and finance.  When asked, would i do it again…… Yeah sure, but then race at your peak all the way.

#ironman #triathlon #triathlon training #140.6 #triathlontraining #ironmantraining #bussleton #traithlonnewbie

[viralhottopics]

How dropping acid saved my life

When writer Ayelet Waldman fell into depression she started microdosing with LSD. She tells Rachel Cooke about her extraordinary experiment with acid

Some time ago for reasons that will become apparent I am not allowed to say when, exactly the American writer Ayelet Waldman scored some LSD. She did this, not on a street corner or via the dark web, but middle-class style, through an acquaintance of an acquaintance, for which reason the drug arrived at her home in Berkeley, California, in a stamp-encrusted brown paper package whose sender (an elderly professor, she believed) identified himself only as Lewis Carroll, a fellow resident of her town. Mr Carroll had, however, troubled to write her a brief note. Our lives may be no more than dewdrops on a summer morning, it said. But surely, it is better that we sparkle while we are here. The bottle he enclosed contained 50 drops of vintage quality LSD, of which he advised her to take two at a time. Waldman was delighted. Not to put too fine a point on it, she believed this drug might save her life.

For as long as she can remember, Waldman has been held hostage by her moods. When she is up, she is up; when she is down, she is down. These highs and lows she has managed over the years with the help of therapy and a number of drugs, with which she has had varying degrees of success. At the time of the parcels arrival, though, she had entered a new and much more scary phase.

I was so profoundly depressed, she says. It wasnt the kind of depression where you fall into bed. Ive been through that before, and while its grim, its manageable. This was more of a mixed state, a kind of activated depression, and thats a dangerous place to be. I was doing everything I could to ruin my own life. I was afraid that if I stayed on that track, I would force my husband to leave me, and that I would probably attempt suicide and being a very capable person, I dont think a failed attempt was on the cards.

It was while she was in this state of mind that she stumbled on The Psychedelic Explorers Guide, by the psychologist and writer James Fadiman, who since 2010 has been collecting reports from individuals who have experimented with regular microdosing of LSD and psilocybin, a naturally occurring chemical found in a variety of mushrooms. Fadimans book is certainly not the result of a scientific research project; there has never been an officially sanctioned study of microdosing.

Here comes happiness: Ayelet Waldman at home. Photograph: Barry J Holmes for the Observer

But the people whose accounts it gathered together spoke repeatedly of experiencing, thanks to LSD, increased focus and better mood. They reported rarely losing their tempers, and becoming more fun to be with. None, moreover, had suffered any side effects. To put it simply, they went to bed feeling they had enjoyed that most elusive of things: a really good day. As Waldman read on, she grew envious. How she needed to have one of those! Was this her glimmer of hope? She thought it might be.

Waldman contacted Fadiman, and received a memo entitled To a Potential Self-Study Psychedelic Researcher. The protocol was simple. In order to participate in his international self-study group on the effects of sub-perceptual doses of LSD, she should take a microdose of the drug every third day. The suggested dose was a minuscule 10 micrograms, one 10th or less of what a person would have to take in order to experience an altered state of consciousness (ie to trip).

Meanwhile, she should lead life as normal, pausing only to record her moods, productivity and physical symptoms. Did this sound to be blunt preposterous? It did. Waldman is a middle-aged mother of four who, in addition to writing novels, lectures on the criminal justice system (she is a Harvard-educated former lawyer). As someone who is law-abiding and swotty, nothing in the world irritates her more than hippies, slackers, free spirits. Even people who wont stay on the right hand side of escalators drive her nuts. Ken Kesey she is not. But she was suffering. She had nothing to lose. Why shouldnt she try it, just for a month?

Having found a supplier, then, she did indeed begin taking the drug, an experience she has now recorded in her own book A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life. Its publication is certain to cause controversy. In fact, the madness has already begun. When we speak via Skype, a month or so before it arrives in bookshops, she tells me that only a few days earlier an excitable reporter got in touch to inform her that his editor had given him permission to drop acid with Ayelet Waldman. (Her response to his question about when they might schedule this journalistic endeavour was: Like, never.)

Loved up: Waldman and husband Michael Chabon. Photograph: Albert L Ortega/WireImage

Attitudes to drugs in America are irrespective of those states that have legalised cannabis far from liberal. Trump has appointed to the Department of Justice a war-on-drugs advocate [the Alabama senator, Jeff Sessions] who is so retrograde in his thinking, he believes the US suffers from an under-incarceration problem, she says. Its for this reason that she wont reveal when her experiment ended: there is a three-year statute of limitations on drugs charges. Do I think a white, middle-class lady will be high on his list of targets? No. But in this crazy new world we live in, you cant be too careful.

Its reception will also doubtless be muddied by the fact that she is its author. In America, Waldman is well known as an acclaimed writer in her own right and as the wife of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon, to whom she has been married since 1993. When she writes about herself, moreover and this is something she does a great deal in A Really Good Day people have a tendency to respond with unnerving fury.

Most famously, this was the case in 2005, when the New York Times published her essay Motherlove, in which she declared that she loved her husband more than her children (If a good mother is one who loves her child more than anyone else in the world, I am not a good mother. I am in fact a bad mother.) In the days that followed, ABCs daytime show The View hosted an unaccountably vitriolic debate about Waldman, her neighbours could be heard tearing her to shreds in Starbucks, and her inbox filled with emails from strangers threatening to report her to social services, the better that her children might be taken away.

Waldman is clever and funny and open-hearted. But as she readily admits, even her more sympathetic readers may sometimes have cause to wonder, in the case of A Really Good Day, which aspects of her behaviour her compulsion to tell the world things that others might prefer to keep private among them are simply the result of her personality, and which can be attributed to her illness. It is hard to distinguish between them, she says, almost wonderingly.

Still, she is probably better placed, now, to cope with any onslaught. Waldman is no longer using LSD her experiment really did last for only a month but its effects have, in some ways, been lasting. I miss its anti-depressant quality, and I miss the way it made me focus. It was like Ritalin [a drug commonly prescribed in the US to children with ADHD] without the side effects, which is frankly incredible. But that month got me out of a dark place. Within the first couple of doses, it was like the computer of my brain had been restarted. I was still moody. I had some really good days, but there were also crappy days, and days when it was just the normal shit. Somehow, though, the bad days were not hellish days, and so I had the capacity to work on issues I just couldnt before. Sure, I was hoping for joy. What I got instead was enough distance from the pain I was in to work on the things that were causing it.

Expand your mind: 1960s LSD advocate Dr Timothy Leary, who advised us to turn on, tune in, drop out. Photograph: AP

That work continues. Im still not on an even keel. Im still struggling with my moods. But Im committed to that. Im doing a new kind of therapy that is working quite well, even if not quite so well as it might be if I was still microdosing. If someone sends her a mean tweet in the coming weeks, she is unlikely to respond as venomously as she might once have done, or even at all.

Given its benign effect on her, why didnt she just find herself a new supplier, and continue taking it? There were, she says, two reasons. The first was her complete inability to purchase illegal drugs: towards the end of her book, she describes how, having made contact by text with a dealer, she panics, having convinced herself that Lucy is a police informant. The second was her determination to write a book about her experience: for that to be safe, she had to no longer be using.

If I could have overcome those things, there is no doubt in my mind that I would have carried on. Of course, it might not have kept working; Ive been on medication before that seemed to be working, and then wasnt. But if it was to be made legal, Id be the first in the queue, and I periodically remind myself that, if I get desperate again, I do have the option.

Her book is well-researched and, in the matter of LSD itself, careful and no-nonsense. The drug, a variation on the ergotamine molecule (ergot is the fungus responsible for the disease known in the Middle Ages as St Anthonys Fire) which was first synthesised in Basel in 1938 by Dr Albert Hofmann, has, she argues, an undeservedly bad reputation. The scare stories it trails of young men and women whose LSD hallucinations lead them to jump off high buildings have little basis in reality. Rather, they are largely the result of conservative Americas response to the 1960s counterculture, to Timothy Learys suggestion that people turn on, tune in, drop out. Twenty million people have used it in the US, and millions more around the world, with no ill effects at all.

Its complicated, but when it comes to the drugs possible use in the treatment of mental illness, what you need to know is that LSD stimulates the 5-HT2A serotonin receptor, which in turn leads to the stimulation both of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), something a pharmacologist described to her as like Miracle-Gro for the brain It stimulates growth, connections, and activity, and of glutamate, the neurotransmitter most responsible for brain functions, such as cognition, learning and memory. (Hence its supposed new-found popularity in Silicon Valley, though Waldman thinks that, in reality, there are more magazine articles about tech dudes using LSD than there are, well, tech dudes using LSD: If there were some mass secret movement, it would have been a lot easier for to get hold of my drugs.)

She believes that during her experiment her neuroplasticity was enhanced, and that this didnt only enable her to work for hours at a time, to achieve a real sense of flow at her desk, but that it also made her happier and less impulsive. What little research has been done backs her up a study at Imperial College London showed that even a single dose of LSD produced robust psychological effects though scientists still dont fully understand the relationship between what happens in the brain, and the psyche.

Why isnt more research carried out? The simple truth is that LSD still carries with it a lot of leftover political baggage. During the writing of her book, the few researchers sanctioned by the FDA (Food & Drug Administration) who are out there were reluctant to allow Waldman to quote them, fearing that to associate themselves with a personal experiment would tarnish their hard-won credibility.

So far, so good. However, when her book is on more personal territory, as it frequently is, Waldman is vastly less cautious, and for the reader especially, perhaps, the British reader this can be, well, excruciating. I know! she says, when I tell her this. Can you imagine what it would be like for me if I lived in London? Chabon, a feminist with whom she shares the childcare, has the power of veto over everything she writes. But because hes a writer, too, this seems not to be something he often invokes. In A Really Good Day, nothing is out of bounds, from their agonising couples therapy (My husbands eyes filled I collapsed in his arms, crying so hard I soaked his shirt), to their sex life (I know you love me, I said, as we made love), to their periodic use of MDMA, aka ecstasy, as a way of opening up their lines of connection. What we did was talk, she writes, of the first time they tried it, in a hotel room theyd booked specifically for the purpose. For six hours, we talked about our feelings for each other, why we love each other, how we loved each other.

Waldman reveals that her moods can be triggered by everything from her writerly insecurities, to the dog, to the sound of her husband eating nuts (she suffers from misophonia, or selective sound sensitivity syndrome): I handed him a handful of almonds, and walked out of the kitchen I heard a crunch, the smack of lips; I felt a wave of anger. She is also fed up that her husband earns more than her, and that she has to share his writing studio, which has an uncomfortable couch: Though hes welcomed me in, I feel like a girlfriend whos been given a drawer in the bachelor pad bathroom. Poor Michael Chabon. The reader begins to feel he is some kind of saint.

Well, he is somewhat saintly, Waldman says. He makes my friends crazy. He gives great gifts. He has impeccable taste in clothes and jewellery. He is a know-it-all, but then, he does sort of know everything. Hes misanthropic, in that we [the family] are all he has space for; he doesnt have any close friends, which I think he would benefit from. I was about to say that hes far better than I deserve, but thats the pathology speaking, because I am a very good wife for him.

Isnt he ever mean to her? Yeah, sure he is. He encouraged her to embark on LSD experiment because he was desperate, too.

Before we hang up, I have to ask: does she ever worry her extraordinarily intense relationship with Chabon on Twitter she has been known to post pictures of her husband, along with a line informing her 15,800 followers just how much she loves him might be another symptom of her illness? For the first time in our conversation, she is hesitant. The gale of her voice drops to a light breeze.

Yeah, I have thought about this. I have said to him: If I were to get healthy, would I still love you, and would you still love me? There is a way that Ive confused needing with loving. I dont want to sound like a Hallmark card, but love is [supposed to be] unselfish, and in my most internal, whirling dark places, I think I need him so badly because he takes care of me, protects me, makes me feel safe. One of the things that saved our marriage in that [dark] period was when I brutally tried to disentangle those things.

The upshot is that she thinks, now, perhaps its OK to need him. After the LSD, when I was having this intense new therapy, I took a drive one night in northern California, where the countryside is very beautiful. I had this thought: maybe I dont love him after all. It was terrifying, and I was crying. But then the phone rang, and it was him. How did she feel then? His voice filled me like a glass of water.

People have been curious, even excited: an extract from A Really Good Day

A fewdays ago, I began tentatively to tell people about this experiment. To my surprise, I encountered few negative reactions. Every once in a while a listener might arch an eyebrow or smile uncomfortably, as if trying to figure out whether her discomfort meant that she wasnt hip enough, or whether I really was nuts. But those have been in the decided minority. Most people have been curious, even excited.

Those with histories of mood disorders were intrigued to hear that my spirits have lifted, that though I sometimes feel the familiar clutch of anxiety in my chest, I am generally able to use mindfulness techniques to make it dissolve. When I told them that I have not gained weight and that my libido has not withered away, they got really excited. The side effects of SSRIs are so ubiquitous and unpleasant that the idea of a medication protocol with fewer of them is thrilling.

Friends who incline to the spiritual were disappointed when they heard that Ive experienced no connection to the divine, but reassured when I mention the pleasure Ive taken in the natural world, the tree outside my window, the smell of the jasmine beside the city sidewalks. Risk takers and hedonists were disappointed that I was unable to provide details of hallucinations. No kaleidoscopic colours, they asked wistfully, no feeling that the floor was shifting beneath your feet? I live in California. The last thing I want to feel is the floor shifting beneath my feet. They urged me to try a real dose. It would change my life, they said, as though my problem is that my life has been too devoid of weirdness. Besides, my life is changing.

Tonight, however, was a different story. These two writer friends are about 20 years older than my husband and me, which puts them firmly in the boomer generation. They were in their 20s in the 1960s. Theyve travelled the world, rejected a life of secure conformity in favour of the risks and rewards of art. What better people to confide in? I thought.

Well, I said, Ive been writing, but not working on a novel. Ive been writing about microdosing with LSD.

What does that mean, the woman of the pair asked? Are you writing some kind of nonfiction article on people who use LSD?

I took a breath and then explained.

Her face froze. If she had been wearing pearls, she would have clutched them. She looked horrified, even disgusted, as if Id told her that Id taken up murdering baby seals. Her husbands reaction was only slightly less disturbing. He smiled uncomfortably and changed the subject. I immediately agreed, yes, the antipasto was delicious, and, no, I didnt want any more.

Their reaction launched a series of cascading anxieties. Will I be condemned for doing this? Will people reject me as a nutcase, a crank, a deluded acid freak? Will I lose whatever credibility I have in the world? Will parents not let their children come over to our house any more, under the misapprehension that I keep drugs in my home?

As soon as dinner was over, I tried the technique for dissipating anxiety that my cognitive behavioural therapist recommends. I took a few deep breaths, exhaling for half again as long as I inhaled. My chest and throat unclenched. The anxiety ebbed. I was calm again. I was OK.

Also, I had some perspective. This couple were young in the 1960s, when Timothy Leary was spreading the gospel of psychedelic recklessness. For all I know, they had complicated histories with the drug that influenced how they responded to me. In all likelihood, their discomfort had far more to do with them than with me.

A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life by Ayelet Waldman is published by Corsair at 13.99. To order a copy, go to bookshop.theguardian.com

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#How dropping acid saved my life