Briefs IN FOCUS

Acontroversial alternative Harvard Law graduate, author and former US Public Defender Ayelet Waldman, pictured, may be the last person you would expect to be dropping acid during the work week. But after experimenting with tiny doses of LSD changed her life, Waldman is calling for a change to laws around the world to permit clinical trials on the drug. KATE ALLMAN reports.

All criminalisation does is make the problem worse by enriching criminals and taking the science and control out of our hands.

A yelet Waldman graduated from 1991. She worked as a US Federal Public Defender for many years, has written six books, had a column in The New York Times and published countless articles in other news publications. Waldman’s resume is overflowing with accolades you might expect from many a talented Harvard graduate. But here’s a plot twist: she also took LSD every three days for a month and proudly credits the drug for saving her marriage and her mental health. Lysergic acid diethylamid – known more commonly as LSD or “acid” – earned a reputation as the drug of choice for hippies and psychedelic music revellers in the 1960s. It’s fair to say Waldman, who is an author, 53-year- old mother-of-four and lecturer at Berkeley Law School at the University of California, doesn’t fit that stereotype. Harvard Law School in the same class as former US President Barack Obama in

Yet, in her 2017 memoir A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life , Waldman admits to having taken LSD, administering “microdoses” of about 10 micrograms (about one tenth of a standard recreational dose) every three days in an attempt to alleviate crippling depression and mood swings that had plagued her for years. “In retrospect I think I had a mood disorder my entire life,” Waldman told LSJ in advance of her appearance at Sydney’s Festival of Dangerous Ideas in November. “As I had more children and I moved on to writing serious fiction and non-fiction novels, my life became busier and bigger and the hormones really made it come to the fore. Eventually I was experiencing suicidal symptoms.” Doctors had offered Waldman a myriad of medications and diagnosed her with everything from Bipolar II to severe anxiety. They eventually identified a mood disorder that affects women in the week before their period, known as

pre-menstrual dysphoric disorder. It was treatable when her cycles were regular but as Waldman approached menopause and her cycles became unpredictable, the anti- depressant medications stopped working. “That’s why I thought, ‘OK why don’t I give microdosing a shot?’,” says Waldman. “And I tried it and it was really effective.” Taking LSD is not the first option to come to mind as treatment for most depressed professionals. But Waldman had worked in drug policy reform at Berkeley School of Law and was fascinated by studies in the 1950s and ‘60s that had shown LSD had potential to treat alcoholism, schizophrenia, depression and mood disorders. Most of that research ground to a halt when the substance was criminalised in the US in 1966, and when the World Health Organization recommended LSD become a controlled substance in 1967. But recent research in the US and Europe has exposed the therapeutic effects of hallucinogenic drugs, including MDMA (ecstasy) and psilocybin

28 LSJ I ISSUE 50 I NOVEMBER 2018