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‘Ayelet Waldman is fearless’ – Rebecca Solnit
‘Genuinely brave and human’ – The New York Times
‘Wildly brilliant’ – Elle
The true story of how a renowned writer’s struggle with mood storms led her to try a remedy as drastic as it is forbidden: microdoses of LSD. Her fascinating journey provides a window into one family and the complex world of a once-infamous drug seen through new eyes.
When a small vial arrives in her mailbox from ‘Lewis Carroll,’ Ayelet Waldman is at a low point. Her mood storms have become intolerably severe; she has tried nearly every medication possible; her husband and children are suffering with her. So she opens the vial, places two drops on her tongue, and joins the ranks of an underground but increasingly vocal group of scientists and civilians successfully using therapeutic microdoses of LSD. As Waldman charts her experience over the course of a month – bursts of productivity, sleepless nights, a newfound sense of equanimity – she also explores the history and mythology of LSD, the cutting-edge research into the drug, and the byzantine policies that control it. Drawing on her experience as a federal public defender, and as the mother of teenagers, and her research into the therapeutic value of psychedelics, Waldman has produced a book that is eye-opening, often hilarious, and utterly enthralling.
‘Genuinely brave and human’ – The New York Times
‘Wildly brilliant’ – Elle
The true story of how a renowned writer’s struggle with mood storms led her to try a remedy as drastic as it is forbidden: microdoses of LSD. Her fascinating journey provides a window into one family and the complex world of a once-infamous drug seen through new eyes.
When a small vial arrives in her mailbox from ‘Lewis Carroll,’ Ayelet Waldman is at a low point. Her mood storms have become intolerably severe; she has tried nearly every medication possible; her husband and children are suffering with her. So she opens the vial, places two drops on her tongue, and joins the ranks of an underground but increasingly vocal group of scientists and civilians successfully using therapeutic microdoses of LSD. As Waldman charts her experience over the course of a month – bursts of productivity, sleepless nights, a newfound sense of equanimity – she also explores the history and mythology of LSD, the cutting-edge research into the drug, and the byzantine policies that control it. Drawing on her experience as a federal public defender, and as the mother of teenagers, and her research into the therapeutic value of psychedelics, Waldman has produced a book that is eye-opening, often hilarious, and utterly enthralling.
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Reviews
A trip worth taking.
Crisp, hilarious, and weirdly optimistic, Ayelet Waldman breaks from the convention of mental health memoir the way an acid head breaks from reality. At its core this is a deeply romantic story about the redemptive power of marriage, surprising and easy to celebrate.
Ayelet Waldman is fearless, which is our good fortune and sometimes hers. That boldness led to her fruitful adventures in mind-altering substances recounted here. Subtly mind-altering; this is a book about sub-hallucinatory microdoses of LSD but also about marriage and family life, insomnia, addiction, her past as a defense attorney, our insane drug laws, moods and dispositions and afflictions, and a lot of other stuff braided into an informative, amusing, nonchalantly incendiary narrative. You could call this book her war on the war on drugs, but it's so much more, and so much more funny.
Waldman proves a sharp debunker of the myths that have accrued around a potentially life-saving chemical whose star is clearly on the rise
Humour informs Ayelet Waldman 's lively diary of taking acid . . . A smart writer with an easy tone. As a suburban mother of four , she nicely plays up how unlike the archetypal acid tripper she is. The neurological and pharmaceutical science is well handled and she makes a strong case for medicinal LSD. But perhaps what the book does best is demystify the chemical mythology of drugs.
A hilarious, intriguing, and thoroughly persuasive account of how a middle-aged mother of four, a writer and lawyer terrified of drugs, found life-changing serenity by microdosing with LSD. It seems that LSD can not only make walls breathe and worlds become one, but turn grouchy, yelling people into happy, reasonable ones. Ayelet Waldman's terrific book holds out hope to the mood-afflicted everywhere that there is a solution to their misery without the side-effects of anti-depressants - a solution that doesn't produce mystical revelations but just a really good day. LSD is illegal, but fortunately this book isn't, and it has much the same effect.
A wildly brilliant, radically candid, and rigorous daybook of [Waldman's] life-changing, last-resort journey.
[The last book that made me laugh] may have been Ayelet Waldman's A Really Good Day in manuscript. It's a nonfiction book about combating depression by way of a daily micro-dose of LSD, and it's Ayelet, so you can imagine.
Ignoring decades of drug war propaganda, Ayelet Waldman bravely chose to take back her psyche using forbidden medicine. The result is this candid and fearless mental travelogue. Funny, wise, surprising, and all too human, this book about peering through the veil of self may just - if you dare to let it - drive you sane
In this raw, honest, and ultimately hopeful journey, Waldman takes us deep into the forest of her mind and moods. The success of her story with microdosing reminds the medical and legal communities how much still remains to be understand about the brain.
It's a simple, delightful premise: a journal of microdosing. Then Waldman brings so much to the project that it turns into something else, something far more beguiling . . . The result is constantly entertaining, slyly educational, and surprisingly moving . . . I don't know another writer like her."
Novelist and essayist Waldman (Bad Mother) - mother of four, married to another high-profile writer (Michael Chabon) - worked as a federal public defender and taught at prestigious law schools. After struggling with mood swings and bouts of depression, Waldman becomes a 'self-study psychedelic researcher,' taking small doses of LSD on repeating three-day cycles and discovers plenty to exonerate the illicit substance . . . A highly engaging combination of research and self-discovery, laced with some endearingly honest comic moments. She is exactly the sort of sensible, middle-aged, switched-on, spontaneous woman whom any reader would enjoy taking a trip with
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