A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life: Summary & Key Insights

My decision to microdose didn’t come easily. Years of mood swings had worn me down, but I wasn’t naive about the risks. Unlike some psychedelic evangelists, I was raised with both respect and fear toward drugs. Yet when traditional treatments plateaued, my curiosity led me to the stories of Silicon Valley engineers and artists quietly exploring LSD in micro quantities to enhance focus and creativity. They weren’t hallucinating. They were calibrating.

When I began my research, I discovered a community—scientists, psychologists, and underground pioneers—all fascinated by the potential of psychedelics to rebalance the brain. Still, I wasn’t a guinea pig chasing high performance; I was a mother chasing stability. The deeper I read, the more I realized our cultural narrative about LSD had been shaped by hysteria more than science. Before prohibition, psychiatrists used it to treat depression, alcoholism, and end-of-life anxiety. Then came the backlash, and with it, a silence that lasted decades.

I set up my experiment with care. One month. A carefully measured microdose every three days. Daily journaling of mood, sleep, and productivity. My husband, Michael Chabon, my most trusted partner and friend, was wary but supportive. I was methodical because I needed this not just to work—but to make sense. I wanted evidence that emotion, self-regulation, even love itself, could be rewired. And in that hope, I felt a glimmer of something new—anticipation instead of fear.

To understand what I was doing, I needed to understand LSD itself. Albert Hofmann discovered it in 1938 while researching fungal derivatives for pharmaceuticals. It sat forgotten for years until he accidentally ingested a trace, opening the door to one of the most potent consciousness-altering discoveries of the twentieth century. In the 1950s and early 60s, LSD was the darling of psychiatry. Therapists used it to treat trauma and addiction. Bill Wilson, founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, even saw promise in it for recovery.

Then came the counterculture: the anti-war movement, Timothy Leary’s “Turn on, tune in, drop out,” and the boom of recreational use that terrified middle America. Politicians, sensing a cultural threat, criminalized the compound. Research ceased almost overnight. An entire avenue of psychiatric exploration was locked away in a moral panic.

This history weighed on me. The purification of LSD into a controlled experiment reflected how our culture swings between curiosity and fear. I wanted to reclaim that early scientific spirit, stripped of hysteria. My experiment was, in a quiet way, a protest against the amnesia that fear imposes—a woman’s act of reclaiming her chemistry from decades of shame and silence.