I believe that the war on drugs is responsible in a large part for the crisis of incarceration. As a lawyer, I had been working for a long time on issues of drug policy reform. A young African-American man in Detroit could not write this book with the same level of security that I have. What was the book’s larger purpose? I believe when you’re in the position of privilege, you have an obligation to take the risks others can’t take. But it has to be that bad for me to risk it. If things get really, really bad again, if it’s suicide or taking a small risk of going to jail, then it’s LSD. I don’t believe one goes to law school to be more adept at breaking the law. What do you think would have happened had you continued taking LSD? It could stop working-who knows? But if it were legal in Sweden, or anywhere, we would probably be moving there. That third day exists because you don’t want to develop a tolerance. You wouldn’t want to take it every day because you would miss that second day. Why did you take it only every third day? What would happen otherwise? The second day is the best day that’s the day that you feel your happiest and most productive. But a couple of things recently happened-I got a couple of emails from people I know, saying, “Oh my god, I am doing this too!” And then Jim Fadiman was just telling me-there was a microdosing meet-up in Europe and 80 people showed up and 80 people were turned away. Is it really “A Thing”? I used to feel there are more articles about it than there are people doing it. Microdosing is something I’m reading about, but it’s not something my friends are talking about. My son takes ADHD drugs and he hates the way they make him crash at night. The older two were supportive since they’d seen the results. Tell me more.” She loves Chance the Rapper and he’s really into psychedelics. My youngest daughter was like, “That’s supercool. After I wrote the book, I knew I’d have to tell my kids. Seeing their mother being funny and nice to be around is such an anomaly for them. My kids are used to seeing me be a crabby bitch in the morning.

I cannot overstate how much I hate mornings. Your descriptions of your children not recognizing the sweet, cheerful woman they are eating breakfast with are hilarious. Never before in my life was I able to have such impulse control. What the microdosing allowed me to do is open up and have space between these components. Let’s say, something on Twitter outrages you: You have emotion, then a thought, then an impulse to act, and then an action. I’m currently in dialectical behavioral therapy-it’s like CBT but there’s this concept of this four-part process that happens when you have stimulus.

Maybe it’s the exact same kind of mindfulness, but you just get it in a pill? We’re in this mindfulness craze but there is something to it. In the age of mindfulness mania, it’s funny to think about this woman in Berkeley practicing a very different sort of mindfulness.

You describe a heightened ability to slow down and pay attention while microdosing. I hired a criminal defense firm and I asked them, “What’s the worst that can happen?” They said most likely nothing will happen, but if the government wanted to prosecute me for possession of LSD, they could imprison me for something from three to eight months.I’ve been trying to figure out what my next book is. But there was consensus that we needed drug reform that’s gone now. Of all Trump’s appointments, Sessions is the one who scared me the most-okay, the environment, we’re all dead. Before the election, I was like, “Oh, nobody is going to prosecute me, but Jeff Sessions. How long ago did the events of the book take place? I can’t tell you that and here’s why: There’s a statute of limitations on the possession of LSD.

Flowstate dropper