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of things in Silicon Valley,” says Molly
Maloof, a bubbly M.D. with a personalized
medicine practice in San Francisco that spe-
cializes in helping biohackers try their
tactics safely. “People microdose mush-
rooms, they microdose LSD, they microdose
research chemicals. It’s a weird world.”
Proponents claim that minuscule doses
of psychedelics enhance creativity and
productivity while reducing depression,
anxiety, and cravings for cigarettes and
alcohol. But no one’s really studied it. “The
most important thing to emphasize is we
really don’t know,” says Matthew Johnson,
an associate professor at Johns Hopkins
University who studies potential therapeu-
tic efects of larger doses of psilocybin. Still,
the questions being asked are smart, he says.
“There’s every reason to think that tinker-
ing with that receptor system could have
antidepressant efects, and it’s never been
systematically manipulated in that way.”
I tried LSD once and thought I was a
lower for thirty minutes. (I think. LSD time
is weird.) So this time, I tried cannabidiol,
or CBD, the also-ran of psychoactive chemi-
cals in marijuana, which is lately being sold
over the counter as an oil that can reduce
pain and inlammation, without the high.
Preliminary results from a Mayo Clinic
study showed that CBD diminshes seizures
in chi ldren w ith a disorder ca lled Dravet s y n-
drome by 39 percent, versus 16 percent in
patients who received a placebo. Meanwhile,
animal studies indicate that the chemical
may be able to prevent tumors, reduce pain,
lower anxiety, and treat inlammation. In a
2015 study in the European Journal of Pain,
applying a CBD gel for just four days signii-
cantly reduced joint swelling in arthritic rats.
I asked the FDA about CBD oil. “The FDA
has not approved a marketing application for
a drug product containing or derived from
botanical marijuana and has not found any
such product to be safe and efective for any
indication,” the FDA spokesperson said. “We
don’t have any additional comment.”
Did I like CBD oil? Yes. Did it reduce my
inlammation? Maybe! Did it feel like mar-
ijuana? No. But also kind of yes. One of the
problems with unregulated CBD oil is thatresearcher at MD Anderson Cancer Center
who told me she thought a healthy system of
gut bacteria might be the key to determining
who responds well to certain cancer treat-
ments and who doesn’t. She said it might even
explain who gets cancer and who doesn’t.
“Everybody’s microbiome is unique,”
says Helen Messier, Viome’s chief medical
officer. “But each can be healthy for that
individual. It really depends on whether
your microbes are performing the func-
tions that they’re supposed to perform to
keep you healthy.” What you want, ideally,
is a microbiome like a rainforest—with a lot
of diversity and a high count of each individ-
ual species. Eating a lot of iber can help, as
can, Viome hopes, using metatranscriptome
sequencing to sort out the creatures living in
your g ut , a nd eat ing in a ccorda nce w ith your
most useful parasites’ preferences.
Viome’s results were fascinating. I
received a whole list of bacteria and viruses
that lived in my gut, indicating which were
good for me. There were also sliding scales of
metabolic itness and inlammatory activ-
ity and graphs of where my gut health it in
among samples of healthy people and the
general public. It was like reading a full-scale
scientiic study about little old me.
The challenge? Ease of implementation.
Whereas Habit provided speciic recipes,
Viome mostly recommended that I eat foods
I already knew were healthy (caulilower,
parsley, garlic, beets). Messier also suggested
ive pre- and probiotic supplements, but they
would cost almost $200 a month. And that
doesn’t include ixing my toilet.WHAT IS IT?
Tiny amounts of drugsWHAT IS IT
SUPPOSED TO DO?
Enhance creativity and reduce
depressionIS IT SAFE?
Probably notIS IT LEGAL?
Not in most statesMICRODOSING
ere’s the thing about taking
drugs at work: You think no
one does it, but they do. In
Silicon Valley, at least. “Peo-
ple are microdosing all sortsfood?) that was so pleasant, I plan to incor-
porate 5:2 into my actual life, even if it does
freak me out that it’s basically play anorexia.
WHAT IS IT?
Learning your ideal diet based
on your gut bacteriaWHAT IS IT
SUPPOSED TO DO?
Balance the microbiomeHOW MUCH DOES IT COST?
$400IS IT SAFE?
Ye sMICROBIOME
TESTINGf you decide to try Viome, a
startup that charges $400
for a gut-bacteria-testing kit
and one year of personalized
advice, you’re gonna want to
bring a trash bag into the bathroom with you.
I wish I had. I walked in there with the sleek
g ray-beige Gut Intel ligence k it , ya n ked up the
toilet seat and strapped the included stool col-
lection paper to my toilet. And then it all went,
as they say, to sh--.
Viome’s instructions say to “carefully
deposit your stool” onto the collection paper,
then transfer one infinitesimal scoop of
feces—a pinhead, a bead—to an included
tube of solution. And that’s where they leave
you, instructionwise.
The glue that stuck the paper to the toi-
let was so sticky there was no way to make
slow, responsible decisions about dumping
the remainder of the sample. I tried to lush
the whole little bundle, but the collection
platform is as thick as construction paper.
It crumpled up and lodged itself in the drain.
The water started rising.
I had company. An old friend was stay-
ing on my sofa bed. My boy friend lives in
my apartment. Thank god the kit came
with gloves. I reached down into the swirl-
ing, impenetrable mess and yanked out the
paper and ran, shouting in nonsensical sin-
gle syllables, into the kitchen to throw the
paper, the inside-out gloves, and everything
else I had touched into a plastic bag, which I
then put into a larger plastic bag, which I put
in the hall before anyone could see it, or me.
Hyperventilating, I took a shower.
I think it was worth it? Last year, while
working on a story about cancer, I spoke to a
Meditating
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