text: Many drugs make you feel better, some by tweaking levels of serotonin, the mood-regulating neurotransmitter. SSRIs make more serotonin available for use by your brain in a controlled way. Psychedelics work on some of the same receptors in the brain that moderate serotonin, but they're doing a different kind of work. They increase glutamate, a neurotransmitter that enables cognition. When people say these drugs expand your mind, they're actually being quite literal. But not as much is understood, on a clinical level, about how psychedelics affect neurological functioning because so much depends on mood and individual brain chemistry.
  While Dean didn't experience the miracle of hyperfocus, microdosing did help her at work. Dean made 120 sales calls per day pitching her company's software to small businesses, and at least eight of those calls needed to result in sales. After microdosing, she says, she nailed an average of one to two more sales per day. Dean says that the mushrooms helped her switch personas as needed. Without consciously realizing it, she became girlier and sweeter when trying to sell to an older man, for instance. "When I'm microdosing, I'm more creative," she explains. "I read people better. It gives me a broader range of compatibility."
  Is this really the miracle drug that will fix moods, increase productivity, boost creativity and empathy all without the risk of addiction posed by its prescription counterparts? After a decades-long drought in clinical research, there have been a few scattered studies, at UCLA, NYU, and Johns Hopkins, and in Switzerland, on the use of psychedelics in patients facing the end of life, for instance. But formal work on microdosing psychedelics is virtually nonexistent. As for how long to microdose, Fadiman doesn't encourage users to be on the protocol indefinitely.
  Smith stopped microdosing when she started trying to get pregnant. Dean, who is still microdosing, says she is still learning things about herself, and quotes the philosopher Alan Watts, who had a simple recommendation for knowing when to stop using psychedelics: "When you get the message, it's time to hang up the phone."