Microdosing Menopause

This is my per­son­al sto­ry. It’s not med­ical advice. It’s not a how-to. I am not a doc­tor or a chemist. Don’t hit me up for shrooms or send me hate mail about why decrim­i­nal­iz­ing psy­choac­tive drugs is the first sign of the Apocalypse. I am, how­ev­er, total­ly open to your sug­ges­tions about menopause, but only if you have a vagina. 

Two decades ago, I micro­dosed MDMA (ecsta­sy) in pur­suit of a spir­i­tu­al awak­en­ing. Perfectly con­tent with that expe­ri­ence, I gave up most recre­ation­al drugs. I’ve eat­en some weed gum­mies here and there, but don’t like how they cloud my think­ing. Today, cof­fee and a well-made old fash­ioned (top-shelf bour­bon, not too sweet) are my drugs of choice. 

Yet here I am eat­ing mag­ic mush­rooms with my morn­ing med­i­ta­tion, in an attempt to be, not enlight­ened so much as just me again.

Perimenopause has been a hor­mon­al hellscape. As some­one who has spent her entire adult life doing yoga, lift­ing weights, med­i­tat­ing, and eat­ing right, I was cer­tain I would be one of those women who just sail through menopause. I even planned to be real­ly gra­cious about it, and only a tiny bit smug. 

Joke’s on me, then. Seems like I won the per­i­menopause symp­tom lot­tery: night sweats, hot flash­es, weight gain, bloat­ing, brain fog, rash­es, dry skin, and a weird pH that makes me some­times smell like a water buf­fa­lo. So far, I seem to have escaped the anx­i­ety and depres­sion that some women endure. When I do get my peri­od, it’s errat­ic and heavy and is accom­pa­nied by cramps that often dou­ble me over in pain. I can’t even con­sid­er hor­mone replace­ment ther­a­py — which is a god­send for almost 40% of menopausal women — while I’m still get­ting peri­ods. And to top it all off, per­i­menopause can last up to ten years. Brutal.

I don’t have one of those doc­tors that dis­miss­es my symp­toms. In fact, she’s my age and also going through it. The prob­lem is that mod­ern med­i­cine has only very recent­ly had any sort of dis­cus­sion around menopause. Our cur­rent med­ical sys­tem is built on research per­formed most­ly on cis­gen­der men, and 0% of those peo­ple will ever bat­tle menopause. 

I was out­raged to learn that clin­i­cal research wasn’t even required to include women (or ethnic/racial minori­ties) until 1993, when Congress passed the National Institutes of Health Revitalization Act. This means the pre­ven­tion, diag­no­sis, and treat­ment of all dis­eases rou­tine­ly fails to con­sid­er the cru­cial impact of gender’s role on hor­mones. So women over the age of forty often fall back on anti­de­pres­sants because it’s our only option; in fact, one in every five women over the age of forty is cur­rent­ly on an antidepressant. 

And while I’m so thank­ful for my men­tal health, I have been expe­ri­enc­ing some writer’s block. This is a com­plete­ly nor­mal part of any cre­ative life, and I’ve always found it use­ful to fill the time I’m not writ­ing with inter­est­ing expe­ri­ences. We can cre­ate around 700 new neu­rons every day, and micro­dos­ing can help these baby brain cells make con­nec­tions more quickly. 

So, I’m eat­ing shrooms. Or psilo­cy­bin, to be exact, dried fun­gi ground and baked with cacao into wafers. My pro­to­col was most­ly intu­it­ed by doing some online research and talk­ing to oth­er mom­mas that have forged the micro­dose path. Every oth­er morn­ing for two weeks, I ingest­ed about a tenth of a trip dose (I tapered off my very low dose of Prozac before, though some anti­de­pres­sants work quite well with microdosing). 

About twen­ty min­utes after micro­dos­ing, I felt… noth­ing unusu­al. There was no trip. The walls weren’t melt­ing, and I didn’t talk to God. There’s no eupho­ria and no crash. Weeks lat­er, if I had to choose one word to describe my micro­dos­ing expe­ri­ence, it would be sat­is­fy­ing. 

Most moments seemed sat­is­fy­ing, and I didn’t feel com­pelled to do some­thing else. I felt very con­nect­ed to what­ev­er was right in front of me, con­tent to just be. Observing takes more ener­gy than just see­ing, and I feel like micro­dos­ing strength­ened my obser­va­tion mus­cles. My lat­er­al think­ing expand­ed; I was able to make con­nec­tions between things in new ways. Microdosing was a delight for the sens­es, gen­tly ampli­fy­ing my abil­i­ty to dis­cern sen­sa­tion. I pet­ted the dog, and it was enough to just pet the dog. Standing on my yoga mat, breath­ing felt like enough. Lying on the floor and watch­ing the ceil­ing fan felt like enough. For the first time in years, I ate lunch and just ate lunch, where nor­mal­ly, I read or work a Sudoku puz­zle while I eat. 

It didn’t inter­fere with my abil­i­ty to go about my day. I taught all my class­es, drove my car, returned emails, paid bills. But I didn’t feel the com­pul­sion to mul­ti­task, didn’t feel the impulse to check my phone all the time, which felt like a huge step toward a hap­pi­er life. I didn’t have my nor­mal win­ter­time crav­ings for alco­hol or car­bo­hy­drates. I had a hot flash with­out the amount of pan­ic that nor­mal­ly accom­pa­nies one. My cre­ativ­i­ty returned, prompt­ing me to spend hours mak­ing col­lages and play­ing my gui­tar. I felt more grate­ful for and lov­ing towards my body, even after hav­ing to buy a new swim­suit in a larg­er size (some­thing that would have sent thir­ty-year-old Erin into a real spiral).

Life felt man­age­able and satisfying.

It isn’t a mag­ic bul­let. I still felt all the nor­mal fluc­tu­a­tions of human emo­tion: irri­ta­tion, bore­dom, wor­ry, joy, anger, grat­i­tude, con­fu­sion, awe. I just felt more aware of those motions as they arose, had more space around them to curi­ous­ly inspect them before mov­ing forward.

If some­one had “slipped” me this amount of psilo­cy­bin, I might not have noticed any­thing except feel­ing emo­tion­al­ly even-keeled. I can absolute­ly see why clin­i­cal tri­als show incred­i­ble improve­ments using micro­dos­ing to treat depres­sion, anx­i­ety, OCD, PTSD, and addiction. 

Microdosing isn’t for every­one, but it was a per­fect new year reset for me.