What if LSD is the key to hybrid working?
Picture this:
A leadership development consultancy visiting an organisation for a workshop with the senior leaders. Except the first part of the process of developing leaders is to administer microdoses of psychedelics (amounts too small to incur hallucinations) to the whole team. Next, we wait a little while, perhaps engaging in a group meditation.
Once everyone starts to feel an increased sense of awareness and openness to emotional connection, the workshop begins, focused on an out-of-the-box topic that would otherwise be off the table or not considered. Now, with a slightly altered state of mind, incredible new conversations and explorations can be had.
I truly think this will be a reality one day – and it’s a reality I look forward to.
Some people already swear by microdosing, most people I speak to want to try it, and what does that say?
We’ve all been desperately seeking balance in our lives, and cultural reinvention, so we can recuperate while meeting higher standards of success and productivity. What if this is it?
Imagine a future where…
…Employees have a healthy approach to their mental health; it is understood, valued and its maintenance is viewed as just as important as physical health and akin to going to the gym regularly. Where stigma and shame are gone, and everyone practices proactive self-awareness and self-reflection, not just as damage control and to healing open emotional wounds, but for growth.
…Work/life balance is no longer just an aspiration or a buzzword, but a reality for everyone, leaders and employees alike.
…People are more tolerant of different, clashing personalities and working styles, and where negative and traumatic experiences and problems are handled with understanding and compassion rather than frustration, defensiveness and shutting down.
…People understand how to ‘just be’ and that our productivity and work achievements are not who we are as beings. Where we all have a greater understanding of how to step outside of ourselves and connect with others and our environment. Where we can tear down the walls of our ego, and embrace a new sense of self, even if that new self only lasts as long as the dose.
…We can break free of negative thought patterns, reduce our negative mind-wandering and relentless barrage of self-criticism and judgment, increase openness to emotions and bring kindness and friendliness to difficult ones.
…We no longer sleepwalk through our days, but feel more creative, more productive, more able to contribute, and more passionate about collaborating and adding value to our work and organisations.
…Working from home does not incur sluggishness, long bouts of procrastination, lack of motivation or anxiety, because we’ve actually figured out a way to make it genuinely offer us the best of both worlds – just like we all thought it would in the spring of 2020.
Perhaps that future sounds a little utopian, but what’s wrong with that? Doesn’t that sound like a better deal than the one we’ve got now?
Hybrid working – as we know it now – is not going to go smoothly.
We need a different approach to the hybrid working model.
We all wanted it, but a lot of people already regret it. Hybrid working and the anxiety and emotional exhaustion it causes will lead to catastrophic waves of burnout.
A recent Tinypulse study found more than 80% of leaders reported that such a set-up was exhausting for 72% of employees – nearly double the figure for fully remote employees and also greater than those based fully in the office. Another recent study found that 20% of UK workers report difficulties in switching off from work and feeling ‘always on’.
Working from home can exacerbate isolation, presenteeism, anxiety e.g., around the unconscious bias of full-time office fans. The blurred boundaries between work and home are so unhealthy. Who else created a make-shift office space in their living room? And can feel work bleeding into downtime when we try to use that room as an actual living room in the evenings and at weekends? Maintaining those two very different workspaces requires constant planning, psychological shifts, chopping and changing, adopting different behaviours.
When you’re creating your hybrid working models, you need to think past logistics, cybersecurity, profit margins, and consider the human beings on your team.
What if the key to the success of the hybrid working model post-Covid is about a way for us all to become more human, more ourselves, more connected with each other, and more able to leverage our strengths, our thinking, and our ways of being? Through, yes: psychedelics.
Microdosing makes people look at things differently – isn’t that what we all need to be doing, in every industry?
“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.” – Alan Watts
It doesn’t mean tie-dye beanbags everywhere, rooms for collective crying and hugging, or afternoon sound baths. It wouldn’t look much different to how things are now. But people would be happier and achieving better results, both inside and outside of work.
Professor David Nutt’s Imperial College colleague, Robin Carhart-Harris, has been doing ground-breaking research on microdoses in treating depression, and the FDA have given “breakthrough therapy” designation to MDMA for the treatment of PTSD, and psilocybin for the treatment of depression. Studies have also found tangible health benefits such as decreased instances of heart disease, diabetes, anxiety and depression.
Studies have also found that microdosing psychedelics almost acts as a productivity shortcut, improving innovative thinking and creative problem solving, and helping people feel more in control and more able to make logical connections without hallucinations. The International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology research indicates that 36.6% of people try microdosing as a performance enhancer. And a Leiden University study found that microdosing on mushrooms “allowed participants to create more out-of-the-box alternative solutions for a problem.” I know a lot of people who say, “I’m not a creative person” but I think we all are, on some level, and just need to tap into that.
Nicholas Levich, co-founder of Denver-based Psychedelic Passage, a network of guides and “trip sitters” who facilitate psychedelic experiences, has worked with a lot of high-level business executives, helping them use microdosing for “self-mastery.” Amsterdam start-up, Synthesis, leads legal, medically supervised retreats for people who want to “catalyse creative breakthroughs” and “improve confidence.” And in Los Angeles and Silicon Valley, its increasingly common for execs and techies to take micro hits of LSD to gain new insights into financial deals.
What does the future hold? What a question. Perhaps we’ll see psychedelics go the route of cannabis, slowly decriminalised and legalised across the world. Perhaps the next iteration of leadership development is not going out for a drink together after work, but sitting around in the boardroom, microdosing on LSD for the next brainstorming meeting.
Isn’t this ingrained in us as a species?
A friend of mine swears by it and tells me that she can work more energetically, for longer, and with sharper focus on dose days, and even feels more creative on non-dose days. She’s also one of many people who has started to drink less as a result, because they feel more comfortable and relaxed throughout the day. There are others who switch from coffee to tea because they begin to notice how overpowering caffeine is to their thought processes. Or develop a desire for constructive activities like yoga, reading or meditation.
According to research conducted by a team of psychiatrists from McGill University, San Raffaele Scientific Institute and Vita-Salute University, microdosing stimulates the serotonergic system, the neurotransmitter responsible for regulating stress and anxiety levels and enhancing mood. Dr Stephen Bright has been overseeing a study by PhD student Sam Bettinson at Edith Cowan University, who has also found that psychedelics are anti-inflammatory and may bring on new neuron growth.
It’s not hard to see how this could impact our capitalist lives, and ease the adjustment to hybrid working lifestyles for potentially a lot of people. Imagine this for a Monday morning routine:
Alarm, shower, cup of tea, get dressed, then you think, “I’ve got that vision planning and team building session today, so I’ll take my microdose of LSD, because I know it increases my empathy and ability to form emotional connections.” Then, a car journey to work, where your mind wanders productively instead of slowly and anxiously filling with endless tasks that await you.
Humans have used psychedelic plants for thousands of years but it’s interesting that microdosing picked up during the pandemic, in a bid to improve mental health and wellbeing, or seeking a boost of motivation or inspiration during long bouts of working from home. A 2021 survey found that among respondents who both microdosed and took psychiatric drugs, almost half reported reducing or stopping their prescribed medication.
“Dr. Ronald Siegel (1989) suggests that the human urge to intoxicate is so strong that it is the fourth most primal instinct after hunger, thirst and sex,” write the authors of a 2007 University of Cambridge dissertation on the medical history of psychedelic drugs. “He argues that people all over the world have historically always used psychoactive substances and that the desire to take mind-altering drugs is inherently programmed into our biology as a natural drive.”
Could microdosing help people understand their purpose?
There’s a one-ness that’s missing from the workplace right now. Ubuntu is a Nguni Bantu term meaning "humanity". It is sometimes translated as "I am because we are." It’s the recognition that we are all bound together in ways that can be invisible to the eye; that there is a oneness to humanity; that we achieve ourselves by sharing ourselves with others, and caring for those around us.
It’s obviously still illegal, and the social stigma is very real. One US CEO said he was fired last year for microdosing psychedelics at his office.
There are also certain studies that suggest long-term risks of microdosing, including increased risk of cardiovascular disease, certain mental health issues such as anxiety and schizophrenia, and negatively affected sleep patterns and digestion.
Now the doors are opening for medical use, I’m excited to see further research, and who knows – perhaps one day it will follow the route of cannabis and become available for therapeutic and recreational use. Perhaps it could even help people choose new careers and understand and connect with their purpose. In that case, employers should stay open-minded and view this as a golden opportunity for every organisation to explore new ways of developing leaders, and attracting and retaining the best talent.
Conclusion: How to make hybrid working a success
More research is needed, but I want to see this sort of creativity and open-mindedness in the leadership development sphere. I want to see nurturing and supportive relationships between leaders and employees, where both parties feel psychologically safe and positive in their coaching of each other. We’re certainly seeing the consequences of missing that connection and that understanding right now.
Who knows what the future holds? Perhaps microdosing LSD could be the answer we’ve all been searching for – a way to nurture people-first cultures, develop leaders who can pioneer a more human future, and create a sustainable hybrid working model post-Covid that can support happier, more productive, and more fulfilled workforces. Sounds pretty groovy to me.
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Written by Michael
Michael Mauro is the founder of a forward-thinking organisation specialising in leadership, HR and employee development. With over a decade of global experience, Michael has become a leading voice on topics such as culture, inclusion, wellbeing, and the future of leadership.
