REASON AND DREAM

(est. 2021) explores the intersections of technology, culture, and human experience. From urban phenomena and digital spirituality to the evolving landscapes of creativity, we investigate how modern life reshapes perception, identity, and society.

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Cassandra Myrren  #13 — 5 min read


The Rise of Microdosing in Corporate Culture

2023

Enter The Void 2012

In the glass towers of San Francisco, Berlin, and Singapore, the fluorescent hum is no longer sustained by caffeine alone. Beneath the sleek minimalism of open-plan offices, a quieter revolution is underway — one measured not in start-up valuations or quarterly repo rts, but in micrograms.

Microdosing, once the esoteric habit of psychedelic pioneers and fringe artists, has slipped quietly into the bloodstream of corporate culture. LSD and psilocybin, administered in imperceptible amounts, are now whispered about in boardrooms as tools for “creative expansion,” “emotional resilience,” and “adaptive cognition.”

The language is clinical, sanitized, stripped of its countercultural origins. Yet beneath the PowerPoint slides and HR wellness brochures lies something older, stranger — a return to ritual under the mask of productivity.

It is not difficult to see why. The neoliberal workplace thrives on flow — a state of seamless, frictionless functioning. In a world where time is monetized to the second, microdosing appears as a sacrament tailored for capitalism’s altar: altered states without chaos, creativity without collapse.

Here, the trip is not a journey into the desert, but a controlled drift into focus. The psychedelic has been domesticated, harnessed not to dissolve the self but to optimize it — to fit more efficiently into the machine.

And yet, the effects are not purely instrumental. Quietly, many report moments of unanticipated rupture: tears in meetings, sudden urges to walk barefoot in city parks, an inexplicable tenderness towards the stranger across the table. These are not in the KPI reports, but they are perhaps the true micro-revolutions.

The mystics knew that the smallest doses of the sacred could transform the soul. Now, the question is whether the sacred can survive being folded into corporate OKRs and Slack reminders. Is microdosing the seed of a new form of inner emancipation, or merely another line item in the productivity spreadsheet?

As with all substances that live between medicine and sacrament, its truth may lie in the intentions of its practitioners. In the cubicles and co-working spaces where this quiet alchemy takes place, one wonders if the real experiment is not in the chemicals at all, but in whether the modern workplace can contain — or be undone by — the ineffable.



References
  • Eliade, M. (1959). The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. Harcourt.
  • Han, B.-C. (2015). The Burnout Society. Stanford University Press.
  • Huxley, A. (1954). The Doors of Perception. Harper & Brothers.
  • Jung, C. (1963). Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Vintage.
  • McKenna, T. (1992). Food of the Gods. Bantam.