Diplo, the popular DJ, has made the bizarre claim that he managed to run the Los Angeles marathon while on LSD.
He managed to complete the marathon in the very respectable time of 3 hours, and 55 minutes and says that he put drops of LSD into his water bottle.
The DJ also took a pop at Oprah in his tweet showing the drops being added to the water.
Unsurprisingly, there remains little clinical research regarding whether taking LSD can help with performance when running a marathon.
However, there have been other people who have attempted similar. Adam Voidoid has spoken of his experience of psychedelics and running. Sarah Siskind is another who has experienced running while on LSD and stated the biggest issue she found, distractions.
“I trained physically in that I had been running ultramarathons for the past two and a half years,” Sarah said. “And, I trained for the drug intake. I did one training run where I ran 20 miles on LSD, and I found that the main problem was that I ran extraordinarily slowly — I was so distracted by everything. So, I figured it wasn’t a performance-enhancing drug, exactly. But, it certainly wasn’t increasing my risk profile.”
Recently though there have been many athletes who have spoken of their use of psychedelics for mental health and helping to cure substance abuse.
Aaron Rodgers, the NFL quarterback, has spoken of using Ayahuasca to cure his fear of death at a psychedelic conference. Former NBA star Lamar Odom has spoken of his use of Ketamine to cure his drug addiction.
Indeed, most of the current research surrounding LSD focusses on how it can help with addiction and other mental health afflictions. They are conducted in safe, secure environments with trained psychiatrists present. Another study indicated that LSD can help with improving memory and learning.
Despite the efforts of Diplo and his LSD, real clinical studies on any possible benefits are likely to not happen anytime soon.
