Dan Brown smoked seven or eight cigarettes on his way to the early lead at The Open.

Told reporters: "Stress levels go up, then probably the more I end up having."

I talk a lot about performance in this newsletter. Breath work, meditation, visualization, the mental side of getting to your best golf. Dan Brown's doing the same thing, chasing the same state — he's just using a different tool to get there.

And it works. That's not up for debate. The question is whether it holds up.

Here's the actual menu, the one nobody in golf talks about honestly:

Cigarettes. Calms you, doesn't touch your hands. Also cancer.

Booze. Takes the edge off. Wrecks motor control and judgment. The most popular one and the worst one.

Weed. Eases anxiety. Also fogs your head, flips paranoid under pressure for some guys. Not great for coordination.

Microdosing psilocybin. Calm, focused, present. Johns Hopkins has been studying it for anxiety for years. The one nobody's talking about, and the one I'd bet on.

Hogan and Palmer made smoking darts look cool. Cool was never smart. It's a coping mechanism dressed up as a personality.

Psilocybin got outlawed for the wrong reasons. Michael Pollan lays it out in How to Change Your Mind — legitimate psychiatric research for a decade, until Nixon tangled it up with the counterculture. The science never turned bad. The politics did.

If you're leaning on something to get calm out there, at least make it something built for the long game, not just the next four hours.

Someone get Dan Brown a microdosing protocol before he's not around for the Champions Tour.

Know a golfer who'd get this? Forward it or share your personal referral link below.