Please enjoy this transcript of How To Optimize Your Microdosing Experience webinar.
As one of the leading entrepreneurs in the cultural psychedelic space, Paul Austin has founded two investment-backed companies: Third Wave and Synthesis.
If you want to learn how to optimize your microdosing protocol to be as effective as possible, we highly encourage watching the entire webinar. Enjoy!
In this webinar we talk about:
- Important complementary practices
- How to calibrate your microdose
- Ways to track qualitative and quantitative results
- Common mistakes to avoid
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0:00:18 Paul Austin: Hey, and welcome to the webinar. I’m really excited to do this guys. It’s 6:00 PM in Brooklyn, where I’m coming at you from. Currently in Bushwick, the home of hipsters. Williamsburg is the home of the gentrified hipsters. Bushwick is home of the poor hipsters. So I had a wonderful day today. It’s beautiful, absolutely beautiful. Stunning in New York City right now, I’m actually headed off to Columbus, Ohio tomorrow, where a good friend of mine is getting married. And I’m excited to do this webinar on how to optimize your microdosing protocol. As you’re coming in, please just go ahead and write in the chat box your name, where you’re from, and why you’re interested in microdosing. So your name, where you’re from, why you’re interested in microdosing. And if you wanna share what you hope to get out of the webinar today. My colleague and an important team member at Third Wave, Charlie Bathgate will be on the chat box interacting with all of you, collecting questions and just making sure everything runs smoothly.
0:01:23 PA: And basically through this webinar, we’re gonna go through a process of just teaching the actual class on how to optimize your microdosing routine, how to optimize your microdosing protocol, and then we will also have a special discount at the end for our microdosing course, which we will get into. And then of course we’ll have Q&A, question and answers that we’ll stick around for, probably until 7:00 PM Eastern Standard Time for when people have questions. So I assume we’ll have a large audience from the United States today, just because of the timing. Many people in Europe, probably don’t wanna stay up this late. So yeah, we’ll start in probably five minutes, I wanna make sure that we have enough time for everyone to come in. We have about 150 people in the live webinar right now. And once we reach about 200, which I would expect to do in the next five minutes, we’ll go ahead and start. And like I said, if you’re just coming in, welcome, my name is Paul Austin, founder of Third Wave. And a very enthusiastic individual about microdosing psychedelics.
0:02:35 PA: And the focus of today’s webinar is going to be on optimizing your microdosing protocol. So not just about the basics of microdosing, but really going above and beyond into how we can quantitatively and qualitatively track our microdosing to make sure it’s as effective as possible. And we’ll talk about why that’s important in a little bit. We’re gonna start in about three to four minutes. I’m just waiting for five after, five after the hour, so that we have enough time for the people who are coming in to get situated and everything. So if you’re just coming in, again, just go ahead and write your name, where you’re from and why you’re interested in microdosing or what you hope to get out of the webinar today. And like I said, in about five minutes we’ll go ahead and start. In the mean time, I’ll tell you a little bit about what I’m drinking. Highly encourage you, even if we’re looking outside of psychoactive mushrooms.
0:03:31 PA: So we’ll talk a little bit about psilocybin mushrooms today, but Four Sigmatic, for those of you who haven’t heard of it, Four Sigmatic is a mushroom company that has instant mixes of medicinal mushrooms. I’m drinking a Golden Milk Turmeric latte that has turmeric, coconut milk, and I believe shiitake mushrooms in it, and it’s excellent, excellent, excellent. If you’re into medicinal mushrooms, particularly for the anti-inflammatory and general health benefits, I’d highly encourage you to check that out. We’re gonna get started in about three minutes, on the webinar for how to optimize your microdosing protocol. Again, we’re just waiting to make sure that everyone has time to come in. There will be people who come in a few minutes late, if you’re just coming in, go ahead and write where you’re from, and your name, where you’re from, and what you are interested, why you’re interested in microdosing.
0:04:35 PA: Ah, so talking about ayahuasca, ayahuasca microdosing, I haven’t done it myself. We do have detailed information in our microdosing course about microdosing ayahuasca. We also have a long-form guide on our website about microdosing ayahuasca. Four Sigmatic, I’m gonna write that for you. Go ahead and check out their stuff. We might have an affiliate link that we can pull up if you go ahead and purchase from them that would also help to support our mission at Third Wave. We’re actually in the process right now of transitioning into… Hey Taylor, good to see you. We’re in the process of transitioning into a non-profit, and actually in the process of raising donations to start microdosing research, which is really, really exciting. So any help that we can get we’ll obviously will take. Running a small business in the psychedelic space is not sexy as you might think. It comes with a lot of challenges. So, today we’re gonna cover how to optimize your microdosing protocol. We’re gonna start in about one minute. I’m just waiting for everyone to come in so that we can go ahead and discuss and talk about optimizing your microdosing regimen.
0:06:02 PA: Sweet. Eric from Mexico, Steve from San Diego, Odin from Amsterdam. Hi, Odin. It’s good to see you, Odin. Thanks so much for coming. Really, really great to see you. Bob from Lady Lake, Dieleap from Hayward, Dieleap. The webinar will be available to view later. Love to all of you as well. Alexander, that’s great to hear. I’m really excited to go ahead and teach this today. Hi, Rafael. Hi, Rachel from Houston. Thank you so much for coming, Alex from Australia, Dennis from Louisville. Just go ahead and write in… Hey, Jared from Grand Rapids, maybe we’ve chatted before over email. Andrew from Calgary, Vince from New York City. It’s great to see all of you here, and we’re really excited to get going today. Dan from Oregon. It’s about five after. I think we have… There might be a few more people who are straggling, but I really wanna get started. And I did this for the last… We taught the last webinar about a month ago, and I don’t know how many of you were on there, but probably a good amount with you. So what I wanna do, just to get a sense for where you’re all at right now, is ask a couple of questions.
0:07:14 PA: And so the first question that I wanna ask is, “Have you tried microdosing before?” Have you tried microdosing before? I’ll go ahead and just quickly click that poll, so I can get a sense for the demographic demographic of the people who are in our webinar today. So I’m just gonna give it a couple of more minutes. It looks like about two-thirds of you have tried microdosing in past, and about one-third of you have not. And that’s excellent news, for two reasons. One, for those of you have tried microdosing in the past, optimizing your microdosing protocol. It’s gonna help you to get more out of it, to be more effective. I know when I first started to microdose back in mid-2015, I just simply cut off little tabs of acid. Sometimes I did as much as probably 25 mics, sometimes as little as 10 mics. And that’s partly because I’m lazy. And that’s partly just because I was experimenting with different amounts, and I was new. There was really no information or education out there about how to properly do this. Talking about volumetric dosing, for example. And looking back, I wish I had this information available so that it could have been much more accurate because there were some days where I would take too much. And I would basically be high and kind of trying to work, but not really able to work, not really able to focus, or I wouldn’t take enough.
0:08:43 PA: It would kind of be a wasted opportunity. And so for those of you who haven’t microdosed before, obviously, the number one risk of microdosing is the legal issues around it, which we’ll get into probably in the Q&A, but we won’t focus on necessarily in the webinar. And if you’re going out of your way to source these substances, which in the United States, for example, are Schedule 1 substances, you wanna make sure that you’re doing everything right. You wanna make sure that you really take advantage of that opportunity. And that’s really why we built our microdosing course was because we noticed that a lot of people were microdosing and they didn’t really know what they were doing. Some people thought a microdose was taking a gram of mushrooms. That’s not a microdose. And so we built an entire course to help facilitate the optimization process, which we’ll dig into a little bit today. So let’s go ahead, and without waiting any longer, let’s go ahead and start. I’m going to turn my Screen Share on, and let’s see. You should all be able to see this. Can you confirm that you’re seeing the… Cool. Yeah. You should be able to see it, how to optimize your microdosing experience, a complimentary workshop by Third Wave, featuring founder Paul Austin. That just happens to be me introducing myself in the third person is always a fun thing to do. So let’s get going.
0:10:12 PA: What are we going to discuss today? So the first thing that we’re going to discuss is why is optimization important. We’ll get into that in a little bit. The second thing is calibration and complementary practices. So calibration is adjusting your dose level and complementary practices are what do you do, what’s the environment in which you microdose to make sure it’s ideal. Number three is qualitative tracking, which is a fancy way of saying journaling. And number four is quantitative tracking, which is a fancy way of saying, “Let’s track this with some numbers so we can actually have a little bit more clarity.” And then at the end, we’ll have a Q&A for all the live audience members who are here right now. And I’ve had… Saw a couple of people ask if this is live or not. This is live. And then we’ll also offer a special discount for our microdosing course at the end of the workshop if you go, if all of you want to go ahead and implement a lot of the things that we’re talking about in today’s webinar. So first of all, why is optimization important? Well, microdosing, because of its legal status, is a risky venture. And if you’re going to pursue it, you should do it as well, as possible. Beyond that, microdosing holds the potential for transformation, as evidenced by the hundreds, if not thousands, of glowing anecdotes about its efficacy.
0:11:33 PA: There is a gap, though, between the potential and the actuality, and optimization fills that gap. So a lot of us understand that it’s possible to have transformative experiences if microdosing is done well that actually executing on that and paying attention to the finer details. And I think this is where we get a lot out of everything. I would say this also as someone who’s an entrepreneur. Whoops. And someone who’s an entrepreneur, really, a lot of the growth happens when we pay attention to the finer details, and that’s not just true for business. That’s also obviously true for health, that’s true for sleep, that’s true for diet. In fact, right now. I’m in the midst of a self-optimization experiment where I’m combining breath work with specific sorts of diet, intermittent fasting, sleep tracking, supplements with microdosing. Eventually to track and measure the impact of microdosing on my overall well-being. And we’ll get into those details a little bit further on in the webinar. So there are three critical aspects of optimization, and we already mentioned this, one, calibration, two, complementary practices, and three tracking. Now before we go any further, I just wanna make sure that we’re staying engaged and I wanna go ahead and ask one more question. So let’s pull up a new poll and I’d love to get a sense for, let me see, which mistake you have made in the past.
0:13:13 PA: So we talked about, I think 65% of you have microdosed before. What mistakes have you made in the past, in terms of your optimization? Did you just cut up your tabs and not volumetric dose? Were you microdosing every day? We’ll talk about why that’s not ideal. Did you take too much on accident? Or did you not use complementary practices like meditation? And it’s likely that you may have done multiple of these, but pick the one that kind of resonated with you most. So, it looks like many of you are taking too much on accident. And that’s a really good segue into our next point about calibration, because as I mentioned earlier, if you’re taking too much or too little, you’re not facilitating the transformation that might be possible.
0:14:02 PA: And so let’s go ahead and dig into calibration and what that means. Now, before we go any further, I want to address one major issue with this whole microdosing fad, not even fad, the whole microdosing movement that is currently going on. And that’s because, since these substances are illegal, the most important thing from an optimization perspective is obviously knowing your dose level It’s obviously knowing your dose level. So knowing that if you’re going to microdose with LSD, that there are 10 micrograms, or 15, or 20 that you’re taking. And that can be really tricky, because if you buy LSD in the dark web, someone might say, “Yeah, you’re buying 100 mics,” but it might be 80 and there it might be 90. Even if you’re getting 1P-LSD from labs in Canada, which a lot of people are doing, because 1P-LSD is a very similar analog to regular LSD, it could be purchased online through the regular web. Even if you’re doing that, people have also tested one 1P-LSD and although it’s advertised for example as a 100 micrograms per tab, some people find out it’s only 95 or 90. Now that it doesn’t even include psilocybin mushrooms and how we accurately measure and dose those. So if you’re going to microdose with psilocybin mushrooms, make sure you dry them, and that you basically put them into a blender and mix them all up and then put them in small capsules to ensure that it’s very clear and that the amount that you’re taking is very consistent.
0:15:40 PA: Now, with that being said, we still don’t really have the technology available to really, really hone in on this, which is why what we’re doing at Third Wave is so important in terms of facilitating microdosing research and amplifying education around these topics, because we won’t really be able to have that fine tuned detail until the legal system changes its beliefs around these substances. So, anyway, let’s get into calibration, that’s kind of my spiel for the webinar. Sometimes I like to go off. So, calibrating your dose. We need to find the proper dose for your own physiology temperament and goals. And every single person is different. When I was microdosing with LSD, I’ll be honest, I was getting a little bit high every time. Some people would say, “That’s not a microdose, Paul.” But for me, microdosing is about integrating an amount of psychedelic in your every day routine that allows you to still do what you wanna do, but just with an increased sense of presence, an increased ability to function, a general improvement in overall well-being. And so calibrating your dose level is really, really important.
0:16:55 PA: And the best way to start is with a small dose. So, with LSD, that would be something like five micrograms with psilocybin mushrooms, that would be something like 0.1 grams of psilocybin mushrooms, if you’re using Cubensis. And once you’ve established how you respond to the initial starting dose by testing it for one week, then you can make incremental adjustments to more precisely hone in on the optimal level for you. And the dose regimen that we’re working off of is the typical Fadiman protocol. So Jim Fadiman, the godfather of microdosing so to say, has this protocol of day one being a dose day. Day two and day three, no microdosing. And day four, another dose day. And this is really, really important, so you can actually have an understanding of how the microdosing affects you and so you don’t overdo it. Because psychedelics have short-term tolerance, if you dose on day one and then again on day two, then you’re not really gonna notice much on day two. And so this protocol helps you to maintain a level sense of self so that you don’t become ungrounded, kind of too airy, and instead you remain rooted in your sense of self so you can gradually see improvements over a period of time.
0:18:14 PA: So, calibrating your dose. So, a good rule of thumb is to increase or decrease your dose by one microgram of LSD with each subsequent dose until you’ve identified where you want to be. So if you start at microdosing with five micrograms of LSD, your next dose would be six micrograms. Precision is very important when it comes to microdosing, because a small adjustment can be the determining factor as to whether your protocol is optimized or not. So, by adjusting in smaller increments, you’ll be able to safely arrive at the precise dose that works for you. Now, how do you do this? This is done through something called volumetric dosing. We have an article on our website, we also have in-depth primers on how to measure out, for example, microdosing for mushrooms, microdosing for LSD in our online microdosing course, which we will discuss at the end of this webinar.
0:19:17 PA: So this is a little bit about calibrating your dose. And I wanna get to what sub-perceptible means, because this is a really important part of microdosing that it’s a “Sub-perceptual amount of a psychedelic.” Now technically, as long as you’re dose does not result in any of the acute sensory effects, typically associated with high-dose psychedelics, specifically visual distortions, synesthesia, seeing geometric patterns and fractals, then we could consider it to be sub-perceptible, but that doesn’t mean you won’t “Feel your dose.” Like coffee, you feel the effects of a cough of copy, sorry, of a cup of coffee, but it’s still sub-perceptible. So depending on your goals for your microdosing protocol, you may want to be more aware of the dose or you might want to have as little awareness as possible. And again, this gets in and I’ll talk a little bit, before we get to the complementary practices. I’m gonna talk a little bit about my own personal experience with microdosing as I calibrated it, because this plays an really important part with the qualitative and quantitative tracking. When I was first microdosing, I wanted to use it to a] reduced social anxiety, and to b] have more creativity when I was working on projects.
0:20:45 PA: And so, what I noticed is that taking a slightly higher amount where I felt it, where it was noticeable, a] helped me with the creative brainstorming process. I wasn’t able to focus on just getting things done necessarily, but it allowed me to enter a flow state and access creativity and brainstorming possibilities that just didn’t come as easily before. And then the second thing with reducing social anxiety again, taking a slightly higher amount, allowed me to get out of my head. To be completely present with the people that I was with. To not overthink things, to not ruminate on things, but instead to be completely aware in the here and now, and again that was when I just took a slightly higher amount, when I would say I was maybe a little bit high. Again, no visual distortions, no geometric patterns, but my sense of touch was slightly enhanced, my sense of smell was slightly enhanced. I was more likely to smile and giggle, I had a slight sense of euphoria and that was really helpful.
0:21:49 PA: Now, other people who microdose really prefer it to be very sub-perceptible and this is more helpful when we’re dealing with needing to get into a focused state, where it’s not… It’s less about the creative brainstorming, the divergent thinking process and more about, “I wanna get into a rhythm and really do some things effectively, productively, efficiently.” And so, really based on the reason that you’re getting into microdosing, you’ll wanna adjust and calibrate your dose level from there. Let’s go ahead, I just wanna check in on the chat. Andrew says, “The annoying part of all this is, how silly it is to source the substances.” That is annoying. I would totally agree. We’re talking about volumetric dosing, if you do have any questions for the webinar, you can write the questions down in the chat box and then, we talked about at the end of the webinar, we’ll go ahead and address those questions.
0:22:51 PA: And I will say for sourcing, one thing to always consider is that it is legal to purchase psilocybin spores, in every country… I’m sorry, in every state except California, Georgia and Idaho. So, it’s still illegal to grow your own mushrooms, but it is legal to buy your own spores and you can do that by searching psilocybin spores on Google. Can we get access to the slides, afterwards? I’m not sure, I’ll let Charlie, handle that and check him with that. We’ll go ahead and see. So, let’s go ahead and let’s get to complimentary practices, what are practices that we can use in combination with microdosing to make it as effective as possible? So, microdosing is an excellent tool to kickstart transformation, but to integrate the experience for lasting benefit, we must include complementary practices both during and after your microdosing regimen. Examples include things like breath work, meditation, diet and exercise, yoga and time in nature. Basically when you’re microdosing it opens, it enables an open window of plasticity, meaning it is easier to make changes in your life and you should utilize this window to integrate new habits that contribute to improved well-being.
0:24:20 PA: A lot of the benefits that people experience from microdosing can also be experienced from things like breath work and meditation and yoga. However, microdosing unlike these other modalities is drug-induced, it is an exogenous catalyst which helps people with getting the machine up and running. But what is the downside to that is physiologically, we then… Not physiologically, I’m sorry, psychologically there’s an element of becoming reliant or dependent on microdosing. So for example, if you start microdosing, you’ve been struggling with low mood, or maybe you haven’t been quite as creative lately, or maybe struggling with social anxiety. And you attribute your benefit to microdosing which will be true initially, but what you need to do is to make sure that you also provide a holistic environment where you’re not completely reliant just on the microdosing, but that you’re using microdosing as this overall catalyst to kickstart breath work, meditation, diet and exercise, yoga etcetera, etcetera. Now there’s a really, really good book, all about how these different modalities share something, it’s called “Stealing Fire” by Steven Kotler. And basically when you’re meditating or doing breath work, or fasting, or extreme sports, or yoga, you’re fiddling with the neurotransmitters in your brain, and they create similar states. For the brain of enhanced cross connectivity just like with microdosing.
0:26:02 PA: So if you combine microdosing with these other modalities think of it as a one plus one equals three effect. In other words, you’re not just becoming psychologically reliant on microdosing but you’re using it again as an engine to kick-start the microdosing routine so that you can make sure that you integrate these habits. Now, as a note it takes about 30 to 60 days to establish a habit and I would only pick one of these so if your diet isn’t great right now maybe you’re not exercising a lot, maybe you don’t have a… Maybe you don’t have a yoga routine or a breath work routine pick one of these when you start microdosing and commit to doing it everyday for 30 days in combination with your microdosing protocol and that will significantly help with making sure that these benefits become integrated over the long term and what we’re gonna get into next then is how we can make sure we track this through qualitative and quantitative tracking.
0:27:08 PA: So let’s go ahead and let’s move on. I’m just kind of checking in again, on some of the questions. This is recorded you may share it with people. Name of the book was “Stealing Fire,” “Intermittent Fasting.” When I intermittent fast I still microdose on an empty stomach in the morning. We did an excellent podcast with someone in Matt Cooper, I’m just gonna write this here, Third Wave Podcast all about how we can utilize microdosing to improve physical performance so when we’re microdosing as well it’s activating serotonergic receptors in our gut which are directly tied to anti-inflammatory properties so a lot of these other crazy stories that are happening with microdosing outside of the normal it helps with depression, it helps with creativity. Some people for example, women have noticed that it helps with reducing really, really painful menstruation. There’s probably some element of an anti-inflammatory effect happening in the gut which then leads to some of these holistic benefits as well.
0:28:14 PA: So let’s get into tracking your microdosing experience. So the first one is qualitative and the second one is quantitative. So qualitative is setting your intention and ongoing journaling. In fact, when this microdosing craze is really up and starting I was speaking with Sophia Korb who is working with Jim Fadiman on a lot of the initial microdosing research that has been published and she was emphasizing how a lot of the benefits of microdosing are also tied to the sense that people are just journaling about it and when people journal and actually maintain a heightened level of mindfulness about their day-to-day activities that as well has a number of benefits so this process of journaling ongoing just creates a more mindful present attitude during your microdosing protocol.
0:29:15 PA: But let’s get into the specifics of qualitative and to do that I am going to walk you through a little PDF. Now, in our microdosing course we include a 124 page microdosing workbook and that workbook is downloadable, you can print it, you can now print it but basically it walks you through a 30-day microdosing protocol and it helps you to both qualitatively and quantitatively track changes over your 30-day microdosing protocol so just briefly we’re gonna walk through the intention setting process for your microdosing protocol because intention is such an important part of microdosing.
0:30:02 PA: Well, the way that I like to think about microdosing is it’s like rocket fuel in the engine and if you don’t really know where that rocket is pointing and all of a sudden you’re putting all this really, really high octane fuel in it and then you just boom get going but you’re pointed in the wrong direction you could end up in a worse place than you were before and so it’s really, really important that you have clear clarity on your intention on the direction you’re heading before you start to put rocket fuel in your body and so the way that we do that is by spending time alone, it’s by spending time in nature, it’s by spending time thinking and reflecting and then orienting our mind, orienting our thoughts towards what do we wanna get out of this, why are we microdosing, what improvements do we hope to experience, what changes, what transformation do we wanna see, do we want it to be in work, do we want it to be in relationships, do we want it to be with ourselves, what are those transformations?
0:31:03 PA: And so, I’m gonna quick pull up the PDF one sec, give me a couple of seconds. We can see it, I think we can see it right, yeah, we got it. So this is the intention and inventory section, so as you see it’s about 127 pages in total, we’re obviously not going to go through the whole thing today but we’re gonna go through a little bit of it and I will try not to scroll too fast. I think this should be better. So as part of the microdosing workbook and I’ll walk you through this process right now, we have you set your baseline measurements and we’ll get into this in the quantitative tracking as well but set your baseline measurement so you know where you’re at right now and these are just basic questions about, you’re feeling calm and relaxed, you’re waking up feeling fresh and rested, it’s easy for you to concentrate on what you’re doing etcetera, etcetera, there’s about 16 questions there in total.
0:32:18 PA: And what we have you do, is we have you walk through those and fill those out basically, every week and every day, so that you continue to stay on top of… In my experience, change in my subjective well-being. But before we even get started with microdosing, we want to write some intention and inventory. So these are a few example questions that we can journal on. If you could choose only one thing that you could do better next month, what would it be? Now let’s do this as a live exercise in the webinar. I want you to go ahead and write in the chat box with your microdosing protocol, whether it’s your first one, or the next one, that you’re doing, if you could choose only one thing that you could do better next month, what would it be? Now, for me, it would be accessing creative flow states in the morning on a consistent basis. That’s what it would be for me and making sure that I get at least three to four hours of really good creative work done.
0:33:22 PA: And now I… Going back to complementary practices, I know that microdosing won’t be fully responsible for that. In other words, I need to make sure I turn off my phone in the morning, I need to make sure that I don’t check email first thing, I don’t check Slack first thing, I need to make sure that I queue up creative tasks the evening before to make sure that I can dig into them. But again, writing about these things and cultivating an intention helps. So just go ahead and write that, if you could choose only one thing that you could do better next month, what would it be?
0:33:55 PA: Let’s keep going. There’s another example question. What would you like to learn more about in the next month? So obviously a big part of what microdosing does is it opens this window of plasticity and that allows us to adapt quicker to new information to novel situations. So a lot of people are orienting their microdosing protocol, their microdosing regime to things like language learning or book reading or business building or whatever else it might be. So what is something that you would like to learn more about in the next month? That could be relationships, it could be something related to, again, your work, it could be for a lot of people I think it’s about themselves. Understanding themselves better, to really dig deep into that inner self and start to do the work necessary to build self-awareness and self-understanding. So go ahead and write that down as well. What would you like to learn more about in the next month?
0:34:56 PA: What habits would you like to improve? Again, this is part of the qualitative journaling, the qualitative tracking. What habits would you like to improve? We already talked about complementary practices like meditation, breath work, diet, exercise, it might be compassion with your partner, it might be communicating with your partner, it could be spending time in nature, it could be working on creative projects, whatever it is, just think about what habits you would like to improve and go ahead and write those down as well and let us know what habits you would like to improve. Few more, and we’re just gonna kinda go through these. So, what habits would you like to improve at work or school, with friends and family, or your personal health? And then a big part of microdosing, and this is the last qualitative piece that will go on before we move on, is what type of connections would you like to make with others? This was my biggest transformation when I was microdosing is, it really opened me up emotionally, allowed me to get out of my head and connect with other people. Intimate, platonic, business, networking, it really allowed me to be present. So also thinking about what are those connections that you would like to make with others, what type of connections are those? And that could be anything from just networking, that could be deep intimate depth relationships with people who are in your life, but again thinking about these things is really helpful.
0:36:43 PA: Now I wanna move on because we’re already about 35 minutes in, and we need to end at about the hour mark, so I wanna make sure that we can keep going. So, what I wanna show you is just a little bit more part, one more part of the workbook. As you can see we have a number of other questions as well, to cultivate your intention and when you get access to our online microdosing course, you go ahead and you get access to this entire workbook that we have. Now one other way that we help to quantitatively track is we ask questions after we microdose. So I’m gonna kinda go through those quick. Again, these are the measurements that we have.
0:37:24 PA: So asking questions after you microdose is really important as well. And when you microdose. Beginning of day, what will you take, how much will you take? When will you take it? Again, what is your intention for the day, what do you want to get out of this? Is there a specific practice you will engage in today, like meditation or journaling? And then at the end of the day, just writing for one or two minutes and getting into the habit of journaling about this. What are your general comments and observations on the day? Did you notice that it was easier to access flow state? Did you notice that it was easier to connect with your partner? That you finally got out of the house and started socializing with others. That you were able to come up with a new idea for a project that you were working on, that maybe, if you’ve struggled with depression or anxiety that that was finally relieved for the first time in a very long time. So what are your general comments and observations on the day and then tracking again, were any other substances involved? Caffeine, alcohol, nicotine, cannabis, things like this.
0:38:15 PA: So that is another aspect of the journaling of the qualitative tracking part. And I just wanna show you one more part of this workbook which is after the week. Because after you’ve microdosed for a week, then it’s also important to reflect and to think about, “Okay, what could go better next week?” So at the end of every week, take a few minutes to fill out these questions. What physical, mental and emotional effects did you notice throughout the week? If you were to do this week over again, what would you do differently? Would you be a bit more disciplined about your diet? Would you go out and try to socialize more with friends? Would you go ahead and try to meditate every day, instead of just three or four times? What would you do differently in that week?
0:39:18 PA: And then what’s your intention for the next week? It could be the same thing. It could be building on what you previously had established or you might orient it towards a different goal. That’s totally up to you. And now we also have this at the end of the entire microdosing protocol as well. We don’t really have enough time. I do wanna… We’re kinda running short on time. I do wanna get into the quantitative tracking stuff. So I’m just gonna cut that out. We’re gonna go into the quantitative tracking, but that’s the qualitative tracking. And again, when you get access to our microdosing course which we’ll have a discount for at the end of today’s webinar, you get access to that entire workbook. And we highly encourage people, if they can, to print the entire thing off, to make it into a little binder. And that’s something that’s a keepsake. That’s something that you’ve been keep because for many of you, even if it’s not your first microdosing protocol, this is going to be potentially one of the most transformative experiences you go through.
0:40:17 PA: And to have that journal, to have that journal of that time period will mean so, so much to many of you. So, we highly, highly encourage you to, even if you don’t get access to the course and you don’t have the workbook, to keep a journal both to help with the process itself and so when you look back, you have this beautiful recollection of your transformation. That’s the first thing with qualitative tracking journaling ongoing. Let’s get into quantitative tracking now. So, quantitative tracking, again, we have a spreadsheet that we’ve built and we specifically include in the microdosing course that you get access to. And I’m going to go ahead and pull that up. Just a hot second. I think I need to pull it up in a new window. One sec. One second. One second. Actually, before we get that, I’m just gonna get… I’m gonna get a glass of water really quick. You guys, I forgot to get a glass of water. I forgot to get a glass of water. So I wanna get a glass of water real quick. Think about what we just spoke about with the qualitative tracking. We’re gonna come back in about 30 seconds. We’ll do the quantitative tracking. One sec.
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0:42:13 PA: Okay, let’s dig into some quantitative tracking. So like I said, we have a spreadsheet that we’re going to use, and then after we talk about the spreadsheet, I’m also going to talk about the self-optimization experiment. I’m gonna go ahead and turn the screen share on. Hold on, I gotta figure this out. There we go. Okay, so this is the spreadsheet. And again, it’s probably hard to see in it’s full clarity, but again, you get access to this as part of the microdosing course. I just need to find how to navigate it real quick. Okay. So I’m gonna have it up here. You should be able to see it. So I’m just gonna walk you through what we have available to track for this. The first thing is, what time you took it? Now, if you’re microdosing, we usually educate people on microdosing early in the morning. And that’s particularly because with LSD, it has a pretty long span of time that it affects you. And so, especially if you have any sort of anxiety or struggle with insomnia, doing it early in the morning is really important.
0:43:37 PA: Then we have the time of the come up. So when is the first noticeable effect? What substance are you using? Approximately how much did you take? Again, it’s hard to be exactly precise, but this is about how much you took? How much sleep did you get the night before? What was your sleep quality? And again, these are about on a scale of one to 10. How is your mood? Are you happy, uplifted? Are you struggling, not so great? Again, one to 10 in tracking. What’s your energy level like? Do you have a ton of energy, or are you lagging and just not really going so well? How was your productivity? Were you able to stay focused and get done what you needed to get done? Hold on, I need to move this over a bit. What creative insight did you have? And again, this is part of the calibration. So for example, when I microdose now, there might be a day… And I don’t microdose consistently like twice a week. I’ll just microdose every now and then. I’ll often do it before public talks, or when I have a really intense creative day. And so I always then microdose to be more A, socially extroverted and B, more creative insight. And so, again, some of these numbers might shift then based on why you want to microdose.
0:45:05 PA: And what was your emotional awareness like? Were you really in touch with your feelings and your emotions? And again if you combine microdosing with something like breath work, then this might be something that you pay closer attention to. And then an overall ranking of the day’s experience. Finally, if you really wanna go in deep, your blood pressure, we can measure your resting heart rate. What was your resting heart rate for the day? Another one is heart rate variability which you can get and track. Finally, general comments and then notable activities. So this, the notable activities part is a really good way to include, a really good place to include complementary practices that you’re trying to utilize or integrate on an ongoing basis. And then, any specific insights? Hold on, we have a few more. Any specific insights that were generated. So for example, I realized today… Let’s pull this up.
0:46:13 S2: I realized today that I can be extremely hard on myself when it comes to worse tasks, the voice in my head constantly telling me that I need to do something or quote unquote, “should have already done something,” makes me attach my self-worth to productivity, which then compounds my stress. So what are those insights that are coming up? What are any physical observations? I felt a little stomach discomfort in the morning and then, what are other substances that are ingested, whether that’s medications or supplements? So half a cup of coffee in the morning, potentially cannabis, alcohol, if there are any pharmaceuticals that are being ingested, any other sort of supplement, that’s also great to note. As you can see, this is more the quantitative part, the sleep quality, mood, energy, productivity, creative insight, emotional awareness, the overall ranking of the day’s experience, there’s some quantitative measurements here with the blood pressure and the resting heart rate. But for me, this didn’t really do it complete, I kinda wanted more when I was looking at quantitative tracking. And so what I did, and I’m gonna write some notes right now in the chat room, what I did is, I’m now setting up my own self-optimization experiment.
0:47:36 PA: And I’m trying to figure out how microdosing impacts three things. Okay? How microdosing impacts three things. One, how it impacts my sleep quality. Now, there is something called, let’s see, an Oura ring, that you can wear, if you wear it, it will track your sleep quality overnight. And basically, we have a relationship with the Oura ring organization, and I’m gonna provide a link to that right now, because that’s an excellent sleep tracker. And if you use our code, so if you wanna utilize that to track your sleep quality, ’cause that’s what I’m using in my self-optimization experiment, if you use the code thirdwaveoura, you’ll get 50 USD off the Oura ring. Okay? thirdwaveoura, 50 USD off the Oura ring, and that’s what I’m using to measure sleep quality. And on the website, there’s more details about what quantitative tracking is available there. The second thing that I’m using is uBiome, okay, the second thing that I’m using is uBiome, and that tracks and measures changes in my gut flora. Like I mentioned earlier, microdosing seems to have an anti-inflammatory effect. And so, I’m curious to see if microdosing then helps to improve my gut flora, because gut flora is significantly tied to overall well-being and health. And then the third thing that I’m doing, are blood panels. And blood panels are a little more expensive, each time you get a blood panel, it’s between 200 and 300 US dollars.
0:49:31 PA: But then I’m looking at my cortisol levels, I’m looking at testosterone, I’m looking at all these different blood panel measurements to figure out and understand how microdosing then impacts my overall well-being, based on all these biomarkers and then for the foundation for that, in terms of what diet am I doing, what’s my exercise like, what type of sleep quality, I utilize 23andMe, I took the raw data from that, to then create a customized protocol about my diet, exercise, sleep, what supplements I’m using, etcetera, etcetera. So this is then going above and beyond just the regular spreadsheet, and really going deep into the quantitative tracking element. If you don’t have that fleshed out yet, what we will be doing is I will be posting blogs, videos, and the results of that experiment again for our microdosing course members. So I’ll be posting those things for our microdosing course members, and that way, people who access the course have access to all of that data and information as it comes out, no one that I know… No one that I know has really done this before, so I’m really excited to see what comes up from it. So let’s get back briefly to the presentation and then I want to ask, or I wanna provide about 10 to 15 minutes for Q&A.
0:51:06 PA: So this is sort of the self-optimization experiment that I’m using, 23andMe, uBiome kits, like I said, the Oura ring, blood panels, lock-in sleep diet and exercise, and then I’m using complementary practices, breathwork, meditation, yoga, and then I’m also adding intermittent fasting, I’m taking certain supplements, and I’m doing the sauna bathhouse once a week as well to help facilitate overall well-being. And again, I’m journaling about this and will be posting the results in the microdosing course and community. And so, before we get into that, before we go into the details of the microdosing course and community, I wanna provide a little time for questions and then once we’ve had a little time for questions, we’ll go ahead and let people have access to the course at the discount if that’s something that they want. So first off, what questions do we have?
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0:52:19 PA: Any questions, Charlie, if you could please post them for me, or highlight them for me. And in the meantime, as we already spoke about and talked about, we’re providing the workbook, the quantitative tracking spreadsheet, and first access to the journals and the numbers from myself, optimization experiment for microdosing in our microdosing course. And basically what you receive with your microdosing course membership is a written course curriculum covering everything from the science of microdosing. To how measure and store your dose to best practices for optimizing your experience. There are demonstration videos with myself, there are exclusive expert interviews, we interviewed people from clinical psychiatry from the bio-hacking community meditation from medical doctors, neurologists, so those are included and those are growing every day. We have 10 total right now. And we’re doing more and more all the time. You get the microdosing workbook And Results Tracking Template to help guide monitor, and optimize your day-to-day experience and you also get six months of free access to our members only online community that’s with 800 other microdosers who’re already in our microdosing course and community, and you get access to them to build communities. You ask any questions that might be coming up during your microdosing experience.
0:53:50 PA: And we also have a 30-day money back guarantee. So if you purchase it today, you decide in the next 30 days that it’s just not for you that it really wasn’t as valuable as you had hoped. Then there’s a 30-day money back guarantee and this is how you access the discounted microdosing course, you’re going to click on the offer link uploaded in the chats. I’m going to go ahead and make that available now. Let’s see and it’s $30 off the normal price for this webinar only, so if you want access to the microdosing course, it’s normally $147, and we have a $30 discount, for those of you who are attending the webinar right now, which brings the total cost down to $117, you’ll simply click on the offer link upload it in your chat, you’ll add the microdosing course to your cart. And then you’ll get access to it and you can start digging into your microdosing education.
0:55:00 PA: Now, this deal will be available until Saturday at midnight, so for the next two days. So if you need some time to think about this and to make a decision that’s no problem, please make that, but if you wanna do it now if you wanna get access now and start digging into our expert interviews to all the detailed information about optimizing your own experience… We encourage you to go ahead and check it out now. And one more thing that’s worth emphasizing, these are a few testimonials from our microdosing Course Members, AG our course student said this course is great for everyone from absolutely no experience with psychedelics to the most experienced who would like to improve their microdosing techniques or wellness tracking.
0:55:45 PA: It’s content of a perfect balance between scientific research practical recommendations and experiences. I consider it to be very holistic informational and inspiring, this course is a must take for experience enhancement and harm reduction purposes. SL, our microdosing course student, said the microdosing course gave me permission to spend time developing myself and help me open myself up for reflection and growth in a controlled way. It was great to share stories and the experience with all types of wonderful characters from across our beautiful planet, and to create the space to reinvent ourselves. And finally, an anonymous course member said this course helped me to optimize and structure my microdosing protocol, it gave me the knowledge and skills to fully experience potential benefits of microdosing in addition, and made me aware of how to monitor those benefits.
0:56:38 PA: One last thing, by enrolling in this course, you’re actively contributing to third wave’s mission and the psychedelic movement, that means first of all funding research into microdosing, changing the cultural conversation around responsible use of psychedelics and helping us to avoid advertising to remain 100% community supported. As I mentioned at the beginning of the webinar, we’re currently in the process of incorporating as a non-profit, and any revenue that’s generated then will help directly support the research will help support my salary Charlie’s salary, so that we can continue to do this work, which we think is incredibly important in a time where psychedelics are heavily stigmatized.
0:57:22 PA: Yet they’re super important tools in helping us to basically build better individuals, a better sense of self, better communities, etcetera, etcetera. And that’s it. So we’ll keep that offer up. It will be available until Saturday at midnight, if you do choose to support us. We thank you, thank you, thank you. Running a non-profit in this space is not easy, yet this work is very important and so any help is greatly appreciated. So again, there’s a $30 off discount down to $117. Now I wanna get into questions, So the Q&A only section of the chat. Charlie where is that? I don’t see a Q&A section of the chat Charlie. Let’s see. Oh okay, it’s in the control box. Okay, so Q&A, looks like we don’t have any in the Q&A section, Charlie.
0:59:08 PA: Okay, so Eduardo asks, why is it bad to microdose daily, is it because of the tolerance? Yes, first of all, it’s because of the tolerance. So psychedelics have short-term tolerance. So if you’re doing it every day, the effects aren’t noticeable. For example, if you microdose on day two, you’re not gonna really notice it after microdosing on day one, so… And then the other thing is if you’re microdosing daily, you really get off your baseline. You don’t really understand your baseline so well, and so it’s really important to make sure that you’re not becoming completely reliant on microdosing, but that instead, you continue to understand your foundation so that the changes that you see are available in the long term. Kevin asks, what’s the difference between mushrooms and LSD. With mushroom microdosing, it tends to be better for inner work, inner reflection, time spent alone, doing self-reflective, self-awareness work, so really feeling-oriented work. Whereas with LSD, it tends to be better for cognitive function. So improving overall cognitive function with LSD seems to be the thing that it’s most widely used for. And so, that could be things like creative projects, that could be social extraversion, but it seems to be really helpful for external events that are occurring. Forrest asks, can one microdose in the evening versus the morning?
1:00:47 PA: What are the pros and cons? I would say, if you’re very sensitive to this, microdosing in the evening would only be suitable if you’re planning to stay up late at night, because these substances can be highly stimulating. If you microdose in the evening, it will keep you up late. So this is why we encourage microdosing in the morning because it’s a stimulant, it helps to keep things even. Alvaro asks, how true is it that microdosing replaces the hard work of years of meditation? I think these two are different modalities, I think microdosing is likely doing very similar things in the brain as meditation. However, microdosing is on demand, it’s exogenous, it’s not endogenous. And so, like we talked about earlier, although microdosing can help when you’re actually going through the microdosing process, if you just stop microdosing and you don’t continue to meditate or do breathwork, then a lot of those benefits that you experienced during the microdosing protocol are going to go away. Whereas if you’ve done hard work of years of meditation, you have a disciplined habitual schedule that’s helping to facilitate non-dual awareness presence. And so they can be used complementary, I wouldn’t say one replaces the other, I would say microdosing is better to get things kickstarted, because a lot of people who meditate have a hard time consistently doing it.
1:02:16 PA: Because they don’t experience benefits right away. Most people who meditate might not experience any benefits for the first 30 to 60 days, whereas microdosing occurs immediately, so they can be used with each other. I wouldn’t say one replaces the other. Alexander asks, I don’t know if I missed it, but could you explain to people the schedule for microdosing? I did first day a dose, second day afterglow, third day normalized, fourth day, the first day, same as the dose. Do you have any suggestions for this schedule? That’s a really good schedule. That’s the typical Fadiman schedule, and I think that is in combination or juxtaposed with Paul Stamets’s schedule of five days on two days off, the way that Fadiman approaches it is much more of a drug dose. In other words, on the first day, you take a microdose, you notice it. The second day, things are still pretty good. The third day, you normalize, the fourth day, you go back to the dose. I think the sense that I get, what Paul Stamets is talking about is taking definitely sub-perceptible dose levels, and stacking it with Lion’s Mane and other things to be neuro-epigenetic, to help with neuroplasticity, to help with the process of cross-connectivity in the brain.
1:03:34 PA: So, I think Jim Fadiman’s is a little more intense, which is why it’s just twice a week, you’re taking a little bit more, with Paul Stamets, I think it’s much lower. So, it’s much more like a supplement, like taking a fish oil, so it’s very low at that level.
1:03:47 PA: Matteo asks, you said you don’t microdose so much any more. Why is that? I got a lot of the benefits that I was looking for from my early microdosing regimens and for me, it’s just, I microdose from time to time, before public speaking, if I’m working in creative projects, but there’s already quite a bit of stress in my life particularly because I now live in New York City, which is very chaotic, and so I noticed that when microdosing here, it just made things worse. And so this is what also people notice who for example, struggle with general anxiety is that microdosing can sometimes make their general anxiety worse, not better. So it’s largely just a personal thing. If you feel like you’re microdosing and things are continuing to go well and you’re not noticing any downsides, I would still say, just like any other drug or substance, coffee, cannabis, that it’s good to take breaks, to understand how you operate and how you feel without the help of an external substance and then if you have that, you know, relationship with a substance where you don’t feel dependent on it, but that you have sort of a conscious mindful relationship with it, then continue to microdose if that’s what you see as best for you. Let’s see, do we have any more questions?
1:05:22 PA: So I’m seeing some now from Christine, her quality of life has improved dramatically and she’s a bit wary about taking a break. How important is it to take breaks from the protocol? Again, I answered that before, but it just depends on you. I would say it’s not extremely important because these are not addictive substances, but I would still say seeing if you can integrate diet, exercise, sleep, meditation, breathwork, some of these other modalities that are not relying on a drug, see if you can integrate habits, those habits to improve your overall well-being, take out the microdosing, continue with the habits, and then see what pans out from that point forward. Alyssa asks, “What is the rule of thumb when wanting to schedule an actual trip?” If you’ve been microdosing, I would say probably… No, if you’ve been microdosing consistently for 30 days or something, 30 to 60 days, I would say it’s best to take probably a week off, and then do a higher trip, and that way you completely reset, you can completely come back down and give yourself at least a week to see if you can then have improvements.
1:06:40 PA: “Super,” someone just said that. Todd said, his wife has Parkinson’s and after three-weekend trips, half dose has appeared to completely heal, don’t know if it will last. I bought your course. Well, thank you, Todd. We appreciate that, and that’s great to hear about your wife. There is some interesting relationship there between, for example, Iboga microdosing and what could potentially help with Parkinson’s. Let’s see if you have other questions… Alvaro says, “On the next webinar we should all microdose at the start and share all our results in real-time until the end. I had like that. Marcus says if you want to exit will you do such a hard stop or just increase the days between the microdosing first? I would say just a hard stop. These aren’t addictive substances, so you’re not gonna have withdrawals or anything. I would just make sure that you use microdosing to integrate those positive habits and complimentary practices so that you can do a hard stop but continue to go with the habits.
1:08:00 PA: Lorelai asks, “Can microdosing help with physical healing as well, if so what is best? Lorelai, I’m gonna point you to the podcast that we did with Matt Cooper, because that is the best way to address the physical healing questions thethirdwave.co psychedelic podcast and look for the podcast with Matt Cooper.
1:08:26 PA: John asked “Are you personally worried about the legal status of microdosing? You’re talking publicly and advocating doing something illegal? What’s your plan if the police knocks on your door?” I don’t have any illegal substances on my person. This is important material. And Jim Fadiman spoke to the DEA, they basically said they don’t care about microdosing. I think it’s really important to understand that from a logical perspective, the entire Drug War is largely based in racist notions and so as a fortunate privilege middle-class white male who can afford a lawyer and can fight them, it just seems like the law enforcement really does not care at all about psychedelics, especially for people who are just talking about them educating. Generally, there just doesn’t seem to be a lot of priority or enforcement about these things. So I’ve been doing this for about three years now, about two and a half years, and with all of the research that’s coming out about psychedelics, with Michael Pollan’s new book that has just come out about psychedelics, I think they’re likely going to take a similar route as cannabis.
1:09:49 PA: Great. Penelope, connecting people where project that’s super. Guest asks, “Do you think microdosing psilocybin will ever become a legal therapeutic practice?” I would assume within the next two to three years. MDMA isolated to become medicalized by 2021 and I think psilocybin will also become medicalized by that point in time 2021. And once we have medical psilocybin and get a little bit more research on microdosing, I think it will become certainly a legal therapeutic practice. And there’s also, it’s worth saying that we now facilitate retreats in Amsterdam, in Netherlands where these substances are legal psilocybin truffles are legal. And so we don’t microdose right now, we’ve just been doing moderate to higher doses, but that is something that also is already legal in the Netherlands and we’re already working with microdosing psilocybin in that way. And if you wanna check out the retreat that we’re offering in the Netherlands, it’s at synthesisretreat.com. Synthesisretreat.com, those are legal safe, structured, guided psychedelic experiences, not micro doses, moderate to high doses in Amsterdam where it is legal. And so, synthesisretreat.com if you wanna get more details about that.
1:11:19 PA: Alvaro asks “Paul, are you helping with any research with all the data you’re gathering?” Yep, we’re helping a number of organizations. We’re also rolling our own research which is why we’re now entering a fundraising process and trying to raise funds to facilitate extensive microdosing research, so we can really figure out what’s going out, what’s going on. Rice ask “How can I help with your retreat in the Netherlands?” Rice go ahead and go to the website, and reach out to us through the contact form on the website in terms of what your ideas are, or what you were thinking and we’d be happy to help. Odin says, “If you have the change to the retreat.” Thank you, Odin. Great to hear from you with Martin. Martin is great.
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1:12:22 PA: Vince asks, How can we get involved in Third Wave? Right now, the best way is to reach out to us, and if you have a specific skill, we’re really looking for developers to help out with certain things. So if you’re a developer and you wanna contribute, that would be fantastic. We’re also looking for funding, financial resources because things are really tight right now. And then generally, we’re looking at building infrastructure, so that people who are really, enthusiastic about the larger mission can contribute either their time, money, or skills.
1:12:53 PA: Things are still in development with that, though, and we hope that we’ll have a more mature infrastructure to help people out in the future. Just asked, do you have any feedback on the MycoMeditation retreat in Jamaica? I attended the retreat about a year and a half ago. I think what they’re doing is phenomenal. I think it’s a beautiful setting. Our retreat in Amsterdam is different. It’s a bit more structured and guided. Their retreat is more just taking mushrooms on the beach. Ours is with music, in a contemplative room in the woods. Do a lot of inner work and go deep. So it’s just a different experience. One is in Paradise, and ours is more in the woods in the Netherlands, more and more modern. So it’s just your cup of tea. Obviously, we built synthesis because we felt there was a certain need that wasn’t met, and we wanted to facilitate that. Avaro sounds great. Please reach out. I would love to chat more about how we could work together. That would be fantastic. Okay, so we are gonna wrap up now. I would argue that is why thank you. We’re gonna wrap up. It’s about 7.15. We’ve been on now answering a lot of questions. Again, the discount, we have a $30 discount down to $117 for the Microdosing course.
1:14:46 PA: If you want access to that, that link is still available where you get access to the workbook, the quantitative tracking my details with the self-optimization experiment, as well as expert interviews and a number of other things. It also helps to support our mission with what we’re doing. This isn’t easy, and any help is great. So Sounds great. Thank you so much, Carolina appreciate your support, can’t wait to have you in the community. If you have any other questions, we’ll likely be doing another webinar in the near future. Thank you, Eric. Deeply appreciated, really, really appreciate those words. Thank you all for attending. Thank you all for coming, and thank you all for being part of this community. We really love to do these webinars. We can’t wait to do another one. There will likely be another one in a month or so. And in the meantime, let’s stay in touch. And I wish all of you well. So again, thank you so much for attending, and have a wonderful rest of your evening, wherever you are. Bye, everyone.
