Please enjoy this transcript of the Long-Term MICRODOSING webinar.
In this webinar, learn why it’s so important for anyone considering a microdosing protocol to think beyond the short-term questions of measuring your dose and what your ideal day could look like. When considering microdosing, it’s essential to have a long-term perspective on what microdosing means for your well-being in the next 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, and beyond.
Founder of Third Wave, Paul Austin, does a deep dive into what you need to know about the intersection of microdosing and best practices for long-term integration.
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0:00:08 Paul Austin: Hello microdosers and all of you interested in psychedelics. Welcome to Third Wave’s webinar on long-term microdosing practices basically today we are going to discuss best practices and big picture integration for all of you. So I just wanna thank you for being on time. They’re already 150 of you here. That is fantastic. Just a little aloha. I got my Hawaiian shirt I’m really feeling the summer vibes here in Brooklyn, New York. So as you’re coming in, it’d be great if you could just go ahead and introduce yourself.
0:00:50 PA: Just say your name, where you’re from and why you’re attending the webinar so your name, where you’re from, and maybe a little bit about why you’re attending the webinar. It’d be great to hear from all of you. We will probably start at 10 after or so it’s 8 PM Eastern Standard Time right now. And I would expect more people to be coming in usually a little bit late. So in the meantime I’ll just kinda talk and give you an overview of where we’re at withThird Wave at the moment.
0:01:20 PA: Some updates like that and then about 10 minutes in, we’ll go ahead and we will start. So Mellisa from Idaho welcome, Bill from Alberta welcome. Hi Mary. Hi Mary good to see you, thanks so much for attending. I can’t wait to visit you up in Woodstock. Mary actually attended our first synthesis retreat and actually I’m flying to Amsterdam on Wednesday to do our next retreats. We host a legal Psilocybin retreat in Amsterdam we actually have next available dates in November. So if you’re interested in a legal Psilocybin experience check that out synthesisretreat.com. Hi Esca from Oregon, Bob from Lancaster, you’re welcome Sharona, thanks so much for being here. Kala from San Luis Obispo. Lisa from San Diego, Lisa I’m giving a talk in San Diego the week after Labor Day. Carl from Vancouver, thanks Mary. Bernie from Sydney, Paul from Las Vegas, microdosing saved my life and continues to contribute to a healthy life. David from the Colorado Rockies, Agatha from London, Sam from Israel, Jillian, hi Jillian from Newington good to see you here Jillian, Dave from Hartford loves microdosing has been doing it for seven months. Jim from Philly.
0:02:41 PA: Again thank you all for attending thank you for showing up for spending your time with us on this Monday evening to go over best long-term practices for microdosing. Frank from Arizona. Thank you for attending Frank, Daren again from Edmonton, Edmonton seems to be a popular place. Noah from Enterprise, Oregon. Thomas from Argentina hi Thomas, good to have you here. Christine from Doylestown, Pennsylvania, Lisa from Michigan where I’m from. I actually grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan went to school in Holland, Michigan, but now I live in Brooklyn, New York.
0:03:21 PA: So again I wanna thank you all for attending. Garret from San Francisco, Carl from Vancouver again, thank you so much. Oh, Lisa, you’re from Grand Rapids as well, cool. I grew up in Grandville which is just outside of Grand Rapids. Brad from Porto-Rico, Walter from Los Angeles. We have a couple hundred people in now so I think more people will continue to roll in. I’m just going to please ask for a little bit of patience. This would be a good time to maybe get some water or just take a few minutes if you need some. Say hi to some of the other people in the chat room. We’ll go for about an hour or so today. And that includes the Q&A. And so we should be done by about 9-00 PM, Eastern Standard Time. I will talk and teach for probably I would say 35 to 40 minutes. That’s about the extent of what I have the energy for and then we’ll have questions for 10 or 15 minutes.
0:04:17 PA: Now at the end, just so that all of you know and that we’re being up front at the end of the webinar, you’ll have an opportunity to get access to our microdosing course for a discount. I’m sure some of you are already in the microdosing course but you will be able to get access to that at the end if that’s something that you’re interested in doing and that will just go into deeper detail a lot about a lot of the topics that we’re discussing today.
0:04:44 PA: So again, just five minutes quick I wanna give you a brief overview of where we’re at with Third Wave. And that way you’ll all have just kind of a larger vision of some of the projects that we’re working on. So the first big announcement which I’d mentioned a little bit before and it’s kind of a back and forth is we are going the non-profit route become a 501 [c] [3] non-profit with a focus on increasing psychedelic literacy. So really with Michael Pollan’s recent book publication, there’s been a tremendous interest in psychedelics culture. And one of the biggest concerns is how do we build a cultural infrastructure both through microdosing and with higher doses of psychedelics to support the big push and interest that would be great. How many of you you can just say yes for now. How many of you read Michael Pollan’s book or you became more importantly you became interested in microdosing or psychedelics because of Michael Pollan’s book? Just say me or no I didn’t, or me, I would love to just get a sense of that. Garret says yes, Jeff says yes, Joe says no, Daniel says yes. Alex says yes, read it. No, no okay. That’s great so we have it looks like a really good mix of people. Some of you might be fairly new to second psychedelics because of Michael Pollan’s book, and some of you maybe have been involved in this for a long time.
0:06:12 PA: My hope is that by the end of this webinar, you’ll at least have a better sense for how you can integrate it into your ongoing practice for basically optimal wellness. And that’s not just physical wellness, but that’s a wellness of itself. So we’ll really be looking at three categories of wellness today, we’ll be looking at physical wellness, emotional wellness, and then spiritual wellness. And that’s more or less the trajectory that we’ll dig through in talking about long-term practices for microdosing. Like I said, we’re gonna wait about three more minutes just to make sure that everyone has a chance to come in, and that book is, “How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan.” A few podcasts if you don’t wanna read the whole book. He was on the Tim Ferriss podcast, the Joe Rogan podcast, Sam Harris’s podcast, who I really enjoy, he was also an NPR which was a fantastic interview. And there’s a number of other media sources as well that you can access. It was a fantastic book, and all of us in the psychedelic space are very grateful for the fact that a well-known, well-respected, scientific journalist really made them move to write about psychedelics.
0:07:35 PA: Peter asks, “Why is it a great book?” It really gives an entire context and perspective of why psychedelic are now becoming tools and medicines for various utilities and really the most comprehensive overview of where psychedelic stand so far. So again, just about one more minute and we’ll get started. Yeah, so kinda back to what I was talking about earlier, where we’re moving with Third Wave, we’re incorporating as 501 [c] [3] non-profit and the focus of that non-profit is to increase psychedelic literacy, and we see that by doing three main things. The first thing is research on microdosing, which is where this community really comes in. So we’re actually gonna start to roll out a few more surveys specific to microdosing, so that we can have more context about what it does.
0:08:28 PA: So that’s the first thing, the second thing is community building, which is really important. So, I actually did a workshop in New York, about a month ago, and there’s just a really deep hunger for in-person community, so we’re starting a Third Wave community in New York City. And then I will be giving talks in San Diego and Los Angeles in September and then over the next six months to a year, we’re really gonna start to try to build out in-person communities around this topic of Third Wave of psychedelics. And then the last thing is aesthetic and PR and brand recognition. Some of you have noticed if you’ve been to our website, it’s not really the standard “psychedelic” website, and we’re really trying to bridge that gap between an esoteric, often esoteric topic like psychedelics and the needs of a more mainstream culture and community. And so we’re really excited about going that route and can’t wait to flesh that out further. So again, I wanna thank you for all your attention. We have about 230 people in for this webinar now. So let’s get started. Alright, let’s get started so I’m going to go ahead and pull up my presentation, I just need one sec for that and we will get going.
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0:09:58 PA: One sec. Okay, I’m just trying to figure out the… There we go, got it. Okay, so we got it. So I’m gonna go ahead and get started with the microdosing webinar today. Can we all see this okay? We have this you can see me in the lower picture. I don’t have that many slides today, I’m really just going to speak mostly off the top of my head, from various questions that we’ve been prompted with and then we will kind of have time for Q&A, at the end. So the focus of today’s webinar is long-term microdosing best practices and big picture integration. My name is Paul Austin, I’m the founder of “Third Wave” which is a website that focuses on psychedelic literacy and education.
0:11:19 PA: And in today’s webinar, by the end you’re going to have a context for first of all, when is microdosing appropriate, second of all, how long do I microdose for? And third of all, what comes after microdosing. And then some of the questions that we’re going to discuss which were outlined in one of the emails that we sent out, were: If microdosing works for me, does that mean I have to do it forever? How long do most people microdose for? Do I have to stick to the Phentermine protocol? What about long-term health risks? I really like microdosing. Why would I take a break? Is it habit forming? I macrodose a few times a year, how do I integrate microdosing and macrodosing? And then how can I maximize the benefits of my protocol on a long-term basis?
0:12:13 PA: Okay, so let’s just go over those questions again. If microdosing works for me, does that mean I have to do it forever? How long do most people do it for? Do I have to stick to the Fadiman protocol? Long-term health risks? I really like microdosing; why would I take a break? Is it habit-forming? I macrodose a few times a year. How do I integrate microdosing and macrodosing? And how can I maximize the benefits of my protocol on a long-term basis? And we’ll return to those questions throughout the webinar. Those are just good to have at the top of your head as we go through this.
0:12:50 PA: Okay, so the first thing that I wanna emphasize, and that if you leave this webinar with any one specific piece of information, it’s that microdosing is not a magic pill. Microdosing is not a magic pill. Microdosing is a tool in a larger toolkit to help facilitate physical wellness, emotional and mental well-being, and then ultimately, spiritual well-being; these three main aspects of the self. And what microdosing is fantastic for is to act as a catalyst to awaken us to the need to pay more attention to each of those three categories. And so, what I encourage you to do when you think of microdosing on a long-term basis is how can you use it as a tool to facilitate neural plasticity and adaptability so that you can integrate better habits over the long-term that again, deal with those three categories: Physical wellness, mental, emotional wellness and spiritual wellness? So it’s a tool that we use; it’s not something that we rely on.
0:14:03 PA: And that gets into one of the questions: Is microdosing habit-forming? So technically, it is not physically addictive. We know that psychedelics are not physically addictive, whatsoever. We also know that they’re not toxic. You can drink a full glass of LSD, you’ll have a pretty crazy trip, but you’re not going to die. And that’s really important to emphasize. However, with that being said, it can be psychologically addictive like anything else. And the way that that comes about is when we attach a certain state of well-being: High in creativity, more energy, a relief of depressive symptoms, a relief of other things related… Women have microdosed to help with their menstruation if they have really difficult menstrual periods. Other people are microdosing to help with other various things. And so, the key is that we use it as a tool, but we don’t rely on it, but that through microdosing, we really look at how we can integrate better habits over the long-term.
0:15:09 PA: So let’s talk about those three things. Let’s talk about physical well-being, let’s talk about emotional wall-being and let’s talk about spiritual well-being. So first of all, physical wellness. What does physical wellness come down to? So let’s start with microdosing first, what microdosing does. So one thing about microdosing is that it activates serotonin receptors both in the brain and in the gut. So what happens is when you take a microdose, you’re activating something called the 5-HT2A receptor, which is one of 14 serotonin receptors. And scientists have tied that to neuroplasticity and adaptability. So in fact, there was a recent study published, and maybe Charlie, you can dig this up and post it to the group, but there was a recent study published that showed that DMT, which is a tryptamine like psilocybin, when applied to rats, helped to facilitate the growth of new neuronal cells. And that’s why scientists and researchers think that it’s effective for depression and addiction, not microdosing but generally, psychedelics, because it helps create new synapses in the brain for well-being.
0:16:32 PA: Now, what that means for you is that when you’re microdosing, you have this open window of neural plasticity, and it’s really important to use that open window of neuroplasticity and apply it to integrating great habits over the long term. So when that comes to physical well-being, I tie that to three main things. The first thing is diet. So what’s an ideal diet? We won’t go too deep into this because it is somewhat controversial, but I’m going to stick with some basic points when it comes to diet. First of all, eliminating and cutting out as much processed food as possible. Second of all, minimizing refined sugar. Third of all, eating a lot of, obviously, vegetables and also, eating a lot of healthy fat because a lot of that… Vitamins are fat-soluble, and we need to integrate them into our well-being.
0:17:33 PA: Now, I’m seeing a lot of questions, we’re going to have Q&A at the end, I wanna emphasize that just so that you all know. So it’s a first thing with food and diet. Ultimately, what we’re trying to do is eat a diet that is anti-inflammatory. It’s anti-inflammatory. It reduces inflammation because researchers have shown that diets that significantly reduce inflammation help with symptoms of depression. They’ve shown this link clearly. Now, what we also know with microdosing is that because it’s activating all those serotonin receptors, 90% of serotonin receptors are in the gut. So when we utilize microdosing as part of a whole holistic health and wellness plan, we’re activating those serotonin receptors that’s significantly reducing inflammation. And so that, combined with an anti-inflammatory diet, is a really good way to help relieve symptoms of depression, just based on what we know so far.
0:18:39 PA: Then exercise. Another thing that microdosing does when it’s consumed is it increases something called the BDNF, which is basically the ability for… I’m not super familiar with it, but it’s basically your ability for your brain to facilitate neuronal plasticity. This is what the increased growth of BDNF does. So we know that high intensity interval training, like metabolic training or really intense physical training can again increase BDNF. It also has a significant anti-inflammatory effect, just like microdosing can do. And the third key is sleep. Sleep is really, really important. So if you’re not getting seven to eight hours of rested sleep per night, then we encourage you A, to be careful about microdosing LSD because microdosing LSD lasts for about 12 hours, whereas microdosing Psilocybin lasts for about six hours. So those who have insomnia or struggle with anxiety, LSD tends to heighten that.
0:19:45 PA: So if you need to get better sleep, be careful of microdosing LSD. So that’s the first step that we go through in a physical wellness. And really what I’m trying to explain to you is that there are significant commonalities in what the body does when it microdoses and also when you lock in a good… Sorry, you lock in a great diet, you have a great exercise habit, and you sleep quite a bit. And what that means is that microdosing again is this phenomenal tool to catalyze inertia, to catalyze momentum, to get you to take action and take steps to open that window of neuroplasticity.
0:20:30 PA: But ultimately, if you wanna see benefits over the long-term, it’s really critical to utilize that open window of neuronal plasticity to adapt to a new diet, to adapt to a new diet that is low in inflammation, to adapt to a new exercise habit. And habits take anywhere from 30 to 60 days to implement. So again, patients with that is really key. And then also to be more mindful of your sleeping habits. So, one big thing that I love to do is turn off all lights at about 10:00 PM, and I have this Himalayan salt lamp that I’ll turn on late at night, which I read under or which is a nice soft light, because blue light production interferes with your body’s ability to create melatonin, okay. It interferes with your body’s ability to create melatonin, which means you’re not sleeping as well. So those are three things to keep in mind. Now, why am I going on and on about physical? Because from my perspective, we can’t really focus on getting into the emotional stuff until we’ve really taken care of the physical stuff. In fact, I was just doing an interview with a medical doctor who runs a ketamine clinic in Boulder, Colorado.
0:21:50 PA: And I just interviewed him for our microdosing course. So if you get access to our microdosing course, you’ll be able to see the full interview. And one thing he emphasizes that with diet and exercise, we’re turning off these inflammatory pathways in the body which then allows us as humans to go ahead and process trauma, issues that are related to emotional well-being. And so that’s the second thing that we talk about, emotional well-being. So we’ve hit the physical. Now we go into emotional well-being. Emotional well-being is often facilitated by things like meditation, breath work and yoga. Okay, meditation, breath work, and yoga. It can also be facilitated through float tanks. It could be facilitated just by going forest bathing, spending a lot of time in nature. It can be facilitated by neural feedback. And some of these elements are really focusing on the emotional elements of really developmental trauma because a lot of the reason most people are microdosing is to reach higher levels of self, to become actualized.
0:23:02 PA: And some of those people are working from maybe a history of depression or PTSD, or addiction, and they’re trying to get back to baseline, so to say. So by focusing in on specific modalities that help with dealing with deep trauma, we can combine microdosing with some of these practices to help facilitate healing over a long-term basis. Now, a great book on this is called, “The Body Keeps the Score” and the way that we can facilitate this emotional development, this emotional healing is through things like EMDR, is really effective. Another really effective tool, is general therapy, that’s oriented towards dealing with developmental trauma. Another great tool are high doses of psychedelics because they allow you to dip into that. And so a lot of these involve working with someone in a one-on-one capacity, or a group capacity to help facilitate the process of healing. But what I’m really interested and what we focus on mostly in the microdosing course is how you can combine something like meditation, breath work, and yoga with microdosing. Now, some of you probably noticed, and I’m actually just gonna do a quick poll right now just so that we can have a little bit more engagement, so I’m just not talking at you the whole time. I’m curious, how many of you have tried microdosing before? So have you tried microdosing before? Just click yes or no.
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0:24:56 PA: Looks like about a 60-40 split. So 60% of you have tried microdosing before and about 40% of you have not tried microdosing before, which is really interesting. Because in a lot of the other webinars that we’ve done, it’s been flipped, a lot more people haven’t trying microdosing to have tried microdosing. So that’s interesting. One more question, as we’re now getting into mental, physical, emotional, spiritual well-being. I also have a curious question to ask, which is what complementary practices do you pay attention to while microdosing? Are those things like physical practices, like we talked about already: Diet, exercise, and sleep? Are those emotional practices: Meditation, breath work, and yoga? Are those more spiritual practices? Time in nature, journaling and high doses? Are those all of the above? Or are those none of the above?
0:25:55 PA: So I’m seeing most of you have tried to integrate some element of all the above into your repertoire, which is fantastic because then you also have that recognition that microdosing isn’t just a magic pill, but that it requires utilizing it within a holistic health framework to facilitate healing, because ultimately one of our big goals in that poll, one of our big goals with microdosing is to eliminate our reliance on a broken medical system, on a system that really hasn’t made any strides in mental health in a very long time, on a system that sees our mind and our body as totally separate, on a system that just reduces us to things, to atoms, to items.
0:26:40 PA: What we are, we’re a self. We’re a person, we’re a human being within a larger community of other human beings, and all of these elements are critical to facilitate well-being, because many of the, for example, clinical conditions that people struggle with and why they start microdosing is because of a sense of deep disconnection and alienation from not only themselves, but also their larger community. And so first healing the self and starting there allows us to really bring our gifts to the world in a productive, meaningful way.
0:27:17 PA: Okay, so the second thing that I mentioned is going to be emotional well-being, meditation, breath work, yoga. So how might that play out in for example a microdosing protocol? Let’s say you wanna start microdosing, or you’ve already started microdosing and you don’t have a meditation habit already. It’s really critical then, that as you begin to microdose that you start a meditation habit, maybe five to 10 minutes a day. And the point is to try to do that for between 30 and 60 days, so you integrate that as a long-term habit. And that way you’re not dependent on microdosing for a state of presence. Because ultimately what we’re trying to do with microdosing and addressing some of these emotional issues is to be completely present in the here and now, to not be focused on the past, to not be worried about the future, but to be as present as possible. This is the big thing that microdosing helped me with.
0:28:17 PA: And this is also something that Michael Pollan spoke extensively about in his book on psychedelics, was this thing called the default mode network, microdosing interrupts that default mode network, as do things like meditation, breath work, yoga some of these other treatment modalities. And that’s really important, because when the default mode network gets too condensed, then we ruminate a lot in the past, which is tied to depression, or we just focus on the future, which is tied to anxiety. So by interrupting that, and bringing some air, some breath into that, that helps us to facilitate presence in the here and now. And again, we can do that with microdosing or we can do that with these other modalities, because one of the big reasons for that is because we’re likely not going to microdose the rest of our life. In fact, I’m gonna do a quick question for those of you who have microdosed before. I’d love to hear, if you’ve microdosed before, how long was your protocol? Have you not done a protocol yet? Did you just microdose once or twice or three times? Was it three to six months or was it six to 12 months?
0:29:35 PA: So I’m seeing about a third of you who have not done a protocol. I’m seeing about 50% of you who said it was for one to three months, 9% of you who said it was three to six months and about 11% of you who said it was six to 12 months, and none of you have microdosed for longer than 12 months straight. Now, when I first started microdosing, I microdosed for about seven months, two times a week with LSD, and then I stopped largely because I ran out of resources. This might have happened to you as well. And so, when we stop, we don’t wanna feel like we’ve lost hope because we have it, because when we started to microdose, we paid attention to integrating long-term complementary practices that again, help us to facilitate physical well-being and emotional well-being, which from a simple perspective, means being able to be present in the here and now. So this is a really important key because a lot of people have… Again, this was one of the questions, “If I’m going to microdose, does that mean I have to do it forever?
0:30:44 PA: And this also comes in with another question is, “I really like microdosing. Why should I take a break?” So, I’ve already answered the first question. If you’re gonna start microdosing, ideally again, it’s not a magic fill. We’re not trying to recreate the pharmaceutical model with psychedelics. We’re trying to use microdosing as a tool to catalyze inertia, momentum autonomy, ownership, really saying, “Okay, I can do this. I’m not a victim of my situation, but that I can rise up and really take control over what’s going on in my life.” That’s a really important key. And then again, integrating these other elements of well-being physical, mental, emotional and spiritual on a long-term basis. And then the other question, of course, is, “I really like microdosing.” And some of you may have been in this situation before. “I really like microdosing. Why should I take a break?” And that’s a great question because if it’s going well, if you’re noticing only continuous incremental improvements, then there’s almost like a mentality of, “Oh, I’ll just keep doing this and I’ll keep going up and up and up.”
0:31:54 PA: So while that can happen there are a few things to be aware of. And obviously I’m not here to tell you whether you should microdose the rest of your life or whether you should just microdose for a month. I think that’s a decision that a lot of you need to make potentially with a doctor, but also ultimately with yourself and what you’re comfortable with. So first, it’s important to pay attention to the subjective effects of microdosing. Do you feel great? Do you have energy levels? Are you rested? Are you eating healthy? Is it contributing to your overall well-being? Okay? Is it contributing to your overall well-being? I’m gonna end the poll. Thanks for mentioning that, I appreciate that. Hold on…
0:32:34 PA: So I went ahead… Sorry, I lost my train of thought because I was fixing that. Oh, “I really like microdosing, why would I take a break?” So there are two reasons, two main reasons. Now I’ll go with three main reasons to take a break that you all should be aware of. One is we don’t have longitudinal long-term data on the safety and efficacy of microdosing. In other words, we know that occasional high dose psychedelic use is perfectly fine, that it’s quite healthy, but we don’t have longitudinal data on long-term low dose use.
0:33:15 PA: Now, from everything that I’ve gathered it looks to be very safe. In fact, it looks to be like a medicine. But again, we just don’t know that. There are people in the psychedelic research community who really fall in a more conservative edge, who create the connection between microdosing and something called the 2B serotonin receptor that’s been linked to heart issues. But based on all the people that I’ve spoken to, based on people who have been doing this a long time, nothing like that has come up. So I personally don’t think that’s something to be worried about, but again, continue to do your own research on that.
0:33:52 PA: Two, it’s important to set a baseline. Ultimately, we’re using microdosing as a tool just like we are diet, exercise, sleep, meditation, breath work, journaling, spending time with ourselves, etcetera, etcetera. We’re using these as tools to figure out if it helps us; if it helps us feel better, if it helps overall well-being. So what you don’t wanna do is you don’t wanna continue to microdose and not actually understand if it’s helping you or not. And that’s why, as part of our microdosing course, we offer a microdosing tracking sheet and we offer a workbook to help you track your overall being to see if it’s actually having a substantial impact or not.
0:34:43 PA: So I’m just gonna pull up and I’m going to share that with you briefly. You can see it right now. I know it’s a little small, but again you’ll be able to see this in our microdosing course, if you get access. And basically, what this is, is it’s a spreadsheet that helps to track the dose that you’re taking, the amount that you’re taking, and then things like how many hours are you sleeping? What is your sleep quality? What’s your mood like? Has microdosing helped to improve your general mood or is it still quite low? What are your energy levels like? Your productivity, your creative insight, your emotional awareness. Again, presence, well-being, being in the here and now. And then your overall rating of your day’s experience.
0:35:28 PA: Now, some of you may go deeper, you can look at things like blood pressure, you can look at things like resting heart rate, and then of course, you’ll wanna take qualitative notes. So general comments and how the microdosing protocol went, notable activities that you’re taking part in as you’re microdosing, specific insights that you might be going through, and general physical observations of your well-being. Now, keeping a tracking spreadsheet like this helps us to actually understand if microdosing is having an impact or not. And the reason we take a break then is to give us an honest assessment of that. Ultimately, if you’re going out of your way to source illicit substances, potentially consuming this over a long-term basis without having hard scientific data about the potential health consequences, we’re really all like guinea pigs at this point in what we’re doing. But you wanna know if it’s actually having a substantial healthy impact, and taking a break, seeing where your baseline goes back to, a week, two weeks, a month, maybe two months, and then going ahead with it further if you feel like, “This is something I wanna practice and work with on a consistent basis.”
0:36:44 PA: Now, usually what I have been doing as of late, and I’m changing this because I’m starting a microdosing protocol with a stack that includes Psilocybin mushrooms and Lion’s Mane together. And I heard about this on a… At a talk that Paul Stamets gave at Psychedelic Science in Oakland about a year and a half ago. So I’m trying that stack. But for the past two years or so, I’ve been just microdosing occasionally. I often microdose instead of drinking alcohol in social situations. It’s much healthier, there’s no diet or there’s no hangover, and it’s just generally a nice thing to help me be extroverted and bubbly. And then I’ll often microdose before I give public talks because it helps me to be confident, articulate things that I really value when I microdose.
0:37:38 PA: So those are two ways to think of it. You might take a break, and then be like, “I’d like to start another protocol.” And through that process, you’re going to wanna cultivate intention, you’re going to want to continue to work at journaling, to really ask those deep questions of the self. And this is where the spiritual aspect… I didn’t really talk much about the spiritual aspect but the spiritual aspect is really just getting a sense, a deep sense to what is your purpose and meaning. Why are you here? What are you here to do? How can you give your gifts to the world in a way that not only contributes to your well-being, but also contributes to the well-being of our community, of our collective, of our society.
0:38:16 PA: Right? So doing that deep spiritual work, that might be high doses of psychedelics, that could be a Vipassana retreat, that could be just going and spending a lot of time alone in the woods. It’s a chance to really go deep inside you, that could be breath work as well, go deep inside you to figure out what are you here to do? And those questions can help facilitate those spiritual insights. So not only have we put together the tracking spreadsheet, which again is great for quantitative measurements, but we also think that qualitative measurements are important as well in terms of journaling and being aware of it.
0:38:53 PA: And that’s why we put together a microdosing workbook, which again helps walk you through the process of facilitating insight and awareness about your microdosing experience. So the intention of the workbook is to help you in your process of cultivating self-awareness, understanding, and healing. To get the most out of it, please first review all the course materials as thoroughly as possible. And then once you are familiar with the technical aspects of microdosing, take your time to familiarize yourself with the outline of the workbook. Okay. Ideally, this resource will enable you to deepen the process of personal growth during your microdosing protocol. So what are some of these elements? Again, this is just the basic information. These are baseline measurements that we have people set. So these are excellent to fill in before you start microdosing, whether it’s your first time, whether it’s your second time, whether it’s your third or fourth time because it’s gonna help you to understand what your baseline is at.
0:39:54 PA: And this just takes a few minutes to fill out. So it just has a list of questions. I felt cheerful and in good spirits, active and vigorous. I wake up feeling fresh and rested. It’s been easy for me to concentrate on what I’m doing. I felt capable of affecting change in my life. Again, autonomy, ownership. I have felt self-love and compassion. These again, are a general thing that we walk through with baseline measurements. If we decide to, again, stop microdosing, we wanna start again. And then these are just a few questions, again, digging into that spiritual insight. If you could choose only one thing that you could do better next month, what would it be? What would you like to learn more about in the next month? What habits would you like to improve? What leisurely activities would you like to pursue that are worthwhile and personally meaningful? How could you improve your relationship with your parents… I’m sorry, with your partner, parents, and/or siblings? And a number of questions like if you could be able to get in touch with the wisest part of yourself, what would you like it to teach you?
0:41:00 PA: So again, these are important questions, qualitative questions, to help to facilitate insight and awareness as you go back to baseline. And that’s an important question to ask yourself. If you wanna start a microdosing protocol again, reestablish that baseline so that you actually know where you’re at and where you wanna go. And that again, it should be done through quantitative and also potentially qualitative understanding. So in terms of any other questions, I think I covered most of the questions that we wanted to set out in the beginning. I talked about the long-term health risks. I talked about… And also the health benefits more from our perspective, why it’s important to take a break. Again, you wanna reset your baseline. You don’t wanna be psychologically addicted to this, but instead you really wanna use it as a catalyst to build broader habits of well-being. Is it habit-forming? Not addictive. Microdosing is not physically addictive. And then, I think one thing that we haven’t spoken about yet is I macrodose a few times a year. How do I integrate microdosing and macrodosing?
0:42:17 PA: Okay. How do I integrate microdosing and macrodosing? Peter, we’ll get to that. Let’s get to that in the Q&A, Peter. That’s a great question. And now, Charlie, I know who you sent that message to, the message to Peter at the beginning of this. I was like, “Who is he talking to?” Okay. I get it now. So integrating microdosing and macrodosing in a long-term basis. I’m gonna use a metaphor because I think a metaphor will help you really understand why we’re utilizing these tools for self-care. So think of going to the dentist, right? Every six months, you go into the dentist to get a deep clean in your two teeth because, again, science shows that it helps facilitate well-being, that teeth health is really quite important.
0:43:06 PA: But you’re not just reliant on that one time you go to the dentist every year. Chances are you’re brushing your teeth two times a day, every day, during that time period because generally, you’re keeping clean. You’re practicing habits of hygiene. So think of microdosing and all these other complementary practices that we spoke about, breath work, meditation, journaling, diet, exercise, sleep. Those are the habits that you’re integrating on a long-term basis, like brushing your teeth every day, twice a day, to facilitate hygiene and well-being. But not just physical hygiene and well-being, physical, emotional, and spiritual hygiene, and well-being. And then every six months, doing a high dose of a psychedelic can be a full cleanse. It can help completely clear us out. A reset, if you will.
0:44:03 PA: And that can, again, just continue to help facilitate that healing process. So think of that context as you’re approaching this balance between microdosing and other modalities that you utilize in a consistent basis, and higher doses. One is just a constant practice of hygiene and self-care. The other is a significant deep dive into a full cleanse. That’s just as important for well-being and overall health. So I hope that provides a little bit of context. And again, as I mentioned before, we are running high-dose, moderate to high-dose, legal Psilocybin retreats in Amsterdam. And you can find that link… Charlie, if you could send it to them, synthesisretreat.com, and we have more retreat dates coming up in November, again, if that’s something that you’re interested in doing.
0:44:56 PA: So just… So you all know that. Okay, so let’s do a little review. Okay, let’s do a little review. So today, we really talked about how we can integrate microdosing over the long-term with other complementary practices to facilitate well-being in three main areas, physical, emotional, emotional and spiritual right? So physical things we can use microdosing along with are an anti-inflammatory diet, that could be things like vegetarianism depending on the foods that you eat, it could be the Paleo diet, is highly anti-inflammatory, Whole30, the Whole30 is a highly anti-inflammatory diet. I believe, again depending on the food that you eat, but veganism is likely anti-inflammatory, so there are a number of diets you can get into that are anti-inflammatory.
0:45:47 PA: Plus, we look at exercise. Ideally, something like yoga, or something that’s high intensity interval training, because again, that helps with the inflammatory pathways, just like microdosing does and just like the diet that we eat does. And then finally sleep, we need seven to eight hours of sleep every night. Turn off the blue light, let the melatonin production create itself. Then we looked into emotional well-being. Again, microdosing helps that process because it helps us to facilitate presence, just like meditation, breath work, yoga and many of these other modalities. And then we talked about spiritual well-being, really getting in touch with that spiritual well-being is just about purpose and meaning. It’s who are you and what are you here to do? What gifts do you wanna give to the world?
0:46:33 PA: And again, we can use microdosing to chip away at that, we first have to get to the physical and the emotional. We can use microdosing to chip away at that, and we can use high doses to really go deep into that as well as, like I said, Vipassana meditation or other really deep, intense reflective practices that help us with that process. In terms of the Fadiman protocol, two times a week for maybe five weeks. That’s great if you wanna follow that, if you like having boundaries and rules. Paul Stamets has another protocol that’s five times a week with just two days off. I typically, like I said, when I’m microdosing now, it’s just one time a week. So, I really think this especially for many of you who have microdosed before to integrate it, you really want to be intuitive about it, and kind of get a sense for how you best work with it, to look at how you can integrate it over the long-term. We talked about why it’s important to take a break. Is it habit for me?
0:47:34 PA: And then we also talked about how you can maximize the benefits of your protocol over a long-term basis. One thing that we haven’t discussed yet, which I wanna get into, is will I still see the benefits of microdosing after I stop microdosing? And the question of that is, it depends. Depends on everything that we just spoke about today. If you’re using microdosing as a tool to help facilitate new habits, diet, exercise, sleep, meditation, breath work, just overall well-being and then you stop microdosing, again, you’ve opened that window of neuroplasticity, so you’ve been able to integrate these new habits easier, but it still means you have to keep up on these new habits after you stop microdosing if you want to continue to see these states of optimal well-being.
0:48:20 PA: So the answer to that is it depends. And it might be, this is what I do, is I microdose and I open up that window and I start to integrate new habits and I’m really good at it. And then life is a matter of ebbing and flowing. Sometimes I have a break for two or three months, I kinda maybe fall back into some old habits and then I kinda get back on the train again and I microdose and kinda step some things up again, and that’s worked for me. I think it really depends on your own needs and how you wanna best work with it. And of course, the best way to do that, to track those measurements over the long-term to see if you’re actually getting those benefits are by utilizing, again, our microdosing spreadsheet and workbook.
0:49:03 PA: Okay, so now I wanna go into Q&A. We’re about at that time. I will have about 10 minutes for questions, but as I mentioned before, I also wanna make sure, whoops, I did not mean to do that. Just a sec. As I mentioned at the beginning of the webinar, we are opening up the microdosing course at a $30 off discount, and basically with the microdosing course, you’ll receive a written course curriculum covering everything from the science of microdosing, to how to measure and store your dose, to best practices for optimizing your experience. There are number of demonstration videos in terms of how to properly microdose with me. We have expert interviews with people from clinical psychiatry, integrative psychiatry, bio-hacking, meditation, metaphysics, psychotherapy, a neurologist, and we’re continuingly doing more and more expert interviews, so that will grow over time.
0:50:05 PA: And then like we said, you’ll get our microdosing workbook and results tracking template as we went over earlier to help guide, mentor and optimize your day-to-day experience with this. You’ll also get six months of free access to our member-only online community, they are about 900 other microdosers in our course at the moment, so that’s a great community, and we of course offer a 30-day money-back, whoops, money-back guarantee. Okay? So I’m gonna bring that up on the, hold on… I’m going to bring that up, in a second. Okay, so here it is.
0:51:10 PA: So if you wanna get access to our course, that’s what you get. It’s a $30 off offer. I’m just gonna load that up for you. And one thing that I should emphasize with this as well is we are in the process of becoming a 501 [c] [3] non-profit. So basically, just in investing in your own education, you’re actually contributing to Third Wave’s mission and the larger psychedelic movement. And as I mentioned at the beginning, that means you’re gonna help fund research into microdosing, change the cultural conversation around responsible use of psychedelics and help us avoid advertising to remain 100% community supported. So again, if you have the ability and if you want to optimize your microdosing experience further, we would absolutely love to have you in our microdosing course. We really think it is of tremendous value to those who have been involved in it. However, financially, if it’s not feasible for you, we totally understand. And I obviously love having you here, regardless, as part of our Third Wave community. I think just even having these webinars online and talking to other people is so important to building this community. So we’ll leave that up there. You’ll get, save the… You’ll save $30 if you support the non-profit and our larger mission of increasing psychedelic literacy all over.
0:52:32 PA: So let’s get now to questions. So Anne says, “Can we do $30 at a later time?” I think we are keeping it open until Sunday, I wanna say. So Charlie can confirm that, but I believe that we will have the $30 offer open until Sunday. So if you wanna wait a little bit, that’s perfectly fine. If you feel ready for it now, and again, we have a 30-day money-back guarantee. So that’s totally up to you, but it will be available for a few more days. Perfect! So let’s get into some other questions and I’m just seeing some of the questions. Now, the webcast is mostly over, we’re going into Q&A now. Okay, so Jim asks, “How long do you meditate for daily? And do you go more into meditation and better dieting techniques in your course as well?” So Jim, right now, I usually meditate for 10-15 minutes a day in the morning as a way to just cultivate mindfulness and presence. And we have expert interviews with people for both meditation and better dieting in the microdosing course. So we go into those details in the course. And then that’s also, as we mentioned before, you get lifetime access to all of this. So those are resources that we will be consistently updating as time goes along.
0:54:00 PA: Emily says, “I practice transcendental meditation. Should I use mindfulness?” Whatever works best for you. If transcendental meditation is working great, stick with that. Mikel asks, “When you microdose, are you sober? People who take pharma pills are considered sober.” It depends on how much you microdose. Microdosing is supposed to be sub-perceptible. But if you take a little bit more, what we call a minidose, and we go further into that in the course, that’s calibration. Now, how do I calibrate my dose level to what outcome I’d like to facilitate? So in terms of microdosing, are you sober? Let’s go with no, but you can… There could be an argument, in fact, yes, you are sober, still. Rob asks, “Is it okay to take an anti-depressant while starting microdosing for the first time?” Just because I don’t have a medical background, I’m not a medical doctor, I won’t give you a firm yes or no on that. My response is probably try to talk to a psychiatrist who has a context for psychedelics. I think there will be more and more with Pollan’s book. And check out Jim Fadiman’s website at microdosingpsychedelics.com. He has a full list of medications on his website that are okay to take while microdosing. So you can cross-reference that to see if it’s okay. But again, that’s not medical advice; it’s just a list that, again, he put together, and we’re just emphasizing this.
0:55:24 PA: So Jona says, “The course is well worth it.” Well, thank you, we really appreciate it. “Where do you get the medications for microdosing?” So I’ll give you a bit of legal context. In the United States, it is legal to buy psilocybin spores. You can buy the spores in every state except California, Georgia and Idaho. However, it is illegal to grow the mushrooms. So that’s good to know. It’s also possible to purchase 1P-LSD from a website in Canada. You can do some digging on that, we won’t provide the link, but you can do some digging on that. But it’s legal to ship in Canada. However, it is illegal to ship in the United States. No cases have been prosecuted yet, but again, it is illegal to ship 1P-LSD from Canada to the United States.
0:56:20 PA: Donnelly asks, “What was the other element you add to the mushrooms?” Lion’s Mane. Okay. Lion’s Mane is the other one. Are you going to get… Leroy asks, “Are you going to get into ibogaine at some point with Third Wave?” We have a long-form guide on ibogaine, thethirdwave.co/psychedelics/ibogaine/
. That will be useful to see. And we have a few other resources on ibogaine as well, but that’s not something we’re extensively doing right now, only because ibogaine is slightly more risky than other psychedelics. It can cause cardiac arrest. And so, we’d rather focus on psychedelics that are just less intense at this point in time, mostly. We still have information on ibogaine and write about it in our content, but it’s just not the focus at the moment.
0:57:05 PA: Daniel asks, “What research is being conducted regarding microdosing?” So we’re collaborating on a couple research projects at Third Wave about, is microdosing a placebo or not, about what role can microdosing play in facilitating well-being, and that’s really, the focus of our research efforts at Third Wave. It’s how does microdosing help with autonomy, with ownership, with really have, feeling that you can take charge and have an impact and effect on your life or what role does microdosing play in that. And then there are other people researching microdosing LSD for creativity. There are people who are researching microdosing for depression, and clinical institution. So there’s a lot of research starting to come out about microdosing.
0:57:53 PA: Steve says, “Is the course taken online at a specific time or on one’s own schedule?” On your own schedule, you get lifetime access including all future updates and you can do that when you want. We are going to roll-out group classes at some point where we’ll coach you basically through the process, but at the moment we’re not offering that. We hope to do that soon.
[pause]
0:58:23 PA: Mark asked, “Is there a research with IBS and LSD? I have experienced evidence is just it works to alleviate symptoms.”At this point, there is not, however, like I was emphasizing earlier, LSD is anti… The psychedelics are anti-inflammatory and I think that could be potentially why it helps with gut issues. Also auto-immune conditions are often related to long-term stress or stress from the parents. This is Gabor Mate has gone quite a bit into this, which is really interesting. And so I think that also could be a, it’s not just a physical component, but you’re actually feeling yourself emotionally as well, and I think that could be potentially why it helps with IBS. Again, these are just speculations, but just from different readings I’ve had.
0:59:06 PA: “So how do you deal with heightened physiological symptoms maybe sweaty hands or that feeling of an increased heart rate?” Probably one is being aware of your surroundings. So in New York, I don’t microdose LSD anymore. I only microdose psilocybin mushrooms because LSD is too stimulating. So if you’re only microdosing psilocybin then it’d be helpful I think to be aware of that. And if it’s interfering too much, just stop microdosing and just focus on things like meditation, diet, exercise, sleep quality. If also, I know I think Tim Ferriss I think wrote about this in “Tools of Titans” and he said that microdosing, he quit microdosing psilocybin or LSD I think because it was too stimulating but he tried microdosing Ibogaine, and that was helpful and effective. So that would be something else to potentially look at as an option.
1:00:00 PA: Emily says, “I’m about to travel out of the country, but want to start my protocol ASAP, is it okay to take a week break from the protocol, and then start again? Will this effect its effectiveness?” I’d say just do a week just to get a trial, little trial going. Use that opportunity as calibration. Lion’s Mane get a sense for what substance level you wanna work with. We did another webinar on this, if you wanna dig into some of our YouTube videos, and then that’s a good chance to test that out, and that way when you come back, you can really start your protocol and go full fledge.
1:00:32 PA: Patricio asked, “Can cannabis play a role in healthy holistic microdosing regimen?” Absolutely, and in fact, we have an extensive cannabis microdosing section in our microdosing course that you will get access to if you join our course where we go deep into how do we do this both with edibles and other things, and so that’s a really interesting element as well.
1:00:56 PA: Carl asked “Is there a guide out there anyway, that offers stacks for nootropics and microdoses or herbs and microdoses for maximum well-being?” This is something we’re working and putting together in terms of little supplement packs. For the meantime, I probably best to refer you to the podcast interview I did with Matt Cooper who we went into what things, off the top of my head, I can recommend Ashwagandha which is an adaptogen, Rhodiola which is an adaptogen, Lion’s Mane, those are three that I worked with in combos with microdosing, and they help quite a bit.
1:01:29 PA: Okay, so that’s about all we have time for. Jim asked, do we cover microdosing DMT? Yes, on the website, there’s a long-form article about microdosing DMT. Let me see if… Luis says, “What is the website of the Amsterdam retreat?” Again, I’ll put this here: Synthesisretreat.com so that you all have access to that. That’s where we’re doing retreats at the moment.
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1:02:12 PA: “Any projects groups around for long-term microdoses that you guys are doing? Let’s talk about that.” Pee, we haven’t started anything yet, but I think that’s an interesting idea in terms of getting people together. So Charlie and I will discuss that and speak about that.
1:02:31 PA: Okay, I gotta go, it’s late here. Again, I wanna thank all of you for coming. I’m kinda losing my voice. I need a drink of water. If you have any other follow-up questions just reach out to us at [email protected], [email protected]. Also any questions you have about the microdosing course, go ahead and look into that. Again, we will have a $30 off discount until Sunday for the microdosing course, if it’s something that you want to take advantage of. We really appreciate all of you being here spending your time with us. It means a lot, it means a lot to have this larger community, to have 200 and get up to 250 people on this webinar which is fantastic.
1:03:13 PA: So thank you also so much for attending and we will see you for the next webinar which will likely be next month about this point in time, right before I head to Burning Man and maybe I’ll see some of you there. Again, thank you so much and have a lovely rest of your evening. Thanks…
