Microdosing Psilocybin with Dr. James Fadiman
Alisa Nappa
Photo Courtesy Scott Kline
Today we bring on Dr. James Fadiman, arguably the person responsible for making microdosing magic mushrooms popular. We talk about the current research, the benefits, safety, dosage, set, setting, history and so much more. Ever wanted to try microdosing? Don't know where to start? Long time microdoser and want to hear the current research and where we are in the industry? Totally skeptical?
Alex tries to play devils advocate on this episode to try to poke holes into the legitimacy of microdosing and we talk about how to create better double blind placebo controlled human clinical trials in the future. Are you of the sub perceptual microdose camp or the above perceptual microdose camp? We argue both sides and give pros and cons for each.
TRANSCRIPT
0:17
Welcome back, everyone you're listening to the mushroom revival Podcast is your host, Alex Doerr coming at you, I hope you're ready to geek out about micro dosing psilocybin because that is what we're going to talk about today. Super, super excited. If you haven't already, head over to our website, mushroom revival.com Bunch of educational content out there, check it out. And I'm bringing on Jim Fadiman today. And I'll hand it over to you how you doing today. I'm good. It's nice to be here. This is our reschedule. So we're trying for a second time on this program. And it's really glad we're together. My background is that I started working with psychedelics in the mid 1960s, a long time ago, and did my actual dissertation on the effectiveness of LSD therapy, then there was a little low when the government when President Nixon said, If we make LSD illegal, we can then harm the people who are using it, which I can't do if I just go after them directly. So as Ehrlichman said, it was never about the drugs. And did we know we were lying, of course. So curiously, research stopped for 40 years, and now we're in a renaissance, or revival, since we're really using getting back to things we knew. There's according to Michael Pollan, 350 companies, who are now in the, quote, psychedelic space, suddenly, there's a lot of research and I changed tracks from very, very high dose about 11 years ago to look at micro dosing, which nobody, including me had any interest in all that time. And I've been involved in micro dosing ever since. So I'm kind of excited to talk about what hasn't been published, and what companies are not fighting over, and what more and more people seem to be doing. Thanks for coming on. And I originally read your work back in 2013, when you publish the psychedelic explorers guide book, and that was when I was first kind of getting into psychedelic seriously. And you publish that in 2011. Right? That's correct. 2011, at a time when we weren't clear that there was ever going to be this renaissance. Right. Yeah. And it was an amazing book. And I remember there's a chapter in there about microdosing. And I actually just read an article about how you were having a conversation with Albert Hofmann about you thought he said something about 10 micrograms of LSD, but later you found out it was 25 milligrams. And that was kind of the start of micro dosing, if I'm correct, of having that conversation with Albert Hoffman. So what is kind of the origin story? What rubber short was the one who told me what Albert Hoffman had said to him? Gaia. Albert, it turns out, at least, you know, maybe his last 10 years like age 90 or 200 microdose, with a higher dose than we now use around 25. And he said it was very good for walking in the woods and thinking.
3:24
And at one point, in a, an interview, he mentioned something about very low doses. And Rick Doblin said, what? And Albert said, yeah, you can go as low as 10 micrograms, and you should try it and nothing happened. That was 2006. And the interview kind of vanished. So when I started it, it was really the question of could it possibly have any effect of any interest to anybody. And my initial position was highly unlikely. Because I've been working in high doses. And we know that with a high dose, you can't miss it.
4:00
As your world melts around you in a larger world appears and as your traumas come up, as you remember past lives, if you add them and so forth, we're all aware of kind of the, it's like kind of going to a July 4, fireworks. And everybody is looking at these magnificent things, and you walk over and there's this one little kid with a candle. And he's really enchanted with it. That's microdose it's the little stuff. And so I started just asking people, you know, give it a try. Tell me what takes 10 micrograms, see what happens. And I began to get that something happened that people basically said they liked it, it felt good. They felt better. And from that point on, I started collecting reports. And now, I'm still collecting reports I just have too many of them to deal with. So for people who don't know, you know, I've been in microdose or for the last 10 years, and, you know, I've done pretty much every single dose that
5:00
You can imagine from very, very, very low amounts to much higher amounts than people wouldn't consider microdose and all different structures from daily to, you know, once a week to everything in between once a month, to every other day, every sort of schedule. I don't know, if you have a regime that you I think it was one every three days is what you well by science is actually made up, I think more of mistakes, or wrong turns or things you didn't plan for than anything else. When I said to people, once you try it. What I got back early on was many people said, well, I felt good, and then I felt just as good the next day. Now, I know, at that point that psilocybin has gone from the body. So I was trying to find out what the effects were like. And so I said to people, okay, why don't you take it, and then you know, notice that second day effect, but the third day, don't take anything, and don't, because I wanted people to go down to their baseline so that when they took it the fourth day, they have another experience and they can notice it and let me know. So I developed what's now called, quote The Fadiman protocol, which was totally for research.
6:12
And it was one day on in two days off. And then I'd ask people, are you willing to do that for a month and keep notes? Because I figure, you're asking people to do something for which they get no particular benefit. And a month is about all people are going to be willing to do. Yeah, so we then develop, quote, The one month Research Pod, which we now have a couple of 1000 reports. Now, after what was interesting is, after a month, what I said to people is, you now know more than I do about your body. And you know how it affects you and you know, what micro dosing does, you decide what's a correct schedule for you as long as it includes time off. And we now have a kind of generic for all schedules, which is start low, not every day, and take some breaks down. Why not every day. Not necessary. For one thing, just thrifty. If it has a two day effect, it's kind of silly to waste it. And my understanding and it's again, a seen from 1000s of people, people who seem to microdose in a way that benefits them end up taking it less often. And there is something in the psychedelic law that is true for high doses, we no tolerance, it's called tolerance, which is when you take the same substance too often. It stops working. So it's an it's like it's anti addictive. This is a way of Hofmann described it. So the taping it not as often is part of all the different protocols that have come up. Paul Stamets has a protocol, which includes taking Lion's Mane mushroom, which is just a cognitive improver, and niacin, which he feels allows the material to be distributed more easily through the bloodstream. And he has a protocol which was four days on and three days off. And then in another speech, he had another protocol, which is five days on two days off.
8:11
And I asked Paul, because, you know, Mr. Research here, he said, Well, you can't be too rigid. And I thought that's, that's more, which is people are now there's a term, people find what's their sweet spot, which is what's the right size dose, and they also find their own, how often, independently, nothing I ever did independently. 1000s and 1000s of people say to each other, you know, it's a good idea if you're micro dosing seriously, every month or two to take a week or two off. Now, in a technical sense, we might say, well, we're washing out the system. But what people seem to be saying is, that seems to work. And I'm not a research science, we don't put people in a lab and I don't kind of control all the variables and hyperopic who I want. I just get reports from the Okay. And so those reports people came up with having a couple of weeks break on their own. And it seems to me eminently sensible. You know, it's really funny because there was just a paper released in 2020 that was talking about, you know, they were measuring four or five different tryptamines in psilocybin, psilocybin mushrooms and the effects of you know, the concentration and the cap and the stem and the mycelium and the spores, the effects of dehydration at different temperatures, storage, and there's a ton of incredible information but, you know, they were finding that the cap had almost twice as many tryptamines that the stem and you know, if you have a bag of mushrooms that you're microdosing and maybe one day that you rip off point two grams of the stem and then the next day, or you know three days later, it's point two grams of the cat
10:00
AP, you're gonna have a wildly different experience, because the cat having almost twice as many tryptamines. And so you get all these funny memes online of someone, you know, being like, Oh, that's not a microdose. And they, you know, they start tripping, you know, and they're like in a business meeting or something, and they start seeing colors, and they're like, oh, no, that was not what I was expecting. And it's really funny, you know, in my time of microdosing, I didn't follow a regime, and I just kind of did it myself. And so when I first started my first few years, I was hitting the sweet spot of just feeling it, you know, then years later, I heard the term sub perceptual. And it was the first time after years of microdosing, that I even heard that term. And I was like, What do you mean sub perceptual? No, no, you want to feel it. And I was like, no, no, just above perceptual. And that was my sweet spot. And ever since, like, I've felt like that, like, I've had the most profound experiences, in my personal experience of actually feeling it, not a lot to where it disrupts my day to day like, I can still have a conversation with someone. But I feel a little bit uncomfortable. When I'm having a conversation with someone, like, it's, I feel like I'm about to, I should maybe leave the conversation because I'm feeling things, but just enough to where I can keep the conversation and keep grounded in maybe they don't notice, you know, and, and because of that uncomfortability, I'm able to overcome and actually grow in real time and actually have these uncomfortable experiences percolate and integrate them in real time and actually grow and evolve as a human being. Whereas if it's sub perceptual, for me, I personally feel less effects. But you know, other people swear by the sub perceptual and they're like, that's exactly I don't, I don't like to feel uncomfortable. So I have to confess, and I'm doing this on, and I know this is being recorded, but I have to confess that somebody when I was first working, use the term sub perceptual, it's wrong. Now I know who did it, it was me. Okay. And I didn't have a way of explaining that it wasn't any psychedelic effect,
12:22
which is, colors might be a little bit brighter, and so forth. But you en Of course, you are aware of it feeling it is a kind of feeling term, but you're aware that that you feel a little different. It's sub hallucinogenic is our new word, because that's more accurate, which is you don't have a lot of visual stuff. And as you're talking about having a little bit more and being in a conversation, and not sure you should leave, and aware that you're kind of coming out a little, I do say that's a little too much. And here's here's the prototypical story. This is somebody who has a job, and it's some kind of sales job. And I get a report, and he said, I want you to know, I've been microdosing has been wonderful, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And in fact, taking 10 micrograms was so good. That one day, I thought, of course, I'll take 20. Okay. He said, I went to the my sales meeting, and I'm sitting in the meeting. And I realized, I don't care about sales, and I don't care about this product. And I don't care about these people. And then he thought, you know, I think I took a little bit too much.
13:32
And then he did something remarkable, he said, so I went home,
13:37
which is he understood that by moving from feeling good and feeling effective, and being able to take cold calls more easily at getting more sleep, the various things he reported. But when he took a little more, he was in a slightly different state, and he had to pay much closer attention to not blowing it just to kind of what you were saying in that conversation. So what people find is, when I say a sweet spot, your sweet spot is where you're feeling it. And whatever we mean by that most people's sweet spot is when whatever reasons they're taking it for that's what's happening. For instance, many, many people who've taken it because their antidepressant medication either isn't working or the side effects are terrible. And what they report is, I don't feel depressed. That's enough. That's it, you know, it's a massive shift in feeling. But it's not. They don't say, I'm not depressed. And when I look at the flowers, they turn and look back at me.
14:36
That's too much. Because what we're finding is people simply function and I mean function like, as you see on the, you know, on the warning labels, they operate heavy machinery, they do coding, they play with their children, they have a holy normal day and remember, there's one of the important books out for microdosing is called a really good day,
14:57
which is one of the defining terror
15:00
heuristics that most people report, which is when I have been microdosing, my days are better. And what we then find someone, for instance, is taking it as many have students, they simply would like to do better in school. And after a month, when they're writing a report, they say, you know, I hadn't noticed, but during this month, my sleep pattern has changed, it's better. And I'm smoking less pot, I'm drinking less alcohol, I'm having less coffee.
15:32
And I'm eating healthier.
15:35
And when you drill down a little, why do we take pot and coffee and alcohol, we want to feel a little different, we want to feel a little better. And if you're already feeling better, you don't have the same kind of automatic let me reach for something. So that's what got me going. Those kinds of reports, where people were not saying any major changes, but they noticed that their physical system was in better equilibrium. That's a general statement, which I'll come back to, because the question is, how do people with remarkably difficult situations, somehow improve with micro dosing in almost every case, we're looking at the possibility of the entire physical and mental system simply rebalancing, that's not the same as high doses where you are imbalancing it in a very particular direction. It's really funny when you you said this story of the sales call, I was like, No, that's great that he had those realizations that he didn't like, say,
16:37
oh, like, that's actually working. Like, I'm glad, you know, that should be his dose now. Because, you know, now he can make changes in his life that will have major impact. And for me, that's why I like that level of dose is because I can have those insights that are cathartic, and not just feel a little better and mask, the real issues and the roots of the problems, I want the roots of the problems to percolate and make me feel uncomfortable of like, oh, shit, I've been living a lie.
17:08
Like, I want to feel that, as uncomfortable as that is, I want those roots of my issues to percolate. And I want to see them, you know, I want to see my demons, and it might not, you know, and just have enough control over my body to keep going in, but integrate those real time for me, and that works for me as an individual. And that might not work for other people and I and for me, I feel like I've maybe had enough psychedelic experience to be able to function in that space, other people shut down completely. So teach their own, you know, also, you're using it a little bit stronger than I recommend necessarily, because you're using a kind of for therapeutic insight, right. And that's what we know is high doses are fabulous for that. Great. And what we don't know much about middle doses anymore, because people aren't really doing those studies, there. Couple of 100 studies in the days before Nixon, where people were taking, like 100 micrograms, and working therapeutically. And that was also useful. But we're now that was a different era and a different kind of way of working. So what I'm suggesting is, if you want therapeutic insight, go for it. But don't then go to sales meetings.
18:27
And the other side of it is, I have a book out about the different parts of you, which I call different cells. And it is likely that the part of him that enjoyed sales, did not go to that meeting.
18:41
And the part of him that would really enjoy petting his cat did go to that meeting, right. And we know that
18:50
when you're petting your cat, that's what you want to do. And that works for you. But you also know that when you're at a sales meeting, and people are laughing and carrying on you have relationships, and you're an extrovert and you have a product that actually you like that part of you really enjoys it too. So what we're looking for is does microdosing improve internal harmony, which is those divisions? And that's one of the things we think it's true. What other things do you think microdosing can be beneficial for for people, let's go way to the other end and be a little radical. There's a company called we sauna, which at the moment is run by a former hockey player, Stanley Cup hockey player who retired from hockey at around age 30. For multiple concussions, he basically had what is we call traumatic brain injury, physical injury to the physical brain. And he tried everything he could he had enough money to spend his he said two years and $200,000 on different therapies, and he had gotten to the place where he was deciding
20:00
Whether suicide would benefit his family more than anything else, okay.
20:06
He was for some reason, he got involved with Salman and took psilocybin, and then started micro dosing and recovered brain function.
20:16
So his company is looking at how can we make it most available, so that people with brain damage can get help, that isn't available in conventional medicine. So that's, that's a kind of far out place. And I now know, a number of people, professional athletes who have been sidelined in their lives due to injuries that have found microdosing has been restoring cognitive stability, restoring emotional kind of balance. And they, they no longer think about suicide. So that's going to the other end. And that's Daniel Carcillo, who nicknamed the car bomb, which you're on the board as an adviser of that company. Correct? Correct. Yeah, he has a very interesting story. You know, it reminds me of who's that famous boxer who has the tattoo on his face? Like Tyson? Mike Tyson. Yeah, no, he's been really eating a ton of mushrooms recently. And claims I mean, I mean, that guy bit someone's ear off. I mean, he's, uh, you could think of ease like the car bomb of boxing. And yeah, I mean, I don't know, if it's working. He claims it's working. You know, I don't I don't want to sit with his demons. But he claims, you know, that it's, it's helping a lot. And especially, I've been in spaces where people have extreme PTSD and a lot of anger, you know, and just like extreme anger and violence, and they're able to, you know, one research in collaboration with John Hopkins showed brain scans that showed that psilocybin was able to lower the ego, part of the brain. And I think that that would be really helpful for someone who's pretty aggressive, you know, and white knuckling life to be able to just kind of dissolve it a little bit. Well, the differences the Hopkins study is again, all high dose where you get once or twice a couple of months, that was a high dose. Yeah. The microdosing is curious, because we do have research was published in cell magazine, that literally neurons that are nourished, with their normal, whatever neurons eat, plus a little micro dose of psychedelics, those neurons are healthier, they are larger, they are more extensive, they have more dendrites, think of like a little Christmas tree, they have more openings, they have more capacity to communicate, they're considered better. That's very different than having a breakthrough insight about that your anger is not about other people. It's about that your career was ruined by brain injury. Okay, so these are somewhat different realms, there's a lot of overlap is that some of the? Well, for instance, there's now a smoking study out of Hopkins, and the federal government, first time the federal government has put a nickel into psychedelics, and they're putting it into an smoking secession study. It's huge. And that's just amazing and wonderful.
23:11
And I have some reports of people that said, I decided to use microdosing to help me stop smoking. And they're not the super hard smokers that Hopkins people are using. This was someone who said, I did pack a day for about five years. And by the third time, I microdose, I wasn't interested in smoking. Now notice, that's not I was able to resist willpower withdrawal symptoms. He just said I wasn't interested in smoking. And I contacted him a couple of years later, and said, How's it going? He said, you know, talked about his life. He had a new job, he'd moved to someplace, bla bla bla, and had he smoked since then. And he said, Well, no, I have no interest. That's fascinating. Okay, we don't know how that works. But we don't know how it works at high doses either. I actually wanted to be in that study with Albert Perez Garcia, Romeo. And I remember calling them up, I was on the phone with one of the people helping to, you know, make that study. And at the time, I was smoking a pack a day. And but I was back in the day smoking two packs a day and I already was taking psilocybin and I was telling them on the phone, I was like, Yeah, this has been great for me. I've already cut my cigarette addiction in half. And like, oh, you know, we're looking for someone who is not already taking psilocybin is smoking about two packs a day. And it was like, I'll start taking psilocybin I'll smoke two packs a day like let's go. And I just remember her laughing and she just hung up the phone and it was cool to like interview Albert again years later, and I told him that story. He was laughing. But yeah, there's amazing studies coming out and I was curious if
25:00
Have you had one that comes to mind as an amazing study for the benefits of micro dosing psilocybin, or if we still have a long way to go in that area? Well, it's interesting, because there's like a year ago, I could be very easy and say, well, there's no research. All of a sudden, there's waves of research. And the general tone of the research is people seem to benefit. That's vague and very slight, we don't, there have been a couple of very tight laboratory studies using healthy people. And the problem when you use really healthy people is they can't improve much.
25:42
So if you're doing a depression study, and you have your choice, people who are super deeply depressed, and on a scale of one to 10, there are nine on depression. And you have another group, who are about a three on depression, which is they have some bad days, and they read the newspaper, and they feel bad, and their relationships aren't so great. So if you give them both psychedelics, and they both improve
26:07
the people at the super depressed and go from a nine to a three, that's fantastic. The people in three go to two. Now, when you're then saying, well, it didn't work. For the, you know, the people with a low depression, it didn't work. Well, it did work, but they didn't have much room. And the problem with a couple of the kind of the studies that have found very, very little or nothing is they start with healthy people. And they give them tasks that are no great interest. And they don't change much. One of the studies commented on that it said, you know, we really need to have people with the kind of pathologies that people report improving. That's what we need to study. We don't need to study healthy normals, right? We differ a bit in. So you know, and we're talking before we came on this interview of, you know, I've been an advocate for 10 years. And the last, even in the last two years, there's been three studies that have come out that are trying to be as double blind and placebo controlled as possible. And all the the ending results have showed, and they're measuring everything from, you know, mood, to cognitive function to perception, etc. Three studies in the last two years, they all showed no difference between placebo and micro dosing psilocybin. And that was very surprising to me. And your response is that they're shittily done.
27:38
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, my response, you speak to it. But yeah, finish or finish your comment about what surprised you? It surprised me? Because, you know, for almost 10 years, I've been doing it and I felt, you know, marked improvement, but it has made me reflect in the last, you know, since reading these articles of, oh, has it been my mind, and the results have been, whether it's placebo, or the microdosing, they both work tremendously. Well, you know, between all all participants, everyone has incredible marked improvements. I mean, this is whether they're actually thinking it in their mind, but where it's the actual effects of the mushrooms, everyone is improving, which is great. And it shows to me and where I'm at right now of, we definitely need more studies that are more controlled, placebo controlled, double blind, more participants, more studies, and more strict peer review process. But it also showed me that Potentially, it could be a lot of placebo, and the mind is so powerful to help improve ourselves. And whether it's placebo or not, it's working. And that's amazing. And we should celebrate it. So that's kind of where I'm at right now. And I'm one, it's an interesting place to be under olace. Let's take one step back, the word placebo, which means it pleases me only came into use about, like 18th century as a way of dealing with the fact that people came in for help, and you didn't have anything to give them. And so you gave them something that said, this will help you. And we found out that in many cases, it helped them. So what the word placebo would better be defined as the natural healing capacity of the human being. Without reishi we'd all be dead. Right? Okay. Your body is really really, really interested in healing. It's not really interested in the topic of this program. little teeny part of your cortex is but most of you is saying, I just want to be as healthy as possible. And I have all these methods that I use. Okay. So
29:51
as early report said, I don't care if it's a placebo. I haven't felt this good in 20 years.
29:58
Okay, yeah.
30:00
What I'm looking at, and I think it's a way of defining it microdosing may facilitate an improved placebo response. It may allow your system to become healthier. That's a way of understanding it. That's a little different frame. And it's wonderful for me to be talking to someone who has more microdosing experience than I have, by way far. And reads a study hard to believe
30:29
I'm more conservative than you I grew up in a different era.
30:34
Also, I grew up with high doses, and who would waste your time with these little bit, right? No, I love that philosophy. Yeah, I'm a proponent. So here we are. And let me just tell you, this is a little called a teaching story. It's a story from the Sufi tradition. And it's, a guy is at home, and someone comes to him and says, I'd like to borrow your mule.
30:57
And the guy says, I would love to loan you my mule. But he's he died last week. And the man says, Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. And then you hear the breaking of the mule.
31:09
And the man says, Wait a moment, I hear your mule break. And the the original farmer says, very angry. Who are you going to believe me or a mule?
31:21
Okay, so when someone says to you something, which is against your own experience,
31:28
it's remarkable that people say, Well, I will set aside my own experience. And I'll accept with this person who I've never met, doing research, that they've controlled that they've established and set up for a particular purpose. And I will go with their report of other people's experience rather than my own. So I find that really a little scary, because I don't find science as fantastic a success story to do that. And the fact is that every scientific study
32:04
has both what's called placebo, which is your body gets interested. And to has what we call expectancy, that's a new term expectancy is I think it's going to be good. expectancy is what your life works with, you say, Well, I'm gonna go to this restaurant, my expectancy is that I'm going to have a pleasant experience I come in prepped for it's going to be good. When it's not good, that takes a little more work. Well, the first course wasn't very good. But I'm sure that the main course is going to be so forth. Okay, dating sites, okay. They're just expectancy.
32:40
We, you know, I know that I've been burned before on on this dating site. But this time is going to be different. That's how life works. And when you microdose, you have expectancy, because you have expectancy for everything else in your life, why not for this? Now, the problem when you're in a study, and you're told that half of the people are getting nothing, it's going to make it harder for expectancy and placebo, to be effective.
33:10
So, and some of these studies, they're perfectly they're nicely designed, except for a couple of variables. And I have no, some of the the researchers are very fine people. And they're setting up an experiment that is hard to is not what I pick, if I'm doing a study on changes in brain capacity or brain functioning with, with brain damaged people, I have to use brain damage people. And you say, well, we can't use brain damage people. Because what if something goes wrong? Six months later with one of our subjects, has nothing to do with us, we will be blamed. There's a lot of rules in the science world, which aren't made quite clear. And you just explained one of the most interesting ones, which is when you talk to Albert, who, by the way, was a student of mine, and he's wonderful. Wow. What his person said is, We don't want people who already know that it's working for them. Right? We want people and then they'll give you whatever the criteria is. Now they had another one of the other studies had something about on the screening, I think it was the smoking study, and the woman had, you know, 20 years, two packs, eight different treatments. Nothing had helped. And then it turned out, however, that 25 years ago, she had been knocked out in a car accident, and was unconscious for a few minutes.
34:37
She was stricken from the study.
34:40
Okay, she was very sad about that. And what I got is they were trying to set it up so that it would work. They were trying to find people, which would give them the best possible solution. Now that's terrific for science because that's what they're looking for. But it doesn't have much to do with real world experience. I mean, you've never been to you
35:00
You're a physician. And he says, I've got a new drug, I think it's really going to help you. Oh, by the way, half of my patients, I'm giving them the real drug, and half of them, I'm giving a sugar pill, and you're not going to know which one.
35:12
Okay, you would say, wait a moment, that's not the way the real world works. And what I've been looking at, and I don't give psychedelics to anybody, I don't have a hospital or not a clinic, I just take people's reports like yours. And I compile them. And I see if there are, there are special cases of which Daniel was one. And Daniel went and formed a company to help other people. So that's what we're looking at. And so the studies that interests me is if we take a group that has an issue a problem, and we find out of macro micro dosing, however, it helps them helps them.
35:50
That's interesting to make. So the stuff I mean, the smoking study, worked very well. But I'll tell you one little one little anecdote, Albert is presenting this at 2017, maps, giant event, and he says 11 Out of the 12 people in our study, six months later, were not smoking.
36:10
And I said, Albert, what about the 12? person? He said our criteria was total abstinence, Albert, what about the 12 person said, well, actually, he's moved from two packs a day to a cigarette a month.
36:24
But he didn't meet our criteria. Right? Now, one of the criteria, if you're into this game of science is you don't have 100% success rates. If you're looking at studies, it's very, very, very rare to find everybody did better.
36:41
Because as soon as you have that kind of study, the critics assume that you didn't, you know, the reality isn't like that. Yeah.
36:50
Now it is, if you If reality is like that, if you know how to do the study, if I'm doing a study, and I want to find out, if I hit you over the head with a two by four versus a foam bat,
37:04
are you going to know the difference? I bet without you know, and we're not going to tell you which one it is. Okay.
37:13
And my goodness, 100% of people hit over the head with a two by four report more pain on a pain scale of one to 12, then hit with a foam bat, I'm not going to publish that, because everyone will say, well, any damn fool would know that. So you have to watch out what you're looking at in science. And whether the science itself has its own rules, its own kind of religious rules that are good in some situations and not another, it's it's kind of, it's a phrase that Maslow uses, which is, if your only tool is a hammer, every problem is a nail. Okay. And the kind of psychedelic version of that is, if you want to, if you want to drill a hole, you don't use a screwdriver. But if the only tool you have is a screwdriver, that's what you use. So one of the questions in these studies is, how do they set it up? What are they asking for? How do they measure, and one of the problems is a double blind with psychedelics has been incredibly unsuccessful. It's really hard. Well, imagine you're in one of these studies at Johns Hopkins, the total cost to John Hopkins to give you your treatment will be 10 to $20,000. And you've been super picked, okay? And you go in one day, and they give you the substance. And an hour later, you don't feel like anything.
38:38
And they look at you and they they just say now you're gonna lie down, and you're gonna put on their headphones. And you think, okay, but I don't feel anything. And they do the whole thing they give you their therapeutic, they're supportive, they're kind, and you're just kind of sitting around having a nice day with these nice people. And within an hour, not only you know, you got the placebo, but they know, but they can't tell you.
39:04
So it's a weird situation. And I just feel for the therapist and the researchers having to pretend all day long that they don't know. Okay, so there's some problems in using a double blind inappropriately. Nothing wrong with a maybe it's a little different with a with a sub perceptual. microdose. Right.
39:26
Don't be mean.
39:29
Some, loosen it hallucinatory? Is that the phrase that you use, I just use a micro dose, it's easier than microdose. Yeah.
39:38
I agree. It's different. Okay. It's just kind of a two part question. If you had all the money in the world, all the resources, all the people that you could pick that would be open to do the study of your dreams that you think would be the perfect study. How would you do it? And the second part of that question is, would you do it because is your is your thought process
40:00
says that no matter how many studies are done, if people are getting benefit, that's all that matters. Well, that's a good, that's a nice way of framing it. Because actually, I think we're doing the kind of study I like, which is called real world evidence. So remember, if you're a drug company, you have a drug, and you've spent like a billion dollars in 18 years, and now you're putting it out there. Now you're putting it out there. So that real world, people with real world situation, take it. And out of the first 100,000 People who take it, eight of them die. Okay. And the FDA says withdraw the drug.
40:38
And you say, but I just spent 18 years perfecting it. I have 27 studies in five countries, with a very, very carefully selected group. Oh, by the way, I've a few studies that didn't work that I didn't show you, but I don't have to solidify it is a term that you probably may or may not know, but it was it was a very fine drug for I think painkilling, but it had a slight problem which has been given to pregnant women to fetuses arrived deformed.
41:07
Okay. Now, why didn't the company notice that before they released it, because you never give drugs to pregnant women, if you're a drug company, so you had no way of knowing that it was a horrible, horrible, you know, terrible drug when released. Okay, so
41:27
the test is real world. Evidence. That's a term by the way that's in the literature. Now, I saw an early paper on it, and had like 18 authors, and I thought they all want to be part of this. And what they're saying is, that's the final test. So I my studies, which I've been doing for 10 years, have all started at the final test.
41:50
And what I've found is for most people who have tried micro dosing, they find that it was beneficial and curative. Not massive, not not amazingly. So a number of cases amazingly, so but mostly people just felt a little healthier, a little better, a little smarter. Also, by the way, a little kinder, and a little have a little better sense of humor. So that's what I'm seeing. And if you rather than go to a study of 12 people done, say, in Hopkins, or New York or in Peru,
42:24
you go to Reddit, Reddit has a sub edit, which you know, have called microdosing. I don't know, I'm not at Redditors. But I assume that that there is a Yeah, I assume that that would be that would exist. Well, I came across it and it has 200,000 members. Okay.
42:44
And what they do is they talk to each other and someone says, for example, and this is a negative, so you'll, you'll probably appreciate it.
42:54
Can I use microdosing for tinnitus? Tinnitus? Is the ringing in your ears. Yes. And if you have it is continuing. I have it. Okay, well, it turns out one of the, this is terrible. One of the side effects that we are finding with a certain number of people with microdosing is they get tinnitus.
43:17
We also find that when they stop microdosing the tinnitus diminishes. So we're now putting that out as a general warning. And people who already have tinnitus report an increase in tinnitus, which also dissipates when they stop microdosing. So it's now one of our few genuine warnings, I might be a one of one because I haven't microdose actually a really long time. And mine actually has gotten worse. And mine is actually from hearing damage. You know, I had very, very loud noises when I was a kid. And yeah, I would go down like I used to go to heavy metal concerts and stand right next to the speakers and have a you know, the whole thing. So I might be a little bit different, but I've actually had the reverse feelings of actually my ringing has gotten worse when I stopped microdosing. So who knows? Again, that's the question of rebalancing your system. Now let me give this just this is i This is all I know, because it just came in two days ago. Yeah. Somebody who's microdosing within Blicher dosing coach, which is a whole new occupation. Oh, yeah. reports that they're hearing has improved. Now, what he said is I'm still wearing hearing aids, but I'm noticing how seldom I ask anyone to repeat, and how different that feels. So see, that's the kind of thing that gets me really interested because one of the few things we think we know is that hearing loss is caused by the damage to those tiny little hairs in your hearing system. And we don't know any way to regenerate those hairs. So we don't I don't think we have anything that I
45:00
I've found that says take this and your hearing will improve.
45:04
So this is one case, and we don't know anything more. But it's the kind of thing See, that's what I liked. Okay, he asked me what experiments I want, who I've never met, never heard of, and have no idea what the limitations are to try something that's safe. And if there's an if there, if there's a surprising improvement, they let me know. Okay. Now, let me give you another one, just so that you, because unfortunately, tinnitus has looked too close to your, your head, so to speak your heart, a woman is diabetic. And he's been on the same dose of insulin for like 14 years, and she's totally stable. It's not a problem. And for other reasons, she microdoses, within a month, she's taking 20% of her insulin. Okay. Now, again, the one thing we know about diabetes, is that it's a physical damage.
45:57
Now, I ran this by a really smart physician the other day, very psychedelically Intune, but also runs an addiction clinic and serious heavy medicine. And he said, You know, it's possible that her general inflammation has is down.
46:16
And it may be that her need for insulin is in some way connected to the the general inflammation that having any major disease like diabetes includes.
46:27
And I thought, Well,
46:29
from my point of view, your question, she's feeling better. And it may have nothing to do with her pancreas. But I don't care. Because she's feeling better. And yes, that is my entire interest. I think something that benefits people should be more available. And things that don't benefit people maybe should be a little hard to get. So yeah, so that's so my study, you know, I've got my wish. And it's even better, is I don't have all the money, I don't have a clinic, I don't have to worry about my tax status. I don't have to pay people, and they get mad at me. I actually do programs with people like you. And someone writes in and said, I bet you don't know about this one. But it looks like Okay,
47:20
so we're we have not yet discovered, see, microdosing, it looks like doesn't have an effect. Okay? Pharmaceuticals try to be what are called tight focus, which is a spray, the smallest amount of you that they can get
47:35
psychedelics, high dose gives you a different worldview, that's kind of big micro dosing just seems to make the system
47:45
get into better equilibrium. And that can be a dozen different ways. Because, I mean, Western medicine, for instance, doesn't talk about the energy coursing through you with radiance. But if you but psychedelics make a much, much closer model, two, energy body.
48:04
So we're just at the edge of, of Western science. Remember, Western science fought like hell, to keep acupuncture out of Western hands, because there was no theory. And then, and then somebody discovered endorphins. and Western Medicine says, Yay, we have a theory, we can now let in this 2000 year old, hyper sophisticated system. So suddenly, acupuncture is available. And originally when it happened, made, it was legal in California, only physicians could use it. And no physicians were trained in it. And all the people in Asian communities who were highly trained acupuncturist, who had been underground were in this funny bind, which is what they now could do is legal, but quote, they weren't, you know, they weren't the right people. Right. Now, so. And we still, if you really look at it, acupuncture still freaks out a lot of Western people. But it doesn't go away. And it's, and its benefits don't go away, simply because people don't believe it. You said something about Yeah, it's funny, a short little story. I'm a scientist, but also deeply spiritual. And a lot of times they go, they feel like they're going head to head. And you know, I
49:21
that when I go really deep in my my spiritual place, especially in combination with psychedelics, I'll work with spirits in the space, either the spirit of mushrooms, the spirit of whatever plant I'm working with, or maybe I'll bring the spirit of a Jaguar into the space, whatever. And
49:38
there has been times in my life where I've been dead set, I believe that that spirit is real, you know, and then other times where I'm maybe leaning a little more scientific. I'm like, No, that is a quote unquote, figment of my mind, and I am creating that.
49:54
Regardless of what it is, you know, our quote unquote Western science probably is never going to
50:00
rube what is actually going on. But it's working, it's working for a benefit for me. And similarly, I'm at an interesting place where I would love to know what's going on with microdosing. You know, like, like, on a, on a biochemical level, like what is actually happening in the human body, I would love to know, and maybe I will never know. But the end result is that it's actually working, you know, and whether it's a quote unquote figment of our mind propelling our self healing, or it's actually the actual chemicals in very small amounts that the mushrooms are, you know, in our bloodstream having a biochemical effect, either or it's working. And I think that's great, you know, regardless of what it is, it's having a beneficial effect on people.
50:50
And so, you know, that's amazing. And we might never know, with as many, you know, double blind, placebo controlled studies, we might actually never know, really what's going on. But really finding what works for you, as you were kind of describing in the beginning of like, finding a schedule that works for you. And if it's, if you feel like it's working great. And if it's not great, you know, and I do want to bring something up, and I, we had a guest on our show talking about micro dosing, and he brought up that there are a few studies out there that are, none of them involve psilocybin. Correct. So I just want to preface that, that none of them involve psilocybin, there's never been a study out there that have studied the results of heart damage with psilocybin, there's no data, no research out there. However, there are studies out there that show substances that bind with the five HT to be receptors, increased cases of valvular heart disease, right. Now, psilocybin does bind to those receptors. And therefore, we do need more studies with that, just like the tinnitus is how you pronounce it. Senatus Yeah, it's like, you know, we don't know. And I think those would be important studies to figure out of, you know, is this, just like the drug with pregnant women? Like, is there a small subset of the human population that maybe this doesn't work with them? And that's fine. And, you know, we should know of, or maybe it's, it's, it's just about, maybe just don't take it every day. And maybe here's the right schedule to prevent any thing, or maybe the people that have the heart issues, or just a 1% of the population, and they should avoid it. But I think for safety reasons.
52:44
I think it's pretty safe. We've been using it for for almost ever. And there's theories that it, you know, help evolve human evolution, but, but I think I would be interested in those studies coming out. Yeah, well, it's wonderful the way you describe it, which is quite accurate, which is there are studies that show some substances, one of them being a diet aide called Fen Fen, which had a veteran, which it turns out, if you take it at a dose 1000 times greater than a micro dose, and you take it every day, you take no days off, and you take it over a period of months, some people who had that substance, developed a heart problem, the federal government said, Whoa, that's not a really good thing to have out there. We are asking you to withdraw that substance. It wasn't a pharmaceutical, it was kind of, quote, nutritional supplements. Right? Get rid of it. And so it went away. The problem in those in a study that says, here's a different substance at a totally different concentration, over a very different period of time. Yeah, yeah. You can't say that psilocybin does it? You know, there's, well also the fact that they both activate the same neuron. Now, one of the one of the simplicities of sciences, there's a what's called a rush to something we can measure. Yeah. So they have found one neuron in the brain that they can measure. And one of the ways I talk about it is we now know, because we've all seen the results in in pictures, that when you take a psychedelic, there are more colored lines in your brain. Yeah. They don't ever deal with the problem that the same neuron exists in other parts of the body.
54:30
For example, you have a perhaps as many neurons in your gut, the same kind of five to a neuron as you have in your brain.
54:41
And I say to neuroscientists, have you looked at that and they all wish I'd go away? Okay, because they don't have any way to measure that they've never even tried. And, you know, you just can't imagine a picture of your your stomach with more colored lines. It doesn't seem to make the same sense. The other problem is the eye
55:00
idea that something is as amazingly complex in its in its effect, as a psychedelic only affects one tiny neuron in the brain.
55:12
Okay? Because it's the same neuron by the way that SSRIs work around. And to think that SSRIs and psychedelics have the same effect, nobody, except one study in England, ever imagine that as plausible. Okay.
55:29
So there's a wonderful part in one of Julie Holland's recent books, I think it's called good chemistry, where she points out that one of the effects of psychedelics is not only
55:42
five to eight colored lines, but you feel love.
55:47
You are very often and even Michael Pollan describes it as it's love. It's all about love. Nobody says that about SSRIs. Okay, but they do say that about oxytocin, which Julie says, is obviously one of the things that happens when you use psychedelics. So, we have not explored how psychedelics affect the body, or even the brain, we've shown how it affects at least one kind of neuron. That's called beginner's science. And it's good. It's wonderful. It's very exciting, but it hardly
56:24
hardly maps over to the description. It's like the people who said we have located where the brain dreams are, or where they originate. And I say that's wonderful. Can you explain the difference between a sex dream and a nightmare? And they say, well, not not at all, I have no idea how to do that at all. Okay, so it's let's, we have to watch out, we're used to advertising that we are taught to kind of defend ourselves. You know, there is a an 89 year old physician in Japan, who years ago discovered a particular herb that has transformed whatever the condition is, and we're going to sell it to you in about four minutes, if you wish to to the end of this video. We're saying, but when when someone says, I am science, you say, Oh, well, that's fine. You're always just totally neutral? And the answer is, you're never neutral. No, no research is neutral, because it's people that want to do it. And the people who do psychedelic research want to do it. And if you actually look at the history of the first study, that said it did a double blind by having people move envelopes around and not know which one they were taking. That study was designed only to determine if micro dosing had no effect or any effect.
57:48
If they came up with what most studies come up with, and what hundreds of 1000s of people say, including you, it has some effect. Nobody cares. You know, I have found out that orange juice tastes good. Whoa. I already knew that.
58:05
But I did a scientific study. Well, but you designed a study on the blindingly obvious. But if you find out that in spite of everyone else's experience, you your study versus the other couple of 100,000 people, and you found that they're all wrong, you get a lot of press.
58:24
I don't know if it's wrong. It's just you know, how their weather, I think those studies versus people, including my own have, whether it's the actual mushrooms causing the benefit, or it's the people's mind.
58:39
Right. And for me, I don't even know like, at this point, I've been doing it for 10 years. I don't know if it's the actual mushrooms causing it or my mind are probably a mix. But and I don't think I'll ever know. But at this point, I'm pretty okay, not knowing and I'll still do it, you know, even even if I if I found out without a doubt, like if there was a way to prove without a doubt it was placebo, I would probably still microdose right. Okay, honestly, because it's still working right? If the placebo was still radically working. It's just it's easy to take a physical substance. And it's a cool story, too. It's a cool story to be like, yeah, I, you know, I work with these mushrooms. And it's it's easier to have that somatic experience in the mind and body to kind of correlate a physical substance rather than an imaginary one, if that makes sense. Yeah. And see, the fun part is if you understand that scientists are actually human. It's a great start. And I'm reminded there was a wonderful scholar of religious something rather named Zaner. And in the 60s or 70s, he wrote a book that definitely took the position that mystical experiences cannot occur with a psychedelic his evidence was
1:00:00
was that he took a psychedelic and had a non mystical trip. Yeah. And I mean, that was it. I mean, he's not a bad person, it was reasonably said, I went and did a real world evidence. Now the fact that mystical experiences occur throughout history with a, you know, in a dozen different ways and so forth. He took the position that I am capable of discerning what other people's minds might do, which is kind of where you get the the limitations of science, just as you get the limitations of religion, and the limitations of what you see on Instagram, between all the things that you came to look at. And as you know, if you ever want to study what the culture is doing with something is trumped almost order something, and then you'll get every version of it. I'm so tired of 19 different ways where you can put mushrooms in coffee and change your life. Oh, yeah, totally. And that's a lot and basically, the ideas, right? Okay. So what we're doing is, we may have to accept real world evidence, even if science can't prove it. I like what you said about it's almost like inverse placebo. And I was actually thinking about this, as I was brushing my teeth, I went to this, I was actually presenting at this conference, and this woman came up before me, and she talks about this one, quote, unquote, study, that was just one woman's experience, who had a terminal illness, and then all of a sudden started taking reishi extract. And then within a week, she died.
1:01:36
And the conclusion was, kill that reishi extract might have killed her. Oh, that's wonderful. And she printed out this study and gave it to me and was like, you know, because at the time I was, I was selling reishi extract, and she was like, you know, did you hear about this study? You know, you should be, you should be so concerned. And I was like, what, this is not, you can't correlate that that's kind of insane. And, but you know, and it was just actually reading an article yesterday about someone on Reddit actually, who said, Hey, I took this this one company's Lion's Mane, you know, capsules, and I and within an hour, I was throwing up, I had diarrhea, and I felt awful, and it had a stomach ache and stomach pains. But I tried another company's lion's mane. It didn't, I felt fine. And then I was eating fresh lion's mane and I felt fine. Is the conclusion that lion's mane gives people stomach upset. And I was like, No, the you probably got that was probably dirty from that one company. And it's the biological contaminants probably covered in E. Coli. And it's E. coli giving you stomach. But, you know, that's kind of a negative placebo. I don't even know the right term. But if someone thinks that, you know, Lion's Mane gives you stomach upset, it actually might, you know, it actually might, if you have that thought process, the power of the mind is actually pretty huge. And you know, it could be disruptive and just kind of what you're saying. And we had a little conversation before this. of you are a little hesitant of bringing up the heart issue. And I think from your perspective of, you know, it's not proven and so we don't want people to think that is truth and that's reality, and therefore, kind of create this
1:03:27
false narrative or false placebo phenomenon that that happens. And so, either way that part of the mind is is huge. And yeah, well, let me the technical term, which nobody cares about is the CBOE, which means it's hard to CBOE love it as CBOE. And here's the classic. Okay, which is how does the mind affect you? Okay, and this was a study you could never do in the real world, but the real world offered is a baseball game, full stadium. Six or eight different hotdog stands. Life goes on. Suddenly, there's an announcement on the radio, several people who went to one hotdog stand, have become ill.
1:04:07
Okay.
1:04:09
Now, there's eight different hotdog stands. And let's assume it's true. Okay, someone there's a bad batch or whatever. Yeah. All over that stadium. People started to feel ill. Okay. They didn't know where they you know, which is raging. Right? Just statistically, you know,
1:04:29
eight or 10% might, you know, had gone to that one. Okay. But it's a wonderful study that says, the mind is perfectly capable of going in both directions. Exactly. Yeah. And yours. Your your examples are wonderful. The person that wrote and said, I mean, couldn't have made it clear. He says he because he tests he says, I use this from Company A it made me sick. This from Company B it didn't make me sick. I tried live mushrooms. They didn't make me sick. Isn't it possible that lion's mane
1:05:00
makes me sick and you think, Wait a minute, wait.
1:05:02
That's kind of like I went on three dates. And one was terrible and two are wonderful. Were the wonderful ones terrible, right? No, exactly. No, I was I was I had a good laugh yesterday. And but yeah, the power of the mind is huge. And, and let's make use of it. Let's make use of it. And that's, you know, there was a period of time after I read those three papers that showed no difference. Placebo and micro dosing. You know, put that aside, I was questioning it. But now that I now I'm at the point where I'm like, You know what, let's make use of it. And I think micro dosing, psilocybin can have a huge benefit for people, regardless of the biochemistry going on inside of the body. It's obviously working. Well, let's, let's look at one more study. Because you're really good. You really know your studies. It's such a pleasure. Okay, there's a recent study out of London, that tested psilocybin therapeutic high dose against a conventional SSRI, okay. You know, this study? I don't, Oh, it's wonderful. This study, maybe I do, keep going. The headline for this study was no difference between the effects of the psychedelic experience two of them, I think, and taking an SSRI, for depression, for depression. Interesting. Okay. Now, what happened with your little intake of breath? Since everyone can't see you? Is you thought, wait a minute, that doesn't make any sense. Okay. But hey, this is science. This is, you know, double blind that people didn't know which of course they do. But they managed somehow to make a study where there wasn't any difference. That's not easy to do. Because we all know that the difference the reason that people come off of SSRIs after psychedelic therapy, and when using microdoses, is there's a difference. Okay, but somehow, and you have to read the study very carefully. And if you listen to the the person who, and I'm not using names, because not appropriate, they're all nice, famous people. Yeah. When one of them when the head person on the study talks about, he says, eight out of nine variables, psilocybin was clearly superior. And I'm listening. And you know, the slides are too fast for me to write anything down. But I believe him. But I'm wondering why wait, what's the ninth variable? The ninth variable was the difference in how depressed they felt? Interesting. Yeah, I do know the study that you're talking about. Yeah. So it's fun. When you kind of say science is actually made up of people with biases. The system has certain obvious biases, you kind of if someone's sponsoring, you know, you kind of look at Yeah, the back of technical articles in journals. Now people have to say, Who's else's paying them? Exactly. Yeah. And you'll see when Psychedelic Studies amaze, I mean, I'm on a science advisory board. They don't listen to me. And I haven't gotten anything. But I'm on an advisory board, because I really think he's doing the right thing. But I look at some of these studies and people are being paid by seven or eight companies. So in a conventional sense, we wonder, is there a conflict of interest? And the answer is, of course there is. I have a conflict of interest, which is, I have 1000s of people who fail, say they feel better. I'm very sensitive. When people say, Well, this research article said that it didn't help. And I think I'm not going to go back to those 1000s of people and say, restore your depression, restore your your neuropathy, restore the amount of insulin you're taking, it's crazy. So what I'm looking at is, how can we use psychedelics most safely, and most beneficially, safely is the first statement. And what we know about high doses is people can get in trouble. What we know about microdoses is it's really hard to get in trouble, especially if you don't overdose, because it's not a microdose. So we have something that's there when they want to quit your sales job, but that's about it. Yeah, well, and that might be the right thing to do. That might Yeah, that might be great. So when someone says I'm improved, you know, I've I have a friend, there's a personal friend who was who I've known for 30 years, or more than that for two years. And he said, I've been on antidepressants for 31 years, do you think microdosing could help me?
1:09:32
And I said, go to your physician and say that you're interested and see if he'll give you any support. Because you've told me you'd like to get off of the the antidepressants because they really don't work. And he was on to antidepressants. And whoever's physician was said, Well, let me switch one of those because the one you're on now is incredibly hard to get off of. I'll switch into one that isn't as bad.
1:09:57
It took him six months to get
1:10:00
off of the two antidepressants, he did it one at a time. And then as he microdose, what he said is, I have my emotions back.
1:10:10
I have not had a full deck of emotions for over 30 years. And he then he talks about how awkward it is because he wasn't used to having them. And he would now for instance, go to an art show and he cried. And he said it embarrassed people, but it was a different world for him. So I don't want to say to him, here's this study that says you didn't that didn't happen to you. Okay, because that's nonsense. So what we're looking at is, can we improve the results without changing the safety? Yeah. And remember, psychedelics are among the safest things out there. And we even have most of them. Well, yeah, well, but most of them is what most people take. Yeah, you're a little more esoteric, and I don't want to know about the horrible ones you've taken. Okay. There's ones I stay far away from because they're, you know, you know, I don't want to, you know, there's like Devil's trumpet. He Boga there's some ones out there, I'm, I'm good. I'm fine. Never putting that in my body. I'm good. So. So I should mention, kind of we weren't too clear at the beginning. But you, you told me you were going to be the devil's advocate. And I can only tell you, you have not fulfilled your role. I haven't I have actually held myself back. I actually, before this interview, thought I was going to be a lot more of a devil's advocate than I have. Because at the end of the day, you know, is it helping people? Right? And that's, that's really, you know, and I actually, I wanted to spend some time talking about a very recently published paper, and I won't say the title, and I'll kind of not even give any insight of so people could guess what that is, maybe some people can, but pretty much every single author of the paper, there's a conflicting interest, ethical ethics, declarations, you know, section of the paper talking about, you know, am I getting money? Do I have any financial incentive for these results? And pretty much all the authors did. And either they were on a board of a psychedelic company, they were about to launch one that was about to sells, microdosing or whatever. And, typically, I would have a lot of issues with that. And typically, I would, you know, in probably, before this interview, I did, and I'd say that's a little ethically a little, you know, I don't want to say slimy as maybe a too strong word, but it's,
1:12:36
it's a concern. But if the end result of it, is it helping people, is it going to improve millions of people's lives at the end of the day, then, should I really, is it really that much of a qualm? You know? And so that's where I'm at now, and why I've held myself back in this, this whole conversation of, you know, yeah, like, Is it really good? If the end result of it, it's going to help people that that's all that matters? And so yeah, that's why I didn't fulfill my devil's advocate role in this conversation. Let me just say that the devil does not need an advocate.
1:13:12
But truth does truth. And truth is, is in the eyes of the beholder really? Well, the truth is, the other question is very simply does it benefit? And you know, what I call a reward risk ratio,
1:13:28
which is, what's the level of reward that's possible? And with microdosing? We've seen, it could be a lot, it could be a little, it could be nothing. What's the risk, and the risk is extraordinarily low. Right? We tend to think that pharmaceuticals are inherently dangerous, because most of them are, you know, when you buy a pharmaceutical, they give you this little this piece of paper, which is folded up as small as possible, and is an eight point. But it usually says things like, here are the following terrible things, if any of them happen. Don't keep taking this medicine. And the other thing that usually says is, if you're taking this medicine don't ever stop or other and here's the second list of things that will happen. Psychedelics don't fit into that. They're not a medication. That's why remember, we haven't had them. They're one of the few substances we have, like 6000 years of use.
1:14:22
They've been checked out. And the question is not the fun part for science is how does it work? What systems? The the profit is, how can I kind of twist the molecule a little bit so I've got something to sell. And that doesn't, that isn't much worse than the original, which is what's happened with ketamine.
1:14:43
The new expensive version doesn't work as well, but it's FDA approved and you can charge literally hundreds of times more than ketamine. For those of you who are using who are going to ketamine physicians, the ketamine costs about $5
1:14:57
Right, the other one cost quite a lot.
1:15:00
So there's other notes, when I look at those papers and see that everyone is, is either advising or just getting paid. That's kind of the way it is these days, because there's so many companies, and they're all trying to put people on their boards, for good reasons. And just for part of their marketing, with we sauna, which we mentioned, I was actually asked to be on their board. And fortunately, I was able to, to avoid it.
1:15:30
Because that's not where I'm, that's I'm of no great use. I have been a management consultant. I know the game. But that's not a good use of me. So we're at a stage and we're in total agreement, which is what can we do that allows people to benefit. And what we're learning is, psilocybin is not the only mushroom that benefits people.
1:15:51
At lion's mane and Chaga and so forth. We're now kind of it's like mycelium is being left back into society. A revival? For sure. Yeah, so I do, you know, just to wrap this conversation up, we're coming on an hour and a half. And this has been great and enlightening. And I think we're, you know, there's many different perspectives that we're playing the narrative of, and I think it's, this will be a very enlightening conversation for a lot of people. And for a lot of people, maybe they'll just start getting into microdosing. Or, you know, maybe they'll, they'll continue or adapted in a different way, I do want to share some results of this 2020 paper that I was talking about in the beginning about the various tryptamine levels and different things. Because I feel like it's very important, especially when it comes to micro dosing or macro dosing, they showed that, you know, as I said, before, much higher levels of tryptamines in the cat versus the stem. And so if you are eating them at home, just be wary of that, you know, it will change depending on on what part of the mushroom that you're eating. It also showed that the higher level of temperatures that you're dehydrating the mushrooms at the faster rate of degradation of the tryptamines, especially over significantly over the rate significantly increased over 100 degrees Celsius around 212 Fahrenheit. And that's typical dehydrators are around 130 to 170 Fahrenheit. So it's not typically something that people have to worry about, but dehydrate your mushrooms as low as you could possibly do it. They in the study, they found the best way to dehydrate your mushrooms was at room temperature, which I find that hard to believe that you're actually dehydrating it and it'll be shelf stable. The fresh mushrooms had higher levels of psilocybin, but dried had higher levels of psilocybin. But if you're drying it at higher temperatures, those tryptamines will degrade. Storing it in the dark was better than storing it in the light and storing it in the freezer. A common method for a lot of people actually degraded the the tryptamines. Far, there was the worst to store it in the freezer, which is counterintuitive for a lot of people I know a lot of people store their mushrooms in the freezer, they're microdose capsules, whatever, that's bad, don't do that, then it was it degraded the tryptamines pretty fast. They also found this is with powdered mushrooms, which degrades the tryptamines much faster, but within a month 50% of the tryptamines were degraded within a month. So well eat them as fast as possible. And if you're storing them for a long period of time, those tryptamines will degrade. This is kind of common knowledge but but it really showed how fast they that they can degrade. So you know, keep that in mind. If if you have some at home, you know, to limit variability in your experience if you choose to do this, following local laws, etc. Oh, you know, I'm not advising anyone to break any laws. But, but keep those those in mind. And yeah, I want to thank you for coming on the show and sharing your insight and your wisdom. And well let me add just one
1:19:12
piece of paper next to me that's called this is from Arrowood. And it's the difference amount of psilocybin in different species. And the top species has 1.78% psilocybin cubensis, the most popular as point six, three, about a third. And there's one of them down there that has point one six, which is like a 50th. So, so the point is, and I love what you said, and I thought, you know, goodness knows you don't have any economic interest in people working with mushrooms, at least not psilocybin. But you are now suggesting all things I would never say.
1:19:51
And I love it. But what we're saying is, Sasha Shogun said it very nicely. He said, if you're holding a substance that you're going to put in your body
1:20:00
to know something about it. Yeah, period. And what we know about micro dosing is in the correct doses, it's very, very rarely has a negative effect. And that negative effect is transient. There's not. And from that point on, we go up, but the safety is fundamental. And it's been, it's been marvelous talking with you. I was a little concerned. Because the problem with devil's advocate is you're you, you don't necessarily use your own experience. And you can, you know, we know about debating, we know that you can take both sides of any argument. But what you did instead was You really are a portrait of a long term micro doser. What's happened to your career? What's happened to your life? What's happened to your interests? And it's been fascinating to get to know you. Likewise. Yeah. All right. Are you going to Telluride this year? Festival? Well, I actually haven't traveled a lot since actually somewhat before. COVID. Yeah, make sense? So I'm not I'm not on the road the way I have been. But hopefully, I'll meet you in person one day, and it'll be great. And we can hang out and maybe microdose. Who knows?
1:21:13
All right, thanks a lot. Yeah. Thanks. And thank you, everyone for tuning in and trimming in for this great conversation. And hopefully, it's one of many more conversations that we can have around micro dosing and mushrooms in general. You know, we bring on experts from all around the world to have these interesting conversations and what a blessing it is, to have them and listen in and get so many different insights from all around the world. You know, it helps when we all share our experiences and you know, tell them to as many people as we can, about our experience with mushrooms beyond psychedelics, just foraging for them functional mushrooms, you name it, you know, this is what sparks this revival is just community conversations around mushrooms, which we're all doing and I hope that we continue doing so we don't take any donations for the show how you can support it if you like listening, head to our website, mushroom revival.com. We have a whole list of functional mushroom products to capsules, the gummies to tinctures, powders, you name it. All of our blogs are there, you know all different topics of fungi. We have all our podcasts in there with links to articles or things that the speaker was talking about. And yeah, just tell your friends, tell your family. Have a great day and much love and may the Force be with you
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
