Mushroom Mastery & Beyond: A Practical, How-To Guide For Unlocking New Parts Of Your Brain, Thinking Faster & Enhancing Performance With The Science Of Microdosing.

My name is Ben Greenfield. And on this episode of the Boundless Life Podcast.

When people say, I'm afraid I'm gonna see giant anacondas like you do with ayahuasca, it's a little bit like saying, well, I had a half an ounce of alcohol. Am I gonna be screaming drunk and throw up and fall down? And the answer is not likely. It's really too low a dose to affect that part of the system. If it isn't working for you, the way you'll notice is you don't notice anything. And if it is working for you, all you will probably notice, particularly if you're healthy, is you're feeling better. You're trying to be a little more cheery. You're nicer to the person at work who doesn't deserve it.

Welcome to The Boundless Life with me, your host, Ben Greenfield.

I'm a personal trainer, exercise physiologist, and nutritionist, and I'm passionate about helping you discover unparalleled levels of health, fitness, longevity, and beyond.

Ben Greenfield: Well, folks, I am asked a lot about microdosing. It seems to be a hot topic these days. And people talk about microdosing cold and microdosing sauna and microdosing GLP-1 agonists for appetite control. But of course, most people are familiar with the term microdosing as being the concept of using small doses of psychedelics. Or in many cases called an entheogenic compound, things like psilocybin, LSD, ayahuasca, et cetera. It's obviously a controversial topic for many reasons as you can imagine, yet it's also something that I think there could be much more useful and practical information about out there. Hence, my excitement when this book arrived at my home, Microdosing for Health, Healing, and Enhanced Performance. It was written by two guys, both of whom happen to be my guests on today's show if you hadn't guessed. The first, Dr. James Fadiman, I've actually talked with James a few times, been incredibly impressed with his knowledge in the realm of microdosing. I mean, you could say to a certain extent that he kind of developed the concept of modern microdosing and microdosing stacks and protocols and dose ranges. And so he puts a lot of that into this book, but then he also co-wrote it with Jordan Gruber. And Jordan has a, a JD from University of Virginia School of Law and has also studied philosophy and public policy. He's a writer, he's an editor, and also has a wide range of knowledge related to these topics as well. So between these two guys, if you've been wondering about microdosing, how it works, how to do it effectively, how to basically not do damage to yourself in terms of dosing and compounds, et cetera, this podcast is for you. All the show notes, including a link to this fantastic new book, which I don't believe— Guys, this book actually at the time of this recording, I believe it's still a couple of weeks before it's actually shipping on Amazon, right?

February 18th.

Yeah, yeah. February 18th. We're recording this in January. So if you're listening to this podcast right when it comes out, you'll get it fresh off the presses. Go to bengreenfieldlife.com/microdosingpodcast. That's bengreenfieldlife.com/microdosingpodcast if you want all the goodies. So guys, welcome.

Thanks for having me. Thank you.

It's great to be here.

Yeah, I, I was actually in the gym this morning listening to a podcast and microdosing came up. And I hear it more and more these days as something that pops up often in hushed voices with people acting like it's this brand new thing, but they're not supposed to talk about it and it's really dangerous. So, I'd be curious to hear your guys' take on why there seems to be such a seemingly big surge of late in the popularity of the concept of microdosing.

Well, One thing we can be sure, it's, uh, until recently it was only a very small voice on, even on TikTok. However, um, there were 3 million searches for the word last year off of Google. So people are interested and basically because it looks like a safer, saner way to use psychedelics without getting into any difficulty and with a lot of improvements. So it's kind of straightforward. Mouth-to-mouth, the best kind of information you can get.

And it's also because it helps not only with physical and mental medical conditions, but it also helps to enhance performance. So there's a wide range of people who are interested in what they're hearing about microdosing.

Have there been any actual public policy shifts that you think have influenced people talking about it more like decriminalization or anything along those lines?

No, it's, it's kind of escaped all of that. Uh, decriminalization doesn't usually mention it. Uh, all the fusses about the research problems that, that the government worries about don't mention it. It's, I think of it more or less like Frodo kind of going very quietly towards the, the source of the problem and everyone else around him is, is, you know, horses and thousands of people and monsters. And he just keeps on going and people keep being interested. The other difference, I think, is that we have reports from 81 countries. So we're not talking about, you know, a United States fad or even a Western fad.

James, related to those reports, this is bringing up a little bit of déjà vu for me because I think when we were talking on the phone a few years ago, you had mentioned you have some kind of like a a database of reports that people have submitted of their microdosing experiences. Am I remembering correctly?

That is exactly what we have acquired over the years, literally thousands of reports. And most people are clear that when they submit a report, that's to help other people move, basically learn from them. And it's, it's how science actually works. You start with individual experiences. And then eventually you get a pile of them and these days you use statistics. But what we're working with is individual reports in detail about individual experiences. And we simply get a much richer and fuller amount of data and we literally have thousands of reports.

And where do those reports live?

You mean like online?

Yeah. Do you, do you publish them?

Oh, first of all, everyone's anonymous, including their country. And we simply, uh, compile them and we, we correspond with some people to get more information. Um, people set up their own groups. There's, uh, trainings being given throughout, say for instance, South America. There's like 10 or 15 different individual groups. Working with microdosing. There's a whole nother set of groups in Europe. It's a kind of quiet underground without any fuss because what people are simply doing is, are they allowed to become healthier or saner or be able to, for instance, spend more time on a treadmill and improve their cardiovascular life. All of that is available without any of the experiences or excitement of high doses. So what one definition of microdosing is, it has none of the effects of high doses that excite everyone.

And also while we're on popularity, before leaving it, when, when Jim first heard about microdosing in 2009 and then started researching it in 2010 and started collecting stories and people started sending stories. After that, he started publishing a little bit and then there were magazines. And so it's kind of like a positive feedback loop, a virtual, uh, you know, cycle that keeps getting stronger. So the more people hear and the more that gets put out, then the more stories, what we call from, uh, citizen scientists, participatory citizen scientists come in and that gives us a bigger picture of everything that's out there. And so, it just keeps building and building.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah. I mean, for me personally, and I would love to hear you guys guess because I have microdosed. I actually have been microdosing for probably about, oh, 7 years or so. I actually rarely, well, I should say now, I never use high doses of any psychedelic. I strictly microdose. But, you know what the number one, I suppose the number one reason that I microdose on a typical week? Because there's all sorts of reason of creativity, focus, et cetera. But, you know, the number one thing is for me?

Sleep?

Workouts.

Yeah.

Like, workouts, sure.

And, I mean, we'll get into this later about LSD and ultra running, But in terms of a pre-workout aid, I have found nothing that is the equivalent of a small dose of psilocybin or LSD, especially when paired with some type of a blood flow precursor, you know, like arginine, citrulline, et cetera. So we, we, we can get into that a little bit later, but a lot of people say or think, and, and I've even said this myself. When asked about what microdosing is, I say, "Well, it's a sub-perceptual dose that you really can't even feel, a very, very small amount." And, I think maybe I say that because people get worried that they're going to see whatever purple fairies and green aliens and go all psychedelic and go back to the '60s or something like that if they take a little bit of a microdose. So, you define it like that to make people feel safe, I suppose. For one reason. But do you guys think that's an accurate way to describe it?

Unfortunately, having invented the term subperceptual, it's a lousy term. I'm very sorry. And it's going to be there forever. What we're now saying is it doesn't have any perceptual psychedelic effects. So what we now say, it's just below the horizon and it has its own set of effects, which are not similar to higher dose psychedelics. So it's a little bit, you know, when people say, I'm afraid I'm gonna see giant anacondas like you do with ayahuasca, it's a little bit like saying, well, I had a half an ounce of alcohol. Am I gonna be screaming drunk and throw up and fall down? And the answer is not likely. It's really too low a dose to affect that part of the system. What we're finding is, and think of it not as even a pharmaceutical, not even as a drug, but as a vitamin. And as a vitamin, it affects the whole system. So when you say it improves your workouts, you're talking about a huge number of different systems all operating on their own and synchronously. That's different than something which, you know, affects, one, you know, affects your liver or affects your stomach. So we're talking a very different world. And The one thing that we can say to people is, if it isn't working for you, the way you'll notice is you don't notice anything. And if it is working for you, all you will probably notice, particularly if you're healthy, is you're feeling better. You're trying to be a little more cheery. You're nicer to the person at work who doesn't deserve it. When you go to the gym, and actually we have a lot of reports, You'll do one more set of reps. You won't, you know, you'll, we have some running stories which you probably have too, but wonderful running stories of people simply improving their time without ex— with, with feeling no extra effort.

Yeah, no, no extra effort and often a reduced rating of perceived exertion due to the mild painkilling effects of something like a microdose of, of LSD or or LSA used for running.

Another example is like coffee. When you have coffee, you know you're, you've had some, it's, it's sort of like that for a lot of people. They are aware that they have taken something. And this gets back to one of the problems that we might not speak about, which is why it's so hard to blind psychedelic tests because even with a microdose, you're usually aware that it's a little different. But as Jim said, there's no substantial changes of consciousness. You don't have any qualms about having your ordinary day. Nobody knows that you're on something.

Yeah. I mean, and my take on it is I really don't want to use something if I can't feel it. I mean, there are certain things like, you know, you might take omega-3 fatty acids to stave off cardiovascular disease or reduce triglycerides. And it's not as though you can tell if you take, say, a couple capsules of fish oil before lunch. Right. So, so there's some, some things that fall into the category of I'm taking this because it's good for me, but I can't feel it immediately. But, but something like a microdose, for most of the reasons that you'd take it, you want to perceive it, whether it's creativity or focus or you definitely perceive compatibility or anything like that.

What you perceive is all the different ways you feel better.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

So it's similar. Let me give you a different similar. The difference between getting not quite enough sleep. And getting really enough sleep, you feel the difference. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But it's not anything you can say, well, what exactly are you feeling?

Yeah. Yeah, I agree. And before we get into some of the, like the, you know, practical usages of microdoses, I think there's a few terms that are thrown around a lot that might confuse people. There's 3 in particular I can think of that I would just love to hear your guys' take on. I hear neuroplasticity, I hear neurogenesis, and I hear default mode network thrown around a lot. People are like, "Yeah, I'm going to take this, going to downregulate the default mode network and increase my neurogenesis and my neuroplasticity." And everybody nods like they understand what that person's talking about. But, can you clarify what that actually means and how it's related to microdosing?

Sure.

Neuroplasticity refers to the brain's ability and the body to adapt to change. And that's happening as populations of neurons and individual neurons— and this is a bad term— but are either wired with each other or unwired from each other. And so when there's more neuroplasticity after you've taken a psychedelic, then there are actual physical changes that happen to your neurons. They're structurally different, they communicate different. And so different parts of your your brain are able to talk to each other and your body in ways that they aren't otherwise. And you're also able to pare down connections that aren't serving you anymore, let go of things. So your whole being is in a plastic state, a term first used by William James a long time ago. Neurogenesis means the creation of new neurons. And as we have Andrew Huberman saying in one of his podcasts, at most, that's 1% to 2% in humans of the game we're at. It might be less than that. There might be some going on in the hippocampus, whatever. But generally speaking, there's not a lot of neurogenesis in adult humans, but there is a lot of neuroplasticity. And the default mode network refers to your ordinary sense of self and how the brain is configured when you're not really focused on something. It's the way sort of your connections normally are. And when you're in a neuroplastic window, the default mode network is turned down which means that different parts of your brain and neurons and populations of neurons can talk to each other in ways that they normally don't. So, and there's also this idea of there's more entropy in the brain. So the mechanism that suppresses entropy is turned down. So there's more going on. You have more different parts of your brain that can be accessed. And we would talk about accessing different senses of self as well.

Yeah, I suppose that inverse correlation between neuroplasticity and the default mode network would be the one downfall or complaint I have about using a microdose for a workout. And that is that during the workout, I'll typically have anywhere from 3 to 4 times the number of ideas and creative concepts that I need to follow up on later. You don't know how good a job I'm now doing it saying, "Hey Siri," or "Start Note," or "Remind me about," just hands-free while I'm working out because I will often just get a flood of very helpful, useful, creative thoughts that develop beyond what exercising can do to the default mode network, right? You do get a little bit of a downregulation just from exercise itself, but when paired with microdoses, that's the one complaint I have. I leave a workout with about, you know, 5 to 10 new things on my to-do list.

This is a feature, not a bug. You realize that you're able to access a more creative self and yeah, it sounds like you're, you're just going with it and making the best advantage of it.

And I want to personally apologize for all those extra ideas because undoubtedly we are responsible for your creativity and we, we regret it deeply.

Well, I have a pretty good daily routine because I finished my workout around 9:30. I don't have my first meeting until 10:30. So, I'm usually spending breakfast writing down things, following up on things, et cetera, you know, whether or not I've had a microdose. So, one thing, the elephant in the room before we jump into some different protocols that I'm sure people are wondering about is the legality piece. I mentioned decriminalization earlier. But I think there's probably some confusion because, for example, mushrooms, psilocybin, LSD, they're generally illegal in most locations, but other things people microdose with like San Pedro cactus or Amanita muscaria mushroom, those are often legal. So how do you guys tackle the whole issue with legality and how do you talk about that?

Oh, it's— understand, like a great many federal regulations, it doesn't make sense and it's a mess. That's a good start. And let's take a look just briefly. Peyote, major alkaloid, mescaline, illegal. San Pedro cactus, major alkaloid, mescaline, legal. Why could that possibly be? Because the people that wrote the law didn't know anything about ethnobotany or botany or much else, and simply used the words, you know, what they could find really easily without knowing much.

I need to clarify, San Pedro is legal to own and cultivate. If you extract mescaline from it and you're holding that mescaline, it is still a Schedule 1 subject and it is illegal.

The thing it can, it can be a decorative cactus in the house though.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I did a test once, which is, could I buy psychedelics on Amazon? And several of my morning glory seeds, which contain LSA, which is a weak form of LSD, readily available. And there were two companies I liked. One said in all the reviews, which is what Amazon is fun about, boy, it was great on the back fence. It really made it beautiful. I put it around and it's making a hedge. And then the other company, everyone said, hey man, this is really cool stuff. I really like these seeds because what they were doing is putting them in, soaking them in water and using them as a psychedelic. So the law is, is generally it's illegal to improve your health in certain ways.

Yes. Yeah. It reminds me a little bit, by the way, of Delta-8 versus Delta-9 THC.

Oh yeah.

Delta-8, heavily regulated. Delta-9. Like, you know, my son, I was, I was on a website looking into this. I think my son was 14 years old at the time and he was sitting beside me at the table. I'm like, my son at 14 years old can order as much Delta-9 THC as he wants to that would get him high as a kite off of, you know, any of like 100 different websites right now. And yet the Delta-8 THC is heavily regulated. It doesn't make any sense. It's as though the lawmakers are simply ill-informed.

Well, the law is the law. And the other thing is psilocybe mushrooms don't know they're illegal. And as a result, there are 200 species which have psilocybin in them. They grow on every continent but Antarctica, and they are very easily grown at home. And so we're seeing a shift from people microdosing with LSD, more and more psilocybin because it's much more available locally.

It wasn't always easy to grow, but now while it's illegal to actually have psilocybin mushrooms, it's not illegal to purchase the spores and it's not illegal to get the grow kits. And lots of people have succeeded now, which wasn't the case 2 or 3 decades ago.

Yeah. Yeah. It still seems like it is a little bit. I'm sure we'll get a ton of people writing into the podcast, leaving comments, et cetera, asking, where do I get this stuff? It still seems like it is a little bit like the high school parking lot. You know, you gotta ask around, order some stuff, grow some stuff, et cetera. Like, you know, there are a few websites. I mean, I've talked about a few before. Like, there's one nootropic company, they're called WooQio, right? And they have a bunch of different nootropics, and one is called Bliss, and I think it has about a quarter gram of psilocybin in it. And I'm— I don't know how you can just go on the internet and buy it, but you can. I don't know how much longer they'll be in business, but there's people doing it.

What we found, and it's kind of strange, is it's amazing how easily and often people kind of write and say, help, I've never met anyone that's ever taken a psychedelic and I really want a microdose. Where can I go? And we say, you know anyone who's ever smoked marijuana? Start asking. And a couple of days later comes a note saying, Thanks, Ben.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But how important is, I guess, you know, this is the type of question I get a lot from older, more cautious individuals who get concerned if they hear to ask around about whether or not something is pure. Like, let's say psilocybin mushrooms. If someone gets those, what's the likelihood that they might be contaminated or a bad batch or something like that? And the reason I ask is people They're into peptides nowadays. You get a bad batch of peptides, you can get a surge of toxic lipopolysaccharides in your bloodstream that leave you feeling like you've had sepsis for 24 hours, you know? So, so I think people are, you know, concerned appropriately about it.

Well, there are, there are tests that, that we recommend people get and it's, they're available and they're described, a couple of companies discussed in the book and can be found online, which is psychedelic tests for psychedelics, tests for mushrooms. Uh, we also now have a new test which tells the strength, uh, which is quite impressive. Um, it's oddly enough a question we don't get very much. So, so in a way we can take the position that we don't break any laws. And, um, I guess perhaps none of us are probably old enough to remember, um, when alcohol was illegal in the United States. It was never unavailable.

Mm-hmm. And the other thing here on the safety issue is there is a kind of bright line where we tell people don't buy any pre-made gummies or chocolates in gas stations. There was a whole thing over this last year with a product that sent 110 people to the hospital and there was an FDA recall and they were combining all sorts of things and it was unsafe. And so, steering away from these gummies and chocolates that you have no idea where they came from or where they made seems to be a wise choice. Yeah.

I think some of the homebrew stuff, definitely. I don't even know how these people get my address, but I'll get boxes that show up at my house with packages and it's like a hand-wrapped bottle of wine with a label that says, "Hey, this is my new brew infused with ayahuasca, psilocybin, and I threw some cactus in there for good measure. Gonna be producing it soon. You gotta try some, brother." And frankly, those, those tend to wind up in the dumpster. But yeah, there's, there's a lot going around. So you do need to be safe. And the, and the book goes into that.

You simply need to be sensible and safe and understand that one of the great advantages of microdosing is you're taking very, very little. And for most people, the only issue they have is, um, that it didn't do it, that it wasn't a miniature high dose. And it isn't a miniature high dose. It is a very safe dose. And if it has a negative effect, such as some people have a, have a little bit of nausea because of the physical parts of the mushroom, our recommendation is cut your dose in half. That handles about 80% of people's complaints. And nothing is good for everyone. And if it doesn't work for you, You haven't done much to your body one way or another.

Yeah. And painting with a broad brush, you know, 1/10 to 1/100 for many substances compared to what you'd use for, let's say, a heroic or a journey dose or anything like that.

More like 1/10 to 1/20, although we do have cases of people going down a whole order of magnitude or sometimes two and they're still having effects. Yeah.

I suppose, you know, an example that would be LSD, you know, 100 micrograms might be something someone would use for for a trip, 10 micrograms is a trip. Yeah. Yeah.

7, 12 micrograms is a microdose. And I have that span because we're different.

Yeah. Yeah. Let's talk about that. Let's jump into some actual compounds. LSD is very interesting. I interviewed an ultra runner who told me that the lion's share of professional ultra runners are using microdoses of LSD not only because of the focus-enhancing effect but also because of the pain-modulating effects. And this surprised me, and I learned this on the podcast with Anthony Kunkel, an ultra runner. I'll link to it in the shownotes that the shift in fat burning and beta oxidation with LSD rivals just about most of the compounds out there that shift what's called your respiratory quotient, the ratio between carbohydrates and fat burnt, meaning LSD quite literally turns you into a fat-burning machine of your own fatty acids, which of course, for someone out running for long periods of time who wants to spare glycogen and spare carbohydrate, is a pretty useful hack. So, with LSD, how would one go about microdosing with LSD and what would they expect from something like that?

Again, microdose with LSD. LSD is available usually in a blotter, which is a little piece of blotter paper, uh, scored in little teeny squares, and each little tiny square has some amount of LSD on it. And let us say it has 100, which is what we used to do. You then take 100 micrograms of LSD, you put it in 100 drops of distilled water. You now have a, a, a basically a liquid which has 1 microgram per drop. If you're measuring, say, 7 micrograms, it's 7 drops. Pretty straightforward.

Oh, so 1 microgram per drop. Okay. So what I'm, I guess what I'm saying is, let's say you were to take 10 drops, then 10 micrograms. If you were to take 20 micrograms, correct me if I'm wrong, but there's a pretty distinct difference between something like 10 and 20 as far as making for a great workday and making for a very, you know, all over the map, hey, look, there's a squirrel jittery type of work.

It's not quite that abrupt, but let me give you a very clear story. It's this guy in sales. He's microdosing, taking about 10 micrograms. Life is good. He's feeling better. Whatever is his problems, or they're less. And he says, as we sometimes do, If some is good, more must be better. So one morning he takes 20 and he goes to the office and he goes to the sales meeting and he's sitting in the sales meeting and he has a revelation, which is he doesn't care about the product. And then he sits there a little while longer and he has another revelation, which is he doesn't care about sales either. Then he does something very wise. He leaves the meeting and he goes home and he doesn't take too much again.

Right. Where is he? He could have done, he could have gone and quit his job.

Ben, I would say that, so I like using LSD microdosing for working out too, very much on my every other day at the gym.

It's great.

What I notice is that if I take 8 micrograms, I'm fine. It's a micro dose. If I take one more of my drops and I'm at 10, 11, 12, I'm really not microdosing anymore. I'm having, you know, my consciousness has changed. I'm beginning to have psychedelic thoughts and experiences. And so I really know what my limit is. And if it's more than that, for me, it's no longer a microdose. It's moved into the mini dose zone.

The general thumb is if it feels like you're starting to come on, you're starting to take off, you're starting to have slight psychedelic twinges, then you just told yourself you took too much and don't do that again. If it's seriously too much, you do what everyone does in the psychedelic world when they take too much, is you stop doing what you're doing, you make yourself safe, you go quiet, you enjoy nature, and you ride it out. But again, we're talking at the small end, even if it's a slight overdose.

I think in the world of medicine, the term taphophylactic response is given to the, the getting used to of a certain compound, the body's gradual need for higher and higher dosages to feel an effect. Is there a similar effect with microdoses?

If I could pronounce it, I would say the anti-whatever you just said.

Okay.

Is, is the, the curious thing about microdoses is that people after a while take less. And after they take it for a few weeks and it does whatever they wanted to do, they then take a few weeks off. That's built into the dosing system. And when they start again, very often they take less. So it has, it has, it has an anti— psychedelics in general are anti-addictive, but microdosing in particular, what we notice is the body needs less of it to have the effects that you desire.

That surprises me. And because I've talked with many people who say, yeah, I started off with a quarter gram of psilocybin and now, you know, I take a gram to get the same effect.

And, you know, then— Yeah, but they're trying to get a psychedelic effect.

Okay.

They're basically saying, how can I get high on what I'm doing? Microdosing, if you're starting to get high, it's too much. So, at least our experience, you know, and I have a lot of, a lot of experiencers out there. It's more common to take less. And some people say, well, I'll take more and see how that works. Again, they're staying within the range where it's clearly a microdose.

And also we addressed this possible tolerance question by having the protocols that we recommend the most, having at least 1, if not 2 days in between when you take a dose and then taking time off after you've been at it for 7 or 8 weeks.

Talk to me about those protocols. How, what's a, what's a protocol look like?

Well, protocol is a classy word for a schedule. It's, it turns out with microdosing early on, it was clear that people said, I felt really good when I microdosed and I feel really good the next day. And then it kind of drops off. So we had a 2-day effect. So the suggestion was don't take it every day. It's not a pharmaceutical. Pharmaceutical, remember, suppresses symptoms, and as soon as it's out of your body, the symptom returns. Psychedelics are improving the way the system functions, and you use only enough to get the functional improvement you want. So we developed— I developed a protocol, which was the first time that every 2 days is great. Then I needed to find more information, so I asked people not to take it on the 3rd day. So they could come back to their baseline. So I would get new information on the fourth day and the three-day schedule or protocol, one day on, two days off. People found they liked that, and that is now probably the most popular protocol worldwide. Also popular is obviously every other day. Uh, but in every case, What's curious about microdosing is it is definitely not an everyday event. That's a, that's misusing or overusing or wasting the psychedelic.

Now, what if you are, what if you are microdosing with different compounds? We have a mutual friend who introduced me to a protocol in which you take a microdose of one compound on day one, a psilocybin-esque compound, a microdose of an LSD-esque compound on day 2 and a microdose of more like a cactus on day 3. And you cycle between each of those 3 days during the course of a month. What do you think about something like that?

Well, the image that comes to mind is, well, I have rum on the first day and then I have vodka on the second.

I was, I was going to use that same analogy, but I didn't want to, I didn't want to equate microdosing to alcohol, but yeah, I didn't either.

But as you can see, we all immediately know that there's something in common in all those drinks, which is the alcohol level. And in microdosing, the psychedelic level is really what we're looking at. It won't do any harm to take it to do that kind of cycling. But let us say we have very few people. You have different friends than we do. Okay. So I really don't know whether that would be any better than simply doing it as As a single item.

I mean, got it.

It's on the reports that we've gotten. If somebody is seriously interested in working with the health condition and microdosing, less is more. So you want to do the most conservative protocol to start. You want to do the Fadiman protocol. You're on day 1, you're off day 2, you're off day 3. You want to keep the dose really low when you start and you want to take time off after a while. So, you know, the opposite is this. People want more, right? The more, more, as one of our friends call it. And that's the interesting thing here. We're starting with such a small dose. We take time off and it gives people time to sort of feel and absorb and understand what they're doing. And these are the people who have the best results.

Ben Greenfield: What do you think about the concept that you microdose for a certain period of time? I've also spoken with people who said, well, I heard about microdosing, so I decided to do a protocol. I did an 8-week protocol. I did a 12-week protocol. How do you think about that versus treating it more like nutrition? Meaning you don't say, well, I'm going to eat for 12 weeks this year and then take the other number of weeks off, or I'm only going to have vegetables on 2 days of the week. How do you think of it in terms of something you do only for a certain number of weeks per year, cycling like a bodybuilder would with a growth hormone? Versus something that you'd use every week of the year?

Well, what we've found, again, we don't have as many opinions as we have information. And one of the curious things, as microdosing became popular in other countries and in other cultures and with other points of view, almost every group I knew of came to the notion of take it for a while and then take some time off. The time off is the body integrating without any support what it is that it has acquired with the help of microdosing. That seems to be what people prefer. Now, I do have one group, a wonderful bunch of people. Woman got excited. It, microdosing ended her long depression. She said, I told my, all my friends who were depressed to microdose. Many of them did. Everyone's, almost everyone showed improvement. And then here's my question, Dr. Fadiman, which is some of the people stopped for a few weeks and said, well, I'm no longer depressed. I'm no longer microdosing. And I have other friends who stopped for a few weeks and they said, my depression started to come back. And I said to myself, God, is that great science? And I then said what we would all say, which is Secretly, of course, I haven't the faintest idea. So I said, what do you think? What can you tell me about these two groups? And we talked for a while and it turned out that the group that got over their depression and went on with their lives, their lives were working pretty well. The people who became depressed again, their lives weren't working very well. So they had reasons to be, if not depressed, at least sad, morose, Lonely, et cetera. So really it's a different question than the usual kind of pharmacological question.

Hmm. Interesting. And, and what about, uh, this guy Paul Stamets? So, you know, he's been on the Joe Rogan Show a few times. I think he says he likes a 4-day on, 3-day off. And I think his protocol is, uh, psilocybin, some kind of a blood flow precursor and, and niacin or something like that.

Niacin, flushing niacin. Niacin for the opening, the dilation of the capillaries. Paul, Paul also has said 5 days on and 2 days off. And at one point I said, Paul, which is it? And he said, you can't be too rigid. And I thought, okay. And what he's found is that a lot of people like that protocol has longer time off and a more intense buildup. And what we've found is some people who, who write to us and say, I'm on a Stamets protocol. I like a lot of it, but, and then whatever the problems are. And I say, well, why don't you try taking it less often and giving your body a better chance to use it over, say, a 48-hour period. And most people write back and say, thank you. That was very helpful. So Paul's, Paul's stack, it's called a Stamets stack. And he named it, unfortunately. I did, I didn't name mine, thank goodness. Seems to be very good for a number of people. Again, what we're seeing is this isn't, this isn't a pharmaceutical, and one size doesn't fit all even closely. And there are a couple of other protocols out there. Every Other Day, as I've mentioned, and there's another one called the Intuitive Protocol, which is how do I feel every day? Um, what we're seeing is if you're dealing with a substance that's fundamentally safe, you can experiment and see what works for you.

I noticed in the book you have one called the Nightcap Protocol. And I think some people think that microdoses are kind of like caffeine because if they give you lots of focus and creativity or workout energy, that they might keep you awake. Is there any research or do you guys have Any anecdotes or reports of the impacts of microdosing on sleep architecture?

Well, I was on the same place you were when I first heard about this. It was people in Holland that were using it for people with nighttime issues. And I thought, that's crazy, 'cause it obviously makes your daytime work better. And then I realized I was imagining it was a stimulant, as if that was the only way the body could work better. The fact is there's dozens of ways which the body can work better, and there are different systems which take over at night. It turns out that if you have a substance that improves your system, literally it improves your daytime system in the daytime. And if you take it at night, it improves your sleep. It actually increases dreaming. And again, it's a, it's a relaxant and a you feel calm. So it actually has the same effect, which it affects the whole system, but the effects are depending on what system is operational.

So, so two things about that. We do have a friend who is an ADHD coach and works with business executives, and she has discovered that if they take it the night before, they end up having really good days the next day. It's kind of the right balance. And then the other thing, if someone is concerned, because there are the very rare person who will be overstimulated, they should try that NIICAP protocol the first day when they don't have something important they have to do the next day in case you're that very rare person who is overstimulated and can't sleep.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah. I think probably I was a little bit jaded because until I came across the concept of microdosing, I would classify myself as a user and even an abuser of psychedelics just willy-nilly taking massive doses, often in competitions against friends to see who had the highest gram intake, et cetera. And I always associated that type of use with, of course, really poor sleep. Like, I'd never have a good night of sleep after a journey or during a journey. And when I began microdosing, I tried it a few times before bed, and I would say the only thing is not only no impact or better sleep, but great dreams.

Yeah. So, there we are.

Did you see the fit in the book where there's actual research that if people are doing the full Phatamin protocol, day 1 on, day 2 off, day 3 off, that their sleep on the second night is statistically improved by quite a bit?

Yeah. Yeah, it was fascinating. And what time of day were they dosing? Was it a pre-bed dose or—

This was a pre-bed dose. And these were all healthy, males. This was a study in New Zealand and they were all wearing sleep, you know, sleep monitors so that their sleep was not their opinion. And this was basically a statistic. And the fact that they got better and more sleep the second day was a really, a genuine scientific laboratory-generated discovery.

Yeah, it's fascinating. You know, you mentioned when we were talking about LSD, something called LSSD. Lsa, what is that?

Lsa, lysergic acid amide. LSD, lysergic acid diethyl amide, is a biologically available— I mean, it's in morning glories and it's in Hawaiian baby woodrose seeds. Yeah, right. Hawaiian woodrose seeds. And it has— it is— the effects are identical to LSD. Except it's about 100th the strength. And when it was discovered, Albert Hoffman, who created LSD, was absolutely convinced it could not appear, you know, in, uh, in plants. So here we are. And again, uh, experiments done with a great many morning glory seeds, uh, found two things. One is morning glory seeds do have LSA. And do work. And two, most of a morning glory seed is horrible, indigestible, awful-tasting seed.

Yeah.

Not recommended. It's, it's as if Grape-Nuts went bad. So it's, most people have found that if they do it as a tea, it's bearable.

Okay. When you make the LSA or when you get LSA these days, are these type of things synthesized or are, are they literally just extracted You know, from morning glory seeds.

Nobody seems to like LSA enough. And the, um, so it's extracted and again, um, there's, there's recipes all over the, the, you know, the web, which basically are grind it up, make a tea and add some lemon because that predigests it a little. And, um, and try not to taste it. So there's a curious— psychedelics are among the most terrible tasting things that nature has ever produced. They're a wonderful concoction of peyote and ayahuasca, you know, you know, dried mud mixed with engine oil kind of flavoring and so forth. And there is a question that some of us have is why is nature making them so unpalatable?

Well, I would say built-in modulation, right?

Maybe. It means you don't eat it by mistake.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's very intentional, aware, and mindful when using something like this. So, you mentioned ayahuasca, you know, that's a whole tourism industry now. People going to the Amazon and beyond to do ayahuasca retreats. I don't know that a lot of people would associate microdosing with ayahuasca. Is that something that you microdose with?

We didn't until we started again. There's a wonderful group in Peru that's formed called Microhuasca, and they were giving micro— these were a bunch of psychologists and scientists and shamans working together, chibibo shamans or shamans. And what they found is that there are two components to ayahuasca. One is called the vine, Banisteriopsis caapi, and then there's 100 other different plants that contain DMT. And when they're combined and boiled for 5 hours, it is what we call ayahuasca. They found that microdosing ayahuasca worked pretty well for people, and they were— other countries were getting interested. Uh, in certain South American countries, ayahuasca is legal, no issue, but others it was illegal. And what they went to the shamans, and the shamans said, just use the Banisteriopsis tappi, which is legal. In every country in the world. And they, and they said, well, how can that work? They said, well, the fact is Banisteriopsis does all the healing. And you say, well, why do we put in the DMT plants? He says, well, people like the visions and they want the excitement. Uh, and that's so that, but if you're really just interested in the healing, you don't need the You know, the DMT. So it's, the research is slight except for the thousands of people who've tried it.

What do you mean the healing?

All of the various effects that microdosing seems to have, uh, using LSD or psilocybin, it seems to be a similar level of healing.

But surely, surely there's, there's a difference in the, uh, the, the results or the feeling or the sensations across different categories of microdoses? Is there something different with ayahuasca that would make someone want to use that versus, or the Banisteriopsis cappi?

Yeah.

Use that instead of say psilocybin.

What we found is basically people in countries that prefer something natural and that the vine is available, legal, appreciate it. The little bit of research that I do know out of Brazil is that it has the same antidepressant effects that the other microdoses have, but we don't know too much about an answer to that question.

I think the vine is a bit of a serotonin reuptake inhibitor, and that's where it gets its biochemical efficacy from, but it doesn't hit the DMT, but it still works.

Got it. Okay. So people would, would experience creativity, focus, downregulation of the default mode network, neuroplasticity, neurogenesis. All those things that you listed with the microdose. Yeah.

When I started reading the reports coming out of South America, I kept thinking, wow, this is all the, so just like the reports that I'm reading about the psychedelics I know. And then when I had this wonderful kind of secret told to me by the Perú group that there are two, there are reasons for having the mix, but for just the kind of healing we're talking about at the, at the Silas, at the microdose level, the vine seems to be fine. So, that's all we know at this point.

Hmm. Guys, this is a big one. And I'm often filled in, you know, case reports, anecdotes related to ADHD, and a lot of people seem to have found great success using microdosing for ADHD. What do you think about that?

Oh, we not only thought about it, we made it like a, a major piece of the book. We have a whole lot of conditions, but we have some that we consider important. And ADHD is important because it's— the diagnosis is increasing. And curiously, there are people who want the diagnosis cuz then they can get prescriptions for amphetamines. There are parents who want their children in college to be able to get amphetamines. Also, the United States government— I can't speak for anyone else— has made ADHD a disability. Now, that doesn't sound like a great thing, but what it means in the school system is you are given extra time for exams. You may answer every other question on homework. It has a lot of advantages. So we have a very curious world in the ADHD.

Wish those rules existed when I was a little boy.

Or you can see why I was just told to go exercise.

And, you know, the government recommends Adderall for kids as young as 3 years old. And so, you know, on the big picture, the idea of millions of children being prescribed Adderall versus a world in which, you know, once they're off of it or, you know, tapered off, then they might be using microdosing instead and get better results without something that is potentially a lifetime addiction that has all sorts of negatives to it. I mean, that would be a better world if we could get to.

So what we found, again, uh, this is a couple hundred people discussing with each other, again, over something like Reddit, their own ADHD and microdosing questions. The general feeling is my amphetamines actually work a little better than the microdosing. However, and then they list all the terrible things about of the amphetamines, aside from just without even talking about their addiction, they talk mainly about the crash and the irritation and the upset and so forth. And what people have said, until I had microdosing, it was worth it to have all those side effects to be able to function. But if one has a choice between something that's 80% as good and has no downside, that's what a lot of people are picking. And that's where we are now.

And what, and what are people microdosing with for, for ADHD?

Either LSD or psilocybin. Now, keep in mind, 95% of our reports are psilocybin or LSD. So the general answer to almost any of those questions are either one, and there is a difference between the two. We do have science here. We have hard science. They did a huge study on all the physiological differences. They found, hold your breath, psilocybin takes less time. Okay, terrific. Thank you, science. So, different study, all the psychological possibilities, cognitive abilities and retention and memory and so forth. And they found, hold your breath, psilocybin lasts shorter time.

Okay.

That's science. But if you go out into the, what we call the real world, um, it's generally understood and agreed that for problems which are, have an emotional base about relationships, um, about, uh, all kinds of internal personal issues about worthlessness or depression, psilocybin is more for opening the heart and the feelings. More, not complete. If your problem is more cognitive, uh, as one young man said, I only microdose when I have a coding problem. Okay. Intellectual use, thinking through philosophical, religious. LSD is preferred by the general drug-using psychedelic population. Um, most people don't have a choice. And what we found in general for most uses The two are interchangeable. Yeah.

I think painting with a broad brush, I've heard the same thing. Many people prefer LSD for, let's say, that focus bout of work, diagramming, planning, scheduling, what might often be categorized as a little bit more of like a left-brained activity. And then when they're ready for creative writing, art, music production, et cetera, they might favor psilocybin or something that might be associated traditionally with more of a right-brained type of experience.

Well, another difference between the two, and this is what people are saying, is that LSD is more of a nonspecific amplifier. It will take you where you want to go and where you want to focus. Psilocybin, the mushrooms, will bring you into your emotions, your heart. It will give you what you need, not necessarily what you want. So even at the microdose level, there's, there's, there could be more, it's more like you're working with a plant teacher that is going to help heal what you need to have healed one way or another. And then there's also the question of even at the microdose level, some people have minor gastric stuff with, with psilocybin, and you can handle that by doing something called lemon tapping, which is having it in lemon juice for 25 minutes, which predigests it and converts this psilocybin into psilocin. But LSD, you know, it's just, it's this very little body load because it's so much smaller and it, you know, it can be easier for people to deal with.

Yeah, that's a good tip about the citric acid vitamin C type of combination with anything that has the psilocybin.

Oh, and the other thing to know about that is that people who do not have as healthy of a stomach and intestines and are not able to, and liver and can't digest the psilocybin as well, they might need a little bit more than someone who's completely healthy, which is a kind of a strange thing. Well, just also the other thing about psilocybin that makes it tricky is that, you know, that most of the types that were out for a while, let's call them 1.0 strength, but now we have types like Albino Penis Envy that are 3x. So depending on what cultivar of psilocybin you're working with, it might be a lot stronger.

Albino penis envy. Who the heck is naming these things? I didn't make that up. We want more, more respect in this industry. We got to start changing up the names of these things. Geez. Okay, so does anybody ever combine the two? I mean, to kind of like get the best of both worlds, a microdose of both?

I'm sure people do. But again, that's a dumb question. I'm sure.

Oh, it's a cocktail. I mean, I mean, as far as what you guys have heard.

No, it's a cocktail. And Not too many people have the option, you know, have them both on the shelf. I can't think of anyone that's told me they've done it and it made any difference.

There are people who might combine either one, psilocybin, LSD with, with Amanita, because that's a completely different pathway. And if you take a very small amount, it has other positive benefits to it.

So.

I know people who do that.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure there's some psychonauts listening in who are going to jump into the show notes and give a case report. A lot of people also talk about microdosing for headaches, even migraines. I believe you mentioned migraines in the book.

At the moment, when people say I have migraines, I no longer do a little song and dance. I said microdosing will probably help. And what we have, and we've had it from the really early days, is people have less migraines of lesser intensity less often. They don't stop having migraines. But as a woman early on wrote me, I said, how are things going? I was able to track people more easily. She said, well, I had a migraine a couple of days ago for 36 hours.. And I wrote a little, you know, compassion note and she said, no, no, no, no, no. I used to get 20 a month. That's, that's the model we're seeing. So that if I were asked what's the one, one major issue or one major condition that people should look to microdosing first, it would be migraines.

And also in the headache realm are cluster headaches, which we have a write-up on, also called suicide headaches. There's this fantastic organization called Clusterbusters, and when they were starting out, the board members and the founders, they were taking 5 or 7 grams of psilocybin. That was the only way they knew how to do anything about their cluster headaches. But now, their recommended opening dose is 0.25, uh, 250 milligrams of psilocybin, which is a microdose in our range of what we recommend. Some people need more than that, but they're recommending you start at that really low. It's been remarkably effective for people with cluster headaches.

A lot of people might be wondering about timing. Like, let's say I start to get a headache or I just want to start the workday. How long does it take for a typical— I don't know, you mentioned like 8 micrograms of LSD, for example. How long before you plan to use that for its intended use would you dose?

Very similar to what I would do for a high dose, which is Biologically, it has to go through the system, has to go through the liver. It takes 30 to 40 minutes to, to start its effect. If you use, if you do what Jordan talked about with using lemon juice, that's predigesting. It'll come on in 20, 25 minutes. And then it will last as long as either psilocybin or LSD tends to last. So it's not different than the high-dose world in that way. What most people who microdose, they're not, they're not, they're not trying to aim for a peak moment. They're saying, just as they have a morning coffee, whether they get up early or late, it's something useful for the day. And that's so you take and your day begins.

Yeah, I'm typically drinking my morning cup of coffee or tea and let's say I microdose with psilocybin. I'm usually drinking that as I'm up around 6:00 or 6:30 going through emails and the like. And then, I'm usually in the gym around 8:00 or 8:30. So, for me, it's usually about an hour and a half after I'm starting to work out. Yeah. So, you guys, this list is incredible. Anorexia, anxiety, asthma, autism, bipolar, body weight reduction, quitting cannabis, cerebral palsy, headaches like we mentioned, color blindness, the common cold, dizziness, eczema, epilepsy, pornography addiction, lacking libido, sleep, stroke, stuttering, traumatic brain injury, which of course you hear a lot about more and more these days, people using psilocybin in a situation like that, PTSD, and the list goes on. It's a fantastic book as far as the practical nitty-gritties of how to microdose for certain conditions. And this podcast is not meant to be medical advice. I would speak to your physician. This is purely for informational purposes only. But, the book is called "Microdosing for Health, Healing, and Enhanced Performance." The shownotes are at BenGreenfieldLife.com/MicrodosingPodcast. We've only briefly touched on the mass quantity of information in the book, but James and Jordan, this has been fantastic, you guys.

Well, many are delighted to spend time with you. Because you have a whole universe of interest and, and results that we don't. And please put in your show notes, if people want to send you a report about any of their uses, particularly if they think it's unusual, that's why we wrote this book is so that the thousands of reports we've read could be used elsewhere.

And if you send us interesting things, I assure the people who write you, Yes, they're very valuable and they can send that to us at the website, which has an easy to remember URL, which is microdosingbook.com. And there's a place there that people can anonymously send us their stories or ask questions.

Fantastic. And I'll link to that in the show notes too. If you got too many URLs jumbling around inside your head, it's bengreenfieldlife.com/microdosingpodcast. Get the book. It's interesting. Again, this is all purely for informational purposes only, but there's definitely some things in here that will make your life better. So guys, thanks so much.

Thank you, Ben. Thank you, Ben. This is great.

All right. Have a fantastic week, everybody.

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