Microdosing Psychedelics, How To Use LSD, Shrooms, Iboga & Other Plant Medicines, Legal Psilocybin Retreats, Truffles & Much More With Third Wave's Paul Austin.

On this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

And that's what happens when you try to fit these profound, incredible substances into the typical medical model. Because the typical medical model is you're here for an hour, you pay for the hour, and then you leave. Whereas what psychedelics are introducing is it's a model of care, it's a model of support, it's a model of love. So all of these substances, when they're used, need to be done in a set and setting, in a container that supports and nourishes the individual as they're moving through this. This idea of the third wave is this is the time where we can perfect how we utilize these substances.

Performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show. Hey, what's up? It's Ben Greenfield. I can't wait for you to get a hold of and listen to today's episode with Paul Austin. Paul Austin is kind of a pioneer in the psychedelic space and he came up to my home to do a big podcast on microdosing and psychedelics and plant medicine. And that's what we're going to delve into today. So Paul's been around the scene for a while, starting at 21 years old and in Michigan. He traveled all over the world, like 60 plus different countries over a span of half a dozen years, kind of studying everything from plant medicine again, the psychedelics to microdosing. He has a very comprehensive website called Third Wave where he logs really good information about, about all of this. And we're going to dive into all of that on today's show, so I hope you enjoy. Dude, Paul, how'd you like that carrot cake smoothie?

Yeah, yeah, Delicious.

Yeah, that. That's actually Shameless Plug. That's actually a recipe in my cookbook. Is it that launches now?

I have to get.

That launches on Monday, actually, at the time that we're recording this. So carrot cake smoothie I use. So I kind of cheated. Like, I used to like, actually use actual carrots, but I had some of that farmer's juice, carrot juice in the fridge. So I use their, like fresh pressed carrot juice and then I use nutmeg and cinnamon and sea salt and vanilla stevia, like all the things you'd normally use to kind of like spice up a carrot cake a little bit. And all that goes in the blender. The carrot juice goes in the blender. A shit ton of ice. Because as you taste, I like it like super, super thick.

This isn't a smoothie.

Isn't it? It's like an acai bowl with a spatula. Sometimes you get to the bottom, it's a little melty, liquidy, and then you drink it. And then what else was in there? A little bit of collagen, a little bit of creatine, which actually I like creatine too because there's some recent research that came out. We always know creatine is good for strength and power and muscle building and yada, yada, yada, and mental function. But then this recent study came out that also showed it. You, when you are in a sleep deprived state or when you just want to operate as though you've had a full eight hours of sleep. And sometimes you're like, this morning I got up super early. And so the two things that help you when you're in a sleep deprived state are creatine and nad. So I took some NAD this morning, put some creatine in the smoothie and then put a little bit of almond butter in there. About two heaping teaspoons of almond butter. This was enough for two people. Kind of careful with the omega 6 fatty acids. But you got to get a little bit of almond butter smoothness in there. And then I'm trying to think what else was in there. A little bit of beet powder, just, just to give it a little bit of extra kick. Vasodilatory effect. I tasted that beetle. I'll make a super, super smart sounding for for today's show and then blend it, blend it, blend it. I blend it for like two or three minutes because I like to just get it. So my biceps get a workout because I use a little stir stick like you saw me with that blender. I go, I go through a blender like every four months. Just smoke them. And then the toppings are the key. You get the right toppings. So for the carrot cake smoothie, what do you do is you put it in the bowls, right? Then you go unsweetened coconut flakes that I keep in the freezer because I like them kind of cold and crunchy. We did a few little chunks like a dark chocolate that was the Lily's Stevia dark chocolate. I also keep that cold. Some people freak out because they say cacao loses its flavor when you keep it cold. Kind of like wine. But I actually like, not only do I like my red wine a little chilled, I like my chocolate little chilled. And then my friend and your new friend Dr. Patrick Love from the Wellness Tree in Spokane was over at our house last night for A little party that we threw and he made us like a keto chocolate pie. But the bottom of the keto chocolate pie was all of his gluten free graham cracker crust. So we broke little chunks of that graham cracker crust off. And if we hadn't had that, I would have used like a paleo granola or something like that. Because basically you're taking what the crust would normally be on the carrot cake, or not really the crust, but the filler of the carrot cake and you're sprinkling that on top of the smoothi. And then, and then we.

Manja, Manja, Manja, Manja.

Pretty good.

You did some email. I read a book. Now we're here at the podcast.

Yeah, yeah. And so by the way, I'll apologize in advance for those of you listening in because Paul and I might rocket ship to the moon in terms of our intellectualization of today's show because Paul's rocking the Apollo. Right? So the Apollo is on you. What, what mode did we put that in?

Social and open 50%.

Social and open, 50%. I always jack it up to 100%. Yeah. So social, social and open. David Rabin, who I interviewed on this show about the Apollo, he said that he thinks that most closely mimics mdma. So, so kind of like social and open as the name implies. I would say maybe, maybe a little bit of like a cocktail esque effect. Like it like an alcohol effect, but you know, it, it makes you more open. And then what I am sitting on underneath my bed butt right now, because I'll bring it up to the mic and you guys will hear it because I can't wear it around my head. You'll hear like a little like staticky sound. And so I'm, I'm using the HAP B, which is the one that uses more of a magnetic signal. The Apollo is more of a sound signal. The HAP B is a magnetic signal. And I have that one set on focus, which is a nicotine. So simulating the, the effects of nicotine, like the wakefulness effects of nicotine.

And we also have nicotine gum.

And we also were chewing nicotine gum.

So this is just going to be.

And we punished a really good workout today on rounds we did a cold plunge. Yeah, we did. For one, one person's on the air dying for four minutes, all nasal breathing at maximum sustainable pace, while the other person for those four minutes does 15 burpees, 10 kettlebell swings and five kettlebell goblet squats for as many rounds as they can do while the other person jamming for four minutes on the bike. Then you switch. And so we did 32 minutes of that. It's like four rounds each of that. Hit the C pool, had the carrot cake smoothie. Now we're here.

Now we're ready.

You ready?

I'm ready.

All right, so for those of you wondering who Paul is, I'm gonna put all the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com Paulaustin In a nutshell, there's probably one website that I think is probably the best website out there in terms of just a massive collection of audio podcasts, articles, and all the way down to. We'll talk about this later. Like books and coaching certifications all related to psychedel, plant medicine, microdosing. But almost like, you know, you have like the full guide to microdosing with lsd, the full guide to, you know, journeying with psilocybin, just like any molecule that you'd ever want as opposed to, you know, any of these forums that a lot of people go to, like Reddit or Arrowwood or Blue Light. Yeah, Blue Light. Where people are just like, you know, so called psychonauts are sharing what they experience, what kind of stacks they found to be useful. Like your website is more written from like a professional content standpoint where it's, I mean, I would say the best way I can describe it is it's a little bit more trustworthy in terms of not just, you know, it'd be like going to the library and getting a book on periodization for muscle gain versus going to a bodybuilding forum. Right. Your, your website's kind of more like the book that's actually got the, the vetted information in there. So I appreciate that. I think that was how I originally found you, was just finding some good articles on Third Wave and then I started following your feed. I forget how you and I actually wound up connecting in person.

Podcast. I interviewed you for the podcast in 2017 or something like that. It's called Third Waves.

Yeah, the Third Wave podcast. And I want to hear more about your stories rather than laying out some extensive bio. I actually want to hear your bio in your words. But I would be remiss not to ask you before we jump in, what does that Third Wave stand for? Like white Third Wave.

Yeah. So First Wave was the indigenous use for thousands of years. Right. Like Amazon, Ayahuasca in the Amazon, the E. Lusinian mysteries in ancient Greece, Soma in ancient India. Right. So there's this long historical context of humans and plant medicines. So that was really the first wave of psychedelics. And then the second wave of psychedelics was the 50s and 60s, you know, when LSD was invented in 1938. And then psilocybin came on the scene soon after that when Gordon Wasson published on the front page of Life magazine. And then of course, we had Leary and Richard Alpert and Ken Kesey and you know, that whole second wave that really burst onto the scene in the 50s and 60s, and we as a culture are like, LSD, psychedelics. What is this? And so there was the backlash and you know, the war on drugs that came after that and the Nixon administration. And so the third wave is really the integration of those two. Okay, how do we combine the wisdom, knowledge of thousands of years of use throughout humanity with cutting edge science about specific use cases in, you know, 2021 for how this can be applied? And what is the integration of those two to ensure that these become responsibly integrated so we don't have a similar backlash as the second wave.

Why was there a backlash? And I asked that because I, you know, I guess I ask it because I've heard that like the, like the whole, let's say like 60s flower child, what was the big. Not the conference, but it was like the Burning man type of thing that they had back in the Sixt, the big festival. What was the name of the festival?

Woodstock.

Yeah, Woodstock. Like that. That whole crowd was potentially posing a problematic issue for the US government because it was a bunch of people who were almost like sticking it to the man or defying authoritarianism or could potentially not be sheeple because they were woke due to their use of plant medicine. Is there something to that? Or were there other reasons that the second wave kind of got shut down or that plant medicine in general is vilified during that time?

Well, there's a few intersecting threads there, right? The first thing is it was the counterculture. It was the other, right? So they sort of positioned themselves as we are opposite to the mainstream. And so whenever you position yourself as the other, as opposite, then there's naturally going to be like a fight in that. So I think that's sort of the foundation of it is we are the counterculture. And then the counterculture was associated with the Vietnam War, right? So all the protests that were going on against the Vietnam War, the left, you know, being like, we don't. We shouldn't be in Vietnam. We shouldn't be doing this. Right. That was all associated with it too. And then, of course, all the stuff that was happening in the 60s around race riots and, you know, all that, all that sort of stuff just made it like, you know, the John Ehrlichman who was in the Nixon administration basically said in the mid-90s, hey, we couldn't make being a hippie illegal, we couldn't make being black illegal, but we can make the drugs that people were using illegal. So we could make LSD illegal and we could make heroin illegal, which is what the black people were using. And so this sort of kicked off the. The war on drugs. So I think that that was like, core to it. And then, I mean, if I get a little bit more meta, you know, for hundreds of years, the core drugs that were used in Western civilization, in our industrial culture were nicotine, tobacco and alcohol. So anything that wasn't within that paradigm, nicotine, tobacco and alcohol, cannabis, psychedelics, whatever else it is, it posed a threat to the sort of dominant culture and the dominant kind of mainstream way of being. And so since that was. It was the other, you know, the Nixon administration was like, we can't have this anymore. We can't have people waking up and realizing that they are God or they are part of this universal consciousness. We want to kind of keep it right.

Because that's kind of like the collective experience that a lot of people have. Not necessarily when they microdose, although many microdosing protocols like I've used, for example, like Wachuma or San Pedro or something like that. When microdosing, it actually does make you more social and open and communicative, and it's great for a date night or a party or a time when you just want to be more. More open with other people. Almost like, well, in a way, loving others more. Right. And same thing with a microdose of psilocybin, for example, I've found myself to be more open, more honest, more transparent during discussions. But when you. When you do these deeper dives, these deeper journeys, you. You wind up having this, you know, it's almost in the same way that we were talking about in the sauna last night.

Help.

People who will use DMT often tend to see, you know, whatever purple fairy or praying mantis. And it's not as though it's something that is unique to that individual. Like a whole bunch of other people experience the same thing. Seems like almost everybody will do, like ayahuasca or psilocybin or something like that, come back out of it thinking more of humans as like this collective race that's here to care for the planet and care for each other and love each other. And it's, it's, it's totally antithetical to an authoritarian regime or a country that might be trying to dominate other countries. It's more. Almost similar again to that book we were talking about, Charles Eisenstein last night, the Sacred Economy and how money needs to be reinvented to be based on gifts and mediums of exchanges based around gratitude and caring for the planet, et cetera. But it is, if you think about it back to the second wave, like a very hippie esque type of psyche that you tend to create through these type of experiences that you could see, you know, a government that wanted to dominate or someone who wanted people to just line up in a row and do what they were told might actually be a little bit fearful of, in terms of that becoming like a popularly used drug.

And this, I mean, we track this back. There's this book published, the Immortality Key by Brian.

Yeah, Brian Marasco. Yeah.

And so he talked about how, you know, when the ancient Roman Empire needed to basically create a political system that could be widespread, they also cut out plant medicine and made Christianity the official religion of the Roman empire in like AD 307 or something. So for hundreds of years before that, the Greeks and the Romans were doing these private ceremonies with plant medicine, especially as part of early Christianity as this cult. And then once it was like, okay, we really want this to be sort of mainstream. We can't have everyone thinking that they have this Gnostic connection to God. We need to keep it within the priestly class, if you will. They cut down on it. So it's also, it also has something.

To do with meaning that plant medicines would be limited to the priests to like the inner circle of a religion and not to the masses, that type of thing. Like the Eucharist, for example, the taking of bread and wine as part of communion. I believe that Brian's argument was that the wine wasn't just wine.

It was.

Was spiced and infused with the type of things that would allow for, say, deeper connection to God or opening of the third eye or the ability to be able to, maybe not in a fully Gnostic sense in terms of total disconnection from the physical body, but definitely being able to use those type of substances to get into an altered state of consciousness that would allow for more meaningful prayer or meditation or scripture or connection to God. That was all eliminated basically to just be something that the authorities had access to or even.

And then at some point that no.

One had access to. So then it was marked as like a sin or forbidden that nobody had access to.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And the ancient Greeks, what they said with these Eleusinian Mysteries is that life would not be worth living without kykeon, which was the ancient beverage that they drank, the thing that was infused with ergot, which is the same thing that LSD is made from. So they knew how central this was to feeling like life was worth living, to feel like there was purpose and meaning, to feel like there was a connection to something greater. And so for 1700 years, you know, since 300 AD, we've been kind of like it's always been in the underground and hasn't been fully accessible. And that's why what's happening now in 2021, with the medicalization of psychedelics, with Oregon legalizing psilocybin therapy, with decrim happening, this is like a massive experiment about what would it look like to have psychedelics once again in kind of the mainstream, available and accessible to a lot of people. And this is why in my own sort of thread, when I started third wave in 2015 almost six years ago now, I focused predominantly on microdosing as that public entry point, because frankly, these high dose experiences are very disorienting and so not everyone can actually hold that space to have that connection. And yet these substances are really profoundly useful.

Well, isn't that, isn't that traditionally the way that a heftier use of a substance like this was viewed is that certain people who were called or qualified or able to, I guess, almost like handle that type of dose responsibly were the people that would use it and then come back to the rest of humankind or their community with what it is they'd experienced, what they'd learned, shared that with everyone else, but that it wasn't necessarily something everyone used as much as what select individuals who had the responsibility and the proper care and training to be able to use, would use and then come back and share what they'd experience with others. Almost like a. Like an oracle, right?

So in the Eleusinian Mysteries, right, the ancient Greek mysteries, they would do it once in their lifetime, right. Plato and Aristotle and all these major thinkers of Greek civilization would go, they would experience this and they would have that experience, but they could actually never talk about it. If you talked about the actual experience when you came back from it, you would be excommunicated.

Could you talk about what you learned during.

You could talk about what you learned, what you kind of like. So, so there's a Philosopher Peter Schusted Hughes, who talks about how Plato's core philosophy about non duality was informed by psychedelic use.

Right.

So he. That was, that was like the bedrock of all of western philosophy, right? We say everything is a footnote to Plato and he was informed through that by this psychedelic experience. So he could talk about. Right. People would come back and go, these are the insights that I have, but they could never talk about. This is what actually happened at the Eleusinian Mission.

Okay, so in terms of like, this is what I use. This is what the dosage was.

So that was, this is what the ceremony was like.

Closely held, secret.

It was all secret. Yeah, it was all a mystery. And that was a huge part of it. And that's, I think when we come back in today's day and age, this is the value that psychedelics bring to people as they help them get back in touch with the mystery or source or God or whatever it is. And so much of us, we kind of have this deep soul longing for faith and for what is the unknown. Because of the scientific method and because of tech and because of. We feel like we have all the answers. And when we think we have all the answers, that's what often creates suffering because we don't have that ability to expand and really trust in this greater power that, that's watching over us in different areas.

And that is basically scientific. Logical rationalism or scientism is this idea that everything must be stripped down to its explainable parts. And at the end of the day, we find the ultimate source of where everything came from. The quark, or what's smaller than the quark or what's smaller than that. And anybody who has, for example, or at least in my own experience and people I've talked to who have, for example, you know, journeyed with something like, like dmt, you kind of experience that like you, you can see like individual particles and sound waves. And you're digging and you're digging and you're digging. And you know, for me personally, I, I got to the point where I could almost like strip apart a, a tree down to its individual constituents and see every last component of it. And then at the very, very, very end when I was like, oh, wow, this is, this is like I'm about to see the source where everything came from. Then it was just like, boom, blinding light, nothing. And you realize coming out of that experience, you know, for me personally, I already, based on my faith, my Christian upbringing, have a strong belief in God, have no doubt that God exists and have no doubt that God is the source of the universe. And so for me, it was more verification or almost like a more beautiful understanding of that. But for many people, you know, and even my own facilitator, who I've worked with for plant medicine, says that when he works with people, he's like, I've had many, many atheists come to my facility, and none leave just because you realize, oh, there is, at the end of the day, this unexplainable source, this unexplainable beginning that everything was founded from. And that's where this clashes with science, because it can't be explained. And when somebody goes down that road and has that realization, it stands in stark contrast to a lot of what you were just alluding to, that idea that everything must be explainable, when in fact, you know, it's not. And so Jamie Wheal is another author in addition to Paul, who you brought up. He just wrote a book called Recapture the Rapture. And he talks about how human beings basically have these elements, these sacred elements woven into culture, you know, for eons of time. And it really is the things that are nowadays vilified in a sense, right? It's sex, drugs and rock and roll, right? Which. Which is, in a way, the sacred sexuality of two human beings being intertwined in a way that's nearly unexplainable in terms of the connectivity that occurs there on a deep spiritual level, right? Which has now been just, like bastardized with porn and polyamory and cheapening of sex and prostitution and all the things that destroy that drugs, which are, in fact, these amazing molecules that you and I are talking about right now that can be used for great good and for personal insights and even productivity and creativity, also vilified because of misuse or because of misinterpretation. And then rock and roll, right? What music, when combined with. With sex and drugs, used responsibly, I mean, like sex, drugs and rock and roll and people joining together and engaging around that for good, not. Not for evil, not. Not in a vice sense of those terms. I mean, it's a magical combination. And it's just something that I think scientific rationalism has driven us away from. And, you know, I don't know what you think about this, Paul, but Jamie talks about this a little bit in his book in that, you know, human beings crave that type of spiritual connection so much that, like, agrarian economies were built around the concept of, like, the agriculture being there for the fermentation capability of grains so that people could enter into altered states of consciousness and basically engage in things like the connection with God, like seeking that deep abyss in our hole, that eternal soul, or that eternal hole that wants to be filled by God, and the use of these substances to allow one to get closer to that state. If you step back and look at it, humans actually are really, really hardwired. Once we fulfilled Maslow's hierarchy of needs to enter into that state using things like. Like sex, drugs and rock and roll.

And then it can get too out of control, right? That's what happened in the 60s, right? We had the acid test of the Grateful Dead and Ken Kesey and, you know, the Merry Pranksters who were just dosing everyone on acid out in the west. And then we had Woodstock. And so when you bring all those things together, it's almost like we. That's why the Greeks had the secret container for it, because that way it kept contained in this thing and it. And it didn't sort of interrupt the normal everyday flow. But once that comes up and interrupts the normal everyday flow, that's where we go, okay, we need to. Need to lock down on this because it's just. It's bringing up too much. It's exposing too much. There's too much chaos, right? So even if we talk about, like Jordan Peterson talks about this, right, that balance between chaos and order, and in the 60s, it just got way too chaotic and so that we had to bring the order back down. And so that's why now in today's day and age Maps in particular, has focused so much on the medicalization of psychedelics.

The multidisciplinary was Associated association for Psychedelic Studies.

They're bringing MDMA through phase three trials for ptsd. They've raised tens of millions of dollars as a nonprofit to make that happen. And the reason that's so critical is because through that clinical trial kind of methodology, that is the order through which we're holding the natural chaos that comes from these substances, Right?

It's like the MKULTRA experiments done on the CIA operatives where they. I think in a nutshell, they would put them on lsd. Were they basically trying to get information that normally you wouldn't be able to get out of a human being by shifting them into an altered state of consciousness using high doses of lsd.

Well, they were trying to see, like, mind control. Can we use LSD for mind control? And so this is the dark side of psychedelic substances, is they are nonspecific amplifiers and they dramatically increase suggestibility. So if you use psychedelics within sort of a shadowy, dark container, then you can easily manipulate people, which is where we see the shadow elements of psychedelics. And that's why the container that we do these in needs to be so clean and pure and sacred. Because when you're in that state, you're suggestible to whatever is coming in. You want to make sure that you are connecting to something that is divine and not some sort of guru that's trying to manipulate you into doing X, X, Y and Z, right?

Well, a, that's one reason why something like MDMA couples therapy can be so effective, because you're essentially with your partner on truth serum, right? Looking deep into each other's eyes and sharing all your hopes and dreams and wishes and desires and fears and subtle annoyances that you might have with them, but in this very open space and then the information is just flowing in full truth, you know. And I think that can be effective for many couples to be in that space together, be in that altered state of consciousness together. And then, you know, when I was thinking about the MK Ultra experience experiments and how this ties into this idea of the oracle, right? So if you watch, let's say like the movie 300, right, where King Leonidas is climbing up the rock and he gets to those, those oracles at the top, and then they have, you know, they're on some kind of a substance and they are getting information about whether or not he should go to battle, you know, from an oracle that they've consulted. You know, if, if you look at some of these medicines, because I've, I've certainly been given the privilege of partaking in some different combinations of plant medicines that almost turn your brain into a 20x supercomputer. So not hallucinogens, but what would be called clarogenic substances, right, where you are experiencing hyper creativity, hyper productivity, and literally seeing things years down the line that you should or could be doing from a business standpoint or a personal standpoint or relationship standpoint and mapping out in a very productive way, like years forward of your life. That's actually been a big game changer for me in terms of my own personal and business success is the use of those type of component because you'll see things like, oh, by this date at this time, these are the six chapters of the book that you need to have mapped out. And this is everything that needs to be included in them, like just crazy stuff. But you could also see that being manipulated, right? What if the government or let's say the CIA were to hook like 20 people up, turn their brains into supercomputers and literally trap them in a room, matrix style, and try to harness a bunch of information, information that they could use, you know, for planning world domination or something like that. Like. Like there's all sorts of ways that this could go wrong.

Right, right, right. And so that's why, like, the. These are tools, right? Tools can be bad or tools can be good. And so the orientation of everything that we're using them for is to help people connect to divinity, connect to themselves, and then integrate that experience so they can show up as better partners, so they can show up with more vision and inspiration for their team. So they can, you know, just. I mean, a lot of it's healing, healing depression, healing addiction, healing alcoholism. There's so many, you know, it's a broad, broad use case. And we want to ensure that it goes well this time.

Right?

So that's the whole idea of this third wave of psychedelics, right? We've. We had the first wave for thousands of years. We tried it with the second wave. And the number of three, right? And the number of three is perfection. This is where the Trinity comes from. So this idea of the third wave is. This is the time where we can sort of perfect how we utilize these substances, or what I call the skill of psychedelics, to ensure that we use these responsibly, to ensure that they're used for purposes that help with morality, that help us to develop values and principles that help us to come together and create community, as Charles Eisenstein talks about in Sacred Economics. Right? Using these substances to actually reconsider our core values around the meaning of being interconnected, stepping out of the story of separation and reinvesting our time and energy into rebuilding the commune, to rebuilding community. Because that's so much of what our despair and suffering and disconnection is about in today's day and age. It's feeling disconnected. It's feeling like we just. We're just in this sort of matrixy world and we can't step out of it. And psychedelics help us to get above that parapet, so to say, and see, oh, there's. There's this beautiful future that we can create in the midst of a lot of existential despair. At this point.

You are correct also that it is difficult to be selfish or to at least develop selfish tendencies as readily when you are in a state in which you are seeing human beings as part of a collective race there for each other's good. It's like in the Bible, it says the two Greatest commandments are to love God and love others. And certainly for the second component of that, and I guess arguably the first component as well, it seems that many of these compounds help to shift you into that state more readily. And honestly, I think that's one of the reasons that God put them on this planet in the first place, is for that type of use. And just like anything, I mean, even the book of Proverbs in the Bible, it lauds the values and the virtues of honey and how great honey is and how sweet it is and how wonderful it is. And then later on, it tells you, yeah, honey makes you vomit. Too much honey is going to make you sick or fat or lazy. And so there's this idea of temperancy, of mastery of desires, of mastery of passions. Yet it's almost. And this is the way I describe myself as a hedonistic Christian, meaning that I enjoy a temperate, hedonistic Christian. I enjoy all God has to offer on this planet and all that he has created in. In a hedonistic sense. You know, in that, like, last night, right, like, we're partying, we're in the sauna, we had a little cannabis. We hit the cold pool. We had keto chocolate pie and slow smoked pork ribs and wine, and we played music and we did some meditation and, you know, then, you know, plates and bags and.

Well, yeah, we 110 and bags.

We played some cornhole, you know, and that was a very, like, hedonistic experience. And it was not an amoral, hedonistic experience. We weren't having an orgy and sacrificing babies to some unknown God. Like, we were just enjoying God's creation. And then this morning, we were out there sweating out in the driveway and shivering in the cold pool, and I was doing my meditation, prayer and journaling and all those things that you might consider to be temperancy and mastery of desires. I was fasting for at least 12 hours after that feast last night. And I think that both can be had to a certain extent, using the same type of, I guess, almost like the hedonistic calendaring approach that Jamie Wheal talks about in a book like Recapture the Rapture. But I personally get a lot of flack for that, dude. For me, being a Christian who also embraces with responsibility the fact that God created all for good and that you can responsibly engage with just about any of these things. And I would at the same time say that that, like, heftier doses of some of these substances, it's not for some people, like, I I do agree with the idea that some are called and some are not. Some are chosen and some are not. Not to sound haughty or narcissistic, but some people, from either a genetic standpoint or a serotonin standpoint, or where they're at in. In life in terms of responsibility and addictive potential, I think this stuff can be dangerous for a lot of people. And then I think there are others who can engage with these substances. Substances, and then come back and share some really good shit with the rest of the world that they've discovered through their use of such compounds.

Yeah. And some people are in the archetype where they're really in that sort of orderly phase, that orderly sense. And so to throw something in like a huge dose of a psychedelic will just totally interrupt that, and that's not necessarily for them. And yet those people can benefit from, for example, microdosing. Right. And you and I have both done microdosing extensively. So even doing something like microdosing, if you're not going into the super high doses, can still be beneficial for that. And so I think this is all about, you know, this gets back to how we as individuals develop an intuition for what is best for us, because so much of our conditioning is around, you know, whether it's diet, exercise, sleep, relationships. We're supposed to be doing X, Y and Z. And what psychedelics help us to recognize is how much can we honor that inner intuition about what is best for us and slowly start to open that more and more and more so that we can really live in a way that's free, in a way that. That we feel aligned with this sort of inner truth that we have. All of these things is what psychedelics help with.

Yeah, we've had a very esoteric discussion thus far, but I want to do some brass tacks, too. Did you microdose with anything before our podcast?

I did not, no. I just did the smoothie bowl because we talked about doing it.

Maybe later we're going to go play frisbee golf and do a little bit of. So I think this afternoon, for example, we'll take a little bit of psilocybin, maybe a little bit of lion's mane, something to open up blood flow like beetroot or something along those lines. And then our plan is to go play Frisbee golf or to hike or to paddle board in nature. And the reason that we might use something like that prior is increased sensory perception. Colors become more vibrant, sounds become more audible, smells become better, or sometimes your visual acuity is better when you're throwing the Frisbee or the joy and the dopaminergic response to seeing that paddle enter the water and feel the rush of water past the board as you, as it sweeps through. It's not to over quote this fellow, but as I think Jamie, it is who says anything you can do high can do better. And I in no way am saying that to enjoy life you must have substances in you. But that's an example of how you and I would responsibly use a microdose to enjoy our afternoon. Or for example, this Monday. I told you, my, my cookbook launches this Monday. So I'll probably have like a 14 hour workday on Monday. Just, you know, jamming away, replying to emails, you know, fostering the team, make sure everything goes right. So that's a case in which I would take something to really enhance productivity and focus. You know, I might do a microdose of like 10 to 20 micrograms of LSA or LSD on Monday morning. And you know, those are just a couple of examples. But for you personally, I'm curious to hear, as a guy who's kind of steeped in this, what a microdosing protocol would look like for you, if you would care to walk me through, let's say, a week in the life of Paul when it comes to the use of such substances.

So the way that I started microdosing was in 2015. I heard about it on the Tim Ferriss podcast. Jim Fadiman, who's been a guest on the show and talked about it. And I had previous experience with psychedelics, like when I was 19 and 20, had high doses of LSD and psilocybin and noticed that after those experiences I always had that sort of afterglow effect where things just felt easier. I was more in flow, I was more connected. I was even more disciplined about meditation or diet.

Not, not during, but in the days.

After, in the, in the week or two week after, right after having those high dose experiences. And so when I heard about microdosing and some of the benefits that people were experiencing from it, I thought back to that afterglow period and I thought, hey, microdosing seems like a really interesting tool to elongate that afterglow feeling. So that instead of it just being a week or two weeks, it could be a month or two months or three months.

Right.

So the way that I first started microdosing was twice a week on LSD, anywhere from 15 to 20 micrograms, just as a Way to get a feel for it, to see how it helped with. And I had two core intentions for that time. One was to help with flow and productivity. So to wake up in the morning and get into the zone and things that I was working on and the business that I was building at the time, just to cut out distractions and be really in it, be more articulate, be more refined about what it is that I wanted to create. And then the second core sort of intention was around social anxiety and just instead of using something like alcohol when I was going out and spending time with friends, I would instead microdose with LSD in particular LSD to help with that sense of feeling connected and feeling open and feeling like I could be vulnerable with people. And so those seven months went phenomenally.

Well and quite, quite notably with far less toxicity. Far less toxicity, far less liver damage.

No hangover, Far less.

Yeah, like way cleaner than say alcohol.

And it's not even like it's not far less damage. It's also a ton of benefits as well.

Right, right.

Like microdosing is anti inflammatory, it helps with neurogenesis, it helps to increase BDNF growth, it helps with general sort of mindfulness and being able to direct attention in certain ways and places. And so now that I've been microdosing almost six years on and off, Right. With lsd, with psilocybin, with San Pedro, with cannabis, I've tried iboga a couple times. Typically my microdosing whey is now two or three times a week. If I'm with lsd, it's usually twice a week because LSD is more dopaminergenic. So LSD typically has a bit more of a sort of manic effect. Right. It can be really intense. And so only twice a week if I'm microdosing.

And also tolerance tends to build for that as well as potentially like a dopamine desensitization, which is honestly why this is quite trendy these days. People do dopamine fast, right. Where I'm just going to eat potatoes for three days and then food all of a sudden is way better. Or I'm not going to use any substances for a couple of weeks or watch funny movies or do do anything that really induces pleasure in a very stoic sense of the word, not in a form of masochistic self denial for life, but in a way that allows you to kind of reset some of those dopamine receptors. The same way you might quit drinking coffee for a week out of every month to keep Your adenosine receptors sensitized. So, yeah. So something like microdosing with lsd, you wouldn't do it every day?

No, twice a week at the most. With microdosing psilocybin, I'll usually do it three times a week, every other day. And then the intention is simply do it in the morning first thing. When I wake up on an empty stomach with a probiotic or with rhodiola or with, you know, some other supplements. I usually don't. I usually fast in the morning, so I don't eat anything. So it's almost always on an empty stomach. And then sometimes that's on a day off, I'm going hiking, I'm spending time with friends, I'm going for a bike ride. I'm doing what we're going to do later today, which is just sort of attuning my sensitivity through sensuality in the world around me. And then there are other days where it's like, this is a brainstorming day. This is a day to sort of have that sense of stepping back and seeing what the bigger picture might be. And this is where we get into microdosing versus mini dosing versus museum dosing. There's different ways that we can calibrate there's different ways that we can calibrate our dose level based on our attention for the day. Because if we're wanting to have more of a flow state, a microdose is going to be better for that because it allows us to maintain focus and attention and stay grounded. But as you know, like, the difference between, let's say 200 milligrams of psilocybin and 500 milligrams of psilocyin is significant. When you're on 200 milligrams of psilocYbin, a true microdose, it's easier to stay grounded and focused. But if you have more than that, let's say 500 milligrams of psilocybin, you tend to feel a little bit more like the 50,000 foot view.

Right?

And so I love those dose levels for like going for a long hike, having a journaling session and being able to zoom out and go, what does the next month look like? What does the next three months look like? What does the next six months look like? Maybe in the next three years, five years, depending on the dose level, getting that sense of, of touching, getting back in touch with a higher level vision and just sort of aligning that north star about where is it that I'm heading personally, professionally, as the two intermingle and intertwine. And then the microdosing helps with just the day to day of doing the tasks that need to get done to sort of accomplish or reach that larger vision of what I've set out for myself.

That's a really good description. I don't think I've heard such a good description before of the subtle nuances between a small microdose and a larger microdose. Because in my own experimentation I've certainly found that to be the case, but wasn't really able to explain it the way that you just had. It's as though the larger microdose, let's say 500 milligrams of psilocybin. It's not as though you're tripping, but you do turn into wanting to engage in very big visionary tasks. Tasks. And sometimes it can be disappointing if you realize you've taken too much. And you're supposed to be, let's say, working on the nuts and bolts of an article, but instead you're more in a mindset where you're able to map out the idea for the next 10 articles but not work on the one you're supposed to be working on. Whereas like a microdose, you're churning out amazingly creative sentences in that one article you're supposed to. And I'm obviously explaining this from the perspective of someone who's a writer. And so that's what I've certainly experienced. But yeah, the way that you've just explained it is perfect. Like if you take a little bit too much, it's not as though it's destroyed your day, but you may have to reinvent the way that you approach that day as far as what you choose to be productive in based on big vision versus smaller tasks. Smaller, more focused tasks. So another thing I wanted to ask you was you said that you've used a lot of different, different such substances for microdosing. You mentioned Iboga, for example, which I've also used as almost like a pre workout, you know, like the South African bush extract. That in large doses is probably one of the more intense, if not the most intense, intense trips that one can engage in. What other substances have you microdosed that perhaps fly under the radar or that people may not be as aware of or DMT is an interesting one, or stacked together.

Yeah, DMT is an interesting one. So in 2017, I was giving a talk in Bushwick in Brooklyn after a conference with Hamilton Morris and a few other Duncan Trussell and a few other folks. And Talked about microdosing DMT in that session. And then someone came up to me afterwards and was like, thanks for mentioning dmt. Vape pens, here's a free vape pen. And so then for the next three or four months, every now and then I would start my morning meditation with a microdose of NN DMT. Not 5 Meo. 5 Meo is the unity consciousness, the toad. That's much more intense. But NDMT is where we see aliens and praying mentises and. Yeah, and those sorts of things. So I would start with that. It was just a 10 to 15 minute thing, but it would instantly align sort of all my chakras and send me into deep, deep meditation. And then I would come out of that like really refreshed and rejuvenated.

How long would you meditate with something like that? I'm actually, actually asking because I have an NDMT pen downstairs and I just sitting down there somewhere with all my, I have freaking pantry full of stuff downstairs. But I haven't really even messed around with it. So how did you use it?

Like 20, 25, 30 minutes, depending how long you want to stay in that state, would be one or two hits that you would take with that. And then you can instantly drop into a deep meditation. Combine it with the Apollo Neuro on the meditation and mindfulness setting and then just get into that state like really, really quick.

Okay, I'm gonna have to show you the biocharger later on because I often will meditate with the biocharger, which is light, radio frequencies, rife frequencies and pemf, this giant you'll. You probably saw it downstairs when you were in the sauna room. That thing when you meditate in front of it, I mean you literally feel it just sweeping up and down your body. And now that, now that you filled me on the Apollo Neuro, what, what I'll do is I'll, I'll try a little bit of that NDMT pen at some point next week. I'll do the Apollo nora but I'll probably do it in front of the biocharger and I'll fill you in on how that goes. That's interesting. I actually really like to combine technology like the new calm, the hyperbaric chamber, breathwork, the sauna, sometimes the cold pool, the Apollo, the hap B with some of these substances. And even for example, the massage that I get once a week, I'll use typically a little bit of ketamine, often with a little bit of THC prior to relax the body, but it's on a full sound acoustic table with pulsed electromagnetic fields under the table and typically an oil diffuser at some point around the table. So you're getting the aromatherapy. And then I've also got what's called a key underneath the table. And the key qi is designed to emit a signal very similar to the type of signal that you might get if you're barefoot on the planet for Earth or absorbing much of negative ions. So I'll stack all that stuff together. But I honestly, I don't know about you. I kind of like the combined use of the so called ancient technologies with the modern technologies. And I think that's something that has yet to be really heavily tapped into or systematized in the use of any of these medicines or micro dosing protocols.

Well, in 2018, as one of the projects that I did, So I started third wave in 2015, which is the platform and the podcast and the guides and everything you had mentioned before. But I also, in 2018 started a legal psilocybin retreat center in the Netherlands called Synthesis.

Oh really?

And we did experiences for 750 people with psilocybin truffles. Because it's legal in the Netherlands. We rented out this beautiful church that was built about 100 years ago that had been renovated into a modern wellness center with attached apartments and a sauna and a beautiful ceremonial space. We would host 15 people there at a time for these high dose experiences. And the way that I came up with that name, Synthesis, was precisely what you mentioned. How can we create an experience, a container for people where they can combine cutting edge technologies like let's say float tanks or let's say being in a church and that sort of thing, with these age old practices of psilocybin and breathwork and meditation. And what are the synthesis of those two coming together to sort of inform this new way of being Right. And now even what what synthesis is doing is they've rolled out a medical program.

So it's still there that this retreat.

In the Netherlands, well, we put it on pause because of COVID but we pivoted and rolled out a clinical training program where we're training 100 clinicians to be approved to have licenses in the state of Oregon to be able to do psilocybin therapy when that becomes legally feasible. So we're looking at, you know, know, closing on a certain place there in Oregon to host experiences and retreats and essentially looking at how synthesis can combine those to create even new models of clinical care. Right where Clinical care so far has been like in a psychiatric office or in a hospital or something. That is not even what your brother was talking about last night. It's just not that conducive for real healing.

So my brother Zach, he's like, yeah, I did ketamine and I didn't really get much out of the experience. So I told him my first ketamine experience was with Dr. Matthew Cook, a wonderful physician who's been on this podcast multiple times down in San Jose. And it was like a two hour dinner with him the night before, talking about what to expect and how the entire experience went. And then going to his office in the morning and doing breathwork and getting an NAD IV and cleaning out the whole body. And then you're shifted into this room with special Chinese lanterns and a rug and meditation cushions and a wonderful bed to lie down in, and a face mask and then two noise blocking headphones that you put on and then a slow ketamine infusion overseen by a nurse, and there's a voice recorder in the room. And then after the ketamine, you're still there for another two hours, just laying back, and there's a little journal beside you to write things down in. And my brother's like, yeah, I just like sat down and they just like injected me with a bunch of stuff and just like left me in this, like, medical room. And then I couldn't stand up that well. But then they sent me out to the parking lot because they're about to close, and I had to stand out there in the parking lot, figure out how to drive away in my car. I'm like, no, that wasn't. That was not academy. That was basically medical malpractice, not academy experience.

And that's what happens when you try to fit these profound, incredible substances into the typical medical model. Because the typical medical model is you're here for an hour, you pay for the hour, and then you look, leave. Whereas what psychedelics are introducing is it's a model of care, it's a model of support, it's a model of love. So all of these substances, when they're used, need to be done in a set and setting, in a container that supports and nourishes the individual as they're moving through this. So it's a total reframing of how we're viewing healthcare, of how we're viewing psychiatry, where it's not so much of a focus on the substance itself, if you will. But it's about the preparation, it's about the Container in which you're doing the substance. It's about the integration afterwards with the support of a therapist or a community. We really have to look at that holistic, integrative picture when we're working with these substances, because so much of what they're bringing up is stuff from the subconscious and the unconscious that we just. It's not the typical biomedical model anymore that we're looking at.

Yeah, I invested in Field Trip Health, which was. They've rolled out a bunch of ketamine clinics in Canada and are also opening in New York and in la. And they. They have a podcast you can go learn more about Field tripping, what they do. Yeah, field tripping. You were on that one run on Levy. Yeah. And, you know, I really like that approach. And during COVID they had to pivot a little bit. And I think they created an app that, you know, where you can actually, with your own ketamine, you know, you know, follow all the instructions in the app with special musical sequences, and you have, like, a coach who kind of walks you through the whole process in your home. And so I think there are ways that you can kind of combine enabling someone using technology and apps, almost like a telemedicine approach along with these type of clinics. But then you were telling me last night in the sauna about another clinic. I think you said it was Entheon, and they're doing like a DMT intravenous. Yeah, tell me about that. And as you're explaining, just opening the kimono for folks, I'm going to walk over to the fridge and grab a Zevia if my voice gets faint. You want anything?

I would like something to do.

All right, so fill us on Entheon. We're listening. Go ahead.

Okay. Okay, so Entheon Biomedical is a company that's out of Vancouver, Canada, and they are looking at intravenous DMT for addiction in particular. So the CEO Timothy Koh, who we had on Thirdways podcast, he started it maybe about 18 months ago because he had his own DMT experiences n DMT, not 5 Meo and DMT and realized that it could be a profoundly useful way to treat addiction, because unlike a psilocybin or an LSD, which can last for anywhere from 6 to 12 hours, with DMT, you can bring someone into that deep state of healing for addiction, and it might only last 20 or 30 or 40 minutes. And if you can titrate that through an intravenous sort of constant, and then you can actually calibrate how deep someone.

Goes into similar to what you do with ketamine. You can, you can open it up or back it off a little bit more if you're using intravenous instead of like oral administrative. Cheers. By the way, this podcast brought to you by Zevia Cream soda Ginger root beer, which I established last night, is wonderful with those Mezcal Tequila. And you've got ginger root beer, which is really good with like a coconut vanilla ice cream for a root beer float.

Oh my God, that is good.

Wow. Zero calories.

Zero calories Brought you by Zevia.

They actually are a pretty good company. They use like a really good form of stevia. They don't mix with a bunch of maltodextrin. I had the, I had somebody analyze the cans. It's actually got like low metals and it's clean stuff, so I don't know, I'm sure someday they'll find something wrong with it. And I'm calcifying my pineal gland or something like that. Yeah, it's not bad. So this entheon, basically they're letting you infuse dmt. So rather than getting that blast off to the universe type of inhalation that a lot of people experience and often freak out during, you're getting a lot of those same type of benefits, but with a slow infusion.

It's like the parallel or the analogy is psycholytic therapy versus psychedelic assisted psychotherapy. So these are the two core ways that psychedelic have been used in a therapeutic modality. Psychedelic assisted psychotherapy is the typical, the thing that Johns Hopkins and NYU have studied, which is high dose of psilocybin, mystical experience. And the stronger the mystical experience is, the more profound healing someone has for depression, addiction, these other things. The psycholytic is more like a mini dose level where the ego is still present, but it's relaxed, it's not near as rigid. And so you can do actually therapeutic sessions while you're on the dmt. You're not just totally in. In another space. Right. And so I think the balance between those two, the psycholytic is much less intense and probably better for someone who's overly neurotic or doesn't have a lot of prior experience in psychedelics. Whereas the psychedelic assisted psychotherapy is great for people who have significant deep issues that need to be worked through, and it can often accelerate that path really quickly because the experiences are so intense.

Yeah. Actually, I want to ask you something about this whole idea of the psychedelic assistance psychotherapy, because I often wonder how much of it is the psychedelic or the substance or the medicine, and how much of it is the integration. And what I mean by that is when someone goes through a process like this, especially if they're using, let's just say. Let's call this. Let's say you're using a drug, right, to fix a problem, that you have the mere nature of the fact that you're going to a clinic, working with a professional, taking this huge leap into the unknown to perhaps use some substance that you've never used before to go after some problem or addiction that you're experiencing. And then if you're in the right type of program, engaging in often weeks of therapy and talk therapy and sometimes weeks going in beforehand, dictates that there's a lot going on in addition to the drug or the psychedelic, both psychologically and legitimate, logistically, throughout this entire process. When I interviewed Dr. Matthew Johnson about the. The extremely successful nicotine addiction and nicotine withdrawal program that they did using their psilocybin assisted therapy at Johns Hopkins, he sent me the. The entire package that every participant had to go through. I have it all printed off down in my office. And it's extensive. It's like aromatherapy and logging and journaling and multi hour meetings, meetings with a therapist. And yeah, there's also psilocybin. But I sometimes wondered, and I wish there were more control trials where they say, okay, we're gonna do all this shit, but without the psychedelic, without the drug. And, you know, I'm just curious, you know, how much of it actually is the psychedelic? I question that sometimes.

I mean, it's a significant portion, especially now that this is sort of a new substance, a new way of looking at things. And what MDMA can do, for example, with the amygdala in terms of helping to mitigate its fear response, allows for those people who struggle with PTSD to be able to have this catharsis of the trauma that happens. So there's definitely an element of the psychedelic plays a key and central role in accelerating that process. And there's no doubt that the support before and after, particularly after, plays a really critical role to help ensure that people can integrate those experiences. So it's not just another drug experience that you're having, but it's something that becomes solidified and part of your. Your new self or whatever it might be.

That's the hardest part for me is explaining this to people who are kind of stuck in almost like that first wave or second wave phenomenon of. I guess it'd be second wave of vilifying a lot of these Things, because they do view it as just doing substances or doing drugs and not doing the work or using the drug as a crutch or yet another addiction to replace an addiction that you've had is. It's almost like my gut response is always like, don't. Don't knock it till you've tried it, bro. I mean, really, until you've been in that altered state of consciousness and combined it in a responsible set and setting with the type of integration that's necessary afterwards. Until you've replaced that association that you have of cannabis being like a high school parking lot, taking a hit on a joint with, like, let's say, a microdose to enhance creativity for the day, or a couple of hits on a vape pen prior to sacred sex with your lover. I mean, like, it's just this idea that when I try to explain that to people, especially people who, like, grew up in the 60s or who have had bad experiences with these type of drugs, using an improper set and setting, it's like, it's so difficult to explain. You know, it's almost like the people who have done ayahuasca and come back with all these wonderful ideas, but they just just, like, vomit it all over their whole family, have no idea, and just can't understand, and almost like winds up driving them farther away from their family than closer because the other people just don't get the experience. It's been problematic for me personally, just trying to explain to people who don't get it, but also have no interest in even trying or using it because of the fear that they associate with it or the irresponsibility that they associate with it.

One, I think that speaks to people need to come into this in their own time, right? You don't want to, like, have to pull anyone or overly evangelize people to come into this because these experiences are so profound and often so challenging and difficult. Right? It takes a lot of courage to go into your deepest sense of self, to face a lot of the things that you hadn't previously faced. In fact, they did research at Imperial College that showed exactly this, that they compared typical antidepressants to psychedelics. And what antidepressants do is they activate the 5ht1a receptor in the brain, which essentially numbs you to things which could be helpful in the short term, but clearly not in the long term. Whereas what psychedelics do is because they activate the 5ht2a receptor, it actually is a catharsis. It forces you to go into your subconscious and Unconscious to face that trauma or that difficult experience that you had that's informing your behavior without your knowledge. And in facing that and going into that and having that catharsis, that's how you actually heal it, right? It's like to. You got to face the dragon to get the gold. So you got to really, really sort of go into these deep parts of yourself, this shadow, the filth, if you will, and that. It's not for everyone. Back to what we said before, right? Like, this is certainly not for everyone. It requires courage. It requires a really strong reason and belief into how this can help. And then if you have that courage and that ability to go there and you have the support, the prep and the integration, then it can be incredibly healing and incredibly beneficial. So it's. And this. This again gets back into our conversation, right? Like not doing psychedelics at all. I don't think that's necessarily great. But also, doing psychedelics too often can be disassociative. You kind of have to find that middle way, right? Working with psychedelics and thread that needle to ensure that they become responsibly integrated. And you're not just dismissing them, but you're also not overly reliant on them. You're able to integrate those experiences and move forward with them as a tool in the toolkit, but not being dependent on that tool.

And you're like, with Third Wave, you're training. Are you training facilitators? Like, you have some kind of program where you're like training people or training coaches to actually walk people through this kind of stuff.

So a lot of the programs that are now rolling out in the psychedelic space are specifically for the clinical use of psychology. Psychedelics, right, because of all the research that's coming out. Psilocybin for major depressive disorder, MDMA for ptsd. You know, MAPS has their own training program for clinicians, Synthesis rollout, a training program. There are several others. Because we have to train thousands, tens of thousands of clinicians in how to work with these substances in the next three to five to seven years as this becomes approved by the fda. And so that's a very clinical model. We're helping people with depression, addiction, things like that with Third Wave. In the program that we've rolled out, there's clearly a lot of use cases for clinical. But there's a lot of non clinicians, executive coaches, wellness coaches, life coaches, even medical doctors, counselors, therapists who are not necessarily focused on a healing perspective, but are looking at sort of a mind expansion or human potential. Right. How can people integrate these substances to become their best selves, to reach self actualization, to reach, reach their greatest potential? And so what we're bringing folks through.

Is to run a marathon faster. That's actually what Jim Fadiman told. He was like he was microdoser with LSD and now some dude like increases marathon performance by like 20%, which is great.

Right. These are tools for everything. And so what we're training coaches in is the non clinical use of psychedelics. And it's not necessarily a lot of these folks already facilitate, but we're not necessarily focused explicitly on facilitation. It's much more the general context of psychedelic substances. How you prepare, how you integrate, what's the usefulness for leadership, for flow, for optimal wellness? How do we set up ritual? How do we set up, you know, an experience and a container that we bring clients through? How do you even communicate to clients that this is something that you're aware of, that this is something that you're skilled in, that you're trained in and then, and then in. And we're rolling out the first cohort in like July 9th. So it's very soon.

And these are called like third wave coaching.

Yeah. And then what we're building for third wave in the back end of that is a directory. So right now on Third Wave we have the Guides podcast. It's a coach directory. It's basically a provider directory. We have coaches, we have clinicians, we have retreats and we have clinics and we're rolling out. That directory is sort of like the best of the best. If you're going to have a psychedelic experience, here's an individual, a coach or a clinician that you can work with. Here's a retrieval retreat that you can go to. Here's a clinic that you should go to.

So we're partnering with people that have been vetted and trained by going through your guys's.

Some of us, some of them like the coaches themselves. Yeah. So the people who then go through our program, not only are we providing the training for them, but we're also providing some of the marketing about. Okay, now that you've gone through this, how can you communicate to the public that you are trained in working with these really, really powerful.

Yes, that's actually, it's kind of similar to I did with the, with the Ben Grief coaching program. Different, not plant medicines, but we're more like hormones and endocrine system and gut and brain function. But then also what we do is a coach directory. We have a Coach liaison who connects the different clients that come to a coach that's going to be appropriate for them. And then the coaches are typically all required to be a personal trainer or a nutritionist or a registered dietitian or a physician. But then we dress up their knowledge with a working knowledge of basically, you know, everything. I've gotten boundless and just like my whole flavor of training and coaching and advising and it sounds like you're kind of doing something similar, but in the plant medicine sector. So I could say, okay, well, if I really want to work with a coach who I know has been trained using a lot of Paul's ways and some of what you see when you go to the Third Wave website, I can just go to this Third Wave.

Coach directory directory and find a coach.

And then similarly, let's say I've got like somebody listening who's a personal trainer or a physical therapist and they want to amp up their resume to be able to not only coach people for fat loss, but also, you know, be able to give people working knowledge of how to microdose effectively for productivity. They could also go through a cert like that. Yeah.

And so that's what we cover. We cover microdosing, we also cover higher doses. And then we're covering like non psychedelic modalities, breathwork, meditation, diet, sleep, leadership, all these things that support the experiences that we have when we're microdosing, when we're, when we're on higher doses. Right. And we're saying, hey, like you're a coach, you have all these tools that you're using as part of your toolkit. Psychedelics can be the most impactful one that you use to optimize client outcomes. Because so much of coaching is getting a clear sense of where the client wants to go, helping them to understand what objective they want to reach, and then guiding them through that path to reach that objective. And so if you have a tool like psychedelics that are shown through clinical research to improve neurobiology and to help with adaptability and to help with learning and to help with behavioral change, how can you then integrate them into your sort of protocol that you're using with the client, in addition to other things to optimize those outcomes? And of course, because they're accelerants, you need a container, you need to be trained in it. And this gets back to what we talk about with what is the Third Wave? Well, it's the responsible and intentional use of psychedelics. And if we want to avoid the same mistakes of the Second wave, Then we essentially need to train an entire like professional network of folks who can work with these substances in a really profound and meaningful way.

I'm looking at this other thing you have on your microdosing course. Is this for coaches or is this one for just like, that's more the general public.

So we've had that for about four years and we've said, hey, you know, we were talking a lot about microdosing. And microdosing is not just simply you take a little bit of LSD twice a week and see what happens. There's so much more around the microdosing.

I'm reading that it says the science behind microdosing, the shifting legal landscape, the wide world of microdosing applications and benefits, how to dial in your optimal state of being, preparing for liftoff, getting started with microdosing, your microdosing experience. Your first month of microdosing integration, daily life and then macrodosing bonus module looks like, much like videos and tracking templates. So this would be for somebody who's not necessarily a coach, but just somebody who wants to just learn everything there is to know about microdosing.

We have a lot of coaches and therapists and doctors and other professional psychiatrists who enroll in that because they're having clients come to them who are interested in microdosing. But it's also for an enthusiast who has heard about microdosing, has heard about the benefits of it. Maybe they've tried microdosing once but they, they didn't see a lot of outcomes from it. And they're like, okay, I really want to dial this in. How can I make sure that I'm as dialed in as possible with this tool? And so that's what that course is specifically for. Again, teaching that skill of microdosing. How we calibrate the dose levels, what different substances we use, what intentions we go in with that, what are other supporting modalities that can help to nourish us while we're going through a microdosing protocol? All those sorts of things are included.

In that 10 day money back guarantee. Look at that. You learn how to make a carrot cake smoothie.

Have I learned?

No. Do you learn during? Of course.

We'll add that as a bonus.

You'd add a bonus module. We'll do a video tomorrow morning. Dude, you got so much going on here. I mean this website's really cool and I'm gonna link to it in the show notes and I'll link to this coaching cert too and also this microdosing course. What do you guys. You give me a discount code is a $10, 10% discount code for the certification program.

There's a 10% discount for anyone. It just comes through.

Ben Greenfield.

Yep.

Okay.

And I think for the microdosing course that they're. I'll double check on that. But it's at least 10% of it.

I know, I know. We got. I don't know. Our teams do all sorts of stuff.

We'll figure that out in the show.

We're just supposed to sit around and like, talk about, get in the cold pool and drink sevia and play Frisbee golf. Will everybody else go behind the scenes? But what I will do for all you listening in, if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Paulaustin that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com PaulAustin just like it sounds. I'll link to Paul's Third Wave website and also the synthesis retreat that he's created over in Amsterdam. But then I'll link to all these coaching certs and also some of the other podcasts that we talked about, like my podcast with Jamie Wheel and with Jim Fadiman. And Paul's actually got a book called Microdosing Psychedelics. I know you're working on a new book now, and dude, I, I really love the stuff you're putting out and I think it's super helpful. And also the reason I wanted to interview you was because there's just a lot of crap out there and because I eat my own dog food. Like we were talking about before, like, why we don't do a video podcast. I'm like, I don't really watch video podcasts. I listen to podcasts. So that's mostly what I do. Same thing. I'd love to open people up to the same type of advice that I rely upon for my own microdosing protocols. And what I've learned in your website's like, way up up there as far as, like, one of the best resources. I think so.

Thank you.

So good on you. As they say, down under. And I guess at this point we have to gear up for me to kick your ass in Frisbee golf.

Oh, is that what we're doing?

Yeah. I think Frisbee golf is gonna happen. And for those of you listening in again, BenGreenfieldFitness.com Paulaustin is where you can learn more about Paul and check out his course. Check out this microdosing course for your coach.

Coach.

Check out the. The microdosing Third Wave coaching certification. I guess microdosing and macro dosing. Third wave coach certification. I'll link to all that. And Paul, dude, give. Give me a cheers with the Zevia.

Cheers.

Clean cling. Thanks for coming on the show, man.

Thanks for having me.

Thanks for, thanks for visiting Spill Compton.

Oh, yeah, it was tons of fun.

All right, folks, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Paul Austin. Have an amazing week. Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the show notes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful Ben Recommends page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormones, sleep digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please, please also know that all the links, all the promo codes that I mentioned during this and every episode help to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. So when you listen in, be sure to use the links in the show notes, use the promo codes that I generate because that helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.