Speaker 1: Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: the podcast. New listeners, old listeners. Wherever you are in
Speaker 1: the world, you know the deal. It is so great
Speaker 1: to have you here back for another episode as we,
Speaker 1: of course break down the psychology of our twenties, dealing
Speaker 1: with our mental health. Our mindset in our twenties or
Speaker 1: any age can feel like an extremely uphill battle, and
Speaker 1: a lot of us are definitely looking for a solution
Speaker 1: or looking for some magical cure, some way out a
Speaker 1: better way to cope with our everyday experience. So when
Speaker 1: we hear about something is seemingly life changing as psychedelic
Speaker 1: treatment for our mental health, I think a lot of
Speaker 1: our ears immediately perk up. You know, these drug set
Speaker 1: for such a long time have been really associated with
Speaker 1: like a party stone and lifestyle. Like there's suddenly being
Speaker 1: talked about a lot in the healthcare community, and this
Speaker 1: scene is very, very promising, even though the FDA did
Speaker 1: recently reject the use of MDMA therapy to treat PTSD.
Speaker 1: As we are recording this, it does seem like in
Speaker 1: general across the world, like the tide is really turning,
Speaker 1: and I think we have a lot of questions, what
Speaker 1: does this actually entail? What would it feel like? Could this,
Speaker 1: you know, one day be as common as treatment as antidepressants.
Speaker 1: And it's such an evolving space personally, one that I'm
Speaker 1: so fascinated by. But I'm definitely not an expert in
Speaker 1: so today I thought I would bring on someone who
Speaker 1: is someone who knows so much about this, more than me,
Speaker 1: more than the average person, more than most of us
Speaker 1: for that matter, Paul Austin, the founder of Third Wave.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Jimmy. It's great to be here. I love
Speaker 2: the introduction. You touched on so many hot items when
Speaker 2: it comes to mental health and psychedelics, and I'm so
Speaker 2: excited to be able to talk with your audience about
Speaker 2: this today. It's a topic that's become very popular these
Speaker 2: last five or six years, and there's still a lot
Speaker 2: of unknowns about it. So I'm hopeful that we can
Speaker 2: clear up some of these misconceptions and provide a great
Speaker 2: contextual understanding of what these medicines can do.
Speaker 1: Well, can you just tell us a little bit about
Speaker 1: yourself before we get into it. What's third Wave like?
Speaker 1: What's been your experience that has gotten to the point
Speaker 1: of being like basically an expert psychedelic coach.
Speaker 2: So I grew up in a very traditional family in
Speaker 2: the Midwest, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Church was the center point
Speaker 2: of my upbringing, not in a fundamentalist way, but in
Speaker 2: a sort of strict You're going to church every Sunday
Speaker 2: and this is what we do as a family. And
Speaker 2: so as part of that, naturally, my parents were very
Speaker 2: anti drug They were very against especially illegal drugs like
Speaker 2: you know, weed and cocaine and heroin and psychedelics. And
Speaker 2: at the age of sixteen, my best friend in high
Speaker 2: school introduced me to cannabis. I started to experiment with
Speaker 2: cannabis a little bit until my parents found out and
Speaker 2: they sat me down one Sunday after church, and my
Speaker 2: dad looked at me and said, you know, I haven't
Speaker 2: been this disappointed since my brother passed away in a
Speaker 2: car accident thirty years before that. Before we had sat
Speaker 2: down before they found out that I had smoked cannabis.
Speaker 2: So clearly it was a monumental impactful thing that their
Speaker 2: only son had decided to start to experiment with cannabis. Now,
Speaker 2: what I felt in that experience was I felt happy,
Speaker 2: I felt laughter, I felt like. It was very curiosity provoking,
Speaker 2: and I was starting to learn more and more about
Speaker 2: cannabis at that time. Why was it illegal? Why was
Speaker 2: it prohibited? Was it as bad as we thought it was?
Speaker 2: And so that started to lead me down this path
Speaker 2: of what Carl Jung would say is called individuation, which
Speaker 2: is the path of becoming oneself right where I was like, clearly,
Speaker 2: this person who I'm becoming won't be accepted by my family.
Speaker 2: I'm going to have to just keep this part of
Speaker 2: myself closed off. And soon after that, when I was nineteen,
Speaker 2: that same friend who introduced me to cannabis introduced me
Speaker 2: to psilocybin mushrooms, and at the age of nineteen, I
Speaker 2: had my first experience with psilocybin mushrooms. Soon after that,
Speaker 2: I started to experiment with LSD a little bit as well.
Speaker 2: And whereas cannabis was like fun and I laughed a
Speaker 2: lot and helped me to get over some social anxiety,
Speaker 2: psychedelics are very profound. There were some really deep insights
Speaker 2: and awarenesses that I came to, one of which was
Speaker 2: I'm not meant to live a conventional lifestyle. That life
Speaker 2: is much more malleable than I previously had thought I
Speaker 2: can create how I want to create, so why not
Speaker 2: do that? So soon after university I moved abroad. I
Speaker 2: taught English and Turkey for a year. I became a
Speaker 2: digital nomad. Soon after that worked and traveled everywhere, and
Speaker 2: at the age of twenty four, was in Budapest. This
Speaker 2: was twenty fifteen, almost ten years ago. Notice that more
Speaker 2: and more people were starting to talk about psychedelics, Joe
Speaker 2: Rogan and Tim Ferris, and more clinical research was coming
Speaker 2: out about it. Cannabis was being re evaluated and legalized,
Speaker 2: and I thought, I think this is going to become
Speaker 2: the next thing. So in twenty fifteen I started Third
Speaker 2: Wave with the intention of making psychedelic education more accessible
Speaker 2: and more available to everyone. And so the idea of
Speaker 2: this third wave of psychedelics is that the first wave
Speaker 2: was the ancient and indigenous use of psychedelics, the second
Speaker 2: wave was the counterculture the fifties and sixties, and then
Speaker 2: this third wave of psychedelics is the modern sort of
Speaker 2: renaissance around psychedelic substances. And I believe it's critical that
Speaker 2: as part of this we both honor the lineage and
Speaker 2: the indigenous wisdom of these medicines, and we also utilize
Speaker 2: best practices based on scientific frame works and what we
Speaker 2: know about these psychedelics and how they interact with the
Speaker 2: body and the brain. So here I am talking about psychedelics,
Speaker 2: talking about microdocene and it's been a pretty wild ride
Speaker 2: these last you know, ten years or so, as they
Speaker 2: really started to come into prominent mainstream attention.
Speaker 1: Oh, I love that summary, and I really really love
Speaker 1: what you said about combining the ancient indigenous wisdom with
Speaker 1: some of the more like I don't know, i'd hate
Speaker 1: to say like Western, but some of the more scientific,
Speaker 1: like quote unquote scientific ways of seeing how this impacts
Speaker 1: our brain. And of course I'm sure there have been
Speaker 1: so many populations who have been able to witness this
Speaker 1: since like the dawn of time, but a lot of
Speaker 1: their knowledge has been snuffed out through a lot of impacts,
Speaker 1: through colonization, through just like a genuine disinterest in anything
Speaker 1: that was like countered to what a Western belief was.
Speaker 1: So I really liked that we're acknowledging that because I
Speaker 1: don't know, I just feel like there are so many
Speaker 1: things that we're returning to the roots of I think
Speaker 1: about how there's been this like huge biological reductionism of
Speaker 1: so much to do with mental health, and now people
Speaker 1: are like, hey, what if we you know, just made
Speaker 1: sure that people had community, and what if we like
Speaker 1: went back to a sense of purpose And this feels
Speaker 1: very ache into that, like very similar of a returning
Speaker 1: to something that's been known for a long time. With
Speaker 1: your experience, what did you find that it kind of
Speaker 1: unlocked for you? I know you you spoke quite generally
Speaker 1: about it, but did you see like a shift in
Speaker 1: how you saw the world, your attitudes towards the world,
Speaker 1: or just your own mental well being?
Speaker 2: No. One of the core things was this re connection
Speaker 2: to spirit will call it or God or source or oneness.
Speaker 2: You know. I mentioned I had been raised in the church.
Speaker 2: It was a Protestant, so you know, there's Catholic. Was Protestant.
Speaker 2: You're a Protestant. And it was very dry. It was beautiful,
Speaker 2: but it was very dry. We'd sing hymns, we'd say
Speaker 2: the prayers, we'd read the Bible verses, but it wasn't
Speaker 2: I didn't really get it. I never really experienced God
Speaker 2: in its full entirety. And that's true. I think of
Speaker 2: the majority of people who grow up in a religious environment.
Speaker 2: It's a lot of the rituals, it's a lot of
Speaker 2: the prayers, it's a lot of the hymns, but it's
Speaker 2: not a lot of the direct experience. And so I
Speaker 2: was becoming an atheist until I started to work with
Speaker 2: high doses of LSD and psilocybin mushrooms. And when I
Speaker 2: had those experiences, all of a sudden, it helped to
Speaker 2: almost remind me of how connected I was to something
Speaker 2: greater than myself. It sort of reopened this concept of
Speaker 2: spirituality for me, and that had a number of downstream
Speaker 2: positive benefits, one of which was I recognized that I
Speaker 2: was deeply connected to everything around me. So the sort
Speaker 2: of classic cliche of LSD and psychedelics is hip hugging trees, right,
Speaker 2: And yet anyone who's done a psychedelic in nature understands
Speaker 2: that because there is this deep love and connection to
Speaker 2: everything around us. And how the indigenous peoples who worked
Speaker 2: with these substances their interactions with it was because it
Speaker 2: helped them to remember that they were just these organisms.
Speaker 2: So they were just these people that were part of nature,
Speaker 2: not above or better than nature. So I experienced that
Speaker 2: a deep and profound connection to the natural environment. I
Speaker 2: also experienced a sense of comfort with myself, or authenticity
Speaker 2: of who I was and who I am. That when
Speaker 2: raised in a very religious environment, you are often shamed
Speaker 2: for who you are or guilted into behaving a certain way.
Speaker 2: And when I started to work with psychedelics, I came
Speaker 2: to realize, oh, I could just let go of a
Speaker 2: lot of that conditioning. At my core, at my essence,
Speaker 2: there's actually a deep sort of sense of innocence and
Speaker 2: love and purity, and I could tap back into that
Speaker 2: and remember that, which helped me again, as cliche as
Speaker 2: it may sound, to love myself again and love myself
Speaker 2: in a very deep way. And I think the outcome
Speaker 2: of that then was a lot of the depression and
Speaker 2: anxiety that I'd struggle with when I started to work
Speaker 2: with psychedelics. Intentionally, they just helped me to commit to
Speaker 2: meditating more often, eating healthier, spending more time in nature,
Speaker 2: spending less time on screens, committing to practices and behaviors
Speaker 2: that ended up having a really positive and beneficial effect
Speaker 2: on my mental health. Because certainly, when we take a
Speaker 2: psychedelic that's doing some really interesting things to the brain.
Speaker 2: That's great for some of these clinical conditions, but a
Speaker 2: lot of it is how are we changing our behaviors
Speaker 2: after the fact and who we hang out with and
Speaker 2: who we spend time with. And psychedelics help that because
Speaker 2: they facilitate something called neuroplasticity. But it's not just the
Speaker 2: drug that's a magic pill. It really is a catalyst
Speaker 2: for change, and we still have to commit to making
Speaker 2: those changes in our everyday life if we want to
Speaker 2: live better and feel better on an everyday basis.
Speaker 1: And that's the thing. If anyone ever offers you like
Speaker 1: a magic pill to cure every single problem in your life,
Speaker 1: walk away like that's yeah, being highly, highly skeptical. And
Speaker 1: I think it's great that you're saying that about this
Speaker 1: as well, right, Like you can do you can take anything,
Speaker 1: any substance under the sun, but if you don't do
Speaker 1: something with the experience and put that into practice afterwards,
Speaker 1: it's not gonna work. I also really like what you
Speaker 1: said about experiencing a sense of oneness. And we had
Speaker 1: someone on just recently called doctor A. Samilla, who is
Speaker 1: a professor from Columbia who talks about spirituality and psychology,
Speaker 1: and I think a lot of us have, you know,
Speaker 1: who've experienced religion the institution of religion over the years
Speaker 1: feel very like silenced by it, restricted by it, and
Speaker 1: feels very clinical. But there's this new wave of people
Speaker 1: who are like actually having a sense of purpose, feeling
Speaker 1: that there is something divine and bigger is incredibly psychologically nourishing,
Speaker 1: because the opposite of that is feeling like we are
Speaker 1: completely alone, all of us are alone. No one can
Speaker 1: understand our experience that like isolation is completely depressing, Like,
Speaker 1: how does one not experience a level of like endogenous
Speaker 1: mental health experiences if you.
Speaker 2: Really do believe that?
Speaker 1: But I want to move on to the impact on
Speaker 1: the brain, and you talked about your plasticity, probably synaptic
Speaker 1: pruning comes into this. Before we get into that, Actually
Speaker 1: we need to clarify one thing which we haven't clarified yet,
Speaker 1: Like I'm getting ahead of myself. What does it mean
Speaker 1: when people say that psychedelics or medically supervised microturcing could
Speaker 1: be used to treat things like addictional PTSD or end
Speaker 1: of life care, Like, what do they actually mean? We've
Speaker 1: talked someone about like more recreational usage shifting to like
Speaker 1: more of a medical environment or being used in mainstream
Speaker 1: care is someone literally going to give you a tap
Speaker 1: of acid and say off you go, like go and
Speaker 1: walk around.
Speaker 2: So in the nineteen fifties when LSD first came on
Speaker 2: the scene, it was invented in nineteen thirty eight, psychedelic
Speaker 2: properties were discovered in nineteen forty three. It was used
Speaker 2: for about the first fifteen to twenty years within strictly
Speaker 2: clinical environments to see what impact it would have on addiction, anxiety, depression.
Speaker 2: Like I said, over one thousand clinical papers were published
Speaker 2: on the efficacy of LC to trade a range of conditions,
Speaker 2: And unfortunately, when it got out into the mainstream culture
Speaker 2: and was associated with Timothy Leary and turn on, tune
Speaker 2: and drop out, the government prohibited and shut down not
Speaker 2: only the recreational use but also the clinical research. And
Speaker 2: that wasn't resuscitated until the late nineties when JOHNS. Hopkins
Speaker 2: started to study this relationship between psilocybin and what they
Speaker 2: called mystical type experiences or you know, experiencing God. And
Speaker 2: what they found in that early clinical research is that
Speaker 2: the more profound of an experience, the spiritual experience an
Speaker 2: individual had, the more likely it was to heal the
Speaker 2: depression or heal their addiction or heal you know, OCD,
Speaker 2: or some of these other clinical indications that they were
Speaker 2: struggling with. So on the one hand, it could be
Speaker 2: described at a spiritual level that when we experience the
Speaker 2: profundity of psychedelics, we are connected to this source of
Speaker 2: unconditional love. And when we feel in our every sort
Speaker 2: of part of our body that experience of unconditional love,
Speaker 2: it has these incredible impacts in our capacity to love,
Speaker 2: our capacity to be with ourselves, to understand ourselves, and
Speaker 2: again most importantly, to start to make changes in our
Speaker 2: everyday life that really honor and acknowledge that sense of
Speaker 2: self love. Now, if we look at it from a
Speaker 2: neuroscientific lens, the common thread between depression, anxiety, addiction, OCD,
Speaker 2: even PTSD is that when you do brain scans with
Speaker 2: people who struggle with these clinical conditions, the two hemispheres
Speaker 2: of the brain are not actively communicating, right, So the
Speaker 2: brain activity is sort of withering away, And when you
Speaker 2: take a psychedelic it's like you know, putting fertilizer into
Speaker 2: your brain. All of a sudden, it activates both hemispheres.
Speaker 2: Neuronal connectivity gets turned back online. They start to communicate
Speaker 2: across the hemispheres again, and that activation allows for a
Speaker 2: loosening of these constricted ways of being. So one of
Speaker 2: the one of the technical terms is called the default
Speaker 2: mode network, and the default mode network is a network
Speaker 2: in our brain that helps us to do our everyday patterning.
Speaker 2: It's sort of the habitual part of our brain that
Speaker 2: is on autopi that allows us to navigate our everyday existence.
Speaker 2: When that becomes too rigid, when that becomes too constricted,
Speaker 2: then people start to notice that they're struggling with depression
Speaker 2: or addiction or anxiety. And so part of interrupting those
Speaker 2: patterns or interrupting those ruts is introducing a psychedelic. And
Speaker 2: so the psychedelic comes in and it creates a more
Speaker 2: entropic system, so more chaos, so to say, and that
Speaker 2: chaos allows for a new perspective, a new look at things,
Speaker 2: which allows people to sort of get out of the
Speaker 2: pattern that they feel they've been stuck in and actually
Speaker 2: see that they can experience life in a new and
Speaker 2: unique way, that they don't have to feel that way
Speaker 2: all the time, that they can actually feel this other way.
Speaker 2: And then so much of working with a psychedelic when
Speaker 2: it comes to working with a therapist in particular, like
Speaker 2: in medical supervision, is it's not only the drug experience,
Speaker 2: but also how that coach or how that therapist or
Speaker 2: psycho hiatrist is supporting you after that drug experience. Because
Speaker 2: when you take a psychedelic, when the brain becomes more entropic,
Speaker 2: then it's opening something called a critical learning period. And
Speaker 2: the critical learning period is like when you're four or
Speaker 2: five or six, your brain is in development. It's a sponge.
Speaker 2: It's soaking up all of these you know, you know,
Speaker 2: language and patterns and social behaviors and music. It can
Speaker 2: just soak it all up. And then as we get
Speaker 2: older that that learning period dies away, which is why
Speaker 2: they used to think, okay, when i'm by time you're
Speaker 2: twenty six, you know, you can't teach an old dog
Speaker 2: new tricks. And now what we're discovering about psychedelics is
Speaker 2: it actually reopens that critical learning period for at least
Speaker 2: three to four weeks after the high dose experience. And
Speaker 2: so people have this experience, they're able to see out
Speaker 2: of their depression or out of their addiction, and then
Speaker 2: the therapist or the coach is supporting them in that
Speaker 2: month after to start to integrate what are actually new
Speaker 2: patterns of behavior you can start to implement that will
Speaker 2: help you feel this way more often. How do you
Speaker 2: have a more regulated nervous system. How do you not
Speaker 2: eat you know, fast food or processed food. How do
Speaker 2: you get more sunlight and exercise? How do you spend
Speaker 2: more time with loved ones or cut out a toxic relationship? Right, Like,
Speaker 2: the psychedelic can help us to go AHA, but the
Speaker 2: therapeutic work, the coaching work, actually allows those AHAs to
Speaker 2: be integrated and become tangible in our everyday life.
Speaker 1: And you can totally see how that would also be
Speaker 1: remarkable for PTSD. Right, you have all this trauma that's
Speaker 1: wired your brain one way, and I'm sure like another
Speaker 1: thing that comes up is like long term potentiation. Right,
Speaker 1: Neurons that fire together, wire together. You've got all these
Speaker 1: major highways in your brain that have been paved in
Speaker 1: concrete that say, this is scary, this is trouble. I
Speaker 1: should be fearful, I should be worried based on these
Speaker 1: previous experiences. And it sounds like when you introduce a psychedelic,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like a tornado comes through. It might
Speaker 1: seem kind of scary. But with that opportunity, you can say, actually, no,
Speaker 1: like that road doesn't really fit here anymore. That road
Speaker 1: like isn't really leading me to places where I want
Speaker 1: to go. Like the roads being the neural highways and
Speaker 1: your brain, and so it allows for that neuroplasticity, as
Speaker 1: you said. And another really fascinating point that you brought
Speaker 1: up that I absolutely love that you said, is this
Speaker 1: misconception that our brains are fully developed, were done by
Speaker 1: the time what twenty five, twenty six, twenty seven for men,
Speaker 1: twenty five around for women. And that is just being
Speaker 1: pro And I know that I've said that on the
Speaker 1: show before. I've been like, yeah, you know, your brain
Speaker 1: only gets fully developed at twenty five. It's like absolutely not. Yes,
Speaker 1: Like you have this frontal like your frontal load basically
Speaker 1: like locks into place. But within your brain there's so
Speaker 1: much opportunity for flexibility. It's why as people get older,
Speaker 1: their personality changes. It's why we see a decline actually
Speaker 1: in the experience of mental health as people get older
Speaker 1: as well, like past their fifties and sixties. So the
Speaker 1: brain is constantly evolving. Has there been any longitudinal or
Speaker 1: like in depth studies on introducing psychedelics to a population
Speaker 1: group or to like a group of participants in seeing
Speaker 1: what's happened, Like, is there a study you can pull
Speaker 1: out that is, like a pretty important one that says
Speaker 1: this has changed people's lives or this has had this impact.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, I mean kind of a few notes here
Speaker 2: to highlight in the in the like twenty ten, twenty eleven,
Speaker 2: maybe twenty twelve, there was a research paper published. There
Speaker 2: was a lot longitudinal research paper that essentially I'd ask
Speaker 2: people who have been using psychedelics for forty or fifty
Speaker 2: years since the nineteen sixties, are you healthy? Are you okay?
Speaker 2: You know, because a lot of the sort of mainstream
Speaker 2: stigma was all these psychedelic users, are you know, dropping
Speaker 2: out or becoming schizophrenic or losing their mind? And what
Speaker 2: they found was when you look at it over a
Speaker 2: long time frame, psychedelics are really well tolerated by the
Speaker 2: majority of people in a population that you do have,
Speaker 2: you know, the one percent who are schizophrenic or have
Speaker 2: potentially a personality disorder that should not be working with psychedelics,
Speaker 2: but that the broad population can tolerate psychedelics really really
Speaker 2: quite easily and quite well. Now, in the last twenty years,
Speaker 2: there's been quite a few clinical research papers published on
Speaker 2: the efficacy of psychedelics. There's probably i would say three
Speaker 2: to emphasize. One is the research on MDMA for PTSD.
Speaker 2: So you mentioned PTSD already. When we have an acute trauma,
Speaker 2: it can often become stored in our body and our brain,
Speaker 2: and that trauma, that emotional imprint will lead to a
Speaker 2: lot of nasty side effects over the long term. When
Speaker 2: you work with something like MDMA, it creates a space
Speaker 2: of safety for the nervous system and for the brain
Speaker 2: to heal that underlying trauma, so that trauma can be
Speaker 2: opened up, it can be processed, it can be integrated,
Speaker 2: and it's no longer this festering wound that's in the
Speaker 2: subconscious of the psyche. It actually gets brought up and
Speaker 2: out and it can be healed and probably worked with
Speaker 2: and this nonprofit group MAPS, which has a for profit
Speaker 2: arm called Lycos, they were the ones who attempted to
Speaker 2: get MDMA approval. They did phase three clinical trials, so
Speaker 2: it was done over twelve weeks. They had therapists that
Speaker 2: were there with them. They did MDMA three times over
Speaker 2: those twelve weeks, seventy percent of those participants healed their
Speaker 2: PTSD and they had PTSD on average for seventeen years,
Speaker 2: which is wow, it's.
Speaker 1: A huge number, seventeen years, huge.
Speaker 2: Number, seven seventeen years, seven zero percent. So that's that's
Speaker 2: one really fascinating clinical trial. Another really fascinating clinical trial
Speaker 2: is this is this distinction between how psychedelics work in
Speaker 2: the brain and SSRIs work in the brain, because a
Speaker 2: lot of people who are coming into psychedelic work have
Speaker 2: been on SSRIs orrently on.
Speaker 1: Well, just quickly saying SSRIs basically antidepressants.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's helpful to clarify. So, and I'll provide a
Speaker 2: caveat here. If someone is listening to the who is
Speaker 2: on one of these medications and they're interested in getting off,
Speaker 2: make sure you do so under the guidance of a
Speaker 2: medical professional. And there's a substance called ketamine which we
Speaker 2: can talk more about, which is legally and medically available
Speaker 2: and can be safely taken with a lot of these
Speaker 2: SSRIs under the guidance of a trained medical professional. And
Speaker 2: there are a lot of psychiatrists and other clinicians who
Speaker 2: are currently practicing this, but typically a folks ask, I say,
Speaker 2: look at ketemine. It's legal, it's available, it's been cleared
Speaker 2: by the FDA, and check that out. But the research
Speaker 2: paper that I'm referring to compared the mechanism of action
Speaker 2: of psychedelics versus lexapro, Zoloft and these other SSRIs, and
Speaker 2: the big difference was the typical classic SSRIs are almost
Speaker 2: like a band aid. They numb the person. So if
Speaker 2: your typical range of emotion, you know, is one to ten,
Speaker 2: an SSRI is going to make get three to six,
Speaker 2: so the lows aren't going to be as low, but
Speaker 2: you're not going to have the same level of highs either.
Speaker 2: Essentially numbs you and creates the sort of band aid
Speaker 2: so you can sort of float, but it doesn't necessarily
Speaker 2: get to the wound that's underneath the core thing. Whereas
Speaker 2: with psychedelics they tend to open up the psyche. They
Speaker 2: tend to almost force a catharsis where the underlying trauma
Speaker 2: that may be causing the depression or the addiction, which
Speaker 2: is in most cases adverse childhood experiences, which for your listeners,
Speaker 2: the ACE score was developed in the nineties. It was
Speaker 2: clinically proven that children who had these adverse childhood experiences
Speaker 2: were much more likely to be alcoholics, or have addictions,
Speaker 2: or be depressed. And so a lot of the new
Speaker 2: context around mental health is it has a lot to
Speaker 2: do with trauma. It's not just serotonin, it's not just biology,
Speaker 2: it's actually the psyche and how it's been treated. And
Speaker 2: so when we work with the psychedelic it opens that
Speaker 2: up and that trauma can start to be healed, That
Speaker 2: wound that's been festering underneath can start to be released,
Speaker 2: and we can look at it and it can be
Speaker 2: integrated as well. So that's another really interesting research trial.
Speaker 2: So the three that I mentioned are longitudinal data from
Speaker 2: the sixties that psychedelics are really well tolerated across thousands
Speaker 2: of people that have been studied, the clinical trial showing
Speaker 2: how effective MDMA is at treating PTSD seventy percent remission
Speaker 2: rate with participants who on average PTSD for seventeen years,
Speaker 2: and then showing specifically how are psychedelics different than necessaries, well,
Speaker 2: lexipro zolof prozac numb us, whereas psychedelics actually make us
Speaker 2: more enlivened and they allow us to get to the
Speaker 2: core thing that's underneath the trauma so it doesn't continue
Speaker 2: to persist over the long time.
Speaker 1: I really love that explanation, and I love that you said,
Speaker 1: you know, SSRIs, they have their time and a place,
Speaker 1: And I think it's really difficult because you will go
Speaker 1: to a doctor and that is the first thing that
Speaker 1: they will prescribe you. And of course you're gonna trust
Speaker 1: your doctor, as you should, you know, but I think
Speaker 1: it's also we've gotten to a point where that has
Speaker 1: been the major way of treating things for a long
Speaker 1: time and yet and I'm saying this is someone who
Speaker 1: has been on SSRIs before, and you know, we've been
Speaker 1: doing it for a long time, and yet rates of
Speaker 1: mental health are increasing. So if you can imagine like
Speaker 1: people being like, oh, we have this cure for cancer,
Speaker 1: we have this treatment for cancer, and they're giving it
Speaker 1: to every cancer patient, and yet no one's getting better,
Speaker 1: Like you do have to start asking questions. Also with
Speaker 1: the adverse childhood experiences score really worth looking into, because
Speaker 1: there was a recent study on this and it's really
Speaker 1: interesting because I actually helped with this study. It was
Speaker 1: done in Australia, the child Mail Treatment Study. And you
Speaker 1: might think, like childhood trauma is neglect abuse from parents
Speaker 1: can also be civiling abuse. It can also be bullying.
Speaker 1: It can also be experiencing the death of a parent,
Speaker 1: a natural disaster, a family trauma, financial insecurity. So a
Speaker 1: lot of people might think, well, you know, nothing really
Speaker 1: that bad happened to me when I was a child,
Speaker 1: and then you dig into it and you can be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but there's also you know, the system that you grew
Speaker 1: up and may not have actually been able to support you.
Speaker 1: It's not all about individual events. It's also about a
Speaker 1: cultural society that may have been emotionally neglectful. But we're
Speaker 1: going to take a short break because I'm getting I'm
Speaker 1: letting time get ahead of me here. I'm so fascinated
Speaker 1: by this conversation, Paul. So we're going to take a
Speaker 1: short break, and when we come back, I want to
Speaker 1: talk about some of the important ethical standards that we
Speaker 1: should be considering when it's not entirely helpful to be
Speaker 1: using psychedelics, and also what the future of this treatment
Speaker 1: might look like. All right, so we're back with Paul Austin,
Speaker 1: the founder of Third Wave. Paul, we have talked a
Speaker 1: lot about how this is like so magical, this treatment
Speaker 1: just sounds absolutely wonderful, and there is just so much
Speaker 1: evidence to prove it, so much research being done currently,
Speaker 1: but we can't talk about this, and I know people
Speaker 1: are going to be like, well, what about schizophrenia? What
Speaker 1: about if I have a really disruptive and distressing experience?
Speaker 1: So what are some of the important kind of ethical
Speaker 1: standards that we need to think about as this practice
Speaker 1: is rapidly growing, both in a personal usage way but
Speaker 1: also in like a medical usage way.
Speaker 2: So what I often say is that the most dangerous
Speaker 2: aspect of psychedelic work is the fact that these are
Speaker 2: still illegal almost everywhere. We have seen some momentum over
Speaker 2: the last few years. The state of Oregon has legalized
Speaker 2: psilocybin mushrooms, the state of Colorado has legalized all plant
Speaker 2: medicines psychedelic plant medicines. Jamaica and the Netherlands have legalized
Speaker 2: psilocybin mushrooms. Australia even has rescheduled psilocybin and MDMA from
Speaker 2: Schedule nine to Schedule eight. I believe the TGA did
Speaker 2: that last year, so it's becoming more accessible and available.
Speaker 2: But these are still largely illegal substances, and that is,
Speaker 2: in fact the most dangerous part about psychedelics is that
Speaker 2: they are illegal. I would say the second aspect of this,
Speaker 2: and I mentioned this in the previous section about research
Speaker 2: and the longitudinal studies around psychedelics, is those who have
Speaker 2: a family history of schizophrenia or psychosis, or personal history
Speaker 2: of schizophrenia or psychosis should not be taking psychedelics, even
Speaker 2: at a microdose a very low level. Those who have
Speaker 2: a personality disorder should not be working with psychedelics. Those
Speaker 2: who don't feel called to taking psychedelics should not be
Speaker 2: taking psychedelics. Right. There does have to be this sort
Speaker 2: of willful choice that's involved if you want to do
Speaker 2: this work, because doing a macro dose a therapeutic dose
Speaker 2: of a psychedelic is not necessarily for the faint of heart.
Speaker 2: It can be very intense emotionally, It can be very
Speaker 2: difficult at times. There can be a lot of anger
Speaker 2: and grief and sadness and challenging emotions that come to
Speaker 2: the surface that need to be processed and how. And
Speaker 2: that's why it's so critical that when working with psychedelics
Speaker 2: you pay attention to set and setting is the number
Speaker 2: one set or mindset is how you come into that experience.
Speaker 2: And setting is a physical environment that you're in. It's
Speaker 2: really critical to have a physical person who is present
Speaker 2: with you. That could be for some folks a sitter
Speaker 2: or a friend who is just there to make sure
Speaker 2: you're safe. For those who are really looking at deep
Speaker 2: clinical issues that they're looking to heal and resolve, that
Speaker 2: most likely will be a therapist, a trained therapist. There's
Speaker 2: also other guides and shamans and coaches. In fact, through
Speaker 2: the Psychedelic Coaching Institute, we train coaches, therapists, practitioners, and
Speaker 2: guides and what I call the five key elements. And
Speaker 2: I'll briefly describe those five key elements because I think
Speaker 2: these are essential to the ethical use of psychedelics for
Speaker 2: those listening at home, that if you're working with a coach,
Speaker 2: a guide, a therapist, a practitioner, they should know how
Speaker 2: to assess you. So what is the assessment process like?
Speaker 2: They should know how to prepare you. How are they
Speaker 2: preparing you or what's preparation like for the experience. They
Speaker 2: should have a sense of how to facilitate the actual experience.
Speaker 2: You should be asking them questions about what medicine is
Speaker 2: appropriate much of that medicine, where are we going to
Speaker 2: do it. What's the overall flow of the experience. Will
Speaker 2: there be music involved? Will there not be music involved?
Speaker 2: You know, just getting a sense of some of these
Speaker 2: questions for how the experience will go. Integration is key,
Speaker 2: So after we have that experience, will they support you
Speaker 2: on an ongoing basis to ensure that that experience can
Speaker 2: be woven in back to your everyday life. And then microdosing.
Speaker 2: I say that, you know, most practitioners should know how
Speaker 2: microdosing can support the integration process. And microdosing is a
Speaker 2: sub intoxicating dose of a psychedelic It's about one tenth
Speaker 2: of a normal therapeutic dose that people might do two
Speaker 2: or three times per week for a period of time
Speaker 2: because it helps with mood, energy, sleep, and the a
Speaker 2: number of other things. So the ethical use of psychedelics
Speaker 2: comes down to I think those five key elements assessment, preparation, facilitation, integration,
Speaker 2: and microdosing. Now, the final thing that I'll emphasize is
Speaker 2: because psychedelics are illegal because they're pro phiboted, it can
Speaker 2: also be very difficult to get a sense of who
Speaker 2: who can I work with right because the other shadowy,
Speaker 2: sort of risky part about working with drugs that make
Speaker 2: you more suggestible, that alter your consciousness is there have
Speaker 2: been stories out there where people feel like boundaries have
Speaker 2: been crossed. You know, they feel like, you know, maybe
Speaker 2: they worked with a male shaman or facilitator and there
Speaker 2: wasn't consent for a certain type of touch as part
Speaker 2: of the experience. So I think the really big ethical
Speaker 2: consideration is make sure if you do this experience with
Speaker 2: an individual, you get references or it's that you know
Speaker 2: you've had a trusted friend who has sat with them before,
Speaker 2: or you know someone who can vet for them. Because
Speaker 2: unlike doctors and therapists and you know, these people who
Speaker 2: are certified by boards, whether it's you know, a national
Speaker 2: board or a state board, there's not a lot of
Speaker 2: of mechanisms to report people who might be unethical in
Speaker 2: the psychedelic space. And so it's really critical that if
Speaker 2: you're interested in this, that you find a practitioner that
Speaker 2: is trustworthy who you can work with. And thankfully you
Speaker 2: know on our website Third Way, we have a directory
Speaker 2: of practitioners, so we have retreat centers, clinics, coaches, and
Speaker 2: therapists that we've vetted and that we recommend to our
Speaker 2: audience as folks that they can work with, because I
Speaker 2: do think this is the biggest ethical risk is that
Speaker 2: people are not waiting for the law to change to
Speaker 2: start to take psychedelics. In fact, last year in the
Speaker 2: United States, eight million people took psilocybin mushroom in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three alone. That's three point one percent of the population.
Speaker 2: Four million of those people were microdosing. Right, so interest
Speaker 2: is growing. But people who are working with this, if
Speaker 2: you're going to do a therapeutic dose, a high dose
Speaker 2: of a psychedelic, have a guide, have a sitter, have
Speaker 2: a therapist, have a coach, a practitioner who you trust
Speaker 2: and can hold that space for you as you're navigating.
Speaker 1: That is such helpful advice and it really does point
Speaker 1: to this huge problem. Right, if this isn't legalized, or
Speaker 1: if there is a progress towards making this a genuine
Speaker 1: therapeutic intervention, you do have these problems. And so we
Speaker 1: know that, you know, the current approach of like don't
Speaker 1: do those things, just no, don't touch that, like don't
Speaker 1: do drugs whatever. I sound so lame saying that, but
Speaker 1: that way of thinking about it that I think a
Speaker 1: lot of like government bodies want us to take on board.
Speaker 1: Is incredibly unhelpful because people are still going to do it,
Speaker 1: but they end up and can end up not always
Speaker 1: in pretty dangerous situations. I like that you pointed out
Speaker 1: the fact that it is illegal means that there is
Speaker 1: no way to discern at times like whether what you're
Speaker 1: consuming is something that you want to be consuming. You know,
Speaker 1: in Australia we have problems with that with like NDMA
Speaker 1: and it being mixed with things that perhaps you don't
Speaker 1: want to consume. And I just think all of that
Speaker 1: is just more of an argument as to why this
Speaker 1: should be more widely accepted by the medical community. Obviously
Speaker 1: that takes time with needing studies and approval, but until
Speaker 1: that does happen, you are going to see those instances
Speaker 1: that you briefly spoke about which don't dominate the experience,
Speaker 1: as well of it being unsafe because people aren't bettered
Speaker 1: by you know, you don't imagine like if you had
Speaker 1: this approved course, like what it would take to become
Speaker 1: a psychologist or a surgeon, so people could know that
Speaker 1: they were going to an expert. And it sounds like
Speaker 1: you're kind of doing some of that work before the
Speaker 1: traditional medical community catches up and that kind of brings
Speaker 1: me to a great question and probably one of my
Speaker 1: final questions. Firstly, what is holding us back? Is it
Speaker 1: just stigma? And secondly, if you could like envision where
Speaker 1: this was part of our medical system, like what would
Speaker 1: that look like? What would you want that to look like?
Speaker 2: So what's holding us back? This is a great question
Speaker 2: and it's something I reflect on a lot. I think
Speaker 2: at a very high level as a we have never
Speaker 2: had psychedelics available to us as a global culture. Another
Speaker 2: way to describe that is historically, when psychedelics have been used,
Speaker 2: they've always been in the underground. They've always been in
Speaker 2: sort of specific indigenous groups in communities. In ancient Greece,
Speaker 2: they had these things called the Eleusinian mysteries that Plato, Aristotle,
Speaker 2: and Marcus Aurelius participated in, and they were the mysteries.
Speaker 2: You couldn't talk about them. If you talked about what
Speaker 2: happened in these experiences, you were either killed or excommunicated, right,
Speaker 2: That's how sacred they were. So there is this deep
Speaker 2: relation between psychedelic use and sort of the underground, the mystery,
Speaker 2: the unknown. And so when we're starting to bring this
Speaker 2: above ground for mental health and for a lot of
Speaker 2: the current ills that people face in modern society. There's
Speaker 2: a big question about how to do that safely because
Speaker 2: in the past, it wasn't that everyone had access to
Speaker 2: doing five grams of mushrooms or drinking ayahuasca or significantly
Speaker 2: altering their consciousness. And the drugs that we are most
Speaker 2: familiar with, alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine are very different than
Speaker 2: a psychedelic experience. So I think the first thing to
Speaker 2: point to is instead of a stigma, I think it's
Speaker 2: more a lack of psychedelic literacy that we are still learning. Oh,
Speaker 2: ketamine is different than MDMA, and MDMA is different than psilocybin.
Speaker 2: And these psychedelic class of drugs are actually very different
Speaker 2: than cocaine and heroin and you know, addictive substances. Because
Speaker 2: one thing I may have emphasized, but I'll reemphasize again
Speaker 2: is psychedelics are anti addicted. They actually help to heal addictions.
Speaker 2: They're not like these other illicit drugs cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines,
Speaker 2: et cetera, et cetera very very different drug class. So
Speaker 2: I think, on the one hand, it's psychedelic literacy, I
Speaker 2: would say, on the other hand, it's just the momentum
Speaker 2: that is required to develop policy and regulatory frameworks that
Speaker 2: work for people who want to do this legally. We've
Speaker 2: seen this in Oregon. Oregon has legalized psilocybin mushrooms. They
Speaker 2: now have a regulatory framework in place where you have
Speaker 2: to get licensed by the state as a service center
Speaker 2: or a facilitator. The people who want to take psiloheybin
Speaker 2: mushrooms have to go into these service centers to do
Speaker 2: it there. Colorado has a bit more of a flexible
Speaker 2: approach now where it's not just psilocybin but also ayahuasca
Speaker 2: and San Pedro, and there are various centers that can
Speaker 2: be licensed and it's quite open. So I think a
Speaker 2: lot of it is just, you know, we have a
Speaker 2: phrase in sort of startup world, which is you're building
Speaker 2: the airplane as you're bringing it down the runway. It's
Speaker 2: a little bit like that with psychedelics. It's this thing
Speaker 2: that's never been done before. We've never made them accessible
Speaker 2: and available to a wide populace. And that's why I
Speaker 2: firmly believe in the utility of microdosing. I do not
Speaker 2: believe that everyone is necessarily suited to do a high
Speaker 2: dose of the psychedelic. I think for a lot of people,
Speaker 2: it's too chaotic, it's too much, it's too overwhelming, it's
Speaker 2: too destabilizing. What I do believe is that the vast
Speaker 2: majority of people, and when I say vast majority, I'm
Speaker 2: thinking ninety percent plus of people would benefit from microdosing
Speaker 2: with a psychedelic because it's sub intoxicating, it's not changing
Speaker 2: your everyday per se. It's shifting things enough, making your
Speaker 2: brain slightly neuroplastic, but it's not overwhelming it with new information.
Speaker 2: It's anti addictive, unlike SSRIs. Back to SSRIs, right, fifty
Speaker 2: percent of people who start taking SSRIs cannot get off
Speaker 2: of them because the withdrawal symptoms are so bad with
Speaker 2: microdoses of psychedelics. With psychedelics generally, there's no withdrawal symptoms.
Speaker 2: So I feel like microdosing is the way of the future.
Speaker 2: And so part of what I'm most excited about is,
Speaker 2: you know, we have Third Wave as our educational brand
Speaker 2: and company. We have our Psychedelic Coaching Institute which trains practitioners,
Speaker 2: and a couple of years ago I also started a
Speaker 2: nonprofit called the Microdosing Collective, and we're focusing on how
Speaker 2: do we develop policy so people can access microdoses of
Speaker 2: psilocybin mushrooms in a safe and legal way. Because for
Speaker 2: anyone who's listening to this who lives in New York,
Speaker 2: or you live in LA or you live in Austin,
Speaker 2: or live you know, in Sydney, mushrooms are everywhere now, right,
Speaker 2: Like the DEA is focusing a lot of their time,
Speaker 2: energy and effort on fentanyl as they should, and cocaine
Speaker 2: and organize crime as they should. So there's this been
Speaker 2: this massive growth of interest in mushrooms and all these
Speaker 2: chocolate bars and supplements and everything that's everywhere, and it's
Speaker 2: all illegal for the most part except in Colorado, and
Speaker 2: it's not regulated, and so people end up getting this
Speaker 2: they don't know what's in it, and so we feel
Speaker 2: like with the micro dos and Collective, people are going
Speaker 2: to do this anyway. We need to develop consumer protection,
Speaker 2: We need to have third party tested supplements, and people
Speaker 2: need to be able to access this because as we
Speaker 2: were talking about before, prozac is no better than placebo, right,
Speaker 2: and a lot of people who get on prozac and
Speaker 2: lexapro can't get off, and there's all these nasty side effects.
Speaker 2: We need different treatments, We need treatments that actually work,
Speaker 2: and I do believe that psychedelics and microdosing in particular,
Speaker 2: is a treatment modality that can transform our medical system
Speaker 2: where the emphasis is much less on just take a
Speaker 2: pill to fix every ill, and the emphasis is much
Speaker 2: more on, how can psychedelics and other tools like breathwork
Speaker 2: and yoga and meditation, other contemplated practices that facilitate neuroplasticity,
Speaker 2: How can those be catalysts to behavioral change, so we
Speaker 2: eat healthier, we sleep more, we exercise more, we practice gratitude,
Speaker 2: we spend more time outside. At the end of the day,
Speaker 2: drugs or drugs, they aren't to fix themselves. But psychedelics
Speaker 2: are catalysts. They're neuro catalytic, so we can actually change
Speaker 2: our behaviors. And that makes me hopeful. It makes me
Speaker 2: hopeful that we'll move from having a sick care system
Speaker 2: to a real health care system, and we'll start to
Speaker 2: focus not just on taking a pill for every ill,
Speaker 2: but actually taking responsibility for our health and well being
Speaker 2: and making intentional choices to live in a more connected
Speaker 2: and loving way.
Speaker 1: What a beautiful way to finish, What a beautiful way
Speaker 1: to finish. I'm going to ask you one final question.
Speaker 1: I feel like I that was just such a beautiful
Speaker 1: way to put exactly what we're talking about today. This
Speaker 1: is a question I ask every single guest. So you're
Speaker 1: coming on during like our twelve Days of Guest series obviously,
Speaker 1: and it's just like a chance to talk to like
Speaker 1: twelve people who just know this shit are really cool
Speaker 1: at experts have a new perspective. What would be your
Speaker 1: one Your biggest piece of advice for people in their
Speaker 1: twenties doesn't have to be related to what we talked
Speaker 1: about today, which is one thing you wish that someone
Speaker 1: had sat you down and told you.
Speaker 2: My biggest piece of advice for someone in their twenties
Speaker 2: is to pursue work, to pursue a career, to pursue
Speaker 2: some form of profession that is more about the art
Speaker 2: of it rather than the outcome of it. And what
Speaker 2: I mean by that is we are so often conditioned
Speaker 2: that we have to be immediately successful. We have to
Speaker 2: make a lot of money right away, we have to
Speaker 2: have the car, we have to get a nice place, blah,
Speaker 2: blah blah blah blah. And I think the most valuable
Speaker 2: part of our twenties is the capacity to experiment and
Speaker 2: the capacity to live in a way that I would
Speaker 2: consider to be frugal, so we can have the freedom
Speaker 2: to pursue work that is deeply meaningful. I think the
Speaker 2: biggest mistake that people in their twenties make is they
Speaker 2: and this is particularly for Americans. It's not as prevalent
Speaker 2: in Europe and Australia, but they leave undergrad, they get
Speaker 2: a job right away, and they essentially stay in that
Speaker 2: job for years and years and years and years, and
Speaker 2: they end up becoming very miserable. There's no meaning in
Speaker 2: the work that they do, but they are now tied
Speaker 2: to it because of what they call the hedonic treadmill.
Speaker 2: And I think the greatest opportunity with our twenties is
Speaker 2: to pursue work that feels artistic, To pursue work that
Speaker 2: feels like you are creating something, that you are responsible
Speaker 2: for something, and to trust that if you are contributing
Speaker 2: something of value to those around you, that there will
Speaker 2: be reciprocity in that and that you will be taken
Speaker 2: care of. That would be my biggest my biggest piece
Speaker 2: of advice.
Speaker 1: I love that as well, that I found that to
Speaker 1: be the case for me. So I have to say
Speaker 1: I one hundred percent agree, and no one else has
Speaker 1: said that yet. So everyone's getting something, everyone's getting something unique.
Speaker 2: Paul.
Speaker 1: I want to thank you so much for coming on,
Speaker 1: for giving us just so much to think about, giving
Speaker 1: us so much of the science, so much of the research,
Speaker 1: and your opinion as well, your expert opinion. So I
Speaker 1: really really appreciate the effort that the work that you're doing,
Speaker 1: the creative work that you're doing. Where can people find
Speaker 1: you if they want to learn more? I know you
Speaker 1: have an amazing book, and I was actually reading this
Speaker 1: is so strange that I was reading some of the
Speaker 1: reviews and I was like, Wow, this looks like a
Speaker 1: good book. So where can they find more from you?
Speaker 2: So Mastering microdos Scene is the book that's on Amazon.
Speaker 2: You can get it on Kindle, the third Wave dot co.
Speaker 2: The Thirdwave dot Co that's our main educational platform. Our
Speaker 2: training program is there, our courses are there. I have
Speaker 2: a podcast that I've hosted for nine years in the
Speaker 2: Psychedelic Space. You can check that out there. We have
Speaker 2: a newsletter and then I'm on social, mostly on Instagram
Speaker 2: and Twitter, but also on LinkedIn. If folks are listening
Speaker 2: to this, add me on LinkedIn, Send me a note.
Speaker 2: Paul Austin three w is my social handle. Follow me there,
Speaker 2: send me a note. I post almost every day, sometimes
Speaker 2: fun memes, usually like sometimes I'll post long scientific threads
Speaker 2: on Twitter about cutting edgy search that's been published. So
Speaker 2: if you're interested in staying up to date on this
Speaker 2: the third Wave, Paul Austin and my book.
Speaker 1: Mastery Microdocing, look at that perfect again. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much to Paul for coming on. As always, guys, if
Speaker 1: you enjoyed this episode, please feel free to give us
Speaker 1: a follow. We have so many more guest episodes with
Speaker 1: amazing people coming out, and it's my favorite time of
Speaker 1: the year to hear from just such wonderful experts. Until
Speaker 1: next time, stay safe, stay kind, to be gentle to yourself.
Speaker 1: As always, we will talk very very soon,