Grand Slam Journey

75. Paul F. Austin︱Navigating the Journey of Psychedelics: Intention, Integration & Safe Exploration

• Klara Jagosova • Season 3

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Embark on a journey with us as we unravel the mysteries of psychedelics with the inimitable Paul F. Austin, founder of Third Wave. From the shackles of guilt and shame to a world of liberation and insight, Paul shares his extraordinary path, guiding us through the wilderness where ancient wisdom meets scientific inquiry. Together, we traverse the landscape of personal transformation, where psychedelics illuminate the canvas of our deepest selves, enabling us to sculpt the life we've always imagined.

This episode is a mosaic of shared experiences and sage advice, depicting the careful orchestration required for guided psychedelic journeys. Paul reveals the emotional pilgrimage of accompanying his father on a psilocybin trip, shedding light on the crucial elements of trust, preparation, and integration. In our conversation, Paul and I dissect the intricate dance between the individual's history and the mystique of psychedelics, offering a lens through which to view these powerful experiences. We navigate this space by understanding the variables at play, from the importance of intention to the profound impact of a guide's presence.

In the confluence of psychedelics and mind-body practices, we delve into how MDMA and ketamine are breaking new ground in mental health treatment, while traditional psychedelics offer gateways to profound healing. We explore how consistent practices like meditation and yoga can be interwoven with psychedelic experiences for enduring personal growth. As we close this chapter, we stress the significance of education in the realm of responsible psychedelic use, ensuring that each step taken is both informed and mindful. Join us for an episode that promises insights and a transformational shift in perspective.

Watch it on YouTube:  https://youtu.be/w-L2MRb3CrE

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https://www.paulaustin.co
https://www.instagram.com/paulaustin3w/
https://twitter.com/PaulAustin3w
https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-f-austin/
https://thethirdwave.co
https://www.instagram.com/thirdwaveishere/
https://thethirdwave.co/podcast/

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Paul:

the core insight or takeaway from that experience was one, how important it is that we have a deep relationship to nature, to the environment, to the world around us right, when we work with psychedelics. It really opens up that awareness. And then, two, that I really had nothing to be ashamed of. So back to that story with my dad LSD psilocybin really helped me to heal from the sort of shame and guilt of being raised in an overly religious and Christian environment and allowed me to kind of step out of the normal day-to-day and dream about what it is that I wanted to create with my life. And so those early psychedelic experiences then were very influential in what I did at the age of 20, 21, 22, which was more or less. I traveled, I became an entrepreneur and I started to take a particular focus on psychedelics In 2015, I was living in Budapest and was there with a couple of friends and we were talking about oh like, psychedelics are becoming more commonly discussed on well-known podcasts, more research is coming out about them and cannabis is being reevaluated.

Paul:

So the conclusion we came to is how helpful it might be to start like an educational platform about psychedelics, which ended up becoming Third Wave, and the idea with Third Wave is that the first wave is the indigenous and ancient use of psychedelics, that we've had a relationship with these substances for thousands of years. The second wave is the counterculture, and so the third wave is how do we take the best of both worlds? How do we take the best of the indigenous and ancient ritual and ceremony and sort of animist worldview and how do we integrate that with science, precision, safety, ethics, efficacy. And that has been sort of my mission for the last almost nine years now.

Klara:

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Grand Slam Journey podcast, where we discuss various things related to sports, life after sports and transitioning from our athletic endeavors to the next chapter of our lives, growing our skills and leadership in whatever we decide to put our minds into For me personally areas of business and technology. In a nutshell, we talk about the Grand Slam journey of our lives. Today's episode is slightly different than some of my previous ones. I have been contemplating about the power of psychedelics, as I have been listening to many famous podcasters talking about this topic and wanted to learn more about it, and so I invited Paul Austin to have a conversation around his journey to psychedelics. Paul is among the leading voices on the use of psychedelics for personal growth, creative insights and professional transformation. He is an entrepreneur, author and coach who sees psychedelic use as a skill cultivated through clear intention, supportive mentorship and courageous exploration. His book Mastering Microdosing is an all-inclusive guide to the practice of microdosing, including protocols, benefits, potential drawbacks and sourcing.

Klara:

We cover many topics on this podcast related to psychedelics, things to consider and education tips that Paul also shares on his podcast, the Psychedelic Podcast, and his educational platform, Third Wave. If you enjoyed this conversation, please share it with someone you believe may enjoy it as well. Consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss the next episode. This conversation is also available on the YouTube Grand Slam Journey channel. This is your host, Klara Yagoshova. Thank you for tuning in, and now I bring you Paul Austin. Hello, Paul, Welcome to Grand Slam Journey Podcast. I'm so thrilled to have you on and talk about your journey to psychedelics and tripping, so it's journeys aligned in many ways, but thank you for your time. Happy Friday.

Paul:

Thank you for having me on. You know it's regardless of the particular topic of the podcast. It's always fun to look at how psychedelics weave into even things like sports and performance and mindset. I'm excited to dive in with you today.

Klara:

Yeah, and maybe just to clarify, the Grand Slam journey is obviously named after my tennis journey. That's why the Grand Slam. But I very much am curious about the journeys of our lives. I think our life is a journey on its own and it actually aligns a lot with your experiences, psychedelic journeys and something I've been diving into Obviously not as deep as you are. That's why you're on the podcast and I'm curious to hear your opinions.

Klara:

But really the mental aspect of how we perceive things. Mindfulness I know there's a lot about breathwork meditation, but psychedelics is just a whole nother world. So I want to give you an opportunity to introduce yourself to the listeners before we dive into many topics and questions I have outlined here for you.

Paul:

Fantastic. So I started my path with psychedelics at the age of 19. So I grew up in a pretty traditional Midwestern family in a place called Grand Rapids, and as part of that upbringing I was raised in a fairly Christian religious environment, and so drugs like marijuana, lsd, mushrooms were not a particularly welcome, let's say, distraction or substance to be using. And so at the age of 16, just a few years prior to my own psychedelic work, I discovered cannabis and my parents found out that I had been smoking a little bit of weed and they sat me down one Sunday after church and my dad looked at me and my dad's a very sweet, kind, human person and we have a great relationship but he looked over at me I'm 16 at the time and he's like you know. I haven't been this disappointed since my brother passed away in a car accident 35 years ago, right. And so there was clearly a level of conditioning in that lens and that perspective that marijuana was this terrible or this bad, you know. And yet the experience I had with it was interesting, it was fun, I laughed a lot, I was able to address some issues with social anxiety that I had at that point in time, and so there was a clear sort of difference and distinction between my personal experience and what my parents, let's say, say believed to be true. But the takeaway from that was, you know, there was a part of myself that I had to be ashamed of or feel guilty of. And so, at the age of 19, I started working with psychedelics. First psilocybin mushrooms at about two grams or so, so a high enough dose to definitely have an experience. This was not a microdose, but it wasn't like a profound and illuminating experience. But a few months after that I did a higher dose of LSD and that was a really profound, moving experience. And the sort of core insider takeaway from that experience was one, how important it is that we have a deep relationship to nature, to the environment, to the world around us right, when we work with psychedelics. It really opens up that awareness. And then, two, that I really had nothing to be ashamed of. So back to that story with my dad. It's like LSD, psilocybin really helped me to heal from the sort of shame and guilt of being raised in an overly religious and Christian environment and allow me to really kind of step out of the normal day-to-day and dream about what it is that I wanted to create with my life, and so those early psychedelic experiences then were very influential in what I did.

Paul:

At the age of 20, 21, 22, which was more or less I traveled, I became an entrepreneur and I started to take a particular focus on psychedelics. In 2015, I was living in Budapest and was there with a couple of friends and we were talking about oh like, psychedelics are becoming more commonly discussed on well-known podcasts, more research is coming out about them and cannabis is being reevaluated as a substance. So the conclusion we came to is how helpful it might be to start like an educational platform about psychedelics, which ended up becoming Third Wave. And the idea with Third Wave is that the first wave is the indigenous and ancient use of psychedelics, that we've had a relationship with these substances for thousands of years. When LSD was invented and reintroduced into Western culture, A lot of clinical research was carried out on LSD. There was a lot of interest, but it became tied up in the anti-war movement and was prohibited, I believe, in like 1968. And so the third wave is how do we take the best of both worlds? How do we take the best of the indigenous and ancient ritual and ceremony and sort of animist worldview and how do we integrate that with science, precision, safety, ethics, efficacy?

Paul:

And that has been sort of my mission for the last eight, almost nine years now, as I've been building in the psychedelic space and sort of to bring this story full circle.

Paul:

A few years ago I went back home to Michigan where I grew up and spent some time with my family, and previously to that trip I had sent my dad a book called how to Change your Mind, which is by Michael Pollan, and it's a pretty well-known book. It was a major inflection point for the acceptance of psychedelics and so my dad read that book and he's never obviously smoked weed, he's never really been drunk in his life, he's a very sort of pious, well-to-do man. But after reading that book he became curious and open to working with psychedelics and so the sort of closing of the story is the sort of experience that I had at 16 was transformed, because about 14 years after that I actually guided my dad through a high-dose psilocybin experience and he was able to sort of get it and go through that experience and have a really beautiful, moving journey in many ways, and so I think that for me has been then to see how much public perception has changed on psychedelics just in the last five, six years, how open people are becoming to it.

Paul:

It's like exponential in terms of the acceptance that we've seen, and so I'm very hopeful that we'll continue to see a growth of interest in these substances and medicines.

Klara:

Thank you for sharing that story, though I also love how you kind of went full circle and kudos to your dad for changing his mind. I think sometimes we as humans get stuck in our own thinking. So the fact that he actually changed his perspective and you were able to guide him through the psychedelic experience, I can only imagine how much that meant probably to you and to him as well. Anything you can share from that I'm curious because it's something to guide somebody through it and other thing to experience it. Obviously you probably have to experience it in order to know how to guide them. But just to touch on that before we dive deeper, even into the types of psychedelic substances, what would you want to share?

Paul:

So, post COVID right 2021, especially there was a huge spike of interest in psychedelics, and I was observing everything that was going on at the time and noticed that now might be a great time to launch a training program for practitioners and coaches and other people who want to enter this space. And so, in 2021, we launched our practitioner training program, where we train executive coaches, health and wellness coaches, life and relationship coaches, some clinicians and how to work with psychedelics. The five key things that we focus on are what I call the five key elements assessment, preparation, facilitation, integration and microdosing. And so a lot of people hear about psychedelics right, they hear about guiding a journey, for example, and they think about just guiding. The actual experience, and the metaphor that I like to compare it to is like surfing, where, when we go out and surf, a lot of people see surfing as riding the wave, but what they don't realize is there's a lot of effort and energy that goes into how you paddle out, how you choose the wave, how you get up on the board. There's a ton of things that lead up to that moment where you finally pop up and you're riding the wave, and I think a psychedelic experience is very similar, that there's a lot that leads up to the experience itself. And the more attention one pays to the assessment process, to how we prepare ourselves before it, to the set and setting that we choose to go into, the environment in which we're doing the experience, the provider or the facilitator or guide or the medicine that we choose, all of these make a big difference. And then even more so after the experience right, how do we help people integrate from that experience? What's the role, potentially, of microdosing for that?

Paul:

And so with the journey with my dad, it was quite informal because we know each other so well and there's already such a deep bond of trust and love.

Paul:

I knew him in and out.

Paul:

I didn't necessarily have to bring him through a deep assessment.

Paul:

We definitely talked prior to it just to prepare him for how to navigate it and what might come up and how to breathe through some things.

Paul:

And then a lot of the experience was simply him laying down with an eye mask and a playlist, and he took about the equivalent of three grams of psilocybin mushrooms, which is a solid dose, and then just sort of was guided through this playlist for about three or four hours and then, towards the tail end of it we went for a walk outside through the neighborhood just to sort of start to unpack some things that he observed and that he noticed, and then in the days following we had some thoughts and conversation around what he noticed and what he observed and how all that went. So I think, for anyone who's listening to this just to zoom out a little bit, if they're interested in working with psychedelics or maybe some of your listeners are somewhat experienced in psychedelics and they're interested in becoming a practitioner or helping other people really honing in on those five elements assessment, preparation, facilitation, integration and microdosing those, I think, are the key aspects to pay attention to if we want to have a really effective, safe and transformative experience with psychedelics.

Klara:

And I want to dive a little bit deeper into kind of what your dad or what you noticed I don't know if you want to share it from your experience creating these sort of guided psychedelic journeys for people and process, how to do it. Is there generally takeaway that you see is common for everyone or is it still very personalized, based on the person's again, experience setting mindset? Obviously what I have going through life. I'm just curious how that is from kind of your perspective and being around it. I'm sure you hear a lot of people's feedback.

Paul:

So the subjective experience of someone who works with psychedelics depends on a number of factors, right, and I'll do my best to list them out. One it's going to depend on a lot of like whether or not they have any practice with deep, inner contemplative work. Have they meditated before? Have they done things like breath work, yoga, float tanks, cold plunging? Are they more spiritually or mystically inclined to some degree, or is this literally the first time that they've really taken the space and time to go inwards and explore the inner workings of their consciousness and their psyche? Right, that's one factor. Another factor is do they struggle with any clinical symptoms? Or are they on any psychiatric medications like SSRIs, ADHD medication, benzodiazepines right, Because there can be contraindications with these medications.

Paul:

They do impact or affect the subjective experience that someone has when they work with psychedelics. If someone does have quite a bit of trauma, if they are clinically depressed or struggle with addiction or anxiety, their initial experiences with psychedelics are going to be different than someone who maybe has a little bit of a cleaner slate to go off of when they're starting to work with psychedelics. So that can be a really big factor. And then I would say the other core factor is what substance they're using. There's a pretty substantial difference between ketamine, which is currently medically available to everyone, let's say, in the United States and.

Paul:

MDMA and MDMA will be medically available, likely approved by the FDA this year to treat PTSD, and there's a difference between those two in mushrooms and LSD and ayahuasca. So a big part of this as well is which substance are we working with, right? How much of that substance are we working with? There's a substantial difference in the subjective experience between taking a microdose and taking a very high dose as well, and all of this is sort of what I call the skill of psychedelics, and so how we navigate the psychedelic landscape, how we cultivate and develop that skill set, that depends on what medicine are we choosing. How much of that medicine are we choosing, how often are we doing it and what's the intention and that's often what I come back to is intention is very central to how the experience plays out, because when we're in that, let's say, more vulnerable state, more suggestible state with psychedelics, when we open up our subconscious and our unconscious, it can go in any number of directions. This is where having a guide or a facilitator or sitter who is there, who is present with you, a lot of it is how do we both surrender to the emotions that want to be felt?

Paul:

Typically, with higher doses of psychedelics, there's a lot of emotions that are coming up. There's a lot of anger or sadness, or grief, or even bliss, joy, awe that is felt. So part of it is how do I just allow myself to feel all the feelings? And then part of it as well is how do I maintain sort of an anchoring in my breath, right that sometimes in very intense experiences our nervous system becomes dysregulated, we become overwhelmed, we may start to feel anxious or paranoid, and so just remembering to anchor in the breath, to continue to sort of take it one moment, one emotion, one experience at a time.

Paul:

Then most commonly, particularly with high doses of psychedelics, if there's a great setting, if it's well-facilitated, if the dosage is pretty on point, people have beautiful, mystical, transformative experiences. And that doesn't mean that there aren't difficult or challenging aspects of that experience. Sometimes confronting trauma or doing shadow work or looking at our demons can be quite a handful and the outcome tends to be positive and beneficial. Like I said, as long as there's an assessment process, there's preparation right, this setting is safe, people can really let themselves go, all these aspects are really critical. It's much different just to go to a music festival and take a bunch of acid after you've been drinking right, and so I think the caveat with psychedelics always is to do them intentionally, to have a safe setting and to ideally have a friend, a guide, a coach, a therapist, a practitioner who can help you navigate the space, especially if you're working with high doses.

Klara:

Thank you for describing that. It actually made me realize all the things I did wrong, because I do want to dive a little bit to also the differences in the doses. I personally don't have that much experience. I've been thinking about Ayahuasca and San Pedro medicine. I know we talked during our first intro conversation so I would love to dive into that, but I guess where I was even going with the question.

Klara:

Just to explain, I took mushrooms once. I don't know which ones they were, they just showed up in my house. It was about three grams and so it was this colorful experiences. I also ate Thai food so I saw like scorpions swimming in my food, but it wasn't like tripping me. You know, for the first time ever taken a three gram. Some people say it's like out of the world. For me was just like warm, colorful experience.

Klara:

I'm not really sure how long it lasted. I don't think it lasted even three hours, and so that's why I'm also wondering, after everything you described, the biological differences, because we know that any developed drug potentially has different impact and effects on people. Maybe I'm like overly sensitive. I took CBD just to fall asleep and I was so exhausted the next morning that I just can't take it. I just have just to fall asleep and I was so exhausted the next morning that I just can't take it.

Klara:

I just have these kind of weird different experiences, and so I feel like the concept of psychedelics and you beautifully describe it it's so wide and it depends on so many other factors. So I don't know where you want to start, paul, but I would love to get sort of description from you. I know you mentioned LSD. Obviously there's the ayahuasca. I know we talked last time that ketamine treatment is something that's becoming very popular due to, I think, a lot of the distress and anxiety and kind of depression that's being diagnosed now across the world. So give us maybe a little bit of overview or wherever you want to start.

Paul:

I'll start with a metaphor here, because it'll help the listeners to really anchor into some of the distinctions and differences between all the psychedelics, Because when most of us hear about psychedelics we sort of clump them all together. Right, there's psychedelics, and I sense there's enough nuance in education now that people realize that psychedelics are different. I sense there's enough nuance in education now that people realize that psychedelics are different than cocaine and heroin and methamphetamines and amphetamines. Right, and the core difference is, of course, psychedelics are anti-addictive. In fact, psychedelics help us heal from addiction, whereas some of these other amphetamines, methamphetamines, cocaine, heroin these are highly addictive substances and the core reason for that is because psychedelics are more serotonergic agonists. So serotonin and stimulants and even things like opiates are much more around dopamine. So I think just setting that distinction is a good starting point.

Paul:

And then, when we talk about the different psychedelics, there are at this point hundreds of different psychedelics, but the most common ones are ketamine, which is actually one of, if not the most commonly used drug in the world. It's most commonly used as an anesthetic in emergency rooms. It's incredibly safe. But about 25 years ago they started to kind of figure out that, oh, I'm giving someone ketamine in the emergency room and they went into maybe the surgery quite depressed and they came out quite happy. So maybe there's more than just the anesthetic property, Maybe there's antidepressant properties to ketamine, and so ketamine is now approved by the FDA for depression through a patented form of ketamine called Spravato that was developed by Johnson and Johnson. Generic ketamine is available everywhere. It's quite easy and accessible. The downside with ketamine is that it is slightly more addictive than the classic psychedelics, so people have to be sure not to abuse it. That's really important.

Paul:

The second one is MDMA, also commonly known as ecstasy, was first invented in 1912 by Merck, the German pharmaceutical company, and then reinvented in the 70s by a chemist named Sascha Schalgen, who was this really brilliant guy who was a professor at Berkeley and invented hundreds of psychedelics himself, and his most famous one is MDMA. Mdma was legal until 1985, and then it started to sort of get widely used in the rave scene, and so the DEA made it a Schedule 1 substance in 1985. And so for the last 30 years almost 40 years now this nonprofit MAPS, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, has been focused on getting MDMA through clinical trials phase three clinical trials for PTSD, and that's on the verge of being approved by the FDA. So MDMA and ketamine are both great introductory, what we could call introductory psychedelics.

Paul:

In this lotus flower metaphor. When we're planting this new seed of self, when we're nourishing a new sense of self to allow for this full blossoming and enlightenment, MDMA and ketamine really help us to till the soil and think of tilling the soil as trauma work. It's a great opener and access point to really ensure that we have a healthy, nourished soil to plant that new seed of self into. Now, planting that new seed of self is really this death and rebirth process, the sort of classic ego-dissolving nature of psychedelics. Lsd and psilocybin are fantastic for that. If you do a high dose of LSD or a high dose of psilocybin, you will most likely have an ego-dissolving experience where you'll sort of see beyond the veil of the individual self, You'll see how connected you are to everything around you, and that is sort of planting this new seed of self. And then, after these high-dose psychedelic experiences with LSD or psilocybin, then we have to integrate. So integration is really the nourishment of that new seed, right it's. How are we watering that seed, how are we providing sunlight for that seed? And so integration practices are things like meditation, breath work, yoga, movement, how we eat, how we sleep. Microdosing is a great integration tool as well to continue to allow that new sense of self to flourish. And then, once we're really looking at, how do I sort of access these higher states of enlightenment blossoming into this true full self that I know I can become? That's when these substances like ayahuasca, San Pedro, iboga, 5-MeO-DMT are all relevant. So ayahuasca, San Pedro, iboga, 5-amio DMT are all relevant. So ayahuasca.

Paul:

Just, I'll give a brief little note about each one. Ayahuasca is a tea from the Amazon that has been used for over a thousand years. Its active ingredient is NNDMT and it's disgusting to drink, but it's a transformative and powerful experience that's stewarded by a lot of indigenous peoples in South America. Iboga is a root from Gabon that is most commonly used to treat opiate addiction and it's a very intense and powerful experience. Iboga is. In fact, out of all these psychedelics I just mentioned, Iboga is the only one that I have not personally worked with because it's that intense. I'm sure at some point I will, but it's just a lot. 5-meo-dmt is the venom from a toad, so you can literally kind of milk the Sonaran desert toad and smoke its venom and that will create this really intense and blissful experience. That will create this really intense and blissful experience. And then San Pedro is a cacti from the Andes and the active ingredient in San Pedro is mescaline. It's also in peyote, which is another cacti from Mexico, and San Pedro is very similar to LSD. It's a bit more energizing, uplifting, really great for movement and exercise and activity those, I think, eight or nine substances.

Paul:

What I usually recommend folks is, if this is your first time, getting into trauma work, doing deep inner work kind of like looking at these different shadowy or subconscious aspects of who you are, starting with something like MDMA, ketamine, lower doses of psilocybin can be very helpful for that. Don't necessarily feel compelled to book a trip to Costa Rica or Peru and drink a bunch of ayahuasca as your first time. Kind of ease your way in, because the likelihood then of you really transforming through this experience is much higher. I've seen this happen too much where people go right in and they smoke the toad venom with 5-MeO or they go do ayahuasca and it ends up actually being too intense for them and too overwhelming and can sometimes re-traumatize them. And so it's really good to sort of ease our way in. I say start low and go slow. You can always take more you can't necessarily take less and have other practices like breath work and meditation and yoga and float tanks that help you to become more familiar with sort of this deep inner world, Because we're so conditioned in modern society to be focused on the external and the big shift that often happens when we work with psychedelics is we turn that energy inwards and it can be like I said, it can just be quite confronting to face every part of ourselves, especially parts of ourselves that we haven't looked at potentially ever.

Paul:

That's the continued sort of overview of all the different psychedelics or use cases. And then, of course, part of the reason that these different psychedelics have different impacts is because the way that they're impacting the brain and the body is different. You know what they're doing to our neurochemistry is different, but that's like going into that detail would pretty much be the rest of the episode. So I don't want to like continue to belabor the details.

Klara:

So what I've taken away from your description is that you likely don't suggest somebody to book ayahuasca trip and go to, so the amazon forest. I was actually thinking about it. I was researching the retreats. I did hear also about the risks. People say it's super intense and so it's good to go with someone you know and you obviously need to research the shamans and kind of the dosing and how good these retreat centers are. So there's lots to just choosing the trip itself and where you go.

Paul:

And part of that as well is if you have a coach and this is why we do even the training program that we do because for you it feels for you, having now chatted with you a couple of times, is actually maybe quite ready to go work with ayahuasca, right, there's probably a level of inner work that you've already done, whether it's through psychedelics or outside of psychedelics, the questions that you have. I could easily recommend you to go. Okay, check out this specific center. I think it would be a really great opener.

Paul:

They take really good care of people and for you the chances of it being a positive and beneficial experience. My senses would be quite high and it's always so personal. So typically what I communicate publicly on public platforms is a more conservative approach. Right, because it's better to, like I said, the sort of start low and go slow. But if you have a coach, a provider, someone who really knows this space, the nuance of it, and they can talk with you, they can assess where you're at, they can get a sense of what might work for you. For some people they could end up having one of their first experiences be ayahuasca or San Pedro. But I don't necessarily recommend that on a broad basis, simply because I know there are a lot of people who are coming into this space who have a lot of big T trauma in particular, and if that's just blasted through with things like ayahuasca or 5-MeO, it can actually be highly destabilizing and quite difficult for someone to navigate planks, cold plunges.

Klara:

I love cold plunging. I do it mainly for my athletic injuries, but I do recognize some of the fun alertness and just calming effect. You have to calm your breath to not panic. So, especially at the beginning, it was really fun playing with my mind because it just goes into this shock oh my gosh, I'm going to die. And so it's really fun calming you down, know you're safe. It's fine, like five minutes at 40 degrees water. It's not fun calming you down, know you're safe, it's fine, like five minutes at 40 degrees water. It's not gonna kill you. But also the yoga and meditation. And so how do you see this trend? It seems like you see it very complimentary. But how do you see this trend overall in society? Because it seems like everywhere you turn around, these four are shown on every corner of the screen, whether you're looking at email or websites or popping up on Facebook of these therapies and obviously, the rise of psychedelics as well. What's your view on it?

Paul:

You know, when we talk about the skill of psychedelics, I really look at navigating the skill of psychedelics, as how do we combine this high-dose kind of catalytic, transformative, intense work with microdosing and what I call non-psychedelic modalities breathwork, yoga, meditation, cold plunging and that the substrate of transformation right, the sort of metaphor of the thing to you know how we brush our teeth every single day, how we maintain these more aware, reactive, more centered states, is through practices that don't require us to take a substance, and I think the reason these have become and are becoming more relevant and more widely used is because for so long we've been stuck in this model of a separation between the mind and the body. So if you dig into some of the foundational science and research that's informed let's say conventional psychiatric, the use of conventional psychiatric medications like SSRIs a lot of it is rooted in a purely biological framework. In other words, someone's serotonin is low. If they take this drug, it'll fix their serotonin, without recognizing that actually the brain is much more complicated than that and that the sort of neurochemistry of the brain is also impacted by what we eat, by how we sleep, by our emotional upbringing, by whether or not we have trauma right, and so I think what's happening now is we're starting to realize that mental health is much more complex than we had previously assumed and that these practices like meditation and breath work and cold plunging and yoga actually help to improve mental health because of their impact on neuroplasticity.

Paul:

So if you look at some of the research that's been done, for example, on mindfulness meditation, sitting on the cushion for 20 minutes a day for six straight weeks shows measurable changes in brain plasticity. So there's something called gray matter in the brain, and when we meditate consistently, that gray matter actually grows and develops, and that's associated with our ability to change, that's associated with our ability to make new choices and make new decisions, and so the sort of fundamental core of any growth, kind of path of growth, development, healing, transformation is the capacity to change. And so these tools, these practices, essentially allow us to, on an everyday basis, continue to grow and evolve rather than feeling stuck or stagnant. And these practices are so important because we can't just take a bunch of mushrooms every day or we can't day.

Paul:

I wouldn't even recommend microdosing every day necessarily. It really has to be an endogenous practice that we root in, or else we're replicating a lot of the same harms of our current psychiatric system, which is essentially, take this pill to feel better. This pill to feel better, right, Rely on something outside of you, utilize this as a crutch to sort of manage your symptoms, but it doesn't really ever get to the core of the thing itself. And so I think, you know, with psychedelics, with these other contemplative practices, we can get to the thing, we can get to the core of the thing itself, which then allows us to be much more free, to have much more choice, to be more autonomous, to be more sovereign. And that, to me, is the quote unquote goal of a lot of this inner work is how can I be free from attachment, how can I be free from reactivity, how can I be free from expectation and just simply exist and create as a human being who is navigating life and having fun while doing?

Klara:

it and it makes me think about a lot of things. I do want to go back even to our first discussion and what you mentioned on your website. It really seems like your belief is grounded that these psychedelics exist. Going back to kind of what we discussed, combined with the right practice, right place, if you take the right dose seems like we're able to open up our deeper consciousness and then make decisions on a different level, instead of this kind of hierarchy, power, greed-driven society that we're sometimes in.

Klara:

I guess to even tie it to biology, what I'm pondering about, at which point it sort of equals out, because our biology is kind of created to always adjust, like I've been doing some reading through Loretta Bruning, who writes about the basic four chemicals serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin, endorphins, and then you have the fifth one, cortisol. But really those are the ones that drive our flight, fight or freeze and very much of kind of who we are get wired through our experiences and upbringing. But that's what I'm thinking. Our experiences and the way our mind works always kind of readjust to what the new baseline is. So how do you see that general biology and chemicals working? You mentioned they're more perhaps serotonin spiking, but I feel like wouldn't. After a while our serotonin levels sort of adjust and we would come to the same norm that we sort of were before.

Paul:

It's a good question. So I think part of this comes down to how we perceive our subjective experience. Are we feeling better? Do we have a better mood? Do we have more energy? Are we more aware? Are we less reactive? So part of it is from a qualitative perspective. How is our life improving?

Paul:

And what we see time and time again with the clinical research on psychedelics is that if psychedelics are done in a safe and responsible container, that they substantially can improve the quality of life of someone, based on both more, let's say, psychometric tests and also even physiological or biological tests. The other aspect of it is if biology is entangled with our psychology and also our social environment, our physical environment. So there's the classic discussion, nature versus nurture, genetics versus the way that I was raised, and I think what we're learning is it's both and proposition. It's not either or. So the biology matters, but also, as we've already talked about, how we have experienced trauma or other psychological challenges. That matters and has an impact that we live in and who our friends are and who our family is and who we spend time with and sort of the physical structure, everyday reality that matters as well. Right, someone who lives in poverty is much more likely to be predisposed to mental health issues versus someone who lives in a more comfortable middle class situation. Right, and so we can track that from a neurochemistry perspective, partly, but but it's also, I would say, much more complex than just the neurochemistry. Now, when it comes to, let's say, serotonin levels over the long term, what I can speak to is that a lot of people who have clinical depression and work with psychedelics notice that they're able to wean off certain psychiatric medications and subjectively feel better. Now, what does that mean for where their serotonin system is at and how it's? I don't know enough about that, just because I'm not a neuroscientist, but something is shifting and changing within that. You know.

Paul:

You mentioned oxytocin, right? So MDMA, utilizing MDMA, it's a heart opener, it's an empathogen, and so part of the magic of MDMA is a substantial spike in oxytocin, which is sort of the bonding chemical, the relational chemical. So when we are working with MDMA within that four to five to six hour window, this is where the intention of the experience, the environment of the experience, how it's facilitated, really matters. Because part of the magic of psychedelics is how do you leverage that window of neuroplasticity, of an oxytocin dump, of an increase in the dopamine baseline, if you will. How do you leverage that open window to kind of move through stuck or stagnant energy or to release? An even better way to put it would be to release stuck or stagnant energy, or to release. An even better way to put it would be to release stuck or stagnant energy, because one of the other impacts that psychedelics have on the brain is they impact the amygdala. So the amygdala is the tiny little almond-shaped sized reptilian brain. It's super, super deep, it's the oldest part of our brain and it's the fear response. And so when someone is, for example, utilizing MDMA within a therapeutic container to treat PTSD, in their normal waking consciousness they can't actually recall the acute trauma that has created their PTSD because it's actually too overwhelming for their nervous system to manage and navigate. But when they take MDMA, that fear response gets downregulated so they can actually talk about the extremely traumatic experience without becoming overwhelmed. And so I think that is really the key to pay attention to is, when we're utilizing these drugs, these medicines, what's happening to the brain? Psilocybin is different than MDMA, which is different than ketamine. How are we utilizing that open window for certain intentions and purposes? And then what impact is that having on a go forward basis, because, as we already talked about right part of the magic of healing and transformation with psychedelics is what we do in integration. It's what we do after the experience, and so someone who meditates every day for 30 minutes for six weeks after a psychedelic experience is going to have a very different integration process than someone who just goes back and does their normal everyday thing. And so a lot of the neurochemistry, a lot of the biology then is dictated by the practices that we do on a consistent basis and then the way that we leverage this sort of open window of neuroplasticity when we're actually under the influence of a higher dose of the psychedelic. Is that helpful? I did my best to sort of address or navigate.

Klara:

Yeah, thank you. What that makes me think about and I did have a question for you even during our last conversation is thinking about everything you were saying, taking it in, and it seems like it's fairly difficult to add all of the right pieces of a puzzle, like someone really needs to have a great depth on information and understanding of each of these drugs and making assessments of the person, where they are, as you mentioned, in their own personal journey, how their life looks like. Perhaps you mentioned in their own personal journey how their life looks like. Perhaps you mentioned even food and nutrition, perhaps exercise, how much they're able to control their own mind and trauma.

Klara:

So it makes me think of technology and also the fact Daniel Kahneman writes what you see is all there is. So specifically maybe the spatial computing AR VR that I've experienced some of the meditation on one of the AR VR devices that is so colorful it almost makes me feel like I'm transported to a very different forest, something that I would imagine. Perhaps psilocybin can do for you if you're guided through the right process and experience. How do you see that? Benefiting or maybe not benefiting? Because, again, it seems like you need to have this really deep expertise created by people and programs to perhaps get the most out of that psychedelic experience for that person, to kind of help them shift to a new type of thinking and sort of mindset.

Paul:

You know there's. The vast majority of people don't want to become masterful at working with psychedelics, necessarily, right?

Paul:

Just like the vast majority of people don't necessarily want to become a five-star chef or the vast majority of people don't necessarily want to become a black belt in jujitsu. So I think there's a there's sort of a fractal here where it's like part of the focus of our training institute is to train providers and how to really master the skill of psychedelics and navigate it. So that way they are equipped. So the general population in public are curious and interested but don't necessarily want to go down the deep rabbit hole of psychedelics, feel safe and supported with someone who knows a lot of expertise and can help them to navigate it. So I think part of it is working with a coach or a practitioner or a provider who knows a thing or two about psychedelics allows you to ask the right questions, go, go through an assessment process and just be supported in what's ideal for you, so you don't have to do all of the upfront work to figure that out. I still think it's helpful if someone is going to work with psychedelics to listen to podcasts. On Third Way we have a bunch of guides on the various psychedelics. I have my own podcast that I've been publishing for seven years. So a ton of free content and education. So again, the metaphor that I would use is like everyone knows how to cook eggs right, and I think we should have a similar sort of literacy with psychedelics. Like everyone should know sort of the basic fundamentals of how we might microdose or how I might do a high dose or how I might set that up, but you don't necessarily need to go deep, deep down the rabbit hole. I think a lot of people can experience healing and transformation just by starting a microdosing protocol, and I wrote a book called Mastering Microdosing. That's a really quick and easy read where folks can check that out. Or maybe it's signing up for a ketamine experience. There are a lot of providers now that will send ketamine to your home, so you can work with ketamine at your house with the support of a virtual coach. So I think there's a lot of ways to dip our toes in, to experience the benefits of psychedelics without feeling overwhelmed by all the information that's out there.

Paul:

And if someone is like, this is a path I really want to commit to. It's a path that I think could be life-changing, because my argument, or my opinion, is that there are a lot of modalities out there. Some are great, like the ones we've talked about today cold plunge, sauna, yoga, breath work, meditation right there are modalities that show efficacy. There's also a lot of bullshit out there in training and personal development and healing. There's a lot of bullshit, and what I've noticed with psychedelics is, time and time again, when they're done in a safe and responsible setting, the impact that they have on the lives of people who work with them is tremendous and substantial, and so my sort of perspective is if you are a seeker, if you are curious, if you're committed to your own sort of path and process of growth and transformation, if you really want to quote unquote make the most out of life, I have found no better tool to help with that process than psychedelic work, and that may mean it might be an experience or two that you have in your lifetime. It could mean that you have those experiences and you come to realize that this is a path that you really want to go deeper down.

Paul:

I've been working now with psychedelics for 15 years and I would say I've grown tremendously from them, and it is a path I will continue to work with these medicines and substances, because life is emergent, life shifts and changes and there's still things that need to be processed or handled or cleansed or dealt with, and that won't necessarily be the case for everyone.

Paul:

Some folks are just like I'd really like to have an experience or two and that's it, and that's also totally acceptable and fine. Now, how do we discern that difference is probably the next question, right? What's the difference between use and abuse is a really interesting one, and I think it really comes down to intention. Are you looking to utilize these substances to become more aware, to do shadow work, to be inspired, or are you really looking to utilize these substances almost as a crutch, as a way to disassociate, as a way to actually avoid doing the hard inner work of everyday change with meditation, breathwork and yoga? These are great catalysts, they're great openers, but they're not necessarily the best thing to become overly attached to because their downsides. I think if we become overly attached to them, if we think all of our power is coming from this external substance, then we sort of have lost the plot and more or less our work is self-defeating in many ways is there someone you would not recommend taking this psychedelic journey or experience?

Klara:

So I'm trying to figure out is there like an ideal person that you think should try it and someone who, well, if you have these and these conditions, it's probably not a fit for you. Try to find something else first before you go into it.

Paul:

So anyone who's predisposed to psychosis or schizophrenia or has a family history of psychosis or schizophrenia really should not be working with psychedelics. That's the main sort of caveat. And then if people are on certain psychiatric medications SSRIs, antipsychotics, benzodiazepines, even ADHD medication there are certain psychedelics that they shouldn't touch, like ayahuasca and MDMA. Psilocybin mushrooms are okay with everything except lithium. There's really very few, if any, contraindications with psilocybin mushrooms. The only one is lithium. So those mushrooms are again the safest right. I would say to anyone listening that's just a really safe substance to work with. Besides that, people have to come into this on their own time. So allow people to sort of make that choice and decision. Providing education, providing context, is helpful and necessary, like we've done in this conversation, but at the end of the day, this is a very personal choice for someone to make. So giving yourself enough time and space to make that choice and make that decision is important. I would say.

Paul:

that's about it no-transcript first sort of psychedelic medicine will be approved by the FDA MDMA for PTSD by the end of 2024. I would also expect that thus far two states have legalized mushrooms Colorado and Oregon and I would expect California to legalize plant medicines this year as well, and California legalizing would be huge. So I think 2024 is really going to be sort of a banner, catalytic year, because when MDMA gets approved by the FDA and California legalizes these substances, that's going to have a massive impact on the second half of the decade and so I think from an immediate basis there's going to be a lot of shifts and changes in what happens with psychedelics and from there it looks to be may be approved by the FDA in 2027 or 2028. Once California legalizes, I think we'll see several other states also look at how they can legalize and regulate certain plant medicines. So I would expect by the end of this decade that the majority of Americans and Europeans and Canadians will have access to legal psychedelic substances within, I would say, six years, six, seven years If folks want to learn more.

Paul:

Thirdwaveco we have a podcast, a newsletter. If any folks are interested in the training program that's at the psychedeliccoachinginstitute so psychedeliccoachinginstitute. And then I'm on Twitter and Instagram at paulaustin3w and I check DMs and if folks just want to reach out with any questions, I'm happy to help.

Klara:

I'll add those to the episode notes so they can easily find you. And thank you so much, Paul. I know we're right on time. I appreciate the conversation.

Paul:

Thank you, this is a ton of fun. I'm glad we got to drop in for a little bit.

Klara:

If you enjoyed this episode, I want to ask you to please do two things that would help me greatly. One, please consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts, spotify or any other podcasting platform that you use to listen to this episode. Two, please share this podcast with a friend who you believe might enjoy it as well. It is a great way to remind someone you care about them by sharing a conversation they might be interested in. Thank you for listening.