July 9, 2021 • 35 mins
LSD and psilocybin aka magic mushrooms are gaining in popularity for the therapeutic benefits, especially using the technique of microdosing. I spoke with E.S. Fein from the lucid dreaming episode about the benefits of psychedelics.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Prodigy is a production of I Heart Radio, Hey Psycho Nuts.
Quick disclaimer here, this episode discusses substances that are currently illegal,
so it may not be suitable for children or adults
who are like totally lame. Listener discretion advised. So I've
been seeing lots of medical research about the potential benefits
(00:20):
of psychedelics, specifically micro dosing psilocybin also known as magic mushrooms.
Listeners really liked E. S. Fine from the Lucid Dreaming episode,
and he is an expert psycho nat who has tripped
thousands of times, so I brought him back on to
discuss psychedelics. By the way, I had my first lucid
dream last week where I had full control. It was
(00:42):
really cool and the flapping your arms thing really worked. Anyway,
here's my conversation with E. S. Fine. Oh and uh,
my name is Lille Berlante and this is Prodigy. Yeah.
(01:06):
So they were doing a lot of research on primarily
what LSD back what like in the sixties or before.
Um the research they were doing, uh in the sixties
and even before was extremely few and far between, and
it would be um very sparse, and the studies they
would be able to do would just have hilarious constraints
(01:27):
on them. Um. Probably the most famous therapeutic LSD study,
the one that just constantly comes up, and it's also
very controversial, was one of the um fathers of LSD,
Timothy Leary. He's the guy that really really made it famous,
him and his friend Richard Alpert. This experiment is called
the Concord Prison experiment, and through this experiment, Leary was
(01:48):
trying to see if he could give prisoners uh therapeutic
sessions of LSD, ideally a single session, and reduced the
recidivism reign in America. Uh. The recidivism reign in America,
the at which prisoners go back to prison is astronomically high, uh,
some of the highest in the entire world region. So
he was attempting to lower that through psychedelics alone. UM.
(02:10):
If the results that he showed were incredible, that being said,
as we've returned to that study and we've kind of
taken a look at it, there are a lot of
problems with it, like, um, the fact that you know,
they're not set up to succeed after they get out
of prison. That's exactly right, right, Yeah, So this what
we found was. He was trying to show that it
was kind of like, as they call the magic bullet,
(02:31):
and you could take one dose and you'd be good
to go. We now know that isn't the case. Um.
For many people, that is right, they can take one
dose and it completely changes their lives. But for the
vast majority of people to use it in a therapeutic setting,
like you said that, you have to have what Leary
called the halfway houses as well. Um, So after you
do this therapy, you have to have cathartic visitation to
(02:52):
reconsider what you went through, especially for individuals that need
this most, like violent prisoners, if you want to reintegrate
them into society. What do you categorize these as? Like
chemical altering substances, psychedelics? Like what's the blanket term? There
are many blanket terms. You're going to hear people say hallucinogen, psychedelic.
These are basically synonymous. Um. The term that we like
(03:15):
to use, especially in the community, is antheagen, which is
ultimately meaning like a natural compound that that alters you.
This again, the word natural is very controversial, especially when
it comes to Timothy Leary. He kind of made it
controversial because he said, if it's not natural, where does
it come from a different dimension? So, ultimately, his argument
was everything is natural. Um so like plastic bottles. Sure,
(03:38):
even even plastic does that not come from the earth? Right?
I mean you you Ultimately it's just a chemical compound,
and ultimately at some point in the university you're going
to find plastic. Maybe not always, it might be very rare,
but you will find it. Right. So, So, including um LSD,
psilocybin and d m T, what are the differences I
(03:58):
guess between them? It's far is l s D full
name being like surgic acid and uh psilocybin mushrooms. Uh,
they are unbelievably similar. I just want to note here
that some experienced psychonauts may disagree that psilocybin and l
s D are very similar. They're somewhat different, but I
liken that they're both tripped to means and have a
(04:18):
similar effect on Sarah Tonin. If you want to discuss further,
hop into the comments section on the episode page at
Prodigy podcast dot com. They are also very very similar
to things like peyote and mescaline. Is the psychoactive compound
uh sand pedro mushrooms excuse me, Sam Cactus um and
like L. S A seeds a lot of people have done.
(04:39):
You can get these anywhere morning glory. They grow in
Illinois where I'm from. Um, you can just go grab
some seed pods. Unbelievably similar as well. If you were
to give someone a dose of LSD or mushrooms and
you didn't tell them what you gave them, I even myself,
I'd be very very hard pressed to be able to
tell the difference. Um. The major difference is the visual effects.
(05:01):
All of them have very distinct visual effects the geometries
that take place. As a matter of fact, that the
geometries that you see are unbelievably similar to the ancient
geometric artworks that we see of of you know eight
for example, the the Aztecs and the Mayans. When you
take L. S A seeds, all you see is the
artwork that they that they wrote, and these individuals constantly
(05:23):
talked about saying, hey, that's where we got that artwork.
We saw in these visions. These geometry. So D M
T is a class of its own. It's really not
fair to kind of put that in into the same class. UM.
But LSD and psilocybin mushrooms basically identical. UM, as far
as d MT is concerned, this is a this is
a whole new territory. I've heard it described as and
I love this description. D m T is like taking
(05:45):
LSD and mushrooms, stuffing in in a canon and just
launching it into outer space. It is on another level. UM.
The chances of what we call ego death, which myself
included a lot of times when we macro dose. We're
trying to achieve ego death. You're trying to experience complete
loss of self UM, so that there is no distinction
between self and what is outside the self. The chances
(06:06):
of ego death on d m T are so incredibly high. Um.
You could try for years and years and years with
LSD and mushrooms and never achieve it. You'll get it
your first time on d m T, if you do enough.
Another term you'll hear in the community is the breakthrough.
People are trying to have the breakthrough where you break
through the veil um and you you die ultimately mentally
right now, legitimately die. But this experience of death is
(06:30):
this is something you've actually brought up another time. Uh,
it'll it's seeing the universe and seeing yourself through a
completely new and open lens that has nothing to do
with your cultural identity, your your what I like to
call earth domestication, all of these values and ideas that
have been ingrained into you and you've been told this
(06:54):
is the way of the world, this is how it is,
this is how we work, this is how everything functions.
All of that is obliterated, and you start to see
things from a completely fresh lens, almost like a baby.
How would you pitch this? This is like something grumby
old boomer who's like that sounds like a bunch of
hippie nonsense. Uh. I mean, they're right, it is some
hippie nonsense. There's nothing wrong with hippie nonsense though. No,
(07:14):
but really, you know, this is something I've brought up
to my own mom and said, you know, yeah, I
think this would be great for you. Mom. You should
really consider this because I've heard her, uh, you know,
maybe make certain statements or other individuals who are a
lot older make certain statements that are clearly statements that
have to do with their culture and their time period,
which really have nothing to do with our new culture
in time period that's taking place. So I would tell them, hey,
(07:35):
there's nothing to be afraid of, the only thing that
you would have to fear is breaking down constructs that
are ridiculous already. And if you don't think the constructs
that you believe in and the identity that you believe
in is ridiculous and it's legitimate, well then fine, you
have nothing to fear. But if it's not legitimate, this
is going to break it down. So as far as
how would you pitch it to that person, it's going
(07:55):
to be pretty tough. It's absolutely going to be tough
because they're going to have to face them elves in
ways that they have absolutely refused to up into this point, right,
And that sounds scary to me, and I'm assuming maybe
other people who are interested, because there's a lot of
you know, research being going on right now about micro
dozing UM. So can you talk I guess a little
bit about some of the research that they're doing now
(08:17):
and why it started up so so much. Yeah, the
most of the research taking place now that I've seen
is to aid people who are terminal UM who are
very very close to death and help them accept death
UM and accept that you know, it's okay it's okay
to die, just as it was okay to live. You know,
(08:38):
another substance you'll see with this, by the way, is
ecstasy m D M A. Yeah. I also saw treatment
resistant depression, like, uh yeah, by the way, treatment resisted depression.
We are finding unbelievable results with ketemine. You get a
single dose academy every three months or so, and it's
just completely curing people of their depression. And micro dosing
is essentially taken like what like a tent or like
(09:00):
two tents, the amount of like a full dose that
would give you like the full effects. They call it
as I call macro dosing, but it's really what they
call full dosing. Yeah, and something that you're right about
that it's kind of up to your discretion. You know
how much you can handle in what you consider to
be micro dosing. Um. I know certain dudes that consider
micro dosing to be like half a tab. I could
never do that to me. That's already the beginning of
(09:21):
a macro dose. Um. It kind of just depends on
who you are though, but um, as far as how
much you should be doing again, it's completely personal. There's there.
You can't just say it's it's absolutely one way or
it's another. In the scientific setting, when we have this
in a in a laboratory setting, they will set the
limits and they will say, hey, this is what we
(09:42):
consider the micro this is what we consider it isn't
This does become a problem though, because some studies have
shown that body weight has nothing to do with this.
Other studies have shown it has everything to do with this.
There's a lot of confounding aspects here. Yeah, yeah, it's
but I saw a couple of different methods that people
use for like how they take it like three days
(10:04):
in a row and then stop, Like how does that?
So here's something to keep in mind. UM, any type
of psychedelic hallucinogen, whatever you want to call it, you
are immediately going to build up resistance. So if you
were to take let's say an eighth of mushrooms and
you start tripping, two hours go by and you say, yeah,
you know, I'd like to take a little bit more,
it's not gonna work. You've already built up a complete
(10:24):
tolerance to it. It doesn't matter how much you take,
it's gonna have virtually no effect. UM. So ultimately it's
too late. So you need to decide that you want
to take more within the first thirty minutes or really,
it's not going to have any effect. And if you
want to take it that Let's say you're going to
a music fest. A lot of people like to trip,
you know, five days in a row to music fest. Well,
you're gonna have to take double the amount each day.
So if you take an eighth of mushrooms one day
(10:46):
and you want to have the exact same effect the
next day, you're taking two ways, taking a quad. If
you want to have the exact same effects the next day,
you're gonna take half an ounce. So this is gonna
get pretty intense. This is also awesome because it stops
you from getting addicted. You not only is the chance
for addiction like basically negligible, We've never really seen people
get addicted to these substances in the traditional or in
(11:07):
the psychological sense. The chances of getting addicted are so
unbelievably difficult because you'd have to spend so much money
and get so much product even to be able to
do that. Um so yeah, that's that. That tolerance is
kind of a kind of a cool aspect of it.
In my opinion, it stops you from doing it too much.
What sort of research has been done on the positive
effects and like why it's having a positive effect. Immense
(11:31):
amounts of research, especially outside of America. Um. We see
a lot of research taking place in numerous European countries,
but there is a lot of research taking place in America.
I'll give you an example. Uh. One of the most
famous studies on dimethyl trip to me was through Rick
Strassman at the University of New Mexico. This was in
early two that, like two thousand twelve somewhere around there.
He wrote a book on it called the d MT
(11:52):
the Spirit Molecule, and he took numerous very advanced psychonauts
who had a huge amount of experience that psycho nuts
expects its sounds so cool, like explorer psyche YEA yeah,
I love that word. I like calling myself a psychoot um.
Once I heard that word, I was like, that's me.
That's I'm gonna wear that um. So he took all
(12:14):
these psycho knots and then he took a few people
as well that had virtually no experience, just to kind
of use as a control um. And what he found
was there were extremely similar elements with all of these
people's experiences, despite the differences in their culture and personality,
and what he found was all of these people had experiences,
especially at higher doses, that we would call mystical, that
(12:36):
we would call religious. They felt connected to something so
much deeper than themselves. And after these experiences, they felt
more fulfilled in life. They felt like they weren't as lost.
They said to themselves, you know, I get it. I
feel motivated. I feel like life is worth it, life
is worthwhile. I want to be alive. I want to
go out there and try different things. So Number one,
(12:59):
why would someone wanted you this? It gives you motivation.
I would say that's the number one effect that these
these experiences and these substances have on you. Um. Number two,
I'll give my own experience as far as how this
is a therapeutic for me. Um. This is something I
touched upon in our previous podcast. But I was born
with a birth defect called Poland syndrome, where I was
(13:20):
born without a right pectoral muscle, and I viewed myself
in a wildly negative way, and through numerous sessions of LSD,
specifically LSD and literally just staring at myself in the
mere naked. I was able to realize and fully fully
integrate into my consciousness in a in a full brain
pattern that's still there to this day. In appreciation for
(13:42):
not only being alive, but for having my physical form
as it is, I was able to see. Listen, man,
this is just part of it. The birth defect that
you experienced. Someone else experienced something else. Someone else didn't
experience that defect, and that's just part of reality and
there's nothing wrong with it. So instead of seeing myself
as other, instead of seeing myself as this odd, abnormal thing,
(14:02):
I started accepting myself is just a natural part of reality.
So that is a highly, highly therapeutic aspect of it.
It helps you get over insecurities and accept yourself. It
sounds difficult, I mean, just because especially cause I'm sure
lots of people have had trauma at the loss of
a loved one or whatever, so I imagine maybe it
would be helpful for that as well, Oh very much. So. Yeah,
(14:24):
you know, I would like to say to your listeners
as well, this is not especially if you're not experienced
with this. This is not something you want to do alone. Um.
One of the most common things that can happen while
you're tripping, is you can forget that you're tripping. Um,
Time becomes utterly irrelevant. Especially at higher doses. You start
to see that time is truly a very just as
Einstein taught us through his math, time is truly subjective.
(14:46):
It's not a real thing. Um. Because they say set
and setting, right, Yes, when we say set and setting,
we don't only mean where you are. That's the setting, right,
the music that's around you, the people that are around you.
The set is you, what's going on in your own mind.
So I know a lot of people that will say, hey, man,
I did a lot of LSD back in the day.
I didn't really get therapeutic effects for it. Because you
(15:06):
didn't want therapeutic effects, you went and partied on it,
And which is fine, by the way, to each his own.
But if you say to yourself, hey, I want to
take LSD and have a good time, well then you're
gonna have a good time. That's your set. But if
you take LSD and say, look, I want to get
over my insecurities, I want to find motivation, I want
to explore what it means to be alive, well that's
exactly what it's going to give to you. It's just
(15:26):
we have to remember this is a chemical reaction, right,
The LSD, the psilocybin, all these substances, they alone are
not doing anything. They're integrating themselves with your system. So
your system is part of this equation. So not everyone's
going to have the same experience. And just like you said,
if you've set the set correctly, you're going to have
(15:47):
an experience that you truly want. That's also why you
want to have a sitter, why you don't want to
do it alone, because again, you can forget. You could
start going is this going to go on forever? Am
I going to be tripping for the rest of my life?
And that's why the sitter is there to go? Now,
did you took UTLSD? This was your This is your motivation.
That reminds me of that um that nine in one
call or the cople I came and his wife like
ate the weed brownies and then emergency. Yeah, can you
(16:11):
please send rescue? I think I'm having an overdose that
a school as my wife, you and your wife, yes,
over knows of what marijuana? Can you please send rescue? Okay,
how old are you? I'm nine? Years old, and my
wife is please come please. Hey, guys been drinking? Also,
(16:32):
what have you guys been drinking today too? No, that's it,
you guys have fever anything? No, I'm just I think
we're dying. Okay. How much did you guys have? I
don't know. We made brownies and I think we're dead,
I really do. Okay, how much did you put in
your brownies? I don't know who made brownie? Um my
(16:54):
wife and I did. How much did you buy? I
don't just please and rescues were on the way. I'm
trying to figure out how much you bought and put
into the brown It's probably like a quote and you
guys eat all of thy Yeah we did. Let's go
on the Red Wings game? Why the Red Wings game?
(17:18):
I don't okay. I just want to make sure this
isn't some type of like hallucination that I'm having. Uh
but so, but like form that makes sense to me, Like,
you know, you have this sort of like large experience
where you confront some parts of yourself. But what about
(17:38):
micro dosing where you're not getting that sort of like
tripping effect. Yeah, the whole point of micro dosing is
too when you take small I don't know, you know
how experienced you are or how how much you want
to talk about. But is when you take small amounts
of any psychedelic, the first effect that you get is
you can't stop smiling. You just it's called the LSD smile,
(17:59):
and you're like a cheshire cat. You're just like, You're like, Okay,
I look so weird. Are your pupils dilated to because
not right away, but yes, you know, with especially like
four hours into it. Yeah, your pupils are as big
as charcoal, which, by the way, that gives you night vision.
That's one of the coolest effects of this. Your your
pupils stay dilated so any even minute amount of light
(18:19):
gets into them, so you can sitch. A lot of
hunters back in the day took it for that reason. Um.
So micro dosing, though, the whole point is to just
get that little serotonin flow and to get that little
happiness throughout your day, um without having to take something
that has terrible, terrible consequences. Um. You know, there's numerous
(18:40):
drugs that give you the same effect that are are
going to be legal and prescribed by physicians. They take inhibitors. Yeah,
some s s RI I some of them have s
s R I effects. Um. Some of them stop the
serotonin um from flowing as much, which in the end
has an actual uh bosit feedback loop. So in the
(19:01):
end you can get more serotonin. Right. Um. So ultimately,
what we're trying to what we're trying to focus on
here is the serotonin and dopamine, but specifically the serotonin.
Specifically because these substances are indols of serotonin, meaning they're
basically identical. Um, so they have almost identical effects. Especially
we now know with this even in the last maybe
(19:24):
like let's say ten years, huge amounts of serotonin is
produced by the gut um and the floor of our gut.
So the fact that these are going through our gut
in our intestines, that just goes to show Okay, well
it makes sense that so much serotonin activity is taking
place with these substances. Yeah, we're seeing a lot of
gut research on mental health now, right. Yes, one of
(19:45):
the most interesting things I ever saw was that I
first learned this in fact through kurzgistat that that YouTube
channel where they said, you you don't really have hunger centers.
The hunger that we experience, the the desires for food
that we experience. That's a habit for warmed by the
gut bacteria that you've been producing through habituation of certain
ingestion of foods. So if you're constantly eating fast food,
(20:07):
you're gonna produce fast food bacteria which are going to
send signals to the quote unquote hunger centers of your
brain which don't actually exist. That says, go get more
of that. So I like to remind people, Hey, if
you want to change your diet, it only takes a
certain amount of time to completely alter the gut bacteria
to start telling you, hey, I like this stuff. At first,
you might not like a salad, but that's because you
(20:29):
don't actually decide whether or not you like salad the
gut bacteria, do you. What about was soda because when
I don't drink much soda, I don't want it. But
then when I drink and I'm like, oh it's so good.
When I like, I'm drinking it over and over again.
YEA sugar, Yeah, that's that sugar. And even even if
it's diet, we you know it's contained substance, artificial substances
that mimic that effective door dash McDonald's sausage biscuit this morning.
(20:53):
I'm not a shamed to say, but yeah, a little
a shamed. I can hear it in your voice. All right,
let's take a quick break to hydrate, be right back,
Welcome back to Prodigy. I'm really interested in the positive
benefits of micro dosing. It sounds like something that could
really be beneficial, and they're now they're starting to try
and get you. They're doing the research to try and
(21:13):
get FDA approval for you know, I guess they're using
it a therapy setting, in a controlled therapeutic setting. UM,
do you have any like info or insight into that? Uh,
The only insight I have is the information that has
been released with those studies. I've written several articles on
my website, one aggressive about the effects that we've seen
(21:34):
through UH therapeutic studies without l s D and mushrooms.
What we find is when you have when you go
into these experiences with a guide, with a individual who's experienced,
who can kind of help you through it, especially with
the first time, your chances of it being positive are
astronomically higher, not only astronomically higher. Often so they'll take
you know, nine to fifteen people and from all different
(21:57):
backgrounds and say, hey, what are the effects of the
people have As long as they have that guided therapy session,
it's going to be positive a hundred percent of the
time in many, many cases. Um. So, every every time
I find a new study on LSD or mushrooms that
have been you know, given to individuals in a therapeutic setting,
I always get very excited and I always go, well,
we already know what the results are going to be,
(22:18):
and they always turn out to be exactly the same.
It's a hundred percent. Everyone in these studies is going, look,
I found some benefit from it, whether it was increased happiness,
increased motivation, uh, increased um, like you said, acceptance about
maybe a lost loved one or some type of trauma
they went through. It's multifaceted. Ultimately, it's your brain. Especially
(22:41):
with m d m A too for treating PTSD. Yeah,
at least I've seen a fair amount of stuff about that. Yeah,
not only PTSD, but just empathy in general. I don't
know if you've ever done m d m A or
m d m A mixed with things which would ultimately
just what we call ecstasy. Um. If you tell a
lot of people get confused when they your ecstasy. They're like, oh,
(23:01):
that's the same as m D M A. M D
M A is pure that that's your molly, right, that's
your pure ecstasy. When normally when we say ecstasy, that
pill is rolled with things either methamphetamine or heroine or other.
You're rolling, Yeah, you're rolling on those pills. And the guy,
the guy thing makes me think of I'm sorry to joke,
but you know that movie Get them to the Greek
where they take the Jeffrey and uh, he's like rubbing
(23:24):
the Hey. And by the way, if you've ever done it,
texture is wildly incredible, absolutely amazing. You really would you
act like that? They didn't just make that up. Um.
Every sense is just heightened to an incredible degree. Um.
This is why it's so effective in therapy too. You
are experiencing the world in a more meaningful, in a
(23:46):
more deep way. Um. You get beyond these these programmed
thoughts that are constantly telling you to be depressed and
to be unhappy and to you know, kind of squander
your ability to enjoy model. Right, you know, so you
like I anytime I think about this one thing, you know,
I feel the same way. But if you can sort
of change the model a little bit, then you can,
(24:07):
I guess, approach from a different perspective and maybe break
it down a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, So let's use
um addiction as a great example, because all of these
substances are so incredible with curing addiction. It's interesting, it's
wildly effective. And so the question is why. But when
we look at addiction, we know that this is an
ingrained pattern. It's not just a physical thing. There you go,
(24:30):
It's not just a physical thing, right, it's mostly it's
actually mostly psychological. Mostly it's a it's a habit that
has been formed with repetition. Addiction is just a repeated pattern,
and I can even just go from their Addiction is
just something that's been repetitive. So the reason these psychedelics,
in generally substances work so incredibly well is they cut
(24:52):
that pattern immediately, and they allow you to see it
for what it is, a pattern, and they allow you
to metaprogram your brain in the moment and tell yourself, yeah,
I don't want that, I don't want that pattern. You
can see through the pattern immediately. Um. In fact, I
used to smoke cigarettes when I was in university about
eighteen and nineteen, and that is how I quit. Um.
I find cigarettes in nicotine in general hilariously easy to
(25:15):
quit with the psychedelic. I've known many people. You start
doing the psychedelic and instead of seeing you yourself, you
you consume nicotine. Correct. Yeah, I'm hitting this vape thing
right now, and most like post people that are like
you know, I don't want to keep doing it, right,
So I'm assuming that was part of it. Yes, you
talked to so many people, including myself at the time,
(25:37):
who go I really want to quit this. Well, listen
to yourself and you can ask the person, well, then
why aren't you quitting it? It's just not a good
time right now. I don't know, man, it's just, you know,
I don't really want to I kind of do want
to question. Yes, yourself and the mind relents, right. Well,
when you take these substances, you are forced into this
position where you can no longer relent. But more importantly,
(25:57):
you can see it at a deeper level. You can
see what that substance is doing to you. You can
see how it's destroying your body and creating this system
that you're out of control, and it gives you that
ability to make this decision in the moment and go, yeah,
I want to be in control, though I don't want
to be completely let loose for myself and I don't
want to be destroying myself. Now, you do have to
(26:18):
want it, by the way, it's not just gonna snap
and work it's set, right, You have to want this
for it to actually function. Like that, some of the
prescription medications they prescribe for stuff like depression or treating
trauma and stuff like that, you know, pharmaceuticals that often
have a fair amount of side effects and it's not
like you're altering the dose. You kind of have to
(26:40):
just stay on it. So, um, it would be cool
I think, you know, for to be able to explore
these types of substances, um, where you didn't have to
take a pharmaceutical. And you know, there's gonna be a
lot of people who say, well, you are taking a pharmaceutical, right,
These substances are pharmacological by nature, at least for me.
When I think of psilocybin, Uh, you know it comes
(27:02):
from a mushroom, right, but still a chemical that's all
playing something in your brain, right, that's right. Um, it's
natural right, I even las look ultimately l s D
this comes from air got fungus. It's like fungus that
grows on rye bread. It has been altered. This this
is something that you know, had to go through an
organic chemistry process UM to create what we call the LSD.
(27:24):
You wouldn't want to eat air got fungus straight make
you very sick, potentially kill you UM LSD N the
other hand, it won't do you know how they've changed
LSD because you know how it gweeds like way more potent.
All LSD you're gonna get is going to have a
slightly different effect UM because it's never purely identical. And
more importantly, you never know what the actual potency is.
(27:46):
It's measured in micrograms, So people would say, hey, I
took one tab. That one tab might be three micrograms
or fifty micrograms. This is a difference of six times
the dosage. You really never know. Well, it's scary, So
what do you like, take like a tiny amount and
see what it does you to guinea picket. So anytime
someone has wanted to ingest um LSD for the first
time and I've been sitting with them, always I'll say, hey,
(28:08):
when we get the dose, I'm gonna get a little
bit extra for me. I'll take it first, decide how
strong this is, and then I will let you know
what would be an appropriate amount for you. Um. But yeah,
it is. Even as an unbelievably experienced individual, it is
very scary because you might be taking a tab that's
a thousand micrograms for all you know. I've come across
several people in my life that are like, yeah, I've
never tried marijuana. Every time I do, you know, I
(28:30):
I freak out. I've tried it. I just freak out
every time, and I'm like, you're doing too much, you know,
like someone needs to introduce you to it by just
giving you a little bit. Yeah, are the people that say,
I've tried marijuana I didn't like and you're like, oh,
how did you do it? I took it as edible.
Well that that's a completely different experience than smoking it, right,
that's so easy to take too much. And then also
the classic you know when I don't know if people
(28:52):
say this much anymore, but I didn't get high my
first time, and I'm like, well you didn't inhale, you know,
I will tell you this though. Interestingly, I know many
people that absolutely did Inhale. Took ten, eleven, twelve times
to get high there first time. That is a very
very well known phenomenon. We don't fully understand it. I
don't believe it. I fully believe they just didn't Inhale. Dude,
I've I've literally watched it. My I don't want to
(29:14):
use any names, but my good friend who resisted, he
was a roommate for a long time. He resisted consuming cannabis.
He'd see me constantly doing it. One day he's like,
all right, I'll try it. And he tried it and
nothing happened, and we're like, dude, you didn't. You didn't
actually Inhale. You're like, you're too scared, Like I did.
I did, Okay, So the next time we try it,
we're all I in him so close, We're like, let's
see it. And he, I mean he fully he's taking
(29:35):
these giant hits and we're like, dude, you're gonna get
so blazed. Oh my god. Nothing, just absolutely nothing. Even
to this day, he's like, I've never really had an effect.
And normally I wouldn't believe it, but I scrutinized them
like a freaking scientist watching this guy. Let me see
the smoke come out exactly. Yeah, he was for sure
doing it. Man. It's very strange. Oh man, that reminds
me of a college days where we would take a
(29:55):
Nope jug and cut the bottom off grab in the bathtub, man,
Like that's just so so dirty, like like thinking back
about it, and you're using like foil to smoke out
of it. Yeah, it's so gross, terrible, terrible. But yeah.
So they're also using it in combination with therapy, right,
So exposure therapy Essentially it breaks down your barriers a bit,
(30:19):
and it's easier for you to confront some of those
traumatic events in your life, and that seems like it
could be really beneficial. I know they're doing that with
ketamine as well. Yeah, ketamine is also on a I
don't know if you've heard people describe ketamine. I don't.
I really wouldn't recommend it, frankly. I prescribed it to
a cat, my cat after surgery. Did they do that? Yeah,
that's that's how it's normally used by vets as an
(30:40):
animal tranquilizer um. But for humans, we experience what's called
kholing if you do enough, and a khle is a
one dent associative experience, kholing is frankly scary. Um you
you experience like whole other lives. Uh So for example,
you can you gotta do a lot, you know, a
(31:01):
very large amount. But when you do a large amount,
not the amount that they'd be giving to you in
these therapeutic settings, you you like become a new person.
So for example, uh, buddy of mine, he can hold
one time and we were in the room and he
just passed out and he came back and he was panicking,
going crazy like, oh, what's going on? Are you okay?
(31:21):
Are you okay? He ran out of the room. We
had to finally calm him down. He explained to us
what happened, He had ingested it. He laid back. He
came back up, and he was in a room with
several other people that he had never met before, and
they had a conversation with him, and they were referring
to him by a different name, and there were there
were a whole different set of things on the table,
and then suddenly he was back in our reality. That
(31:43):
is unbelievably terrifying. So and that's when that's that's when
you can potentially overdose on if you were to do
too much right. Yes, you can definitely overdose on kedemy.
That's again not something I would recommend. I was reading
a paper like before we started this interview, and it
was saying basically like researchers haven't really seen much of
a difference between doing a full dose and then micro dosing,
(32:06):
So like, essentially there's no key secret to micro docing.
You could do a full dose and get similar effects.
It's it's the therapy. Um It's like you said, it's
the setting setting. So as long as you're in the
same therapeutic setting, doing a threshold dose and doing the
heroic doses terence and kind of coin, both of these
will have the very very similar effect on your life.
(32:28):
That's as far as motivation is and therapy is concerned.
If you are trying to explore the inner self and
you're trying to experience ego death, that's not going to
happen on a threshold dose period. You need very very
large doses of a psychedelic to achieve that. Um, So
there's a major difference there. But as far as hey,
I just I wanna I wanna be less depressed. I
(32:50):
want to be more motivated. No, you absolutely do not
need a giant dose. Micro dose is more than enough
to achieve those results. Great and UM, if any of
my listeners want to try it, like, do you know
a guy or I'll be I'll be honest. I don't
really know how this works, but I've seen adds on
Instagram constantly, because I follow all these psychedelic pages, um constantly,
(33:13):
I see ads on Instagram for people to go to
these institutions where you can take these substances and for
like to be part of research, right, not just research.
A lot of them are just for yeah, to have
a good time and to go through therapy. And a
lot of them are fully funded so you don't have
to pay anything. I've read the experience reports of people
(33:33):
that have gone to them, and it just sounds like
people like me giving, you know, giving these doses and
and sitting for these people in a therapeutic setting. It
sounds absolutely amazing. I'd love to try it out one day.
Something else I recommend to your listeners. I think I
brought this up the other day is sensory deprivation. UM.
If you ever go into a sensory deprivation tank, which
is something that was created by John C. Lily to
(33:55):
help him explore what it would be like to experience
life as a dolphin. But if you go into a
sensory deprivation tank and also take a hallucinogenerous psychedelic, the
effects are unbelievably incredible, impotent, um more dissociative than anything UM.
So you you could take up just a couple of
tabs of LSD and have an experience similar to d MT,
(34:17):
unbelievably potent. I highly highly recommend it, and it's totally safe.
You're just you're sitting in saltwater. It's not a big deal.
Thanks so much to E. S. Fine. Fine is spelled
f E I N. You can find him on Instagram
at author E. S. Fine on his website at official E. S.
Fine dot com. His book is called Points of Origin.
(34:38):
If you want to discuss these topics further, hop into
the comments section on the episode page at Prodigy podcast
dot com. Prodigy was creating produced by me Low Berlante.
The executive producer is Tyler Klang. Thanks so much for listening.
If you want to help me out, you can follow
the show on Apple podcast or share an episode with
a friend. I also really appreciate when listener send me
(34:58):
messages and I respond to everyone. Prodigy is a production
of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts in my heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app or wherever you get
your podcasts.
Prodigy is a production of I Heart Radio, Hey Psycho Nuts.
Quick disclaimer here, this episode discusses substances that are currently illegal,
so it may not be suitable for children or adults
who are like totally lame. Listener discretion advised. So I've
been seeing lots of medical research about the potential benefits
(00:20):
of psychedelics, specifically micro dosing psilocybin also known as magic mushrooms.
Listeners really liked E. S. Fine from the Lucid Dreaming episode,
and he is an expert psycho nat who has tripped
thousands of times, so I brought him back on to
discuss psychedelics. By the way, I had my first lucid
dream last week where I had full control. It was
(00:42):
really cool and the flapping your arms thing really worked. Anyway,
here's my conversation with E. S. Fine. Oh and uh,
my name is Lille Berlante and this is Prodigy. Yeah.
(01:06):
So they were doing a lot of research on primarily
what LSD back what like in the sixties or before.
Um the research they were doing, uh in the sixties
and even before was extremely few and far between, and
it would be um very sparse, and the studies they
would be able to do would just have hilarious constraints
(01:27):
on them. Um. Probably the most famous therapeutic LSD study,
the one that just constantly comes up, and it's also
very controversial, was one of the um fathers of LSD,
Timothy Leary. He's the guy that really really made it famous,
him and his friend Richard Alpert. This experiment is called
the Concord Prison experiment, and through this experiment, Leary was
(01:48):
trying to see if he could give prisoners uh therapeutic
sessions of LSD, ideally a single session, and reduced the
recidivism reign in America. Uh. The recidivism reign in America,
the at which prisoners go back to prison is astronomically high, uh,
some of the highest in the entire world region. So
he was attempting to lower that through psychedelics alone. UM.
(02:10):
If the results that he showed were incredible, that being said,
as we've returned to that study and we've kind of
taken a look at it, there are a lot of
problems with it, like, um, the fact that you know,
they're not set up to succeed after they get out
of prison. That's exactly right, right, Yeah, So this what
we found was. He was trying to show that it
was kind of like, as they call the magic bullet,
(02:31):
and you could take one dose and you'd be good
to go. We now know that isn't the case. Um.
For many people, that is right, they can take one
dose and it completely changes their lives. But for the
vast majority of people to use it in a therapeutic setting,
like you said that, you have to have what Leary
called the halfway houses as well. Um, So after you
do this therapy, you have to have cathartic visitation to
(02:52):
reconsider what you went through, especially for individuals that need
this most, like violent prisoners, if you want to reintegrate
them into society. What do you categorize these as? Like
chemical altering substances, psychedelics? Like what's the blanket term? There
are many blanket terms. You're going to hear people say hallucinogen, psychedelic.
These are basically synonymous. Um. The term that we like
(03:15):
to use, especially in the community, is antheagen, which is
ultimately meaning like a natural compound that that alters you.
This again, the word natural is very controversial, especially when
it comes to Timothy Leary. He kind of made it
controversial because he said, if it's not natural, where does
it come from a different dimension? So, ultimately, his argument
was everything is natural. Um so like plastic bottles. Sure,
(03:38):
even even plastic does that not come from the earth? Right?
I mean you you Ultimately it's just a chemical compound,
and ultimately at some point in the university you're going
to find plastic. Maybe not always, it might be very rare,
but you will find it. Right. So, So, including um LSD,
psilocybin and d m T, what are the differences I
(03:58):
guess between them? It's far is l s D full
name being like surgic acid and uh psilocybin mushrooms. Uh,
they are unbelievably similar. I just want to note here
that some experienced psychonauts may disagree that psilocybin and l
s D are very similar. They're somewhat different, but I
liken that they're both tripped to means and have a
(04:18):
similar effect on Sarah Tonin. If you want to discuss further,
hop into the comments section on the episode page at
Prodigy podcast dot com. They are also very very similar
to things like peyote and mescaline. Is the psychoactive compound
uh sand pedro mushrooms excuse me, Sam Cactus um and
like L. S A seeds a lot of people have done.
(04:39):
You can get these anywhere morning glory. They grow in
Illinois where I'm from. Um, you can just go grab
some seed pods. Unbelievably similar as well. If you were
to give someone a dose of LSD or mushrooms and
you didn't tell them what you gave them, I even myself,
I'd be very very hard pressed to be able to
tell the difference. Um. The major difference is the visual effects.
(05:01):
All of them have very distinct visual effects the geometries
that take place. As a matter of fact, that the
geometries that you see are unbelievably similar to the ancient
geometric artworks that we see of of you know eight
for example, the the Aztecs and the Mayans. When you
take L. S A seeds, all you see is the
artwork that they that they wrote, and these individuals constantly
(05:23):
talked about saying, hey, that's where we got that artwork.
We saw in these visions. These geometry. So D M
T is a class of its own. It's really not
fair to kind of put that in into the same class. UM.
But LSD and psilocybin mushrooms basically identical. UM, as far
as d MT is concerned, this is a this is
a whole new territory. I've heard it described as and
I love this description. D m T is like taking
(05:45):
LSD and mushrooms, stuffing in in a canon and just
launching it into outer space. It is on another level. UM.
The chances of what we call ego death, which myself
included a lot of times when we macro dose. We're
trying to achieve ego death. You're trying to experience complete
loss of self UM, so that there is no distinction
between self and what is outside the self. The chances
(06:06):
of ego death on d m T are so incredibly high. Um.
You could try for years and years and years with
LSD and mushrooms and never achieve it. You'll get it
your first time on d m T, if you do enough.
Another term you'll hear in the community is the breakthrough.
People are trying to have the breakthrough where you break
through the veil um and you you die ultimately mentally
right now, legitimately die. But this experience of death is
(06:30):
this is something you've actually brought up another time. Uh,
it'll it's seeing the universe and seeing yourself through a
completely new and open lens that has nothing to do
with your cultural identity, your your what I like to
call earth domestication, all of these values and ideas that
have been ingrained into you and you've been told this
(06:54):
is the way of the world, this is how it is,
this is how we work, this is how everything functions.
All of that is obliterated, and you start to see
things from a completely fresh lens, almost like a baby.
How would you pitch this? This is like something grumby
old boomer who's like that sounds like a bunch of
hippie nonsense. Uh. I mean, they're right, it is some
hippie nonsense. There's nothing wrong with hippie nonsense though. No,
(07:14):
but really, you know, this is something I've brought up
to my own mom and said, you know, yeah, I
think this would be great for you. Mom. You should
really consider this because I've heard her, uh, you know,
maybe make certain statements or other individuals who are a
lot older make certain statements that are clearly statements that
have to do with their culture and their time period,
which really have nothing to do with our new culture
in time period that's taking place. So I would tell them, hey,
(07:35):
there's nothing to be afraid of, the only thing that
you would have to fear is breaking down constructs that
are ridiculous already. And if you don't think the constructs
that you believe in and the identity that you believe
in is ridiculous and it's legitimate, well then fine, you
have nothing to fear. But if it's not legitimate, this
is going to break it down. So as far as
how would you pitch it to that person, it's going
(07:55):
to be pretty tough. It's absolutely going to be tough
because they're going to have to face them elves in
ways that they have absolutely refused to up into this point, right,
And that sounds scary to me, and I'm assuming maybe
other people who are interested, because there's a lot of
you know, research being going on right now about micro
dozing UM. So can you talk I guess a little
bit about some of the research that they're doing now
(08:17):
and why it started up so so much. Yeah, the
most of the research taking place now that I've seen
is to aid people who are terminal UM who are
very very close to death and help them accept death
UM and accept that you know, it's okay it's okay
to die, just as it was okay to live. You know,
(08:38):
another substance you'll see with this, by the way, is
ecstasy m D M A. Yeah. I also saw treatment
resistant depression, like, uh yeah, by the way, treatment resisted depression.
We are finding unbelievable results with ketemine. You get a
single dose academy every three months or so, and it's
just completely curing people of their depression. And micro dosing
is essentially taken like what like a tent or like
(09:00):
two tents, the amount of like a full dose that
would give you like the full effects. They call it
as I call macro dosing, but it's really what they
call full dosing. Yeah, and something that you're right about
that it's kind of up to your discretion. You know
how much you can handle in what you consider to
be micro dosing. Um. I know certain dudes that consider
micro dosing to be like half a tab. I could
never do that to me. That's already the beginning of
(09:21):
a macro dose. Um. It kind of just depends on
who you are though, but um, as far as how
much you should be doing again, it's completely personal. There's there.
You can't just say it's it's absolutely one way or
it's another. In the scientific setting, when we have this
in a in a laboratory setting, they will set the
limits and they will say, hey, this is what we
(09:42):
consider the micro this is what we consider it isn't
This does become a problem though, because some studies have
shown that body weight has nothing to do with this.
Other studies have shown it has everything to do with this.
There's a lot of confounding aspects here. Yeah, yeah, it's
but I saw a couple of different methods that people
use for like how they take it like three days
(10:04):
in a row and then stop, Like how does that?
So here's something to keep in mind. UM, any type
of psychedelic hallucinogen, whatever you want to call it, you
are immediately going to build up resistance. So if you
were to take let's say an eighth of mushrooms and
you start tripping, two hours go by and you say, yeah,
you know, I'd like to take a little bit more,
it's not gonna work. You've already built up a complete
(10:24):
tolerance to it. It doesn't matter how much you take,
it's gonna have virtually no effect. UM. So ultimately it's
too late. So you need to decide that you want
to take more within the first thirty minutes or really,
it's not going to have any effect. And if you
want to take it that Let's say you're going to
a music fest. A lot of people like to trip,
you know, five days in a row to music fest. Well,
you're gonna have to take double the amount each day.
So if you take an eighth of mushrooms one day
(10:46):
and you want to have the exact same effect the
next day, you're taking two ways, taking a quad. If
you want to have the exact same effects the next day,
you're gonna take half an ounce. So this is gonna
get pretty intense. This is also awesome because it stops
you from getting addicted. You not only is the chance
for addiction like basically negligible, We've never really seen people
get addicted to these substances in the traditional or in
(11:07):
the psychological sense. The chances of getting addicted are so
unbelievably difficult because you'd have to spend so much money
and get so much product even to be able to
do that. Um so yeah, that's that. That tolerance is
kind of a kind of a cool aspect of it.
In my opinion, it stops you from doing it too much.
What sort of research has been done on the positive
effects and like why it's having a positive effect. Immense
(11:31):
amounts of research, especially outside of America. Um. We see
a lot of research taking place in numerous European countries,
but there is a lot of research taking place in America.
I'll give you an example. Uh. One of the most
famous studies on dimethyl trip to me was through Rick
Strassman at the University of New Mexico. This was in
early two that, like two thousand twelve somewhere around there.
He wrote a book on it called the d MT
(11:52):
the Spirit Molecule, and he took numerous very advanced psychonauts
who had a huge amount of experience that psycho nuts
expects its sounds so cool, like explorer psyche YEA yeah,
I love that word. I like calling myself a psychoot um.
Once I heard that word, I was like, that's me.
That's I'm gonna wear that um. So he took all
(12:14):
these psycho knots and then he took a few people
as well that had virtually no experience, just to kind
of use as a control um. And what he found
was there were extremely similar elements with all of these
people's experiences, despite the differences in their culture and personality,
and what he found was all of these people had experiences,
especially at higher doses, that we would call mystical, that
(12:36):
we would call religious. They felt connected to something so
much deeper than themselves. And after these experiences, they felt
more fulfilled in life. They felt like they weren't as lost.
They said to themselves, you know, I get it. I
feel motivated. I feel like life is worth it, life
is worthwhile. I want to be alive. I want to
go out there and try different things. So Number one,
(12:59):
why would someone wanted you this? It gives you motivation.
I would say that's the number one effect that these
these experiences and these substances have on you. Um. Number two,
I'll give my own experience as far as how this
is a therapeutic for me. Um. This is something I
touched upon in our previous podcast. But I was born
with a birth defect called Poland syndrome, where I was
(13:20):
born without a right pectoral muscle, and I viewed myself
in a wildly negative way, and through numerous sessions of LSD,
specifically LSD and literally just staring at myself in the
mere naked. I was able to realize and fully fully
integrate into my consciousness in a in a full brain
pattern that's still there to this day. In appreciation for
(13:42):
not only being alive, but for having my physical form
as it is, I was able to see. Listen, man,
this is just part of it. The birth defect that
you experienced. Someone else experienced something else. Someone else didn't
experience that defect, and that's just part of reality and
there's nothing wrong with it. So instead of seeing myself
as other, instead of seeing myself as this odd, abnormal thing,
(14:02):
I started accepting myself is just a natural part of reality.
So that is a highly, highly therapeutic aspect of it.
It helps you get over insecurities and accept yourself. It
sounds difficult, I mean, just because especially cause I'm sure
lots of people have had trauma at the loss of
a loved one or whatever, so I imagine maybe it
would be helpful for that as well, Oh very much. So. Yeah,
(14:24):
you know, I would like to say to your listeners
as well, this is not especially if you're not experienced
with this. This is not something you want to do alone. Um.
One of the most common things that can happen while
you're tripping, is you can forget that you're tripping. Um,
Time becomes utterly irrelevant. Especially at higher doses. You start
to see that time is truly a very just as
Einstein taught us through his math, time is truly subjective.
(14:46):
It's not a real thing. Um. Because they say set
and setting, right, Yes, when we say set and setting,
we don't only mean where you are. That's the setting, right,
the music that's around you, the people that are around you.
The set is you, what's going on in your own mind.
So I know a lot of people that will say, hey, man,
I did a lot of LSD back in the day.
I didn't really get therapeutic effects for it. Because you
(15:06):
didn't want therapeutic effects, you went and partied on it,
And which is fine, by the way, to each his own.
But if you say to yourself, hey, I want to
take LSD and have a good time, well then you're
gonna have a good time. That's your set. But if
you take LSD and say, look, I want to get
over my insecurities, I want to find motivation, I want
to explore what it means to be alive, well that's
exactly what it's going to give to you. It's just
(15:26):
we have to remember this is a chemical reaction, right,
The LSD, the psilocybin, all these substances, they alone are
not doing anything. They're integrating themselves with your system. So
your system is part of this equation. So not everyone's
going to have the same experience. And just like you said,
if you've set the set correctly, you're going to have
(15:47):
an experience that you truly want. That's also why you
want to have a sitter, why you don't want to
do it alone, because again, you can forget. You could
start going is this going to go on forever? Am
I going to be tripping for the rest of my life?
And that's why the sitter is there to go? Now,
did you took UTLSD? This was your This is your motivation.
That reminds me of that um that nine in one
call or the cople I came and his wife like
ate the weed brownies and then emergency. Yeah, can you
(16:11):
please send rescue? I think I'm having an overdose that
a school as my wife, you and your wife, yes,
over knows of what marijuana? Can you please send rescue? Okay,
how old are you? I'm nine? Years old, and my
wife is please come please. Hey, guys been drinking? Also,
(16:32):
what have you guys been drinking today too? No, that's it,
you guys have fever anything? No, I'm just I think
we're dying. Okay. How much did you guys have? I
don't know. We made brownies and I think we're dead,
I really do. Okay, how much did you put in
your brownies? I don't know who made brownie? Um my
(16:54):
wife and I did. How much did you buy? I
don't just please and rescues were on the way. I'm
trying to figure out how much you bought and put
into the brown It's probably like a quote and you
guys eat all of thy Yeah we did. Let's go
on the Red Wings game? Why the Red Wings game?
(17:18):
I don't okay. I just want to make sure this
isn't some type of like hallucination that I'm having. Uh
but so, but like form that makes sense to me, Like,
you know, you have this sort of like large experience
where you confront some parts of yourself. But what about
(17:38):
micro dosing where you're not getting that sort of like
tripping effect. Yeah, the whole point of micro dosing is
too when you take small I don't know, you know
how experienced you are or how how much you want
to talk about. But is when you take small amounts
of any psychedelic, the first effect that you get is
you can't stop smiling. You just it's called the LSD smile,
(17:59):
and you're like a cheshire cat. You're just like, You're like, Okay,
I look so weird. Are your pupils dilated to because
not right away, but yes, you know, with especially like
four hours into it. Yeah, your pupils are as big
as charcoal, which, by the way, that gives you night vision.
That's one of the coolest effects of this. Your your
pupils stay dilated so any even minute amount of light
(18:19):
gets into them, so you can sitch. A lot of
hunters back in the day took it for that reason. Um.
So micro dosing, though, the whole point is to just
get that little serotonin flow and to get that little
happiness throughout your day, um without having to take something
that has terrible, terrible consequences. Um. You know, there's numerous
(18:40):
drugs that give you the same effect that are are
going to be legal and prescribed by physicians. They take inhibitors. Yeah,
some s s RI I some of them have s
s R I effects. Um. Some of them stop the
serotonin um from flowing as much, which in the end
has an actual uh bosit feedback loop. So in the
(19:01):
end you can get more serotonin. Right. Um. So ultimately,
what we're trying to what we're trying to focus on
here is the serotonin and dopamine, but specifically the serotonin.
Specifically because these substances are indols of serotonin, meaning they're
basically identical. Um, so they have almost identical effects. Especially
we now know with this even in the last maybe
(19:24):
like let's say ten years, huge amounts of serotonin is
produced by the gut um and the floor of our gut.
So the fact that these are going through our gut
in our intestines, that just goes to show Okay, well
it makes sense that so much serotonin activity is taking
place with these substances. Yeah, we're seeing a lot of
gut research on mental health now, right. Yes, one of
(19:45):
the most interesting things I ever saw was that I
first learned this in fact through kurzgistat that that YouTube
channel where they said, you you don't really have hunger centers.
The hunger that we experience, the the desires for food
that we experience. That's a habit for warmed by the
gut bacteria that you've been producing through habituation of certain
ingestion of foods. So if you're constantly eating fast food,
(20:07):
you're gonna produce fast food bacteria which are going to
send signals to the quote unquote hunger centers of your
brain which don't actually exist. That says, go get more
of that. So I like to remind people, Hey, if
you want to change your diet, it only takes a
certain amount of time to completely alter the gut bacteria
to start telling you, hey, I like this stuff. At first,
you might not like a salad, but that's because you
(20:29):
don't actually decide whether or not you like salad the
gut bacteria, do you. What about was soda because when
I don't drink much soda, I don't want it. But
then when I drink and I'm like, oh it's so good.
When I like, I'm drinking it over and over again.
YEA sugar, Yeah, that's that sugar. And even even if
it's diet, we you know it's contained substance, artificial substances
that mimic that effective door dash McDonald's sausage biscuit this morning.
(20:53):
I'm not a shamed to say, but yeah, a little
a shamed. I can hear it in your voice. All right,
let's take a quick break to hydrate, be right back,
Welcome back to Prodigy. I'm really interested in the positive
benefits of micro dosing. It sounds like something that could
really be beneficial, and they're now they're starting to try
and get you. They're doing the research to try and
(21:13):
get FDA approval for you know, I guess they're using
it a therapy setting, in a controlled therapeutic setting. UM,
do you have any like info or insight into that? Uh,
The only insight I have is the information that has
been released with those studies. I've written several articles on
my website, one aggressive about the effects that we've seen
(21:34):
through UH therapeutic studies without l s D and mushrooms.
What we find is when you have when you go
into these experiences with a guide, with a individual who's experienced,
who can kind of help you through it, especially with
the first time, your chances of it being positive are
astronomically higher, not only astronomically higher. Often so they'll take
you know, nine to fifteen people and from all different
(21:57):
backgrounds and say, hey, what are the effects of the
people have As long as they have that guided therapy session,
it's going to be positive a hundred percent of the
time in many, many cases. Um. So, every every time
I find a new study on LSD or mushrooms that
have been you know, given to individuals in a therapeutic setting,
I always get very excited and I always go, well,
we already know what the results are going to be,
(22:18):
and they always turn out to be exactly the same.
It's a hundred percent. Everyone in these studies is going, look,
I found some benefit from it, whether it was increased happiness,
increased motivation, uh, increased um, like you said, acceptance about
maybe a lost loved one or some type of trauma
they went through. It's multifaceted. Ultimately, it's your brain. Especially
(22:41):
with m d m A too for treating PTSD. Yeah,
at least I've seen a fair amount of stuff about that. Yeah,
not only PTSD, but just empathy in general. I don't
know if you've ever done m d m A or
m d m A mixed with things which would ultimately
just what we call ecstasy. Um. If you tell a
lot of people get confused when they your ecstasy. They're like, oh,
(23:01):
that's the same as m D M A. M D
M A is pure that that's your molly, right, that's
your pure ecstasy. When normally when we say ecstasy, that
pill is rolled with things either methamphetamine or heroine or other.
You're rolling, Yeah, you're rolling on those pills. And the guy,
the guy thing makes me think of I'm sorry to joke,
but you know that movie Get them to the Greek
where they take the Jeffrey and uh, he's like rubbing
(23:24):
the Hey. And by the way, if you've ever done it,
texture is wildly incredible, absolutely amazing. You really would you
act like that? They didn't just make that up. Um.
Every sense is just heightened to an incredible degree. Um.
This is why it's so effective in therapy too. You
are experiencing the world in a more meaningful, in a
(23:46):
more deep way. Um. You get beyond these these programmed
thoughts that are constantly telling you to be depressed and
to be unhappy and to you know, kind of squander
your ability to enjoy model. Right, you know, so you
like I anytime I think about this one thing, you know,
I feel the same way. But if you can sort
of change the model a little bit, then you can,
(24:07):
I guess, approach from a different perspective and maybe break
it down a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, So let's use
um addiction as a great example, because all of these
substances are so incredible with curing addiction. It's interesting, it's
wildly effective. And so the question is why. But when
we look at addiction, we know that this is an
ingrained pattern. It's not just a physical thing. There you go,
(24:30):
It's not just a physical thing, right, it's mostly it's
actually mostly psychological. Mostly it's a it's a habit that
has been formed with repetition. Addiction is just a repeated pattern,
and I can even just go from their Addiction is
just something that's been repetitive. So the reason these psychedelics,
in generally substances work so incredibly well is they cut
(24:52):
that pattern immediately, and they allow you to see it
for what it is, a pattern, and they allow you
to metaprogram your brain in the moment and tell yourself, yeah,
I don't want that, I don't want that pattern. You
can see through the pattern immediately. Um. In fact, I
used to smoke cigarettes when I was in university about
eighteen and nineteen, and that is how I quit. Um.
I find cigarettes in nicotine in general hilariously easy to
(25:15):
quit with the psychedelic. I've known many people. You start
doing the psychedelic and instead of seeing you yourself, you
you consume nicotine. Correct. Yeah, I'm hitting this vape thing
right now, and most like post people that are like
you know, I don't want to keep doing it, right,
So I'm assuming that was part of it. Yes, you
talked to so many people, including myself at the time,
(25:37):
who go I really want to quit this. Well, listen
to yourself and you can ask the person, well, then
why aren't you quitting it? It's just not a good
time right now. I don't know, man, it's just, you know,
I don't really want to I kind of do want
to question. Yes, yourself and the mind relents, right. Well,
when you take these substances, you are forced into this
position where you can no longer relent. But more importantly,
(25:57):
you can see it at a deeper level. You can
see what that substance is doing to you. You can
see how it's destroying your body and creating this system
that you're out of control, and it gives you that
ability to make this decision in the moment and go, yeah,
I want to be in control, though I don't want
to be completely let loose for myself and I don't
want to be destroying myself. Now, you do have to
(26:18):
want it, by the way, it's not just gonna snap
and work it's set, right, You have to want this
for it to actually function. Like that, some of the
prescription medications they prescribe for stuff like depression or treating
trauma and stuff like that, you know, pharmaceuticals that often
have a fair amount of side effects and it's not
like you're altering the dose. You kind of have to
(26:40):
just stay on it. So, um, it would be cool
I think, you know, for to be able to explore
these types of substances, um, where you didn't have to
take a pharmaceutical. And you know, there's gonna be a
lot of people who say, well, you are taking a pharmaceutical, right,
These substances are pharmacological by nature, at least for me.
When I think of psilocybin, Uh, you know it comes
(27:02):
from a mushroom, right, but still a chemical that's all
playing something in your brain, right, that's right. Um, it's
natural right, I even las look ultimately l s D
this comes from air got fungus. It's like fungus that
grows on rye bread. It has been altered. This this
is something that you know, had to go through an
organic chemistry process UM to create what we call the LSD.
(27:24):
You wouldn't want to eat air got fungus straight make
you very sick, potentially kill you UM LSD N the
other hand, it won't do you know how they've changed
LSD because you know how it gweeds like way more potent.
All LSD you're gonna get is going to have a
slightly different effect UM because it's never purely identical. And
more importantly, you never know what the actual potency is.
(27:46):
It's measured in micrograms, So people would say, hey, I
took one tab. That one tab might be three micrograms
or fifty micrograms. This is a difference of six times
the dosage. You really never know. Well, it's scary, So
what do you like, take like a tiny amount and
see what it does you to guinea picket. So anytime
someone has wanted to ingest um LSD for the first
time and I've been sitting with them, always I'll say, hey,
(28:08):
when we get the dose, I'm gonna get a little
bit extra for me. I'll take it first, decide how
strong this is, and then I will let you know
what would be an appropriate amount for you. Um. But yeah,
it is. Even as an unbelievably experienced individual, it is
very scary because you might be taking a tab that's
a thousand micrograms for all you know. I've come across
several people in my life that are like, yeah, I've
never tried marijuana. Every time I do, you know, I
(28:30):
I freak out. I've tried it. I just freak out
every time, and I'm like, you're doing too much, you know,
like someone needs to introduce you to it by just
giving you a little bit. Yeah, are the people that say,
I've tried marijuana I didn't like and you're like, oh,
how did you do it? I took it as edible.
Well that that's a completely different experience than smoking it, right,
that's so easy to take too much. And then also
the classic you know when I don't know if people
(28:52):
say this much anymore, but I didn't get high my
first time, and I'm like, well you didn't inhale, you know,
I will tell you this though. Interestingly, I know many
people that absolutely did Inhale. Took ten, eleven, twelve times
to get high there first time. That is a very
very well known phenomenon. We don't fully understand it. I
don't believe it. I fully believe they just didn't Inhale. Dude,
I've I've literally watched it. My I don't want to
(29:14):
use any names, but my good friend who resisted, he
was a roommate for a long time. He resisted consuming cannabis.
He'd see me constantly doing it. One day he's like,
all right, I'll try it. And he tried it and
nothing happened, and we're like, dude, you didn't. You didn't
actually Inhale. You're like, you're too scared, Like I did.
I did, Okay, So the next time we try it,
we're all I in him so close, We're like, let's
see it. And he, I mean he fully he's taking
(29:35):
these giant hits and we're like, dude, you're gonna get
so blazed. Oh my god. Nothing, just absolutely nothing. Even
to this day, he's like, I've never really had an effect.
And normally I wouldn't believe it, but I scrutinized them
like a freaking scientist watching this guy. Let me see
the smoke come out exactly. Yeah, he was for sure
doing it. Man. It's very strange. Oh man, that reminds
me of a college days where we would take a
(29:55):
Nope jug and cut the bottom off grab in the bathtub, man,
Like that's just so so dirty, like like thinking back
about it, and you're using like foil to smoke out
of it. Yeah, it's so gross, terrible, terrible. But yeah.
So they're also using it in combination with therapy, right,
So exposure therapy Essentially it breaks down your barriers a bit,
(30:19):
and it's easier for you to confront some of those
traumatic events in your life, and that seems like it
could be really beneficial. I know they're doing that with
ketamine as well. Yeah, ketamine is also on a I
don't know if you've heard people describe ketamine. I don't.
I really wouldn't recommend it, frankly. I prescribed it to
a cat, my cat after surgery. Did they do that? Yeah,
that's that's how it's normally used by vets as an
(30:40):
animal tranquilizer um. But for humans, we experience what's called
kholing if you do enough, and a khle is a
one dent associative experience, kholing is frankly scary. Um you
you experience like whole other lives. Uh So for example,
you can you gotta do a lot, you know, a
(31:01):
very large amount. But when you do a large amount,
not the amount that they'd be giving to you in
these therapeutic settings, you you like become a new person.
So for example, uh, buddy of mine, he can hold
one time and we were in the room and he
just passed out and he came back and he was panicking,
going crazy like, oh, what's going on? Are you okay?
(31:21):
Are you okay? He ran out of the room. We
had to finally calm him down. He explained to us
what happened, He had ingested it. He laid back. He
came back up, and he was in a room with
several other people that he had never met before, and
they had a conversation with him, and they were referring
to him by a different name, and there were there
were a whole different set of things on the table,
and then suddenly he was back in our reality. That
(31:43):
is unbelievably terrifying. So and that's when that's that's when
you can potentially overdose on if you were to do
too much right. Yes, you can definitely overdose on kedemy.
That's again not something I would recommend. I was reading
a paper like before we started this interview, and it
was saying basically like researchers haven't really seen much of
a difference between doing a full dose and then micro dosing,
(32:06):
So like, essentially there's no key secret to micro docing.
You could do a full dose and get similar effects.
It's it's the therapy. Um It's like you said, it's
the setting setting. So as long as you're in the
same therapeutic setting, doing a threshold dose and doing the
heroic doses terence and kind of coin, both of these
will have the very very similar effect on your life.
(32:28):
That's as far as motivation is and therapy is concerned.
If you are trying to explore the inner self and
you're trying to experience ego death, that's not going to
happen on a threshold dose period. You need very very
large doses of a psychedelic to achieve that. Um, So
there's a major difference there. But as far as hey,
I just I wanna I wanna be less depressed. I
(32:50):
want to be more motivated. No, you absolutely do not
need a giant dose. Micro dose is more than enough
to achieve those results. Great and UM, if any of
my listeners want to try it, like, do you know
a guy or I'll be I'll be honest. I don't
really know how this works, but I've seen adds on
Instagram constantly, because I follow all these psychedelic pages, um constantly,
(33:13):
I see ads on Instagram for people to go to
these institutions where you can take these substances and for
like to be part of research, right, not just research.
A lot of them are just for yeah, to have
a good time and to go through therapy. And a
lot of them are fully funded so you don't have
to pay anything. I've read the experience reports of people
(33:33):
that have gone to them, and it just sounds like
people like me giving, you know, giving these doses and
and sitting for these people in a therapeutic setting. It
sounds absolutely amazing. I'd love to try it out one day.
Something else I recommend to your listeners. I think I
brought this up the other day is sensory deprivation. UM.
If you ever go into a sensory deprivation tank, which
is something that was created by John C. Lily to
(33:55):
help him explore what it would be like to experience
life as a dolphin. But if you go into a
sensory deprivation tank and also take a hallucinogenerous psychedelic, the
effects are unbelievably incredible, impotent, um more dissociative than anything UM.
So you you could take up just a couple of
tabs of LSD and have an experience similar to d MT,
(34:17):
unbelievably potent. I highly highly recommend it, and it's totally safe.
You're just you're sitting in saltwater. It's not a big deal.
Thanks so much to E. S. Fine. Fine is spelled
f E I N. You can find him on Instagram
at author E. S. Fine on his website at official E. S.
Fine dot com. His book is called Points of Origin.
(34:38):
If you want to discuss these topics further, hop into
the comments section on the episode page at Prodigy podcast
dot com. Prodigy was creating produced by me Low Berlante.
The executive producer is Tyler Klang. Thanks so much for listening.
If you want to help me out, you can follow
the show on Apple podcast or share an episode with
a friend. I also really appreciate when listener send me
(34:58):
messages and I respond to everyone. Prodigy is a production
of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts in my heart Radio,
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