#545 Mastering Microdosing: Merging Psychedelics With Professional Development
with Paul Austin
Dr. Wendy Myers
Hello, everyone. I’m Dr. Wendy Myers. Welcome to the Myers Detox podcast. And today we’re going to be talking about psychedelics, psilocybin and using that for personal and professional development, and answering a lot of the questions you have about this and certainly satisfying your curiosity. And I think it’s really fascinating.
You know, I’ve done psilocybin myself, microdosing, and just found it really, really interesting. Very like, opening, elevating your mood, giving you tons of energy. And I know many people who’ve been helped tremendously with psilocybin and psychedelics, so I wanted to have one of the world’s experts on psilocybin come on the show. His name is Paul Austin, and he’s guided millions to safe and meaningful psychedelic experiences through his work as a founder of Third Wave.
He’s been featured in Forbes, Rolling Stone, BBC’s Work Life. He’s pioneered the convergence of psychedelics, personal transformation, and professional success. And Paul empowers leaders, creatives, and pioneers to leverage psychedelics for both personal and professional growth. He’s authored the book, Mastering Microdosing, a transformative resource for leaders, creatives, and healers.
And Paul’s training program, Psychedelic Coaching Institute, caters to individuals who seek to integrate their psychedelic experiences into their business practices. And you can use code WENDY to get $500 off that program, and you can learn more about Paul’s work at PaulAustin.co and microdosing psychedelics for therapeutic use at TheThirdWave.co.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Paul, thank you so much for joining us.
Paul Austin
Thanks for having me on the podcast, Wendy. I’m glad we figured out our technical difficulties and got to kick off.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Always fun, those tech issues. Aren’t we in Mercury retrograde right now?
Paul Austin
Probably. I feel like we’re always in Mercury retrograde.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah, aren’t there like five planets aligning right now?
Paul Austin
Or something, yeah, and we had an eclipse. Maybe that has an impact.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah. And so I’m actually in Texas, I’m right into the path right here.
Paul Austin
Oh? Totality.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background? You’re very much into psychedelics. Why don’t you tell us about that and how you kind of, you know, got into this foray?
Paul Austin
My story starts in Michigan. I grew up in a small suburb outside Grand Rapids, which is known for its furniture and now beer. Amway is from Grand Rapids, Steelcase, Herman Miller… Anyway, so more conservative part of the world, quite religious. I grew up in a very traditional home environment, very religious home environment.
And at the age of 16, I started to smoke weed, which my parents, when they found out, didn’t appreciate too much. And so they sat me down one Sunday after church, and my dad looked at me, and he’s like, you know, I haven’t been this disappointed since my brother died in a car accident, like 35 years before that, right? So they were clearly impacted by it, and maybe for some good reason. My mom’s sister had been struggling with drug addiction for a lot of her life, and my mom sort of blames that for her not doing so well. So some logic to that. But also I was like, I had a really fun experience, this seems way safer than alcohol, you know, I don’t necessarily agree with you. Well, I mean, they grounded me regardless, so I didn’t go out for like six weeks. And then once I kind of got back out in the world, I continued to smoke weed from time to time.
And when I went away to college at the age of 19, I tried psychedelics for the first time at higher doses. Very impactful, I had some beautiful and profound experiences with them. And that was highly influential on my path of deciding what I wanted to do. I was a sophomore junior in college at the time, I didn’t know what I was going to do when I graduated, what I was going to study. I actually changed what I was studying from biology to history.
And then I focused on traveling right out of college. So I went and taught English in Turkey, built an online business soon after that while living in Thailand. And then in 2015, I was living in Budapest, and we were talking about how psychedelics were becoming more studied, there was more research. You had Tim Ferriss, Joe Rogan, big podcasters who were starting to interview people about microdosing and psychedelic therapy. And the assumption was that, oh, psychedelics would soon become a similar force to cannabis, but in a different way like. And so I love history, so I just studied all the history of psychedelics. I tried to understand why they were illegal in the first place, I tried to understand how they had been used historically for thousands of years. And then from that came this Third Wave of Psychedelics, which is, you know, cultural accessibility through microdosing. So how could people use these in safe and effective ways, essentially?
Dr. Wendy Myers
I know. I went to one Bulletproof conference, and it seemed like everyone was microdosing. I think it was like 2018 or 2019, I was like, wow.
Paul Austin
This is becoming a thing, what’s going on here?
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah, but I grew up in Southern California, I had my fair share of microdosing, you know, in high school and whatnot. But yeah, I have tried like LSD microdosing. I had this photo shoot and I was super exhausted. I’d paid like a fortune for this photo shoot and the photographer was like, “oh, hey, you know, you should microdose. It’s completely changed my life, I’m a completely different person.” And I was like, okay, well that’s a pretty good sales job. So I tried it and I had an amazing day. I had like three hours of sleep for some issue and I had a great day. And then later that day, my brother, who I’d never met, called me on the phone.
Paul Austin
Wow, oh my gosh!
Dr. Wendy Myers
So I had a very strange, strange day that day. But it was an interesting foray into microdosing, and I’ve known people… I have a really good friend of mine that started doing mushroom microdosing, completely changed him, came out of his shell, out of his depression and isolation, etc. Completely changed his life. So I’m a huge, huge fan of it, which is why I wanted to have you come on.
What do you think about like how the perception of psychedelics has evolved culturally, and what are the kind of like common misunderstandings that people have? Because people, you know, growing up and it’s been illegal for a long time, people can have a negative perception associated with mushrooms and LSD or microdosing.
Paul Austin
Yeah, and more and more that’s changing. When I started Third Wave in 2015, it was definitely an uphill climb. It’s been a pretty uphill climb for the last 10 years, I would say. But we’ve I think reached a tipping point. Sixty one percent of Americans now support legal psychedelic assisted psychotherapy. The use of psychedelics quadrupled from 2019 to 2023, four times as many people took psychedelics in 2023 as four years prior. COVID was a huge indicator in that for mental health. And microdosing also played a very big role in that because microdosing at home, especially during some of those more challenging mental health times, people were bored and they experimented and it helped a lot of people through that.
So that I think has changed the conversation rapidly. There’s still some misconceptions about, are these addictive? Can they be physiologically harmful? What about can people lose their mind? Can they have a psychotic break? So there’s still some case for concern, like any drug or even medicine. You know, the dose is the poison, if you will, which is why I’ve always loved the approach of microdosing because it’s more for the risk-averse, the sort of beginners, the people who are just putting their toe in. You don’t necessarily need to have these huge journey doses to still have positive beneficial outcomes from working with psychedelics.
So I think they are still schedule one, they are still federally illegal. And I would say that the DEA is much more focused on fentanyl, crystal meth, even cocaine, drugs that are harmful and addictive, particularly fentanyl right now. And there’s a flourishing underground scene of psychedelics, and there’s really very little to no prosecution of that, so that’s a very exciting time. And more and more we’re working to bring that above ground. Colorado and Oregon, in both of these states now mushrooms are legal. California will look to pass a similar bill this year, and the FDA will likely approve MDMA, also known as ecstasy, to treat PTSD this year as well. So we could see by the end of this year, early next year, much broader accessibility. And my expectation is that by 2030, the majority of Americans will have legal and affordable access to working with psychedelics if they choose.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah, that’s fantastic. I mean, whatever works. The psychedelics- so how do they work? I mean, they obviously seem to kind of flood your body with serotonin or dopamine, feel good chemicals and kind of elevate your mental state. Open you up, to a certain degree. Tell us a little bit more, maybe more eloquently, how they work.
Paul Austin
When it comes to the benefits of psychedelics, there’s two mechanisms of action to focus on, which are its impact on neuroplasticity and the prefrontal cortex, and also its impact on the amygdala, which is our fear response center. What I often tell folks is because of its impact on neuroplasticity, it helps us to learn new behaviors in a quicker way. We can accelerate behavioral change because of the neuroplastic effects of psychedelics, both microdosing and a high dosing. And we can have the courage to make those changes by its impact on the amygdala. The fear response, the fear center is downregulated, and it allows us to think in a much more courageous and expansive way.
We often (and I also include myself in this) make decisions from a place of fear or constriction or scarcity, whatever term you want to put around it. You can measure that physiologically, in terms of where are we with the autonomic nervous system? Sympathetic versus parasympathetic. You can measure it spiritually. I mean, there’s a lot of different ways. Emotionally, mentally, right? When the brain is more rigid, that leads to depression, addiction.
So we’re looking for expansion, we’re looking for opening, we’re looking for the capacity to create that space for new changes in our life. And that could be quitting smoking, that could be a new diet, that could be meditation practice, that could be difficult conversations with a partner or spouse, so relational work, even within a therapeutic container. There are lots of ways in which that plays out. And that depends on the person’s intention. So this is where having a coach or a therapist, sometimes there are more therapeutic outcomes. I just want to feel good, I just want to feel normal, I just want to be back to myself. I don’t want to be depressed, I don’t want to be anxious, I don’t want to deal with this trauma anymore or PTSD, whatever it is.
And what I’ve focused on and what I am much more well versed in and enthusiastic about is the effect when we’re pretty good and we want to get way better. So what is its impact on creativity, leadership, performance, wellbeing? I like the sense of exploring all the dimensions of living and I think psychedelics helped me to be very creative about how I’m choosing to live, very intentional about how I’m choosing to live. I love autonomy and choice and just being able to create, and the beautiful thing about psychedelics is they teach both of those paradoxes. They teach both the paradox of how to surrender and how to let go and how to just be with things that come up, but also how to direct that energy towards a creative outcome that you think would be beneficial both for you and for the broader collective. So there has to be equal emphasis on both what’s great for me and myself and my family, but also what’s great for people at large and kind of the contribution that I’m making.
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Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah. And I thought it was really interesting that back in the day, say, when I was in high school a long time ago, that back then they thought psychedelics were causing brain damage or LSD. Certainly large doses, you know, are…
Paul Austin
It can.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Anything in large doses is going to be really problematic. But now they’re finding that there’s this neuroplasticity effect where you can change your brain in a positive way, in a quicker way. You said changing behaviors more quickly and that sounds great. Like I said, I’ve seen such positive benefits from friends and colleagues and just personally how it can help to dramatically elevate your mood, bringing you out of that depressive state. And I could see where that could be so helpful. I spent most of my twenties depressed with mercury toxicity and other things going on, it would have been great to have had like a nice lift. Because the microdosing, I didn’t really think of that at that time… people weren’t thinking.
Paul Austin
Well, too, most of that, I’ve heard so much about saunas for detoxification, was that part of it?
Dr. Wendy Myers
Oh yeah, for sure.
Paul Austin
You’ve talked about this a ton on the podcast as well, like, because that’s the focus of it, is detoxing.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah, yeah, getting out the mercury toxins. Yeah. Infrared saunas, coffee enemas, targeted supplements and things like that. Super helpful. And nutrition.
Paul Austin
And psychedelics, ayahuasca, I think also has that… I mean, I’d love to see research on that. I can’t speak at length about this necessarily, but I’ve worked myself a lot with ayahuasca and I think it has some really interesting effects for detoxification. Kambo as well. Kambo, are you familiar with kambo?
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah, I’ve heard kambo definitely has some detox…
Paul Austin
Really cleans out the lymphatic system in particular. In fact, I’ve been having some health issues the last 18 months, so I’m scheduling a Kambo thing because it is just a purgative so it cleans you out. Ayahuasca does that as well, not to the same degree. But some of these psychedelics, I mean, I find with psychedelics, they have a very detoxifying effect on the body and the mind. Like when people go in. I mean, that’s even the intention behind dietas with ayahuasca, where a dieta is like for a month before, no pork, a week before, no other drugs. Two weeks before, no cannabis, for a week before, no sex. You know, you just clean everything out for that space so it can be very powerful in that way.
Dr. Wendy Myers
In what ways have you observed, say like psychedelics and microdosing being really helpful for leaders, CEOs, in their professional and personal lives?
Paul Austin
I’ll stick with the two principles that I talked about before— neuroplasticity and its impact on the amygdala. So the prefrontal cortex, prefrontal cortex is related to decision-making, it’s related to strategy, it’s related to big picture thinking, engineering, systems change. The prefrontal cortex allows us to think in abstract ways, more complex and complicated ways. It really is what differentiates the human species and our sort of quality of intelligence, I’ll contextualize it, versus maybe monkeys or animals or plants or whatever it is. Well, specifically versus mammals. It’s the prefrontal cortex.
So psychedelics help with that. In fact, there’s early theories that, you know, the stone ape theory, which is that psychedelics helped with the development of the prefrontal cortex initially, which helped us go from being apes to humans. Pretty farfetched, but also quite interesting. I think that’s the first thing to focus on because leaders and builders and creatives, especially in today’s world, there’s a lot more uncertainty, there is a lot more change that is occurring rapidly as we sort of reach the end of time or the singularity. There’s artificial intelligence, remote work, the internet. We’re moving into a much more decentralized ecosystem, more local governance, I sense. So leaders need to be both highly adaptable, but also very attuned to their environment, to their surroundings, to their people. That attunement, that relational capacity, is very helpful when building a team in an organization.
So I think on the one hand it’s attunement and on the other hand, I think it’s a vision, strategy, and how that gets communicated. So vision and team. And this isn’t just me making up random stuff. I mean, I do that from time to time, but this is actually backed by peer reviewed research out of the leadership circle profile. The Leadership Circle Profile is a fantastic 360 assessment for leaders that comes from the book, Mastering Leadership. And they’ve done this with [pew] values, and they show what differentiates the great companies from the good companies is teamwork and vision. As a CEO. So that’s key to focus on.
Then of course it’s impact on courage, it’s impact on the ability to make difficult decisions. The more our lives become complex, the more we strive to become successful, build something of value, do something important in the world, the more we have to navigate making decisions when we don’t have everything at our disposal. So the sort of classic startup line is like you need to know about 70 percent of the information to make a decision and the rest is on gut. And I think psychedelics, when done in intentional and responsible ways… With community and accountability. Because there are a lot of people who drink a bunch of ayahuasca and they come up with all those crazy ideas and then it just ends up derailing their life completely. And it felt courageous at the time, but there was no sense of discernment or accountability within a greater community. So I think that sense of support and community is essential, or unless people just get totally off their rock and start doing ridiculous and wild things and it actually is more destabilizing than helpful. So courage, I think is important. It helps us to make difficult decisions as leaders and sometimes we need that sort of kick in the pants to go in and make it happen. That’s like with bigger doses too.
Then we look at microdosing and microdosing would do that just on a more day-to-day basis. So on a day-to-day, right? Because after we do a high dose, what opens up is something called the critical period of learning. And in that critical period of learning, it lasts for about 14 to 21 days, 2 to 3 weeks after a high dose psychedelic experience, what I tell folks is commit to one behavioral change.
Like, meditate for those 21 days or do breathwork for those 21 days, or fast, intermittent fast. Whatever it is, just do one thing and then you can microdose to elongate that critical learning period to about 45 days. That’s my hypothesis. And so that’s the time you need to build a habit and create a habit. And so the combination of that neuroplasticity, which makes the change easier, it’s opening up that critical learning period, with the courage to make a difficult or hard decision (like meditating, finally just doing it), that combination I think it’s a superpower for client work. And that’s why we have our training program with coaches and practitioners, because I’m like the use of psychedelics in these two ways in particular could help a lot of creativity and impact to blossom in the world.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah, and I can see where using psychedelics could help you if you are kind of stuck. If you feel kind of like you’ve hit a roadblock creatively, especially if you’re, say, a writer or you are lacking motivation to get up off your ass and start a project. You know, we just go through periods where we’re uninspired also, it just happens. Like we’re super motivated and excited and inspired, and then other days we’re just like, meh. Well, I feel like psychedelics could really help you on those meh days, where you could just get over that hill and get on with it already. I mean, there’s something to like surrendering and listening to your body as well, but there’s sometimes when you’ve got to make it happen. You know, you’ve got to get cracking, and I could see where taking psychedelics could really help foster that, you know?
Paul Austin
Yeah, it’s helpful. And just to go into this a little bit deeper for the audience, then, if we were to look at LSD versus psilocybin, because you had mentioned LSD, you had also mentioned mushrooms, right? What are the core differences between using those two substances to microdose? I look at dopamine and serotonin. Dopamine is the molecule of more, it’s the focus, attention, motivation. Healthy dopamine levels are essential for getting work done and executing in focus, and all these types of things. Serotonin is more tied to contentment, presence, kind of emotional well-being. Psilocybin is much more serotonergic, so there’s a lot more serotonin, an impact on serotonin, the feel-good molecule. LSD is more dopaminergic.
This isn’t black and white. They’re both active in both domains, but LSD is more dopaminergic. So a lot of individuals who have been on Vyvanse, Ritalin, Adderall, they take Modafinil, maybe even certain Racetams as a nootropic, they love LSD because it has the same level of stimulation without the sort of like constriction and jittery, overly stimulating. It’s more playful. And those who have been on SSRIs tend to prefer microdosing with psilocybin because it has a greater impact on depression, but most importantly catharsis, like allowing the body to open up and heal and release things. It’s not as cognitive as LSD.
Dr. Wendy Myers
And that’s really good to know, depending on what your deficiencies are. Maybe you have a lack of receptors or a lack of like production or whatever your issue is genetically or what is going on with you. I think people naturally reach for certain substances — cigarettes to get dopamine or alcohol to get GABA. Whatever people are just kind of naturally deficient in, knowing that can really help you to kind of choose what type of microdosing would be ideal for you. But you could also just try each one and see which one works better for you as well. I think it’s just another “medication” that people can use to help make up for genetic deficiencies that they have, which is causing their depression, causing their anxiety, causing whatever’s going on with them they don’t like. Whatever symptoms.
Paul Austin
Yeah, and ideally people then can get to a place where it’s more supplementation. And that could be once a month. It might not even be… like I do, one of my favorite brands is Neurohacker, they have something called the Qualia Senolytic, which is an anti-aging thing. I think I take it twice a month, back-to-back days, and it’s really effective. So it could be for some people, this might be a once-a-month thing. It could be for some people, you know, I take fish oil five times a week, I take creatine every day so there may be ways to also think about it from a supplementation lens where it can help. Like you said, it’s especially effective on what I found to be off days. Like there’s something clinically significant that we were finding in the early research where if someone feels depressed, it’s going to give them a bigger boost than if someone’s already pretty good and they want to go further. This is with psilocybin in particular. I think the way to tweak that for people who are already pretty good is just take more.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yes.
Paul Austin
It would be my perspective. Instead of just 10 micrograms of LSD, try 25. Or instead of 100 milligrams of psilocybin, maybe try 250 or 300 and then they’ll get a little bit more of a boost because the dosage amount is higher. And again, that could be once every two weeks or once every three weeks or once a month. It doesn’t have to be three times a week, lifelong thing that you do.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. I mean, I can tell you from experience when I did that, the microdose of LSD, I just felt like trash. I felt terrible that day.
Paul Austin
The next day?
Dr. Wendy Myers
No, no, no. The day before I took it. Lack of sleep, I felt bad mentally, physically exhausted. And I took it, I had the best day of my life. I had an amazing photo shoot, and I had a great time. But it just completely flipped the script on that day, and it was incredibly memorable. So I can imagine taking it on like a regular basis, how positively impactful, that would be. So you mentioned one brand. Like, where do we source this? Where do we get it? How do we try it?
Paul Austin
Neurohacker is not a microdosing or psychedelic brand.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Sorry, you were mentioning a nootropic, yeah.
Paul Austin
Yeah. They do something called Qualia, which is a legal nootropic. Fantastic. Highly recommend. It’s one of the best nootropics. I take the one without caffeine and they have NAD+, they have other things. So just shout out to Neurohacker Collective, they make phenomenal products.
When it comes to sourcing, it’s difficult still because it’s still illegal in most places. And even where it’s legal, like Colorado and Oregon, it’s not legal to just openly sell supplements. Like a cannabis dispensary model, that is not yet available. What I tell folks is there’s a great brand called MM1, that’s capital M, capital M1, and just search for that MM1 mushrooms or MM1 microdosing. And that’s a great starting place as a way to source psilocybin microdoses.
Now, we also on Third Wave, we have a sourcing guide where we say, okay, if you’re interested in LSD, there are a lot of analogs that are technically legal for research that people can work with. But LSD is still quite difficult to get unless you know someone. Mushrooms, even on Third Wave, we have a grow kit. So folks are like, I’d like to grow my own mushrooms, they can grow them in as little as six weeks, so that can be something to check out if folks want to do that.
Otherwise, the key is just meeting more people. Like meeting more community and more networks and going to a conference. We have a private community platform with Third Wave so you can download an app and start to connect and meet with other people. All of these are really great and important ways just to start to build a network of folks and then it becomes very easy to get really good medicine and drugs, and get plugged into a great network of people who are doing this in an intentional and responsible way. And then, you know, some people, you know, ayahuasca is legal in South America and Central America. There are mushroom retreats in Jamaica and the Netherlands. There’s ketamine clinics all over, ketamine is currently legal. So there are lots. You can go to Oregon and do it legally at a high dose. There are lots of legal options at this point in time all over the world and we have a directory of those options on Third Wave. So if you just go to our directory provider, you can find a bunch of spots in there.
Dr. Wendy Myers
So TheThirdWave.co. Oh so, this might be kind of a stupid question, but do mushrooms grow on cow patties?
Paul Austin
There’s a certain type of strain called Psilocybe Cubensis which most commonly grows on cow patties. This goes back to the stoned apes theory that across the savannas of Africa, this type of magic mushroom grew, our ancient ancestors ate these mushrooms and noticed that they would have these spiritual experiences, sure, but more importantly, it would help with visual acuity. They could see better, they would have more energy, and those all grew out of cow pies. But you can grow mushrooms on wood chips, you can grow mushrooms on other types of substrates. There are mushrooms that are currently devouring oil in the Amazon. These are not psychedelic mushrooms necessarily, but mushrooms just eat and process things and digest dead things and there are over 200 species of psilocybin mushrooms in the world today, and we’re discovering more all the time.
Dr. Wendy Myers
I had no idea. I mean, my mom has a ranch here in Texas and when I go walking and I see the cow patties and there’s mushrooms growing on there, and I just think, hmm, are those medicinal? Maybe I should pick a few and try them, but I’m like a little bit too scared.
Paul Austin
Mushrooms are tricky because it could be magic, and you could be in the emergency room with liver failure in six hours. It’s just hard to know unless you’re with someone that knows.
Dr. Wendy Myers
So you can find trusted sources and connections, correct? On your site?
Paul Austin
Exactly.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Okay, great.
Paul Austin
On the site, yeah. We have a sourcing guide, I think that’s a great thing to check out. Like I said, we have the private community. We also have this practitioner training program, so if there are coaches or practitioners or those who want to like weave this into their practice, we do a really great longer program as a retreat component in Costa Rica. We do a high dose journey, we do a microdose, we do something called the sweat lodge, Temescal, hot springs, it’s a really beautiful experience. So that’s also a great way to get professionally involved because a lot of folks are looking, as we talked about earlier, it’s like this modality is really on the cutting edge, I think it can differentiate a great practitioner from a good practitioner if you learn how to work with it skillfully. Because so much of coaching work or therapeutic work, I think it always comes back to behavioral change. It’s like we heal the trauma, or we heal the thing, whatever, to change our behaviors. So we’re always looking at practically how does our life get better as a result of it, and psychedelics, time and time again, what I see is just psychedelics blow almost everything else out of the water. It’s crazy.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it’s very, very popular in Mexico, where I was living before in the Mayan Riviera and Cancun and South Tulum and that area. Lots of frog medicine, lots of kambo with the temescal, like a pot to the ayahuasca, just…
Paul Austin
Lots of beads. I’m sure there were lots of beads and hats, as well, I’m sure.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Oh, I’m not sure what that is.
Paul Austin
Just like the Tulum beads.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah. The Tuluminati.
Paul Austin
Everyone has the Tuluminati hat.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yes, absolutely, lots of that too. Even more than frog medicine. But, yeah, it’s very, very popular there as well. Lots of my friends down there are doing that. I didn’t try it, I was like, I think I’m good.
Paul Austin
The frog medicine?
Dr. Wendy Myers
You know, I never tried it, I don’t know why. I think I just felt like I’d been there, done that so I didn’t feel like the need to do it. But I am interested in kambo, or the “bofu.” Actually, my friend’s really into the “bofu.”
Paul Austin
So kambo is the frog, bufo is the toad.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Bufo, that’s what I meant. Bofu, that’s how like Texans say it. Bofu.
Paul Austin
So the frog is the purgative, that’s kambo. There’s no hallucinations, it’s not like you’re just vomiting for hours or maybe 30 minutes, depends how long you go. The Bufo is like white light transcendence, that’s like the strongest psychedelic that you can do. And I’ve been experimenting lately…
Dr. Wendy Myers
On the planet, yeah.
Paul Austin
Yeah, on the planet. And I’ve been experimenting lately with very low doses of that. So doing it in different, titrated doses because there’s a synthetic version of five. Bufo is the toad version, and it’s tricky because it’s starting to get handled by cartels. So what I usually tell people is do the synthetic. And with the synthetic, I’m using these patents to sort of do low doses that get gradually more and more intense. And that’s another interesting way to approach it. What I love about this emerging psychedelic ecosystem is a lot of people are experimenting with a lot of unique practices. Like the friends that I know who are doing this low dose 5-MeO, the bufo, they’re doing it with parts work, something called IFS, which has become quite prominent lately. So it’s fun to look at. Or I love to meditate and do microdoses of LSD, or go hiking and do higher doses of LSD or whatever it is. The combination of modalities is exciting.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah. I mean, it seems like, the bufo is very transcendent, like it’s for, you know…
Paul Austin
At the very high doses.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah, having a very spiritual experience. But yeah, where are you wanting to take Third Wave? Where are you going with this? What are your goals and what are you hoping to accomplish?
Paul Austin
My big vision that I’ve started to share as of late, and whether I do this or someone else does this, I would just love to see this come to fruition. Six months ago, I went on a ten-day silent Vipassana meditation retreat in Joshua Tree. So 10 days of silence, you meditate 10 hours a day. It’s this Goenka Tradition. So Goenka was a Burmese businessman, he had a morphine addiction, he went all around the world to try to fix it, and 10 days of meditation in this style is what fixed it. Vipassana is the technique of meditation that the Buddha used to become enlightened. It’s the pure form that he used to become enlightened. So the ethos or the story behind it is that you’re practicing the form that the Buddha used 2500 years ago. And this person, Goenka, ended up bringing it to the entire world. So there’s 150 centers now, 100,000 people go through this program every year. It’s completely donation, on a donation basis, you can pay whatever you want. It’s also on a purely volunteer basis. And each center is sovereign in its own way. It does its own fundraising, builds its own, it’s really community sort of grassroots oriented. I would love to see that, but for mushrooms.
I’d love to see that, but for maybe ayahuasca. I’d love to see that, but for like generally plant medicines. Where these are more retreat centers, you could have some living quarters, but it’s just for when you’re running the retreats. Very low cost, anyone can do it. They still have an application form, there’s certain things. You have to be mentally stable to a certain degree to participate. Implement a similar methodology that way, and see how could we create accessible experiences for 100,000 people a year, right? So that would be my like, I don’t know, 20-year vision. Kind of like real estate land projects, nonprofit, community model where accessibility to psychedelics becomes widespread, and it’s on a volunteer donation basis.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Nice, nice.
Paul Austin
I think more short term, especially in the next five years, I’m very focused on training practitioners in how to work with psychedelics, focusing on psilocybin in particular, and low dosing. Low doses of psychedelics in combination or conjunction with other modalities. I love to train, I love to teach, that’ll be sort of my personal focus. Impacting more and more leaders and builders, so more from an executive level and business development level. Personally. But I’ll train other practitioners in life relationships, clinical, whatever it is. Kind of all the dimensions of that.
And then my big problem that I think needs to be solved for the broader ecosystem is vetted centers that people can go to. So safe access. Because there are a lot of newbies that are coming into the space that don’t know up from down, they don’t know left from right, they don’t know this medicine from this medicine. So they just kind of go to whatever lands on their plate — many of those experiences are good, some of those experiences are great, and some of those experiences are not great. You know, they could even be traumatizing. And that could be with individual practitioners, or it could be in group settings at retreats, or even in clinics.
So my intention is, how do we build like a vetted ecosystem of providers, practitioners, and centers that you can go to? Where you know that you’re going to get really great treatment, or really great care. These are people that you can trust. Because that will create a very strong and healthy ecosystem because there will be a lot of integrity and a sense of transparency and ethics. I think that for me is like generally what I want to put my entrepreneurial energy behind. And the way that I look at sort of what I’m creating is a psychedelic archipelago. I’ve started three companies in the space. Actually, no, four, but one is not fully public yet, but three are very public. And a fourth. And then I started a nonprofit, cofounded a nonprofit called The Microdosing Collective, where we’re looking to legalize microdosing. It’s a 501(c)(3) in California.
And so my next big thing I want to do is this nonprofit land project and start to figure out that. But I love this work, I kind of feel like I found what I want to do for the rest of my life, which makes it very fun and playful and exciting. And my biggest reminder to myself is like, you have a lot of time and no rush. I love to create and I love to move and I love to build things, but sometimes I get over my skis, and so every now and then I’ve just got to slow down.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Well, there’s I think a lot of opportunity for that in Mexico. I think there’s a lot of people going there for that, there’s a lot of freedom there as well around now. But probably, you know, it will be legalized in the United States.
Paul Austin
Mexico, Costa Rica, Canada, Portugal, the Netherlands, Australia. New Zealand, I think will soon be. Asia’s a little less open to it. Thailand, there may be some feasibility there soon. Thailand could be a potential. And even there is now psychedelic conferences in Dubai.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Hmm, interesting. That’s interesting.
Paul Austin
And Saudi Arabia is getting more and more interested. The sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia is looking to invest in psychedelics.
Dr. Wendy Myers
That’s fairly interesting, because they typically are so closed about marijuana and other drugs. It’s literally like a capital offense.
Paul Austin
It’s the mental health outcomes, it’s got to be. Just because that’s the pure, like they’re interested in biotech and drug development for it basically.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah, that will be great. Well, very interesting. I had no idea. Well, Paul, thank you so much for coming on the show. Again, why don’t you tell us where we can find you, learn more about it, learn how to microdose and try this out for ourselves?
Paul Austin
Go to TheThirdWave.co, everything you need is on there. Folks like books? I wrote a book called Mastering Microdosing. I’m on Twitter and Instagram @PaulAustin3W, like Third Wave. I do some one-to-one work guidance, experiential work with psychedelics, support with microdosing. And like I mentioned, we also have the practitioner training program if there are coaches or practitioners who are interested in incorporating this in. What would be a good code, Wendy, do you think that would be easy to remember?
Dr. Wendy Myers
Oh, just Wendy. Wendy.
Paul Austin
Just Wendy? So we have a code, if you just put in WENDY, for 500 bucks. That’ll be 500 bucks off the practitioner training. So you can find all that on TheThirdWave.co, my name as well, @PaulAustin3W on Twitter and Instagram, and my book, Mastering Microdosing. This is fun, it was a great kind of conversation and I’m glad we got to do it, so thanks for having me on the show.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah, that’s great. And there’s lots of practitioners that listen to this, lots of physicians and lots of health practitioners, alternative health practitioners, so that’ll be really helpful. Thank you for that $500 off the training. I’m sure there’ll be lots of people interested in that. And I’ve had a few people on this show talk about ketamine assisted therapy, and I just find this really, really, really interesting. As someone myself who went to therapy for 10 years, this seems to be something that would be far more impactful and move the needle so much faster for people dealing with depression or anxiety or other issues related to that. Or if you just have a meh day, and you need a little push.
So Paul, thanks for coming on. And everyone, I’m Dr. Wendy Myers. Thank you so much for tuning in to the Myers Detox podcast, where I have experts from around the world coming on and helping you to meet your health goals because you deserve to feel good. So thanks for tuning in.
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The Myers Detox Podcast is created and hosted by Wendy Myers. This podcast is for information purposes only. Statements and views expressed on this podcast are not medical advice. This podcast including Wendy Myers and the producers disclaim responsibility for any possible adverse effects from the use of information contained herein. Opinions of guests are their own and this podcast does not endorse or accept responsibility for statements made by guests. This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about guests’ qualifications or credibility. Individuals on this podcast may have direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to herein. If you think you have a medical problem, consult a licensed physician.
