Well, hello ladies and gents, Robert Sykes, Keto, savage.com.
Today I've got special guest Paul Austin on the line.
He is the man behind Third Wave, which is a company that he
started about nine years ago. And it's all about psychedelics,
micro dosing, doing deep work and using that as an alternative
to traditional prescription medication and just turning
one's health and psychology around via these psychoactive
substances. So this is again a topic I know
nothing about from experience, but I wanted to just bring him
on and pick his brain as to what the use case scenarios are for
this, what he's experienced personally, what he's
experienced with his client pool, and just learn more about
this as a potential outlet for people wanting to improve their
health and psychology So thoroughly enjoy that
conversation. I've got no doubt that you will
take something from it. So that for the delay, sit back,
relax, enjoy the podcast with Paul Austin and we are live.
Paul, how are you man? I'm good, Robert.
How are you doing? I'm doing wonderfully well
myself, so it's interesting. I've actually had a few guests
as of late jump on and dive into the wonderful world of
psilocybin mushrooms, psychedelics, and that's an area
that I have very little knowledge and 0 experience.
And so I'd love to kind of just peel the curtain back on that
because that is certainly a growing trend these days it
seems. And what What has you
interviewing people about it? Why?
Why do you think it's curious or something to talk about?
I mean, I'm just, I bring on people from all different
backgrounds within the, you know, quote UN quote, biohacking
health space. And I feel like that genre of
health as a a viable alternative to traditional medicine,
especially within the psychological realm, has has
shown some pretty efficacious use cases.
So just kind of have an open mind about that and bring people
on learning their perspective, figuring out where they stand on
it, seeing what the science shows and just learning, man.
That's what I'm all about. Very cool.
And you know, what's interesting is, you know, 61% of Americans
now support legal psychedelic assisted therapy.
Colorado has legalized psychedelics Oregon, and the FDA
is about to approve MDMA as a treatment for PTSD, also called
Ecstasy. So it feels like now is a great
time to talk about this topic, because by this time next year
we could see the first legal federally legal psychedelic in
60 or 70 years. Yeah, it's it's crazy.
All the bureaucratic red tape that has had to jump through in
order to get this moving in that direction.
But and the way I look at it, I mean, like I said, I don't have
any experience with this personally, but I, I know people
who have been on prescription medication their entire life and
have been able to get off of that sometimes leveraging you
know, these these psychedelics. And in my opinion, with the
little experience or the zero experience I have like that is a
much healthier alternative in my opinion.
Yeah, they don't have withdrawals if you stop taking
them. No physical withdrawals.
There's no nasty side effects. Like a lot of people who are
necessarized. They see, you know, whether it's
testosterone or estrogen, you know, sexual vitality drops,
there's less energy, there's mood swings.
And people notice when they work with psychedelics.
There's actually a lot of things that get better, and and a big
reason for that is just how it interacts with the brain.
You know, typical antidepressants tend to act as a
Band-Aid, and they tend to blunt our emotional response to
difficult things. And psychedelics actually act as
we could even say, a form of catharsis.
So there's a hormetic response when we work with psychedelics
where it sort of does something within the body to force it to
adapt and that creates, you know, neuroplasticity.
There's clinical research that shows psychedelics are helpful
at lowering chronic inflammation, which is we all
know is super important for anyone who's interested in
living a healthy and vital lifestyle.
So there's, you know, more and more research coming out, but
it's really a a ground, you know, a grassroots groundswell
movement at this, at this point in time.
The number of people who have worked with psychedelics, in
fact, has quadrupled since 2019. So since 2019, the number of
people who have taken psychedelics has quadrupled,
increased by 4X. Which just shows you that people
need alternative treatments for mental health challenges because
the sort of current protocols just aren't cutting it for most
folks. Yeah, and I don't know, man.
Like we we don't even know what we don't know about the brain.
And when it comes to psychology, human psychology, like I've got
family members that have struggled with depression and
they've been on and off various different SSRIs and you know
they've I've seen people turn to alcohol and other forms of
medication that have a very obvious and clear negative
effect on the body and the health of that individual.
So anything that could be a potential outlet that is
superior to that I'm I'm all for what got you interested in this
to begin with man. Like was there a catalyst for
you diving into the the world of psychedelics?
So I'm 33 and at the age of 19, just under 15 years ago, I tried
psilocybin mushrooms for the first time with a couple friends
in a pretty not a party setting, but also not necessarily a deep
therapeutic setting. We were in the basement of a
home that I was living in at that point in time and we each
did like 2G of mushrooms and watched Pink Floyd's The Wall,
which was a great way to experience my my first ever
psychedelic trip. But you know, that was just sort
of a teaser. It was an opener.
I I didn't have a really, I would say deep and meaningful
experience with psychedelics until about 5 months after that
when I tried LSD for the first time.
Again, not in a recreational or party setting, but also not a
deep therapeutic setting. It was with a few friends.
We were outdoors, hiking, swimming, enjoying the woods and
the beach. And we did a, you know, moderate
dose of LSD, about 250 micrograms.
And just, you know, I felt connected to everything around
me. It felt like I was able to be
more present, you know, for two or three weeks after I I had
this experience with LSD. Life just felt a little
smoother, a little bit more flowy.
It was less in my head, less rumination.
And so at that point in time, I got pretty into it, you know,
for the next, over the next two or three years, I I took
psychedelics probably 15 or 20 times and just started to really
explore how beneficial they could be.
And you know, I was at AI was at an age where, you know, I'm
19/20/21. I'm trying to figure out what
I'm going to do and what my professional career is going to
be and what I'm going to do when I graduate university.
And those really psychedelic experiences, I would say one of
the main things they taught me was that in my 20s it's better
that I commit to doing things not for the money, necessarily,
not to build a status or not to build a resume, but to really
pursue life experiences that would be beneficial.
And so I ended up in my 20s, travelling to over 80 countries.
I've lived in cities pretty much almost on every continent in the
world besides Australia and Antarctica, and as part of those
travels, in 2015 I was living in Budapest and I had started my
first business in 20/13/2014. I taught English online and
built a small educational business, and in 2015 there were
a lot of prominent folks who were starting to talk about
psychedelics. There was more research coming
out. Cannabis had been recreationally
legalized in many states. And so I thought, you know what,
I think I see the writing on the wall here.
Psychedelics are just going to become more popular, more of
interest. And I'd love to help educate
people about if I want to do this, how do I do it
responsibly, how do I do it safely, How do I do it
effectively? And so in 2015, I I started 3rd
Wave. The educational platform was
almost nine years ago now. And so for the last nine years,
you know, I've had a podcast where we interview clinicians,
therapists, doctors, coaches, entrepreneurs, writers, shamans.
I started a legal psilocybin retreat center in the
Netherlands. We did high dose mushroom
retreats for over 1000 people and my most recent project is a
practitioner training program. We've trained over 250
practitioners and coaches and how to work with psychedelics.
So this this, for me really is my life's worked and it's only
getting started. And I think what continues to
drive and motivate me, you know, on a day-to-day, week to week,
month to month basis is just seeing how many lives are healed
and transformed and working with psychedelics, especially when
it's done with a level of intentionality, you know, an
attunement to safety. But yeah, I just, I there's a
lot of personal development hacks out there.
There's a lot of healing hacks out there.
There's a lot of techniques and psychedelics for me are one of
the one of the big ones that can really help us to to move
forward in a positive way. I.
Love it, man. I feel like there's nothing more
fulfilling in life than when you have figured out what your
calling is and you dive into it with 100% intentionality.
So it's awesome that you've found that at the young age that
you have and now you have your whole life to just continue to
pursue it. Yeah, and I I really, you know
the even the name 3rd wave suggests there was a first wave
and a second wave and so the first wave of psychedelics was
the ancient indigenous use. So what a lot of people don't
recognize is that we've been using psychedelics for thousands
of years potentially 10s of thousands of years as a as a
human species. The second wave being the 60s in
the counterculture when LSD was invented and came on the scene
and that was sort of like oh wow it's back like we're we're back
to to this state in this experience again.
But that was associated with the Vietnam War protest, the anti
war movement in the 60s. So it got shut down very quick.
And so I've always looked at the 3rd wave as how are we
developing the educational frameworks?
How are we honoring the sort of indigenous or ancient roots that
this comes from and creating a a path forward to fully legalize
psychedelics so that any adult basically could access these in
a safe and responsible way. And so for me that's really what
the 3rd way represents. And so it's like, you know, so
far it's been media and education and retreats and you
know trainings. But you know I'm, I can't wait
till we can roll out supplements like micro dosing supplements.
I'm looking at you know, more and more real estate potential
in terms of actually buying centers and buying land and
developing that. Psychedelics are just sort of
the the opener. They're the catalyst, but the
way that they're shifting and changing society is pretty
substantial at this point in time.
And it's a lot of, there's a lot of exciting, there's a lot of
stuff to be excited about that's at the cutting edge of of human
potential. Yeah, I have.
I have no doubt man. I have certainly seen the
writing on the wall. I think going about it with a
very educated, intentional, well informed approach is certainly
the the way to do it when it comes to.
I got a couple questions here. So with you being as well
travelled as you are, what what is the the stigma towards
psychedelics in other regions of the world and what would you
define it as here in the States? So the States is definitely a
cultural leader. I would say the United States
and Canada and Australia are the the most progressive countries
in many ways. So in the United States, Oregon
and Colorado have legalized psilocybin mushrooms.
There's several cities that have decriminalized plant medicines,
which essentially means that if you possess them, you can't get
thrown in jail or get arrested, you just get written a citation.
In Canada, it's become more accessible and available, so you
can go into, you know, even in places like Toronto and Ottawa
and Montreal, there are shops that are openly selling
psilocybin mushrooms. Now.
It's still illegal according to Canadian law, but, you know, the
government really doesn't do much about it.
And then in the EU, you know, the EU tends to move a little
bit slower. They've started to invest some
money. The government has invested
money into psychedelic research. But I would say Europe's
probably anywhere from three to seven years behind the United
States and Canada in terms of its progressive mentality.
And then Australia's a really interesting one because
Australia traditionally is actually not all that
progressive. It tends to be a little more
conservative. But last year Australia was the
first country to make MDMA and psilocybin medically available
through a psychiatrist or a clinician's office.
So for the last six months those two have been legal.
But if you, you know, if you start going in and then Israel's
another one, Israel's very much on the cutting edge of
psychedelic research and it's really unfortunate all the the
sort. Of yeah, just everything that's
happening there right now. But they're continuing to chart
a path forward for for psychedelic research in in
Israel. But you know, if you look at
Asia, if you look at basically all of Asia, if you look at
Africa, it's highly stigmatized still.
There's not a lot of education about it.
You kind of hear about things here and there.
Like, I know Thailand just legalized cannabis.
So there are certain pockets that are more progressive, but
generally speaking, people either just don't know about
them, right? Psychedelics didn't really have
their heyday in Asia and Africa. You know, it was mostly in the
United States and Europe. The LSD was widely used in the
50s and 60s. So a lot of people just don't
even know about it. And those who know about it
would likely think that these are, you know, drugs and they're
illegal drugs, so it's better not to to touch them at all.
And then South America's really interesting, right?
That would be the one other region of the world where,
particularly because there's a rich indigenous use of
psychedelics with ayahuasca, with something called yopo, with
peyote, with San Pedro, a lot of these entheogenic plant
medicines are protected in Peru, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador,
Mexico, right. And so specific geographic
locations that have historical use, specifically the indigenous
peoples of these places that have historical use.
A lot of these things are actually legal in those states.
And so that really makes up a bulk of what we could call
psychedelic tourism. And in fact, on 3rd wave we have
a directory of legal retreats and clinics that people can
check out if they're interested in potentially attending this.
But a lot of psychedelic tourism happens in Peru and the Amazon,
Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Jamaica, Jamaica has legal
psilocybin mushrooms because they didn't want to sign a
certain law way back. They're like, we're Jamaica, we
do whatever the fuck we want. If we want to have mushrooms
legal, we're going to have mushrooms be legal and so and
then Mexico as well and then you know places like Costa Rica,
it's also quite accessible and available.
So mostly this side of the world, I would say mostly the
Americas, a lot of progressive sort of mentalities around it, a
lot of access. The rest of the world, either
they just don't feel like they need it, or they're just not
really aware that, you know, it's a it's a potential option
for them. Do you feel like America is
pretty progressive and open to it as a whole, or is it just
these certain hotspots like in California, where it's just
gaining a lot more attention? So the University of Cal
Berkeley. So Berkeley did a study that
they published maybe six months ago.
And in that study they they surveyed 1000 people from across
all demographics and perspectives in the United
States and they found that 61% of those individuals support it
legal psychedelic assisted psychotherapy.
So even if we assume that's a little inflated or it might be a
little high and and we were to say you know give or take 10
percentage points, that still means the majority of Americans
are supportive of legal psychedelic assisted
psychotherapy. Now granted California's the
most populous state in the United States, so the cross
section would be higher there. You know the chances of a a a
state like Alabama or Georgia or Mississippi or you know Oklahoma
legalizing psychedelics anytime soon, I think is it's not very
likely. But the the caveat is once the
FDA approves MDMA for psychedelic assisted
psychotherapy, which will likely happen by the end of this year,
all of these states, from what I understand, will be legally
obligated to provide it. And in fact, there's a really
interesting substance called ketamine.
And ketamine is classically known as an anesthetic.
People often think of it as a horse tranquilizer, as sort of a
negative connotation. But ketamine is one of the
safest anesthetics that's used in emergency rooms.
It's been used for over 60 years and it has an immediate
antidepressant effect. And so ketamine is currently
legally available. A lot of people are
transitioning off psychiatric medications by working with
ketamine, and that's available in basically all 50 states.
Currently. You can get legal ketamine
treatment. And so I think a lot of people
don't even recognize or realize that actually this is currently
available and in the next 5 or 10 years there's just going to
be more types of psychedelics that become legally available.
So ketamine's legally available, MDMA by the end of this year,
you know mushrooms are legal in Oregon and Colorado.
The FDA will likely approve psilocybin, which is the act of
alkaloid in in mushrooms by 2027.
So by the end of this decade you could see as many as three, if
not more psychedelics being legally approved by the FDA and
available to pretty much everywhere in the United States
and thus, you know, Canada and Europe, because the governing
agencies of Canada and Europe often rely on the decision
making by the FDA to also make these substances medically
available. So again, I would expect that by
the end of this decade, pretty much if you live anywhere in the
quote UN quote western world, you'll have legal access to to
psychedelics. Gotcha.
So when it comes to going about
using these the right way as opposed to the wrong way like
I'm a big proponent for doing this deep internal self work
without using any outside. Crutches, 'cause I feel like a
lot of people just immediately turn to a pill or a potion or
something of that nature. And now that said, I can
absolutely get behind using one of these natural plant
substances in place of something like alcohol or hard drugs that
do have an addictive tendency. How?
How does one navigate those waters?
Like how does one differentiate when they would be best off best
suited for something like a psychedelic as opposed to an
alternative option? Like how do you kind of instruct
and encourage people to to navigate those waters?
Yeah, I mean it really starts with education.
So people should have an awareness of this is how it may
impact you. This is the subjective
experience of working with ketamine or MDMA or or
psilocybin. These are some of the potential
benefits. These are also some of the
potential risks. I think you know, for people in
particular who have a mental health indication they would
want to talk to a medical professional, ideally a
psychiatrist, before they work with psychedelics.
If someone has depression or they have, you know, a certain
type of anxiety or PTSD. Also, people who have either a
predisposition or they've experienced before some level of
psychosis or schizophrenia should never work with
psychedelics, and those who have bipolar or borderline should
also be very careful in working with psychedelics.
It can be helpful, but it's you really got to know what you're
doing and you really got to do it with a a medical professional
if that's the case. So I think that's probably for
those who have a mental health indication.
By and large, it's quite safe, and something like psilocybin
mushrooms are even perfectly safe to take if you're on Prozac
or Zoloft or Lexapro. Pretty much any any medication
is safe to take with with mushrooms except lithium.
If you're on lithium, you don't want to touch the Nygidelics
whatsoever. However, this is where the the
support of a medical professional is really helpful,
because psilocybin mushrooms is much different than MDMA, also
known as Ecstasy, right? You can't take MDMA if you're on
certain psychiatric medications because it could cause something
called serotonin syndrome. So anyone who has a clinical
diagnosis, who's potentially interested in psychedelics
working with psychedelics, what I always say is talk with your
psychiatrist. If your psychiatrist really
doesn't know anything about psychedelics, which is rare
these days in the United States, then go to our website, go to
our directory at 3rd Wave and we have clinicians on there that
you can connect with and get in touch with, if that's something
that you're interested in doing. I think, you know, for those who
don't have a clinical diagnosis, you know, I've, I've never been
clinically diagnosed. Like everyone, at times I
struggle with, you know, depression or anxiety.
You know, there are sometimes days or weeks where I feel quite
low, But I've never been on an antidepressant.
I've never been diagnosed in any significant way.
Usually what I tell those folks is it can be helpful to have a
coach or a practitioner who supports you.
You don't need a medical professional necessarily, but it
helps to have a coach or or a practitioner who can support you
and to start loan, go slow, right.
And so that's why I've talked so much about microdosing in
particular, because microdosing is taking 110th of a regular
dose, doing it two or three times a week for maybe a month
or so, seeing how you feel, seeing what you notice.
And then if you're like, OK, this is something that I feel
like I benefited from. This is interesting.
Then you can slowly go higher. The metaphor that I that I use
to describe that is when we learn how to swim, you know, we
often learn how to swim in the shallow end.
We have our these swimmies on, we have a swimming teacher.
And then as we become more comfortable in the water at a
young age, we go deeper and deeper into the deep end.
And I think microdosing is a similar bridge for people who
are quite new to psychedelics that a lot of people are
intimidated by. What if I have a bad trip?
What if I experience ego death? What if I freak out and, you
know, I'm paranoid? What if I have a lot of anxiety?
And so usually with people who have a lot of these, like, what
if this happens? What if that happens?
I just tell them, start low, go slow.
You can always take more. You can't necessarily take less.
And so that I think is a good, a good general frame of reference.
And then it really comes down to what's your intention.
You know, for a lot of people who have a clinical diagnosis,
let's say they've had depression for five or ten years and Prozac
and Lexapro and Wellbutrin and these other, you know,
psychiatric medications aren't necessarily cutting it.
You know, their intention is to heal.
Their intention is to feel better.
Their intention is to feel alive, to feel more vital.
Great. That's a phenomenal intention.
Their intention may be to wean off psychiatric medications, but
because there's so much energy moving through, when we work
with psychedelics, Tim Ferriss, who's a well known podcaster,
calls it nuclear power. It's like you're accessing
nuclear power. There's so much energy that
moves through. You wanna you wanna wrecked it
somewhere. You want to have an orientation,
you want to have a goal. You want to have a have an
objective, a a place where that energy is going.
Because psychedelics are fantastic catalysts.
They can really get you going, they can kick start productivity
and motivation and all these things.
But you still got to drive the car.
You know, psychedelics are like premium gasoline, but you're
still driving the car and so you still have to know where you're
going. How can you support yourself?
What are your intentions on a day-to-day or week to week or
month by month basis? And the more focus, the better.
It's just like in business, right?
When we get too distracted, when we have all these initiatives
going on, nothing gets done that well.
But when we're healing, or when we're looking for
transformation, having a very clear singular focus on, OK, if
I work with psychedelics, I'd really love to heal this
depression. Or maybe you've come to realize
that your depression is somehow related to some form of
childhood trauma and so you. So maybe the intention is even I
want to confront and forgive and heal that traumatic experience
that that happened to me when I was a child.
Or the intention could be a lot of the people that I work with
because I do someone on one coaching myself.
They're CE OS, they're leaders, they're creatives.
They're interested in performance.
They're interested in well-being.
Maybe the the, the focus or the objective is write, write the
first chapter of my book. Or maybe it's, you know, get a
sense of how I can love myself more and take better care of
myself as a leader instead of go, go, go all the time.
How do I find more balance on a week to week basis so I always
feel rested and and recharge. So that intention matters a lot
because oftentimes what we notice with psychedelic
experiences is if you don't have an intention, then it's just a
lot of information without the necessary context or structure
around it and at that. And when that's the case, it's
sort of like a fire hose that you're just putting your mouth
up to. You can become overwhelmed very
quickly. But if you have a context of,
OK, this is the general direction that I would like for
this to head, these are the questions that I'm interested in
asking myself. Then psychedelics can be a
really great ally in that process of awareness and self
discovery. Makes total sense with with the
people that you've worked with over the years, what would you
say like the average demographic of your client pool consists of?
Like, are those typically people in the business sector that are
looking for more creative inspiration or are they people
that are struggling with some type of mental disorder?
Like what? What is the general general
demographic? Yeah, I would say the the ones
that I tend to work the most with, the ones that are most
drawn to me are people who are going through some sort of
professional or career transition.
And and typically the common thread is they've been quite
successful professionally. They've exited a company,
they've worked high up and you know big tech.
They have had a successful either corporate or legal or
medical career and they want to either fully transition or weave
in, you know, becoming a coach or practitioner, someone who
works with psychedelics or maybe not even works as psychedelics.
Just as interested in in how do I find work that's more
meaningful, right? How do I, how do I pursue
projects, creative projects that are not necessarily just to have
an exit or just for a certain type of status or just to, you
know, subconsciously receive validation from my parents.
What if I pursued work that I felt was truly going to change
the world in a substantial and significant way that I found to
be meaningful, that was very helpful for individuals.
So those are those tend to be personally the the clients that
I that I work with most and they're at various stages.
Some are still in their careers and jobs looking to transition
out. Some have already transitioned
and are sort of in that liminal space in between in terms of
where do I go from here. And the reason psychedelics are
so helpful in that process is because when we work with
psychedelics they they often facilitate A deconditioning
process. So the the, the best way to
think about it is as we grow up, you know, adolescence, late
adolescence, teenage years, late teenage years into college and
university, we wear so much armor that's been put on us by
our parents, by our friends, by our high school, by the culture
that we live in, by the community that we were raised
in. So by time we're actually ready
to become a full adult. We're wearing everybody else's
clothes by that point in time, right?
And so everything we're pursuing is actually, in most cases it's
not truly ours. We're pursuing it because we
were told a story that we should pursue it even if we didn't
necessarily find a degree of resonance of this.
And of course this is most common with parents, right?
Parents who want their children to become something, whether
whether it's explicit or implicit, there can be a a quite
a burden there and quite a sense of I have to do this because I
can't let these people down or whatever else that might be.
When we work with psychedelics, they how they essentially for
many people are the first time that we can take off all that
armor. We can remove all of the things
that have been put on to us by things external to us and
instead really start to ask the questions of what do I want to
create, What is most important to me?
How do I want to live? If it didn't matter what anyone
else thought, what would I pursue as a creative task and
projects? Because that then is our gift,
right? And that's the greatest gift
that we can give. It's something that's very
aligned. It's an Arizona genius.
We feel a deep sort of devotion. We're calling to it.
And then we're pursuing A vocation rather than work.
We're pursuing A vocation that feels very aligned and
meaningful. And then regardless of whether
we make you know $1,000,000 or whether we make $100,000, as
long as we feel like we have the necessary resources to you know
feed our family and have a nice home and these sorts of things
then we can actually pursue projects that that we think are
very meaningful that we that that that help other people that
are impactful. We're not just clocking in and
clocking out so we can appease you know, the the sort of
subconscious of our of our parental conditioning.
But we're really looking at how can we create and build
something that we feel like we want to do more than anything
that excites us to do. And that's helpful for for other
people. Why do you think think some
people are able to figure that out without any exogenous
substances, whereas a lot of people need to have that
stimulus to to kind of have that deep interflexion and figure out
who they are and where they're going?
That's an that's an interesting question.
I think my initial response is most people do not pursue work
that they personally find meaningful.
I think we're certainly, I consider myself to be in the
minority of individuals who pursue work that, you know, I
really loved day in day. I mean granted there are
challenges of course, but like day in, day out, I really love
what I get to do. And I think it's just like, like
I remember reading a recent survey that as many as 60 to 70%
of people employees in the United States are dissatisfied.
Yeah, it's pretty. Sad with their jobs.
It's pretty disheartening for sure.
Yeah, it's super disheartening. So I think on the one hand it's
we're in the minority. UPS I go, I mean good parenting,
honestly. Like just being raised in an
environment. Like for me, my parents were
always like play the violin. You know, I played soccer.
I I did well in academics. They pushed me, but they weren't
overbearing, they weren't intense or overly crazy.
And they always told me, look, regardless of what you do, we'll
be happy for you and we'll love you, right.
So I never had this sort of external pressure of you got to
be a doctor, you got to be a lawyer, you got to make certain
amount of money. You know, I grew up very middle
class. You know, my parents drove 15 to
20 year old cars. My mom was a social worker.
My dad worked in higher Ed at A at a local university that I
ended up attending. So for me, I was just raised and
nurtured in this very American middle class family where we had
enough money to put food on the table.
But you know we we were not necessarily cleaning up, you
know. And so I think that was a great
impression from a young age. And I think in in many ways This
is why a middle class is so important because we learn to
many of us learn to pursue things that have some some level
of alignment. And then I think you get into
like, you know, the student debt crisis, right?
There are a lot of people who have to pay it off student debt.
I, I, I again was fortunate. My dad worked at the university
that I attended. I came out of university with no
debt whatsoever. So I was able to instantly move
to Turkey to teach English there and pursue this entrepreneurial
path from the age of 24 because I didn't have to get, you know,
a sales job or go get my MBA so I could pay off 150 or $200,000
in debt. So I think we do currently in
our former, in our current structure and system, have this
sort of modern form of indentured servitude where
people basically have to work jobs that they hate, you know,
back to Fight Club, right? We got to work for the fucking
man to make shit that nobody fucking wants.
Because we we find ourselves stuck in this, this sort of
consumerist matrix of sorts. So that's when it then gets more
interesting because it's like, OK, if I was in that case, if I
was in that situation, there's a likelihood that if I had a bunch
of debt, I would be much more oriented towards getting a job
immediately and getting that paid off so I could be fully
free. So I think it's partly
structural, it's partly upbringing, and then it's also
partly just disposition. Like, there are some people who
they want to be poets, they want to be artists, they want to be
writers, they want to be musicians.
There are some people who want to work in finance who you know,
love numbers and spreadsheets. So I think some of us are just
naturally drawn to jobs and careers where we make more money
and some of us are not. And the fundamental truth is
because of the system that we're in, for better or worse, I'm,
I'm part of it and and participatory in it.
But for the the those who make really good money tend to have
more freedom and opportunity. And so a lot of these people
that I work with, I'm 33, a lot of my clients are in their 40s
or 50s and they're more or less financially independent because
they've worked in finance, because they've worked in big
tech or rarely they've exited a company and now they're going
OK. I thought getting wealthy was
would fulfill me and it hasn't whatsoever.
Where is real fulfillment? Where is real meaning?
And that's where I think psychedelics almost act as a
correction course. They almost they help these
people to remember certain things about what actually
matters in life that many of us have not been taught or we've
we've completely forgotten. Yeah.
No, I think it's all very fair statement.
I feel like we are certainly finding ourselves a society in
this Matrix, As you say, that is just unfulfilling, arduous work.
That's and for me, it's like I feel so blessed because I know
exactly who I am, what I'm capable of, and what I want to
pursue with my time. Like I wake up early and I'm
excited every single day. But I know so many people, we
all do that hate it when the alarm goes off.
They hate it when they have to go to work and that just is no
way to live. So if you know psychedelics can
act as a catalyst to break them free of that matrix and thought
pattern, to see that there is a lot more to life than the four
corners that they feel trapped in, I feel like that makes total
sense. Yeah, I mean it's it's it's it's
an opportunity, it's an opening. And I think the other thing
that's important to emphasize is psychedelics can be great for
this. Breathwork is a phenomenal tool
for this. Fasting for five days or six
days is a phenomenal tool for this.
We're there are so many modalities that can provide us
with a new perspective. They require a certain level of
intensity and it's more about the state that it facilitates
than the modality in and of itself.
And the reason I love meditation and breath work and yoga and
fasting and these non drug, non psychedelic tools is because at
the end of the day that's that's the foundation, right.
Psychedelics here and there are great to work with.
Microdosing again, taking these low doses and doing it 2-3 times
a week. I, you know, I've been
microdosing for nine years. No, not straight but in and out
for nine years. So I take these low doses and
they're just great on a on an everyday basis, but the high
doses like really doing deep inner work.
You know for me that's once every six months at this point,
once every nine months I really set aside time and usually it's
with ayahuasca. Now I'll I'll I'll work with
particular quarenderos, healers, shamans from Peru and ayahuasca
has been a really great teacher in that way.
But again, it's it's not often that I'm doing this.
My day-to-day is meditation is so fundamentally key.
Breathwork, cold plunges are so fundamentally key.
And then fasting every now and then is something I really,
really lean on. And of course, saunas.
I'm like in the in the sauna at this point, four or five times a
week. Yeah, I feel like just simply
disconnecting. Like I just got in doing a a
competition prep and I was incredibly depleted.
And every day after I trained before I would allow myself to
eat a meal, I would just do a ton of breath work, prayer,
meditation, mindfulness and like that.
That's like such a transformative moment cause like
you're able to just disconnect from the the hurry nature that
we all find ourselves trapped in.
And so few people take the time to do that.
But that is where the real work is done.
So if you can carve that out and prioritize it, you can figure
out why you're doing the things you're doing in the first place.
Yeah, only and it's it's not a huge commitment.
It could be 15 minutes, it could be 30 minutes.
But for me, that time to myself is so necessary if I'm going to
just generally be happy and healthy and and you know, get up
in the morning with with energy for the day ahead.
Totally so. And it when it comes to
different substance, to different modalities of therapy
you you've done, you said LSD, ayahuasca, psilocybin, how, how
would you compare all of these? Like, where would somebody
start? What?
I mean, I'm sure this can be highly individualized, but like
how did certain substances impact the brain differently
than others? Like how would you kind of
describe each of these different substances?
Yeah, so the best way to think about this is the Lotus flower
metaphor. So the Lotus flower is the
symbol of enlightenment in Buddhism, and it represents sort
of the full blossoming of human consciousness.
And so the Lotus flower metaphor has three parts.
It has the soil, it has the seed and it has the blossoming, the
full blossoming and flourishing of that seed.
So substances like MDMA and ketamine are ideal as to help
till the soil. And so before we plant that new
seed of self with psychedelics like mushrooms, LSD, ayahuasca,
we first need to make sure that the soil that we're planting it
in is very healthy. And so this is a metaphor for
trauma work that were people who are new to psychedelics.
If, if and there's all, we all have trauma to some degree, but
especially if it's a big T trauma first, doing that
necessary healing work with MDMA and ketamine is a great starting
point. And the reason it's MDMA and
ketamine is because those tend to be the easiest, the the least
intense, the most euphoric. And so for beginners, it
provides a little bit of a safe and soft landing pad to do that
necessary trauma healing. Once we have healthy soil,
that's when we plant the new seed of self and you can think
of that new seed as a death and rebirth process.
So the reason psilocybin mushrooms and LSD are so
effective at treating depression, addiction, PTSD, all
these mental health conditions is because of their ego
dissolving properties. And a lot of mental health
conditions are related to over rumination.
You're just thinking too much. The brain is always turned on.
You've developed these ruts in the brain that just thoughts go
down automatically. So when you take a psychedelic
it interrupts that process. It's almost like a brand new
carpet of snow of powder has fallen on a mountainside and all
the usual ruts get snowed over and all of a sudden you can
carve new paths and new ways down the mountains.
And so when we take a high dose of psychedelic, when we're
planting that new seed of self, it we we get an opportunity to
step out of those usual ruts and actually pave new paths, which
are new patterns of behavior, which are new habits, which are
new perspectives and ways of being.
And it happens through this ego dissolving process, the seed of
self. So once that seed is planted,
then we want to water it right then.
Then it needs sunlight and so water, sunlight, nutrients,
that's what we call integration. Those are the practices like we
already talked about, meditation, breath work, cold
plunge, sauna, journaling, diet, exercise, sleep.
These practices help us to integrate the high dose
experience because if we don't integrate it, then a lot of the
insights that we get just sort of go away, you know, whereas we
want to capture those insights, we actually want those insights
to inform the new person that we're becoming.
And then you know as the seed is fully growing then it has an
opportunity to blossom and flourish.
And so that's where substances like ayahuasca, which is a tea
from the Amazon, San Pedro, which is a cacti from Peru, even
something like 5 MEODMT, which is the venom of a toad in
Mexico. Don't ask me how they found out
that if you smoked toad venom you would get incredibly high.
That's beyond me. But these these are the more
intense we could say like plant medicine, psychedelics,
ayahuasca, San Pedro 5 MEO. And that's where you've tilled
the soil, you've planted the new seed of self.
You've done a lot of the beginner and intermediate work.
Now I with ayahuasca with five, MEO with San Pedro.
That's the more advanced work that you can get into in terms
of the different ways then that they interact with the body and
brain. That would be a whole other
episode in itself, but ketamine is most effective at immediately
interrupting the the the sort of default mode network of the
brain. In fact, clinical research shows
that ketamine is probably the best intervention for
suicidality. If someone you know is feeling
suicidal, get them immediately to do ketamine, It will help it
almost immediately. Whereas MDMA is more of a heart
opener, what they call an empathogen, which is So it helps
to be very bubbly, not bubbly but vulnerable.
You can talk about deep things, a lot of people use it within
relationships. LSD and psilocybin are the
classic psychedelics. They activate something called
the five HT 2A receptor, which if activated at a high enough
degree facilitates again this eco death, eco dissolving, death
and rebirth process. And then ayahuasca, San Pedro
and five Meo, they all kind of work in different ways.
Probably the the most relevant thing for this audience would be
specific to ayahuasca. That's most often done with an
indigenous shaman. It's a tea you drink.
It tastes quite nasty and people have a lot of purging with it
and a lot of what these, the sort of indigenous wisdom says
about ayahuasca is we're purging because there's we need to get,
we need, we need to heal and we're we're we've repressed or
suppressed emotions, stories, feelings.
And so when we vomit it up, we release it.
It's the it's the physical catharsis of those emotions and
those memories which can be incredibly healing.
Gotcha, gotcha. What about DMT?
There's a lot of talk around that too.
So DMT is the active ingredient in Ayahuasca and so it's and
there's actually 2 DMTS and get very confusing.
NNDMT is is the substance that you smoke and you go into these
sort of machine elves, fractals, other dimensions. 5 MEODMT is
the the toad venom that I talked about and that's just white
bliss, white light unity, consciousness.
And so when you drink ayahuasca, it's sort of like a NNDMT
experience. What most of us would know is
DMT. It's like ADMT experience for
six hours. It's just kind of spread out and
not as intense. When you smoke DMT it's that
much more intense. But I I rarely talk about it
just because you know, Joe Rogan has talked about it quite a bit
and several other podcasters. But the fundamental truth is
getting accessing DMT is quite difficult.
You have to extract it either from Mimosa, Hostilis or Acacia.
Once you extract it, then you need to smoke it, but you have
to use like a glass pipe to smoke it and you have to smoke
it in a very particular way to get it correct.
So it can be a little complicated, but those who are
into DMT are really into DMT. Like like DMT is the thing.
And what's really cool is lately they've been doing extended
state intravenous DMT. So usually would, yeah.
Usually when you smoke DMT it lasts for like 15 minutes.
You know, they call it the the business bands trip, but they've
started to do research out of a university in London where
they're providing DMT intravenously and people are in
that state for two, 3-4 hours at once.
So I and I think again this is the really cool thing about
psychedelics is this is really just the beginning stages.
Because if we had a whole another podcast episode, I could
go down all the rabbit holes of all the really crazy cutting
edge shit that I'm here about and subject to an intravenous
DMT is like one of them. Super fascinating.
Where's the the mass push back coming in the current day and
age? Like what is what is the the
bureaucratic red tape that's having to be jumped through
currently as it sits? That's a great question.
So most people would think, oh you know, like big pharma would
go against this and they're going to hate this.
And the the truth is there's already been one psychedelic
company that's been acquired by a pharmaceutical company.
There are several other companies that have raised
hundreds of millions of dollars as biotech companies to get
psychedelics approved. It's likely that you could see
some pharmaceutical giants just buy out some of these
psychedelic sort of synthetic substances.
But at the end of the day, like pharmaceutical companies want,
they want to be effective, they want to make sure that what
they're doing works because sure they can continue to reap short
term shareholder benefit. But more and more we're learning
that if you really want to be at in for the long term, you
actually have to. You actually have to help people
is my is my sense. So big Pharma is like not
they're they're aware of it, but I wouldn't say they're super
interested in it yet. The biggest challenge is more so
that psychedelics represent a totally new paradigm.
And so the typical drug approval process for the FDA is you're
really looking at the drug and the drug itself.
So you know the gold standard and research is double-blind
placebo-controlled studies where this person gets the drug, this
other person gets the placebo. We see how they respond and if
it's clinically significant, then the drug, it gets approved.
Well, as you can imagine in clinical research and
psychedelics, it's pretty obvious who got the placebo and
who didn't get the placebo, right.
If you take 5 grams of mushrooms, you're probably going
to know you took 5 grams of mushrooms.
Whereas if you get the placebo, there's not going to be much
that happens whatsoever, right? And so that makes it very
difficult to do proper blinding. And so one of the criticisms
within, you know the FDA and clinical research is well, our
model is built for drugs, right. Our model is not necessarily
built for the drug plus the therapy and and what a lot of
people in the psychedelic space would say is the drug helps,
MDMA helps, ketamine helps. Mushrooms help, yes, they help
and a lot of the efficacy is the therapeutic support before and
after the experience because it can be so paradigm shifting that
you need someone to process and support that.
Whereas taking Prozac, it's just like you start to take Prozac
and yeah, maybe you still see a therapist, but you're not having
this life changing. At least most people aren't
having this sort of life changing, paradigm defining
paradigm breaking moment or experience like they do with
psychedelics. So that's sort of the mainframe
of criticism. It's do psychedelics actually
fit into this FDA pharmaceutical model?
And my personal belief is that they don't.
I think trying to stuff psychedelics into the FDA model
is like, it'd be like if Elon Musk was like, OK, we're going
to replace oil and gas by just doing the same thing they did
before but with solar. And the fundamental truth is
regenerative energy is way different in terms of how it's
created and built and distributed than oil and gas.
It's way less centralized, it's way more decentralized, it's
much more localized. So whereas oil and gas often
rely on huge pipelines, they rely on, you know, you don't
need that with regenerative energy necessarily.
So I think the opportunity with psychedelics is to say fuck the
system. The FDA pharmaceutical system is
dead or dying. We really need to create a new
paradigm of what it means to be, well, focusing on true
healthcare and not sick care, and actually helping people get
to the bottom of their shit rather than just getting
addicted on pills that they have to stay on for the next 30-40
fifty years of their lives. I can 1000% get behind that
message. How would you compare
psychedelic sent to like THC? Like would you put them in a
similar category or do you consider them totally different?
You know, cannabis, if done at a high enough dose, can certainly
be psychedelic, especially if it's done only on an occasional
basis. You know, I know plenty of
people who lead cannabis ceremonies or cannabis circles
where they'll have an eye mask, they'll lay down, they'll play
music, they'll take a very high dose of an edible and they'll go
on a journey. But I would say that's the
exception normally for people who are using cannabis.
Most people who are who are using cannabis are just, you
know, the smoking, spliff, smoking joints, taking edibles.
It's more of more of the new alcohol rather than it being the
substance that's used for therapeutic or for purposes of
personal development. Now that doesn't mean that
enjoying yourself isn't is is bad.
I think it just depends on the relationship with it.
Cannabis can also be sticky, it can be addictive, whereas
psychedelics aren't typically addictive.
So cannabis I would say it can be a psychedelic.
Most people who use it don't use it as a psychedelic, they more
use it as an alcohol replacement.
And I would argue that cannabis is still healthier than alcohol
overall. So it's a good starting point,
but I really think the the sort of, you know, if we were to look
into this as bad, OK, better, I would consider mushrooms,
ayahuasca, even LSD, to be more on the better side because
there's full clarity. It actually helps with
neuroplasticity and neurogenesis, and there's not
really at all a potential for addiction with with psychedelic
sentences. Yeah, I feel like avoiding the
new alcohol syndrome would be key.
I mean, everybody knows their their college roommate who just
had zero ambition as a result of smoking weed all day.
And that's why I would want to hedge against for sure.
Because cannabis can also lower your especially for men out
there, it can lower your it lowers your if you use it often
enough, it will lower your testosterone levels.
It will, you know, decrease your sort of sense of motivation if
you smoke it. It's obviously not great for the
lungs, so there's certainly negative aspects to cannabis,
but at this point anything is better than the sort of binge
driven, alcohol driven society that that we live in.
It's getting better, Cali Sober and a lot of people are drinking
less, but it's still by far the most popular drug besides
caffeine. And there's there's not been any
known studies done on negative implications of like mushroom
use overtime like. Are you aware of any negative
adverse implications from that? No, over time, no.
There's been some population studies from people who started
doing LSD in the 60s and 70s and have been doing it for 50 or 60
years, and there's been no adverse outcomes that people
have noticed. Physiological nor psychological.
There can be negative psychological outcomes with
psychedelics. As we talked about before, if
you have a predisposition to psychosis or schizophrenia,
bipolar, borderline, you should be very, very careful with
psychedelics. And also there are some people
who just unfortunately, the only time they ever did psychedelics
was that, like a music festival when they were 25, they were
really drunk, they had a bunch of mushrooms with friends, they
had a terrible experience. They wrote it off forever.
So there are quite a few of those as well.
By and large, the people who do their homework, the people who
educate themselves, find a great therapist or doctor or coach to
work with, you know, do the necessary preparation and
integration. By and large, about 70 to 80% of
people end up having a positive and beneficial experience when
working with with psychedelics. And then you see about 10 to 15%
of people who, it's fine, nothing really happens, but
nothing bad happens. And then about 5% of people, it
can be destabilizing, it can be quite difficult, Which again is
why it's so important to have support.
Because, you know, a lot of people look at psychedelics and
they go, oh, maybe this will fix all my problems.
And the truth is, it'll help you confront and face your problems.
It'll help you become more aware of what your problems are.
But it's not going to fix them. You still have to, as we talked
about before, drive the car. You still have to do the work to
actually live a life that you want to live.
Yeah, no, I totally agree. If someone's stable, they're
like confident in who they are. They have their purpose.
They know what they're doing in life.
Are they likely going to find more benefit from an occasional
high dose of mushrooms for instance?
Or more so, taking the path of the micro dosing a few times a
week. You know I talk about it as like
the skill of psychedelics, like the skill of psychedelics is
high doses, micro doses and non psychedelic modalities.
So I always look at, you know, if I'm working with any client
or you know as part of our training program for
practitioners, I always consider you know, the the, the non
psychedelic stuff like the breathwork, meditation, yoga.
That's just things that all of us should be doing every day
whether we do psychedelics or not, right.
We need some sort of form of contemplative practice.
Micro dosing can be great if you're looking for more flow,
more creativity, if you're looking to be less socially
awkward, have less social anxiety, it can be great if
you're just looking to, you know, take care of your brain,
it's quite helpful. Neurogenesis and then high doses
are really great for folks who just feel like even if things
are going well, they feel maybe a little stuck.
They feel unclear. They feel like they've been in a
rut lately. They feel like they haven't been
able to be as courageous in making the decisions that they
need to make. And doing a high dose of
psychedelics can sometimes help with that process.
So I would say a lot of it is we should all be meditating, we
should all be doing breath work, We should all have some form of
contemplative practice. And then depending on your
intention, you might want to explore either, you know,
working with a high dose or microdosing.
Makes total sense. How has all this been received
from like religious sectors, out of curiosity like that, you get
a lot of pushback from those that are, you know, devoutly
deep in their faith. Like, is that a confrontation
with, you know, people taking psychedelics, playing God?
Like how is that received? Yeah, most for most
conservative, you know, religious people, it's honestly
not really on the radar. They would just have the classic
perspective of this is a drug, it's illegal.
It must be bad. So I'm not going to touch it.
There are quite a few, like in the Jewish community especially,
there are a lot of people who are interested in the overlap
between psychedelics and the Kabbalah, which is sort of the
mystical text and devotion of of of Judaism there.
Johns Hopkins, which has done quite a bit of research on
psilocybin, has an ongoing study where they're giving religious
leaders, priests, bishops, imams, rabbis, they're giving
them psychedelics and seeing how it impacts their sort of
relationship to God if it sort of revitalizes them in their
ministry. So definitely the vast majority
of people who follow a religious path are anti psychedelic and I
can't tell you including myself, how many people have healed
religious trauma with psychedelics.
I wasn't raised fundamentalist, but I was raised from basically
the the day I was born until I left my parents house when I was
17. I was at church every single
Sunday. I mean, there were maybe when we
would travel once a year, I wouldn't go, but literally every
single Sunday for four hours. And working with LSD at the age
of 1920 really helped me to heal a lot of that religious shame
and guilt that I had been raised within.
I know a lot of people who have left the Mormon Church who have
turned to psychedelics to help them on their healing path,
people who were raised as Jehovah's Witness.
So I think psychedelics, especially for those who are
raised and more like intense fundamentalist religious
traditions, they can be really helpful to heal that trauma.
And and then, you know, with the research at Johns Hopkins where
they're bringing religious leaders in to do psychedelics, I
think it's interesting. I mean we'll we'll we'll see
what happens with it. Yeah, it is interesting.
There's a lot of exciting things in the pipeline on this front,
man, you're at the tip of the spear here.
What what are you personally excited about as it relates to
your your consulting business, just your operation as a whole?
Well, you know I hold, I hold a lot of hats.
I'm ACEO of a company. We have about 10 people who work
for us at this point in time. So the typical business and
strategy and relationship building.
You know I love to host the podcast.
So we have great guests on from across the spectrum there and I
just love interviewing and and going deep into that.
I have a second book that will come out at some point this
year. The first book I wrote was
called Mastering Microdosing. So folks want to take a deep
dive into microdosing. You can find that in Amazon and
I'll have a second one coming out, coming out this year.
And and then I would say the main project that I'm excited
about in the next two or three years is I'm just really
starting to take a look at properties in Costa Rica and
Portugal and the United States. I'm really keen on buying a
retreat center, building a retreat center and sort of
setting up a physical home for 3rd wave.
You know, we have a remote team, we've been online for nine years
ever since I started and I'd love to have like a physical
home for 3rd wave at some point in the next 3-4, five years.
And so I'd say on a longer term horizon that's the that's kind
of. I've been interested in real
estate for a while and I've just had my hands full with running
an online education business. But I'm really looking forward
to getting into to retreat centers and land development and
all these sorts of things before the end of this decade.
Very cool. Yeah.
I think doing things like in person as a retreat like that
would be incredibly fulfilling because you're right there,
boots on the ground with the people you're you're helping.
So that'd be that'd be exciting for sure.
Man, I love it. Palm.
Well, where? Where can people go to find out
more about you and dive deeper into your world and just learn
more about Third Wave? Yeah, folks, want to check out
our guides, our list of providers, join our community?
That's thethirdwave.co You can also just type in 3rd wave into
Google to pop right up. Folks can reach out to me on
Instagram or Twitter at paul.austin3wimalso@paulaustin.co
You can reach out directly through the website there and
then if there are any coaches or practitioners, dietitians,
People who in a professional way work with clients and they're
interested in working with psychedelics.
We have our training program at the Psychedelic Coaching
Institute, which you can find through Third Wave or directly
at Psychedelic Coaching dot Institute.
So quite a bit there, but Third Wave, Paul Austin Psychedelic
Coaching Institute. And folks have any questions.
If they want to share any sort of personal stories or anything
like that, feel free to reach out to me on social.
I'm pretty responsive there. Awesome man.
Well, I will certainly link out to all those.
Make it easy for people to find you.
You said multiple times on the podcast.
That'd be a whole podcast in and of itself, man, so we'll just
have to do around here at some point.
I would love that. I had a lot of fun.
Robert, thanks for and I love the style of the the show.
It was super smooth and flowy, so I appreciate you being a
great host. Hey man, my pleasure.
I'm. I'm always excited to learn more
and just dive deeper into other people's wheelhouses.
So I appreciate you enlightening me, man.
Yeah, for sure can't. Wait till next time, man.
Yeah, take care.