114. Paul Austin - Can Psychedelics Rewire the Brain and Heal Addiction? | A Conversation with the founder of Third Wave and the Psychedelic Coaching Institute

In this episode of 'Unhooked,' host Jeremy Lipkowitz welcomes Paul Austin, a seasoned advocate and practitioner of psychedelics, to discuss their multifaceted benefits for personal development and healing. The conversation delves into how psychedelics can help overcome various addictions, including pornography, nicotine, alcohol, and even gambling. Austin shares his personal journey using psychedelics to break free from a pornography addiction and emphasizes the concept of using these substances with intention. He explains the potential of psychedelics as anti-addictive agents supported by clinical research and shares insights about building a sustainable practice around their use. Listeners will learn about the profound therapeutic and transformative experiences psychedelics can offer, along with practical advice for beginners interested in incorporating them into their lives.


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Connect with Paul Austin:
http://paulaustin.co
https://thethirdwave.co/
https://psychedeliccoaching.institute/

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ABOUT JEREMY LIPKOWITZ

Jeremy overcame addiction, shame, self-judgement, and depression in his early twenties with the help of mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness not only helped him let go of destructive behaviors, it also allowed him to connect with deeper meaning and purpose in his life.

For the past 10 years Jeremy has been teaching mindfulness and emotional intelligence practices at universities, recovery centers, and companies throughout Asia and the US. He holds a Bachelors and Master’s degree in Genetics and Genomics, and spent several years at Duke University working towards a PhD in Genetics & Systems Biology before he turned full-time to teaching mindfulness.

Jeremy is also an ICF certified Executive Coach. As a former scientist and academic, Jeremy has a great passion for bringing his EI based coaching skills into the corporate and professional world. He realizes how powerful & transformative these practices can be for skeptics and senior-level managers. He is known for his calm and grounded demeanor, his expertise in habits and high-performance, and his compassionate approach to transformation.


Shownotes:

00:00 Introduction to Psychedelics and Personal Development

00:57 Welcome to the Podcast: Meet Paul Austin

01:13 Paul Austin's Journey with Psychedelics

02:45 Exploring the Benefits of Psychedelics

04:12 Overcoming Addiction with Psychedelics

06:48 The Impact of Psychedelics on Personal Growth

10:21 Understanding Psychedelics: Safety and Misconceptions

14:00 Microdosing: A Gentle Introduction to Psychedelics

20:18 Who Should Consider Psychedelics?

25:54 Turning to Psychedelics as a Last Resort

27:50 Five Key Elements of Psychedelic Practice

30:22 Understanding the Critical Learning Period

33:18 Navigating Challenging and Bad Trips

37:10 Experiencing the Beauty and Connection

45:50 Final Thoughts and Takeaways

Transcript

  📍 these substances, drugs, medicines, whatever we call them, have various utilities and that when they are used with intention more than anything, they can be a very powerful ally on the path of healing    📍  Psychedelics helped me to go down the path of personal development one of the core behaviors that I changed was my pornography addiction and I feel like that has set me up in a beautiful way over the last 15 years

  📍  Psychedelics can often be that sort of kick in the ass that we need to actually make the courageous changes that we know we need to make to live the life that we know we are capable of  📍 living.

 Psychedelics are anti addictive. In fact, clinical research has shown that they can heal addiction. Nicotine addiction, alcoholism, opiate addiction. There's research on gambling addiction. There's starting to do research on pornography addiction. So these are actually anti addictive drugs. And they don't have nearly the risk profile. 📍  of 

  📍 ​

 All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of Unhooked. I'm your host, Jeremy Lipkowitz. I'm very excited to have my guest on today, Paul Austin. Paul, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Jeremy. It's great to be here. Yeah, I never thought I'd be on a  podcast like this one. And yeah, it feels totally natural because as I was telling you before I went live, I've had my own struggles with pornography addiction as I think a lot of men in our time have had and psychedelics were very helpful at interrupting and breaking that pattern. Many years ago, so I'm excited that I would in with you and see where the conversation leads 

Yeah, I'm very excited for this. A little backstory, actually something you don't know. What was really interesting was about a month or two ago, I was actually, doing my own research for a psychedelic retreat that I was considering going on. And so I was looking up the, the founder and listening to some interviews with the founder of this psychedelic retreat.

And I was actually listening to your podcast interviewing this psychedelic retreat founder. And then literally two days later, your team messaged me for a connection and said, Hey, would you be interested in having Paul on your podcast? And I was like, this is amazing. Perfect timing. Like I was just listening to him for an hour.

He's a great speaker, I really like what he's saying.  So the universe really, it seems, wanted to bring you on the podcast and now also hearing that you have history with porn and breaking free from that and using psychedelics. I think this will just be a really valuable conversation.

So yeah, definitely 

No, it's too 

funny. Yeah. Thank you. 

for sharing that. 

Yeah.

Also just found out that we lived in the same neighborhood in Chiang Mai. I just got to add this in as well. Lots of synchronicities here. No coincidence, no coincidences,  right? Only 

synchronicities.

 Well, For the people who are not familiar with you, just maybe a high level overview of, because I know you have quite a few organizations that you founded what is it that you're up to in the world right now?

yeah. So at this very moment, my particular focus is on semen retention.  And putting on about 10 to 15 pounds of muscle. So I'm 

really practicing semen retention. I'm practicing, I'm doing a lot of weight lifting. I hired a trainer for the first time. And I say that slightly tongue in cheek, because when people think about, a guy who's involved in the psychedelic space, probably the last thing they think about is, Sort of a fitness junkie as well.

And I think that really defines who I am in many ways, that my interests are broad and vast. That, I was the kid who 

played violin in the symphony orchestra, I played college soccer, so I was an athlete and then I was reasonably smart and did pretty decent in academics as well.

So I was a jock, I was a nerd and I was in some ways a musician. And that's also the lens that I brought to the psychedelic space is looking at this from a very diverse perspective that these are not strictly tools. or pills to be medicalized for clinical indications. These are also not just drugs to help us disassociate and disconnect. And these are also not just Tools that have to be taken seriously all the time, right? That 

 



these substances, drugs, medicines, whatever we call them, have various utilities and that when they are used with intention more than anything, they can be a very powerful ally on the path of healing and transformation.

And that's what they did for me many years ago when I was,  19 I started to myself work with psychedelics psilocybin mushrooms and LSD was the more impactful of those two medicines, maybe 15 or 20 times

between the ages of, 19  and 21. And they really set me down this path of personal growth and introspection and awareness and really wanting To make the most out of my existence because before those experiences, I had been raised in a pretty, I would say, Pretty Christian family. We weren't fundamentalist necessarily, but we were at church every Sunday. Church was really the pillar of our social life. And when I was 16, my parents found out that I had been smoking cannabis and they sat me down one Sunday after church and my dad looked at me and said, I haven't been this disappointed. Since my brother passed away in a car accident, right? And so the community environment that I was raised in was very anti drug,  also very anti sex. And, so there's a lot of repression that goes into that. And so of course, I'm 10 year, I think  



when I was 10, I started finding naked women online, Playboy. When I was 13, I started watching pornography. And then by the time I was 16 or 17, I was watching pornography. Probably every day. And 

 

it wasn't until I had these experiences with LSD that I was able to totally interrupt that pattern and come to recognize how toxic. It was, and this was prior to a lot of the sort of neuroscience coming out about the harms of pornography, right?

I could just tell something's going on. I was starting to have sex at that time with girlfriends and was struggling with premature ejaculation. I was noticing I couldn't last that long. I was noticing that I was, overly objectifying these women. And I was kind of like, what's going on? And so LSD helped me to recognize. Oh I really got to stop. I really got to stop doing this. That's a little kind of all over the place, but I think the crux of it is  

 

Psychedelics helped me to go down the path of personal development one of the core behaviors that I changed was my pornography addiction and I feel like that has set me up in a beautiful way over the last 15 years to know and understand how to hold my Own energetics socially with women in a business context all these sorts of things 

I'm curious to know a little bit more about what was it that psychedelics gave to you that helped you overcome the addiction? What was actually going on there that, what were the insights? 

There's a sensitivity that comes online when you start to work with psychedelics, so you become, at least I did, I became more sensitive to food that I ate,  right? I was pretty healthy up until that point in time, but every now and then I would still have fast food or drink quite a bit of alcohol. And once I started to work with psychedelics intentionally, I came to realize, Oh, like I can't.  I like feel how bad it is to eat McDonald's or Taco Bell, right? Same with alcohol. Like

 

I really started to feel and notice and be sensitive to how toxic alcohol was for my body. Similarly, I started to meditate. So I came to realize, okay, the only way to replicate this state on a consistent basis outside of these drug experiences was to start to meditate more often. Spend more time in nature, spend more time in contemplation. And so as I started to spend more time in nature and in contemplation,  I came to realize and understand the value of in the way that I would put it now is like managing dopamine.  And I think at that point in time, I intuitively

started to sense and understand that whenever I would watch pornography consistently, I noticed that I just felt Like I had lost a little bit of something, like I felt a little bit empty.

I felt a little unclear. I had this sensitivity that this was just toxic and not that great of an energy to be involved in. And I also,  Around that time started to get really into reading about personal development. So I was on all these blogs reading about personal development and what, as a 19, 20 year old man, I could do to become more intelligent and aware and free and powerful. And one of the patterns that kept coming up was, these are some of the harms of pornography. And that if you really want to become, I think the art of manliness was one of these early blogs, I believe it's still around. If you really want to become like a full man, a central part of that is learning the way that I would frame it now is learning how to manage and circulate your cheat and not just let it go. And

sexual energy is this, it's really the most primal of all energies and it's where all of our power really comes from. And so learning how to be in, in closer relationship with it, learning to be more sensitive to it, psychedelics helped me to wake up to it. And then the work that I did  after doing psychedelics helped me to establish that as a new behavioral pattern, which was, I'm just not gonna,  I'm just not going to do this anymore.

Like I, and I'm not going to say I was.  Perfect. But I would say I probably in those years reduced it by 98 percent every now and then still, I would go back. I'd have these phases. But  for the most part, it was just never the same as it was when I was 16, 17, 18. 

Yeah, it sounds like it,  it lifted the delusion and you started to see more clearly how these things were affecting you. And I think that's 

 

one of the things that I've always appreciated about psychedelics is just the way that it gives you clarity. Like you really see things from a different perspective.

Things more clearly,  maybe, getting out of a rut, getting unstuck.  I'm curious to know.  For those of the people who are listening to this, because I imagine I've been doing psychedelics since I was a teenager as well, fortunate to grow up in Northern California where there's a bunch of hippies around.

And and so for me, it's been something that's been a part of my life and in a very healing way, I would usually do it alone, put on some yoga music, like stare at the sky and go within. But there are many people who when they hear the word psychedelic, it's still kind of a. That's illegal.

That's dangerous.  What would you say to someone like that who has some hesitation or isn't really sure what it 

is?

The  The word psychedelic comes from two Greek words psyche and delos. Psyche meaning mind,  and delos meaning manifestation. And so the word itself means these are mind manifestors, and.  What that means is that our conscious mind is just one aspect of the mind. We also have the subconscious and the unconscious.

And when we take a psychedelic, it actually opens up that conscious mind and expands into the subconscious and the unconscious. And so these patterns, these behaviors, these repressed memories, these suppressed emotions, they start to rise, they start to come into awareness. And then with that, we are more.  Cognizant of why we are the way that we are or why we do what we do. And so as these mind manifestors, psychedelics require a safe set and setting,  right? They require a capacity to feel safe. They require an ability to to surrender. to whatever may want to come through.  And when we do this in an intentional way with the appropriate support and the necessary education, these are often one of the most profound experiences of an individual's life.

And I think it's really unfortunate that people think of these. as just drugs, because the way we think of drugs, especially illegal ones in a modern context, is if it's an illegal drug, it must be harmful. And that's because of cocaine and heroin and now fentanyl and crystal meth and all of these illegal drugs that are highly addictive and can lead to really unstable behavior.  And psychedelics are different. 



 

Psychedelics are anti addictive. In fact, clinical research has shown that they can heal addiction. Nicotine addiction, alcoholism, opiate addiction. There's research on gambling addiction. There's starting to do research on pornography addiction. So these are actually anti addictive drugs. And they don't have nearly the risk profile. of other illicit substances. In fact, many years ago, there was a study published that showed the relative safety and harms of all drugs including alcohol, tobacco, and yeah, alcohol and tobacco. I don't think caffeine was included in this. And out of all of the drugs, both legal and illegal, psilocybin mushrooms were found to be the safest. Of all of the drugs, much safer than cannabis, much safer than alcohol, much safer than tobacco, and obviously much safer than things like heroin and cocaine. And so usually the hesitation lies more in ignorance  or in fear,  right? And ignorance can be addressed through education. Fear is more of a, I'm worried that if I take a psychedelic, I might have a bad trip.  And this is why for so long I've been a very big proponent of microdosing. Because microdosing says you don't have to have any trip to actually experience some of the benefits from psychedelics. You can take a very low dose of a psychedelic  a couple times a week.  And you'll start to see and notice that after about a month, you have a better mood, you have more energy, you might sleep a little bit better, you're a little bit more connected in your relationships, you might be a little bit more creative, right?

And I think microdosing is a really great, for those who are like, I'm curious, but I'm intimidated by what a mushroom journey might bring up. Usually what I advise is start low and go slow. You can always take more, you can't necessarily take less. And so to start with a microdose and Hunter S Thompson said, once you buy the ticket, you take the ride, right?

This is very true as I'm sure you've experienced as well with psychedelics. So start glow, go slow. There's no rush, right? And see how it feels. Get us, get a feel for it. The metaphor that I often use is when we learn how to swim,  Most of us weren't just thrown in the deep end of a pool by our parents and told to figure it out. Some of us were, and I'm sure that was some early childhood trauma that was later resolved through psychedelic work. But most of us were placed in the shallow end with swimmies on, with a teacher, and we were told, okay, this is how you paddle, this is how you swim. We got comfortable in the shallow end, and then we went in the deep end. And psychedelics are similar. Start with microdosing, start in the shallow end of your consciousness. And then if you're like, okay, now I'm curious, I want to go deeper, find professional support as you go and navigate the deep end of your consciousness. 

It's so beautiful. I really like that analogy of  swimming and starting in the shallow end, like going straight into the deep end. It can just be traumatizing. If you go too far, too fast and I know this is true. I remember I was on  an ayahuasca retreat in Peru. It was a 14 day retreat. There were seven ceremonies and there were people on there who hadn't done any kind of psychedelic work before.

And it was, ayahuasca is also a very intense, it's at night in the jungle. Lots of sounds around and and I know for some people it was just, it was a bit too much, too fast. So I like hearing, this approach of go slow, take it easy. Would you say that psychedelics are safe? 

Incredibly safe. I would say they are the safest of all basically drugs. The one exception to that might be caffeine, but  the counterpoint to it would be you could die if you take too much caffeine or drink too much caffeine. You can't die if you. Take or eat too many mushrooms or take too much LSD.

There's no there's no registered deaths from the physiological from a physiological perspective. Now,  obviously these can cause instability. Psychological instability, first and foremost, if an individual has a family history of schizophrenia or psychosis, they should not touch psychedelics.

So there are particular people who should not be engaging with psychedelics whatsoever, and their risk profile significantly increases if they are done with other drugs like alcohol or cocaine, like at music festivals or raves. It also significantly increases if.

Too high of a dose is taken, or if the person is not in a good mindset or a supportive environment as part of that experience.

So a lot of the risks of psychedelics usually come online because they are being They're being taken in a irresponsible way, for lack of a better term. And this is a lot of what we have

a practitioner training program for coaches and guides and doctors and therapists who want to work professionally with psychedelics. And a lot of what we focus on is what I call the skill of psychedelics. And so just like you can learn to become a better writer, a better cook, a better martial artist. You can also learn to become a better. Psychedelic taker, psychonaut, 

maybe would be the right word. A better

Psychonaut. You can learn how to more skillfully work with these substances to both heal and transform your reality. 

Yeah. I've definitely found that. to be true for myself, that it's like you become more familiar with the landscape a bit more what to expect. I've also found for myself that training in meditation, particularly in things like compassion and love and kindness, and some of these softer, more gentle approaches in meditation are so helpful.

In the psychedelic experience, when something scary comes up, rather than running away from it or trying to suppress it or fighting against it, if you can learn how to be soft and gentle and practice acceptance, practice compassion, either towards yourself or whatever energy is coming towards you, it can be a huge benefit.

And breath work as well, right? Because the overlap between breath work and meditation is the capacity to regulate through your breath, right? And so when we start to actively practice different forms of breath work, it could be Wim Hof, it could be pranayama, it could be holotropic, or even with meditation, right?

A fundamental aspect of a meditation practice is just noticing the breath as it comes in and as it goes out.  When we learn to identify the breath and work with the breath, it becomes much easier to regulate a dysregulated nervous system. And when you're in the throes of a psychedelic experience

And you start to get into loops or paranoia, there are things that aren't, there are difficult emotions that you don't know how to work with.  Learning to remember to breathe, especially deep belly breaths can immediately shift the state of your physiological symptoms. One of the. The best pieces of advice that I've heard is, before someone does a psychedelic experience, do a cold plunge. Because when you go into a cold plunge, you immediately start hyperventilating. When you're brand new at cold plunging. And the skill, the technique is to  slow down, to breathe through it, to calm the breath. That can also happen in psychedelic experiences. You can become very dysregulated. And anchoring in the breath is is an essential element of that. 

Who should take psychedelics? Who is it for? Who would 

Everyone.  I'm kidding.

You're joking, but me personally, sometimes I feel like, wow the whole world would be a better place if everyone took psychedelics because it it opens you up to  compassion, to, to love, to the experience of oneness. There's so many benefits. And at the same time, I also recognize that it's just not for everyone.

So I'm curious. For you who is it for?  Who should consider taking 

psychedelics? Mmm.

That   the vast majority of people would benefit  from working with psychedelics in a skillful way.  could be micro doses only  or it could be higher doses potentially. Now,  for certain clinical issues,  PTSD,  depression, addiction, depression. OCD anxiety.  There's a lot of great clinical evidence showing how effective psychedelics can be to treat these clinical conditions. Currently LSD is in phase three clinical trials  for generalized anxiety disorder. Psilocybin, which is the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, is also in phase three clinical trials for major depressive disorder. MDMA.  We were hopeful we get approved this year for PTSD, but they have to go back and shift some things about the phase three trial.

But the evidence is incredibly strong around MDMA for PTSD.  And then you also have ketamine,  which is legally available at this point in time, and is really helpful for depression and suicidality. So I think the first people who could consider is if you have a clinical condition, if the current medication that you are on, you feel like. It's killing your sex life. You have no energy. Everything feels gray. You just don't enjoy being on it anymore and you're looking for other solutions. A lot of people are  interested in exploring psychedelics. I would also say anyone who just generally feels like a little stuck, a little stuck in a rut.

Maybe you're not, you don't have a clinical condition, there's more out there, right? Maybe you're in a job that you hate or a dead end relationship, but you just don't have the courage quite to make the leap that, you need to make. You need to make psychedelics can often be that sort of kick in the ass that we need to actually make the courageous changes that we know we need to make to live the life that we know we are capable of living. And so that kick in the ass is sometimes what we need and psychedelics can be they can be really helpful with that. And then I would say beyond that People who have a really intense fear of death could really benefit from working with psychedelics because the, our fear of death is  something that keeps us constricted  and in what I would call a slave mentality. When we come to recognize the illusion of death,  whether through a near death experience. Through a psychedelic experience,  through some other initiation, there's a whole nother world in life that opens up beyond that. In fact, it's why  psychedelics have been used for thousands of years as a right of passage in ancient civilizations and indigenous cultures across the globe. And so I think if someone is  afraid of death being able to face that and confront that through an intentional psychedelic experience can be very powerful. Now.  The final thing that I will say I'm going to reference a really famous psychedelic thinker who I'm sure you've heard of Terrence McKenna,  who was an author from the 80s and 90s.  He's now a YouTube phenomenon. He died many years ago before YouTube was invented, but you can find a lot of his stuff on YouTube. His most famous book is food of the gods, where he hypothesized that our ancient hominid ancestors ate psilocybin mushrooms on the savannas of Africa. And it was responsible for the doubling of our cranium and why we were able to evolve into homo sapiens, fascinating thinker, Terence talked about how he believed only really five to 10 percent of people.  Have the capacity to  hold a psychedelic experience  that it's not necessarily for everyone that those 5 to 10 percent of people should be this sort of  hardcore psycho, not elite. If you will, who should be willing to go deep into the recesses of their own brain and mind and explore the subconscious and the unconscious and come back and tell the stories of what they were able to navigate and unpack and uncover, and that maybe 90 percent of people need the sort of orderliness that a typical brain facilitates and that micro dosing.

I'm now filling in the gaps. Micro dosing could be a great.  way just for those people to feel, like they have a little bit more energy, a little bit of a better mood. They get a little bit better sleep, almost like a supplement, but the majority of people would not necessarily benefit from having their world shake shook upside down. I really think, for those who are considering deep psychedelic work it has to be your choice. You have to be,  100 percent wanting to do it. Usually people do it because they have no other options.  Veterans who are on the verge of committing suicide, sexual assault survivors who, have been raped and don't know where to turn and are continuing to have nightmares. People who have been depressed and on Prozac for 20 years, people who have an opiate addiction. So a lot of these people, they're like, there's nowhere else to turn. I'm going to psychedelics as a last resort.  But what I prefer to say is  it's better to be preventative,  right? Then do things out of desperation. It can still help if someone is in that desperate place, but better yet, just to not ever get to that desperate place. And I find psychedelics as a practice, as a skill can help us to stay present, involved, engaged, happy, content, alive, vital If they are worked with in a safe and effective manner.

So

and effective manner. Like for somebody who's brand new to psychedelics, what are some of the things they should consider before starting their journey?

 there's, I would say three main pillars of yeah. Three main pillars that folks should be aware of and going into this. One is education.  So the first step is. Go to the third wave, which is the third wave dot co. Check out our platform. Check out our resources. We have a bunch of free guys. As you mentioned before, we have a podcast you can listen to.  I wrote a book called mastering microdosing. Pick up a book, read about psychedelics, just educate yourself, learn about this topic, understand it a little bit better  as you're beginning to understand it a little better, a little bit better. If you're interested in doing it, then find a great provider. Find a coach. Find a therapist. Find a doctor. Go to a retreat center. Find a local clinic that you can work with. Providers. And then the third pillar is community.  You're walking this path alone, it can be a pretty lonely path at times. And so being able to have a community that you're a part of, people that you can lean on, people that can support you as you're navigating it,  Those I think are three important and the steps that one might follow. First, learn about it, find a great provider, and then have a great community. Now, as part of our practitioner training program, we also really emphasize what we call the five key elements.  Assessment,  preparation, facilitation, integration, and microdosing. So assessment, preparation, facilitation, integration, and microdosing.  So when someone is looking for a provider, To work with that provider should know all five of those elements. They should have an assessment process that they put you through so they can understand what is your history? What is your background? Are you on any psychiatric medications? Do you have any adverse childhood experiences or early childhood trauma? Have you previously? Meditated or done breath work or any other contemplated practices. So this assessment process is so key preparation. They should be able to prepare you for a psychedelic experience. They should help you to understand what are your intentions going into this experience?

What might you uncover as a result of committing to this experience? How do you regulate your nervous system? If the experience gets quite difficult, right? What are some practices that you can anchor in? Before you go into that experience. Facilitation is the third element. Which medicine are they using?

How much of that medicine?  What's the space going to be like that you're doing this experience in? Is it in the jungle in Costa Rica? Is it in a clinic, in California?  Is it in a private home? Is it with a group of people in, the woods? What is that setting that you're actually going to be in for this experience that really matters?

And then integration and microdosing, right? The, after you come out of this experience, if you aren't actively supported in that integration process, then working with psychedelics can often just be another drug experience. I got high, I had these transcendent thoughts or insights or perspectives. But if your actual behaviors didn't change at all, let's say specific to this podcast, one of the intentions for someone going into a psychedelic experience is, they want to break their porn addiction. They want to do no FAP for 90 days. If you don't have the, you can have the insight and the download and you can see why it was really important for you to quit, and you can commit to that process when you're deep in the throes of a mushroom experience, and maybe for a week or two after you come outta that mushroom experience, you commit to it and it's going really well and it's going really strong. But after that two or three week mark, you need support. You need accountability, right? That psychedelics open up what's called a critical learning period.  which is related to neuroplasticity. Our critical learning period is a state of the brain when we're like three, four, five years old. And it's the brain state  that that we are in when we're looking to absorb language and social behaviors and other practices.

It's when our brain is, a sponge and it's just soaking all of these things up. And then of course, as we grow older, that, that critical learning period shuts down and we start to enter this more rigid state, psychedelics reopen that critical learning period. For two or three weeks after a high dose psychedelic experience, your brain returns to the state that it was when it was three, four, five years old.  And so the integration support you have on the back end of that experience helps to determine what are the new patterns that are being established in that brain. And so if that goal is to do 90 days of no FAP and you've committed to those first week or two, great. But having a coach, having someone who you can continue to hold you accountable, ensure that you're showing up for yourself in that way is essential to make sure that practice and that behavior lasts beyond that.

And that's also why I love microdosing because when we start to microdose. After a high dose experience, it keeps that window of neuroplasticity open for a little bit longer. So it just makes it easier to, on an ongoing basis, continue to make  and commit to these changes in our behavioral patterns that are beneficial for us in the long term.

 I remember I was listening to one of your podcasts and you were talking about the metaphor of snow on a mountain. And, if all these skiers are going down and they're all going down the same track, you just get these grooves down the mountain, these deep grooves.

But What psychedelics do in a certain way is, lay a fresh coat of snow so that you can form new pathways. And it gives you almost like a blank, not a fully blank canvas, obviously we'll still have those grooves in us, but it gives you the opportunity to create some new 

pathways.

And to extend that metaphor further, if you're pretty new to snowboarding and you're like, okay, great. New powder day. Great. I'm going to go off piste. I'm going to go, I'm going to go down the back end and go off trail. And you go by yourself, what are the chances that you're going to end up surviving that?  Probably not so great, right? You always take a guide with you, right? If you're going down the new powder and you're going into a new area off the beaten path, bring a guide with you because they're going to know where to take you. And this is why a guide, a coach, a practitioner is so important in the psychedelic space because you're going to a place you have never gone before. And so you want to journey there. You want to go there with someone who can help you to navigate that new terrain. And make sure that it's as profound and mystical of an experience as it can be, rather than a very sort of terrifying or traumatic experience that it could be if things literally go off the rails.

Talk to me a little bit about what some people call a bad trip. And I know that we're changing the terminology away from. bad trip because it has so much baggage around it being a bad experience. But it's really, at least for myself, what I can say is even the really difficult trips that I've experienced have been some of the most rewarding, like going into those dark places have taught me the most.

But I also know that I needed some of these tools of Mindfulness, compassion, breathwork, in order to actually, squeeze the juice out of that lemon. But I'm just curious, what's your take on what somebody might call a bad 

trip? 

 So,

Yeah, I would say there's three categories. There's like a good trip. There's a challenging experience. And there's a bad trip. And I've had all three. I would say the difference between a challenging experience and a bad trip is the awareness that you are still driving the car  that in a challenging experience. At least the ones that I've had. There's a lot of difficult emotions that come up. There's a lot of grief and sadness and anger and shame that may come up, but I recognize that it's still my choice  to go into it, to go deeper into it, to have that release, to experience the hurt. And I feel safe in doing that.

I can go into the depths of my being and expose the raw part of who I am. And I feel safe in doing that. And it's cathartic. There's this feeling of catharsis within it. That could be a challenging experience. It's not rainbows and butterflies and love and bliss and light. But there's a sense of I'm still driving the car. What I found with bad trips is bad trips are more about like paranoia.  Deep paranoia, deep, like nervous system dysregulation, a lot of anxiety things like depersonalization or D realization, not believing reality is real, right? And that when I've had those experiences, that's happened to me basically twice. About 10 years apart. And both times I took psilocybin mushrooms.  In a more public environment, and then I traveled somewhere, like I went in a car with someone and went somewhere else and because I was in this public environment and I wasn't fully sure of the people that I was with, I ended up getting very paranoid and anxious as a result of it, and it didn't teach me a lot about myself necessarily, it just made me realize how, if these don't have the right set and setting, they mimic psychosis.

Basically and that doesn't need to happen now. There's also people who just genuinely like I, I consider myself to be  reasonably stable as a human. Some people may disagree with that, but like I have my bearings about me, but there are people who are a little bit more out there who maybe aren't as stable, who take a psychedelic and it sends them into a tailspin that they can't get out of for many months. And so I think there is a real risk with some of these bad trips. Like one example is with something called HPPD,  which usually happens when there's poly drug use of someone is drunk or they're taking cocaine or other amphetamines and they're taking psychedelics as well. They do way too much of it.

And it's usually when they're quite young, but HPPD means people might see things in their visual field that aren't actually there for years and years after that,  right? So there are certain harms. But almost all of the harms  can be reduced or eliminated by starting low, going slow, having a guide or a friend who is there to support you,  and doing it in a setting that you feel very safe and comfortable in. 

Yeah, I feel for me that's one of the most important, it's just that when you feel safe in an environment, when you trust the facilitators, or you trust the people around you, your nervous system feels a bit more at ease. I'd love to talk, the flip side of that. There's, of course, the bad trip, the paranoia.

Just profound beauty and deep connection. And for me, that's one of the things that keeps me coming back is that a psychedelic journey, it just it opens you up to the beauty and the mystery of life in this really profound way. And I'm curious if you could talk a bit about that for someone who hasn't done psychedelics.

Like,  Obviously it's a bit ineffable. It's one of the things we can't put it into words because it's not just a conceptual Oh, I know I'm part of the universe. It's this feeling of deep connection. But I'm wondering if you could just try to explain a little bit for somebody who hasn't done a psychedelic, what are some of the things that people experience?

Yeah, it's hard.  It's hard to do that. With microdosing, I'll start with microdosing because microdosing is a bit more practical.  and that it's taking a low dose of a psychedelic, a 10th to a 20th of a regular dose, two or three times a week.  And people notice that when they stick to a microdosing protocol, it's very similar to some of the benefits they'll experience when they meditate consistently,  right?

So they'll notice, Oh, I'm less reactive.  I'm more present. I'm less distracted.  I notice that my mood is a little bit better. I'm a little bit more positive or optimistic.  I have more energy on a day to day basis.  Some people will notice that  their sleep gets better as well. So there's when microdosing people notice, Oh, I just feel a little bit more alive and vital on a day to day basis.

It's a nice sort of pep, pep in their step, if you will. With high doses,  there's often this really deep  appreciation and gratitude for the miracle of life.  There's a sense of, Oh, wow. How lucky and fortunate am I to be able to exist  in this body in this time? How lucky and fortunate this is. And I will speak personally now, what I often experience is how lucky and fortunate I am to have the parents that I have and how grateful I am for that. Or appreciative of the family that I was raised in or appreciative of, the sort of privilege to be, uh, middle, basically, I was born in a extremely middle class family in the Midwest as a white dude who's also straight. And that to me is just like  the jackpot because you're born too rich and you're fucked up and you're born too poor and you're pretty fucked up usually.

But middle class, male, white? And I'm straight. I'm like hit the jackpot in many ways. So I think that privilege as well and the recognition and remembrance of that, the gratitude and appreciation of that is is something that like  at times can come up within a psychedelic experience. I would say  other things.

It's just definitely I'm more of a philosopher or heady when I work with psychedelics, there's a big heart opening. So there's a lot of emotions and feelings that may come up, especially with things like MDMA. So there's just like a a sense of wanting to deeply connect with other humans. I also get really creative. Especially on the back end of an experience, I just have a lot of ideas that start to come forward. I have like yeah, just ideas, whether it's about business or music or art or. Whatever. I just have a lot of these sort of insights and perspectives that come through. And then it also can be just very still and quiet. What a lot of people experience in today's day and age is, their mind is a washing machine.  It's just always going. And when we take a psychedelic,  What I often hear from folks who do this work is, wow, for the first time in maybe my life, I was able to experience silence.  These thoughts that were just  unstoppable, just kept coming and coming. They actually just quieted and I could see reality. I could see my existence. I could perceive it in a very lucid, clear form  that it wasn't interrupted by the noise or the chit chatter. Of my ego of my mind that I was able to be in the absolute present moment and the ineffability of the here and now. And the capacity to experience that and be part of that this sense of what I would call non duality  being connected to the divine, being connected to something greater than ourselves, to source, to oneness, to the mystery, that experience is  what cannot be described, basically what cannot be named, and that experience, I think is,  responsible for so much the potential benefits of psychedelics that at a lot of the core of mental health issues or a sense of disconnection or a lack of gratitude or appreciation of purpose is a sense of deep disconnection from love.  And there is no greater source of unconditional love than the mystery of what's beyond us.

 Yeah, there's so much potential in psychedelics and just opening up to the mystery, the beauty of it all. Like you said,  I open my eyes and I look around and it's just complete appreciation for everything. I remember one time I was on a trip and I was in a, in my kitchen and there was like trash on the ground and I was just staring at this trash and just like complete gratitude of wow.

this beautiful trash, you know, it's like, and it just, it really opens up your eyes and kicks you out of this mundane grumpy, like I've got a to do list and it just reminds you of, the miracle of life in a very, not woo woo, not super kind of religious way necessarily.

For me, I'm very, Always an atheist, I guess agnostic more, but even for me, someone who's like a capital A atheist, it connects you to the deepness

and the mystery of life in a beautiful way.

Yeah, there's a real, um, USH that comes through. There's a real sense of wow, how lucky I am to exist in this way. And it can bring up the range of all the emotions. And so one of the most common things that I've experienced with psychedelics and probably others too, that may be listening to this is you start crying so hard. You're crying so hard that you can't help but laugh,  or maybe you're laughing so hard that you can't help but cry. And so there also is this recognition of all of these emotions are welcome and all of them are. intimately connected. And in taking a second, like I can actually, this is my experience, I can feel everything. And that was for the most part, very beautiful. It's not always so nice, but as someone who's a little bit more shut down in the feeling part or had been, I could really feel a lot more. And that sense of feeling was very colorful, right? It just was very enlivening. 

Yeah, it's so interesting that the topic of crying for me in my normal day to day life, I'm not a big crier. Like it's  also quite, cerebral in my head, very composed and reserved.  And it takes a lot for me to cry, unless I see like a sappy commercial, those for some reason always get me.

But in my. normal relational life. I don't cry very often, but when I go on these psychedelic retreats and I'm in the space in a community and we've all gone through this thing together and we're sharing about what came up, I just, I'm bawling my eyes out. And it's such a gift for me to be able to cry.

Particularly in a community of other people and have that experience. There's something for me, that's so cleansing to be able to shed some tears. And if nothing else, like if that's all I got, it would still be worth it, just to open up to those emotions and 

the realness of life.

Yeah, I had that. 

I had that same download many years ago. I was doing mushrooms in Jamaica.  And I was like, yeah, I don't normally have like in my normal waking life. I'm like, I work hard. I'm focused. I'm dedicated. I'm determined. I'm devoted.  So I don't create these spaces for like real deep emotional and I'm like, it's nice because when I go into these mushroom experiences, I have that channel opens up. It's like a productive way. Yeah.

to allow these emotions that need to be expressed to come out and be expressed. And then I can get back to it and focus and build on what I need to focus and build on. I found more balance now. I think, there's obviously value in  the emotional side of things and not just strictly relying on psychedelics to help with that. But whenever I do a lot of mushrooms, I tend to be very sappy and sensitive is what I've noticed in particular.

 what do you just my final question for you? What do you hope someone is taking away from this conversation today? Let's say I'm particularly someone who might be struggling might be stuck in life Maybe with porn addiction or was just with something else.

What do you hope they're taking 

away?

Just to recognize that psychedelics are just another tool in the toolkit, right? So just like diet, exercise, sleep, lifestyle changes, just like meditation, breath work just like no FAP or semen retention, that psychedelics are simply another tool in the toolkit. However, unlike some of these other tools, they are They are a little bit more dangerous if used irresponsibly.

And they're a little bit easier to use irresponsibly because they are drugs. And so we, if using the tool, we have to start low and go slow. We have to do, we have to walk, I'm sorry, we have to crawl before we can walk and we have to walk before we can run.  And so for someone who is open to this, who is considering it Explore and look into ketamine, which is a legal psychedelic like substance that is available in many places.

Explore or look into micro doses of psilocybin or psilocybin generally, which is now legal in Oregon and Colorado. Go at your own pace, have the professional support in your corner that you need.  And don't feel obligated to rush through this. You know that our healing process, our growth and our transformation process is not a linear process that you can come into this when you're ready, but at the very least start that educational process because psychedelics, when you look into them, they're really just, I'm, obviously fascinated by them.

We've been using these substances for thousands of years. There's a lot of different types of psychedelics that do different things to the brain.  They have clinically established benefits that are pretty profound in nature. And even tech entrepreneurs or general entrepreneurs, not just people who are clinically depressive, but want to be more creative and have greater awareness are also utilizing them.

So I think They're a  fantastic tool,  and to start that process of education and awareness is just a great first step, just to be curious about what these entail and what these hold, because even if you yourself are not interested in them, which some people may not be, they're just like, this isn't just for me, you may have a friend or family member who could benefit from that who may be on their last straw, and this could be something that could actually save their life. So to have that education awareness, even if it doesn't directly benefit, you may be beneficial for someone that you know.

 I guess last question is where can people get in touch with you if they're interested in learning more about the work That you're doing

So third wave, the 

third wave.  co we, every quarter I do a microdosing experience. So I do a six week group coaching container where we meet every week and we microdose as part of that. So if someone is new to this and they're interested in, in, in microdosing, you could look into that microdosing experience on the third wave.

co.  I'm on social at paulaustin. co. Three W mostly Instagram and Twitter. Also on LinkedIn at Paul Austin. So follow me on social, send me a note, say hello. And then finally, if there are any practitioners or coaches or doctors or therapists who are listening to this, who are interested in deepening their practice and understanding of psychedelics, we also have a practitioner training program, and you can find more details about that at the thirdwave.

co as well. 

awesome. And what's the name of the podcast?

Uh, The podcast is the psychedelic podcast?

So we've been running it since 2016.

We have almost 300 episodes now that we published. And I love it. I just, as I'm sure, you know, running a podcast, I just get to interview and talk with so many interesting people and it's a blast. Yeah. I really love 

it's a great resource. It's how I found out about you. And, I was listening to your interview with Jen from Alalaho. 

Oh, Jen. Oh, that's the one you were exploring. I was like, who was it? That was a really good interview. That was one of my personal favorite interviews as well. She's got some real wisdom in her. She's fantastic. 

definitely. She's gonna be coming on the podcast at some point, definitely. So stay tuned for that one. Yeah. Alright, folks, that's it for today. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Unhooked. We'll catch you guys on the next episode.