Psychedelics

(This is an automatic transcription so not super accurate)

Lowell:

Hey, psychonauts, quick disclaimer, here, this episode discusses substances that are currently illegal. So it may not be suitable for children or adults who are like totally lame. Listener discretion is advised.

So I’ve been seeing lots of medical research about the potential benefits of psychedelics. Specifically micro-dosing psilocybin also known as magic mushrooms. Listeners really liked E.S. Fein from the lucid dreaming episode. And he is an expert psychonaut who has tripped thousands of times. So I brought him back on to discuss psychedelics. By the way, I had my first lucid dream last week where I had full control. It was really cool. And the flapping your arms thing really worked. Anyway here’s my conversation with E.S. Fein. Oh, and, uh, my name is Lowell Brillante and this is prodigy.

E.S. Fein: The research they were doing, uh, in the sixties and even before was extremely few and far between, and it would be, um, very sparse and the studies they would be able to do would just have hilarious constraints on them.

Um, probably the most famous therapeutic LSD study. The one that just constantly comes up and it’s also very controversial, uh, was one of the, um, fathers of LSD, Timothy Leary. He’s the guy that really, really made it famous him and his friend, Richard. This experiment is called the Concord prison experiment.

And through this experiment and Leary was trying to see if he could give prisoners, uh, therapeutic sessions of LSD, ideally a single session and reduce the recidivism rate in America. Uh, the recidivism rate in America, the rate at which prisoners go back to prison is astronomically high. Uh, some of the highest in the entire world, 70% region.

So he was attempting to lower that through psychedelics alone. Um, If the results that he showed were incredible, that being said, as we’ve returned to that study, and we’ve kind of taken a look at it, there were a lot of problems. Yeah. Like, um,

Lowell: the fact that, uh, you know, weren’t, they’re not set up to succeed after they get out of prison.

E.S. Fein: I got that’s exactly right. That’s a Piccolo. Yup. So this, what we found was he was trying to show that it was kind of like, as they call the magic bullet and he could take one dose and you’d be good to go. We now know that isn’t the case for many people that is right. They can take one dose and it completely changes their lives.

But for the vast majority of people to use it in a therapeutic setting, like you said, that you have to have what leery called the halfway houses as well. Um, so after you do this therapy, you have to. Cathartic visitation to reconsider what you went through, especially for individuals that need this most like violent prisoners.

If you want to reintegrate them into society,

Lowell: what do you categorize these as like chemical altering substances psychedelics? Like what’s the

E.S. Fein: blanket term there? Many blanket terms, you’re going to hear people say a hallucinogen psychedelic. These are basically synonymous. Um, the term that we like to use, especially in the communities and Theoden, which has ultimately meaning like a natural compound that, that alters you.

Th this, again, the word natural is very controversial, especially when it comes to Timothy Leary. He kind of made it controversial because he said, if it’s not natural, where does it come from a different time? So ultimately his argument was everything is natural. Um, so like plastic bottles. Sure. Even, even plastic does that not come from the earth.

Right. I mean, you, you, you ultimately could, it’s just a chemical compound and ultimately at some point in the university, you’re going to find plastic. Maybe not always, it might be very rare, but you will find it. Right. So, so including,

Lowell: um, LSD, psilocybin and DMT, what are the differences, I guess, between them.

E.S. Fein: As far as, uh, LSD full name being lysergic acid and, uh, siliciden mushrooms. Uh, they are unbelievably similar. I

Lowell: just want to note here that some experienced Psychonauts may disagree that silicide bin and LSD are very similar. They’re somewhat different, but alike in that they’re both tryptamines and have a similar effect on serotonin.

If you want to discuss further hop into the comment section on the [email protected].

E.S. Fein: They are also very, very similar to things like payoti Mescalin is the psychoactive compound, uh, San Pedro mushrooms, uh, excuse me, San Pedro cactus. Um, and like LSA seeds. A lot of people have done. You can get these anywhere morning glory.

They grow in Illinois where I’m from. Um, Go grab some seed pods, unbelievably similar as well. If you were to give someone a dose of LSD or mushrooms and you didn’t tell them what you gave them, I re even myself, I’d be very, very hard pressed to be able to tell the difference. Um, the major difference is the visual effects.

All of them have very distinctive visual effects. The geometries that take place as a matter of fact, that the geometries that you see. Are unbelievably similar to the ancient geometric artworks that we see of, of, you know, ain’t for example, the, the Aztecs and the Mayans. When you take LSA seeds, all you see is the artwork that they, that they wrote.

And these individuals constantly talked about saying, Hey, that’s where we got that. Right. We saw in these visions, these geometries. So DMT is a class of its own. It’s really not fair to kind of put that in into the same class. Um, but LSD and psilocybin mushrooms, basically identical. Um, as far as DMT is concerned.

This is a, this is a whole new territory. I’ve heard it described as, and I love this description. DMT is like taking LSD and mushrooms stuffing in an, a cannon and just launching it into outer space. It is on another level. Um, the chances of what we call ego death, which myself included a lot of times when we macro dose, we’re trying to achieve ego death.

You’re trying to experience complete loss of self, um, so that there is no distinction between self and what is outside the self, the chances of ego death on DMT. Are so incredibly high. Um, you could try for years and years and years with LSD and mushrooms and never achieve it, you’ll get it your first time on DMT.

If you do enough, another term you’ll hear in the community as the breakthrough, people are trying to have the breakthrough where you break through the veil, um, and you, you die ultimately. Mentally right. Not legitimately by, right. But this experience of death is this is something you’ve actually brought up another time.

Uh, it’s seeing the universe and seeing yourself through a completely new and open lens that has nothing to do with your cultural identity, your, your, what I like to call earth, domestication, all of these values and ideas that have been. Ingrained into you. And you’ve been told, yeah, this is the way of the world.

This is how it is. This is how we work. This is how everything functions, all of that is obliterated. And you start to see things from a completely fresh lens, almost like a baby. How would you pitch

Lowell: this to slice to some grumpy old boomer? Who’s like, that sounds like a bunch of hippie nonsense.

E.S. Fein: Uh, I mean, they’re right.

It is some hippy nonsense. There’s nothing wrong with hippy nonsense though. No, but really th you know, this is something I brought up to my own mom and said, you know, yeah, I think this would be great for you, mom. You should really consider this because I’ve heard her, uh, you know, maybe make certain statements or other individuals who are a lot older, make certain statements that are clearly statements that have to do with their culture and their time period, which really have nothing to do with our new culture and time period that’s taking place.

So I would tell you. There’s nothing to be afraid of. The only thing that you would have to fear is breaking down constructs that are ridiculous already. And if you don’t think the constructs that you believe in and the identity that you believe in is ridiculous and it’s legitimate. Well then fine. You have nothing to fear, but if it’s not legitimate, this is going to break it down.

So as far as, how would you pitch it to that person? It’s going to be pretty. It’s absolutely going to be tough because they’re going to have to face themselves in ways that they have absolutely refuse to up until this. Right. And

Lowell: that sounds scary to me. And I’m assuming maybe other people who are interested because there’s a lot of, you know, study research being going on right now about micro dosing.

Um, so. Could you talk, I guess a little bit about some of the research that they’re doing now and why it started up so,

E.S. Fein: so much. Yeah, the most of the research taking place now that I’ve seen is to aid people who are terminal, um, who are very, very close to death and help them accept death, um, and accept that.

You know, it’s okay. It’s okay to die just as it was okay to live. You know, another substance you’ll see with this, by the way is ecstasy. Uh, MDME MGMA. Yeah.

Lowell: I also saw treatment resistant depression,

E.S. Fein: like, uh, yeah, by the way, treatment resistant depression. Unbelievable results with ketamine. You get a single dose academy and every three months or so, and it’s just completely curing people of their depression

Lowell: and migraine dosing is, is essentially taking like what, like a 10th or two tenths, the amount of like a full dose that would give you like the full effects.

They call it as I call it macro dosing, but it’s really what they call it. Folded.

E.S. Fein: Yeah. And something that you’re right about, that it’s kind of up to your discretion, you know, how much you can handle and what you consider to be microdosing. Um, I know certain dudes that consider microdosing to be like half a tab.

I could never do that to me. That’s already the beginning of a macro dose. Um, it kind of just depends on who you are though, but, um, as far as, yeah, How much you should be doing again, it’s completely personal. There’s there. You can’t just say it’s, it’s absolutely one way. Or it’s another in the scientific setting.

When we have this in a, in a laboratory setting, they will set the limits and they will say, Hey, this is what we consider the micro. This is what we consider it. Isn’t this does become a problem though, because some studies have shown that body weight has nothing to do with. Other studies have shown it has everything to do with this.

There’s a lot of confounding aspects. Did they cancel out? Yeah. Yeah. It’s.

Lowell: I saw a couple of different methods that people use for like how they take it, like three days in a row and then stop. Like, how does

E.S. Fein: that work? So here’s something to keep in mind, um, any type of psychedelic hallucinogen or whatever you want to call it, you are immediately going to build up resistance.

So if you were to take, let’s say an eighth of mushrooms and you start tripping two hours, go by and you say, yeah, you know, I’d like to take a little bit more. It’s not gonna. You’ve already built up a complete tolerance to it. It doesn’t matter how much you take, it’s going to have virtually no effect. Um, so ultimately it’s too late.

So you need to decide that you want to take more within the first 30 minutes, or really it’s not going to have any effect. And if you want to take it, then let’s say you’re going to a music festival. Lot of people like to trip, you know, five days in a row to music Fest. Well, you’re going to have to take double the amount each day.

So if you take an eighth of mushrooms one day and you want to have the exact same effect, the next day, you’re taking two ways. If you want to have the exact same effects the next day, you’re going to take half an ounce. So this is going to get pretty intense. This is also awesome because it stops you from getting addicted.

You not, not only is the chance for addiction, like basically negligible. We’ve never really seen people get addicted to these substances, uh, in, in the traditional or in the psychological sense. The chances of getting addicted are so unbelievably difficult because you’d have to spend so much money and get so much product even to be able to do that.

Um, So, yeah, that’s that tolerance is kind of a, kind of a cool aspect of it. In my opinion, it stops you from doing it too much. What sort of research

Lowell: has been done on the positive effects and like why it’s having a positive effect?

E.S. Fein: Immense amounts of research, especially outside of America. Um, we see a lot of research taking place in numerous European countries, but there is a lot of research taking place in America.

I’ll give you an example. Uh, one of the most famous studies on dimethyltryptamine, uh, was through Rick Strassman at the university of New Mexico. This was in early tooth at like 2012, somewhere around there. He wrote a book. Called the DMT, the spirit molecule. And he took, uh, numerous, very advanced Psychonauts who had a huge amount of experience.

It’s like,

Lowell: that makes it, makes it sound so cool. Like

E.S. Fein: floater, psyche. Yeah. I love that word too. I like calling myself a psycho now. Um, once I heard that word, I was like, that’s me. That’s how I’m gonna wear that badge. So he took all these Psychonauts and then he took a few people as well that had virtually no experience just to kind of use as a control.

Um, and what he found was there were extremely similar elements with all of these people’s experiences, despite the differences in their culture and personality. And what he found was all of these people had experiences, especially at higher doses that we would call mystical that we would call religious.

They felt connected to something. So much deeper than themselves. And after these experiences, they felt more fulfilled in life. They felt like they weren’t as lost. They said to themselves, you know, I, I get it. I feel motivated. I feel like life is worth it. Life is worthwhile. I want to be alive. I want to go out there and try different things.

Number one. Why would someone want to do this? It gives you motivation. I would say that’s the number one, uh, effect that these, these experiences in these substances have on you. Um, number two, I’ll, I’ll give my own experience as far as how this is therapeutic for me. Um, this is. Touched upon in our previous podcast, but I was born, uh, with a birth defect called Poland syndrome where I was born without a right pectoral muscle.

And I viewed myself in a wildly negative way and through numerous sessions of LSD, specifically LSD, and literally just staring at myself in the mirror naked. I was able to realize and fully, fully integrate into my consciousness in a full brain pattern. That’s still there to this day and appreciation for.

Not only being alive, but for having my physical form as it is, I was able to see, listen, man, this is just part of it. The birth defect that you experienced, someone else experienced something else, someone else didn’t experience that defect. And that’s just part of reality and there’s nothing wrong with it.

So instead of seeing myself as other, instead of seeing myself as this odd abnormal thing, Accepting myself is just a natural part of reality. So that is a highly, highly therapeutic aspect of it. It helps you get over insecurities and accept. It sounds

Lowell: difficult. I mean, just cause, especially because I’m sure lots of people have had trauma with the loss of a loved one or, or whatever.

So I imagine maybe it would be helpful for that

E.S. Fein: as well. Oh, very much so. Yeah. No, I would like to say to your listeners as well, this is not, especially if you’re not experienced with this, this is not something you want to do alone. Um, one of the most common things that can happen while you’re tripping is you can forget that you’re tripping.

Um, time becomes utterly irrelevant, especially at higher doses. You start to see that time is truly a very, just as Einstein taught us through his math time is truly subjective. It’s not a real thing. Um, because they say set and setting, right? Yes. When we say set and setting, we don’t only mean where you are.

That’s the setting, right? Uh, the music that’s around you, the people that are around you, the set is yeah. What’s going on in your own mind. So I know a lot of people that will say, Hey, man, I did a lot LSD back in the day. I didn’t really get therapeutic effects for it. Cause you didn’t want therapeutic effects.

You went and partied on it, which is fine by the way to each his own. But if you say to yourself, Hey, I want to take LSD and have a good time. Well then you’re going to have a good time. That’s your set. But if you take LSD and say, look, I want to get over my insecurities. I want to find motivation. I want to explore what it means to be alive.

Well, that’s exactly what it’s going to give to you. It’s J. This is a chemical reactor. Right. The LSD, the psilocybin, all these substances, they alone are not doing anything. They are integrating themselves with your system. So your system is part of this equation. So not everyone’s going to have the same experience.

And just like you said, if you’ve set the set correctly, you’re going to have an experience that you truly want. That’s also why you want to have a sitter while you don’t want to do it alone. Because again, you can. You could start going, is this going to go on forever? Am I going to be tripping for the rest of my life?

And that’s why the sitter is there to go. Nah, dude, you took LSD. This was your, this was your motivation. There

Lowell: reminds me of that. Um, that nine 11 call where the cop like him and his wife like ate the weed brownies and I’ve heard it

911: emergency. Yeah. Can you please send rescue? I think I’m having an overdose.

So is my wife. Okay. Do you and your wife over and off of what marijuana. Can you please send rescue. Okay. How old are you? 28, 29 years old. And my wife is, uh, 26, please. Yes, please. . What have you guys been drinking today to? No, that’s it. You guys have fever? No, I’m just, I think we’re dying. Okay. How much did you have?

Uh, I don’t know. We made brownies and I think we’re dead. I really do. Okay. How much did you put in your mouth? I don’t know. I mean, the brownies, um, my wife and I did tuba come here. Yeah. How much did you buy? I don’t. I said please send, right. No, I know, but I’m trying to figure out how much you bought and put into the brownie, sir.

Probably like a quarter of Godel in the brownies. Didn’t you guys eat all of that? Yeah, we did go in the red wing game. What’s the score on the red wings game. I haven’t gotten uncle. I don’t watch the right away. Oh, okay. I just want to make sure this isn’t some type of like hallucination that I’m having,

E.S. Fein: but

Lowell: so, but like, I, that makes sense to me, like, you know, you have this sort of like large experience where you confront some parts of yourself, but what about micro dosing where you’re not getting that sort of thing?

E.S. Fein: Tripping effect. Yeah. The whole point of microdosing is to w when you take small, I mean, I don’t know how experienced you are or how much you want to talk about, but is when you take small amounts of, uh, any psychedelic, the first effect that you get is you can’t stop smiling.

You just it’s called the LSD smile and you’re like a Cheshire cat. You’re like, okay, I look so weird. Oh, people

Lowell: dilated too. Cause that

E.S. Fein: would be it not right away, but yes. You know, with especially like four hours into it. Yeah. Your pupils are as big as charcoal. Um, which by the way, that gives you night vision.

That’s one of the coolest effects of this. Your, your pupil stay dilated. So any, even my nude amount of light gets into them. So you can stitch a lot of hunters back in the day, took it for that reason. Um, Uh, so micro-dosing though the whole point is to just get that little serotonin flow and to get that little happiness throughout your day, um, without having to take something that has terrible, terrible consequences, um, you know, there’s numerous drugs that give you the same effect that are going to be legal and prescribed by physicians, but they take inhibitors some, yeah, some SSRI, some of them have SSRI.

Um, some of them stop the serotonin, um, from flowing as much, which in the end has a, uh, actual, uh, opposite feedback loop. So in the end, you, you can get more serotonin. Right. Um, so ultimately what we’re trying to, what we’re trying to focus on here is the serotonin and dopamine, but specifically the serotonin specifically, because these substances are indoors of serotonin, meaning they’re basically identical.

Um, so they have almost identical effects, especially we now know with this, even in the last, maybe like, let’s say 10 years. Huge amounts of serotonin is produced by the gut and the floor of our gut. So the fact that these are going through our gut in our intestines, that just goes to show. Okay, well, it makes sense that so much serotonin activity taking place with these substances.

Yeah. We’re seeing a lot of, uh,

Lowell: gut research on mental health now, right?

E.S. Fein: Yes. The most interesting things I ever saw was that I first learned this, in fact, through curves, gestalt, that, that YouTube channel where they said you, you don’t really have hungers. The hunger that we experienced, the, the desires for food that we experienced.

That’s a habit formed by the gut bacteria that you’ve been producing through habituation of certain ingestion of foods. So if you’re constantly eating fast food, you’re going to produce fast food bacteria, which are going to send signals to the quote unquote hunger centers of your brain, which don’t actually exist.

That says go get more. So I like to remind people, Hey, if you want to change your diet, it only takes a certain amount of time to completely alter the gut bacteria to start telling you, Hey, I like this. At first, you might not like a salad, but that’s because you don’t actually decide whether or not you like salad the gut bacteria do.

So. What about,

Lowell: what about with soda? Cause clean. I don’t drink much soda. I don’t want it, but then when I drink it, I’m like, oh, it’s so good when I like I’m drinking it over and over again,

E.S. Fein: sugar. Yeah. That’s that’s sugar. Even if it’s diet, we, you know, it’s contained substance artificial substances that mimic that effect.

Yeah. Door dash

Lowell: to McDonald’s sausage biscuit this morning. I’m not ashamed. Well, I’m a little ashamed,

E.S. Fein: but yeah, a little ashamed. I can hear it in your voice.

Lowell: All right. Let’s take a quick break to hydrate. Be right back. Welcome back to prodigy. I’m really excited. And the positive benefits of micro-dosing, it sounds like something that could really be beneficial.

Uh, and they’re now they’re starting to try and get you. They’re doing the research to try and get FDA approval for, I guess, therapy using in a therapy setting in a controlled, uh, therapeutic setting. Um, do you. Have any like info or insight?

E.S. Fein: Uh, the only insight I have is the information that has been released with those studies.

I’ve written several articles on my website, wonder aggressive about the effects that we’ve seen through, uh, therapeutic studies with LSD and mushrooms. What we find is when you have a, when you go into these experiences with a guide, with a individual who’s experienced, who can kind of help you through it, especially with the first time your chances of it being positive are astronomically higher, not only astronomically higher, often a hundred.

Yeah. So they’ll take, you know, nine to 15 people and from all different backgrounds and say, Hey, what are the effects that these people have? As long as they have that guided therapy session, it’s going to be positive a hundred percent of the time in many, many cases. Um, so. Every every time I find a new study on LSD or mushrooms that have been, you know, given to individuals in a therapeutic setting, I always get very excited and I always go, well, we already know what the results are going to be.

And they always turn out to be exactly the same. It’s a hundred percent everyone in these studies is going, look, I found some benefit from it. Uh, whether it was increased happiness, increased motivation, uh, increased, uh, um, like you said, acceptance about maybe a lost, loved one or some type of trauma. They went through it’s multifamily.

Ultimately it’s easy. It’s an exploration of the brain,

Lowell: especially with MGMA too, for treating PTSD. At least I’ve seen a fair amount of stuff

E.S. Fein: about that. Yeah. P uh, not only PTSD, but just empathy. Uh, I don’t know if you’ve ever done uh MTMA or, or MTMA mixed with things which would ultimately just be what we call ecstasy.

Um, if you take a lot of people, get confused when they hear ecstasy, they’re like, oh, that’s the same as MDM. MDM is pure that that’s your Mali, right? That’s your pure ecstasy. When normally when we say ecstasy, that pill is rolled with things, either methamphetamine or heroin or other rolling. Yeah, you’re rolling on those pills and you get the guide.

The

guide

Lowell: thing makes me think of I’m sorry to joke, but you know, that maybe get them to the Greek where they, they take the Jeffery and, uh,

E.S. Fein: he’s like rubbing the fur. Hey, and by the way, if you’ve ever done it, texture is wildly incredible. Absolutely amazing. You really would. You, you act like that. They didn’t just make that up.

Um, every sense is just heightened to an incredible degree. Um, This is why it’s so effective in therapy too. You are experiencing the world in a more meaningful, in a more deep way. Um, you get beyond these, these programmed thoughts that are constantly telling you to be depressed and to be unhappy and to, you know, kind of squander your ability to enjoy this experience model.

Lowell: Yeah. Like I, I, anytime I think about this one thing, you know, I feel the same way, but if you can sort of change the model a little bit, then you can, I guess, approach it from a different perspective, right? Break it down a little

E.S. Fein: bit. Yeah. Yeah. So look, let’s use, um, Uh, addiction as a great example, because all of these substances are so incredible with curing addiction.

I saw that too. Yeah, that’s interesting. It wildly effective. And so the question is why, but when we look at addiction, we know that this is a ingrained pattern. It’s not just a physical fan. There you go. It’s not just a physical thing, right? It’s mostly, it’s actually mostly psychological. Mostly. It’s a, it’s a habit that has been formed with repetition.

Addiction is just a repeated. And I can even just go from there. Addiction is just, uh, something that’s been repetitive. So the reason these psychedelics in generally substances work so incredibly well is they cut that pattern immediately and they allow you to see it for what it is a pattern. And they allow you to mete program your brain in the moment and tell yourself, yeah, I don’t want it.

I don’t want that pattern. You can see through the pattern immediately. Um, in fact, I used to smoke cigarettes, uh, when I was in university about 18 and 19. And that is how I quit. Um, I find cigarettes and nicotine in general, hilariously, easy to quit with a psychedelic. I’ve known many people. You start doing the psychedelic and instead of seeing you yourself, you, you consume nicotine.

Yeah. I’m

Lowell: hitting this vape thing right now. And most of it like posts people. They’re like, yeah, I don’t want to keep doing it. Right. So I’m assuming that part of

E.S. Fein: it. Yeah. Yes. You talked to so many people, including myself at the time who go, oh, I really want to quit this. Well, listen to yourself and you can ask the person, well, then why aren’t you quitting it?

And it’s just not a good time right now. I had, I don’t know, man. It’s just, you know, I don’t really want to, I kind of do want to quit, excuse me. Yes. Itself and the mind. Right. Well, when you take these substances, you are forced into this position where you can no longer relent, but more importantly, you can see at a deeper level, you can see what that substance is doing to you.

You can see how it’s destroying your body and creating this system that you’re out of control. And it gives you that ability to make this decision in the moment and go eat. I want to be in control though. I don’t want to be completely let loose from myself and I don’t want to be destroying that. Now you do have to want it, by the way.

It’s not just going to snap and work. It’s set. Right? You have to want this for it to actually function. Some of the pre

Lowell: prescription medications they prescribed for stuff like depression or treating trauma or stuff like that. You know, pharmaceuticals that often have a fair amount of side effects and it’s not like you’re altering the dose, you kind of have to just stay on it.

So, um, it would be cool. I think, you know, for, to be able to explore these types of substances, um, where you didn’t have to take a pharmaceutical

E.S. Fein: and you know, there’s going to be a lot of people who say, well, you are taking a pharmacy. Right. The, these substances are pharmacological by nature.

Lowell: At least for me, when I think of siliciden, uh, you know, it’s, it’s, it comes from a mushroom, right.

But still a chemical that’s outlaying something in your brain, right.

E.S. Fein: That’s right. Um, it it’s natural. Right? I even Ellis look, ultimately LSD, this comes from air, got fungus. Uh, it’s like fungus that grows on rye bread. It has. This, this is something that I had to go through an organic chemistry process, um, to create what we call the LSD.

You wouldn’t want to eat air, got fungus straight and make you very sick, potentially kill you. Um, LSD, in the other hand, they won’t do

Lowell: you know of how they’ve changed LSD? Cause you haul a Gleeds like way more potent.

E.S. Fein: All LSD you’re going to get is going to have a slightly different effect, um, because it’s never purely identical.

And more importantly, you never know what the actual potency is. It’s measured in micrograms. So people would say, Hey, I took one tab that one tab might be 300 micrograms or 50 micrograms. This is a difference of six times the dosage. You really know. Well, it’s scary. So

Lowell: what do you do? Like take like a tiny amount and see what it

E.S. Fein: does.

You have to get you pick it. So any time someone has wanted to ingest, um, LSD for the first time, and I’ve been sitting with them always, I’ll say, Hey, when we get the dose, I’m going to get a little bit extra for me. I’ll take it first, decide how strong this is. And then I will let you know what would be inappropriate amount for you.

Um, but yeah, it is even, yeah. Unbelievably experienced individual. It is very scary because you might be taking a tab. That’s a thousand micrograms for all, you know, I’ve come across several

Lowell: people in my life that are like, yeah, I’ve never tried marijuana every time I do, you know, I freak out do I I’ve tried it.

I just freak out every time. And I’m like, you’re doing too much, you know? Like someone needs to introduce you to it by just giving you a little. Yeah.

E.S. Fein: Or the people that say, oh, I’ve tried marijuana. I didn’t like it. And you’re like, oh, how did you do it? I took it this edible, what? That, that’s a completely different experience than smoking it.

Right.

Lowell: Easy to take too much. And then also the classic, you know, when, uh, I don’t know if people say it as much anymore, but I didn’t get high. My first admin I’m like, well, you didn’t inhale.

E.S. Fein: Yes. I will tell you this though. Interestingly, I know many people that absolutely did inhale took 10, 11, 12 times to get high.

That is a very, very well known phenomenon. We don’t fully and believe it. I fully believe that. Just it inhale, dude. I’ve I’ve literally watched it. My, I don’t want to use any names, but my good friend who resisted, he was a roommate for a long time. He resisted consuming cannabis. He’d see me constantly doing it one day.

He’s like, eh, I’ll try. And he tried it and nothing happened. And we’re like, dude, you didn’t, you didn’t actually inhale. You’re like, you’re too scared. You’re like I did, I did. Okay. So the next time we try it or all INM, so close we’re like, let’s see it. And he, I mean, he fully, he’s taking these giant hits and we’re like, dude, you’re going to get so blazed.

Oh my God. Nothing just absolutely nothing. Even to this day, he’s like, I’ve never really had an effect. And normally I wouldn’t believe it, but I scrutinized them like a fricking scientist watching this guy. Let me see the smoke come out. Exactly. He was for sure doing it, man. It’s very. Oh, man, that reminds

Lowell: me of a college days where we would take a, a Nope.

JAG and cut the bottom. Yeah. Gravity, gravity, man. Like, God, that’s just so, so dirty. Like linking thinking back about it

E.S. Fein: and you’re using like foil to smoke out of it, so gross,

Lowell: terrible, terrible. Um, but yeah, no. So they’re also using it in combination with therapy, right? So. Exposure therapy, essentially it breaks down your barriers a bit, and it’s easier for you to confront some of those traumatic events in your life.

And that seems like it could be really beneficial. I know they’re doing that with ketamine as well.

E.S. Fein: Yeah. Ketamine is also on a, I don’t know if you’ve heard people describe ketamine. Sorry. I don’t, I really wouldn’t recommend it, frankly. I prescribed it to a cat, my cat after surgery. Did they do that?

That’s, that’s how it’s normally used, uh, by vets as an animal tranquilizer. Um, but for humans, we experience what’s called K holing. If you do enough. And a K hole is a 100% associative experience keyholing is frankly scary. Um, you, you, you experienced like whole other lives. Uh, so for example, you can, uh, you gotta do.

Know a very large amount, but when you do a large amount, not the amount that they’d be giving to you in these therapeutic settings, you, you like become a new person. So for example, a buddy of mine, he K hold one time and we were in the room and he just passed out and he came back and he was panicking, going crazy like, oh, what’s going on?

Are you okay? Are you okay? He ran out of the room. We had to finally calm him down. He explained to us what happened. He had ingested it, he laid back. He came back up and he was in a room with several other people that he had never met before. And they had a conversation with him and they were referring to him by a different name.

And there were, there were a whole different set of things on the table. And then suddenly he was back in our reality. That is unbelievably terrifying. So, and

Lowell: that’s when you, that’s, when you can potentially overdose on if you were to do too

E.S. Fein: much, right. You can definitely overdose on ketamine. That’s again, not something I would recommend.

I was reading

Lowell: a paper like before we started this, uh, interview and it was saying basically like researchers haven’t really seen much of a difference between doing a full dose and then micro dosing. So like essentially there’s no key secret to micro-dosing. You could do a full dose and get similar.

E.S. Fein: Yeah, it’s it’s the therapy. Um, it’s like you said, it’s the sentence setting. So as long as you’re in the same therapeutic setting, doing a threshold dose and doing the heroic doses, Terence McKenna coined, both of these will have the very, very similar effect on your life. That’s as far as motivating. And therapy is concerned.

If you are trying to explore the inner self and you’re trying to experience ego death, that’s not going to happen on a threshold dose period. You need very, very large doses of a psychedelic to achieve that. Um, so there is a major difference there, but as far as, Hey, I just, I want to, I want to be less depressed.

I want to be more motivated. Yeah, you, you absolutely do not need a giant dose. Microdose is more than enough to achieve those results.

Lowell: Great. And, um, if any of my listeners want to try it, like, do you know a guy or yeah.

E.S. Fein: And I’ll be, I’ll be honest. I don’t really know how this works, but I’ve seen ads on Instagram constantly.

Cause I follow all these psychedelic pages. Um, constantly I see ads on Instagram for people to go to these institutions where you can. Take these substances and for like to be part of research, right? Not just research, a lot of them are just for individually. Have a good time. Yeah. I have a good time and to go through therapy and a lot of them are fully funded, so you don’t have to pay anything.

I’ve read the experience reports of people that have gone to them. And it just sounds. People like me giving, you know, giving these doses and, and sitting for these people in a therapeutic setting. It sounds absolutely amazing. I’d love to try it out one day, something else I recommend to your listeners. I think I brought this up the other day is sensory deprivation.

Um, if you ever go into a sensory deprivation tank, which is something that was created by John C Lilly, to help him explore what it would be like to experience life as a dolphin. But if you go into a sensory deprivation tank and also take a hallucinogen or a psychedelic, the effects. Unbelievably incredible and potent, um, more dissociative than anything.

Um, so you, you could take up just a couple tabs of LSD and have an experience similar to DMT, unbelievably potent. I highly, highly recommend it and it’s totally safe. You’re just, you’re sitting in salt water. It’s not a big deal.

Lowell: Thanks so much to IES. Fine. Fine is spelled F E I N. You can find them on Instagram at author.

ESRP fine. On his website at official IES. fine.com. His book is called points of origin. If you want to discuss these topics further, hop into the comment section on the [email protected] prodigy was creating produced by me, Lowell Berlanti. The executive producer is Tyler clang. Thanks so much for listening.

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