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Kreatures Of Habit Podcast
The Healing Power of Mushrooms: Mental Health & Microdosing with Alli Schaper | Kreatures of Habit
01:06:00
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- [00:00]
Host
Were we put here to experience life as it has been, or were there things planted in the earth to help us expand that experience? Has, you know, God or the Creator really introduced these things for humans to find to help us expand our, our journey.
- [00:20]
Michael Chernow
These have been a part of humanity forever. Cavemen were eating mushrooms. There's, you know, and a kind of unexplainable jump in, in human brain development that a lot of people allude to, potentially. Terence McKenna's theory of being, you know, cavemen eating psychedelic mushrooms and expediting our brain development. And then there's the modern science, right, that is actually studying these and looking at what is this actually doing to our brains. Was it like a 9,000 person study? And it showed that adults that were microdosing psilocybin mushrooms showed health related motivation. So they wanted to drink less alcohol, they wanted to be more social, they wanted to move more, they wanted to generally be healthier people. There's so much nuance between each one of these molecules. And one of the most common things that psilocybin is being studied for is addiction. So it's actually being used to treat addiction with people that have had, you know, alcoholism, you know, and also all sorts of emotional addictions, ocd, anxiety, depression, et cetera. I can't pretend to know what God's intention was, but my experience of these in my personal life is I'm so glad that I did find them.
- [01:31]
Host
An entrepreneur straight out of New York City. Michael Chernow. What's cracking? I think podcasting. You can't look at podcasting necessarily unless you want it to be. Unless you want to be a podcaster solely.
- [01:53]
Michael Chernow
Right.
- [01:54]
Host
As like an roi, dollars and cents thing, right? Yeah, it's just an awesome opportunity to make and create content and to connect with human beings that are interesting and also like you. You put yourself in front of other people, communities, other people get to, you know, you, your guest. Communities gets to be put in front of your community. It's just like, I think it's just like a great tool.
- [02:23]
Michael Chernow
I think it's an amazing tool. I like that way to word it. I mean, I think I, I started recording them. I've done most of mine in person too, because I feel like it's a completely different thing.
- [02:34]
Host
Well, if you do it virtually, people just like fit it in in between meetings.
- [02:38]
Michael Chernow
Yeah, they're not showing less intention. But I've learned so much from my podcast, like just from absorbing the information. And I've met the coolest people totally through like the, the network of it and my mo. And it's funny because, you know, I've gotten to talk to some, like, amazing people, and our most successful podcast has been with my mom.
- [03:02]
Host
Wow.
- [03:03]
Michael Chernow
Isn't that interesting? She has zero Instagram followers. Zero. That's great. Yeah. And I'm, Yeah. So I've, I've loved the, the medium of it.
- [03:12]
Host
What did you guys talk about?
- [03:14]
Michael Chernow
We talked about my, my dad and his, and his death and her experience with death. And I think it's just, it was, it was like three months after he passed away. And so my, she was in such like, a very raw but beautiful place. I kind of wanted to capture, like, the moment. And we didn't think we were going to share it. It was more just for me and my siblings. It was so beautiful that I was like, I really, Would you be open to me sharing this? And it was really, I think it just really resonates with people wanting to, you know, death and grief is very stigmatized. The stigmatized topic. And so she's talking about her experience of psychedelics and how they.
- [03:52]
Host
Was that, was that your first really close encounter with death when your father passed?
- [03:57]
Michael Chernow
Yeah, I would say I've had, I've had other experiences, but. Closest family member. Closest. Some the person I loved the most. Yes, for sure.
- [04:07]
Host
What did that experience expose you to when it comes to death?
- [04:16]
Michael Chernow
It's like a whole Pandora's box. I mean, it's a really, it changed my perspective of so many things and. Yeah, because I don't know if I told you this when we met up the first time, but my, my dad passed away five days before he's supposed to retire. And so, I mean, that, that alone, just looking at these future goals that we set for our lives and we never, you know, often you never make it there, like, looking at his. So much of our relationship was about, you know, this, like, kind of funny artificial future date of retirement. So much like, back and forth between banter about, you know, when I retire, I can finally relax or whatever it is. And so that really hit hard for me around, like, what am I in my own experience of life looking at, like, this future destination happiness date around. So that was, that was really big. I mean, there's so, there's so much with it. But I, you know, I, I, I was able to kind of connect the dot dots backwards with a lot of my work with mushrooms and both functional and psychedelic. And looking at how, you know, the, the, I think the real power of those came through the experience of experiencing grief as a family and Seeing how those tools were so useful for my family both before he passed away. Like the first thought I had when my dad, when I found out my dad died was I'm so glad I was able to introduce mushrooms to my parents. So that alone, I think is the first reference point because it gave him such a sense of where he's going. So it gave me this like deeper sense of peace, you know.
- [05:55]
Host
And so you introduced psychedelic mushrooms to them?
- [05:58]
Michael Chernow
Yes.
- [05:59]
Host
How long before he passed?
- [06:00]
Michael Chernow
It was probably three or four years. Okay, yeah, three or four years.
- [06:03]
Host
And then how did you convince them to want to do that?
- [06:08]
Michael Chernow
It was a, it was a long process. It was a long process. I mean I didn't, I would say I less so convinced them. I more just shared my experience. I was never necessarily trying to. The end goal wasn't trying to get my parents to experience psychedelics, but I'd had such, you know, impactful experiences in my own life and I was starting to work in that space. You know, I was, I've been studying them for years. I had, you know, I'd started a functional mushroom brand which my parents love. They started taking lion's mane and cordyceps and turkey tail, all these legal superfood mushrooms. And they were really impactful for them. And then it was like this kind of slower process of education with my, you know, my mom watching documentaries with me and reading books with me and my dad was kind of like whatever, whatever she says, I trust her to have done the kind of.
- [06:59]
Host
What does your dad do for work? What was.
- [07:00]
Michael Chernow
He's a cfo. So he's an accountant.
- [07:03]
Host
Okay.
- [07:04]
Michael Chernow
Yeah. Big numbers guy. Yeah.
- [07:07]
Host
So try. So it's so interesting I think, trying to get into the head of a practical logistical human, which is accountants and CFOs.
- [07:17]
Michael Chernow
Right.
- [07:17]
Host
You're like one plus one equals two, doesn't equal anything else. It equals two. Trying to get that human to be open minded enough to want to experience something like a psychedelic journey.
- [07:34]
Michael Chernow
Yeah, I mean I'm super impressed with my parents in general. They're not hippies, you know, neither of them had tried a psychedelic before their 60s and.
- [07:46]
Host
Wow.
- [07:47]
Michael Chernow
And so it was. And now, you know, my mom is the biggest advocate for these as therapies. And does she use them intentionally and occasionally when she feels, I guess, you know, when she, when she feels that it could be useful for her. But it's one of the things I think has been really beautiful is I have other friends that. And there's no, there's no right way. But a lot of the, a lot of the impact of an ssri, it just actually blunts the emotional highs and lows of your experience. So if you turn to kind of a pharmaceutical intervention for dealing with depression that might come along with grief, it often just kicks the can down the road and then you have to kind of reopen that whenever you might want to wean off of the ssri, which is very difficult to do. And so my mom was able to, because she's had these experiences with psychedelics, is use these tools. And I've watched her process grief in a way that has been like very deep and very intense, but really healthy. And she's now, you know, consulting with other people and sharing her experience. And so I'm just super impressed with my, with my parents and their open mindedness to, you know, like you said, like to, to take someone who thought a certain way for so many years. It's different for, you know, someone. It's, it's one of us like, you know, to have less programming. But they were, you know, 63 years old and they thought of life a certain way. So to have that kind of open mindedness I think is really beautiful.
- [09:18]
Host
I, so I haven't shared this with you. I was kind of waiting to see you in person, but I, I've been, I mean, I shared a little bit with you about sort of like my exploration into the world of psilocybin and like my, my, my fear about my sobriety life and how introducing a mind altering substance like psilocybin does that impact my sobriety journey. Is it what you just said, I think is very, very important and it's the word that has stood out to me most as I've been really exploring potentially, you know, taking this plant medicine path, whether it's a long path or a short path for me, I've deeply been considering this for about a year. I'm taking it like very seriously because my sobriety is everything in my life. I mean I, I don't, I don't walk around, you know, beating my sobriety chest, but without it, I was dead legit. Two weeks before I got sober. I died and came back to life, you know, and so I just know how, how my, like how I am as a human being just with other things in my life, how like I can go deep on stuff very quick, especially if I like them. But I've been really, really. I'm very, very close to making a decision on taking a journey because I think my intention is right with it, you know, and so I Guess I would just ask like, you know, so you've been working with functional mushrooms for a long time with super mush, right? And that is, I'm sure, making massive impacts on people's lives. How would you describe sort of the difference outside of like the, the, the potential hallucinations or, you know, sort of introduced into new dimensions, potentially with psilocybin. Like, how do you, how do you, how do you prescribe the two?
- [11:29]
Michael Chernow
Yeah, well, I'm not a doctor, so I don't do much prescribing of the mushroom myself. But I would say, you know, how I would, how I would differentiate for people that you know and most people now that you talk to. This wasn't the case a few years ago, but most people understand what lion's mane is or what cordyceps are. They're starting to see these functional medicinal, non psychoactive superfood supplements, like appearing in everything your drinks and you might have some in your bars. I don't know. Most likely, you know, they're, they're everywhere and you can find them in grocery stores. And those are all fully legal non psychoactive. But they're so good for you. Like if you look at, you look at what lion's mane, for example, does to your brain, it's, it's incredible.
- [12:10]
Host
You know, how much do you have.
- [12:11]
Michael Chernow
To show the, the, the, the dose that. I mean, I took 500 milligrams of Lion's man today. And also, it depends on, you know, I, we use fruiting body extracts of the mushroom. There's a lot of like deep, you know, mycology stuff that you can understand, but like high level, what you're looking for is fruiting body extract, which is, you know, the, the fruit of the fungi organism, which is what you see popping out of a grassy field or like the top of the mushroom, so to speak. And so that is turned into an extract and then it's turned into functional mushroom products. And the thing about, so there's. Just pull back for a second. Like fungi is the organism, right? So fungi is what we're talking about. And there's three kind of different categories that most people would recognize. So functional mushrooms are non psychoactive, meaning they have a medicinal benefit beyond just nutrition, but they're non hallucinogenic and those have been used forever. If you look at Chinese medicine, like I grew up over in Taipei, they're using lion's mane, turkey tail, shiitake.
- [13:13]
Host
You grew up in Taipei?
- [13:15]
Michael Chernow
I grew up over. So I had such a big influence from traditional Chinese medicine. From the way I grew up, which I think maybe influenced wanting to start a mushroom company later. So that's functional mushrooms, and then there's psychoactive mushrooms, and the most common being psilocybin, which you're just talking about. And psilocybin is, you know, it. It converts to psilocin once it goes into the liver, and then when it goes into your bloodstream, it creates a hallucinogenic experience. And also, what is that? What is the hallucinogenic experience? I mean, like, how does it happen? So, you know, the. The actual process is once you take, you know, or consume a psychedelic, it's converted to silosins. That's a compound that it's converted to in your liver, and then it goes into the bloodstream and it creates a hallucinogenic experience. And what, you know, if you have ever seen the brain scans, I highly recommend, if you're listening to this, to look up the brain scans. Robin Carhart Harris has some really cool original brain scans. Who is it?
- [14:14]
Host
So we can show. Not it.
- [14:15]
Michael Chernow
Dr. Robin Carhart Harris, okay? He has some really cool brain scans that shows a normal brain and a brain under the influence of psilocybin mushrooms. And you can see in the brain all of these neural pathways connecting in the brain of someone who is ingested psychedelic. And it's like all of these new neural pathways are lighting up. They're connecting in new ways. You're actually forming new thought patterns, new ways of thinking, and it's why they're so impactful for things like trauma, you.
- [14:46]
Host
Know, emotional, you know, I also want to ask a question that I think is important. So a neural pathway, like, let's just. Do you, Are you. Are you able to break down a neural pathway?
- [14:55]
Michael Chernow
I'll tell you if I can't.
- [14:56]
Host
Okay, okay. So, neural pathway. What, what, what is a neural pathway?
- [14:59]
Michael Chernow
Well, so I don't. I. So the, the, the idea of what neuroplasticity is, I think, is like more of the important concept for people to understand. Right. So your brain, over time operates in its. Mostly its default mode network, which is habits. Right. Where's all the habits? The creatures of habit. Yes. So all of your habits are kind of sitting in this default mode network. And this is why when you drive home, you might not remember the entire drive. And you arrive in your driveway because you're just turning on a habit. You don't remember how you put your shoes on your pants on because you've done it so many times. And that's amazing because it can allow your brain to go into other areas. Right. But the problem with that is that sometimes we have these unconscious habits. And so what psychedelics can do is actually disrupt that and decrease the amount of activity significantly that's going on in the default mode network and allow your brain to connect differently. And what is created is this experience of neuroplasticity and it makes your brain more malleable. So people will come out of these experiences, you know, feeling like they were able to see something in a completely different way, make a new meaning of a trauma, you know, an experience of their life, the people around them, their experience of themselves in the world. There's, I mean the, the psychedelic experience is so personal and it's so diverse. No person has the same exact experience. And a lot of the most beautiful parts of it are often ineffable. You can't really explain it until you're in the experience. And we're such, you know, one of my friends told me, like, we're such bad storytellers in general. And so, you know, we'll hear people talk about their experience of a psychedelic. And the way they describe it, it's just, you can't really compute it because we're taking these verbal shortcuts. But it's often, you know, very physical, it's often very emotional and it, it really connects people to a sense of God in a lot of ways as well. So they're spirits. You know, if you look at Psil Sabin, it's been documented and used for thousands of years. So is an ancient medicine. It's often like, you know, it's one of the only medicines that have stood the test of time. Everything that we're utilizing now is like relatively new. But this is a really ancient wisdom and people feel that when they, you know, when they work with psilocybin or other psychedelics, they feel like they're communing with this kind of ancient spirit.
- [17:25]
Host
Interrupting this episode to share with you that Creatures of Habit of finally launched our protein bar. It's called the Daily Bar. It's made with 20 grams of plant based protein. 3 grams of creatine. Yes, you heard that right. It also has 3 grams of creatine. It is incredibly tasty and clean as a whistle. All clean ingredients. Take this opportunity. Hop over to creaturesofhabit.com that's creaturesofhabit.com with a K and use code K. O H pod 20 at checkout for 20% off your first order back to the pod. I, I, I, the, the conversation that I've had with myself over the last year really is. I believe in God, I have a relationship with God. And I've been praying and meditating on this question. Were we put here to experience life as it has been in its purest form, or were there things planted in the earth to help us expand that experience? Right, that is the question that I've been asking. Like, please give me a sign. Like, because the, the, the, the, the things that I've grabbed towards or gravitated towards, you know, specifically in the earlier part of my life were what I, you know, life expanding substances that took me down a really, really dark path. Like really dark. And so has, you know, God or the Creator really introduced these things for humans to find to help us expand our journey? I don't know. Have you ever asked yourself that question? Do you like, do you know, have you, have you sort of said, hey, like, were we meant to find this? And is this like a sacred thing that was like, you know, there for us? I don't know.
- [19:27]
Michael Chernow
I mean, I'll answer it in kind of two ways, right? Like there's the, the historical way that we've used this for a very long time with so much sacred intention. And like you can, you can literally look back and 5,000 years ago find a caveman that was fossilized. His name's Otzi. They found this caveman recently, Oti the Caveman, and he was fossilized with medicinal mushrooms on his person. He had like a little pouch and he had mushrooms fossilized with him. And he had a little chaga mushroom which is non psychedelic around his neck. Nothing was psychedelic. But these have been a part of humanity forever. Cavemen were eating mushrooms. There's, you know, a kind of unexplainable jump in human brain development that a lot of people allude to. Potentially Terence McKenna's theory of being, you know, cavemen eating psychedelic mushrooms and expediting our brain development. There's, there's so much history around the use of, of psychedelics. And then there's the modern science, right, that is actually studying these and looking at what is this actually doing to our brains. You know, the way that they're using these in indigenous ceremonies, they're not, I, I, I, I can imagine they're not studying the science because they didn't have the tools to do that yet. But we in our modern world are actually, you know, researching these molecules that have been used for thousands of years and what the findings are. And I'll speak to one, you know, one specific study that was done on on microdosing psychedelics that I think is really interesting specifically for people that are concerned around sobriety and have, have had addiction previously is that was it like a 9,000 person study and it showed that adults that were microdosing psilocybin mushrooms showed health related motivation. So they wanted to drink less alcohol, they wanted to be more social, they wanted to move more, they wanted to generally be healthier people. And that is kind of the general conclusion. Unfortunately, psilocybin and a few other psychedelics have kind of been looped into this category of drugs. You know, I grew up with the DARE program. Just say no to drugs. And there's so much nuance between each one of these molecules. And one of the most common things that psilocybin is being studied for is addiction. So it's actually being used to treat addiction with people that have had, you know, alcoholism, you know, and also all sorts of emotional addictions, ocd, anxiety, depression, et cetera. So there's, there's so much to kind of unpack and I guess to your, you know, to your original question of do I think that God put these here for us to find. I can't pretend to know what God's intention was, but my experience of these in my personal life is I'm so glad that I did find them because what I've seen from my experience, you know, we were talking about my, my dad and his death as one example of many where I can't imagine not having access to these tools. So I'm really just grateful that I've been able to interact with them and, you know, kind of learn how to work with them consciously. And it's definitely, you know, continued exploration and I don't know what that looks like in my future, but it's really changed my perspective of the world.
- [22:37]
Host
It's okay. So I, I, I'm, I'm obviously deeply interested in this topic, right? So people with adhd, add, adhd, anxiety, chronic anxiety, depression, ocd, mental illness. Alcoholism is an illness, right? Like, I don't like to use the word mental health because I feel like mental health has got this negative connotation to it. It's, it's actually mental health. It could be both positive and negative, right? So like when someone's battling with, with an anxiety or you know, someone who has depression, like it's an illness, right? It's an illness that has to be dealt with at some level. There's so many different ways to deal with it, right. Like you can use, for me, it's been Fitness and self care, like that's been my sort of go to.
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Michael Chernow
Really.
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Host
Somehow some way, you know, you know, asking God for strength and being able to navigate through these, these, these sort of hills and valleys that I've had over the last 21 years in sobriety. Because for prior to that it was drugs and alcohol. I mean that was the way I dealt with my illness. But what I'm hearing is that microdosing psilocybin is, is not dissimilar to SSRIs, except it's just natural and doesn't have the downside. Is that, is that. I mean, like I, I don't know, I'm, I'm, I'm. Speak to me like I'm a child here, like.
- [24:13]
Michael Chernow
Yeah. So I mean it's. I guess in theory people have used it to treat the same issue. But the way that psilocybin works on serotonin is very, is completely different from how an SSRI works, binds to that receptor. And you know, the, the, the difference is psilocybin is, is non addictive. So if you're microdosing, it's, it's a non addictive practice where SIL. Where SSRIs have a, you know, weaning off process and you'll have withdrawals and.
- [24:41]
Host
Often can be very difficult for like Adderall, Prozac.
- [24:45]
Michael Chernow
Yeah, Adderall is ADHD medication.
- [24:47]
Host
Yeah.
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Michael Chernow
And then there's like the whole, you know, there's SSRIs which are, you know, would.
- [24:52]
Host
Adderall would. But like for microdosing psilocybin, would that be something that someone diagnosed with ADHD could benefit from? Microdosing psilocybin?
- [25:03]
Michael Chernow
Yeah, a lot of people use it for, for that exact purpose. And you know, we, so a few years ago I was, I was so passionate about how microdosing had impacted my life and you know, my journey as an entrepreneur and Mike just. Mike's relationships, so many things. I was like, wow, there's this subtle shift that I noticed in my experience. The idea for, for people that don't know what microdosing is, it's taking a small amount of a psychedelic that's sub hallucinogenic. So it's below the hallucinogenic threshold. So you're not having, you know, any sort of visual experience. If you are, it's, it's fine, but it's just not a microdose technically. And this term was really popularized by James Fadiman when he wrote the Psychedelics Explorers Guide and he went on the Tim Ferriss podcast, I think in 2011. And that kind of like created this Silicon Valley boom of people using microdosing for creativity, for low grade depression, anxiety. There's so many things that it can benefit, but as it compares to a pharmaceutical, it works very differently. And so something that I guess people should know if they're looking to explore, just look up the differences of what psilocybin does to your brain chemistry, what SSRIs do. And you know, I think SSRIs and pharmaceuticals have a time and place, but they're way over prescribed in general. And you know, I have friends that say that, you know, they go to the doctor and they have difficult experience for a few weeks and they'll get put on an SSRI where this is something that could support people without having to create dependency.
- [26:36]
Host
So you can use it intermittently as needed. Basically.
- [26:38]
Michael Chernow
Yeah. The most commonly the way that, you know, if I coach people on how to use microdosing, there's a most common protocol where it's, you know, two weeks on, one week off and you have it in your system four to five days a week. Um, and then you take one, you take one week off. So you're taking four to five days a week. And that can be two days on, one day off is one protocol. Another one is five days on, two days off. There's a little bit of, you know, it doesn't for, for me it doesn't really matter that much. The idea is that you're getting that consistent neuroplasticity four to five days a week and the people, the things that people notice. You know, there's, there's been a lot of really great studies. I mentioned one, the health related motivations. But you know, there's also a study that showed microdosing increased convergent and divergent thinking. And so convergent thinking is like, if you've ever played the game code names where you're trying to connect three words with one word, and so that's convergent thinking. Then divergent thinking is like, what are four ways we can use this table? And so microdosing increased both, which is really interesting. And something about, you know, to connect it back to functional mushrooms is there was this study that showed of the, I think it was 9,000 people they studied, largest study ever done on microdosing, that 39% of the people that were using microdosing psilocybin were also taking lion's mane because they work really synergistically in your, in your system.
- [27:59]
Host
Hmm.
- [28:00]
Michael Chernow
Yeah.
- [28:02]
Host
It's so interesting Because I, I mean, and I, for the first time, actually I've never really thought about. And again, this is so in the world of recovery, specifically 12 steps AA recovery, we are, and I owe my life to that program and that system. I'm not active in it currently and I haven't been probably in a few years, but I'm very, I'm very active in the community. I'm not just, I don't feel the need to be active in the way I was for the first 15, 16 years of my sobriety. However, in that world we are taught, groomed, cultivated to believe that any mood or mind altering substance is going to take you off of this path. However, mental health medicine, SSRIs, in some cases people that have severe ADHD, Adderall, the prescription of, from a doctor of those tools taken as prescribed, totally fine. So what I never really thought about was psilocybin as a tool in. I know that, I know what happens biologically is different between psilocybin and SSRIs and the dependency. But I'm just thinking to myself, like, why have I never considered that as an alternative tool? If these are, if tho, if, if microdosing psilocybin could be applied in the same way that these are applied, why is it that psilocybin would be sort of potentially looked at as a cheat or a slip or a, I'm no longer sober in the way that the 12 steps has sort of laid out this idea of sobriety, however. But the SSRIs are, are okay. It's an interesting thought process. Right. I, I, I never really thought about it the way I, I, I thought about it after just speaking with you. Now that like this is not something that is going to make you experience a high, but it could enhance the, it could potentially help you deal with, if you battle with depression and anxiety. It could help you lift those from your day to day.
- [30:38]
Michael Chernow
Yeah. And also, you know, the, the I believe the guy who started AA was started after doing Ayahuasca.
- [30:46]
Host
Well, apparently after 10 years he was using LSD as well.
- [30:49]
Michael Chernow
It was. Yeah. Okay, so interesting, right? Just as a date, as a data point. And look, I mean I, I am not an expert of what people should or should not put in their bodies. And you know, I, I just had a conversation with someone who, because she, you know, she had a suicide attempt. It can be the right intervention at certain, at certain points, but if you, if you kind of, if you kind of pull back and look at, you know, what, what your, your main Question is, which is, you know, if something is handed to you in an office with a doctor that has a white lab coat, what is legal is not, is not always good. And we've seen that time and time again. Like, you know, with the opioid crisis that was started by legal prescriptions. And there's so much that we've got over history with what we were allowed to prescribe people. And so I've, I've really taken my, my perspective from history. Like I mentioned, you know, that looking at, I first thought that psychedelics were invented in the 60s when I was first starting to learn about them, because that's what I was kind of told in school. You know, I thought this is something that, that came into culture through the hippie movement. And then the war on drugs came and you know, just like a general data point is that we spent $4 trillion on the war on drugs and it decreased drug use. Zero. And so people have been using mind altering substances since the beginning of time. Since we've been documenting human societies. I would, you know, my, my current belief is that the ones that are being the most prescribed are mostly profit motivated. Right. The interesting thing about watching psilocybin or even mdma, which is, you know, in the psychedelic family, it's an amphetamine move through the FDA process is they're not very profitable because often people will have one experience with one of these psychedelics and it will cure oftentimes the thing that they've been struggling with and taking a pharmaceutical for every single day. And so it's not a very long term model for the pharmaceutical system. So it's having more difficulty moving through the process. But there's more and more research kind of showing how important these are as mental health interventions. And the one other thing I will say is that microdosing can of course be great for low grade anxiety, depression, but it's also just a tool for people that are looking to enhance their lives. I don't believe that you need to be sick to explore your consciousness. And a lot of people I've seen have just had a shift in perspective, whether that be from like a relationship that is or is not serving them or going deeper into something like these are tools of exploring your consciousness. And I don't believe psychedelics are for everyone. But my cousin wrote a book and I always quote him when he says this, but he said, you know, psychedelics aren't for everyone, but everyone should understand them. And I really believe that. I think that there's something that we need to kind of understand and have more information about. Because the more, you know, most of the issues that come along with drugs and overdoses are from the issues of them being illegal. Like if you look at, if you put a drug testing tent at a festival, the rate of overdose goes down to almost zero. So most of the issues come from people taking way too much or being uneducated about the substance that they're taking. So that's just become a huge passion of mine of, you know, how can we educate people of like, here are the tools that are available to you and help people make more conscious, informed decisions. Because unfortunately we're like funneled into the world with very little information and it often leads to people falling into the wrong substances and addiction. And there's so much that goes along with that.
- [34:39]
Host
I am so interested in continuing this conversation and publicly with the audience and for me in full transparency. And I think I've clearly stated it in this conversation, but also in other conversations that I've been having recently. I'm just terrified.
- [34:58]
Michael Chernow
Yeah.
- [34:58]
Host
Not of the experience. I'm actually very, very curious about the experience. Not because. And I have like a super clear intention which is basically I've been haunted by this fear of illness since I was a kid. My father was very sick and I witnessed him having multiple severe diabetic seizures as a young kid. And it was incredibly traumatic for me as a four or five year old kid in Disney World, like watching my father turn blue and convulse and foam from the mouth where, you know, we were surrounded by like, I remember it like it was yesterday. And I remember lying on the floor not understanding and seeing him, you know, they had to jam something in between his teeth so he didn't bite his tongue off. It was like very, very traumatic for me. And so that fear. And I'm conscious of it, I'm conscious of, I mean, I can't say for certain that that fear is what influenced my fear today of being ill. Not of death necessarily, but like of actually getting cancer and being ill. Cancer for whatever reason is the one that shows up for me when I spiral out into this thing. But it's haunted me and it's happened probably six times in a very mouth, 1, 2, 3, 4 times distinctly over the course of my life where I, I've gone down a dark, dark, depressed, well actually not depressed, anxious path where I dissociate and can't function. I can function, but I'm not there. You know, like I could do, I could take the steps and go to the gym and go to work. But, like, I'm just like. And I have no interest in sharing about it because I don't want to burden anybody with my, like, irrational fear. But it's an irrational fear. And what. Where. Where I, you know, and I. And I had one recently because I had this, like, weird scare where I took a full body MRI scan and they found a lesion in my liver that they told me was benign, but I just didn't believe them.
- [37:05]
Michael Chernow
Yeah.
- [37:05]
Host
And it just went. And I was just like, that's it. This is it, cancer. I'm done. And I couldn't get. I couldn't shake it. And so, like, this option for me, I've exhausted a lot of things, you know, I mean, sober a long time, lots of therapy, breath work, which has been wonderful. Just a lot of things that I've done, not, not for this one specific reason, but just to enhance my life as a sober human. Right. It's just all. All signs have pointed me to, like, hey, you have just not done this plant medicine thing. Like, you just haven't. And you haven't done it in a. In. In the set and setting that would potentially be advantageous for a potential breakthrough with this one thing that you've been battling, you know, and so I, I'm like, very, very curious and also full, fully transparent, terrified because I've been. I've been, I don't want to say brainwashed, because I don't believe it's brainwashing. I think the 12 steps, whatever program you're in, saves more lives than any any other system. Right. It just has. The success rate are super low. But of the, you know, the massive amount of alcoholics and drug addicts on the planet, the 12 steps have been the most successful path for them to potentially find relief in recovery. And so, but in those programs, we get told, like, this is how it's done. There's no other way. And if you're not doing it this way, you're not doing it, you know, and so it's.
- [38:50]
Michael Chernow
It's tough.
- [38:51]
Host
You know, my buddy Rich Roll, who's got, you know, he and I share similar time in this world of recovery through the 12 steps. You know, I've had a number of conversations with him about this, and he has experience. He, He. He decided to make. To make. To go through with a journey. And it was powerful for me to hear that. I needed someone like that to tell me, like, you've got to ask yourself the question, do you care about? Is it an intentional thing for you in your life, or is it. Are you wrapped up in the identity that you've created through this sober person thing? Like, what is it? And I honestly ask myself, and the truth is I care more about what people are going to categorize me as. If the people that think taking a psilocybin journey or an ayahuasca journey, which I haven't even really been called to in any way, really, it's all been about the psilocybin thing, are going to categorize me as. No, you got to start counting days again, dude. You're not sober anymore.
- [40:01]
Michael Chernow
Yeah.
- [40:01]
Host
You know, and that's scary for me.
- [40:03]
Michael Chernow
Yeah, it's powerful. It's a really powerful. Thank you for sharing that, that story. And it's very, it's, it's very, it's. It's very common that people will be reliving these experiences. Right. Like, I have, you know, some version of that, and psychedelics were really helpful for that. And they're not a, they're not a silver bullet. You know, the, the, the idea that it's going to fix all of the problems is not. I haven't, I haven't found that to be true. I really think they open a window for you to actually look at your life in a different way. So I used to say, mushrooms changed my life, but then now I'm like, they gave me the opportunity to, to look at my life and alter it, to kind of step out and look at, from this observer view and to go back to different experiences and make a different meaning. Because how, you know, if you're, if you're having an experience where your body is recreating anxiety, linked to which you have conscious awareness of, linked to this event that happened when you were a child, that's what post traumatic stress disorder is. So your body is recreating a trauma, even though the trauma isn't present. And so what psychedelics have the unique ability to do in a lot of ways is help you revisit that original experience, but then make a different meaning of it. And so it's actually fixing where in your nervous system that experience is living. Because for another kid that was there that day, he could be completely fine, but it registered in your body as trauma. And so I just find that to be really fascinating. And they're such, there's such mystical, you know, such mystical compounds. And, you know, I think the thing about what you're saying that I think is very important is there is still stigma around psychedelics in general, and they're being Legalized all across the country. In Colorado and Oregon, you can legally do psilocybin therapy. There's a really amazing bill that our nonprofit is supporting in New York that's supporting a psilocybin permit bill that would make it even more accessible in New York State, which would be amazing because you live there and. Right. You still live in New York. And you know, there's this incredible progress. So it's, it's not a far off future where this will be legal in most places in the country. You can already do legal ketamine therapy all across the United States and hundreds of clinics. So while there still is a stigma, it's, it's very much being rewritten and that's fueled by the research and people also understanding the history of really where these compounds came from.
- [42:27]
Host
Are there any facilitators that you have connected with or experienced yourself personally that have stood out to you that, that share about that or no?
- [42:43]
Michael Chernow
Yes. I mean, as far as underground facilitators that I. Yeah, I mean, I love, I love that this is, this is happening and it's all still illegal. Right. So to do psilocybin therapy outside of those, you know, actually New Mexico also is the third one that just passed a legal medical model. So Colorado, Oregon and New Mexico, but outside of those three states, everything else is underground, is underground. And then the stat so people understand. You know, there's 8 million people in the US that reported using psilocybin. There was a study done in 2023. Eight million people reported using psilocybin in the US and then 50% of those people were microdosing. So, you know, obviously there's some wiggle room there. There's a way that you can survey this, but that's in general what kind of the landscape looks like. And I think that'll, you know, continue. It's increasing every single year.
- [43:31]
Host
Wow. Tell us, tell us about Super Mush. I want to hear about Super Mush because, I mean, I knew that you coming on was, you know, the topic I really wanted to focus on with you. And selfishly, like, I love having the podcast because I get to ask all the questions from the people that I'm, that I invite onto the podcast. Stuff that not only I want to know, but I think, you know, it's really, really great to broadcast this kind of thing, but I want to hear about Supermush and tell us that story.
- [43:56]
Michael Chernow
Yeah, So I mean, Supermush is fully legal. It's non psychedelic, even though we have really fun, colorful branding because I was, I'm obviously very passionate and influenced by the psychedelic space, you can tell. But my story with, my story with functional mushrooms, that's what Super Mush is. It's a functional mushroom brand is. I had a long, deep, winding history with the western medical system. And by the time I was 23, I think I had been prescribed somewhere between eight and 10 medications. I was told I had this kind of long list of different illnesses, diseases. And I, in this process of becoming my own citizen doctor, discovered functional mushrooms and I started using them. This is like early days when the functional mushroom brands that people knew about were four Sigmatic and a few others. And so I started. I remember one day I was sitting at my computer and I was shopping for supplements and I had gotten off of most of my pharmaceutical stuff at that point and I saw something called mushroom coffee. And I was like, that's really weird. But I bought it and I started drinking lion's mane in my coffee every single day. And I felt my brain come online and I was like, this is so interesting. Why is no one, why is no one talking about this? And I started to notice like this subtle kind of like tuning fork was taken to my nervous system. So it was a subtle shift. It wasn't the same feeling that you get from caffeine or, you know, anything that's like an upper or downer. It was like this kind of bringing into homeostasis of my entire body. And so I was, I was so fascinated with what was happening to me. And so I started to research functional mushrooms. I was like, why, why are not more people talking about these? And I met my, my now co founder Brian, and he had just sold a tech company and I convinced him to start a mushroom brand with me. And over the last four years we've built, you know, our, our brand which is called Super Mush. And the vision of it is to make the supplement space more colorful and fun. And we do a lot of stuff focused on community. But all of our products are, you know, very extremely science backed supplements, all powered with functional mushrooms. And we're starting to get into, you know, different categories. Like we just launched a creatine gummy. I'm sure you take creatine from anything I know about you. And it's one of the only creatine gummies that actually has creatine in it. Because have you seen the whole creatine gummy scandal? Yes. So this guy, James Smith did this whole creatine gummy audit and based on all of the third party reports, of these creatine gummies he found, I think it was like, don't quote me on this, but majority of the creatine gummies had a small fraction of their claimed creatine in the actual gummy. And so we have a certificate of analysis from Eurofins which is like one of the most legit third party testing that shows the amount of creatine that we actually have in our gummies. So I'm really excited about that because it's very difficult to make a good, good, good creatine gummy. We mostly make gummies now. That's the main product that we focus on. And yeah, I mean, it's been a wild ride. Entrepreneurship is crazy. We launched in Target last year, so we're in around 2,000 doors now. And it's just been this whole crazy ride. We've, we have like 130 investors, so we've raised around $6 million. And it's just been a, it's been an amazing journey. But I really, it's just the beginning now. It's like our real kind of opportunity to scale it this year. But it's been amazing.
- [47:12]
Host
Wow. And how does. You're also on the board of a nonprofit that really is trying to. Is it, is it like lobbying for microdosing and psilocybin? Is that what you guys are doing?
- [47:26]
Michael Chernow
Yeah. So through, through the process of starting super mush, I, you know, I was, I was interested, like, what does the underground market of psilocybin look like? So a lot of people are asking us, are you going to get into the underground market for mushrooms? And I started to read the bills that were being proposed because I had an idea that, okay, the consumer brand market, you're going to have mushroom bars, protein bars, candy, all sorts of things that are going to come above ground in the next few years with the way the space is moving. And turns out that's not the case. And so all of the bills that are being proposed for psychedelics are all for medical models, mostly on a state by state basis. And so I went to a few other people that I really respect. One is Josh Capel, who wrote the bill that legalized, was a part of the team that legalized psychedelics in Colorado and passed the most progressive decrim bill. So he's a psychedelic lawyer. And then Paul Austin, who started Third Wave, which is a big psychedelic research site. And then John Downs, who is a coach and our exec director. So we kind of like formed this posse and, and formed a nonprofit called the Microdosing Collective. And the goal of that was to help increase legal access to microdosing. And so we've done a lot of lobbying efforts in California. Now we're working on this New York bill and just build this amazing community of thousands of people that are, you know, sharing their stories with us about how transformative microdosing has been in their life. Like, there's. There's so many incredible examples. One, one that I'll share with you, because I think you'll appreciate, based on your athletic world, is there's this guy, his name's James hall, and he was in a snowmobiling accident. So he's going like 60 miles an hour in a snowmobile and flipped over the snowmobile and went into a tree, and he had three tree branches go through his brain. And so he's taken to the hospital and was told he could never walk talk normally again. And within six weeks, he was almost made a full recovery. And so they scanned his brain along the way, and they're like, this doesn't make any sense. And he swears that microdosing psilocybin is the thing that saved his brain. He's like, I felt the neurons reconnecting in my brain. And he was also microdosing eight months before the accident. So that's one of a thousand stories that we've been able to collect through the process of working with this nonprofit. And the goal is just to increase education, safe access to information for people, safe access to resources, and also to move closer towards having legal access, because most of the way that people get these substances right now is from the underground market. It's incredibly sketchy.
- [50:06]
Host
What is your thought on how cannabis was legalized?
- [50:11]
Michael Chernow
So I have a lot of people that I'm very close with that worked very closely in that space. I'm not an expert on cannabis legalization, but the general consensus is that there's a lot of learnings that we can take into psychedelics, because a lot of the way that cannabis was rolled out, people weren't happy with. And psychedelics are different. Right. The therapeutic implications and use of psychedelics are very different. You know, it requires different support. So I'm. I'm more interested in, like, how we can do it better based on the differences in the. In the compounds. And I'm also really passionate about people, you know, that are. That are looking to have an experience of psychedelics, have a safe resource to be able to get that product from. Because right now you go to, like, a guy who knows a guy on signal, it's a super, it's super unsafe. And, you know, like another story I'll share because I'm, I think the stories are the biggest thing, right, because it brings this, like, big statistic of 8 million people are using psilocybin down to, like, a real tangible example. But there's this other guy we're working with. His name's Joe McKay, and he was a firefighter, and he was on the ground on 9 11, and he had, I think it's 26 of his friends die that day. And the, the PTSD that he developed was cluster headaches. I don't know if you know anything about cluster headaches, but they're called suicide headaches because 70% of people that get a cluster headache end up wanting to commit suicide because they're so painful, it feels like there's an ice pick going through your brain.
- [51:40]
Host
Wow.
- [51:41]
Michael Chernow
And in a last kind of attempt to save his life, because he was going to commit suicide, he went to the underground market, got someone to sell him psilocybin mushrooms because he found something online that said this might help, and it completely took away his cluster headaches. And now he's advocating and lobbying for safe access to this in New York as a part of this, this group. So there's so many different ways in which this can impact people. You know, whether it's cluster headaches, anxiety, ocd. There's so, there's so many things.
- [52:11]
Host
Have you been out to. I would imagine you have, like, Amsterdam.
- [52:16]
Michael Chernow
Yeah, I did. I have, I have done mushrooms in Amsterdam. Yeah. It's not. Yeah, yeah. But, yeah, go ahead.
- [52:22]
Host
So, so I mean, I, I, I, I went out there when I was 20.
- [52:26]
Michael Chernow
Yeah.
- [52:26]
Host
And I went out there with my, my best friend, and our plan was to just use mushrooms for a week straight. And we did.
- [52:35]
Michael Chernow
Yeah.
- [52:36]
Host
And you can walk into most, like, you know, like, they're, they're, they broad, they, they like, they, like, they market on the street. Just like, you know, the red light district markets on the street. And you walk in and there's a display table and there's like seven different kinds of mushrooms. And they start from, like, the lowest potency up to, like, the most potent.
- [52:55]
Michael Chernow
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm just, I mean, I.
- [52:58]
Host
Only bring it up because I'm just curious. Have you ever. Are you into protein bars at all?
- [53:02]
Michael Chernow
I'll take one. I'll take one. I'm not, I just ate. But I would like to try one. I think I tried one at the conference. I love that. We went from Amsterdam to protein Bars.
- [53:10]
Host
Yeah.
- [53:12]
Michael Chernow
So this is the new one. This is the new product that you're talking about. What flavor is it?
- [53:16]
Host
Chocolate peanut butter banger.
- [53:18]
Michael Chernow
Okay. Oh, it's so good. Wow.
- [53:25]
Host
How good is that?
- [53:26]
Michael Chernow
That's amazing. Creatine. I knew it. You strike me as a creatine guy. Wow, this is so good.
- [53:39]
Host
Tasty, right?
- [53:41]
Michael Chernow
Yeah. Dangerous.
- [53:42]
Host
It's so good and like so good for you. There's no seed oils, no sugar, alcohols, non gmo, gluten free, dairy free.
- [53:49]
Michael Chernow
Wow. Well, I love it. Chocolate peanut butter banger.
- [53:56]
Host
Yeah.
- [53:57]
Michael Chernow
See you in health. I love it. Back to Amsterdam.
- [54:00]
Host
Back to Amsterdam.
- [54:01]
Michael Chernow
So, yeah, I've been to Amsterdam. It's great. I mean, the, again, general consensus from people that work in the psychedelic space is that, like, the quality of the mushrooms over there aren't terrible. Well, not terrible, but not the best. Um, there's, you know, lots of, lots of different, you know, things you should note about growing mushrooms. I'm not a mushroom grower, but. And I work with, I work with a lot of them and there's a lot of different nuances to growing really amazing psychedelic mushrooms and really amazing functional mushrooms, for that matter. So, yeah, Amsterdam, they're legal and that's, I think that's a great thing. I wouldn't, if I had to choose myself, I wouldn't copy and paste that model of how we legalize it.
- [54:42]
Host
Like, I guess the question is, is that, is that something that's going to happen? Right. Because, like, what happened here.
- [54:48]
Michael Chernow
Yeah.
- [54:48]
Host
What happened with cannabis is like pretty bad, in my opinion.
- [54:50]
Michael Chernow
Well, you know, you can walk, like, if you, if you live in New York City, you go stand in the middle of Manhattan, within a five mile radius, you can walk into 100 stores, bodegas that are selling psilocybin mushrooms. The issue with that is that most of the brands, they look like this, like they are branded beautifully. And on the front of it it says mushrooms, psilocybin included. Most of them have amanita or other chemicals in them. And they're sending people the hospital. They're not actually psilocybin. So the danger of the underground market is that people are misreading, thinking that this is psilocybin and having a terrible experience because they're eating too much of it or there's no education around it, or there's just not what it says in the actual product. Like, like diamond shrooms, Polka Dot, or a few brands that have been all over the news, sending people to the hospital because they're not actually supposed to Be mushroom.
- [55:39]
Host
Are they mushrooms?
- [55:40]
Michael Chernow
No, they're claiming to be mushrooms and they're not actually mushrooms.
- [55:43]
Host
Wow.
- [55:44]
Michael Chernow
Yeah.
- [55:44]
Host
So like what's the form factor? Is it like in a pill?
- [55:47]
Michael Chernow
All sorts of things. Gummies, capsules. Yeah. So it's, it's already happening the same with Venice Beach. There's a lot of different places that are, that are just kind of going for it and selling these products, but they're not actually psilocybin.
- [56:01]
Host
So see, that's the fear in my opinion, like if it's not like in the legalization process, like I do think that it has to be like in some way, shape or form specifically if it's legalized recreationally, which is obviously what's happened in New York. Like I do think that there has to be some sort of a structure and some sort of a standard.
- [56:24]
Michael Chernow
Yeah.
- [56:25]
Host
And some sort of a, of a, of a guideline.
- [56:27]
Michael Chernow
So the, the bill in New York I'll tell you about because I like, it's the coolest piece of legislation that we've seen. It's the one that our, our nonprofit is the most excited about. And so we've, we've gotten involved to support it. And the bill is a permit model. So high level. It is the same way that a driver's license test would operate. So you have to prove psychedelic literacy. It's like a four to five hour test to actually get access to low dose psychedelics at home. If you wanted to have it outside of a service center. Service center being like where you would go to have, actually have a therapeutic journey. Therapeutic, higher dose journey. And then similar, you know, there's a lot of different guidelines on the provider side of licenses and all these things. So that model I'm really excited about. At the end of the day, the way that this is going to kind of trickle through policy is very dependent on who is supporting the bill. Like we have Senator Julio Salazar, who is supporting this bill in New York, the Assembly Health Chair Amy Paul and who's really excited about it because they have personal ties to psychedelics themselves. So I think that there's a lot to consider with how policy gets rolled out. I honestly would I tell people now I'm like, if I had any idea how difficult it was, I would never have intended to start a nonprofit focused on policy. But it's been fascinating because I'm really interested in the gap between kind of government and culture because culture is going this way. Right. You see what's happening in the New York bodegas. You see what's Happening in the psychedelic underground and the government isn't in touch with that. So our goal is to kind of help close the gap.
- [58:05]
Host
This has been such a great combo. Like I'm, I like this topic for me has been super for, for the first six months I've kept it really kind of insular to myself and just exploring and sort of like tapping little questions here and there. And then the last six months I really feel like I have been way more vocal about it and because I do think that set and setting an intention are critical for someone like me that would, that, that's interested in, in embarking on something like this to, to, to enhance my, my experience of life.
- [58:45]
Michael Chernow
Yeah.
- [58:45]
Host
Not to get high and to, around and like go, you know, sit in Central park and climb up the mind tree, which is definitely something that I've.
- [58:54]
Michael Chernow
Done many times, which could be therapeutic depending on how you look at it, you know.
- [58:57]
Host
But, but I think, you know, there's, there's, there's people that are prone to addiction and there's people that are just that simple. There are people that have addiction, there are people that are, that don't.
- [59:05]
Michael Chernow
Right.
- [59:05]
Host
And it is, you know, sometimes it, it is enhanced through traumatic, traumatic experiences that one has in early life. Right. It's not, I don't believe that, that, that addiction is something that is, is, is, is. You don't get it from these experiences. But if you have addiction, it is some and you have trauma, it could totally, it could totally polarize that for you and, and you can be prone to, and gravitate towards mood. Mind altering substances that are going to help you numb out some of the things that life throws at you. Right.
- [59:40]
Michael Chernow
Yeah.
- [59:40]
Host
I, I, I haven't, I've, I'm 90 there where I believe this could be very helpful for me. And it's not going to trigger a desire to want to like party on mushrooms every night.
- [59:56]
Michael Chernow
Yeah. I don't think you're gonna want to do it again after you do it the next. Yeah, it's, it's, it's a different experience and I'm cautious to not say, you know, to recommend anything necessarily. Like, I love to guide people and like kind of share my own experiences and, and resources. But I love that you're educating yourself so much. I think most people, more people should do that before they engage with, with psychedelics in general. And you know, I think we talked about this when we first met, but addiction is an interesting thing because there's a lot of addictions that we have that aren't Substances, you know, they're scrolling, they're emotional addictions, they're sexual. There's so many, there's so many things that we can be addicted to. And some, some addictions in theory are good, right? If you're addicted to love, I think that's a good thing or what. You know, there's, there's so much nuance to that, to that concept. But I really, I, I have, I have, I guess over the last 10 years that I have been exploring this space and being a student of it, so to speak. I, I just realized like, you know, the, the, the journey of your life can so often be defined by the substances you ingest. Right? Whether it's supplements, psychedelics, like there's so much influence by whatever caffeine, water. Everything that we ingest will kind of dictate the journey of our life. And I think that some substances move you into your heart and some into your head. And psychedelics, when used intentionally, can move you into your heart and make you more heart centric. And I think the world needs that desperately. So I'm really excited about these tools coming more into the mainstream with the right education. And I'm also really excited about functional mushrooms. You know, like, I'm really excited about those alone can rewire your nervous system and bring your body back into balance.
- [61:44]
Host
I need to, I need to, I wanna, I really wanna pick your brain about that. About that too, because I really haven't, outside of like my early Tim Ferriss days, learning about four sigmatic. Yeah, like, you know, have it, you know, ordering, being on a subscription for a little while with cordyceps, I haven't really explored that at all. So I think that's something that I should probably. I, like, I would be, I'm, I'm interested in that. I'm interested in that too.
- [62:07]
Michael Chernow
Yeah. Like, if Alzheimer's runs in your family, lion's mane is one of the only things that can help slow neurodegeneration with age. It's so, it's so amazing for your brain.
- [62:15]
Host
Well, we'll, we'll, we'll throw super mush for sure in the show notes. This was such a good combo. I, you know, I was very, I was really, I mean, I, I have a few podcasts lined up today and this one I was like, very excited about because I do, I think that it's, there's, there's. I have yet to meet someone that has said this is a bad idea for you. That's the facts. I like, there's not a single Person in sobriety, as a matter of fact, and not in sobriety, like in recovery through the 12 steps. And not. And I obviously I'm not talking to like newly sober people, right? I'm not talking to like someone who's got like three years of sobriety. Congratulations, by the way. Three years sober and clean. And recovery is like amazing, right? I'm talking to people that are in long term sobriety that have probably explored this firsthand or have thought about it themselves. Like, is this something that could potentially just like evolve this journey of recovery and self awareness that I've been on, you know? So you're awesome. Thank you.
- [63:29]
Michael Chernow
It's so great to see you.
- [63:30]
Host
You too.
- [63:31]
Michael Chernow
So great to see you.
- [63:32]
Host
Thank you guys, gals, all of you, all shapes, sizes, places, wherever you are. I hope this conversation sparked an interest for you and potentially educated you a little bit on this really interesting genre of self exploration that I have become way more interested in in regards to whether or not it's right for me. I don't know anybody who I have discussed this with and I've really been talking to a lot of people about this that have had experiences themselves that have said, oh yes, I did a hero dose of psilocybin and couldn't wait to do the next one. No one has said that to me. Actually, people have said, I don't know if I'll ever do it again, but it was the most profound experience that I've had. So with that, I'm not telling anybody to do or not to do. I obviously have not done this. I mean, I did when I was, you know, using it recklessly as a child in active addiction. But I've, I have not done, done this intentionally with the idea of, of potential therapeutic outcomes. I am a flawed human like all of us, and I have really done many things along this path to try and be. I know this is cliche, the best version of myself I can be. I actually believe that that is a, that is a path that I have sort of put my, my, my, my, my North Star towards. That's why I'm doing the podcast. That's why I have Ali here to really just get educated, to really learn more. Learn more. So share this podcast with someone who you care about. That would mean the world to me. That is the only rent I ask you to pay for listening to the creatures. Have a podcast. Obviously if you want to give us a five star rating and review, that would be dope. But really I'm grateful for you for subscribing for tuning in, for the being on this journey with us. Until the next one, y', all, peace.