← Mayim Bialik's Breakdown
Mayim Bialik's Breakdown
Psychedelics Expert: Can Microdosing Help the Body to Heal? Explore the Mental & Physical Health Benefits & How to Feel Better.
01:42:50
James Fadiman, PhD (the "father" of modern microdosing) & Jordan Gruber, J.D., M.A. (coauthor of Microdosing for Health, Healing, and Enhanced Performance) are here to unlock the secrets of microdosing psychedelics! Learn how microdosing can dramatically enhance your creativity, your productivity, ease social anxiety, and even transform chronic pain, depression, and trauma. James and Jordan break down the benefits and risks of microdosing and how microdosing could really work for you. Discover the mind-blowing difference between microdosing and full psychedelic experiences, why psychedelics are often called "the most powerful substance for mental effects ever discovered," and the life-changing self-healing benefits that could completely reshape your health and performance. James and Jordan discuss microdosing protocol and how to do so safely to see improvements to your mental health! Ready to see if microdosing is right for you? You won’t want to miss this episode of MBB!
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- [00:00]
Mayim Bialik
Is it possible that we are denying people potent and valuable medicine because of some politician with a stick up his ass?
- [00:07]
James Fadiman
Microdoses do not get you high. High doses get you high. If you're feeling a little high, by definition that is an overdose. Microdoses make your system run more effectively, more efficiently, reduce pain, reduce inflammation. Microdoses seem to be as beneficial for depression as they are for chronic pain. Certain conditions where science isn't doing a good job like Long Covid, it seems to be able to make a difference. We're getting reports from dementia community investigation.
- [00:41]
Mayim Bialik
Is what we've been forced to do because of the restrictions made honestly based on some very outdated and inappropriate perceptions about drug use in general and psychedelic use in particular.
- [00:55]
James Fadiman
As far as we can tell from maybe 10,000 reports, it seems to improve the body's capacity to self heal, which is, after all, what the body is really best at. People with trauma who can't get help, who can't afford help, can look at the possibility of taking a small bite of mushroom to get some relief.
- [01:15]
Mayim Bialik
Why wouldn't we want our government to support that? Hi, I'm Mayim Bialik.
- [01:26]
Jonathan Cohen
I'm Jonathan Cohen.
- [01:27]
Mayim Bialik
Welcome to our breakdown. This is the place where we break things down so you don't have to. Jonathan, what if I told you you could live a life with an overall sense of peace?
- [01:37]
Jonathan Cohen
I like peace.
- [01:38]
Mayim Bialik
What if I told you you could be less irritated with loved ones? You could feel more engaged in conversations? Maybe you'd like to feel excited about things in your life. Maybe you'd like to actually enjoy socializing or enjoy socializing without feeling the need to drink. Maybe you'd like to be able to focus more on what's happening rather than stressing about what happened in the past or what might happen in the future. What would life be like if you could enjoy things without needing to also have your phone, TV or some other distraction at hand? What if you felt a desire to be more of the self that you believe you were supposed to be? What if you could experience less headaches? What if you could stop grinding your teeth? What if you stopped using food for comfort? If I answered yes to any of these things, I would barely recognize myself.
- [02:40]
Jonathan Cohen
If you answered yes to all of those things, what would happen?
- [02:43]
Mayim Bialik
Today's episode is going to talk about something that in many cases is controversial, in many cases is illegal. But the risk to reward ratio for what we're going to talk about today is enormous and potentially transformative.
- [03:02]
Jonathan Cohen
You were hesitant to broach this topic. You didn't want it to feel like, here's the magic bullet solution. You've been sort of anti this trend when you've heard about the fact that Silicon Valley people have been using it to be more productive and executives are using it to get into that flow state and artists are using it in ways that they describe a burst of creativity and ability to drop in to their creative state.
- [03:34]
Mayim Bialik
But I may have had a change of heart and you may as well. The it that we are discussing is microdosing. And we're not talking about just like going to a party, doing it crazy, eating chocolate that you don't know where it came from. We're talking about reasoned out, researched and well thought about intention with protocols, with protocols regarding the ingestion of teeny, teeny, teeny, teeny tiny amounts of psychedelic substances that do not get you high. Unfortunately for those of you who want to get high, that's not what this is for. They do not make you hallucinate. They do not make you leave your body and end up in the ER thinking that you're dying. We are talking about microdosing in a reasonably thought out manner that involves an examination of of data that has been collected in many cases outside of the bounds of what the government deems legal or appropriate. So we are not here to provide medical advice, we're not here to provide legal advice. We encourage people to speak to doctors and practitioners before engaging in any form of microdosing. Psychedelics are still illegal in many places. We are not trying to encourage anything illegal. But we are here to welcome James Fadiman, who has for half a century dedicated his life to the understanding of the neurochemical and psychological influences that we can come under when using psychedelics. And in particular, along with Jordan Gruber, they're going to be talking about the new world of microdosing and what it means for a variety of of conditions that can be alleviated. So we are here to welcome them so that they can answer all the hard questions about are we all just getting high all the time? Is anyone actually working on their issues? Is this a panacea cure? What are the dangers of microdosing and what are the psychological dangers of actually feeling good? Do you have to take these things forever or what's the protocol? What does that even mean? Why is everyone talking about this and is it a safe alternative to alcohol?
- [06:02]
Jonathan Cohen
It could also be an alternative to SSRIs and other medications that people are taking in this whack a mole approach to health, when really what's happening is that their basic systems are not functioning properly. They may be inflamed and this may be a way to alleviate that.
- [06:19]
Mayim Bialik
We're going to talk about the science, we're going to talk about the neurochemistry, we're going to talk about neuroplasticity and neurogenesis and what it means for a potentially new perspective on the way we view our health. So it's really an honor to welcome James Fadiman and Jordan Gruber to the Breakdown. Break it down.
- [06:40]
James Fadiman
There you are.
- [06:41]
Jordan Gruber
Hello.
- [06:42]
Mayim Bialik
We're very excited to have you here. The. The rise in the interest in microdosing and the rise in the interest in general in psychedelics is something that for those of us who live in Los Angeles, you kind of, you know, just hear about at your local coffee shop and it's become a larger national conversation as well. This book is, is absolutely the definitive guide. And I wonder if you can sort of start by telling us your mission. Obviously you've both been part of this world for decades. What is your mission in terms of putting this book out the way you are putting it out, and why now?
- [07:23]
James Fadiman
The mission is obviously to share information in detail, maximizing safety and effectiveness for the quite remarkable wide range of conditions that microdosing helps. It doesn't fit the classic high dose world at all and therefore it needs to have its own empire, so to speak. And that we are putting out the best information we have at this very moment because the field is changing very.
- [07:57]
Mayim Bialik
Quickly and microdosing is, you know, ingesting teeny, teeny, tiny, non psychedelic doses of drugs that are psychedelics by classification and by their chemistry that in many cases have been deemed problematic, dangerous, illegal, um, in many cases have a very bad reputation. My mother will be watching this and saying, these are a bunch of hippies. And I left that behind in the 60s. Why is that man wearing a collared shirt talking about this? So we're going to be talking about mostly microdosing of, of mushrooms, but also microdosing of lsd, which I promise is not as scary as it sounds. Maybe you can start by talking about the difference between microdosing LSD and mushrooms.
- [08:45]
Jordan Gruber
Before we go there, I want to present you with a concept which is that most of what people have done with psychedelics since the sixties in Aldous Huxley might really be a kind of overdose. And that at the microdose level, 1/10 to 1/20 of a standard recreational dose, you have this really broad swath of benefits both in the physical and mental conditions and in enhanced Performance and the other thing where, you know, you see great visualizations and things change and you're thinking differently and all those crazy things happen, maybe that's really a kind of overdose. And this is where we need to kind of pull back to get the full value from these medicines.
- [09:24]
Mayim Bialik
I really appreciate that. Before I ask you to talk about the difference between LSD and mushrooms, I want to dip a little bit deeper into this because, you know, for many people those experiences are transformative. I mean, I definitely know people who, you know, have had very bad trips and have had really bad episodes and you know, sometimes you do end up in the er. It's a thing that happens. But also, can you speak a little bit to what happens at those doses that many people also find therapeutic transformative?
- [09:53]
James Fadiman
Well, I put in 40 or 50 years looking exactly at the high dose world, have a book out and all the usual stuff. This is not the same thing. This is. Imagine someone says, well, alcohol makes you sick, makes you vomit and makes you say stupid things. And you say, well, I had half a glass of beer, should I be frightened? And I guess I'm talking to your mother now, right? The answer is half a glass of beer is very different from a full fifth of tequila. So when someone says, well, it's all the same, the answer is, no, it's not. We're looking at a different, a different frequency, so to speak, in which the effects are different, the mental effects are less. There are no visualizations, there are no magnificent moments where God says, I have decided to speak only to you. There are no anacondas that eat you alive. All of the excitement of high doses are missing. Also, the transformative psychodynamic amazements are also missing. What we found that many of the improvements that people want in mental and physical health they can have without all the fuss, without all the excitement and without all the money.
- [11:13]
Mayim Bialik
Awesome. So talk a little bit about the difference between microdosing LSD versus mushrooms if.
- [11:20]
James Fadiman
You match doses correctly. Almost none. Now that's from straight science. We have two wonderful studies, one that says there's no difference from all the physiological measures, except psilocybin lasts less time, which we all knew. Another wonderful study took all the mental conditions they could imagine and found no difference between LSD and psilocybin, except that psilocybin didn't last as long. Okay, now let's put science aside and let's look at what we call real world evidence. It is definitely agreed on throughout the psychedelic world, which is millions of people, that LSD is Better for conditions that use, that you want mental acuity, that you're interested in problem solving, that you're looking at abstractions, that you're looking at thinking about, and that psilocybin is better for issues of emotional concern, of mental illness, and for things of what they would say of the heart. Psilocybin is from a living organism and that might be an enormous difference.
- [12:29]
Jordan Gruber
So another way to put that is that LSD is more of a non specific amplifier. You can take it and go with it wherever you want to go. Psilocybin containing mushrooms almost seem to want to teach you and heal you and give you what you need spiritually and emotionally. And on the pragmatic level, while LSD is getting harder to find and psilocybin containing mushrooms are getting easier to grow and more abundant, there are a couple of. With mushrooms, it's a little dicier because there are different cultivars or varieties, some of which have three times as much psilocybin in them as others. Also, it turns out that the health of somebody's liver and stomach and intestines affects how high they will get from the same amount of mushrooms. So it takes a little bit more working that out. And also, even with a micro dose, which is a very small amount, between 0.05 and 0.3 grams, or 50 milligrams and 300 milligrams, some people have a bit of stomach queasiness. But there's a way to handle that by using lemon juice to put it in for a while and that gets rid of most of that problem.
- [13:36]
Mayim Bialik
Sounds a lot more labor intensive than I thought when I was reading. It's like a tincture and the lemon and the thing like I get why people just want to like, you know, take an edible or smoke a joint. This is a little bit more of a precise science.
- [13:52]
James Fadiman
Well, it isn't that it's precise. It's. We're dealing with a living organism and we're dealing with, you know, when you buy apples, you don't say, God, it's really hard. I wish I just had a, an artificial apple. What we're looking at is that psilocybin is something that you need to know a little bit more, or you simply have to get it from a source which is trustworthy, which is no different than any other pharmaceutical or environmental.
- [14:21]
Mayim Bialik
I'm trained in neuroscience, so this whole book had me thinking about what's actually going on on a neurochemical level. You have to kind of wait till you get to the end of the book to talk a little bit about what's going on. But, um, are there different, you know, can you talk a little bit about the difference between LSD and mushrooms in terms of substrates and what's being actually activated?
- [14:44]
James Fadiman
Well, again, very little. There's very little difference. These are called classical psychedelics. It includes mescaline, which comes from different kinds of cactus, and there are other substances. The general rule of thumb at the microdose level, there's very little difference. And there's very little difference as far as we know. And we don't know much from conventional science doing these comparisons. It's a very rare study that compares one psychedelic to another, perhaps because funding is harder to get.
- [15:19]
Mayim Bialik
And we've had Rick Doblin on, so we've talked a lot about that, I guess, you know, sort of my interest is, you know, when you describe the different sort of states that you can be in with microdosing, LSD versus mushrooms, that, of course, makes me think what's being activated? What system is being tapped into chemically? But we'll get to that a little bit later. Jordan, you used the word high. Jonathan says I sound like an old Republican if I refer to this as high. Jonathan refers. Jonathan prefers me to call it adjusted. You're in an adjusted state. State. Do you like using the word high when we talk about this state?
- [15:57]
James Fadiman
No, because. Let's be clear, because it's easy to get sloppy here. Microdoses do not get you hot. I'll just do it one more way. High doses get you high. That's why they're called high doses. Microdoses make your system run more effectively, more efficiently, Reduce pain, reduce inflammation. They have a lot of effects. But what we know is, and again, we go mention about five times throughout the book, is if you're feeling a little high, by definition, that is an overdose. That is too much.
- [16:37]
Jordan Gruber
So it's more like you're on a little bit of coffee and you are aware of that. So when Jim first used the word subperceptual, which stuck and which everybody uses, that was a bit of a mistake because most people are aware if they're on a microdose. And this is one of the reasons the science is so hard to blind any type of psychedelic, including microdoses. So you are aware that you're on a little bit of something. But in my own case, I can tell you because I'm not only speaking theoretically about microdoses. I very much know the difference if I am on just below the threshold or just Above. And I can kid myself, but I can tell because I get distracted and I want to do fun things, and whatever I was doing might not be the right focus anymore. So Jim is exactly right. You're not high, you're not inebriated, you're not experiencing any major changes of consciousness, any strange mental ideations or visuals or any of that. If you've done that much, then it's too much. And that's really the thing about microdosing is for the most part, less is more. If people try more than the recommended range, it's not going to work for them. And all the incredible benefits that you see in all the health conditions and all that, those are mostly experienced by people who are very conservative and are doing, you know, the Fadiman protocol. That's a day on and then two days off. And after seven or eight weeks, you take off a couple of weeks. And so for microdosing, it's being conservative and not wanting to be high and not doing that where, you know, the best results seem to come from.
- [18:08]
Jonathan Cohen
I want to take a step back to someone who is somewhat new to the conversation. Maybe they have heard about the term. They've never tried it before. They may never have had a psychedelic experience. Not that. And I know that they're not related per se. How would someone start to consider whether or not they should engage in something like this if it's right for them? As Mime and I were going through the book, one of her concerns was that it's a very wide swath of people that it can potentially help. But how would someone start to evaluate if, again, it's outside of their experience to date, that it could help them?
- [18:52]
James Fadiman
Well, they would start, for example, of paying attention to this program. This program says you need information before you start. You don't go into the pharmacy and say, you got any good stuff lately? And I don't want anything with a label on it. Okay? You say, I would like this particular substance for this particular condition, because I have been informed by my physician or by my friends or by my spouse or in many cases by my children that this might be beneficial. And if it's not beneficial, I will probably have no reaction at all.
- [19:31]
Jordan Gruber
We see the book as presenting sort of a buffet of possibilities and options. We're certainly not telling anyone that they should do that. And if anyone approaches us and says, you know, I want to, but we stop them there and say, that's all you need. You're not, you know, it's not right.
- [19:45]
James Fadiman
Whatever your reason for not taking is good enough for us.
- [19:50]
Jonathan Cohen
What brought you specifically to. To your own. Your own journey with this?
- [19:54]
James Fadiman
Well, what brought me into this is that I had lunch with someone named Robert Forte, F O R T E, who told me that Albert Taufman, who developed LSD in his. I guess his 90s, was saying, I use small doses when I. And I. Then I use it when I want to go into the woods and think. And then I was in Santa Cruz, California, which it is easy to find people interested in experimenting with new ways to use psychedelics. And so I suggested to some people that they try 10 micrograms of LSD. And they said in the next few days when they came back and told me, said, hey, man, that was really cool. And then they said, you know, this is the day after, and I feel as good as I did yesterday. And I didn't get high at all. I just feel good. That was where it started. And it began to be explored by other people. Someone I met when I was giving a speech in the Midwest, said, hey, you know, it'd be really cool is if we sent like a hundred, like, tabs of, you know, lsd, but at the microdose level. And then I'll send them, and we'll send them a notebook and a pen. And a pen, and we'll get reports. And I said, you're saying I should send illegal drugs through the mail with my return address? He said, no, no, man, I'll do the sending. So we began to get reports from really all over the country in some detail about the effects of these very small doses. And that's really how it started. And yes, the interest is extreme wider than LA. According at least to Google, there were 3 million searches last year for the word microdose. It's out there.
- [21:48]
Jordan Gruber
So what happened really is Jim started, you know, no one in the world of psychedelic research was looking at this or really ever had. And with his already decades of experience, he started looking at and doing what someone trained like him knows how to do. And reports started coming in and a signal started building, and before you knew it, there were reporters asking about people coding in Silicon Valley with microdosing and articles and magazines. And it kept building and building all the way up to Michael Pollan and Ayala Waldman. And it became bigger and bigger because it actually works in my case, because Jim and I have been friends since about 1990. He told me about it in 2009, shortly after, and I thought, oh, okay, I'll try this. And I found it to be very Effective in all the ways we're talking about.
- [22:37]
Mayim Bialik
So is this, Would you call this Nature's Best Kept Secret?
- [22:44]
James Fadiman
If I was looking for a title for a good magazine article, I certainly would. Except that we know that it's been the secret has been discovered by indigenous people for thousands of years. But in terms of the culture that we both grew up in, that we all three grew up in, it wasn't noticed. It wasn't noticed because the high doses are extraordinary and you know, extraordinary both in their effects and that millionths of a gram can do anything. They were the most powerful substance certainly for mental effects ever discovered. And that took the spotlight and that also took lots of my career because it was so exciting and my own life had been transformed. So that microdosing is remarkable in once you kind of strip away the excitement that we're now expressing, it's very uninteresting. You just feel better or get better, you stop being depressed. Your neuropathy doesn't hurt as much. Certain conditions where medical science isn't doing a good job, like Long Covid, it seems to be able to make a difference. We're getting reports from dementia. And one of the major scientists in England, David Nutt, said of it, anything that has that many reported effects I'm very suspicious of. And what we said is absolutely right, Dr. Nutt. Unless you stop thinking of it as a pharmaceutical and imagine that it might be better considered like a vitamin. Nobody is upset when you say a vitamin. It helps all systems just as exercise, you know, exercise isn't for a condition. Exercise improves the whole body. And so it looks like, as far as we can tell from maybe 10,000 reports, it seems to improve the body's capacity to self heal, which is after all what the body is really best at.
- [24:47]
Mayim Bialik
So the book is, you know, kind of goes category by category, talks about all of the different kinds of conditions that people report significant changes in. Cognitive enhancement is one of these categories. There's interesting discussion about ADD and adhd, and chronic pain is another one that's fascinating. This is a huge market, I think you quote, you know, 50 million adults in the US experience chronic pain. And this means pain that kind of persists because of a perseveration of your brain and not necessarily a physiological component. You know, that's an example of something that, you know, big Pharma makes its living out of, you know, selling drugs to people who have chronic pain. It often doesn't work. It gets people addicted. And we, you know, have a national epidemic of overdose because of a Lot of these medications talk a little bit about sort of what, what we think is happening with microdosing in something like chronic pain.
- [25:53]
James Fadiman
Well, chronic pain can also be defined as inflammation. Anti inflammatories from aspirin on up relieve pain. Microdosing or microdoses of classic psychedelics have been found in the laboratory and in rats and in humans to be anti inflammatory. So it should be actually not a surprise that it reduces pain. What is less well known is that enormous number of mental illnesses also measure with as part of the symptomatology, inflammation. So it is less surprising to us that microdoses seem to be as beneficial for depression as they are for chronic pain.
- [26:45]
Mayim Bialik
I found the, the depression conversation kind of the most compelling. And you know, we, we talk here a lot about medications work for some people, they don't work for others. We had Johann Hari on, who obviously has a really fascinating and well researched perspective. We've talked about placebo effect, we've talked about the problems with the classic SSRI studies. You know what's also true and you don't really get into it in the book, so I kind of wanted you to speak to it today. You know what's also true is that a lot of people are depressed. A lot of people are living in an overstressed world. They feel that the pressures of our culture are too much. The demands from work, from family, from, you know, expectations. A lot of people, their, their finances are struggling in the economy, Many people are unhappy and many turn to recreational drugs to quote, feel better. Many use and abuse alcohol. Many get lost in their phones and are scrolling on social media. It occurred to me as I was reading this, are we all just depressed and we all deserve to feel a little bit better and this is a better solution than being put on a drug like an SSRI that might not even work?
- [28:08]
James Fadiman
Well, I talk about what I call a risk reward ratio, which is what's the risk of taking a microdose versus say an ssri? SSRI is, we already know the risk. You spent lots of programs on them. It's a lot. In fact, if you read the little eight point stuff you get at the pharmacy that tells you all the different ways you can die if you miss a dose. It's scary. Microdoses seem to have remarkably few additional effects which are called side effects. And they have for most people in many conditions, improvement because they're anti inflammatory, etc. They improve the functioning of the whole system. And the whole system is very good at repairing and restoring and recovering from all kinds of conditions, including ones that conventional medication, because it's so symptom focused, simply can't do.
- [29:05]
Jordan Gruber
So microdosing does three things overall that we know of. At least one is this, it has an anti inflammatory effect because all the psychedelics are strong anti inflammatories. A second is neuroplasticity, which we haven't spoken about yet. And the third is that they tend to generally bring you back to a state of equilibrium. And as Jim likes to point out, a lot of people in the report say, you know, I'm back, it's the me that I love. So we wrote another book four years ago called your symphony of selves that talks about different parts of who we are and taking these subpersonalities seriously. We know that psychedelics tamping down the default mode network, which is your sort of ordinary sense of self when you're not focusing on anything and what you're like. So if you have a little bit neuroplasticity, more neuroplasticity going on and the default mode network is toned down, then microdosing can bring you back into parts of yourself that enjoy life more. And you can remember some of that and you can sort of, you know, the rewire metaphor is a bit, you know, especially with you as a neuroscientist, but it's the best words we have. But you can, you know, once you remember that part of who you are, you can kind of double down and do things that will bring you back more of the parts of you that really enjoy being alive.
- [30:20]
Mayim Bialik
I'd like to ask a difficult question and I hope that you'll take it as it's coming from a good place. I'm a lot more fun with a glass of wine in me. Everyone enjoys me more. My children think I'm a better parent. I'm nicer to them, I'm better to myself. Jonathan for sure prefers to spend time with me with a glass of wine in me. I choose not to drink because of other effects, namely apparently after you're 40, you just can't sleep if you drink. If you're me, I also have a physical allergy. Like my palms itch and I get a rash. So I'm the kind of person who, I'll just be honest. I'm a, I'm a. I'm a dymic person. I never have operated in my God given life at a happy level. It's just not how I'm wired. I enjoy things. I can have pleasure like, oh, okay, that's fun, you know, but to be honest, you know, I didn't drink till I was 21 and I realized I'm a better me when I'm like, like not tipsy, but it's. It removes that veil. I also have similar experiences with pot, which are less interesting because you get paranoid and then you think you have to go to the hospital. Like, that's my chemistry. Also. I'm just being this person. The thing that worries me is if I'm putting myself in a state where, as you said, all the things you said, Jord, that sounds amazing, the self that I should be, I just feel better. Like, I'm not high. I'm just a better me. If when that wears off, and presumably even on the protocols that you describe in the book, at some point it's gonna wear off if I then realize that I need to start doing that again. To me, that is the definition of addiction. The withdrawal symptoms are so significant that the only solution is to return to the drug. Meaning I don't like being me, so I would like to be the person I am when I'm microdosing. Is that just that I was made a little faulty and I need a little help. I'm asking you, like, directly, let's take.
- [32:24]
James Fadiman
It from where you're coming from, which is I'm a normal, somewhat neurotic, somewhat depressed, somewhat aware of what's going on in the world human being. And I find, as people have for, you know, thousands and thousands of years, yes, alcohol at a small enough dose makes you less aware of all that. Okay. And also overcomes social anxiety to some extent. Etc, etc, etc. Now, unfortunately, the new data, as we know, on alcohol is a lot will kill you quickly and a little bit will kill you slowly. It has, let us say, on the risk reward ratio, the risks keep growing as the science improves. Okay? So let's be aware of that. Now, the question you're basically asking is, gee, if microdoses make me feel better, aren't they just another addicting drug? And it's a very realistic question. And fortunately, the nice thing about having thousands of reports and literally millions of people using is we have some good, good reports. Psychedelics have one curious side effect. High doses and low doses, they're anti addictive. What that means is that if you take the same amount too long, you will lose the effects. And if you up the dose, it doesn't work. Okay? So the way people have evolved using psychedelics. Using psychedelics is once in a while, because it takes a whole day, among other problems. With microdosing, there are what are called protocols are scheduled or how often you take them. None of those schedules are every day. So you start by something you're taking once every couple of days, once every other day. And no matter what you're taking, you after four to six weeks, you take a couple of weeks off.
- [34:25]
Mayim Bialik
Can you explain why? Why is there this protocol? Why can't I just take it when I want it? Why can't I take it every day? Everybody would love me in that mood every day.
- [34:33]
James Fadiman
Well, two reasons. One is the first thing we found is that the effect lasts for most people. The effect of noticing it just as a normal person without any symptoms, you're not trying to cure anything. You're just curious and it's fun. And you notice what Waldman called a really good day. And we've all had them, even if we're very depressed. And at the end of that very good day, what we found is people will say, oh, yeah, I forgot I microdosed today. Meaning it didn't intrude into the day. They just noticed that they ate a slightly better breakfast, that the traffic didn't bother them so much, that the SOB two doors down, two cubicles down, that they were nice to them, which was surprising. After work, they noticed, they did one more set of reps. As one of my friends said, the only way people can tell I'm microdosing is the light level on my laptop. I lower it a little bit. They're nicer with their kids and they have better sex. Okay, now you say, well, gee, don't I want that every day? And the answer is if taking it every day would lead to that, maybe. But what really happens, and this is why we call these things something that are healing. They're not a symptom suppressant, which alcohol is, is your system is getting used to functioning at that level. It doesn't take it every day, but so your system takes over and handles it the same way. And what we found in depression, as you read, is for many people, they take it for four to six weeks and then as suggested in their schedule, they take a couple of weeks off and they remain not depressed. So why. And they say, well, why would I go back on the anti kind of depressant microdose if I'm not depressed and they stop, other people will stop. And after a few weeks, they will find that their depression is creeping back in and they'll do another cycle. There are differences between those two groups, and we do have some evidence. But what we're seeing is, you know, at the moment I've had a little bit of surgery and I'm taking an antibiotic, but I'm going to stop because it's done its job. It's protected me from having an infection from the surgery I don't need to take. Just gee, the antibiotic really works. It prevents my having an infection. Why don't I keep taking antibiotics forever? And we all know that's a little nutty because we're taking it until the improvement is in. So that's a great difference between, remember, most medications are symptom suppressing. They prevent you feeling pain, nausea, depression, whatever. And the reason you take them every day is because as soon as they are excreted by your system, since they have done nothing to improve the underlying condition, it's great for marketing, it's great for sales. It's not good for health.
- [37:55]
Mayim Bialik
I mean, this is a beautiful point. And Andrew Weil has talked about your book and we're a huge fan of his. You know, for many of us, Andrew Weil was the first introduction to the fact that you actually have the. Your body has the ability to heal. Your body has the ability to generate better states if given the right kind of environment. So I think this is a really important aspect that, and, you know, I've, for most of my life was put on one medication or a dozen others, you know, to try and fix. Right. All of the things. And look for many of us, for, for people who are in a state where they are suicidal, where they are, you know, at a place where they don't want to be institutionalized or where there's a fear of that, you know, certain medications are suppressing symptoms so that they can function, you know, in the world. But I think this is a beautiful point that most psychiatric drugs are literally looking to lower the presentation of symptoms. But unless there are tools that are learned when you take away that medication, they weren't designed to reprogram the environment of your nervous system. They were designed to stop you from having symptoms.
- [39:12]
James Fadiman
Very nice. I like that.
- [39:15]
Jordan Gruber
You know, an allied point is that most of the people that we know who microdose over the long term end up taking less and less, not more and more.
- [39:24]
Mayim Bialik
Okay, so I'm going to, now I'm going to bring up another hard thing. I'm bringing up all the hard things. But you're both doing great. I'm sure you've had worse challenges. So you know that this is like a thing now that like everybody's taking mushrooms in their chocolate when you go to parties, it's on the table. It's on the side table. This blew my mind. Like, what is happening? I have a kid at Santa Cruz. I know there's things going on there. I know things are going on. Many people are doing this in a non clinical, non, you know, kind of therapeutic way. Right. So I want you to be judgmental of those people on my podcast. That's why I brought you here.
- [40:06]
James Fadiman
Okay? Okay. Those are people who want to go to a party and feel better and socialize better and not say things that they are condemned by everyone else for the next eight years and not get sick and throw up on the way home. Those are bad people. Okay? We should allow them to not make themselves healthier. And they. What? I know, and I know this is Los Angeles and I love this. It's now being. Microdoses are often now served at weddings in The Los Angeles.
- [40:39]
Mayim Bialik
100%.
- [40:41]
James Fadiman
Because if you. If you've ever been to a wedding, and we all have, and we all know that someone got drunk at the wedding and we don't want to talk about it, and it was probably a relative of the bride or groom, and it was awful. Okay. A lot of people have figured out that if you go to a wedding and you simply have something that makes you a little more sociable, a little kinder to yourself, relaxes your muscle tension, reduces your shoulder pain, relieves your headache, perhaps allows you to get off your antidepressant medication, and at the end of that evening, your system is not only normal, but a little better than normal. And you will again, the data is fairly clear. You will probably sleep better and you will not regret that you went to the wedding.
- [41:29]
Mayim Bialik
I mean, I find weddings insufferable. So I would just want it at home.
- [41:33]
James Fadiman
It'll be better if you go to one where nobody is trying to. There's no excessiveness.
- [41:39]
Mayim Bialik
So is microdosing the new alcohol?
- [41:43]
James Fadiman
No, because the old alcohol was based on that you wanted to get right to the place where you still thought you were having a good time and people thought you were smart and not flip over till you notice as you're lying on the floor that maybe you aren't as smart as you thought you were. Alcohol is a intoxicant. It is something that blurs capacity. Nobody says, you know, I'm going to take the legal. The lsat, the exam to get into law school. You know, I want to relax during that. So I'm just going to drink a lot before I go. Yeah, okay. Because what we know Is it lowers cognitive effectiveness being using some classy words that nobody cares about, okay, if instead. And again, we have lots and lots of experiences in our files of students saying, you know, I used to get bees, now I microdose, I take better notes, I'm even willing to listen to the worst of my teachers. I get PowerPoints faster and I'm getting A's. That's, that's not terrible. And I'm off of Adderall for the first time since my parents put me on it in high school so that they could get me into a better college.
- [42:57]
Jonathan Cohen
What do we think is happening to improve cognitive enhancement in that way? Is it literally just the anti inflammatory properties?
- [43:06]
Jordan Gruber
No, it's. I mean, we know that microdosing improves. We have a new term called neural complexity. A friend of ours named Connor Murray is doing some tests with that and it's shown certainly that microdoses work to do that. We know it enhances neuroplasticity. We have brain scans and we have blood flow and we have BDNF markers. We know all of it that microdosing is similar, but at a much lower, similar signal but at a lower amplitude. So what's neuroplasticity? It's the ability of neurons and populations of neurons to wire with each other differently and in new and different ways. So people's. It's really kind of like your brain and mind are being opened up a bit and you can literally make more connections. And we're just at the beginning of understanding how this works. I did some heavy science reading last summer and learned that there's six or seven different ways that neurons connect to each other. You know, radio waves is one of them little packets that go through and move through. It's not just what we've all been taught, although that's really true too. So if you're having more neuroplasticity and you are focused in taking, you know, and using it, you, you in effect, you know, have more cognitive capacity available.
- [44:16]
James Fadiman
So we have a term called flow. And flow means that space, when everything is working as well as possible in your mind, writers hover around the possibility habit, because suddenly they get through the piece and so do people. In cognitive science and in mathematics and higher sciences, it's a very normal term for really being able to focus for a long period of time. It looks like, according again, only to hundreds of reports. We're not talking about laboratory statistics. We're just talking about people who use it in their daily work or in their graduate studies and what they report is that if they are on a schedule of microdosing, they are not more creative as in more brilliant, but they are longer creative, as in being able to focus for a longer period of time successfully. So we're not changing the kind of IQ level, but we're changing the amount of capacity that you put towards a problem.
- [45:17]
Jordan Gruber
And we're also changing the ability of people to be in the part of them, the self. Again, going back to your symphony of selves that is able to get into flow and that is really good at focusing and being creative. They can kind of land in that part and stay there.
- [45:29]
Mayim Bialik
Well, and I think that's sort of a place where the default mode network comes in, because there is an enormous component that microdosing seems to be tapping into. Things like self consciousness, right? Things like fear, psychic fear. Like, am I saying the right thing? Am I thinking the right thing? Can I do this? The tape that plays in your head, which was put there by your parents and all of your ancestors and all of the neuroses that you know have been inherited. The script that is playing in your head all the time when you're in your most insecure, your most fearful, if that gets to get quiet, right? And at a microdose level, if we're able to quiet down that default mode network, but maintain cognitive accessibility, creative accessibility, what you're doing is you're allowing flow to happen without that self consciousness, the fear, the insecurity, all those voices in your head. So this is sort of the, the magic, you know, fulcrum point that microdosing is placing itself at. You know, what if we can quiet that default mode network and increase and just to sort of elaborate, and Andrew Huberman, who is a friend of ours, as it were, you know, he talks about this and you put it in the book. It's not neurogenesis per se. It's not even necessarily neuroplasticity. It's a catalyst for. For neuroplasticity. What it looks like is you're increasing the density of synapses, so you're allowing for more connection. You're increasing the dendrites, the dendritic spines. You know, the places that connections happen, are increased. There's also spinogenesis and dendritogenesis, the. The creation. And again, it's like putting more. When you think of, you know, SSRI is putting more serotonin in that synaptic cleft. This is more of everything. You talked about increasing the BDNF proteins. Also, you didn't mention, I mean, it's in the book Upregulation of Genes that are associated with plasticity and synaptogenesis. So you kind of have this whole system that's wiring itself for. For more connection. The things that people talk about at higher doses or at overdoses, as you say, are things that are. Are sort of manipulating your sensory experience in many cases. People do experience that as clarity, right? The sort of higher level clarity that you get. But what microdosing is offering is a micro clarity which, you know, if anyone's ever been in the flow, what if you could recreate that more often? It's potentially phenomenal. It might make you a billionaire in Silicon Valley, because apparently that's what they're all doing.
- [48:21]
Jordan Gruber
Well, and this is why we think, or at least I think, that in every creative and athletic endeavor that you can name, within five or 10 years, it will put people at the cutting edge and if it's competitive or not, who are going to be working with microdosing. And one more point is that psychedelics seem to suppress the mechanisms that normally keep entropy in the brain to a minimum. So there is an upwelling of energy and there may be more and new and different connections as this is going on.
- [48:53]
James Fadiman
Now let me, as Jordan and I. He's better at being theoretical and I'm better at telling other people's stories. And the one that comes. We just were. We were talking with Ben Greenfield a couple of weeks ago and he said he'd been interviewing long distance runners. These are the people who run 100 miles, and I don't even understand them at all, but I'm very impressed. And it is now well known, according to Ben and his guest in the ultra marathon world, that microdosing is almost a necessity because it allows longer runs. And then Ben had a whole wonderful biochemical explanation of the fat is metabolized at a different rate.
- [49:36]
Mayim Bialik
Why you want to run so much? That's what that God gave us. God gave us mushrooms. God gave us mushrooms that we can microdose. And you want to run more than 100 miles? Why?
- [49:48]
James Fadiman
No, these are people who are already running more than 100 miles.
- [49:51]
Jordan Gruber
Why are they doing this?
- [49:55]
James Fadiman
Let me give you an easier example that we can all identify with the beautiful early story that focused us on looking at things like social anxiety. Social anxiety is you don't feel good in social where other people are present. This was a college student and she said, you know, I'm going to give this an experimental try. So she said, I took a microdose and I went to shop at Target. And instead of keeping my hood on the whole time, taking forever to make my choices and dreading going through the line, I went and I looked at other people and I made my purchases and it wasn't difficult. And I chatted with people in the line, I said hello to the cashier. And I was basically no different than anybody else who was normally is normal. And that was her understanding of what she was looking at inside herself. And we don't know what are the neurological mechanisms that were, that were in play.
- [50:59]
Mayim Bialik
So as someone who, who lives with social anxiety and also is in the public eye, you know, I was on a very popular television show for 10 years and I kept getting nominated for Emmys. And everybody was like, this is amazing. It's the pinnacle of your career. And every time I got nominated, you get a phone call early in the morning from your publicist. Every time I got nominated, the first thing I thought was, I have to get a dress and I have to be around all of those humans. What am I gonna do? And I was sober every party I ever went to. And I wouldn't say I was miserable. I suffered from the things that people with social anxiety suffer from. It was an insufferable situation. And now I'm thinking back, if everybody is microdosing, though, there's no variety of human experience. You're not going to have that person in the corner who you get to say, like, oh, that's an Asperger's girl. I'm going to date her. Everybody's going to seem like normal.
- [51:56]
Jordan Gruber
Argument that was made in listening to Prozac, you know, back 20 or 30 years ago. And, you know, you would might not have had all of the great genius throughout human history and the paintings and the works if everybody was happy. So we got to make sure that everybody's not happy.
- [52:09]
James Fadiman
Right. The other possibility is it's more as if everyone is an artist. They're not all going to paint the same painting. I find actually that mental illness is not as attractive as mental wellness.
- [52:25]
Mayim Bialik
Says you.
- [52:28]
Jonathan Cohen
You're going to have to come up with a new identity. I think you can do it.
- [52:32]
James Fadiman
I was looking at that when I was kind of know, looking at you before we did the show. I thought you are, you know, you're recovering and then you've got this long list and you would fit in our book with all the other people with long recovery list, except that you don't quite, you don't have yet the system to hold on to it. And at one point we Said, what if we imagined that microdosing is simply something that is available and that tends to improve the health of human beings. Are there anything else we can think of with that? Magnificent. Yes, I can think of several things. Exercise, good nutrition, good sleep, hydration. Hydration. Social relationships, that group, we all understand that if you have any of those, the assumption is everything else is going to be better. If I get enough sleep, I am not nasty. That doesn't, that doesn't mean I don't have, you know, I still have the ability to be nasty, but it isn't easily triggered. Okay, so if someone says, well, if the way you're thinking is everyone had enough sleep, the world would be healthier. And the answer is, you're absolutely right.
- [53:51]
Mayim Bialik
Well, the other way to say it is, you know, if, if we were living closer to a state of our natural, God given, love based humanity, we wouldn't all be suffering the way that we are. But most people, you know, are on somewhat of a hamster wheel. You know, we, we have a lot of people, you know, who, who we have guests on, on our show and we love talking to them about seize your inner artist and you shouldn't have a job that doesn't bring you joy all the time. And like, if it's not working for you, like move, you know, and the fact is, you know a lot of these things and there's been some very interesting articles specifically about, you know, like upper class, wealthy white women who are enjoying microdosing because it's making their lives tolerable. Because we were told if you have money and the husband and the two kids, everything will be fine. And guess what, wherever you go, there you are. We are all, you know, potentially suffering beings on this planet. Which leads to my next question. You know, you talk about, and I think it was your quote at the end of the book, nicer people increase hope and possibility. And this notion, you know, from the origins of our understanding of LSD research and the government clamping down on that, you know, the way I've heard it described is, you know, happy, enlightened people are very hard to make go to war. Right. And you know, my parents were anti Vietnam documentary filmmakers. Like I come from a civil rights background and like peace and love and all the good things, but many of us lose hope in that. Can you talk about this aspect of it in a way that doesn't just feel like let's all get stoned?
- [55:41]
James Fadiman
No, there's very simply, and I'm quoting Paul Stamets because he says it very simply, people who view psilocybin are nicer. He doesn't say they're terrific. He doesn't say they radiate peace, love and goodwill. He just says they're nicer. And what comes to mind is I have a couple of kids who have kids, but at one point I had a three year old and I'm working in this little teeny part of almost a closet in my house with a typewriter. And she comes in and I gently let her know to get the hell out of my space, okay? And she goes, and I hear her ask my wife, is daddy tired? Okay? Which is. She was aware that that wasn't normal behavior with her and therefore she figured there was some reason where I was off of my better self. So if microdosing allows people to be on their better self more often, it is a remarkable shift. Remember, we've had remarkable shifts in science and in medicine. Remember, the great breakthrough in hospitals was not medication, surgery or anything or equipment. It was washing your hands. And the person who originally suggested you should wash your hands was basically beaten out of the profession. So we're simply saying, here's something which has a pretty good risk reward ratio and doesn't seem to hurt people and if they take too much, they simply understand and see that. And therefore we're reporting real cases with real people in real situations because we think that's actually the end state of any breakthrough. It isn't when it's good. The antidepressant people who do have a problem of second rate drugs never have.
- [57:48]
Jordan Gruber
Long.
- [57:50]
James Fadiman
Long lasting reports of people using it. For years and years, those of you who are on antidepressants have been told by your physicians, if this one works and if it doesn't, I have others that are incredibly similar. You're on it for life. You say, well, what are the effects over 20 years? And they say, well, gee, I ran a Google search and there isn't any. None of these companies that sell you the medication have any long studies.
- [58:19]
Mayim Bialik
No, what they now do is they add another medicine and if your SSRI stops working right, they give you. It's like, I think it's like an anti, it's like a, it's an anti. Antipsychotic side effect. Exactly. But it's like, it's like, we'll keep, you know, stacking it.
- [58:34]
James Fadiman
And old people have some amazing number of medications. And if you kind of go down the list, three out of ten are to handle the side effects of three of the others. The symptom, suppression model is incredibly good economically. It's not ideal medically when you, you know, you've broken a limb and you get a, you get a cast and that works better. It's safer than your own arm. But at some point, the point of the cast is not to wear it forever and not to get new casts when they get old. The point is to allow the body to do natural healing and then it's absurd to keep wearing a vest.
- [59:16]
Mayim Bialik
That's a beautiful metaphor.
- [59:18]
Jonathan Cohen
And we've seen that the medical industrial complex has no financial incentive to help people heal on a long term basis or build up their underlying resistance to disease. We saw it during COVID We didn't hear anything about vitamin D, health, exercise, sleeping more, building your immune system. All we heard was prevent it at all costs and take a vaccine which is highly financially beneficial to the manufacturers of those vaccines. So in terms of an approach, I think we're very much in alignment. We do want to figure out what is the best way to build underlying health and resilience for everyone because we know that each one of our systems will improve if we do that. How does someone go about figuring out what their right dosage is? Because as you described, we want to avoid the psychedelic experience of psychedelics. And I assume everyone is a little bit different. So how do you go about finding that right sort of sweet spot in a do from a dosage standpoint?
- [60:29]
James Fadiman
Well, this will not surprise you, but it's different in everyone and it's different at different times in their life. And, and you need to find out, at the risk of a very silly metaphor, how much ice cream is a portion?
- [60:43]
Jonathan Cohen
None, because I'm lactose intolerant. But keep going, that's fine.
- [60:46]
James Fadiman
Okay. And there's all kinds of weird things that people like. I don't think anyone would like that you can eat. The point is, you have made an awareness that there's a whole class of things you can't have at all. And there's a whole other class of substitute things that you can have in moderation, but you have to keep checking. And that's what we do. I mean, one of the things that you. I learned in the restaurant business when I've done a lot of consulting and there was a wonderful guy who said we serve portions that are too large. And I thought, why would you do that? Waste, so forth and so on, so on. He said people feel better when they have more than enough to eat. That's. We're not selling food, we're selling comfort. Okay, so what we're looking at is microdoses allow people and again, you have to find out what's the right dose at the right time. And we are not discussing dose regimes or how amount on a program even as good as this, because we think people need to get the information in enough detail so they understand it and they can refer back to it. But again, the one thing we can say to people who view psychedelics, and that's by the way between 40 and 50 million Americans since psychedelics were made illegal, is you need to find out how it is with you at this time. The nice thing with microdoses, if you take too much, you'll know it and you'll just as you do with, with ice cream or turkey at Thanksgiving or champagne at weddings and so forth. You really, we will have very, very finely tuned. It's too much meters.
- [62:35]
Jonathan Cohen
And that's the answer that I was sort of thinking, thinking about because what it says is that in the learning about this protocol, you may get a little bit too much and then you back off and so you become aware of your relationship to it. It's almost, you know, not really possible to avoid getting a little bit too much to find that sweet spot.
- [62:56]
Jordan Gruber
So yeah, you want to start low and you want to go slow. You want to do it on a day, the first time, let's say, when you don't have any real world responsibilities whatsoever, on the off chance that you are the one in a hundred thousand people that has a major experience and a very, very small amount. I didn't even know that's possible. But so that's what we say. But one of the hard won pieces of information in the book is what the average dose that we recommend, what the high. We've even reduced the average suggested dose for psilocybin. It's down from what we used to say and all that stuff is in the book. And you do really want to start really low and just experience it. And in Reddit, interestingly, there are examples of people taking an order of magnitude less than what we recommend as our lowest dose, as our lowest dose and still having and you know, here's an interesting fact. Each microgram of LSD has 1.54 quadrillion molecules of LSD in it. So you're getting more than enough molecules if you're taking a few or several micrograms to hit, you know, every cell in the 40 trillion cells in the body and the 1/10 of those that LSD might affect.
- [64:09]
James Fadiman
So but let me go just back. We really have a little Mantra. And it's exactly what you're asking. And we agree. The mantra is start low, meaning start below what you think will have any effect at all. You don't start by saying, how much can I put in before I go nuts. Okay? It's the other way around. It's the way those of you who have had children know about new foods, which is, I've never tasted in my life. It's yucky. And you as a parent say, I just want you to have a little taste. And sometimes they say, oh, that wasn't so bad. And sometimes they say, I was right. The smallest taste is really yucky. So we as adults are capable of the same kind of behavior that we do with our children, which is you start a little taste, and you only go up if it isn't working well enough. And the desire to take more is one of the problems that we all have with things we like. I like. That's why overweight is an issue sometimes in this culture, not only because of the inferior food that we're offered, but because if it tastes good, our system is designed to nourish itself on things it likes. And microdosing, we say, yes, you feel good on this amount. You actually won't feel better on more than that. It's different. And so that's why we say, you really need to do your homework rather than kind of, you know, rather than just listen to us and say, okay, I know what to do.
- [65:50]
Mayim Bialik
The statistics, you know, in. In this country, which, you know, I think in many cases are underreported or. Or understood. Many, many people come from complicated homes. Would be the nicest way to say it. And many people grow up in homes where there's abuse. And as Gabor Mate and many of the, you know, wonderful people we've had on this podcast talk about, you know, trauma with a capital T or trauma with a small case T can change your physiology. It changes your nervous system's ability to take in information, to process emotions. For many people who have trauma, what it ends up looking like in their teens, in their twenties, and then beyond is, in many cases, depression. It's anxiety, it's nervous system dysregulation. What happens when those people who are reporting all the things that you'll report in depression, or what happens when those people, in theory, microdose. Can this work the same way? Are there other mechanisms that would need to be in place to help people who have trauma, you know, who have other kind of significant abuse that they're, you know, that. That's at the basis of their depression? Or is it kind of like all depression can benefit from it and maybe the brain will rewire and repair some of the damage done by abuse and trauma.
- [67:14]
James Fadiman
What we found, and again, I would say what we've found because we're not doing it to anybody. We don't give and haven't given psychedelic microdoses to people. We have reports from physicians who use them, from hospitals who use them, from people in native jungle areas who use them. Ibogaine, by the way, is used for improving hunting and improving sex, for example, in Africa. Okay? So we're dealing with a lot more information than you get from a scientific study which deliberately limits what you can get. So what we're seeing for hard conditions is some likelihood of, if not improvement, feeling a little better in some cases. We've had miraculous individual cases, many of which we talk about in one of our few numerical lookats, which woman's Phi Corb worked with me for some years and we had a group of 1500 people from around the world who wrote us before they microdosed. And after a month of microdosing. So we had pretty clean data. And what we found with depression was that about 80% of them reported a major improvement. Now understand, these weren't a normal group of depressed people. They were all treatment resistant depression because if an antidepressant was working, they wouldn't show up. So we're looking at the group that isn't doing well and at least with depression they're doing better. Now, we don't have a breakout of people with trauma because again, if you listen to Gabor mate, that's all of us. So it's a little hard to distinguish, but if you said to someone in severe trauma, do you think more sleep would be helpful? Improving your diet, would that be helpful? Getting enough exercise, do you think that would be helpful? It won't touch the trauma, okay? But it'll give you as much capacity to work with the trauma as possible. And then microdosing apparently seems to work at some of the mental illness symptoms. Now let's take something harder than trauma, which is ptsd, maxotrauma, okay? Where remember, we're losing more soldiers every day who are getting the full treatment from the Veterans Administration, and by God, they try to do the best they can. We're having, you know, more suicides than we lose in war. Okay? Now we also have veterans groups who are going off to other countries where they can get legal psychedelics and they are high dosing successfully and we have A lot of reports. We also have a few reports from a single study that we report on, not our study of some individuals who microdosed solely and their PTSD diminished sufficiently that they weren't calling themselves PTSD patients. Now, it's a small group, but what it says is when you have a small group in botany or astronomy or geology, you get incredibly excited because there's something, there's someone. Okay. If one person, for example, with multiple sclerosis, gets better with microdosing, that is incredibly exciting. If you have two people, then you know you've already changed the nature of how you treat the condition. So what we're looking at with trauma is we don't know enough to say what level of trauma will be helped to what extent. But we do know that on that risk reward ratio, people with trauma who can't get help, who can't afford help, et cetera, can look at the possibility of taking a small bite of mushroom to get some relief and maybe some improvement, and maybe the improvements will last.
- [71:32]
Jordan Gruber
If you do identify as someone who leads with trauma, then you might want to work with a microdosing coach or a microdosing informed or a trauma informed therapy therapist, because you know that you'll do better. People who like working with coaches and therapists, and they definitely should do this. And the other point, once again, goes back to your symphony of selves. You may be more aware of the part of you that is normally feeling good and feeling bad. You might even, you know, have more memories, I suppose, of what's going on. So the ability to be in and feel your different selves and to be in the right self at the right time and to move yourself is also relevant.
- [72:11]
Mayim Bialik
Yeah, that's a, that's a beautiful point because, you know, also not to speak about connectivity necessarily in the neuronal, you know, component, but if you're making more connections, if you're able to make more connections, in theory, we could be talking about placing yourself in an environment or in an environmental milieu where you are able to access more healing modalities, you know, even feeling more positive or hopeful, which is something that we know will happen from microdosing. Feeling positive or hopeful can be the thing for some people that tips them into trying something new, having more consistency with treatment. So I really think that's a very hopeful way to frame it. So thank you.
- [72:52]
Jordan Gruber
I'm also thinking of Ellen Langer right now that Andrew Huberman just interviewed, and we talk about her in your symphony of cells. And she brought those people back to those environments when they were young and happy and all these amazing changes happened for them.
- [73:05]
Mayim Bialik
I want to ask you a question that we talk about a lot when we talk about even the use of psychedelics at high doses. We talked about it with Rick Doblin. It's something that we do talk about a lot, and it really is kind of in the cultural vernacular right now. The way that I framed it when Jonathan and I were prepping for this episode was, is it possible that we are denying people potent and valuable medicine because of some politician with a stick up his ass?
- [73:37]
James Fadiman
Is that a yes or no question?
- [73:40]
Mayim Bialik
It can be. But I wonder, you know, I said to Jonathan, you know, if there's a possibility here, you know, for all of the things that we're talking about, why wouldn't we want our government to support that?
- [73:57]
James Fadiman
We.
- [73:57]
Mayim Bialik
Why wouldn't someone want people to have access to this? And, you know, as. As a scientist, like, I will first speak to the notion of, like, oh, do we have, you know, double blind studies and all these things? And there's a really interesting thing you talk about here in kind of a community investigation is what we've sort of been forced to do in. In the last half century because of the restrictions made honestly based on some very outdated and inappropriate perceptions about drug use in general and psychedelic use in particular. So can you speak a little bit to, you know, this? You talk about how, you know, the objections to the use of psychedelics in any dose are not psychologically based, they're not even medically based. They're politically based. Can you talk a little bit about that?
- [74:47]
James Fadiman
And culturally, right, and remember, Nixon made psychedelics illegal as part of a program to be able to attack and arrest people he hated, who included people who didn't like going to Vietnam, included people who smoked marijuana and thought the idea of killing people, even people that are bad, was not a great idea. As one of his henchmen said, did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did. Okay. So we made a policy change. And then curiously, the medical profession said, maybe, maybe that's maybe because the government says it's bad, maybe it's bad. And risk reward ratio, of course, it's hard to find something that doesn't have a certain amount of bad. But psychedelics at their very worst have never approached the. What automobiles are, but we already had automobiles when we were figuring out the bat. Okay, so, and. And there are not only politicians, as you describe them, but there are politicians who stand up in Congress and say, I'm A vet and I found that my mind had cleared and I got over my PTSD by taking a psychedelic. I think the government should allow them to be researched so that he doesn't say this, so that other congresspeople might have the same opportunity. He doesn't say that, but he does say that. And as different people, as you point out, are widely available in the culture, as more and more people find benefit, it puts pressure on politicians. And what's happening across the country in Massachusetts, in Colorado and Oregon and other places is we're quote, decriminalizing psychedelics. Which means if you're not doing anything criminal while you have a psychedelic in your system, it's not a crime. Alcohol is not a crime unless you're doing something like driving with so much that you don't drive well. But alcohol is not a crime. We tried making alcohol a crime and all it did was make it more popular and higher proof stuff became more available.
- [77:06]
Jordan Gruber
We also have to remember that in our culture there are sort of multiple stigmas against psychedelics. You know, it's the puritanical ethic that has been embedded in this country since its founding. There's an anti pleasure component and psychedelics can lead to increased pleasure. And then there's the general notion that anything you do to change your God given sense of who you are in your mind has got on some level to, you know, be bad and wrong. And actually Tim Leary talked about this in some very poetic ways, you know, and all of this, you know, there's a lot of people who think that if you take anything at all that's not, you know, approved, then it's. It's bad inherently.
- [77:50]
Mayim Bialik
Can I ask about your groovy necklace?
- [77:53]
Jordan Gruber
Yeah. This is a. This is a. This piece is called Frenite P H R E N I T E. And I was in San Diego last summer and saw it. And usually I wear a meteorite around my necklace because I collect meteorites. But once I saw this, this became my go to piece for important events with interesting people.
- [78:14]
Mayim Bialik
Wow. It's a Stone of dreaming. I see.
- [78:19]
Jordan Gruber
Yeah.
- [78:20]
Mayim Bialik
Jonathan knows more about stones and crystals than I do.
- [78:22]
James Fadiman
Do I get any credit for that? I'm carrying an Apple computer in my pocket, which I use Important events. Does that give me credit? Enjoy. Gets. Gets credit for that.
- [78:36]
Mayim Bialik
He gets credit for his groovy necklace. Sorry.
- [78:38]
Jordan Gruber
Thank you.
- [78:39]
James Fadiman
Okay, I. I give it to him.
- [78:42]
Jonathan Cohen
I think it's really important to explore ways of feeling better, whether that be through psychedelics or looking to the edges of things that were previously Told that we shouldn't take or. Or that we may not fully understand. We have to go behind the motives of why an agency, a person, has tried to control things that could be available for us. So I just. I'm really appreciative of the work that you guys are doing, and I know that there are a lot of people that this is. This is helping. And I think we are just at the beginning of seeing just how many applications this can have.
- [79:16]
James Fadiman
That's exactly where we feel, is that the number of applications for a while felt too much until we began to be able to generalize that they all had the same basis of improving the functioning of the whole system. Then it got. Then it kind of almost was uninteresting because the whole system is the whole system.
- [79:37]
Jonathan Cohen
And actually, it's kind of frightening that people have these myriad of problems that come back to one fundamental problem, that the overall system that they. That they're relying on isn't functioning properly.
- [79:54]
James Fadiman
But I want to thank you both is you've said so many things really beautifully that we would say only we would be accused of being too extreme and kind of positively excessive. The reason that we take a kind of neutral position, which is, here's a couple of thousand people who have tried these for their conditions. Why don't you consider if your condition matches theirs and maybe your experience might match theirs.
- [80:23]
Mayim Bialik
I do want to ask one, one other thing. In terms of what Jonathan just said, we're hearing a lot about making America healthy again. And there's a lot of things that RFK Jr says that I do not support or like at all. And then there's some things he says, especially about diet and the medical system, that I'm kind of like, wait, which side is anyone on anymore? I thought I was a liberal. Am I still a liberal? Yes, I'm still a liberal. But I wonder if you can speak about in terms of what we see as, you know, where do you see microdosing fitting into, trying to make America healthy again? Is there a place that this could fit into what we think of as an agenda towards understanding health better?
- [81:06]
James Fadiman
Yeah. And that's why I kind of push that metaphor of we'd like to be in the same group as exercise and sex. Which is the question for me is always, what's the danger of taking this? Okay. So when people come to me with remarkable conditions from remarkable places, I have a great story that takes place in Namibia, for example, with shingles. Okay. And the question is, well, if microdosing might help, what's the risk, the risk is it won't help. That's not much of a risk. And so the place in the health, in the health, healing and increased performance world is the people who've tried it are the best judge of whether it's effective. And until now, the commercial demonization of psychedelics that's trying to make money in an old fashioned way using things that don't fit the model. Somehow they've let microdosing alone. A couple of companies are beginning to figure it out that even if you don't take it every day, you would take it often enough to profit by it. But that so far has been avoided. So we've had like 12 to 15 years of not being driven by capitalist issues. And therefore what you're seeing and why the book is interesting is these are all people who decided independently, certainly 90 independently of their physicians. The other 10% said well I've been using it and it's pretty good. So again we're getting physicians, we have psychotherapists, we have, you know, all the various therapies who also are personally microdosing and that's what they share with their patients. So we're very grateful to have shared with you. And Jonathan's point is really how does this fit into the system? And it fits into the same, probably the same place that the difference between over processed food and organic food fit, which is one is better than the other. And the risk reward ratio of organic food is a better risk reward ratio than highly processed food. See, I'm stripping away capitalism as a defining variable, but we haven't had the problem that's also been plaguing high dose psychedelics which is chasing money, not health.
- [83:32]
Jordan Gruber
And you know, interestingly in Canada right now there is like a stage three equivalent of at home LSD for depression study. So there are ways that governments are going to be working this in. So you have the general antipsychedelic thing and illegal we have to get through. And you turn out that there are a lot of people who are very pro psychedelics who don't like microdosing because it's not what they're into, it's not what they study. There's not a lot of money to be made. It can be done by, you know, we say in the book everything you need to know is here. Although if you like coaches and therapists you should work with one, but you don't. It's, it's, it's. Jim likes the analogy that it's like a Frodo, it's Like a hobbit. Now, not a lot of people have paid attention to microdosing, but that's also why word of mouth is spreading it, because it's so effective and you don't have to get all involved with your system and your doctor and all that things. And yet with all that low risk and the possibility of great rewards, it's, you know, it's very interesting to a lot of people.
- [84:25]
Mayim Bialik
I have a colorblind child and one of the only warnings in the book is about colorblindness and microdosing.
- [84:34]
James Fadiman
Not colorblind. Red, green.
- [84:36]
Mayim Bialik
Correct.
- [84:37]
James Fadiman
So is your child red, green, colorblind? Yes. Okay.
- [84:40]
Mayim Bialik
I've already told you about this. We're having a grown up conversation.
- [84:44]
James Fadiman
It's wonderful. No, it's a fun thing because early on when we had that happen, I was working with Sophia, she found a colorblind friend to check it out, which was if you're colorblind and you microdose, you will have what are called tracers. Tracers being a kind of follow spot. When you have an illumination like in the ceiling and you move your eyes, the light, you get a kind of little trail of light just like that. And it's irritating. Okay. And it's also super common with high doses. So that all the high doses people say, yeah, that's what it's like. So we say, you shouldn't take it if you're red, green, colorblind because you'll have tracers. Well, see, we don't live in a world where we restrict people. We just give information. So we get information that says, yeah, you do get tracers. But I'm not depressed anymore, okay?
- [85:33]
Mayim Bialik
I'm not depressed about being red, green colorblind.
- [85:36]
James Fadiman
Being red, green colorblind only gives you that peculiar after effect with microdosing, but it doesn't seem to interrupt any of the other effects. So let your child know and your child can make their own decision.
- [85:51]
Mayim Bialik
And there are some studies talking about the amelioration of colorblind symptoms from higher doses of psychedelics, which I'm just fascinated. I need to get into this mechanism because.
- [86:01]
James Fadiman
Well, that study, that study is one guy.
- [86:04]
Mayim Bialik
Yeah, no, okay, but you taught me that one guy can be very important information.
- [86:11]
James Fadiman
Hey, one guy can change your life.
- [86:13]
Mayim Bialik
And I want to know about his rods and cones. The book is Microdosing for Health, Healing and Enhanced Performance. James Fadiman and Jordan Gruber, thank you so much for this conversation. We really, really appreciate it. Thank you for the work that you do for all of humanity and the way that you present information and, and thank you both for wearing collared shirts. So my mother can't say they were a bunch of hippies.
- [86:32]
James Fadiman
Thank you.
- [86:33]
Jordan Gruber
Thank you, Jonathan.
- [86:34]
James Fadiman
Thank you, Jonathan.
- [86:38]
Mayim Bialik
I'll be honest, I don't even know where it is legal or where it isn't legal. It's legal here. This is on voting ballots.
- [86:47]
Jonathan Cohen
I have no idea. I actually have no idea.
- [86:50]
Mayim Bialik
Certain, in certain cities you can get it, but people are getting it illegally. This is the other thing. And they talk about this in the book a lot. Like, it's clear that a lot of people don't care what's legal and what's not.
- [87:01]
Jonathan Cohen
It's illegal in California.
- [87:03]
Mayim Bialik
They're also taking LSD when you're not supposed to do that. So for many people it doesn't matter. Also, I'm going to say a really hippie thing. I don't know what's the difference between the government saying it's legal and it's not. It really has to do with, obviously, prosecution. You don't want to be caught with it. You don't, you know, but, but it, that doesn't change the efficacy of the psychedelic, whether it's legal or not. And as, as, as they talked about, you know, Richard Nixon kind of arbitrarily deciding. There are certain people that I would like to throw in jail. And so I'm going to make this class of drugs that they like illegal. I'm sorry, people, I hate to burst your America bubble. And I'm a proud, proud American. That's the way a lot of decisions are made. So you get to make a decision about what you'd like to research, look into, but the notion that this might be something that can impact so many people. And, and I'm not just talking about like, oh, I want everyone to be more billionaires and I want them to run 300 miles. That's not my interest. But when he talks about inflammatory diseases, when he talks about things like multiple sclerosis, like, we can start to understand what these mechanisms are. And if the government would not have so many regulations, we'd actually get to do the research to figure out if there are better ways to treat things like multiple sclerosis.
- [88:19]
Jonathan Cohen
I mean, I'm shaking my head a little bit because I've always believed in the idea that so many disease states are actually underlying condition of something that's probably pretty much the same. The body starts to break down. The underlying mechanisms of the body are not functioning the way that they ought to. We know how metabolic disease is Actually begins to show up in many different ways for people. We can also look at inflammatory responses in a similar vein. So if we can look at psilocybin and say that people can have these overall systems improvements through these protocols, not studying them is criminal. Because what you're doing is you're reinforcing the medical industrial complex and protecting pharmaceutical approach to well being, which if you need pharmaceuticals in certain scenarios, they're life saving. Absolutely. Western medicine is a fantastic intervention if you need it. But the lack of preventative care, well care, helping people's systems function properly, research into optimizing system function before you get into a disease state where you need those types of medical interventions, not doing that is really a massive disservice to humanity and keeps us stuck.
- [89:49]
Mayim Bialik
There was an article three years ago in the Journal of Neuropharmacology. This is a big one. This is like a legit, legit journal. And it, it opens with, you know, many of us think of images of the Grateful Dead and their fans tripping out, you know, when you think of psychedelics. But what is true is that certain psychedelics may represent new class of small molecule, highly bioavailable anti inflammatory that is steroid sparing and efficacious at sub behavioral levels that can be used to treat and prevent a variety of inflammatory related diseases and conditions. And inflammation is one of these words that like everybody started hearing and they feel like it's overused. That's because it's the cause of many, many things that are wrong with your body. Google examples of inflammatory diseases or conditions. Chronic pain in many cases has an inflammatory component. Right? A lot of muscular pain, joint pain, psychological pain, inflammation in your gut. We talk about the gut brain connection. All of this is governed by inflammatory mechanisms. And of course there's a lot of different mechanisms that are involved. But I always bring up the people who said don't eat nightshades, don't eat nightshades. They were right. Gluten, gluten is inflammatory. For some people it doesn't bother them, for other people it does. So a lot of these things also behavioral things, attentional things, add, adhd, they talk about it in the book. These are all things that are governed by inflammatory genes and gene regulation systems. If there is a drug that at sub behavioral levels, sub behavioral. We're not trying to make you stoned. If there is a drug that can be a global anti inflammatory and have these kind of wide ranging effects, why wouldn't we want to know more about it?
- [91:40]
Jonathan Cohen
I completely agree, we should. We should know a lot more about it. We're going to do some firsthand research. I signed you up for the protocol. We're going to document your changes.
- [91:48]
Mayim Bialik
Surprise. I'm microdosing right now.
- [91:51]
Jonathan Cohen
Well, I thought what he said was interesting. They. They didn't know us. They did a little research on the.
- [91:56]
Mayim Bialik
Show and he's like, she's very depressed.
- [91:58]
Jonathan Cohen
They watched the show's trailer on YouTube, which was like three years ago, where you list that, you know, you've had some experience in treating mental health. And what they said was, you know, I'm paraphrasing, but what they said was like, oh, you know, you haven't had the system to like, hold those changes. And what work are you doing right now? You're upregulating your overall system. You were just talking about a new practitioner you were seeing. We don't have to go into the specifics. There's some things that are private. Keep your prying ears away, audience. And I think that's an interesting idea of what are the ways in which the overall system can be strengthened to increase how it's functioning. It's increased its resilience so that we can make changes. Because one of your biggest, you know, I think complaints or concerns before the episode started was this idea that is this just an escape? And my interpretation is that actually it's not an escape. It's an ability to have the system be in a place to integrate change.
- [93:07]
Mayim Bialik
Another aspect that I think is really interesting about this is a lot of people are afraid of fun and like elevated mood states. Meaning. I. I don't picture a world where everyone's, you know, kind of walking around high. And I don't think our guests did either.
- [93:23]
Jonathan Cohen
And that's not what they were saying they were. Clear distinction.
- [93:26]
Mayim Bialik
But some people have a very, I don't want to call it old fashioned. Some people have a very, you know, I think it is an offshoot of a puritanical notion of why would you do that? And that's silly. And like, why would you need to be in an elevated state like that? And a lot of those people are really, really unhappy. And I think if you scratch even a little bit beneath the surface, even those people probably have the things that they keep secret that keep them going, whether it's pills, whether it's alcohol, whether it's things that the government sells you and tells you is okay to elevate your mood, I. E. Sugar. Right. Everybody's got their thing. So I think the notion, unless you really want to, like, at The Ren Faire, when there's the Puritans, you know, unless you're going to be those people, like outlawing fun or goodness, we have to leave open the possibility that we're meant for better than a lot of the way that we've been taught we have to live. I for one, believe that I like.
- [94:24]
Jonathan Cohen
That idea that we're meant for better. We've normalized a level of functioning that I think we deserve better than.
- [94:31]
Mayim Bialik
Gabor, mate said that we think that's normal. You think that's normal to grind your teeth, to hate your life, to, like, not want to go out, to not be able to, like, even enjoy putting lotion on your face? Right? Like, to not be able to take care of your body? We've been taught that that's normal, that for your body to hurt, that it's normal that when you turn 40, you no longer want to have sex or enjoy yourself. Right? Those things. That's not. That's not how we're supposed to live. And I'm not going so far as to say that we should all be tripping balls all the time and being like, I'm one with God. It's amazing because it's hard to come down from that mountain. But what if there's a whole other access to what is the better me like? And how do I start to access that without being part of a pharmaceutical system that in many cases is not really working?
- [95:18]
Jonathan Cohen
Archie agrees. He's just joined the conversation. It means that we're. We've been podcasting too long. He's saying so. Well, with that in mind, from our.
- [95:26]
Mayim Bialik
Micro breakdown to the one we hope you never have, we'll see you next time.
- [95:29]
Jonathan Cohen
It's Maya Bialik's breakdown.
- [95:31]
Mayim Bialik
She's going to break it down for you.
- [95:33]
Jonathan Cohen
She's got a neuroscience PhD or two.
- [95:36]
Mayim Bialik
One fiction. And now she's going to break down. To break down. She's going to break it down.