Paul F. Austin on The Rise of Psychedelics in Modern Medicine

Paul F. Austin on Exploring Psychedelics: Creativity, Hidden Benefits, Microdosing, and Retreats

Bryan Fields: What's up guys, welcome back to another episode of The Dime. I'm Bryan Fields, and with me as always is Kellan Finney, and this week we've got a very special guest, Paul F. Austin, entrepreneur, author, and coach. Paul, thanks for taking the time, how you doing today? Paul F. Austin: Hey Bryan, good to be here. I'm in Truckee, a little ski town outside of Tahoe, and I'm stoked to talk about microdosing and psychedelics and anything else that you want to go into, so I'm looking forward to it. Bryan Fields: Love it. Kellan, how are you doing? Kellan: I'm doing really well, excited to talk to Paul, cover all those topics he just mentioned. How are you doing, Bryan? Bryan Fields: Yeah, I'm excited. Microdosing is a topic that I feel like not enough people understand on the levels that we're going to get into today, and I'm really excited to have Paul kind of dive deep. Paul, before we get into the fun stuff, Kellan and I have got an East Coast/West Coast battle, and I know you've lived in New York, so I'm just gonna have to ask you for the record: if you had to choose a coast to live, and you had all the money in the world, which one would you choose? Paul F. Austin: I would choose New York. I'll tell you why — you can always get out in the winters, right? So it's easy to fly to Mexico City, easy to fly to the south of France, easy to fly to Argentina, whatever it is. I grew up in the Midwest, in Michigan outside Grand Rapids, so I'm used to a small town, suburban lifestyle, and I moved to New York when I was 26, right when some of the third-wave and microdosing stuff was starting to take place. I met some very influential people in my life who I'm still close to today, and I love how New York is equidistant between California and Europe — I can be in London, or I've been spending more time in Lisbon lately, be there in six hours, or I could be in LA in six hours. For me the challenge with the West Coast — and I've lived in San Diego the last couple years, the weather's beautiful, the people are phenomenal, I love spending time outside — but it's a 12-hour flight one way to get to Europe, so that's harder to do. I'd say New York first, San Diego a very close second at this point. Bryan Fields: Love it. Let the record reflect, Kellan — and I would also say I'm more West Coast, more chill, laid back, easygoing, and people knew I lived in New York and were like, that doesn't add up. But the food, the culture, the people, the proximity — all of that makes New York hard to beat. It really is the greatest city in the world, people go on about it. You did a good job answering a stacked question, we're gonna cut up the other part — just New York. So Paul, for our listeners who are new to you, can you give a little background about yourself and how you found your way into the psychedelic space? Paul F. Austin: Yeah, so I touched on this already, but I grew up in a pretty traditional and sheltered family in the Midwest. My parents still live in the same house I was basically born in, 33 years ago. I have two sisters who live 20 minutes either way of my parents, a couple nieces now, which is really beautiful — the family unit in a small town was always very important, and we were, I would say, politically progressive — my mom was a feminist in the 70s, they voted Democrat — so not fundamentalist, not even conservative, but definitely very traditional. As part of that we would go to church every Sunday for three, four hours for the first 18 years of my life. It was to the point where I couldn't spend the night at a friend's house on a Saturday because church was always Sunday morning, required and obligatory. When I was 16 I started to — this was like a day after I got my driver's license — smoke weed, because it was free and I could explore. I smoked weed a few times with my best friend in high school, and within a couple months my parents found out. The story is kind of funny — everyone remembers, who's my age at least, AOL Instant Messenger, and I was instant messaging my best friend about us smoking weed that night after a high school football game, and I accidentally left the conversation up on my parents' computer, because we just had one computer we all used. My mom saw it, printed it out, circled all these things, and within a couple days my dad looked at me and said, "I can't believe you would do this, I'm so disappointed," and said something I'll never forget — "I haven't been this disappointed since my brother passed away in a car accident 30, 35 years ago." So that goes to show you how intense the conditioning and sort of brainwashing was around illegal drugs. I blamed my parents at that point, but in retrospect I don't blame my parents — it's a product of the environment they grew up in. That same friend who introduced me to cannabis at 16 introduced me to psilocybin and mushrooms when I was 19. Soon after I tried LSD for the first time and had a very transformative, profound experience, and those early psychedelic experiences when I was 19, 20, trying to figure out who I was going to be, led me down a path of freedom and exploration. At 21 I moved to Turkey where I taught English for a year, and soon after I started a digital nomad lifestyle — I lived in Thailand, Chiang Mai, Budapest, Lisbon, Oaxaca. While in Budapest in 2015 I was taking LSD with a couple friends, reflecting on the state of the current ecosystem — cannabis was becoming, by 2015, legal in four states, and California was on the verge of legalizing in 2016. It was clear we were going down a path where cannabis would become recreationally available to the majority of Americans within a short time, and that psychedelics would soon follow in those footsteps. The challenge nine, ten years ago was that most people still thought psychedelics were highly dangerous, addictive, harmful, so I set out to change that through the lens of microdosing — Third Wave as a brand is very approachable, has a reasonably good vibe and aesthetic. Having studied history in undergrad, that was my core focus, so I rooted Third Wave in what we can learn from the past. What can we learn from the first wave — the ancient and indigenous use of psychedelics, ritual, ceremony, connection to nature — and the second wave, science, ethics, best practices, ideal outcomes or medicine, and the third wave is really about the synthesis between those two. It's been a fascinating and long trip — I've been building in the space for nine years. Third Wave is more of a media/educational platform, but I also started a company called Synthesis; we did high-dose psilocybin retreats for over a thousand clients in the Netherlands legally, then took that model and applied it to Oregon to help create the first legal framework in the United States. I've also trained practitioners through our Psychedelic Coaching Institute. I'm keen on cultural accessibility — I think these things should be fully legal to any adult who wishes to use them, though there needs to be quite a bit of precaution and safety, especially for high doses because they're quite volcanic and catalytic. But I think microdosing is basically usable by almost everyone, with exceptions, and almost everyone could benefit from it. That's what I've been committed to the last nine, ten years. Bryan Fields: I appreciate you breaking all that down, and I'm looking forward to getting into the retreats and the microdosing, but the first thing I wanted to bring up is a quote on your website: "Plenty of CEOs do not talk publicly about their psychedelic use because it would put their entire career at risk." I think that's such a powerful statement. Before we get into that, why do they take it, and why do you think it would put their careers at risk? Paul F. Austin: You want the long answer? All right. Historical context: when I first got into this deep dive, I read like 20-25 books, a lot of history books — what happened in the 60s and 70s when there were a thousand clinical papers published, and what happened in ancient times. One thing I came to understand is that drug use is normal — it's a normal evolutionary impulse for human beings, we literally have to alter our consciousness in some way, and those who don't actually suffer more than those who do. The most common drugs we use to alter consciousness are tobacco, caffeine, and alcohol, and you can track the development of the use of these three drugs with the development of industrialism — we didn't start actively using these a lot until the 17th century, and use grew because these drugs supported the industrial mindset: stimulation during the day to get things done, and stimulation in the evening with alcohol to unwind. Cannabis was the first drug legalized outside those three core ones in modern times, and that's created a bridge for psychedelics to be more widely used. Why does that matter? In industrialism, a lot of value-creating activity was convergent thinking — you know what needs to get done, you just need the energy and time to do it. That's shifting now with AI and automation — AI will do a lot of that convergent thinking, and the role of humans in work will be much more about creativity, problem-solving, high-level thinking, navigating uncertainty. Psychedelics, more than cannabis, alcohol, caffeine, or tobacco, help with stepping back and looking at things from a broader lens. This hypothesis is rooted in a 1966 research study by Dr. James Fadiman, a psychologist — he's sort of the godfather of microdosing, talked about it on Tim Ferriss's podcast, wrote a book called The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide. In the 60s he was a leading researcher on the overlap of psychedelics and creativity and problem-solving. He took 30 professionals in the Bay Area, asked them to pick a problem they'd been stuck on for over three months, and gave them the equivalent of 100 micrograms of LSD — not a microdose, a moderate dose — or mescaline, the active ingredient in peyote and San Pedro, and asked them to use the time to problem-solve. Something like 80-90% were able to solve the problem they'd been stuck on, with a number of innovative solutions. That's still one of the only research trials done on psychedelics and problem-solving, and yet the anecdotal reports are hard to overlook — Tim Ferriss, Joe Rogan, Aubrey Marcus, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Aaron Rodgers, the list goes on of high-performing creatives and entrepreneurs who've talked about how beneficial psychedelics have been for them. From a leadership perspective, CEOs and executive teams need to be more resilient and adaptable, and I think psychedelics are one of the best tools for that. Bryan Fields: Why does that put them at risk? Paul F. Austin: We all know the anecdote of Elon Musk going on Joe Rogan and smoking a blunt — maybe four or five years ago — and as a result Tesla shares dropped substantially because of potential risk with the SEC, since he was using a federally illegal drug in a legal context. Every SpaceX employee then had to get drug tested as a result, which is insane given the value of the type of cognitive work his team does — there's uncertainty on all sides but massive repercussions to decisions. Psychedelics are a slightly superior substance for that compared to cannabis, which can become more of an everyday habit rather than something done occasionally — when done occasionally cannabis can have a very psychedelic effect and substantially help with creativity, but with consistent use I lose some of that impact. Whereas 50 mics of LSD on a hike with a few problems I'm working through — boom, a lot of great new insight comes through. Elon was recently interviewed by Don Lemon and was open that he uses ketamine here and there for depression, which is a legal substance prescribed by a medical professional, so there's more capacity now for leaders to talk openly about ketamine use specifically. The challenge is that until legal structure and policy change more substantially, the risk isn't worth it for most. I do think it's critical that the leaders, creators, and builders of tomorrow are informed and influenced by psychedelics — my hypothesis is that the more leaders who work with psychedelics, the better society becomes for everyone. Kellan: I've always had a question — psychedelics is a broad description of multiple drugs. Is there a purpose a CEO may use magic mushrooms over LSD from a microdosing standpoint — would they choose based on what they're trying to achieve? Paul F. Austin: Yeah, the protocol they're looking for. I had a tweet the other day — psychedelic comes from a Greek word meaning "mind manifesting," really "soul manifesting" — psyche is Greek for mind, and the Greeks perceived the mind as also part of the soul, which is what Plato talked about with duality. Delos means to manifest. The term was coined in the early 1960s by Aldous Huxley and a psychiatrist named Humphry Osmond, who guided Huxley through his first psychedelic experience. They were focused on three main classes of drugs: tryptamines — DMT, psilocybin, ayahuasca, 5-MeO-DMT; lysergamides — LSD is the most well known; and phenethylamines — the two most common being mescaline, which is in San Pedro and peyote, and MDMA is also a phenethylamine. Ketamine doesn't fall within that, cannabis doesn't, ibogaine doesn't, so there's a lot of questions about what is and isn't a psychedelic. The context of why someone is coming into this and where they're at matters a lot. The metaphor I teach in our training program is the lotus flower metaphor — the lotus represents enlightenment in Buddhism. We plant a new seed of self through a high-dose psychedelic experience, but for that to be successful we need healthy soil — tilling the soil means trauma work, healing work, shadow work. Once that's done, planting the new seed of self is the death-and-rebirth, ego-dissolution aspect. Once planted, we need to nourish that seed with exercise, meditation, diet, lifestyle practices — that's integration. Then things like ayahuasca, 5-MeO, and potentially ibogaine help the lotus flower fully blossom. Regardless of leadership position, people new to psychedelic or inner work usually need some initial tilling — trauma work — even without a big-T trauma. I count myself fortunate that I wasn't emotionally or sexually abused, had reasonably good parenting, but I was bullied quite a bit around 10-12, which is where some of my trauma came from — I can be prickly, not all that social, prefer to be introverted. Even so, in my early psychedelic work guilt, shame, and attachment issues came up that I had to navigate through a more therapeutic process. So often the first step, even for high-functioning people without a diagnosis, is that tilling — usually with ketamine or MDMA, which are a bit less intense than five grams of mushrooms in the dark. Once the soil is tilled, a high dose of psilocybin can be a great way to do the death-and-rebirth, plant the new seed of self — could also be a high dose of LSD, but people have a harder time finding it and some are still scared of it due to 1950s-60s stigma, so usually a high dose of psilocybin works well. Then microdosing in the week to four weeks after elongates the window of neuroplasticity — that's why psychedelics can be so effective at catalyzing behavioral change. Normally people find two to three weeks post-high-dose experience where things feel more in flow, they're kinder, more compassionate, more relational, but after two to three weeks that starts to dissipate. Microdosing can elongate that window to six to eight weeks, which is roughly the amount of time needed to establish a new habit. On LSD versus psilocybin specifically from a neurochemistry standpoint: tryptamines are more serotonergic — serotonin relates to contentment, present emotion, somatic experience; lysergamides are more dopaminergic — dopamine relates to focus, attention, motivation. Folks interested in psilocybin often have a history of SSRI use and want something natural to reconnect with their body. Folks interested in microdosing LSD often want to be more in flow, have greater cognitive capacity, be creative — for cognition, LSD is superior because of its dopamine impact. Compared to Adderall or Vyvanse, which bring constriction and intensity and can leave you feeling hungover, LSD microdosing retains playfulness while still getting things done. Kellan: What are the steps someone should take to establish a protocol, or for a retreat in general? Paul F. Austin: Going back to the lotus flower metaphor over a five-to-ten-year trajectory — you might start with MDMA-assisted or ketamine-assisted psychotherapy for six months to eighteen months, then move to a high dose of psilocybin on a retreat in Mexico or Oregon depending on legality, and then substances like ayahuasca — I didn't drink ayahuasca until I'd been working with psychedelics for seven years. There's a necessity in being patient with the path; a lot of people rush in because they hear how impactful psychedelics can be. I coach folks to take it slow, be intentional, find great providers, and commit to facing all aspects of who they are. Neuroplasticity is a huge benefit, especially for leaders and creators, but just as important is a sense of courage that comes from deep psychedelic work — psychedelics downregulate the amygdala, the reptilian brain, where a lot of our fear response comes from, opening space to ask hard questions, make difficult decisions, have difficult conversations while staying regulated. There's a quote — maybe Jim Rohn — about the quality of your life being dictated by your willingness to have difficult conversations, and psychedelics often help with that while staying compassionate. Kellan: If someone wants to go on a retreat, what's the prep work like, and how do they approach the whole situation? Paul F. Austin: There are three main options. One is to do it at home with virtual support — when COVID hit, the federal government passed the Ryan Haight Act allowing scheduled substances to be prescribed virtually, specifically for ADHD medication but also applied to ketamine, so over the last four years hundreds of thousands of people have worked with ketamine virtually, sent to your house after a consultation and prescription, with a trip sitter who could just be a friend, and virtual coaching before and after. We offer that through Third Wave — a two-month personalized psychedelic coaching program guiding a high-dose experience followed by a microdosing protocol with coaching support, all from the comfort of your own home, which matters because set and setting are so important. The second common way is to go on a retreat in a legal place — the Netherlands, Jamaica, Costa Rica, Mexico, now Oregon since it legalized psilocybin, and Colorado. We have a directory of vetted retreat centers at thethirdwave.co, whether it's ayahuasca, psilocybin, ketamine, or huachuma. That can cost anywhere from a thousand to eleven thousand dollars depending on the center, typically with four to six weeks of group preparation calls beforehand and four to six weeks of integration calls after, with optional one-on-one support. The third way is to find an underground community — plant medicine circles happening every weekend in places like New York, illegal in most states but legal in Colorado. Law enforcement generally isn't interested in prosecuting psychedelic work, partly because half of police forces have worked with psychedelics themselves, and attention is focused on fentanyl instead. With underground ceremonies, especially for newcomers, it's key to ask the right questions: how much experience do you have with this medicine, how much medicine are you serving, what's the group size, is there a vetting process, are you trauma-informed, do you offer prep and integration. Interviewing whoever you work with — retreat center, underground provider, therapist, or coach — is essential. Kellan: With California potentially legalizing, what do you envision a fully legal psychedelic market looking like — like cannabis, or more through certified providers like ketamine clinics? Paul F. Austin: Cannabis actually isn't federally legal — hemp is technically federally legal, but cannabis itself is a state-driven, grassroots shift, even more grassroots than the psychedelic movement, which has pros and cons — a lot of that grassroots push wasn't informed by scientific practice, and we're seeing some challenges now; I've personally experienced cannabis addiction, for better or worse. With psychedelics, I think MDMA will be approved by the FDA to treat PTSD very likely this year, with rollout around December 2024 or January 2025. Psilocybin, the alkaloid in magic mushrooms, will likely be legalized by the FDA with rollout around 2027, for treatment-resistant depression and major depressive disorder. I'd guess five to ten other psychedelics — microdose LSD for depression, psilocybin analogs for depression, potentially ibogaine for certain addictions — could be FDA approved before the end of the decade. The challenge is a lot of regulation, high cost, and it's unclear if insurance will cover it since many treatments require a therapist present, unlike a daily SSRI pill. My guess is about 10% of people who work with psychedelics will do so through that FDA-approved path over the next ten years. The majority will work with psychedelics either through a state model like Colorado, Oregon, or potentially California, or through a more localized community church model with religious protection as part of a nonprofit, low cost, some vetting but not cost-prohibitive — that's currently legal in Colorado, where you can't sell mushrooms but can donate them as part of a retreat or ceremony. I think 80-90% of use will occur in that community church model, and the state-licensed model sits somewhere between FDA approval and the community church model, with licensed facilitators who don't need to be clinicians. Kellan: Are there certain groups of people, from an age or life-stage perspective, who benefit most from retreats — and conversely, is there a window where it's likely not the best time? Paul F. Austin: The main contraindication for psychedelic use is schizophrenia — someone with schizophrenia or a family history of it, especially under 26, should not work with psychedelics, probably not cannabis either, and should be very careful. Someone on lithium should also avoid psilocybin in particular — that's really the main contraindication. Also, if someone has had a very recent traumatizing experience — say a parent passed away a week before a planned retreat — it's probably better to push the retreat out until they feel more internally stable. As for who benefits most — and this may be controversial — very young adults, 16 to 19, doing this as an intentional rite of passage, like a men's circle or with a parent or community, can be incredibly beneficial; my own LSD experiences at 19 were very positive and completely changed the trajectory of my life. There is real risk though — family mental health history needs to be clearly understood, and dosing should step up gradually so you can gauge response. It's more risky than doing this in your 50s or 60s, but psychedelics are by far the safest way to have a rite of passage or initiation compared to traditional indigenous initiations, which were often physically dangerous. The other group that benefits most is people in their 50s and 60s who've been stuck in their ways for a long time, at a midlife crisis or entering retirement, looking for a new sense of vitality — Michael Pollan said something similar in How to Change Your Mind. Psychedelics can help reframe how we approach pain and death; something like 95% of healthcare spending happens in the last year of someone's life, largely because we don't know how to die as a culture, and psychedelics can help us remember death is a transition, not a jail sentence. Bryan Fields: I love it, Paul. We only have time for one more question. I take you to the mountains, drop you off, give you 200 micrograms of LSD, and you can bring three people, dead or alive — who are you bringing? Paul F. Austin: I'm assuming you follow me on Twitter since I saw you followed me the other day. I had a tweet a few months ago about how one of my favorite things to do is take 200 mics of LSD and go on a mountain, which I do once every few years. Number one would be Stewart Brand — an OG in Silicon Valley tech psychedelic culture, part of Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters in the 60s, did LSD with Jim Fadiman back in the day, started the Acid Tests with the Grateful Dead, started the Whole Earth Catalog, came up with the idea of seeing a picture of Earth from space which helped kick off Earth Day and the ecological movement. He was influential at the bridge between counterculture and cyberculture, still alive — I've tweeted at him recently trying to link up. His most recent project is de-extinction, trying to bring woolly mammoths back to help with climate change; there's a documentary about him called We Are As Gods, from his quote in the Whole Earth Catalog, "We are as gods, so we might as well get good at it." He was close friends with Kevin Kelly, who started Wired, and Brian Eno. Second person would be Leonardo da Vinci — inventor, artist, the original Renaissance man, which is something I aspire to, having both creativity and craftsmanship. I've read parts of his biography by Walter Isaacson. Third would be Aldous Huxley, probably my favorite author — wrote Brave New World in 1933, very dystopian and cynical, came from a wealthy upper-class Oxford family, and World War II opened up a spiritual crisis for him; he started studying Vedanta and then experimented with mescaline and LSD, and just before he died wrote a utopian counterpart to Brave New World called Island. The coolest part is that on his deathbed he had his wife inject him with 100 micrograms of LSD, so he was tripping on acid while dying, which is basically what I think all of us should aspire to. So Stewart Brand, Leonardo da Vinci, and Aldous Huxley — those would be my three. Bryan Fields: I love it. So for our listeners, where can they find you if they want to get in touch and learn more? Paul F. Austin: TheThirdWave.co — we have a newsletter, a private community that's free to join at community.thethirdwave.co, I'd encourage people to sign up and meet others interested in the space. If there are coaches or practitioners, or those who want to become one, we have a training program, the Psychedelic Coaching Institute, also found on Third Wave. I'm on Instagram and Twitter at Paul Austin 3W, and I'm pretty responsive to DMs — if you heard this show and have questions, hit me up. Bryan Fields: Appreciate it, thanks for taking the time, this was a lot of fun. Paul F. Austin: Thanks brother, this was great. Kellan: Thanks, Paul.