Microdosing Mommies w/ Michael Pollan

Everyone always has a choice. Whenever somebody says no, you can't, or there's no rules for you, or you have to look like this, I go. I'll show you. I'll show you. Welcome to Go, ask Alli. I'm Alli Wentworth and this is season three. I'm so excited. Had a great hiatus. Thank you for supporting my book, Allie's Well That Ends Well. Had a great summer with that, did a lot of lecture series, clammed a lot of clam ms, and hung out with my two daughters. You know, I'm about to

become a true empty nesters. So I am holding onto my daughters by their ankles, kicking and screaming um and so happy to be back, you know, George, My husband always jokes and says that go ask Galleys like my master class, because I get to invite all these experts and artists and thinkers and creators, and I get to ask them all kinds of questions and learn more about

the things I want to know more about. And I know you do too, And so first up this season, you know I've been hearing more and more about psychedelics. Stephen Wright once said, I used to have an open mind, but my brains kept falling out, which is very aproposed to today's episode. So I have a few friends that have been micro dosing, and they swear by it. It's basically taking very small doses of some popular psychedelic lucinogens. So I've been a little fascinated by it because I

know that it helps with PTSD and trauma. But would a little nibble here and there help just the everyday stress? I mean, we're living in a world right now where everything is terrifying. There's so much anxiety. Maybe maybe a little micro dosing might help it. And it occurred to me that maybe micro doosing might make us better mothers, wives, friends, humans, And there's no better guests than Michael Pollen to answer these questions. So. Michael Pollen is a writer, teacher, and activist.

His most recent book, This Is Your Mind on Plants, is a follow up to his highly acclaimed How to Change Your Mind With The New Science of Psychedelics, teaches us about consciousness, dying, addiction, depression, and transcendence. He's the author of seven previous books, all of which were New York Times bestsellers. The Omnivores Dilemma was named one of the ten Best books of two thousand and seven both

by The New York Times and The Washington Post. Several of his books have been adapted for television, including How to Change Your Mind now streaming on Netflix, which you should definitely watch. Pollen teaches writing at Harvard and at You See Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. In two thousand ten, Time magazine named Pollen one of the one hundred most Influential people in the World. And stay with us afterwards for a short conversation with a mom about her personal

experience micro dosing. Hello, Michael Pollen, Hello, good to be here. Ali. So I know you've been doing this grand book tour and I want to talk to you about something and I'm going to make it a little more specific if you don't mind, Okay, great. My question to you is does micro dosing make you a better parent? And the reason I ask is because I don't know if it's

because of you. I don't know if it's happening in the medical world, but I have noticed more and more I have friends who are a mom or a dad who are micro dosing. And when I first heard about it, of course, my very waspy roots was taken aback and I clutched my pearls and I thought, oh my god, you're tripping on acid while you're parenting children. This is crazy. Since I've read your book, I am a lot more educated about it. So first of all, let's just put a toe in the pool and let me just ask

you to explain micro dosing for those who don't know. Sure, so, micro dosing is the practice of taking a very small sub perceptual in other words, a dose so small you don't feel any psychedelic effects of LSD or psilocybin. Psilocybin is the chemical and magic mushrooms. People take basically a tenth of what would be an active dose, and they do it on some sort of schedule like one day on two days off, one day on two days off. You can't take it every day because you build up

tolerance to and it doesn't work anymore. Many people report beneficial changes to their mood and their outlook and their productivity and their creativity. Whether these changes are real or a placebo effect is still up in the air. I haven't seen any research that suggests that micro dosing actually does anything, although people report that it does, and that's in a way the only thing that matters. There's nothing

wrong with the placebo. Placebos are incredibly powerful. And when you think about it, I mean, even if if I gave you a sugar pill and I said this is going to make you a better parent or a more patient parent, let's say it probably would have some effect.

That's how powerful the placebo is. But if you combine it and say this is a little bit of LSD, that amplifies the placebo effect because there's so much magic we attribute to that molecule, so that it may be a very powerful placebo effect is going on until we really do the kind of controlled double blind studies where people don't know what they're getting, uh, they get a real placebo where they get the small dose of LSD.

We won't know that it's doing anything. If what people report is true, Yeah, it's conceivable it would make them better parents if they're you know, less depressed or anxious. You know, that should make them better parents. But um, it is illegal. I think it's important for people to know, even if it's a small dose. Haven't I read recently that it's it's sort of the lowest in terms of the criminal chain of offenses. Well, it depends where you live.

There are many jurisdictions around the country, including Washington, d C. Oakland, California, and Arbor, Denver, Colorado, and a bunch of others, and there will be a lot more that have decriminalized psilocybin, for example. But decriminalized doesn't make it legal. It's still illegal at the federal level. And yes, and all it does really it doesn't change the legal status of the drug. It basically just tells the law enforcement this should be

your lowest priority. So it's probably hard to get busted in those places for possession, but but certainly sale would get you in trouble. But it has opened the door I mean here in I live in Berkeley, you know, one town over from Oakland, and a friend of mine was just at a farmer's market or flea market and they were selling psilocybin chocolates openly with with labels saying what it was. So things are changing. Yeah, it feels like it. And by the way, it's five to is

how much you use when you're micro dosing. Right, what would be a full dose of LSD of a psychedelic if you wanted to really trip um, it would be about a hundred micrograms, So it's very small. Yeah, LSD is a very what's kind of incredible about l s D is it's such a I mean, micrograms are millions of a gram. This is a very tiny amount of a substance, and that wouldn't be a big dose, but

that would be a dose you'd really feel. So I'm looking back at history, particularly with with moms, and certainly in the fifties and sixties there was valium housewife. You know, women were medicating for various reasons and helper mother's little helper, and so right now, and I could just be because of the people I know, but I'm sort of seeing

a trend that micro dosing is actually helping people. And I certainly look at the world as we all do right now with everything that's going on politically, climate crisis, everything, and I go, well, why are we all micro dosing? I mean, it does everything I've read in your book and every research I've read. It does boost morale, it does give you more energy, it does sort of take the edge off anxiety. It's all a plus to me.

Besides the fact that it's illegal. Yeah, I think that's the biggest negative about micro dosing is that it is illegal. There's not a lot of risk in micro dosing at those doses. You know, you're perfectly functional, you can do what you need. I think the biggest risk is and I hear this a lot. People describe micro dozing and then talk about feeling different and feeling a psychedelic effect. That means they weren't micro dozing, they took too much.

And it's particularly difficult with psilocybin mushrooms because any two mushrooms can differ in intensity by a factor of ten. So you what was just a kind of a micro dose, little nibble of a mushroom, when you did the same thing with another mushroom, you Mike go WHOA, I can't drive, and you're usually managing your medication yourself when you're micro dozing. Correct. Yeah, people are not guided with micro dosing. I mean, this is something you can do on your own. You don't

really need a guide. There's no experience to talk you through. It's it's more like a brain vitamin. I think that's kind of how people how people treat it. But as I say, you know, I think the jury is open on whether it's actually doing anything at a pharmacological level. Um, And I think we have to do that research. I

think it's really important search. Yeah. I heard a story the other day from a good friend of mine and she was away on working and her husband was at home with their kids, and he called her up and he said, UM, is there something you want to tell me about this chocolate bar that you have hidden in the drawer of your desk. And my friend said, what do you mean? And he said, well, I just ate

half of it and I am seeing colors. And she said, well, yes, that is a candy bar that has mushrooms in it for micro dosing, and you just ate half of it, so you are in fact tripping. So she had to call her children and put them on speaker and say, listen to me very carefully. Your father is tripping. I need you to make him a big thing of spaghetti because he's really hungry and you can't raise your voice or do anything that's going to make him feel disoriented

or anxious. And the kids were like, what this is not This is not a family where the parents like talk about drugs openly. So she said she had to beg her children to kind of take care of him, to manage it. Yeah, to be his guide. I mean, you know, if you have these substances around the house, somebody may take them, and uh, people should realize these are powerful substances and they shouldn't be casual about it.

And it's one of the reasons that I emphasized the importance of working with a guide if you're going to take a substantial dose of a psychedelic and that you mitigate a lot of the risks. And but there are risks, their psychological risks, and people do end up in the emergency room because they have such a horrifying experience or

or can't get out of it. But a good guide can help you get out of it and actually turn that bad experience into a positive experience because whatever is coming up, whatever terrifying things you're seeing or feeling, this isn't a product of the molecule. The molecule is just a catalyst. This is something that your brain, your mind is producing and therefore has some meaning, and with the help of a good guide, you can interpret it and

and actually get something valuable. I noticed the researchers and the guides um that I've talked to, you don't use the term bad trip. They talk about a challenging trip. And that's because it has valuable material. It shouldn't it shouldn't just be ignored. Let's take it a step further, because if you feel you can manage your micro dosing as an anxious mom living in a world that seems to be on fire, you know, it could be placebo, it could be the actual mushrooms, but it seems to

be helping people, yes, in a larger scale. So if we're starting to talk about m D m A and I have I have friends that have done that as well, where they're guided through a trip which is significantly more of the LSD, and it has been life changing for people that have experienced trauma. I watched the Netflix series you did with isolet Waldman, and she talked about being, you know, just chronically depressed and how much it helped her. So for me, I think, well, why isn't this being

researched even more? I mean, we have a huge problem with depression, huge mental health crisis, especially with this younger generation with anxiety. So what why isn't this on the front burner of medical research. Well, it's getting there. Um, there is a lot of research going on right now. Part of the reason that there isn't more is, first of all, it was impossible to do the research until about twenty years ago. The government made it very difficult.

There was such a backlash against psychedelics from the sixties. The NIH National Institute of Health, which funds most medical research, was allergic to psychedelics for many years. They felt it was too controversial. But just in the last year they've given their first two grants for psychedelic research to a to a really promising research program at Yale that's looking

at obsessive compulsive disorder. Uh. And if you saw the Netflix series, one of the patients in that trial, Ben in the psilocybin episode, has an amazing story of transformation of Actually, he's like thirty years old, he's just had his first kid. He has been hobbled by o c D since he was ten, and it was like this this ball and chain he was dragging around, and in the course of one afternoon, he just he dropped the chain. He just didn't need it anymore, and his symptoms one

by one disappeared. It was quite remarkable, incredible. So the government is funding that research and also a program in smoking cessation at Johns Hopkins. They've given a grant for that. By the way, is Harvard doing any research? I know Timothy Leary was there for a long time. Yes, they have reignited. It's the last place I thought would do it.

Mass General, which is part of Harvard, has launched a psychedelic research center and they're working specifically on rumination as the common denominator of a lot of these rigid thinking disorders. I think it's a really interesting study. So the stigma is lifting. The research is happening right now. I could point to a dozen trials underway for everything from addiction for alcoholism, cocaine and cigarettes, to o c D to

depression rumination. But right now, the thinking is that it's most effective on those forms of mental illness or mental distress that are characterized by brains that are too tightly wound, too too rigid in their thinking. And that's all at one end of the spectrum, and that is depression, anxiety, rumination, addiction O c D. These are all the products of minds stuck in loops that they can't get out of, or destructive narratives. You know, I'm unworthy of love, or

my work is ship, you know whatever. So m D m A is a very interesting substance and very useful

in the therapeutic relationship. It deactivate the amygdala, which is the fear and anxiety center in your brain, the fight or flight response, and this allows people to take out very painful memories and look at them and talk about them without the accompanying charge of anxiety or fear and for people with PTS, so you're not reliving them while you were living them without emotion, and and that allows you to process them in a way you can't normally,

and instead of just being tormented by these memories, you can like take it out and deal with it and talk to a therapist about it. The value of this research has been demonstrated. I mean a Phase three study, which is the last phase before approval, was released last year and I think it was two thirds of the people with PTSD no longer qualified for that diagnosis after their treatment, so they were no they no longer had PTSD by the normal scale the CAP score and UM.

So it will be approved for that, but I think it will be used for other things as Well's it is incredible. I think m D m A is an amazing substance from my own experience, I think it's going to be great for couples therapy because it allows two people to UM to talk about the most difficult topics without getting antagonistic, without getting defensive. Um, it's just kind of remarkable the kind of conversation you can have. And UM, I'm just scarious, Michael. What would be in a couple

therapy situation? What would be an example of something that you could work on in this setting that maybe it wouldn't be as effective in regular therapy. UM, it needn't be trauma. I mean, it just could be the frictions of everyday life. It just could be that your partner is driving you crazy. You know something about his personality, or his habits or his you know, behavior, or the way he deals with the kids or whatever it is.

You could have that conversation without it going to def conn and like instantly, which often happens in relationships and people fall into these patterns of defensive response. It disarms all that and you can you can talk about these things in a very cool and helpful way and and also feel the strong bond At the same time. It has more risks than other psychedelics, physical risks and raises your heart rate and things like that. It is an emphetamine,

but I think it's going to have great value. And what do you think about trying micro docing m d m A with teenagers because you know, their frontal lobe hasn't completely developed and the brain is still growing. Is there any research on that? No? Um, It's interesting though, MAPS the organization that has done most of the m d m A research. It stands for the Multidisciplinary Association

of Psychedelic Studies. Once they get f d A approval for m d m A, which they will get probably in the next two years, at the outside, they have to one more study that the FDA has asked for. They have been asked to test it on adolescence. That's kind of FDA requirement because if it has some benefit for young people, you want to know it. Yet they may need a different dose, so they will be studying

it in adolescence. And I mean there are many adolescents who suffer trauma um in terms of psilocybin treatment and young people. You know, I say in my book How to Change Your Mind, there's kind of a throwaway line that I think psychedelics are wasted on the young, and that they have particular value as you get older. And the reason for that is as you get older, you are locked into ways of looking at the world, looking

at yourself. You you do have these narratives of who you are that are kind of limiting, and you're a creature of habit increasingly, and habit kind of dules us to the world into reality because we see things in a conventionalized way, even if it's our own personal conventions. And psychedelic melt all that and allow you to form new habits and get out of old habits and get a perspective on them. And I think that's all really valuable,

but especially valuable as we get older. One of the things that happens on the classic psychedelics on a macro dose is something called ego dissolution or mystical experience. This is an experience where your sense of self completely dissolves, and when that happens, it can be terrifying or wonderful,

depending on the context you're in. I mean, if you're in a safe place with the guide you trust, it's a wonderful experience because when the walls of the ego come down, you merge with whatever else is out there, and it could be the divine. If you're a religiously inclined person, it could be nature, it could be For me, it was a piece of music that I completely merged with. It was this remarkable experience of of um, you know, there was no subject object duality. It wasn't me listening

to it. It was like I was it. So I wonder about ego dissolution to someone who hasn't fully formed their ego yet, and is that a good time to experiment with that kind of radical self transcendence. I don't know. Um, you know, I know lots of people who had good psychedelic experiences in their youth. Young people sometimes they're a little careless about when and where they take it. You know,

they don't pay enough attention to set and setting. I wonder about addiction to not there's no real addictive element to this. No, there's no addiction risk. Two very interesting things about classic psychedelics again I'm not talking about m D M a UM, is that they're not habit forming. The classic experiment to prove addictiveness where you have a rat in a cage and they have two levers, and one lever administers heroin or or cocaine to their bloodstream,

and the other lever, you know, sugar water. Uh, and the rats will pick the lever with the drug over and over again until they're addicted or dead. It's just irresistible. If you put LSD in that set up, they'll try it once and then never again. There. They don't like to trip. I mean, it's too weird. It's like, you know, it's it doesn't it doesn't have it doesn't give the kind of reward and animal wants. I mean, we don't know how animals trip, obviously, but they do and they

don't like it. UM. So it's not habit forming by any kind of standard, And and that intuitively sounds right after a big psychedelic experience which is all consuming for a day, your first thought is not when can I do this again? It's like, do I ever have to do this again? Because it's it's really hard work. It's really hard work. Even if there are moments of incredible euphoria, you feel like you've run a marathon or something. Afterwards, there's a lot more to come after this short break

and we're back. Just walk me through it for my own curiosity. If I were if I met with a guide I felt safe with, I would probably go to their place. Usually sometimes they'll come to your place. It's I think it's better to go to a place where, like your neighbors are not gonna, you know, knock on the door for a for a cup of sugar, or the FedEx guy's not going to show up. I mean, you just don't want to worry about your body, you know, you just want to be in a safe place. Someone

else is looking after you. It's their environment, they control it and it's safe. That's ideally what you want. And how long would this go? Well, I'll walk you through a psilocybin session, okay, which is shorter than an LSD session, but psilocybin is being used in research LSD not so much in this country, not because it doesn't work, but because it takes a long time and you have to pay your guides over time, because it's like eight hours. Now,

we're not talking about microdocing. Now, we should really make clear the distinction. We're talking about macrodocin with a guide, which is a combination of talk therapy and a drug that involves uh several hours of preparation by your guides, and they're usually two of them, a man and a woman. So anyway, first of all, before the day of your experience, you will have already met with that guide and had a pretty extensive conversation where they might take your medical history.

Any responsible guide should know any medical issues you might have, and they may, based on that disqualify you. You know, if you have a second order relative who has schizophrenia, they probably won't want to work with you. So they take your medical history, but also your psychological history, like what do you want to work on? What's your intention

in doing this? Why have you sought this therapy? You know, you could say, well, I want to develop my spiritual side or I want to learn something about my mind. It doesn't have to be I want to solve my obsessive compulsive disorder, whatever it is. But it's it's really useful to frame an intention for the experience. It may or may not become the center of the experience. Your experience may take you somewhere very different and unexpected, but

it's it's useful to have an intention. I've gone into an intention thinking, I mean, as you know, my dad died a few years ago, that I really wanted to like be with him and have him appeared to me in some sense and and have a conversation with him. And I went into it with that in mind. Experience ended up being all about my mom. And it was like, you, idiot, she's a lot. He's here. You should be taking care

of her, not your memory of your father. And I was like, but that was very valuable, and that I remember that very day. I was planning not to come to Russia Shaun a dinner, and I had this experience the day before in another city, and I came out of it saying, I've got to go to Russia shawn a dinner, and we changed our plans and we flew to New York. That's incredible. So yeah, I mean it was kind of a banal insight, like be with your

mom as long as you can. But but your point is you go in maybe with one intention and but something else completely and you come out with another. Yeah, which is very interesting, and you should pay attention to what comes up. There's a reason it comes up. So hopefully by the time she or he administers the psychedelic, they know about you. They know like what's on your mind, they know your history, um, and you have developed some

trust some confidence in them. I did interview some guides that I did not trust and I didn't want to work with, and you should be alert to that. It's like choosing a therapist. Yeah, so it's it's intuitive basically, Yeah, it is. It's it's intuitive, you know, you know if some if you trust somebody or not. And it's it's style too. Someone could be a little too new ag or too casual about what to me is going to be a big frightening experience. How much time do you

put aside to do this? Do they say, like you have a free day, you should have a free day. You may not need a free day. I mean, different people metabolize the substances differently. You should expect four to six hours on a psilocybin experience. They give you the drug,

it takes about a half hour to come on. Typically they give you headphones or play music, and they usually have their own playlist, and you shouldn't choose the playlist yourself because you'll have all these associations and um, so they have a playlist that it is incredibly important to the experience. Um. Music takes on enormous meaning and and

kind of drives the experience. There's something called synesthesia where your different senses get kind of cross wired and you can actually see music sometimes or taste it or smell it, and it's the most wonderful thing. Um. You don't want music with lyrics though, you don't want to be, you know, trying to make out the words. But um, but many styles of music work. Okay. So it starts to come on. You start to realize that, oh my god, things sound

a little different. Maybe you have some visuals, maybe the walls are starting to pulsate a little bit. Um, but you you you realize you're altered. Here's another thing that might surprise you. You're wearing eye shades and the reason for that is you could get really hung up on all the sensory things going on around you, which is all fascinating, but you want to have an internal trip. You're doing this for therapeutic reasons. You want to learn

something about your mind. And if your eyes are closed, you will go deeper. And um, so very often you have the eye shades on and the music and this takes you out of the room you're in and you and you travel, you venture and uh, there is a succession of different many different things happen. Um. People talk about hallucination, and I think that that word gives the wrong idea. It's sort of like you're having waking dreams.

I mean, you're perfectly awake, you know that this isn't really happening to you, but you kind of allow it to. So there may be a period at the peak, which comes after a hour to where you cannot exert any control over your mind where you it is just taking you and you're following. And this can be, you know, a wonderful experience. You could travel to really interesting places,

or it can be frightening. I mean, and and and part of the preparation is telling you what to do when you have a frightening experience, and they'll tell you if you see a monster, don't try to run away, step right up to it and say, what do you have to teach me? Why are you in my mind? They'll tell you if you see a door, open it,

if you see a staircase climate. Basically, the advice is to surrender to whatever is happening, which is really I think the key piece of advice in a psychedelic experience, because it is when you fight it. It is when you try to resist what's happening as your ego gradually softens and melts or whatever it is, and you try to hold on for dear life, that you get very

anxious and paranoid. I thought, as someone who I think of myself as kind of a control freak in in normal life, I thought I would have trouble letting go. But I found that working with a guide that I trusted, as soon as I ingested the substance, I was like, all right, here we go, you know, and I was able to surrender and and therefore had an experience of of of complete ego dissolution. That that was, you know,

a wonderful thing, but it's unpredictable. One of the interesting things about psychedelics compared to most other drugs, since it is really your mind that's producing what happens with this catalyst, experiences are as different as people are. I mean, there are some common denominators, but different people go different places. Some people recover traumatic memories and that can be difficult

to deal with. Other people, you know, have kind of uncomplicated trips that are just kind of adventures taking them to interesting places. I've had many experiences where all the people in my life appear to me and I feel like I'm in conversation with my sisters or my parents, or my wife or my son, and I think about those relationships and I come out of it invariably with this powerful feeling of gratitude to all to all these people. Um,

that's you know, I just get very emotional. Imagine if we could put it in the in the water in Congress and the House of Representatives. Well, you know, that's a It's a common kind of trope in the psychedelic community that it would be great to give certain people psychedelics. Um, but I think we should do more research before we take that risk, because it may just push people to be more of what they already are. Yes, well that

would be terrifying. Yes, yeah, there's this cool research that shows that after a psilocybin trip, uh, people's nature connectedness scores go up, in other words, the extent to which they feel they're part of nature and not standing up heart from it. And so that seems like really good news. We need more of this to solve the environmental crisis. But I think the people who volunteer for a psychedelic

experiment or take psychedelic aready there. Yeah, I think I think it's intensifying a feeling they already have until we give it to the Koch Brothers and you know, people like that, people who are not environmentalists. You know, then we can safely make that conclusion. But that's research that needs to be done, and in fact will be done. Maybe if we start with ecstasy with those people and then we can work our way, that might be smart. Yeah, that's a good idea good plan. When you come out

of the trip, though, are you tired? Are you thirsty? Does it? Everything starts to get very lucid and then you realize, oh, I'm back. It's not that sudden. So after the peak of the experience, this period where your mind is going to take you where it's going to go. You enter this long danument. This this period that can last a couple of hours. That is I think, really a wonderful part of the experience that doesn't get talked about nearly enough. And it's a meditative frame of mind.

You've regained the ability to think about what you want to think about, yet you're utterly absorbed and not distracted, so you can It's really where I learned how to meditate. Actually it was in that period and I had amazing focus. I was undistractable and did a lot of thinking. And that goes on for a couple of hours, and then gradually your guide probably wants to go home, and you know, gradually starts taking you out of the experience, and um, you don't say very much at that point about what

happened to you. They really leave that for the integration session, and and there is this process of making sense of it. And for me, it was talking to Judith, my wife at dinner when I got home, and she would kind of debrief me. And it's a it can be a very confusing experience and you have to turn it into a narrative, and and by telling the story to somebody who understands you, you start to see, Oh, yeah, that's what was going on here, this is the theme of

the trip. And she would help me connect the dots in various ways. So I got more out of integrating with her, frankly, than I did from most of the guides I work with. I wanted to ask you, when you're in this guid to trip, can you tell me the difference between spotlight consciousness and lantern consciousness? Yeah. So this was a term I learned from a psychologist at Berkeley I was interviewing and she was arguing that there are two kinds of consciousness. Actually, there are many kinds

of consciousness, but this is a very important distinction. Um. Spotlight consciousness is characteristic of adults, especially adults who do thinking work, and it is what allows you to block out everything and focus on one thing. The way we are now focused on one thing, and we're ignoring a lot of things going on around us, right, and uh, and a lot of things coming up internally. We're just kind of doing this. This is a very important adult skill.

Children have a different kind of consciousness. I'm talking about like you know, younger than five or six, say, before they go to school, they have what she calls, or several psychologists called lantern consciousness, where instead of focusing on that one point, they're taking in information from all sides. They're very sticky, they're they have trouble focusing. They you know, the trade off is they're getting all this wonderful sensory information.

You're getting all these you know, the hilarious things kids say to us about how the world works. And it's because they have this three sixty degree aperture to take in information from the world. Her theory and we need to test it is that um psychedelics gives you a taste of lantern consciousness, that you are suddenly much more open to sensory information coming in. You can hear things

in the music you've never heard before. Whatever kind of algorithms you run to have an experience base don having had that experience before is out the window. So everything is incredibly fresh, and that, you know, she believes that young kids are essentially tripping all the time, and that our access to that consciousness comes through these substances. It's a very intriguing theory, but it is a taste. I think of how young children go through the world, and

for that alone, it's it's fascinating and valuable. I think so fascinating. Well, Michael, this was very helpful. Micro Dosing seems to be getting a lot more popular. Yeah, And

if you want more information, there's a website. There's a psychologist named James Fatiman who started a website for people interested in micro dosing, and he offers online the He doesn't sell substance, obviously, but he he tells you the protocol, how much to do, how often to do it, and he's collecting a lot of data from people based on their experiences. So it's it's so if you search James Fatiman micro docing, you'll find it and that will tell

you all you need to know about the practice. Great, and don't don't hide chuck of oars in your desk, not once with psilocybin in them yet though. And now, before I let you go off and trip or whatever it is you do over there at Berkeley, UM, you get to ask me a question, and you can ask

me anything. Well, it's interesting you've talked a lot about your friends and their experiences with psychedelics, UM, but I'd be curious to know about your own experiences with psychedelics, if you'd be willing to share that, I'd be happy to share. I have never taken mushrooms. I've never taken a psychedelic before. I smoked pot um when I was

in college. My boyfriend was at Harvard. I went to meet him and had to go to a Crimson Club event, and the pot I smoked I believed was laced with something. I don't know if it was PCP or something, but we were sitting at his Dean's dinner and there was a fish on the platter, and I believed the fish was alive and kept asking me to save it. Yes, And I kept turning to my boyfriend Jake and saying I've got to get this fish back into the ocean, to which he knew that I obviously smoked something that

wasn't just normal marijuana. So that's really the only time I've had any kind of altered state. But as a teenager, I was terrified. I never, you know, wanted to not be completely lucid, And even as an adult, you know, I don't drink just because I don't like the feeling

of being drunk or buzzed. But the more research I've done, and after reading your book, I am kind of fascinated with it because I sort of feel the way you felt, certainly the way you spoke at the beginning of the Netflix um series, which is, you know, I I feel like our life doesn't change that much from here on in. You know, this is who I am, These are my kids, this is my husband. I don't see anything imploding anytime soon. Um. I re the books I read, I have, the friends

I have. You know, I'm sort of feeling like I need to expand and maybe next year when I'm an empty nester and you know, there there's going to come a time where I'm like, Okay, let's open up the universe a little bit. So I think it's on the horizon. That's a classic situation. I think it's very hard to deal with these experiences or drugs while you still have

kids at home. Yeah. I've noticed that the people most interested in in what's going on with psychedelics and the and the potential of psychedelics are either on the young end, people in their twenties or people in their fifties, and the kids have left home. Um, And that's kind of where the curiosity comes in and the opportunity, because frankly, it's a hard conversation if you're having these experiences with

your kids, if they're young. I mean, by the time I was involved, Isaac was already in college or maybe out of college, and so we could talk about it and he shared his experiences. I shared my experience. But I'm not sure how to talk to a fifteen year old about this, frankly, and uh, and I'm glad I don't have to. Yeah, I don't think I could either. I think it I think it would give mixed messages about all kinds of stuff. Anyway, thank you so much

for talking to me today. I really really enjoyed it. And um, everybody must I read all your books and watch this Netflix series which is incredibly enlightening. Thank you. Yeah, how to change your mind? I really appreciate it. Was great talking to you. Ali. All right, Michael, talk to you soon. Take care. Coming up after the break, a mom is going to tell me all about micro docing. Welcome back to go ask Ali. Now we're going to hear from a mom who micro doces, and remember this

is just one person's experience. Okay, I'm fascinated by micro docing. I spoke to Michael Pollen all of out it, but also I have more and more friends that are starting to do it. Tell me about when you first micro doced and why, Uh, my gosh, it's been probably about five or six months. Um. You know, my the last few years, my anxiety has been off the charts and I'm normally very able to regulate myself, and you know, with just normal therapy and everything. UM. I've gone the

route of antidepressants and anti anxiety medications before. UM, but I don't like I don't like not feeling in control of myself. I don't like the feeling of being being on something, whether it's whether it's pain killers or you know, medications. UM. So when it came to micro docing, I was I was apprehensive because you know, you think of mushrooms and micro docing and you think that you're going to be tripping and then um, it's it's it's remarkably not like that.

So it was anxiety that initially brought me to this path. I honestly, I saw the information through a friend of mine who's a PhD and a therapist on micro docing on her Instagram page, and I was like, Okay, this is intriguing. And I started kind of, you know, I started, I started looking into a little more. And around that same time, my mother, of all people, brought me a newsweek with you know, the mushrooms on the front of it, UM and she said, honey, you should you should look

at this. And she's always been a very homeopathic type of person. And I remember distinctly, I was working in my corporate job and I said, Mom, this isn't some hocus pocus hippie dippie crap that like you that won't fix it. And she said, honey, you just need to look. And I did at the time, and UM, I just kind of got into it. I filled out the questionnaire that is on the website that that I saw, which is my collegy Psychology. UM. I filled out the questionnaire.

I was contacted by one of their intakes specialists. They have therapeutic practitioners there and UM. I chatted with her for half an hour or forty five minutes UM and then she recommended a blend to put me on to start out UM and that was it. I ordered it. I got it two days later and I started it I expected it to be something that made me feel

loopy and weird, and um, it surprisingly wasn't. So the more that the more that I take it, the more I realized that I don't feel I don't feel any different. I just feel better. It's very, very hard to explain. It's hard to say, well, no, you don't feel anything. You just feel better, because no medication just makes you feel better. It always has some kind of cloudy side effect that makes you, you know, not not be able to function in one way or another. And it's just

it's just a different clarity and a different joy. It's um, you know, it's It's allowed me. It allows me to focus more on my work when I'm working. It's allowed me to get more creative and just completely immerse myself and what I'm doing and enjoy every single second of it rather than be bogged down by I have to do all of these things. I'm just like I do them, and I moved to the next one, and it's it's

just this different state of being rather than worrying about being. Okay, so you have to walk me through this because I've never done it. Okay, what do you get in the mail? Just like dried mushrooms or you know, what does it look like? Oh, and that's that's one of the reasons I was apprehensive to even do something like this, because I'm not the kind of person who can be like, well then I eat this cap of a mushroom and feel better. I That weirds me out, honestly, because again,

I don't like feeling like I'm high. I have kids, I'm you know, I'm self employed. I have to be on top of things. Um So what you've got. What I got is literally a bottle with thirty capsules in it. And I just take a pill every morning, okay, And you take one every morning like you would a vit him and see, I do five days on two days off. Okay, So I take them Monday through Friday, and then Saturday

and Sunday. I don't take them. Why, It's just to give your body a chance, in your in your mind, a chance to just not have it in your system and kind of like reset a little bit. Okay, So you take the pill first thing in the morning, and so can you kind of walk me through how you feel physically and mentally? Yeah, so, um my, I do have a pretty stringent morning routine. And think that's what works for me. UM. In the morning, I wake up very early, I take my pill, I go for a run.

I might be out for about a half an hour forty five minutes. UM. If it's one of the four days of the week the work week that my son is with me, then UM get him up and going and ready for school and everything. And it's not the kind of thing where, at least for me, and I know everybody is, experience is vastly different with this. UM. I I don't feel an actual hi or any anything

for that matter. And that's what's so kind of weirds me out is I thought that I would feel like, like you said, like rainbows, and UM it's not like that. It's just I feel calm and I it's so hard to explain it. UM, it's not like when you take an antidepressant and it's kind of this. UM. For me, at least, that was like a numbing or a blanketing of like putting a band aid on something and saying, there,

don't feel anything. It's not like that. UM. It's I'm more focused on my work, UM, and just instead of dwelling on the things that are bogging me down and causing that anxiety that I can't get out of my head. Like if you're a chronic overthinker, which I am, I have a zillion things going through I had at any given moment, and a lot of them, you know, especially given today's climate. Sometimes they're just not good and they can be overwhelming. Um, and it just stopped that. It's

just it doesn't make me not think. It makes me realize that not everything so bad and that there are beautiful things. So would you say, you know a lot of a lot of people with anxiety have something where let's say you got fired off a project and you it's almost like if you have a clip in your head that says, oh my god, I'm never gonna work again, I'm not gonna be able to pay the bills, I'm never going to work again, and it just goes on

a loop over and over over in your head. Does micro dosing kind of make it disappear or does it just calm it down? Are you able to kind of stand back and deal with your anxiety like from a distance. Um, it's allowed me to more reasonably and calmly evaluate whatever such a nation is causing the stress and realistically just be like, is this really the end of the world? Are there are steps out of it? What are the

steps out of it? Instead of being this conglomeration of this of a mess inside your head that's you know, swirling around, it stops all of those things for me and makes me go, king Number one, I'm going to take care of this. Number two, I'm going to take care of this. And it it just allows me to um more easily handle things, one thing at a time rather than just a mess of my life is over right?

And how how quickly does it take effect? First of all when you first started doing it, because you know, antidepressants take like three weeks. And second of all, can you tell if it's taken effect? Um? I was telling my girlfriend that I would go from my run and I would have this moment of just like a like a deep breath and like a kind of letting go, and um, it's just kind of like they're all of

a sudden, it's just a piece. So it's so hard to explain because I relate that to being you know, like if you're stressed out and you have a glass of wine. When we start feeling that like glass of wine and then you're calm a little bit. It's not like that, it's just clarity. Does it feel like what you wanted antidepressants to feel like? It feels like in a perfect world, that is what an antidepressant would feel like, but that is not, in fact, what actual antidepressants feel like.

And how are you feeling on Saturday and Sunday when you don't take the capsule? For me, there's no difference. There's no difference. And can you micro dose whenever you want and stop whenever you want? Oh yeah, it's absolutely

non addictive. It's not you know, there have been times where I've I was really I was really busy and totally last track of the fact that I was running out of them, and then I've yeah, I forgot and maybe I'd go like a week where there there have been times where I've felt just fine and I didn't need them, and I was like, all right, well, I'm just not going to take them for right now. There's never once spent a moment where I was where I

felt like I had to have them. And as a matter of fact, I've actually stopped drinking since I started taking them. Wow, I'm so fascinated. Is there are there things about it that you that would surprise me, besides, of course the feeling of calmness or that surprised you when you first started micro docing. Yeah, I found that I am more calm about literally every aspect of my life. And I've always been a very very busy and very

go go go go, Like I have a schedule. We have to adhere to it, you know, kids get on board, you have to go like it. And this is definitely just made me chill more. For lack of better words, I'm I'm nicer. Would you say you're a better mother for it? I I absolutely would. And I will also say that kids are are definitely they're older now. M I wish that I would have had this tool when

they were younger. Um. I think it's easy to, like I said, get get busy, busy, busy and go go go, um and especially in today's world, and I think it would have made me stop and just kind of smell the roses a little bit more, you know. I. Um, my youngest is is actually a sophomore in high school and he's in baseball and hardcore like and I would sit as baseball games and stress out about all the things that I needed to be doing while I was

sitting there watching his baseball game. It's like just taking that, you know, a couple hours or a few hours to do that was something that was just it was hard. I would do it, but I would always be thinking, I need to be doing this, this isn't this. And I go now and I sit with him, and I just enjoy it. I enjoy our conversations more. And not to say that I didn't before, but I just I see a different side of them. Um. We laugh or

I out myself to laugh more, and not because I'm high. Yeah, if you had a anxious child, would you introduce micro dosing to them? I'm my oldest, well, and I know, I know the world child is kind of He's not a child, he's my child. Um my son was twenty one, my oldest, and I did recommend as to him as an antidepressant and he started doing it before I even touched it. And how did that work for him? It

worked well for him. He's always been a very he had a learning disability growing up that he still has um and he's never been really comfortable with with the pharmaceutical company because he was on so many medications when he was younger, and it got to the point where when he was in high school, even he um he got a prescription for an antidepressant because the medication that

he was on causes side effect of being oppressed. And his doctor said, if this antidepressant causes some other side effects, then we'll go ahead and put you on something else. And I remember we walked out of that appointment and he crumpled all of his prescriptions up and he threw him on the foreboard of the car, and I said, what are you doing? And he said when does it stop? Wow? And he was like, when does it? This causes another side effect, that causes another side effect, that causes another

side effect. So he's always been interested in finding out different routes two handle mental afflictions or whatever the case may be. Was very brutal on him, as it was for a lot of us UM and he was severely depressed, and it was it was something that I brought up to him, just saying, hey, you're over eighteen, like maybe this is something that you should look into, and he jumped on it right away and it changed him right um,

seeing the change in him. He's always been a very goofy and light heart it and just beautiful, so human. And I saw him go so deep and dark and depressed for so long. I mean, he couldn't get out of bed. It was it was I didn't know what to do. I legitimately was worried about him for a very long time. And um, he's a musician. He started playing music, he started writing music. He started immersing himself

in that again. And you see he was getting up and he was showering, and he was making chokes and we were laughing and he would say, hey, mom, let's go for a run and we get out. Like he it brought him back to who who he was. I recognized him again. It happened. How fast did that happen? Like he He didn't happen like the first day he micro dosed, right. It was very fast, though, it was

very fast for him. It was. I remember I was in my room and I hadn't heard music in my house in months, you know, I hadn't heard him, And all of a sudden I heard one of his amps. He plays electric guitar and bass, and he's brilliant and so good at it. And I heard one of his amps turn on, and I went wow, and then and then I heard him start playing and he was playing jazz and he was he he was just he was going crazy on his front boards and his little fingers

were going all over the place. And I went and I walked and I stood in his doorway and he was sitting there and he was in his pajamas and I went hi, and he was like hey, mom, and he it was just like he was never in bed, he was never depressed. It was just this. It was tremendous. It's amazing for him. And like I said, I can't stress enough that that every single person is different. Every single person's physiology and makeup and everything um react to

different ways. But that's again the beautiful thing about it is that if one thing doesn't work, try another one. You know, if that chocolate bar didn't work, try taking the pill. If you take one of the pills and that doesn't work, let him know and they'll be like, let's switch this up and try a different things. Like there's no harm in trying it different ways. And that, I think for me, was like that was the hugest thing. It's you don't get addicted to it. When he stopped,

When my son stopped he Um. I remember because we were ordering. I was ordering him another bottle and I said to you, how are you doing on your pills? And he said, I don't. I think I'm fine, mom. And I was like, are you sure, like you know, and he was like, no, I think I'm gonna try it without And so it kind of gave him that step to be okay on his own without needing anything. So he's not reliant on them at all. It's incredible. Oh, it's remarkable, Um. But they definitely did help him through

a very very dark time. And it was the change that I saw on him also that I kind of sat back and went, wow, this is kind of crazy. And it's I think one of the reasons that I allowed myself to step into it also. And I'm curious, do you have to be careful about the amount? Only because one of the one of my friends, uh date too much of a chocolate part and had mushrooms in it. Well, I mean you'll just I mean, if you if you eat a lot of it, you'll you know, probably have

some trip right, Yeah, you'll have some holiocinergenic effects. But the thing that for for me, um, I had to have some kind of um structured or like a regulated way of doing this. I guess I'm not much of a control freak that I have to know that I'm getting the same amount every time. UM, but I know that that what I'm taking right now is a very calculated and measured dosage. So I would have to consciously take an extra pill in order for it to be

too much. Right, It's amazing, amazing, It's pretty good. It's I had one person the other day, one of my friends. She was like, are you like a spokesperson? Are you getting like kicked? And I was like, no, I get I get zero. I just it's it's done that much for me that I and no matter whether it's through this channel that I'm going through or I have I have a friend who does get to chocolate bars and

for her that works. You know, it's it's you have to kind of find your your groove and go with that. And everybody's different. Can you imagine all of us mothers started micro dosing. The pharmaceuticals would lose their minds. Oh my god, we all got off the anti depressants in Zanna. I mean they come and kill us. That in the wine industry would just take exactly. Um, thank you so

much for talking to me. This was really really insightful and it's it's so nice to talk to somebody that actually is taking them and has given me sort of an idea of what would be like to start micro dosing, which I kind of want to do. I mean, honestly, try it. If you don't like it, you don't have to do it again. That's what's wonderful about it. It's amazing.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for listening to Go ask Alli, and a very special thanks to my new micro dosing mom friend for sharing her insight on micro dosing with all of us. And just to be clear, I'm not suggesting condoning or in any way trying to convince anyone to try psychedelics or even micro dosing, and it is still illegal to buy the stuff, at least for now and now. Michael Pollen. You can find tons of information and resources at Michael's website Michael Pollen dot com.

You can follow him on Instagram Michael dot Pollen and on Twitter at Michael Pollen. If you'd like more info on what you've heard in this episode, check out our show notes next week and go ask Alli I bring you the one and only Julia Roberts, Yes, the prettiest woman Julia Roberts. We talked about her newest film, Ticket to Paradise, her love of cooking, her passion for her husband Danny, and how I always mispronounced young. You'll want

to hear it all. Be sure to subscribe, rate and review, Go ask Alli, and follow me on social media on Twitter at Ali e Wentworth and on Instagram at the Real Ali Wentworth. Now, if you'd like to ask me a question or suggest a guest or a topic to dig into, I'd love to hear from you, and there's a bunch of ways you can do it. You can text me or call me at three to three three six four six three five six, or you can email a voice memo right from your phone to Go Ask

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