Know Your Physio

Paul Austin: Exploring Psychedelic Healing - Unconditional Love, Integration, and Societal Transformation

• Paul F. Austin • Episode 110

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In this compelling episode, I have the pleasure of engaging in a deep and thoughtful conversation with Paul F. Austin, a leading figure in the psychedelic space. As the founder of Third Wave, Paul has become an influential educator and advocate in the realm of psychedelic experiences, focusing on their transformative power for personal and societal change. His work, prominently featured in global media outlets like Forbes and BBC's Worklife, centers around the intersection of microdosing, personal development, and professional success.

Our discussion with Paul unveils the profound impact of psychedelics on mental health and personal growth. He delves into the key differences between conventional psychiatry and psychedelic therapy, highlighting how psychedelics address the core of psychological issues rather than just treating symptoms. Paul emphasizes the importance of intention, preparation, and integration in the psychedelic experience, advocating for a responsible and educated approach to these powerful substances. 

This episode is an enlightening journey for anyone curious about the healing potential of psychedelics or seeking a deeper understanding of their role in modern society.  His unique perspective as a pioneer in this field offers an inspiring and hopeful vision of the future, where psychedelics are recognized not just as a means of personal healing, but as catalysts for profound societal transformation. Join us in this engaging conversation with Paul F. Austin, and explore the transformative power of psychedelic experiences.

Key Points From This Episode:

  • Guest Introduction [00:04:01]
  • Psychedelics' Physical Benefits [00:05:09]
  • Psychedelic Use Prerequisites [00:06:06]
  • Post-Psychedelic Integration [00:07:48]
  • Unconditional Love in Integration [00:11:00]
  • Psychedelics and Negative Traits [00:19:06]
  • Trust in Psychedelic Experiences [00:20:22]
  • Vetting Psychedelic Providers [00:26:23]
  • Psychedelics in Psychotherapy [00:38:46]
  • Unconditional Love Experience [00:41:05]
  • Psychedelic Healing vs. Psychiatry [00:43:07]
  • Psychedelics and Mental Health [00:45:47]
  • Mind-Body Connection in Psychedelics [00:49:06]
  • Ketamine Experience [00:51:26]

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Paul Austin: Key difference between classic psychiatry with conventional medications and psychedelic work is psychedelics get many ways to the bottom. They get underneath the surface and they allow for a release of the trauma or the issue. And in that release, all of a sudden what has been sort of dictating our life through subconscious programming now becomes conscious and we can become aware of it and change it, right? So psychiatry is symptomatic, psychedelics get to the core of it.
Andres Preschel: There is only one supplement that I think almost everyone on this planet should be taking and that's a full spectrum and highly bioavailable magnesium supplement because, well, let's face it, ever since the industrial revolution, our soil has been depleted. of magnesium and therefore our food is depleted of magnesium and on top of that our modern environments which are inherently overstimulating and stressful are constantly depleting our body of magnesium and unlike other nutrients this is not something your body can produce on its own it literally needs to get it from the diet, and one individual kind of magnesium alone is not enough. And so the folks at BiOptimizers have made it very easy and convenient to add back in what the modern world leaves out. They've created Magnesium Breakthrough. Now I've been taking this for the past two years and the biggest benefits that I've seen are related to my evening wind down sessions and my sleep. I tend to be pretty overactive in the evenings, just totally overthinking everything that I do. And this has helped me wind down and get more restorative, more efficient to sleep. So I wake up feeling way more refreshed, more energized, more clear, more ready for the day. And the way that I see it, sleep is upstream of essentially every other health and wellness related habit and decision. Because if you're sleeping better automatically, you're gonna have more regular cravings. You're gonna have higher insulin sensitivity You can derive more of all these inputs like fitness, right? You make more gains you gain more muscle you burn more calories and you wake up feeling refreshed so that you can do it again and again and again, and then beyond the fitness you have more energy to go for a walk, to do fun activities with friends, you are less stressed so you can socialize anxiety-free, and you're also going to be retaining, refreshing, and refining your skills and information much, much better so you won't forget any names. And, yeah, I mean, like I said, over 300 biochemical processes that you're supporting with magnesium. And then sleep, I mean, wow, better sleep is just a better life in general. So, I found that extremely helpful on a personal level, and I'm sure that you guys will find it helpful too. Your mind and body, and maybe even your spirit will thank you. So anyway, if you want to get a sweet little discount off of this amazing, amazing magnesium supplement from Bioptimizers, all you have to do is visit the show notes. So you scroll down right now, takes just a couple seconds and boom, you'll have access to all seven different kinds of magnesium that your body needs. All you have to do is hit the link and use code KYP for Know Your Physio. KYP. That's all. Enjoy 10 to 22% off depending on the package you choose, whether or not you subscribe. I'm obviously subscribed because I don't even want to think about whether or not I'm going to get this essential supplement in the mail. And yeah, hope you guys enjoy that awesome stuff. And that's all for now. I'll see you guys on the show. All right, Paul, here we are finally on the Know Your Physio podcast. I've had a chance to explore the depths of your knowledge and your passion now for, I don't know, two years. First learned about you through my friend Julia Meyer and the psychedelic conference that takes place here in Miami. since then have been inspired by you, have had the chance to meet you at the Jim Kwik extended book edition party at the Sentinels. It was very serendipitous to run into you in that moment in time. And here we are. And I'm excited to embark on this journey with you here for the next hour and talk psychedelic medicine and much more.

Paul Austin: Yeah, thank you. I mean, I appreciate your warm and welcoming introduction. I think it was great to meet. I mean, the timing of it happened to work out super, super well. I met you and your partner and we hung out quite a bit, talked for a while, and then we're like, we got to do a podcast. And now a couple months later, here we are. And one thing that I love about your approach and related to psychedelics is a lot of people talk about psychedelics and they think more about, let's say, the emotional or therapeutic side. And there's something deeply physiological about the benefits of psychedelics that a lot of people don't. recognize or realize. And physiology has always been sort of my central or core interest in, let's say, transformation. You know, I used to play college sports and have always been an athlete and interested in diet and exercise and sleep and all these sorts of things. So I think that overlap between psychedelics and just becoming a physically healthier specimen is, it's a really interesting crossover.

Andres Preschel: Well, you know, typically I start these episodes asking, you know, why you do what you do. And I think with what you just said, you answered part of that question, but maybe a good way to kind of follow that up is what are some of the prerequisites to intentional psychedelic use that you have found to be the most valuable and transformative?

Paul Austin: Yeah. So, um, the way that I think about it is like, what I would call the five key elements. And I'll start there and then we can go a little bit deeper into the pre-reqs because pre-reqs often come before psychedelic use generally. But the five key elements of what I would call like a transformative psychedelic experience would be assessment, preparation, ceremony or the experience, integration and microdosing. Right. Because a lot of people hear about psychedelics, especially as they've become more sort of in vogue in the last few years. And they think, oh, yeah, I'm going to do a bunch of mushrooms and my life is going to change from day one to day two. I'll have this profound experience or this really healing experience and everything will be better. And to some degree, that's true. Like the experience of working with psychedelics, something like mushrooms or MDMA, the experience in and of itself can be profoundly helpful and transformative. and there's a lot of preparation. that goes into that to ensure that it's an optimal experience. And there's a lot of integration. So after we have these insights, downloads, this awareness, this expanded awareness that comes from working with psychedelics, then the question is, well, what do we do with it? How do we integrate it into our everyday life? How do we make the most of it? How do we actually change who we are? So this isn't just another drug experience, but it's actually something that tangibly changes our external reality. And so a lot of prereqs really are about surrender, being comfortable with vulnerability. The metaphor that I often like to use when talking about the relationship between microdosing and high dosing is like microdosing is You know, like when we all learn how to swim, ideally, most of us first started in the shallow end. We learned how to navigate the shallow end of the pool, maybe with swimmies on, maybe with a swim instructor. We became more comfortable in the shallow end of the pool. And as we became more comfortable, we then went into the deep end of the pool and we went off the diving board and all the really fun things about swimming. And psychedelics are similar. A lot of people see the swimming pool of psychedelics and they're like, I just want to do a, you know, 360 whatever, head over heels dive right into the, to the, to the deep part without ever actually learning how to do the fundamentals of swimming. And so the fundamentals would be meditation. You know, the fundamentals would be, can you sit still and be quiet for an extended period of time? So any sort of contemplative practice that could be breath work, that could be yoga, having some sort of contemplative practice. Even something like a float tank is really helpful before going into a psychedelic experience. I would say another prereq is definitely like a curiosity and openness that you really have to be wondering and interested and desiring to have that experience. There's nothing worse than someone who does psychedelics who's forced by someone else to do it. or feels obligated to do it because a partner or friend or parent or whoever told them to do it, there really has to be full agency and choice in going into any psychedelic experience. It's no different than cold plunging. I hear Huberman talk about this all the time, which is a huge aspect of the physical benefits of cold plunging is the willful choice to cold plunge. Meaning if you're just thrown in a cold plunge or cold water and you don't want to be there, the physiological impact is going to be much different than if you're making the conscious choice to go in the cold water for two minutes or three minutes. And it's very similar with psychedelics. You have to feel like you are fully in, you are choosing this 100% of the way and you're committed to whatever might show up. Because I think the last prereq is definitely a sense of courage. That especially when working with higher doses of psychedelics, it could be mushrooms or ayahuasca or 5-MeO-DMT. You do need to be willing to go into the unknown, to not have all the answers, to potentially face parts or aspects of yourself that have been hidden or that may be repressed or that may have been traumatized, which could bring up sadness and anger and grief and other difficult emotions to process. And there just has to be a willingness to be there for it all, right? Whether it's great, whether it's not so great, the willingness to surrender, the willingness to be vulnerable, the willingness to have the courage to unpack it all and be with it, I think is really central to a transformative psychedelic experience.

Andres Preschel: Lovely. And why don't you tell us a little bit about the integration? And before you answer that, I want to give a little bit of credit to Jim Quick, who inspired me many, many years ago with a quote that goes, You have to have the curiosity to get to know yourself and then the courage to be yourself and I think when it comes to psychedelics, you know, they can be very revealing and you know, certainly this is Valuable for curious people, but once we see what we see How do we embark on an effective? process of integration so we can step into a whatever it is that we revealed.

Paul Austin: Yeah, so I love that sort of paradox of revealing and concealing, right? So revealing and concealing, right? We open it up, we look at it, and then maybe we close it back up. And in some ways psychedelics are like Pandora's box. When you open it up with any practice of awareness, there may be things that you wish you hadn't seen that you now have to confront and deal with and integrate. And some people would say, and I would agree with this, that it's for the benefit. Even if it's difficult, it's for your benefit. But part of it being beneficial is knowing that you always have the choice and the willingness to go in there and do the hard work that's necessary to go through those transformative outcomes. So integration really is this concept of becoming whole. That's how I would frame integration. It's wholeness. And for a lot of folks, I would argue that integration is continuing to release the conditioning of modernity, of consumerism, of convenience. of greed, of the shame and guilt that we're so often subjected to, you know, like when we're growing up, when we're young, if we show a part of ourselves or we act in a certain way that our parents don't approve of or our teacher doesn't approve of or, you know, whoever doesn't approve of, we often hide those parts away because they're not loved. in a way. And so psychedelics really open up the capacity and the ability to fully love all aspects of ourselves, both the beautiful aspects that many of us know about, but also what we would call the shadow. And shadow work is very simply, how do I shine a light into the repressed parts of my being? The parts of my being that I was told were not lovable, the parts of my being that I was told are not worthy, the parts of my being that I was told made fun of for whatever that might look like. Like for me growing up, I played the You know, I grew up in the Midwest in Grand Rapids, Michigan, pretty traditional part of the United States. When I was growing up, you know, I played the violin and where I grew up playing the violin was not necessarily seen as a macho. thing. It wasn't really acceptable to be a dude and to play an instrument like that in particular. Trombones a little different, trumpets a little different, guitars definitely way different, but the violin is a much more sort of feminine touch to it. So part of my healing process with psychedelics even has been loving all those aspects of myself, welcoming them all back in. And so even Now many years down the road after I stopped playing violin, last year I bought a new violin and now have been somewhat consistently playing and bringing that back as a skill or a hobby that I really like. So integration is really about wholeness, it's about welcoming all parts of ourselves, it's about illuminating the shadow, and then practically it's also about choosing to change, right? That a lot of insights and downloads that occur, especially with higher doses of psychedelics, tend to be about ways that we treat ourselves or ways that we treat others that are not in alignment with who we really are, who we really want to become. So a lot of integration work with psychedelics is, I think, first saying no, or cutting out toxic relationships, or not eating certain types of food, or not engaging in certain types of addictive behavior, whether that's drugs, or gambling, or pornography, or cigarettes, or whatever it is. And in allowing those things to die that no longer really serve us and are not who we want to become, We actually create spaciousness for the practices and behaviors and habits that are really nourishing to us and help us to maintain a regulated nervous system and help us to have the energy to be entrepreneurs and help us to, you know, treat others with love and kindness. And so oftentimes when I'm either coaching individuals or as part of our training program that we offer and what I teach our coaches and practitioners, is focus matters a lot. Because even when we work with these high doses of psychedelics, sometimes the tendency is there's all these things that I want to change, right? Like some people will go and they'll drink ayahuasca in the Amazon. And they'll be like, all right, I'm going to divorce my wife or my husband. I'm going to quit my job. I'm going to move to a new country. I'm going to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They're going to do all these really intense, dramatic things all at once, which can be incredibly destabilizing. And so what we often say is wait 30 days after a high dose experience to make any major life decisions. Make one decision at a time so it doesn't destabilize your sense of self and focus on just one thing. You know, like, and this is true of all behaviors, like shifting and changing behaviors. If you try to do too much at once, all of it will fail. And so with that window of neuroplasticity that's open through psychedelics, utilize that window of neuroplasticity by focusing it towards one specific thing that you'd like to change in your life that you think will have the biggest impact on your quality of life. Now, how do you determine that? Some people are just naturally disposed to be more reflective. Coaching and hiring a coach or a practitioner to guide you through this, I think can be a phenomenal way to navigate it because so oftentimes we lie to ourselves or we fool ourselves. So having a coach or a therapist who can hold you accountable and help to guide you through that can also be important. Yeah. Take it slow, one step at a time, do the hard work, look in the shadow. And most importantly, remember that a lot of psychedelic work really is about experiencing unconditional love. And that's why it's so healing. Because so much of our neuroses or so much of our trauma or so much of our challenges and problems in life often stem from a lack of felt love, typically in childhood, whether it's as a newborn, whether in early adolescence, whether in whatever. And so one of the reasons psychedelics, especially at higher doses, are so healing is because people experience a sense of unconditional love. for the first time in their lives and that is an incredibly powerful force to sort of or even ally to navigate with.

Andres Preschel: So following this theme of psychedelics being so healing and helping us fall in love with every aspect of who we are, How do psychedelics or the experience of taking psychedelics? filter out the parts of us in fact Well, maybe there's a reason why society or people don't love that about us. Maybe it's it's a really ugly truth So let me give you an example just for you and for the listeners to help us answer this question let's say that you take someone who has a deeply rooted childhood trauma that they're not aware of that for whatever reason led them to become a pedophile and And now you give them psychedelics and so how do you make sure or what part of this process ensures that this isn't going to have them double down on being a pedophile and instead is going to reveal why they became a pedophile to begin with, other issues they may have and heal that problem? You know what I mean? That's just one example. Like what if you have these issues? Are you going to fall in love with the fact that you have the issues or are you going to reflect back on the trauma that caused the issues and then actually heal not just for yourself but for society?

Paul Austin: The pedophile question. We went there.

Andres Preschel: So I'm going to zoom out.

Paul Austin: I won't specifically address the pedophile question because that could be problematic. OK. But I'll take a more broad answer, which is psychopathy. Right. Becoming psychopathic. OK. Right. So psychopathy often comes from deep, early rooted, intense childhood trauma. Not all the time, but it often comes from, you know, having an alcoholic father who beat you or sexually abused you or, you know, not having any sort of love when you were growing up or like psychopathy can be rooted in some sort of developmental trauma. There are, and usually what I say is psychedelics may make psychopathics more psychopathic. The advice that I got from a coach that I worked with a few years ago was someone's a psychopath. There is unfortunately really not much that can be done and it's better to just cut them off and not have a relationship with them.

Andres Preschel: What is a psychopath? Before we continue, what is a psychopath?

Paul Austin: A psychopath is someone who, I mean a narcissist would be a good example of a psychopath. Let's say someone who lacks empathy or has absolutely no empathy. Someone who is willing to put themselves above everything else. I would say someone who is not constrained by basic human decency and basic human morality. So, in other words, is willing to do things that we would consider to be not only offensive, but downright dangerous or harmful. It's someone who is very damaging and dangerous and harmful to be around, toxic, right? Now, of course, the next question is, how do we discern between someone who's psychopathic and someone who's just an asshole? Because not all assholes are psychopathic. And so I think this gets into the nuance of, can psychedelics be helpful with someone who has a history of being an asshole? Like the classic example would be like a, let's say like a corporate CEO. Corporate CEO got, usually it's a guy who's the asshole, but not always, but got to where they had to be, got to where they are through certain politicking, through certain ways of being charismatic, and typically in a big corporate environment, maybe backstabbing by being two-faced, etc., etc. Now, would deep, intense, psychedelic work help them? I think it would help them if they have a desire or willingness to change. In other words, if there is an awareness that they come to that, fuck, man, I have been an asshole, right? Like for 20 years, I've been an asshole. Did you ever see Elf with Will Ferrell? Yes. Good example, right? And I'm mentioning this because most of us have seen Elf. I just watched it with my sister on Christmas Eve a few weeks ago. And you know Elf, you got the dad of Will Ferrell who's this sort of, he works for Greenway Press, he's like a corporate exec and he's a total fucking asshole. And then Will Ferrell comes in as Elf. is fun, is loving, is light, is hilarious. And by the end of the movie, this guy realizes, holy shit, I'm an asshole and ends up quitting his job so he can go spend Christmas Eve with his two sons. So I do think the difference between psychopathy and asshole and whether or not psychedelics can be useful or helpful is does someone have the awareness of how they're treating others. And if they do, and then they're like, I really should change this. This is really just not a good way to live. This is not only negatively impacting everyone around me, but it's also just negatively impacting myself. Then I think psychedelics can be tremendously helpful for them. But if someone just has no willingness to change, if they are who they are, there's really no self-awareness, they continue to sort of blaze a path of destruction wherever they go in life, then the use of psychedelics can probably just make them more psychopathic. And a good example of this is Charles Manson, who for those of your listeners who may not know Charles Manson was he was sort of this cult leader in the 60s. that gave all of his followers LSD and then convinced them to murder a number of people. And this was in Malibu in Los Angeles. And of course, then he was thrown in jail. All of his followers were thrown in jail. They were totally brainwashed by him because he had utilized LSD to brainwash them into doing these really psychopathic things. So all of that to say is psychedelics are, what they do is they create more suggestibility. Sort of like hypnosis. When you're hypnotized, you'll do whatever you're asked to do. And psychedelics are in some ways a form of hypnosis. They create a lot of vulnerability. You have to surrender in a significant and substantial way. And that's why it's so critical that for anyone who wants to work with a high dose of psychedelics, that they do it with a coach or practitioner or guide or shaman that they trust. Because trust is sort of the bedrock of good human relationships. And if you have trust in a relationship, then you can fully surrender to someone. And in that surrendering is where a lot of the healing lies. And in that surrendering is also where we sort of rediscover who we are, why it is that we're here, what it is that we want to create. Things that aren't dictated by our external conditioning, but instead come from a true, unique, and intuitive place.

Andres Preschel: Do you think that folks that are good candidates for psychedelics have the intuition to pursue trust with someone that should enable this experience for them? Like, do a lot of people that need psychedelics to begin with, do they have issues with any kind of maybe intuition or finding the right person or making the right connection?

Paul Austin: They could, right? Because oftentimes what's core to trauma is basically being raised in a certain way or having a childhood or having a traumatic experience that substantially reduces or impacts your ability to trust other human beings, right? And so if psychedelics are being used as medicines, especially to help with depression and PTSD and addiction and things like this, then naturally there could be a sense of, I don't know if I want to trust this person because of X, Y, and Z. So building rapport and creating rapport and establishing a clear sense of trust, and this is true in any sort of therapeutic, what they call a therapeutic alliance as well, like that has to be established. Right? It has to be there. So the question then is in this industry that's largely illegal still, that's mostly underground, you know, for listeners at home, like how do I, as you said, how do I find a provider that I know I can trust? And so the first line of defense that I often talk about is do you have a friend or a family member who has worked with a provider and they've had a fantastic experience with them? That's usually a great first step as if a friend, a family member, someone you know and trust quite well, not just like a random acquaintance that you talk to at a party necessarily, but like a genuine friend or family member. If they've had a psychedelic experience with a therapist or a guide or a shaman or at a retreat center or at a clinic and they come back and say, wow, that was really well held. That was great. I felt supported, I felt seen, I felt safe, I processed a lot, then that may be a good sign. That may be a good sign. And I say that may be a good sign because there's nuance here. And the nuance is brand new people to psychedelics would not have the same level of discernment as someone like myself who's been working with psychedelics for 14 years and has worked with hundreds if not thousands of people. So my level of, this is really good, is going to be different than someone who's just starting. So then another layer of, I would say, establishing trust or I would even say vetting. I think it's really key that for anyone who is going to work with psychedelics in either a therapeutic or coaching container is that you interview the person who you're looking to potentially work with. and root that interview in what we talked about earlier, which is ask them about these five key elements. Do they have an assessment process and an intake process? What questions do they ask in that assessment and intake process? If you're someone who has a history of trauma or you've struggled with PTSD or depression, does the individual that you're working with, do they feel skillful enough? Are they a clinician? Can they handle whatever might come up during those deep intense experiences? What do they do for preparation? Do they have preparation calls that they set aside? It could be an hour of coaching or two hours of coaching beforehand. How much medicine do they give you for the experience? Which medicine do they give you? Do they have music? What Where are you doing this? Is it at an apartment? Is it in the countryside? Is it wherever else? So, getting a sense of the experience itself, how it's facilitated, what medicine is used, how much medicine is used, and then asking them about integration. Do they offer integration coaching or integration support after the high-dose psychedelic experience? And then finally asking if they're familiar with how to work with microdosing and are they skillful or do they know how microdosing might be a powerful adjunct to a high dose experience. So I think interviewing the people that you're potentially going to sit with and if they won't do an interview, that's a red flag, don't sit with them. If they're not willing to hop on a phone call and talk through everything with you and listen to your questions, red flag, don't work with them. And then the final thing that I'll mention is You know, we have a directory at Third Wave. So Third Wave was the platform that I started. You know, I started it in 2015 when I was living in Budapest and taking acid. And the idea of it is we're in the third wave of psychedelics. The first wave being indigenous use for thousands of years. Well, indigenous and ancient use like in ancient Greece and ancient India. The second wave being the counterculture of the 50s, 60s and 70s. And the third wave being today, being now. And on Third Wave, we have a directory of providers. So retreats, clinics, coaches, therapists that we've vetted ourselves. And so I would say that's a great starting point. You know, so if any listeners are listening, they're like, man, who do I work with? I'd really love to do this. I don't know where to start. Start there. You should still interview, if you want to work with a coach or work with a therapist or work with a practitioner or retreat center or clinic, still interview the person who you want to work with, but just know that we've done a certain level of vetting to establish that these are reputable and quality people that you can potentially do plant medicine work with.

Andres Preschel: That's absolutely amazing that you guys have created a network that is so complete and where people can get a feel of who they're going to work with, but really trust their knowledge, experience, and credibility, and that they're going to have a follow-up experience to help you integrate the things that you learn and the things that you reveal. That's wonderful, man. I really can't thank you guys enough on behalf of everyone who might benefit from something like this. So, I have a few questions related to a theme that I've seen on social media that I think a lot of people have mixed feelings about, and that's that you have Someone that takes or uses psychedelics and Then they're raving about it as if it's like the one thing that's gonna help you with all of your problems. It's like Ambrosia, it's like this is the answer to all of your problems how and Once we've done psychedelics, how can we engage in conversation more responsibly so that maybe when we do inspire someone, we inspire them for the right reasons, but not because we're under the impression that all of a sudden this can help everyone do and fix everything.

Paul Austin: Yeah, good question. So earlier on in our conversation, I mentioned this feeling of unconditional love. And the Beatles are well known for saying that all you need is love, right? And love is known as sort of this driving, all-embracing, kind of, in a way, all-healing quality. And so the reason we see this on social media or you hear about it from people who have worked with psychedelics is because there's something fundamentally true that an experience of unconditional love has a dramatic and widespread effect on all aspects of who we are and all aspects of the way that we live. So now does that mean it's a panacea? Does that mean it's going to fix everything? Not necessarily, but My hypothesis is the reason we're seeing, I mean, the number of things that people have healed through psychedelics, it's insane. You know, depression, addiction, PTSD, autism, issues with creativity, relationship issues. You know, I hear people who have healed Lyme disease, shingles, you know, so it's so much. And I think a big part of that is because of this feeling of unconditional love. Now, with that being said, that doesn't mean that every experience is a feeling of unconditional love. There are plenty of experiences that can be quite challenging or quite harrowing. There are also a solid number of people that should not necessarily be working with psychedelics. They may have a predisposition to psychosis or schizophrenia or, you know, other things that may make them not a great candidate for psychedelic work. So usually what I say is, by and large, intentional psychedelic work will have a positive and beneficial effect on your life. With the caveat being, it's a dose that's appropriate for you. It's done within an intentional container. You have all the things that we mentioned before, assessment, preparation, a great ceremonial space, integration, microdosing. If all of those things line up, The chances of a psychedelic having a beneficial effect on your life will be quite high. It's not 100%. It's probably not even 90%, but I would say probably 80% of people who really cross all their Ts and dot all their Is. end up finding these experiences to be beneficial. So I think first and foremost, we have a responsibility to educate because a lot of people who work with psychedelics and they don't have great experiences, it's usually because maybe they were drinking alcohol, maybe they were at a rave, maybe they just did it with friends randomly, maybe they You know, took way too much. Maybe they didn't take enough. Right. So there's a lot of nuance there where people would go, oh, I tried that and I had this really bad trip. Well, what were you doing? Well, I was at a rave with a bunch of friends and we had been drinking a bunch of alcohol before. Then we just decided that we need a bunch of mushrooms and see what happened. And then I'm like, OK, no, I get it. So I think one is education. Right. The better the education becomes, the more people will have positive and beneficial experiences. I think too, though, it goes back to this point that I made around agency and willful choice. That so oftentimes people have a really positive and beneficial experience of psychedelics and they're like, You know, it's kind of like Oprah handing out free tacos.

Andres Preschel: Like, you got to do it.

Paul Austin: You got to do it. Like, everyone has got to drink ayahuasca. You know, like, you just got to do it. And they tell their parents and they, you know, tell their partner and they tell their friends and they end up becoming this really annoying person that just won't stop talking about ayahuasca. Right. And that actually turns people off more than anything. So I think what's key is just to let the work speak for itself. Right? That when we ourselves embark on any sort of path of psychedelic work, or hell, just any sort of inner work, people notice a change or a difference. people that we spend a lot of time with, whether that's our family or our partners or the people we work with or whoever, they notice a difference. And a lot of them are going to ask, what's up? Like, what you've been doing? What's been going on for you? I've noticed your eyes are much brighter. You're much more alive. You're laughing a lot more. You have a lot more energy. You're like, what's changed? And I think that invitation is a really great opportunity then to talk about our own personal experience of, you know, I went and I had this beautiful mushroom ceremony, or I've been microdosing with LSD, or I went to the jungle and worked with ayahuasca, or I did 5MAR or whatever it is. Right? So waiting for the invitation, I think, could be a really beneficial way to communicate about our own experience with psychedelics. And then as part of that, just keeping in mind, like, People have to come into it when they're ready. Some people will be like, holy shit, I want to do this. Where'd you go? Who'd you work with? What happened? What medicine do you do? They're going to ask you all these questions. They'd love to dive right in and check it out. And there will be other people who just simply have no interest. And this goes back to what I was talking about before, like the asshole. The difference between someone who's psychopathic and just an asshole is the asshole has the self-awareness of, oh, I'm affecting and impacting these people in a certain way. I really want to change who I am. And some people just don't have the impetus. They're happy and content with their lives. Things are going reasonably well. They make reasonable good money. They have a pretty good relationship. They have a pretty good job. Things are fine and they don't really want to mix it up. And what I often notice is those who work with psychedelics This isn't always the case. Some people are just curious. They're curious seekers. You know, I was that to some degree. But either people, you know, they're working with psychedelics because nothing else has worked. So they have depression, they have addiction, they're suicidal, they, you know, have anxiety, whatever else it might be. Nothing else has worked. And they're really hopeful that this has worked. So they're sort of at their last step. Or they're just someone who's really committed and devoted to a path of development and growth. They're seekers. These are rare, right? This might be true seekers. It's probably like one to two percent of the population. But these seekers, they're really interested in exploring all of the realms of life. And I would argue that psychedelic work, whether it's mushrooms or ayahuasca or 5-MeO or San Pedro or even MDMA or ketamine, they create a subjective experience that is really interesting for those who are curious and who are seekers, because it's so fundamentally different from everyday reality that you can't help but ask, what just happened? Why did that occur? What was I experiencing? What was going on? Who was I communicating with? Why did I get those visuals? Right. It just it makes life more interesting is what I find more complex. It makes the fabric of life much, much richer. And so I think anyone who's either not a hardcore seeker or not really kind of significantly and substantially struggling to go out on a limb and just take five grams of mushrooms, the risk is not worth the reward necessarily. I know that was sort of like a far ranging answer to your question, but I think that's probably the best way to contextualize it about like, how do we authentically share our experiences without sounding desperate?

Andres Preschel: Yeah, you know, that's an incredible answer. And in fact, so good that you answered a few of the questions I had downstream. So there we go. So thank you for that. I'm glad I didn't interrupt that flow. It was marvelous. So I, you know, I've been keeping up to date with your social media and I've noticed some really incredible stuff, you know, with respect to how psychedelics compares to psychiatry and psychotherapy and such. So my question is, what can psychedelics do that psychology and psychotherapy can't do?

Paul Austin: Okay, so There's like three, there's three categories there, right? Like psychiatry is related to psychotherapy, but it isn't necessarily the way we think of psychiatry, isn't necessarily explicitly psychotherapy. And psychotherapy is involved with psychedelics. You know, there's sort of a triangulation. All three of those relate to one another. So conventional psychiatry, and it'll take a little bit to unpack this, but I think it's interesting. Conventional psychiatry was built on a model of the gut. And what I mean by that is in the 1930s, 1920s, 1930s, penicillin was invented. And at that point in time, penicillin was a breakthrough treatment. Antibiotics, right? All of a sudden we could kill these viruses that were decimating our population. And so antibiotics really were a major breakthrough for mainstream medicine. And the gut, as we know, is very complex. And as we know, the brain is very complex. And so when a lot of the early psychiatric medications were being developed, the hypothesis was that the brain is the same thing as the gut. So if we just target certain parts of the brain, like our serotonin or our dopamine or these other neurotransmitters, and we just slightly modulate them, then we'll have better outcomes. And so this is how SSRIs were developed. This is how ADHD medications were developed. It's a very reductionist worldview. just target that one thing and if we can change the neurotransmitter, then we can change depression or we can change addiction or we can change whatever. So the SSRIs are no better than placebo, right? So after 40 years of widespread SSRI use, we show that they're no better than placebo. Well, why is that? because the assumption that we could address certain things in the brain like we could address them in the gut was misguided. The brain is not nearly as reductionist as a physical symptom or issue in the gut. The brain is actually much more complex and has a lot to do with how we relate to not only our entire body but also our entire subconscious or unconscious. And so what we're learning through psychedelics is that the reason people are depressed or have issues with addiction or alcoholism or anxiety or whatever that might be, It almost always stems from early childhood trauma, developmental trauma, attachment issues, attachment wounding, not receiving enough love, certain forms of abuse that then create an egoic structure that needs to basically has an experience of life that is Not ideal. So what psychedelics do is, again, they open up this window where we can experience that unconditional love. We can maybe heal those attachment wounds. We can forgive the abuser. We can integrate certain parts of ourselves, certain memories that have been forgotten or certain emotions that have been repressed. And there's a catharsis. that happens there. So a key difference between classic psychiatry with conventional medications and psychedelic work is psychedelics get in many ways to the bottom. They get underneath the surface and they allow for a release of the trauma or the issue. And in that release, all of a sudden what has been sort of dictating our life through subconscious programming now becomes conscious and we can become aware of it and change it. So, psychiatry is symptomatic, psychedelics get to the core of it. Now, where psychotherapy comes in, they've done some really interesting research on this, which is they compared people who took psychedelics and did psychotherapy with it and who took SSRIs and did psychotherapy with it. And they found that, of course, the psychedelics with psychotherapy was more effective than the SSRIs without psychotherapy. But what they also found was the SSRIs with psychotherapy was more effective than just taking SSRIs by themselves. Right. And so there is something healing in and of itself of this therapeutic alliance or working with a coach or a practitioner or a therapist. Right. So the role of psychotherapy or the role of coaching cannot be overstated. I do think it is a helpful aspect in doing psychedelic work. What psychedelic work does is it substantially accelerates the psychotherapeutic path. So a lot of people would say, you know, working with psychedelics like a high dose of a psychedelic is like 10 years of therapy in one sitting. This actually comes from Gabor Mate, who's a well-known medical doctor who talks about ayahuasca and addiction and trauma and all these sorts of things. So one psychedelic experience is like 10 years of therapy. Now, some people would say, ah, that's hyperbole, that's a bit overstated. And maybe. But there's a way in which psychotherapy shows us the map psychedelics bring us into the territory. So the map versus territory is sort of a, it's a semantic reference, right? That we can look at a map, right? You can open up a map of, you know, let's say you want to go hiking in the mountains. You can open up the map and you can see, you know, the various things. Oh, there's a mountain here and there's a valley here and there's a change in elevation here. Oh, there's a river here. But until you actually get into that terrain, You don't really know what's going to come up. You don't really know the specific challenges. You don't know what might be emergent, what might happen in the spur of the moment. You're not really in it. And that's the difference between psychotherapy. Psychotherapy helps to give you a map of, oh yeah, you had this trauma and you had this attachment issue and you had this other thing. And psychedelics put you face to face with that thing that happened. They force you to confront yourself in a way that can at times be jarring, but ultimately if it's held well, if it's in a safe and therapeutic container, it's incredibly healing. Because then we can face these parts of ourselves, we can face these memories, we can face these stories that have been very difficult or challenging, or that we've repressed or ignored. And like we've talked about already, we can welcome them back in, we can love them, we can accept them, and we can integrate them on this path towards greater wholeness.

Andres Preschel: It almost sounds like it's too good to be true. I mean, I obviously have more experience, I'd say, with psychedelics and the underlying physiology than most people, especially those tuning in. But what do you have to say about this magical interplay between our physiology and psychedelics? Why does that relationship exist?

Paul Austin: So, you know, in typical Freudian psychoanalysis, which has become more or less the mainstream kind of way of thinking about the brain and the body, we really think of the brain as neck up, right? Like what happens in the head stays in the head. We analyze, we intellectualize, we can work through things here. And what Jung, so one of the big differences between Freud and Jung, and Carl Jung was a Swiss psychologist, he was initially a mentee of Freud and then they broke off, is Jung talked about sort of the gestalt, which is the entire body, and that the brain is intimately connected to everything else, right? There is no separation between the body and the mind, that they are interconnected. And so what psychedelics do is they help you to experience that as a fundamental truth, not just as a theory. You really experience the ways in which your mindset, your ideas, your thoughts, your perspective influences the way that you feel, influences your mood, influences your energy levels, and that you actually, especially when working with psychedelics, you have more agency and choice to shift that and change that to be healthier. Now, there's also something to be said back to the map versus territory. There's only so much that we can intellectually unwind when it comes to trauma. A lot of trauma is so deeply rooted in the subconscious or the unconscious. that the only way we can access it is by getting out of our default state. In other words, entering an altered state. It could be psychedelics, it could be breathwork, it could be yoga, it could be float tanks, it could be cold plunging, whatever it is. But we need something that puts us into an altered state. And by entering that altered state, we all of a sudden find that we have more access to memories, to repressed emotions, to things in the subconscious and the unconscious, some of which live in the body. And so one of my most, I would say, impactful experiences with psychedelics was when I did ketamine. So ketamine is typically known as like a general anesthetic. It's the most, I think, widely used medicine in the world. It's used in emergency rooms all over. Then it became quite commonly known as a horse tranquilizer because of its anesthetic properties. And about 25 years ago, people started to notice that they would put people into a catatonic state with ketamine and they'd come out less depressed. And so now ketamine is really the main legal psychedelic that people can work with. And something it does is it just sort of disassociates you. And it's also an anesthetic. And so I worked with a body worker, like a physio, physiotherapist, who does Rolfine and other sort of forms of transformational body work. And by leveraging ketamine, he was able to do body work on me that was like a week of plant medicine in two hours. And what I mean by that is he was able to get deep into fascia and tissue and other things that in my normal waking state would be too painful to access. But because I had taken the ketamine and it had created a certain sort of pain threshold or tolerance, he was able to sort of open up different aspects of tissue fascia and muscle for me that would otherwise be inaccessible. And a lot of people would say that our unconscious trauma is stored in the body, right? And so in order for us to be fully free and sovereign, we have to be just as free in the body as we are in the mind. And there would be people that would disagree with this. You know, there are plenty of, you know, meditation gurus and teachers who are super out of shape and just focus on the mind and don't really worry about the body and say the body is an illusion and that it'll go away one day anyway. But my sense is as long as we're living here and as long as we have this opportunity and chance to be alive, right, why not also take care of our body, take care of our form, as well as our brain. So I think that's the relationship between, let's say, psychedelics and the unconscious, especially, I would say, for people who maybe have done psychotherapeutic work, who maybe know sort of the ins and the outs of, you know, the relationship to their mom and their dad and, you know, why they did this thing and how they did that thing and all these, like psychedelics get you out of the analyzing and into the full somatic experiencing of what that actually was.

Andres Preschel: That's all wonderfully said, and I think my curiosity currently lies in how do these compounds that are found in nature… How do they evolve to influence us in such an important way? Why do we have this relationship with these particular compounds? And why are we just suddenly, you know, running with this, right? There's been so many issues with psychedelic medicine, lawmaking. I mean, there's been so many of these issues, but if we look back, or simply if we reflect on how how deep these perspectives and these changes are. It reveals something related to our evolution, right? So, like, what is that? Like, why do we have this relationship with these compounds?

Paul Austin: Well, you know, Terrence McKenna, who wrote this book, Food of the Gods, hypothesized that our ancient hominid ancestors used to eat mushrooms and that it was actually core to sort of our evolutionary advantage that, you know, he calls it the stoned ape theory, that we were eating these low doses of mushrooms. Low doses of mushrooms help with visual acuity. It made us better hunters. And so there was a distinct and direct relationship there between, you know, the evolution of human consciousness and psychedelics. Now this is very much hypothetical, right? It's by no means an established theory. But it's an interesting one, and I could see it being true. I think more relevant to, let's say, the scope of human civilization, since 7,000 BC, 8,000 BC, there is archaeological evidence of use of, let's say, drugs. Now, that could have been beer and wine, but there's some people who believe that psychedelics were woven into early beer and early wine. And so there's this lineage across human culture and across human time of a relationship with these substances. And typically that relationship was more for the elite. So, for example, in ancient Greece, Plato, Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius all participated in something called the Eleusinian Mysteries, which were these mysteries that would happen only once every so often where they would drink a beverage called koukion made from ergot, the same thing that LSD is made from. And they would have these mysteries and you could not tell anyone about it upon pain of death or excommunication. In the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads, they talk about Soma, which people hypothesize was psilocybin mushrooms. We have archaeological evidence of peyote from 15,000 years ago in Mexico, ayahuasca for the past thousand years. So on every continent across the span of human civilization, we've been in relationship with these substances. It's only in the last 70 years where there's been this sort of widespread prohibition as part of this sort of globalized, corporatized world that we live in. And so I think the reason they're coming back now is because we become so disconnected from who we actually are. We've become so disconnected from our human essence. We've become so disconnected from the natural environment that we're willing to do whatever it takes. to sort of get through this next period because the fundamental truth is psychedelics have always been used underground, sort of hidden within, you know, temples. There's never been an experiment in sort of the globalization of psychedelic medicine and psychedelic healing. And so, and yeah, a lot of people would say, You know, there's a lot of bad shit going on in the world today. There's a lot of systems that are dying. There's a lot of things that are falling apart. There's a lot of polarization. And what I hear again and again and again is people are like, but psychedelics and the potential of psychedelic healing and transformation is one thing that gives me hope. And for me personally, this is sort of like my personal mission and has been my personal mission. You know, I'm all for the therapeutic use like we've talked a lot about today for PTSD and depression and addiction, but I'm really keen on how psychedelics can help us to create a new paradigm. It's a lot of the work that I do, like the training program we have for practitioners is more so for executive coaches, health and wellness coaches, life coaches, other forms of practitioners who are not just looking at sickness, but really looking at how can psychedelics help us to dream a new paradigm or a new way of living. And so my sense is the reason they're becoming very popular or common, especially in entrepreneurial circles, especially in the circles of builders and creators and innovators, is because there's a certain level of wisdom that is, I would say, received or downloaded when we form a relationship with these plant medicines that inspires us to look at life and reality, not in a way that is extractive and disconnected, but in a way that's much more, I would say, regenerative and interconnected. And that it's sort of our duty, I think our generation's duty to create new paradigms and new systems and business and politics and healthcare and education that are rooted in this truth of interconnectedness, which I would argue is the core lesson or learning from working with psychedelic substances.

Andres Preschel: That was magical. Hey, I know we're out of time. I have just one last question for you, man. If you could put a word, message, or phrase on a billboard somewhere, what would it say and where would you put it?

Paul Austin: That's a good question. I'd probably say stop looking at your phone. But the irony of that is if someone saw the billboard, they wouldn't be looking at their phone. So I think the second thing that I would say would be, I love this concept of like memento mori. Which is more or less like embrace the day or you probably know the actual translation, but it's like one life to live. It's one life to live. Right. So I think memento mori would be the one like this could be your last day. Basically, life is a gift. Make the most of it. Where I would put that. Times Square, I mean, the center of all billboards, right? Like, why not have… Because one of the things that, you know, and this is psychedelics, another thing that psychedelics help with is so many people are scared of death. really intimidated by death. And I think what psychedelics help us to learn or they teach us is that life will continue to go on, that death, the way that we perceive it, is somewhat of an illusion and nothing to be scared of. And in recognizing that there's a freedom that's opened up that allows us to really embrace living rather than to live in fear of death.

Andres Preschel: You know, and you mentioned just a couple of minutes ago how all these things are happening in the world and they can be really tough for us to digest. And that might be a reason why we maybe should engage psychedelics to help put things in perspective. But I was going to say, not only are these things happening, I think that the problem is that we have instant access to all the things that are happening all the time. You know, and it's as simple sometimes it's as simple as putting your phone down, which is making that a practice in your life, putting your phone down or just not using the phone within the first say 30 minutes in the last 30 minutes to an hour of the day, especially when you're around people that you really care about. So anyway, just my two cents. Paul, I can't thank you enough, man. I can't thank you enough for your mission and for just how authentic this flow is, I can tell that you're really aligned with all the wonderful things that psychedelic medicine is helping us with because, I mean, man, you just flow through it in a way that really speaks to your essence. It's so pure. So, thank you for sharing that with us, man, and we'll be keeping an eye on third wave. Hopefully, I can do that course and implement those learnings in my practice. So, thank you so much, man.

Paul Austin: Thank you. This is fun. We had a ton of fun. If any of your listeners have, you know, they want to reach out, I'm on social at paulaustin3w, Instagram and Twitter mostly. And then Third Wave, if they want to go learn more about what we're up to at Third Wave, that's thethirdwave.co. And yeah, had a blast. Great questions. What I mentioned to you before we went live is, you know, you were like, what would make this a banger? I mean, you did not use those words. Those are my phrases. And I said, just ask you any questions and you did a great job of that. So thanks for working out.

Andres Preschel: Awesome, man. My pleasure. So that's all for today's show. Thank you so much for tuning in today. For all of the show notes, including clickable links to anything and everything that we discussed today, everything from discount codes to videos, to research articles, books, tips, tricks, techniques, and of course, to learn more, about the guest on today's episode, all you have to do is head to my website, AndresPeruchel.com, that's A-N-D-R-E-S-P-R-E-S-C-H-E-L.com, and go to podcasts. You can also leave your feedback, questions, and suggestions for future episodes, future guests, so on and so forth. Thanks again for tuning in, and I'll see you on the next one. Have a lovely rest of your day.