When you have this very high dose psychedelic experience, it really from my perspective encourages independent thinking and curiosity and seeking. Hello
and welcome back architect Nation. I'm Enoch Sears and today I'm excited to bring with you an excellent conversation. As always, this is the show where you'll discover tips, strategies and secrets for running a more impactful and profitable architectural practice. And, if you haven't already, make sure you head over to smart practice method.com for your free 60 minute masterclass on how you can build an architectural practice for the business doesn't get in the way of the architecture. This episode is sponsored by Smart practice, the world's leading step by step business training program that's helped more than 103 architecture firm owners structure their existing practice. So the complexity of business doesn't get in the way of their architecture. Because you see, it's not your architecture design skills that's holding you back. It's the complexity of running a business, managing projects and people dealing with clients, contractors and money. So if you're ready to simplify the running of your practice, go to business of architecture.com forward slash smart to discover the proven simple and easy to implement smart practice method for running a practice that doesn't get in the way of doing exceptional architecture. Hello,
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Today's guest is Paul F. Austin. He is a leader in psychedelic work. He's impacted millions of people through his work as the founder of third wave. It's been featured in many media outlets, including Forbes Rolling Stone, the BBC is work life as well as Business of Architecture. He's an evangelist for integrating psychedelics with personal transformation and professional success. We'll be talking about that today. As well as the another episode that we'll be inviting Paul into. Paul views intentional psychedelic work is critical for Humanity's ongoing evolution. And he founded the psychedelic Coaching Institute, which helps people integrate their psychedelic experiences into their business practices. All welcome. Hey, Nick.
Thanks. So thanks so much for having me on. I can't wait to talk with your audience about psychedelics and micro dosing and especially how these these tools might be applied to help with any creative or entrepreneurial practice. There's, there's a lot here to get into. Well, let's
talk about what are just what are psychedelics and pharmacists if we have no clue here,
okay, so psychedelics are what I would consider to be a class of drugs or increasingly so a class of medicines that activate are largely active on a five HTT to a receptor, which is one of the 14 serotonin receptors in the brain and in the gut. The activation of this receptor leads to certain benefits like greater neuroplasticity, executive functioning and decision making certain insights that lead to healing and transformative effects. The most common psychedelics are LSD, psilocybin, mushrooms, ayahuasca and DMT as well as a substance called mescaline, which is found in peyote and what tumor and the classic psychedelics are tryptamines which would be DMT psilocybin Ayahuasca was surge Umayyads, which is LSD, and then phenethylamines, which is mescaline and also MDMA. And so those are those are classified considered to be we could say the classic psychedelics but as psychedelics have generated more interest and attention over the last several years, medicines like ketamine, which are technically a dissociative, have been grouped in with psychedelic medicines. There's also a substance called Ibogaine, which comes from a Boga which is a Root Bark in Gabon, that helps with opiate addiction and other forms of addiction. And then some people may consider cannabis to be a psychedelic. Some people may consider, you know, breath to be a psychedelic depending on the type of breath. The word psychedelic comes from two Greek words psyche, meaning mind, and Delos meaning manifesting. So the the sort of essence of a psychedelic is that it's mind manifesting and not the con Just sort of limited mind necessarily, but the sort of big mind of of everything that is and that we exist as a part of
eautiful. So for our listeners, Paul, who may be wondering why is Why is Enoch wising a Kevin? Why were they having a drug conversation on the podcast, I'm going to give a little bit of context here. For people who may not have heard of this work, maybe the last thing they heard was that your brain has this is your brain on drugs during the 80s. And they they're not in tune, or they haven't been paying attention to the psychedelic revolution, or the big advances that have happening. So I'll share a little bit of my story here, to kind of provide some context for this little bit oversight in my journey of doing personal self work. I've attended pretty much every business seminar out there all sorts of transfer transformational conferences, and along my journey, I was facing blocks in my own performance, and identified that a lot of these blocks came back to my own inability or emotional blocks that I had in my psyche and in my body, my my inability to access deep and raw emotions. And this ended up impacting my relationship with my wife, because she felt like she couldn't feel me. My wife is very intuitive, she's very empathic, she's very emotional, she rides the edge of her emotions. And so me just being kind of a stoic robotic personality, it was causing issues in our marriage, because she felt like she was married to a robot. And it was impacting my business growth and my business success in other areas as well, because let's face it, if you can't really if you have difficulty accessing deep, powerful emotions, it's going to be harder to empathize with other people, it's going to be harder to market your business because part of marketing is understanding the pains of another human being, and being able to show them how your solution matches up with the pains that they're having and solves them. So to make a long story short, I was at a little mastermind of a group of powerful business owners and I was asking them how he could unlock some of my emotions. And one of them after several the other man gave me different suggestions. One of the men says, Well, do you want the short path or the that you want the quick path of the lungs? Yeah. And of course, we're all type three overall type three integrated role, like, you know, these, these, you know, high achieving types or Anyways, these people who are like trying to go go go type A personalities. And so I'm like, well, what's the what's the short path? And he said, a word that I really had ever been exposed to before. He said, plant medicine. Now, I grew up in a very conservative religious context, drugs were way taboo. I've not literally I've only drank a beer wine. I've only drink an alcohol once in my life. Like, I don't. Yeah, dude, I do not drink coffee. I think I've only sampled coffee once. never taken any drugs never taken any nicotine, nothing. And so when he said this, my desire and drive I just something felt inside of me was pulling me that just this landed for me. And I was like, Heck, I'm all in. I'm all in on myself. I'm all in on my own, develop my own growth. So he connected me with a retreat center out in Tennessee that you may know about. Yep, Claire Vita. And so I went to Claire Vita. And they have a protocol that I'm not going to say what it is here, there's some speculation about it, you may know what it is. But at the time, they did not tell me what I was ingesting for obvious reasons, because there's still some gray area with the law around some of these things. I still this day, I do not know exactly what I just did. So it required a lot of trust, from my perspective, right? You know, and people in my circle, thought I was nuts, you're going to retreat center to take some pills, you have no idea what these things are. So anyways, I went in because I trusted my men's group, I trust that my mentor had this experience was a little bit over two years ago, Paul, and in the first 20 minutes than first 15 minutes that experience. I knew more about divinity, consciousness, spirituality, myself, the connection of humanity. Then I learned in 45 years of Sunday school and church and scripture study and researching and seminar. So my mind was literally blown. It was like expanded at extremely high level. And, and the beautiful part about what I've discovered about plant medicine since then, is that it's not just only about the experience, meaning it's not just about, hey, you had a one time experience. And now you need to keep on going back because you want to get high. It actually there's a long tail of transformation that happens based upon a catalyst. And I saw that in my own life, I came back and my wife was just, she saw instant transformation in me. And that really catapult the last two years have been almost Lightspeed transformation in my business and my relationship. And it all comes back to taking the substances that are natural and synthetic, that influence the brain. So there's for listeners, that's my personal experience with these things, and these things were considered psychedelic medicines. So with that, I want to I want to ask you, Paul, there's a lot of stigmas because they're drugs, like you said, like these are classified as drugs. They are still on the schedule one. Correct. They call it schedule one listed for the US mean, they're banned, they got banned back in the 60s. And when things were getting kind of crazy around these kind of medicines, but, you know, what are some of the stigmas that you've experienced that people have about these medicines that that create fear that caused them to be apprehensive about them?
Yeah, well, thank you for sharing your story. It's powerful to you know, for you to come from such a know not psychedelic background and find your way into I mean, I share that in common with you. I grew up in a very religious household, for the first 18 years of my life, and psychedelics are what helped me to better understand even the sort of upbringing it was, it was very Protestant Reformed Church of America was the church. And so it was like you had the prayers and the rituals, and you had the Sunday, you know, Sunday afternoon stories and all these sorts of good things, the mission trips, but I never really got it until I took LSD when I was, you know, 1920. So that was massively impactful for me as well. I can interject, how'd
you get a hold of that was at a party. Was it recreationally was it?
Yeah, it was no. I mean, at the time, it was starting to sell some some weed, it was 19. I was like, I'll make I'll make a little side, hustle side cash. And the guy that I bought my cannabis from, I went to a place called Hope College, which is a small liberal arts school in West Michigan. The guy that I bought my candidate from also had LSD and mushrooms and DMT. And so I would I acquire that. And then I would do it with small groups of friends. Typically, in the woods, we would go hiking for anywhere from four to eight hours. In the sand dunes and the woods. Sometimes on the tail end of an experience, I would go out and socialize because I just felt like it was a little bit easier. I was more connected. But the vast majority of my psychedelic use has been not in a strictly therapeutic container, like what you experienced at Clara Vita, but also not in a sort of recreation or reavie Use rave party or anything. No, I'm not, I don't like to be around a lot of people. So
for a second that the that the doses that you took at that early stage, like nighttime, when you're walking in the forest, how much LSD were you
take anywhere from 100 to about 250 micrograms. So it's a definitely not a microdose. This is a upwards of a therapeutic dose level of LSD. And I had visual changes, and you know, was definitely under the influence of this this psychedelic. And it was really beautiful and profound and transformational. It wasn't until about five years after that, that I started to explore micro dosing, which is about a 10th. Of that anywhere from 10 to 25 micrograms of LSD is what I have done with micro dosing and micro dosing is mostly what I do now, if I'm doing deep ceremonial work, it tends to be with Ayahuasca. But on a more consistent basis on microdose, maybe once a week, sometimes twice a week, sometimes sometimes not at all. So it just depends on the day and the week and how I'm feeling beautiful.
Well, that's we're going to touch on micro dosing on our next episode that we talked about. But going back to some of the stigmas that you find people myths about psychedelic medicines, there's a lot of probably fear around the use of these drugs because let's face it, there's a lot of drugs out there that are completely damaging. I mean, we're things of fentanyl people dying things laced with fentanyl, we hear about methamphetamines people have no teeth and they're just shooting up. I mean, there's it's horrible. It's a horrible plague. So what makes these
psychedelic is are, these are way different. They've been to some degree stigmatized. For a long time, right? Even Even the name of the company website brand that I started third wave of psychedelics suggests there was a first wave and a second wave and the first wave was the ancient and indigenous use of psychedelics. So in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, they use or worked with a medicine called cookie on, which was made from Erekat, a fungus that grows on rye, the same thing that LSD is made from so they were drinking a sort of liquid form of of LSD in ancient Greece. And when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire in the fourth, early fourth century, they banned the use of these substances within what was called the Eleusinian Mysteries because these were pagan traditions. These were not Christian traditions. And so For 1700 years, we are just under we in the West had no container or access to psychedelics until I would argue LSD came back on the scene and the early 1940s. And there was a massive resurgence of interest in the therapeutic use of LSD, there was over 1000 Clinical papers published on the efficacy of LSD. But it became too closely associated with the Vietnam War protests, the anti war protests in the 60s and 70s. And it was made illegal in California in 1966. And then federally in 1968, and then globally in 1971, to the UN, and it wasn't only LSD that was made illegal it was also mushrooms, psilocybin mushrooms, it was DMT, it was a Alaska was, you know, all these other sort of medicines and substances that we have had access to. And the official reason given was because when these drugs have, you know, they have no medical value, and they're highly addictive, which now through clinical research, we know the exact opposite is true. And so I think part of the reason the stigma exists, if I look at this from a very big lens, is partly because of what we experienced both of us right, it opens your mind connects you to something greater, there's less of an ability to control or be controlled, when you have this very high dose psychedelic experience. It really, from my perspective, encourages independent thinking and curiosity and seeking, which in more, let's say mainstream religions is not necessarily enthusiastically supported. Depending on the tradition, of course, the more mystical a tradition, usually the more that is supported, but mysticism is hard to contain. And so partly, it's a matter of containment, these the psychedelics are very difficult to contain. But it's also the fact that in the 60s, in particular, there wasn't a lot of great responsible use, there was quite a bit with a therapeutic use, but a lot of people were taking very high doses of LSD. And it caused quite supposedly caused quite a ruckus, I can't I wasn't there personally. So I can't I can't speak for personally, but suppose the UK caused quite a ruckus. And and so over the last 40 years, 3040 years since the war on drugs, as you refer to really became more more prevalent, people have assumed that because psychedelics are illegal because they're scheduled one because of what happened in the 60s, these must be dangerous, these must be harmful. These must be like all the other illegal drugs, cocaine, amphetamines, Crystal Meth, heroin, etc, etc. And the fundamental truth is, and this is backed by now, a ton of data and science is these are actually anti addictive, they actually help to heal certain addictions, they have incredible medical value. We've used these medically for 1000s of years all across the world. And in that the prohibition of psychedelics has really set us back, I think, substantially over the last 50 years. And so now we're attempting to play catch up, as we race towards a very uncertain future, at the overlap of artificial intelligence, the sort of climate crisis, if you will, a climate change. And, you know, basically a brave new world overall, that we just are all of us are sort of on the seat of our pants, trying to figure out where will you be in five years? Much less time? Yes.
Okay, so, Paul, thanks for that. So you talked about some of the stigmas. So obviously, there's the well, there's the legal aspect of these substances, the fact that they've been blacklisted by the government and also by the world, as you mentioned, through the UN, we talked about Association, even even public informational campaigns, back in the 80s, when you and I grew up, where this is your brain on drugs, the war on drugs, and psychedelics being heaped in with all these other substances, all these other drugs, like heroin, cocaine, things like that, right. Now, what I experienced was that and this is why we're talking about this isn't this what your work is focused on is that psychedelics, properly used can be one of the most cutting edge modalities for higher performance on one end, and also trauma healing and addictive healing on the other end. So I kind of my experience, Paul, is that there's like the spectrum of people who they're really hurting either through depression, anxiety, and they want to be healed from some past trauma, maybe PTSD. And then the people I associate with a lot of the they're looking for the edge like we are in the Silicon Valley there. They don't they don't go to these medicines because they want they necessarily need a Heil. Um, heal some childhood trauma, although that certainly happens, but they want to expand their creativity. They want to be able to expand the horizons, rewire their brain. You did mention neuroplasticity, would you describe for us what neuroplasticity means and why that's important. Yeah,
neuroplasticity, I would say is one of the two core benefits for those in leadership, entrepreneurial, high performance categories. The other one I would say is courage. So the capacity to make difficult and hard decisions that we've been putting off or to have difficult conversations that we've been putting off, psychedelics can help tremendously with, with facilitating courage. And neuroplasticity is simply the brain's ability to adapt to new circumstances, and how it communicates behavioral change to the rest of the body. And we've seen with research, for example, in mindfulness meditation, that six weeks of mindfulness meditation helps to develop more gray matter in the brain that can see this with fMRI scans. And so that gray matter is related to something called cortical plasticity, which is associated with the capacity to basically be happier to learn quicker to adapt to new and uncertain circumstances, which as we know, and in an entrepreneurial world is incredibly important because things are changing rapidly, every single day. And so, and that that mechanism is linked to something called BDNF brain derived neurotrophic factor. And so there's been a fair bit of clinical research that shows that psychedelics amplify the production of BDNF, which then helps to develop more gray matter and cortical plasticity in the brain. So I think that is one of the most exciting aspects of psychedelics. And the second part, the courage part is related to the amygdala. So the amygdala is a tiny, reptilian almond sized part of our brain, it's the oldest part of our brain. And the amygdala is our fear response center. And so the when you work with a psychedelic, when you work with the plant medicine, it down regulates that fear response. So if you're, you're nervous to have that difficult conversation, there's a way in which you can sort of ride the coattails of a psychedelic experience, or potentially work with microdosing, to help overcome some of that internal resistance to do the difficult but necessary thing. And so I think, and sometimes that difficult, unnecessary thing, psychedelics actually help to bring into awareness that often it's maybe repressed or suppressed, it's in the subconscious, it's something we just refuse to look at, maybe because of trauma, or just because of stubbornness, or we're too busy, or whatever it is. And so when you have a psychedelic experience, it opens up this capacity to look at things from a new perspective. And that allows us, you've experienced this, I've experienced this, a lot of the clients and coaches and folks that I've worked with have experienced this people can make profound and transformative change within a very brief period of time. And that's both exciting for every entrepreneur, because as you mentioned, most entrepreneurs are interested in effective shortcuts that helped to reduce stress and minimize overhead while still making life fun and interesting. And I think psychedelics are a great fit for that. Now, of course, you are both you were very fortunate in terms of the the person that you got referred to in the Senate that you got referred to is really world class, it stands in a league of its own in many ways. Many people don't know sort of Jack from jail or up from down when it comes to what makes a good psychedelic experience or not. And I think that's important. Also, as part of this process for especially leaders and high performers, if you do this, you really want to do it with someone who kind of knows their way around the block, and can help you look at it in terms of how this can support the growth of your business and the vision for the life that you're creating. Because a lot of people who work in psychedelics are more trained in the therapeutic aspect, which is helpful and necessary. But there are so many people who could benefit from this. If they're not on SSRIs or if they don't have a clinical diagnosis. There's still massive shifts and change that can come from it. Beautiful.
And you mentioned SSRIs just to inform our audience what is that?
selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, Prozac. Zoloft. Lexapro are the three most common these are psychiatric medications that are in my belief over prescribed for the treatment of depression and anxiety. And they're sort of the standard treatment for depression and anxiety and even PTSD at this point in time. And, and in There's been recent research that shows they're actually no more effective than placebo. And so we have a lot of people on SSRIs and a lot of folks are starting to look at psychedelics and micro dosing because psilocybin mushrooms are safe to take with SSRIs as a potential replacement for that.
I mean, like you said, it is indeed a brave new World. Wallis, thanks for summarizing so we've gone over some of the stigmas about these medicines given our audience a bit of introduction, perhaps if they haven't heard this before. And we're going to pause this episode we'll we'll stop this episode here in the next episode, really want to get into how to use these things for performance enhancing activities, how we can leverage them ourselves, we have a lot of great suggestions already gave us on that, plus dive into microdosing and other modalities around how these things can actually help us as individuals.
Let's do it can't wait for him to. And
that's a wrap. Oh, yeah, one more thing. If you haven't already, head on over to iTunes and leave a review, we'd love to read your name out here on the show. This episode is sponsored by Smart practice, the world's leading step by step business training program that's helped more than 103 architecture firm owners structure their existing practice. So the complexity of business doesn't get in the way of their architecture. Because you see, it's not your architecture design skills that's holding you back. It's the complexity of running a business, managing projects and people dealing with clients, contractors and money. So if you're ready to simplify the running of your practice, go to business of architecture.com forward slash smart to discover the proven simple and easy to implement smart practice method for running a practice that doesn't get in the way of doing exceptional architecture. Hello,
listeners. We hope you're enjoying our show. We love bringing you these insightful conversations, but we couldn't do it without the support of our amazing sponsors. If you're a business owner, or know someone who would be an excellent fit for our audience, we'd love to hear from you. Partnering with us means your brand will reach over 40,000 engaged listeners each month. interested in becoming a sponsor, please send us an email at support at business of architecture.com
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