MicroDosing Coaches for Magic Mushrooms?

I’m very interested in the idea of microdosing, as are you probably if you were clicking on this video. I want to know how to use it in my life. I want to know if there are any health benefits. Are there any drawbacks? I come to this as a biologist, I’m asking questions. I did a video on the science of Microdosing where I talked to some of the real experts who are studying this at a very high level. I was fascinated by it. Now I’m going to continue this series with the actual interviews from some of the people that I talked to. The person I’m talking to here is Greg Spack, who, he’s a optimal wellness coach, I think is how he goes by. We’re going to be talking about how he uses it with clients, how he recommends people to use it, the health benefits that he’s seen with his clients. And I’m just going to be asking a lot of questions that I hope you have as well. So I hope you find this interesting. If you are interested in microdosing, and we can just explore this topic together. And like always, this is just a casual chat, but one that I hope has some interest for you all out there. Leave your comments below, make sure you don’t look at the bots. They’re durable. And we will just get started with the interview. How would you describe yourself, Greg?

I coin myself as an optimal health coach. I work with clients on a variety of formats, but basically the crux of it all is helping everyone become their most optimal version of themselves. We all have a choice to live life optimally or drift through life, you could say. I always like to come back to this question that if when you wake up in the morning, if you have a choice to take the red pill or the blue pill to live an average day and let yourself drift through the day and be a product of society or to choose to step in through optimal self and achieve or pursue your optimal self during the day, which would you choose? I think everyone was going to take that red pill, but not everyone realizes that there’s even an option. So that’s where I come in.

Yeah, I grew up as an athlete and I think that optimal health and improving my wellbeing is definitely one of the things that I’m focused on. How did you get mixed in with the idea of mushrooms and microdosing and using that in optimal health?

It’s a long story. So you just mentioned that you grew up as an athlete. So I grew up competing at a very high level in a variety of sports. I became a national judo champion. I played division one college football. With that, with all of that, I was always trying to pursue to be bigger, stronger, faster, sharper. Everything that was all towards given was brought towards for athletics. And eventually when I got done playing football in college, I was a broken mess. I’ve had seven reconstructive surgeries. My career ended with one last big injury, and I’m having an identity crisis. I’m in my early to mid twenties and I don’t really know who I am. This identity of being an athlete is now gone. I can no longer do a lot of physical activity that I once did. I can’t cut laterally and go play, pick a basketball or volleyball or do anything like that anymore because of the risk of blowing my knee out again.

So life has now forever changed and I’m having to figure out who I am as a person, which I didn’t really have to do before because I had this strong identity. So then with that came a lot of self-discovery of understanding that there’s this voice in our head that won’t ever shut up. It’s always talking to us. And so coming to terms with having a relationship with that. So that brought me to meditation, started listening to getting some really good downloads from people like Tim Ferris and Joe Rogan with all their amazing guests that would come on and talk about this concept of consciousness. And then with that, I got into the Wim Hof method because now you have this individual who’s taking the eastern and western worlds and he’s marrying them together through the western religion, which is science. And that spoke to me a lot because I grew up in a western medical household.

My dad was a surgeon. He came here from the Soviet Union, five bucks in his pocket and made himself into everything that he was. And so been growing up in the shadow of him. It also, it stunted my identity as a man. So I had to really figure that out a lot in my twenties through a lot of trial and error and a lot of shadow work. And I eventually had a big macro experience on mushrooms on the top of a mountain, on a backpacking trip in the top of the High Sierra. And it was as if a monkey was taken off of my back. This level of pressure was taken off of me and I realized I was okay to love myself. I’m okay to pursue what I feel called to this world without any fear of giving a shit what anyone else thinks because I’m doing it for myself.

I had a big download recently on this retreat I was on in Sonora. I was talking with this shaman, and he had said that one of his most profound things that he said, man, a few words, but very powerful words, and if someone else said them, it would almost be taken as if it’s too simplistic. But he said that you should be happy and you should enjoy your life and the power and the authenticity of which he said it in hit me like a thunderbolt. That’s our job as humans is to do that. So after that macro dose experience, I started finding out about microdosing and I realized that the power, the level of consciousness that I tapped into on a macro front, I was able to take pieces of that away, the present moment awarenesses of it and bring it into my dayto day-to-day life without the psychoactive components of it. I was able to be more intuitive in touch with my day-to-day with whatever I was doing from working out to conversating with clients, family, loved ones. I was able to be more intentional and present with my day. At the end of the day, that’s what we all want. We want to be more present because when you’re more present, you can be happy. You can’t be happy in the past or the future. It’s only right here. And right now

You’ve been working with clients and you recommend microdosing. How have you, you’ve obviously seen reports come back. What are the benefits that you’ve seen from microdosing, particularly with clients and then for yourself as well? I suppose

Everyone seems to have an impact from this. I feel like so many people that come to this from different, from different backgrounds. Some people come with being on some sort of pharmaceutical Xanax, S S R I or a drug addiction or depression and anxiety. Some people just need the light turned back on, excuse me, in their lives. And microdosing has been an amazing tool for an amazing vessel for those people to be able to get alleviation and get more in touch with themselves. Because when you look at the neuroscience of what’s going on, when you’re on a psychedelic, it’s exactly the same as when you’re in a meditative state. Take aside the neurotransmitter releases, the areas of the brain that are lit up with oxygen and blood flow and downregulated are the exact same when you’re meditating. So thus you can hypothesize that you’re bringing in, you’re eating, you’re ingesting consciousness.

And that is something that no one really necessarily takes into consideration that it’s a tool. It’s a tool for consciousness, just like meditation is just doing anything intentional with your life, walking into nature, breath work, working out. When you’re totally focused, they’re all tools to get more present moment awareness in your life. So it’s a powerful tool. And some people don’t realize that there’s a path to be walked, to pursue essentially your purpose, to have this self-realization and sometimes it taking something from Exogen, from an exogenous source such as a microdose, to increase that level of awareness, to realize that I need to work on pursuing this level of consciousness in my life.

How would you describe it feels like when you’re microdosing? What does a microdose feel like? How would you describe that?

And then at the end of your day when you remember that you’ve taken a microdose earlier in the day, audit yourself, audit your day, how was it? How do you feel? Were you more in tune? Were you more focused? Were you clear with your day? Were you more intentional? Did you notice your day just blinked by and the time and space was kind of forgotten about and you were just so wrapped up in the moment that you had an amazing day? So I always ask people think about the most amazing day you’ve had, not like a day when you got married or you had a kid or something like that. Just a normal average day where you just felt so damn good. And that’s what microdot helps you do more often. It helps you to feel like yourself, your best version of yourself because able to be more present with your day. And like I said before, the more present you are, the happier you are because can’t experience happiness in the past or the future. It’s only something that you could experience here. And now,

Do you find sometimes you have to help coach people to find that sweet spot? It’s a little different for everyone. Is that,

Yeah. So I always tell people to start small and take it from there. So you get to choose which side of the pool that you want to play on. So I always say, start small, see how you feel. And you could always adjust from there because if you take in say too much and you’re now past the microdosing realm and you’re in what I call the museum dosing realm, and you’re trying to do some real quantitative work and really do some critical thinking for whatever your career is, your job is and might impede that process. Now, if you’re an artist and you’re painting, you’re really invoking the muse for some really creative work, then that’s probably a good thing. So it really depends what your intention is for ingesting the medicine.

I see. I see. And the average user is probably not going to grow mushrooms, do the whole process, grind them up, throw them into a microdose. I mean, first of all, it’s a difficult hurdle for people. I know that the trend is there and people want to experiment with this potentially. Obviously there’s hurdles to walk around. How do people get started in something like this? How do you approach it?

It’s a good question because just like you said, if you want to take a calculated dose, you do have to have fruiting body, which is just the part of the mushroom that’s above the ground. You have to take that, you have to blend it, then you have to somehow get into capsules. And it’s a daunting process. I know a handful of people who have done that in the past, and it’s sort of a massive pain in the ass. And then I know other people that just say, oh, well, I’ll just take a piece of the cap or a piece of the stem, and I just eat that. I’m a microdose even. And if you’re doing the latter method that you have no idea how much you’re taking in. So sometimes you could be doing the perfect amount if you’re going on a hike or hanging out at the beach, but you have no idea how much really milligrams of psilocybin of mushroom is inside of there.

And you could be taking way too much for whatever the given task is that you’re doing. So it’s important to be calculated with it. Imagine if that was some sort of pre-workout and you’re supposed to take one scoop, but instead you just took a serving size scooper where that’s four or five times the size of what you’re supposed to take. And then you’re just totally like you’ve overdone it. Not that this is the same effect as pre-workout, but that’s a way people can relate with this, I guess. So I recommend a company called Muse. So Muse, I’m friends with these guys. They’re really great people. They’ve created a microdosing product that helps you basically be able to choose what part of the pool that you want to play on. They have four different products ranging in different amounts of mushroom inside. So from everything from 55 milligrams, which is what they call a nano dose up to two grams, which is their macro dose like chocolate bar experience. So you get to really decide what part of the pool that you want to play on given your particular intention.

So there’s different ways that you could order a copy and you can get the product somehow, or that’s just friends with them. I dunno how that works.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So obviously it’s an interesting time. We’re in this Renaissance period in the western world right now of this is becoming much more available to people. And as the demand is really becoming very apparent that not only do people want this, but the mankind, we need this. We really need this to help heal a lot of the shit going on with our mental and spiritual spaces in this western world. So you’ll see there’s a lot of different companies and a lot of different people in the space coming forth, helping to make this medicine more readily available to the people.

Okay. So tell me about the protocol that, I guess, what protocol do you use and is that the same that you recommend to people? Because I think people are unsure how to take it. It’s different from what I gather from a normal pharmaceutical that you would take every morning at 8:00 AM with breakfast.

So starting out there is a number of different, because this is new, microdosing is something that’s very new. It’s not like people have been doing macro dosing of medicine, not just mushrooms, other plant medicine, ethno substances throughout millennia and just taking however much that is. It’s not never been really very calculated with this. So figuring out the perfect microdosing protocol is something that’s I believe is very intuitive. I know Paul Stats was doing something recently with collecting surveys on people’s microdosing protocols to hone in on what’s the ideal amount, what’s the ideal days on and days off. So that’s really figuring that out right now. But I firmly believe that it’s very intuitive to the individual, and you have to first see, try start small and see what works for you and go from there. So I always recommend people when they first start, they want a particular protocol is start with four days on and three days off.

And that’s so you don’t build up too much of a tolerance. It’s like you can with any substance for melatonin to alcohol, to anything in between caffeine. So that’s for the tolerance component of it. Some people like to do two days on, two days off, some do every other day, some do every day just because they really feel like that’s the best thing that works for them. So it’s really up to the individual. And then some people really just like myself now, I take it when I feel called to taking it, I feel where I’m going to take it with intention that I want to have that extra, that tool working for me and working with me during my day. So I’m very intuitive with when I do it. Now, sometimes I’ll do that protocol four on three off. Sometimes I’ll go weeks without taking a microdose. I feel like I’m in that flow and I don’t necessarily need it.

So one of the things I’ve been curious about is this idea of building a tolerance. I understand how it works with caffeine because I think a lot of people, I’m a little bit addicted to caffeine. I

See your coffee right there.

Yeah, exactly. Well, this is Yuba Yuba mate, but it’s the same thing

That’s packed full of caffeine.

It’s the exact same thing. And so if I don’t have it, it’s kind of like I feel pretty crummy on the days I don’t have it because I’ve built up this tolerance to it. Have you heard any reports or is there any reliable info on this? Same with microdosing, because it doesn’t seem like there’s a free lunch. You can’t just feel good and then you come a little lower to your baseline. I see what you’re saying. Does your baseline dip? It just seems like it would have to, right.

So that’s a great question. You’re saying, I know from a macro dose perspective, when you’re flooding the brain with a lot of serotonin that you’re sort draining your receptors and you’re going to go below baseline and then you’re going to build yourself back up. That’s kind of what you’re saying, right?

Yeah. Well, I mean, I heard people talk about dopamine in the same way. You get highs of dopamine and then you’re going to go a little low. How would this not be the same? Or maybe it is different, maybe it holds a different model.

So that’s a really good question. So psilocybin is shown to release serotonin in the brain, which obviously serotonin is our feel-good neurotransmitter. A lot of the actual serotonin, majority of it, to be honest, is actually produced in our guts. So keeping our guts healthy and living a healthy lifestyle and eating a healthy diet will help you to have more serotonin readily available. And it’s funny because SSRIs, the new research has shown that they actually don’t even stimulate serotonin secretion. So that’s pretty interesting. But in regards to this, the amount that you’re taking in is such a small amount that it’s more of a therapeutic response from a neuro transfer standpoint than rather than that of you’re depleting your resources to have a high because you’re not high. It’s a benefits versus the effects. You’re more tuned in, but you’re not high, essentially. So if you’re doing 2, 3, 4 grams, yeah, you probably shouldn’t be doing that every single day, otherwise you’re going to burn out your neurotransmitters and you wouldn’t even feel called to doing that every day.

After you have an experience like that, there’s a level of integration where you need to go and sit with that and process that and integrate that what you experienced, what the dissolve of your ego showed you. And then after your normal waking consciousness comes back and hopefully now integrated from the medicine, you might feel called to doing some period down the line. So if you are thinking you’re going to deplete your neurotransmitters for microdosing, I would disagree with that personally. But I’m also not a neuroscientist. I can’t say that for a fact, but I can only say it from experience and also working with numerous, numerous clients and hearing countless testimonials, because there’s a residual effect on the days when you’re not taking it, that you feel you’re more in tune, you feel you’re more alive in your body and in the world. So there’s residual effects when you’re not taking it because it’s working, even though when it’s not in the system now creating new neurocircuitry of creating these new neurocognitive pathways, which is essentially neuroplasticity. So the more you actually do this, the more you actually necessarily don’t need to do it, if that makes sense. It doesn’t mean that you don’t need to do it all together, but the more you see these patterns working in your normal day-to-day life.

Tell me again what some of the unintended benefits are from microdosing.

Unintended. What do you mean?

Well, it seems to me like people may have anxiety or depression or different ailments that they would seek out microdosing for, but it doesn’t seem to me anyone is ever like, well, I’m not working out enough. Why don’t I start microdosing? But it seems like people start to get healthier after

It’s

A little bit of an unintended thing. Like, oh wow, I didn’t realize that’s happening now in my life.

Yeah, you’re more tuned in. You’re more tuned with everything. Like I was saying before, it’s increasing your consciousness. So when you’re more conscious, you’re more aware, you’re able to look at yourself more without the blinders on the ego, which is the mind, it’s there to keep you alive and nothing else. So it’s purely survival. It’s purely survival now. It has nothing to do with being happy and you kind of living intentionally. So that actually takes effort. It actually takes conscious practice in order to be happy. When you improve your level of consciousness by doing things like meditation, microdosing going into nature where your stimulation levels are reduced and you’re more plugged into everything, you’re able to look at the rest of your life and audit yourself more from a less of an ego standpoint, because the ego’s there to protect your identity. It’s your framework of reality like that.

And a lot of that’s constructed from early adolescence programming that was put onto you. So we all have our own traumas. They’re all individual to ourselves, and a lot of these traumas shape our framework for the world and a lot of the subconscious contracts that have been programmed. So the more in tune and present you can be, the more you can actually realize those things and rewire and wire and fire and new ultimately going to make you a healthier, more rounded person. So it’s very likely that you start microdosing to stop or reduce your anxiety or your depression, but then you realize that, okay, well, I should probably start eating better and treating this meat vessel a lot better than I am. I should probably exercise more now. I actually feel good with that, and I know I want to look good. If I look at it, I feel good. And if I feel good, I’m more inclined to look better and vice versa, and it’s all synergistic.

Okay. Before we wrap up, you have a lot of experience just meeting people in all sorts of walks of life.

Yeah.

Do you recommend Microdosing for people? And who do you recommend it for? Is there someone when you’re like, ah, they might benefit from it? How does that work?

So when I see people that are wound up, when I see people whose egos are so rigid that they can’t think greater than the way that they’re feeling, they need microdosing, they need this medicine because the other tools of consciousness that are available to them, they’re not even aware of them. They have no idea that there’s a path to be walked, and they have zero idea. So that’s a great tool for them to help them to open their eyes up a bit, to take the blinders off. Everyone can benefit from mycin. I’ve worked with clients upwards of 80 years old. I’ve worked with clients in their twenties. Everyone can benefit from increasing their consciousness. It’s completely safe, and there’s nothing to lose, everything to gain.

Nice. Well, that’s I think, very appealing for people trying to improve who they’re, especially the safe part and not huge consequences. You can always stop, I guess that’s thing. It’s such a small, yeah. So I’m going to leave links to a lot of the stuff that you’re doing and anywhere where people want to find out more about what you talked about.

Yeah, totally.

How can people find out about you? Where’s the best place?

Best place would be Instagram. You could search me @OFXcoach. That’s @OFXcoach. And then I also have a website that’s OFXhealth.com.

Awesome. Well, thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it, Greg.

Absolutely. And if you guys want to learn about Muse, they are on Instagram, I believe, at MyMuseLife dot, or sorry, it’s at MyMuseLife. And then I believe the website is Mymuselife.com.

Fantastic.