In this episode of Ayahuasca Podcast host Sam Believ (founder of http://www.lawayra.com) has a conversation with Paul F. Austin. Paul is a leading pioneer in the modern psychedelic movement, founder of Third Wave, author of Mastering Microdosing, host of The Psychedelic Podcast, and head of the Psychedelic Coaching Institute. He focuses on psychedelic education, microdosing protocols, and training practitioners to help scale the responsible use of these medicines in the modern world.
We touch upon topics of
- 00:01–00:44 Introduction to Paul F. Austin and his work
- 00:44–03:14 Paul’s early LSD experiences and conservative upbringing
- 03:14–04:17 First microdosing protocol and founding Third Wave
- 04:18–07:08 Convincing his parents and guiding his dad through a mushroom journey
- 07:09–10:01 Parent–child healing and psychedelic experiences together
- 10:02–13:29 The “third wave” of psychedelics explained (indigenous → LSD era → today)
- 13:30–15:45 Microdosing as the safest path to legalization and cultural acceptance
- 15:46–17:29 Stepwise dosing and retreat philosophies
- 17:30–20:16 Why different psychedelics require different approaches
- 20:17–22:09 Psilocybin tolerance and retreat spacing strategies
- 22:10–27:29 Microdosing LSD vs psilocybin vs wachuma
- 27:30–30:48 Vine-only microdosing and adaptogenic effects
- 30:49–35:34 Psychedelics vs SSRIs and the “crutch” metaphor
- 35:35–41:39 Importance of psychedelic education and practitioner training
- 41:40–45:38 Addiction, cannabis dependence, and integration
- 45:39–49:15 “CEO medicine” and psychedelics for conscious leadership
- 49:16–52:27 What Paul is excited about in 2026 and the future of psychedelics
If you would like to attend one of our Ayahuasca retreats go to http://www.lawayra.com
Find more about Paul F. Austin at thethirdwave.co and follow him on social media at @PaulAustin3W
Transcript
Paul F. Austin: My big mission and vision is how do we get psychedelics legal, available, and accessible to any adult who wants to use them, and i- in my perspective, microdosing is the safest way to do that. I think what we’re gonna start to see and notice in the next decade is there’s gonna be a massive industry that starts to pop up to help people get off SSRI medications and onto psychedelic medicine.
SSRIs are like a crutch for your mental health. Sometimes you break a leg and you need that crutch, but the whole point of the crutch is to get you walking again. I characterize the second wave as the reintroduction of psychedelic substances into the consciousness of Western civilization in particular.
And that was through the invention of LSD, what a lot of people don’t realize is that the internet exists because of LSD. When LSD was starting to be used in clinical trials at Stanford, Ken Kesey snuck out a bunch of acid and distributed it all over Palo Alto, which that became Silicon Valley and you look at people who were very involved, Steve Jobs is the most famous one.
I say LSD is love in crystal form.
Sam Believ: You’re listening to ayahuasca podcast dot com.
Hi, guys, and welcome to Ayahuasca Podcast. As always, with you, the host, Sam Believ, and today I’m having a conversation with Paul F. Austin. Paul is a leading pioneer in the modern psychedelic movement and the founder of Third Wave. As an entrepreneur, author of Mastering Microdoses, and a frequent voice in outlets like Forbes and New York Times, Paul is at the forefront of shifting psychedelics from counterculture into a tool for leadership, creativity, and personal transformation.
Paul is also the host of Psychedelic Podcast, and head of Psychedelic Coaching Institute. This episode is sponsored by LaWayra Ayahuasca Retreat. At LaWayra, we combine affordability,
Paul F. Austin: accessibility, and authenticity. LaWayra, connect, heal, grow.
Sam Believ: Guys, I’m looking forward to hosting you. Paul, welcome to the show.
Paul F. Austin: Thank you, Sam. It’s it’s great to be here. Thanks for having me on.
Sam Believ: Paul let’s start from your story, like what, what in your life put you on this path?
Paul F. Austin: Yeah I did a bunch of acid when I was 19, and these were not microdoses. These were macrodoses. This was a tab or two or three, usually with a friend or two, or sometimes a larger group of friends in my college years when I was 19, 20.
And I became curious about psychedelics from a my best friend in high school who had introduced me to cannabis. Yeah … and a few years after cannabis, it turned me onto mushrooms, and I tried mushrooms and thought, “This is interesting.” And then I found LSD, and LSD was really the one that, that stuck for me.
And I was raised in a pretty traditional home environment in the Midwest, here in the, the States. So my parents were very, church-focused. Anything that was illegal was bad. And so when they found out that I had been experimenting with cannabis, they yeah they expressed their disappointment to the point where my dad said he hadn’t been this bummed, this disappointed since his brother had died in a car accident, right?
That’s how impactful my illicit drug use was for my parents. And so from that experience, I quickly realized that, I was on my own, that I had to figure out this path, that I wasn’t necessarily going to be able to share all these aspects with not just my family, but my general community, ’cause the community as a whole that I was raised in was quite conservative.
So when I had my early experiences with LSD, like many other folks who explore psychedelics, at least at that point in time, I thought, “Oh, this is a drug. It’s an illegal drug. It must be bad. This feels so good.” I’m having all these insights and ahas and perspective changes, but everything that I’ve heard about LSD says, “Oh, this is harmful for my brain,” or, “This is harmful for my body.”
And and so at the age of 21, 22, I phased it out for a couple years. And then in 2015 I noticed that more and more people were starting to talk about psychedelics, more podcasts, there was more research coming out. Cannabis was being reevaluated. And so in 2015, I started to do a deep dive into all things psychedelic, and lo and behold, figured out that these weren’t nearly as, dangerous as I had been initially led to believe.
And so in 2015, I started my first microdosing protocol where I did a low dose of LSD two times a week for about six months, and through that experience, started Third Wave as an educational platform. This is over a decade ago now. Just as a resource, as an asset for people to have as they started their psychedelic exploration.
And so over the last decade, I’ve had my hands in many pots education, media, training, retreats. I wrote a book. I have a second book coming out. But the core focus has really been around education and training in the psychedelic space. I believe that if these, these tools are used with intention and responsibility, they can really catalyze tremendous healing and transformation.
And so I’ve been a a very big advocate for their use and I’m really excited about where we are now in, in 2026 and what opportunities are available for people to explore these, these substances respectfully and safely.
Sam Believ: Thank you for sharing, Paul. You mentioned your story with your dad and how he was bummed, and like it affected him strongly.
I know that since then you’ve converted him from skeptic to believer. Can you tell us that story?
Paul F. Austin: Yeah. When this thing happened with cannabis, it would’ve been 2006. I was 16 years old. And at that point in time, my parents were very anti-everything. And when I was 24, so in 2014, I ca- I opened up to my parents.
I told them, “Look, I’ve been exploring psychedelics, I’ve been exploring LSD. It’s meant a lot to me.” Even at that point in 2014, they were still quite disappointed, and they couldn’t believe it, and they were in shock. And it wasn’t until I started Third Wave and then actually started to make a living from this, ’cause I had an initial business that I taught English online.
So I sold that business, really went all in on the psychedelic part and through that work, my parents started to become more and more open. And then when Michael Pollan’s book came out in 2018, How to Change Your Mind I shared that with my dad. He read it. He was open to microdosing. My dad is very keen on all things longevity he’s really big on diet and sleep and exercise, and he’s always reading a book about how to live longer and be healthier, right?
So I pitched microdosing to him as a thing that was gonna help him maintain a high level of cognition at a, at an older age. He microdosed. He enjoyed it. And then I pitched him on the idea of doing a, a mushroom experience, a high-dose mushroom experience. This would’ve been in 2019. And he was open to it.
And I guided him through a high-dose mushroom experience, and it was impactful for him, for sure interesting. And, ever since that point in time, my parents are very supportive and of the, the work that I’m doing. And and it’s and it’s, that’s saying a lot because in the Midwest, especially where they’re from in Grand Rapids, there’s not a lot of people who are openly talking about this still.
I’m really proud of them just for keeping an open mind.
And not continuing to be in judgment and shame around it.
Sam Believ: We have a lot of people coming to LaWayra that after having that experience, they get obsessed with convincing their parents to come. And a lot of them end up doing it, and then they’re coming, and it’s always very profound.
Those… it’s good for couples, but like parent-child couples seem to be– There’s like a lot of very special healing that happens. So have you observed like big change in your relationship with your dad afterward? Was one ceremony enough, and w- should– do you reckon should more kids try and bring their parents to Ayahuasca or psychedelics?
Paul F. Austin: Yeah, it’s a good question. My relationship with my parents is interesting because when I was 21, I’d moved away from Michigan, where I’d, lived for the first 21 years of my life, and I taught English in Turkey. And I lived abroad for the better part of five years, and then, I- I’ve lived in New York, Miami, Oakland.
So I’ve gone back to Michigan here and there, but I’ve never moved back. And so I see my parents occasionally. I probably see them two or three times a year. We talk on the phone every now and then. We have a close relationship, but it’s not it’s not like we’re texting every day, as an example.
So I think the big thing that it shifted for my dad and I, and for my parents and I, is it just made them more willing and open to accept the work that I do and sort of parts of who I am. So it just got this awkward part out of the way. But I will give my parents credit in saying that they’ve always been very in many ways open, about w- who I wanna be and what I wanna do and who I wanna become.
My dad’s profession is in career counseling for a university and so as you can imagine, moving abroad to teach English in Turkey was not necessarily the standard conventional thing to do out of university. A lot of my friends went and got corporate jobs, and, or went to graduate school, and yet they were always very supportive of my more unconventional path.
So I think there’s always been a lot of love there. And and I still haven’t done psychedelics with my mom. Maybe at some point. They’re now 70. Maybe at some point we’ll get that chance. I think MDMA, if anything, would be more powerful. Even with the, the psilocybin mushroom experience, I was guiding my dad through it, so he was really into medicine.
I didn’t really take any medicine. I was just there to support him and whatnot. We haven’t yet really drank Ayahuasca together or done MDMA together or had that sort of peak experience at the same time. It’s something I would be open to, and I think something they’d be open to, just haven’t been able to book it.
Partly because I already have a pretty good relationship with them. There, there’s no weird energy or, estrangement or, we’re never out of touch or anything like that. So I don’t feel like there’s a lot to heal necessarily. I already have a pretty good relationship with them, and and partly just because I don’t live close by with them.
The opportunity to do it is just… it’s not as present. And and I pitched my dad on the idea of, “Let’s go down to Costa Rica and drink Ayahuasca together,” and he, he said he would be open to it, so you never know. Maybe at some point- we’ll be able to do that together.
Sam Believ: You can come here to LaWayra with him. I’ll give you a big discount.
Paul F. Austin: Okay. Thank you .
Sam Believ: So your your your business is called Third Wave, right? Which obviously refers to the third wave of psychedelics or this kind of renaissance that we’re experiencing.
Let’s talk about that, how is this wave different than others, and what do you like about it and what you don’t like about it?
Paul F. Austin: Yeah, we could spend the rest of the podcast probably going into, to that analysis. So just some context for listeners, right? Third Wave came out of the third wave of psychedelics.
That was an amalgamation between third wave coffee and taking acid. So I was living in Budapest in 2015, visiting all these third wave coffee places, which are these artisanal coffee places with really fancy cappuccinos and flat whites and, things like that, and microdosing with LSD, and they just emerged.
I was talking with a couple friends about how do we characterize this current moment as it relates to psychedelics and this notion of the third wave of psychedelics came up. And so I sat with that and thought about it and, my, my key area of study in university was history, right?
So a lot of my lens and my analysis and my perspective on psychedelic work is historical in many ways. And so this notion of the third wave of psychedelics suggests we’ve been here before in some ways, meaning that we as a human species have had a relationship with these entheogenic plants for thousands of years.
There’s archeological evidence for peyote that goes back fifteen thousand years. There’s archeological evidence for wachuma, also called San Pedro, that goes back three thousand years. There’s archeological evidence for psilocybin mushrooms that goes probably back probably anywhere from one to two thousand years, maybe longer if are keen on Terence McKenna’s Stoned Ape Theory.
So we have a clear and distinct relationship with these plant medicines and and so that’s number one, right? That’s the first wave of psychedelics, the ancient and indigenous use of psychedelic substances. Then we get to the second wave, and I characterize the second wave as the reintroduction of psychedelic substances into the consciousness of Western civilization in particular.
And that was through the invention of LSD. Albert Hofmann invents LSD in nineteen thirty-eight, discovers its psychoactive properties in nineteen forty-three, and then we have the counterculture. We have thousands of clinical papers published on the efficacy of LSD, and as many of your listeners are aw- are aware, the second wave of psychedelics failed, not necessarily because of a lack of clinical evidence about their efficacy, but because we never figured out how to create sort of a container for these states of ecstasy at a cultural level.
And so my, my perspective on this third wave of psychedelics is that its success will depend not so much on proving clinical efficacy, although this is helpful for those with PTSD, depression, and addiction, but more so how do we create spaces for the ecstatic, for peak experiences, for awe, for mystery, for one- on- oneness in our everyday lives, right?
In our spiritual lives, in our sort of cultural fabric, if you will. And so my, my belief, my assumption has always been that microdosing in particular will act as a stepping stone for broader culture to become more familiar with psychedelic states. And so a lot of people, if they’ve heard of our work before, know of Third Wave or myself, they probably know about my work within the context of microdosing because that’s what I’ve been very public and prominent about.
And that’s been very strategic and intentional. My big mission and vision is how do we get psychedelics legal, available, and accessible to any adult who wants to use them. And in, in my perspective, microdosing is the safest way to do that. And I think One, one thing that’s been unfortunate, I would say, is there hasn’t been a lot of research carried out on low-dose psychedelic work, right?
A lot of the modern psychedelic research has been focused on high doses of psilocybin, MDMA, LSD, Ayahuasca, 5-MeO-DMT. We’re really looking at that breakthrough experience because the impacts are so extreme compared to placebo. But what I think is challenging about that or potentially problematic about that is a lot of folks who have never done psychedelics before may be hesitant to go and do a super high dose of psilocybin as an example.
And so I’m really interested in how, what are ways that we can warm people up, and help them become a little bit more open to the fact that a high dose of a psychedelic might be useful for them. And I think one of the best ways to do that is what a lot of practitioners call the stepwise approach, and this is often used in reference to Bufo 5-MeO-DMT, where when someone works with 5-MeO-DMT, ideally there’s not just a blast-off right away, but you’re doing low doses until you get to a place where you feel like you can really expand and open up into it.
And I think that’s, that should be the practice for mushrooms, that should be the practice for LSD, that should be the practice for maybe even Ayahuasca in some cases. Right? That stepwise approach I think is really a really useful approach to, to take.
Sam Believ: That’s actually very close to the philosophy that we have here at LaWayra, where when people come, we don’t start with like full guns out, like huge doses of Ayahuasca.
And like the doses are very controlled, and they’re very designed for each person. So each night we see like there’s couple cups, right? And that’s the beauty of Ayahuasca that- There is no tolerance. There is actually reverse tolerance, and I have a question to you regarding that.
But we start slow and we get people to a certain threshold, but trying not to overshoot it, but also not to undershoot it. Because if you were to get … give the same amount of ayahuasca to each participant, enough for everyone to have a breakthrough experience, then you have to take couple people to a mental hospital next day.
So you have to find the exact dose for everyone because such a unique, … Depending on your microbiome, on your mental state, what you ate, how much you weighed, what medications you take, do you smoke weed or not, and so many other factors, you might need a different amount. So generally people tend to have a breakthrough experience around, I would say, first ceremony maybe half of the people break through, and the second maybe 75, third 90%, and then by fourth ceremony 99%.
But because of that careful approach, nobody’s freaking out and needs to go needs to run away. So I think that’s … I think the word for it is psycholytic, where it’s not psychedelic. So the first doses we give to people are psycholytic. And then also the preparation, I think it allows people to warm up.
I don’t know if you have anything to say about that.
Paul F. Austin: And ayahuasca is a different beast, right? And this is- This is, I think, some of the nuance that’s been missed in the general discourse on, on, on psychedelics or maybe even drugs, right? On the one hand we have a sense of, if something is called a drug and it’s illegal, it must be bad, so then psychedelics get looped into that.
And then when people hear about psychedelics, they assume that these are all the same. But as you well know, the experience of 5-MeO is going to be different than the experience of ayahuasca, which is gonna be different than mushrooms, than cactus, than LSD, et cetera, et cetera. Ayahuasca, it feels like there- there’s a much more shamanic approach in some ways.
There’s a much more intuitive approach. As you talked about, there, there does tend to be reverse tolerance with ayahuasca, meaning the more you drink, the more sensitive you become to it. This, I think, is largely true of most psychedelics, that the more you do, assuming it’s done within a intentional container and there’s other work being done, it tends to thaw out the nervous system and the sort of protectors, if you will, if we’re using IFS terminology, which allows there to be more sensitivity on a general basis.
And that psychedelic approach, I think is essential to the scaling of psychedelic therapy. I, I just don’t see a world in which, tens of millions of people are jumping, in with a high dose of psychedelic. Maybe ketamine becomes that within the medical system, I’m not sure.
But I do think it would behoove the, the system at large to figure out how do we make microdoses accessible and available to more people so they can titrate and calibrate the dosage to what they feel is appropriate before they decide they wanna jump in the deep end. And, in some ways, that’s happening in the underground, right?
If you go online now in the United States, there’s two dozen, three dozen, four dozen websites you can just order microdoses from and there’s really nothing being done about it. Yeah, I think we just live in interesting times. We live in a world now where psychedelics are quasi-legal, even though they’re still Schedule I substances.
We live in a world where they’re legal in, in certain states, but illegal in others. We live in a world where they’re legal in certain countries, like where you are in Colombia, and illegal in others. But I think what is true is any adult now, I know it’s not fully legal everywhere, but if there was an adult who really wanted to work with psychedelics they could figure out a way to do it, and I don’t know if that was necessarily true a decade ago but I do think that’s true now.
Sam Believ: Regarding the tolerance I’m curious to ask you, ’cause I know you, you organized or still are organizing m- psilo- psilocybin retreat. Yeah. How do you deal with extended retreats and if there is several ceremonies in a row, how do you deal with the tolerance?
Is there maybe some kind of formula to calculate it? Because I ask it from experience, ’cause I’ve tried once to do that. And yeah, so how do you work around that?
Paul F. Austin: So most of our intensives these days, which, I would also refer to as a retreat, are part of our practitioner training program.
So we have a, a six-month practitioner training program focused on prep and integration coaching. We do an in-person intensive in Costa Rica as part of that, but we only have one high-dose psilocybin experience as part of that. We do a lower dose, like a high crew dose, and then take a day off for the temazcal, and then we go in and do a high-dose ceremony.
So there’s 48 hours usually between the, the dosage, and the high-dose ceremony you’re taking a much higher dose, like 10X the dose that we do in our high crew dose. I’ve done and facilitated a few retreats where we’ve had multiple experiences, and I think the key thing with psilocybin is you just need…
Excuse me. You just need 48 hours between the experiences. Because because they’re very active in the serotonergic system, typically the brain needs about 48 hours to reset tolerance for the serotonergic agonist, like psilocybin, LSD, mescaline et cetera, et cetera. It’s different than ayahuasca.
From what I understand with ayahuasca, you can drink ayahuasca, every night for four straight nights or five straight nights or six straight nights, and there’s not tolerance built up. If anything, you’re gonna become more and more sensitive to the medicine itself, from what I understand.
Sam Believ: Yeah, no, that’s exactly how it is. So even by giving same amount every ceremony, you’re basically increasing the dose. So you talk about microdosing and I know that’s your forte, and you’ve already mentioned a lot on it. What do you think about… what are the main differences between microdosing, let’s say, LSD versus microdosing psilocybin?
Paul F. Austin: Yeah. So I would say there’s like- There’s three core substances that people microdose. Mushrooms are by far the most popular one partly because of accessibility. It’s really easy to grow your own mushrooms, partly because most of the products online now are openly selling mushroom microdoses, and I think partly because people wanna work with a, quote-unquote, “plant.”
Even though mushrooms aren’t a plant, they’re a fungi, but they wanna work with a plant medicine because a lot of people who are microdosing are sick of the, quote-unquote, “pharmaceutical system,” right? So they don’t wanna be taking anything that’s synthetic or pharmaceutical. They like working with the mushroom.
It’s accessible, it’s easy to get. Now it’s legal in, in various jurisdictions. So mushrooms is by far the most common substance that people microdose. I would say 80 to 90% of people who are microdosing are doing so with mushrooms. Mushrooms tend to have a little more body load with them. They tend to be a little more focused on the emotional body.
It tends to be quite somatic. People notice that, for a lot of folks who microdose with mushrooms, it might bring up challenging emotions like sadness, grief or anger and frustration, so there tends to be a little bit more of a shadowy aspect to mushrooms, which if you understand how mushrooms grow, where they grow, what they do in nature, that makes sense.
Mushrooms typically decompose, right? They’re typically found in places that are moist and wet and dark, and so there’s a distinct relationship between moist and wet and dark and shadow work Right? Whereas if we look at LSD, LSD tends to be crystal. It’s a crystal. I say LSD is love in crystal form, right?
And it’s synthesized in a laboratory. It’s derived from ergot, which is a fungus that grows on rye bread, and LSD tends to be more dopaminergic, more dopamine. So LSD is more stimulating, it tends to be more cognitive it tends to be more up- from a mood perspective, more uplifting, maybe even more euphoric when compared to psilocybin.
But folks do notice that with LSD, sometimes it can make them a little manic, it can make them a little overstimulated, it can make it hard to sleep, it can make it at times hard to focus, even if they overdose on accident with a microdose. LSD for me is a favorite. And then we have Huachuma, cactus, San Pedro.
Huachuma’s somewhere in between. Huachuma’s still very active on the dopamine, like LSD, so people notice when they work with Huachuma, it’s stimulating, it helps with focus, attention, and motivation, but it tends to be more rooted and embodied than LSD. And so there are people notice that, “Oh, I can really feel myself, I can feel my body, I can feel my emotions.
I don’t feel like I’m just neck up.” And Huachuma has been the one that I’ve been exploring more and more. In fact, we have a microdosing training program now where we train people on our six-week protocol with Huachuma microdosing and nervous system practices. And so we’re actively training coaches and practitioners, “Look, if you wanna bring microdosing into your your practice, into the work that you do with clients, then this is really the protocol to go with.”
Because I find that, oh, one of the One of the critiques that I notice around, around microdosing is that, okay, if you just take this, it’s gonna address or fix certain issues. And one thing that I’ve been very adamant about for a very long time is that microdosing is not a magic pill that it does upregulate BDNF and neuroplasticity, that it can help manage inflammation and gut health, that it often leads to more energy and greater mood.
But so much of the long-term effect of microdosing is the work that’s done. It’s committing to meditation. It’s committing to breathwork. It’s committing to changing your diet, exercise, and sleep. It’s committing to changing or shifting something with support from the microdosing. And and so for folks who are just getting started, usually I say start with psilocybin mushrooms.
Once you’ve done an initial protocol with that, then maybe explore LSD or huachuma. And then I know beyond that, there are people who are microdosing with ayahuasca. There are people who micro- who microdose with just the vine of ayahuasca, which is an MAOI and an, and a, and an anxiolytic. There are
people who are microdosing with iboga more and more as well. That’s been something that’s talked about more often. I even know people who are microdosing 2C-B, which is in the phenethylamine class. It’s another substance that was invented by Sasha Shulgin in addition to MDMA. So they’ll microdose 2C-B, or people who are microdosing ketamine.
But usually what I teach to and focus on is psilocybin, LSD and
Sam Believ: huachuma. This episode is sponsored by La Wayra Ayahuasca Retreat. Most of La Wayra if you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while. Some of you might have already been to La Wayra before. For those who don’t know us yet, we started La Wayra four years ago.
At La Wayra, we combine authenticity, accessibility, and affordability. La Wayra is currently highest-rated ayahuasca retreat in South America with more than 700 five-star reviews and an average rating of five stars. If you come to La Wayra, you’ll experience powerful, authentic ceremonies led by our indigenous shaman, Fernando, in a very beautiful venue just one hour south of Medellín, Colombia.
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L-A-W-A-Y-R-A.com What do you know about microdosing Ayahuasca, vine only specifically? ‘Cause I’m actually experimenting with with it recently. I just started making capsules of vine only, and I’m just giving it to people, and we’re trying to figure out what it does. For me personally, I notice that if I’m in a bad mood, it lifts my mood, like emotional support.
But how much do you know? Because I’m kinda trying to almost inve- in invent it, but maybe somebody’s invented it before, so any information would be welcome.
Paul F. Austin: I think it’s adaptogenic in some ways. So if you’re overstimulated, it’s probably gonna bring your nervous system back down to be a little more calm, or if you struggle with, or have a down mood, it might bring you back up.
So I think it has an adaptogenic quality to it. I think it also has a anxiolytic quality to it, so if someone is feeling quite anxious it can help them to come back to center. MAOIs are also psychiatric medications, right? You can be prescribed certain MAOIs and some people are prescribed MAOIs for depression, as an example.
So I think it’s no surprise that just the vine itself has certain properties. Now, what’s also interesting about just the vine is it has harmaline in it, and there’s been more and more research about the impact of harmaline on inflammation and gut health. So I think what we’re also probably, and what you may notice is if people have issues with gut health or they have issues with inflammation, taking just the vine can also be helpful at managing some of those problems and issues.
Sam Believ: Yeah. So I’m gonna show you my,
Paul F. Austin: Oh,
Sam Believ: nice … my new baby project. It’s called- Very cool … Only Vines.
Paul F. Austin: Nice.
Sam Believ: It’s a fun play on words. But it’s- How often do you take it? So I’ve personally noticed that if I take two capsules in the morning and two capsules in the evening of just pure Ayahuasca vine powder I feel like uplifting the energy and just better focus and better sleep.
It’s just kinda it’s so hard to explain. Because if I take more, then I start feeling heaviness in my body. Kinda when you take a full dose of Ayahuasca, the, the early onset, you feel kinda heavy. So I’m just right now I’m just experimenting. I gave it to maybe 10 people, and they’re trying and they’re sending me their reports, and I’m feeding it to AI, and I’m gonna figure out what it is.
So a little citizen science project. Nice. That’s very cool. So MAOIs were the original antidepressants, right? There was the… There was this tuberculosis drug that people were taking, and they noticed that it was improving their their mood. And it was, it contained MAOIs. But it’s a different kind of MAOI compared to Ayahuasca because it’s an MAOI that accumulates in your system.
And the most of the rules that are on internet about Ayahuasca, they’re based on that MAOI. Because the MAOI in Ayahuasca I’m not a scientist, but o- it’s of a different type, and it’s basically out of your system very quickly. But yeah, I think that probably MAOI and Ayahuasca, it’s basically if I would describe it, and of course I can’t, if I were ever to sell it, I can’t really tell it, but I would say it’s a natural antidepressant.
Interesting. What do you think? I know you talk about this a lot, but what, Let’s talk about psychedelics versus antidepressants.
Paul F. Austin: Yeah. Where do you wanna start?
Sam Believ: Just what’s better? Why, what’s the value of one versus another? Obviously without making any medical claims.
Paul F. Austin: Yeah, I went on a bit of a rampage on social maybe three, four, five months ago.
We’ve had a, we’ve had quite a bit of discussion on the podcast and through webinars that I’ve hosted. I’ve interviewed psychiatrists about this, I’ve interviewed neuroscientists about this, including Robin Carhart-Harris, who published a, a groundbreaking research paper comparing traditional antidepressants to psychedelic medicine, and describing some of the differences between the two.
The, the metaphor that I’ve landed on lately when talking about SSRIs is SSRIs are like a crutch for your mental health. Sometimes you break a leg and you need that crutch, but the whole point of the crutch is to get you walking again, right? To allow the leg to heal. You don’t wanna be using crutches for the rest of your life, and I think the problem, what’s incredibly problematic about SSRIs is most of the people who are prescribing them have no context on their ideal use.
So for example, my sister is on an SSRI. She’s been on an SSRI for over 10 years now. She was never told that these are really only meant to be used for three to six months. So if you look at all of the clinical research on SSRIs, it’s about their use for three to six months. Now you have people who are taking them for years, and when they try to get off, they have brain zaps, they have withdrawals, they have sexual dysfunction, right?
So there are all these negative impacts that accumulate over time when SSRIs are used for too long. So I think I’m a big fan of SSRIs as a crutch in, in a use of emergencies. I also fundamentally believe that psychedelic medicine could be just as effective as S- SSRIs, like ketamine has been shown to be incredibly helpful and effective for suicidality.
I’m still not convinced about this sort of pill that you need to take every day model. And, I’ve also been diving pretty deep into bioenergetics and mitochondrial health. I think the sort of cutting edge frontier of health and wellness is gonna be focused on does this positively or negatively impact the mitochondria?
And what we see with some early research on SSRIs is that it negatively impacts mitochondria, and so why would you wanna take something every day that’s harmful for your mitochondria? It’s silly. It’s totally silly. So- Psychedelics, on the other hand they’re used on an occasional basis. They’re shown to be pro-metabolic.
They’re shown to be anti-inflammatory. They’re shown… we’ve been using them for thousands and thousands of years, going back to my historical reference. There’s a frame that I often discuss or talk about called the Lindy effect, and the Lindy effect is a notion that the longer an idea or technology has been around, the longer it will be around.
In other words, the willingness of the human species to continue to utilize something is indicative of its utility. And so the very fact that we as a human species have been using psychedelics for thousands of years so is that they’re useful. They’re actually doing something for us that’s useful across generations.
Where with SSRIs, we’ve been using them for 40 years. 40 years, that’s like one, one-thousandth of the amount of time that we’ve been exposed to psychedelic substances. We still have no idea about the long-term implications of the mass use of SSRIs. And so I think what we’re gonna start to see and notice in the next decade is there’s gonna be a massive industry that starts to pop up to help people get off SSRI medications and onto psychedelic medicine.
I’ve already seen this where- Sure … 29 million people last year were prescribed SSRI medications in the United States. 29 million people. That’s nearly 10% of the population. I think up to 50 million people are on an SSRI at any point in time, right? The numbers are just totally insane.
Yeah … and most people don’t know around, they’re not informed about the potential sexual dysfunction. They’re not, m- informed about the negative impact on mitochondrial health. They’re not informed about the massive withdrawals that sometimes take place when they try to get off of them.
So I think we’re gonna need to figure out what are solutions to help people get off these SSRI medications and onto practices and maybe medicines that are much more sustainable and durable and don’t have the negative consequences.
Sam Believ: Yeah. The– I’ve heard stories of people that they come with a backache, and they are giving an antidepressant just in case.
And the way how medical professionals give them out like a candy is definitely very bad. And I think that, as you say, it’s a crutch, and if somebody’s openly suicidal and they need a quick short-term support, those are great, but then they need to come with instructions. Like, how are you gonna… You you– here you go.
Here’s your subscription for– prescription for three months, and here’s the instructions of how to get off them when you finish.” I think that’s the way it should be done. But of course it’s gonna take a long time to change, and there’s a lot of vested interest because there’s a lot of money in it.
It’s people taking a pill every day, so there’s money coming in to big corporations every month. I don’t blame them. It’s a– seems like a nice business. But yeah, I guess there’s there are better ways to do it. So this this wave of psychedelics, the third wave that you talk about, and obviously you focus a lot on education through your training program for facilitators and also for and also your podcast.
I would say probably the biggest difference in this wave is the presence of the education. Let’s talk about that. What is the importance of education and informing people before working with psychedelics?
Paul F. Austin: Yeah, what a lot of people don’t realize is that the internet exists because of LSD, when LSD was starting to be used in clinical trials at Stanford, there was a gentleman by the name of Ken Kesey, who wrote One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, who was an early experimenter in those Stanford clinical trials, snuck out a bunch of acid and distributed it all over Palo Alto, which then became Silicon Valley.
And you look at people who were very involved, Steve Jobs is the most famous one, but there’s a lot of other people who were involved with the computer revolution and the internet revolution that were heavily influenced in their approach by the use of LSD. Stewart Brand is another really interesting guy who’s still alive today and has talked pretty openly about his own experiences with LSD and the computer and all that.
So I think that’s like the starting base, right? Because so much of the education that’s available today is done through the internet, whereas in the ’60s and ’70s and ’80s, the government could propagandize whatever they wanted to through the educational system. But today, there’s a lot more autonomy that people have over their capacity to discover what’s real and what’s not.
And so education, knowing, the difference between ketamine and MDMA, understanding that psychedelics, although they are Schedule I substances, are actually not addictive, I think is a huge part. Understanding that, psychedelics are very different than SSRIs in terms of how they interact with the brain and the impact that they have on people is an important one.
I think recognizing the value and utility of these indigenous practices, right? That we don’t just get too occupied with synthetics or modern medicine, but that we recognize that there’s a history there’s a context in which a lot of these plant medicines have come from, and that to stay in right relationship with them, there needs to be some level of reciprocity or relationship to where these medicines come from, which in most cases is Central and South America.
Not all cases, but in, in many cases is Central and South America. So I think just that, like- Basic level education, right? I call it psychedelic literacy or the skill of psychedelics. Just like everyone should learn how to cook their own eggs or, make their own toast, or everyone should learn, how to read and write as these basic skills, I think knowing the difference between a psychedelic and heroin is important.
Or I think knowing that psychedelics are medically useful is important. Or I think knowing that psychedelics have a long history of use in various indigenous communities around the globe is important. And as long as we can get most people there, recognizing the utility, understanding some of the research around it, I think that’s good.
I saw in a recent poll that Cal Berkeley had done that seven– over 70% of Americans now support legal psychedelic therapy, right? So we’re definitely at a point where there’s been a lot of media, there’s been a lot of attention around this. Colorado, Oregon, New Mexico have legalized psilocybin.
The FDA recently announced that they may approve synthetic psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression by the end of this year, right? So there’s a lot of momentum and movement. And education isn’t everything, right? Because after education comes providers, and I think that’s another key, key and important aspect is, okay, if you’re learning about this great, but who are you gonna go do this with?
In what context are you gonna do this? And which medicine are you going to use, and I think that’s then the next big phase of this sort of third wave of psychedelics. If the last ten years was really focused on education, which we seem to have won, I think it’s going quite well. I think the next ten years on how do you train up potentially thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of practitioners in how to work with psychedelics, because the ability to work with psychedelics is much different than standard CBT psychotherapy or, a 15-minute psychiatric appointment or you know, taking an SSRI every day and managing symptoms.
It’s a whole new landscape and a whole new ballgame, and most people don’t, themselves as practitioners, have the experience, know-how, and nervous system capacity to hold that for others.
Sam Believ: Yeah. Let’s talk about your own experiences with psychedelics. I think in one of the podcasts you said that your Ayahuasca helped you overcome weed addiction.
Can you talk to us about that and just maybe a- addiction in general?
Paul F. Austin: Yeah, there’s… what I love about psychedelics is they’re not really all that sticky, ayahuasca can be a little bit at times, but even then it’s not… I just, I don’t see people who have a, a propensity for addiction with Ayahuasca.
I think cannabis is problematic. I’m a big fan of legalizing cannabis. I’m a big fan of access to cannabis, but I don’t think I realized it could be as habit-producing as it has been for me. I go through phases. I have a hard time with moderation. I used to be able to moderate with it really well, but at this point I have a hard time with moderation, so I’m more of a no than I am a yes with cannabis, and it tends to really negatively impact my mood and sleep.
And so for the time being I’ve just said as much as possible no to cannabis. And what we’ve seen with Ayahuasca and ibogaine and mushrooms and, LSD even is that they can really interrupt these patterns, right? And so addiction oftentimes is getting into these ruts and getting into these, these patterns, and psychedelics can often come in and up come in and disrupt those patterns, and I think that’s also very useful to have.
So I’m a huge fan of psychedelics for addiction. I do think there needs to be external accountability. And, I think something that’s not talked about enough, although we are starting to see more and more conversation around it is the propensity for people to become psychologically dependent on psychedelics, right?
And you’ve probably seen this in sort of the broader Ayahuasca space. I’ll see this with sometimes with psychedelic, high-dose psychedelic work, although it tends to after a year or two it tends to taper off. But there are some people I know who are still drinking Ayahuasca, once or twice a month, maybe three times a month and not much has changed in their lives, so I think this really brings up a big and important question around the relational dynamic how we are really looking at this as an allyship, and how we’re really committing to doing the hard and courageous work after the fact to actually change the things that are happening in our lives on a day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month, year-to-year basis.
Sam Believ: Yeah, integration is very important to for people to actually apply the lessons. But with- I think with Ayahuasca, it’s tricky to abuse it because in my experience, I had a period of time in the very beginning of my Ayahuasca jealousy phase where I was doing it too often, and eventually Ayahuasca itself just told me “I gave you homework, you never did it,” and it just gave me a bad trip.
So I think it can be-
Paul F. Austin: Yeah.
Sam Believ: Okay … somewhat self self-guiding. But definitely relying on it, yeah, it– I think there are… people go through periods of time where sometimes where they rely on it too much. You talk about psychedelics also as a potential for, as a tool for improving leaders and leadership, and you call it CEO medicine.
Why? And also ’cause I’ve heard that some big companies or like funds that fund those startups they prohibit CEOs to take Ayahuasca because they, a lot of times they don’t wanna do that work anymore. So talk to us about that.
Paul F. Austin: Yeah, I think the context here is- You know, work has been stigmatized unfortunately, especially in, in this sort of late industrial capitalism.
People perceive work as a negative thing. They perceive work as harmful to the environment. They perceive work as something that is stress– only stressful. They perceive work that is something that is greedy or jealous. And so I think part of it is reclaiming the word vocation rather than work.
So what is it that we feel called to do and build and pursue? And my sense in what I’ve seen and noticed with a lot of people who, who do medicine work is medicine work tends to reorient our values and perspectives. And so a lot of people who go through with Ayahuasca work or mushroom work or whatever it is tend to align themselves with a true vocation and not just an occupation or, a company that is done for what I would call superficial gain.
And that could be– usually there are things related to ego, so status, achievement, money being liked feeling like you’re right, feeling like you have might. These are all things that one of my teachers, Eric Hoffman, warns against, right? These are sort of signs of ego myopia, wanting to be liked, wanting to be right, wanting to have might.
And what we see again and again with psychedelics is psychedelics tend to make the ego more porous. They tend to make the ego more spacious. They tend to make the ego more open we can then reorient towards wisdom, love, and power. And so I think the great work for a lot of leaders in business today is to reclaim business, not as something that is negatively– not as something that is harmful or negative for the broader environment, but business as something that actually helps the world regenerate.
And Dr. Bronner’s is a really good example of this. Dr. Bronner’s is a soap company. The friend that I just mentioned, Eric Koffman, he’s the chairman of the board at Dr. Bronner’s, and Dr. Bronner’s is a really good example of this. They make great soap. They pay their employees really well.
They have a regenerative ethos. And so my belief is that psychedelics as… ‘Cause that’s always been my focus as well, i’m a big fan of the medical use of psychedelics and the therapeutic use of psychedelics, but I’m a really big fan about, when we’re talking about this overlap of psychedelics and systems change, and how can the intentional use of psychedelics by the leaders and builders and creators of the world, how can that shift what it is that they’re choosing to build, lead, and create?
And I think for a lot of folks they’re, they, through high-dose psychedelic work, we come to realize that we are connected to everything around us. We come to realize that if that’s the case, we need to better steward and take care of the Earth and our communities, and we tend to reorient the work that we get to do or choose to do in the world around that.
And so that’s my kind of prayer or my hope, is that the widespread use of psychedelics, especially by leaders helps us to approach business as something that can actually regenerate our ecosystems rather than continue to extract value and resources from ecosystems and put them in share- shareholders’ pockets.
Sam Believ: Yeah. I think psychedelics definitely help to foster that sort of conscious entrepreneurship or just understand what your actions lead to down the line. So it’s definitely exciting to see what happens if more leaders take them. You said you were excited about 2026 and future just to come with this wave of psychedelics.
What are the things you’re personally most excited about?
Paul F. Austin: One thing I’ve been talking a lot about is this potential approval of psilocybin by the FDA. So many of us are aware that in 2024, MDMA-assisted therapy was rejected by the FDA for PTSD. It looks like psilocybin will be approved at the, by the end of 2026 for treatment-resistant depression, which is really exciting.
And then in 2027 looks to be, like there may be a couple other drugs that get approved, psychedelic medicine that, that gets approved for clinical issues. I’m really excited to see if there are any other states that pass legislation. So last year we saw New Mexico they were the third state.
There are several states that are in discussion right now around legislation for psychedelics, so it’ll be interesting to see if there are any other states that end up legalizing psychedelics. And I think, 2026 is just another year of building infrastructure, of education, of training practitioners, right?
So it’s just another year of showing up and doing the work. And so what we’re focused on at Third Wave and the Coaching Institute is our podcast and continuing to educate folks and have great guests on. Our training programs we have a couple new training programs that we’ll roll out this year for medical providers.
Right now we have our two core training programs, which I mentioned before, our microdosing practitioner certification program and our practitioner, our main practitioner certification program, which focuses on prep and integration. So continuing to focus on trainings continuing to focus on education, and then just supporting all the infrastructure development that’s going to be necessary for for the, the, the successful launch of the FDA-approved psychedelic medicine.
I think we’re all really excited about what that might entail. And yeah, so I’d say those are… Yeah, and then I actually have another book that I’m working on. So I have a book that’s coming out next year that I need to finish this year, and that book is on the value of exploration and the role that psychedelics play in facilitating creative expansion and neuroplasticity.
And and so that’s the that’s probably my main creative project that I’m gonna really gonna go deep on.
Sam Believ: Yeah, the future is bright for psychedelics, I believe. And thank you for the work you’re doing and spreading that message. Let’s start wrapping up. And any last things you wanna say to the audience, and also where they can find you, your books, and your training program?
Paul F. Austin: Yeah, so Mastering Microdosing is on Amazon. Thethirdwave.co is our main website, thethirdwave.co. We also have the Psychedelic Coaching Institute, which you can find out about more details around that on Third Wave. And then I’m on Instagram and X PaulAustin3w. I’m pretty active on social. So if you listen to this and you wanna reach out and say hi and ask a question, reach out over social.
And yeah, I just appreciate you creating this platform, Sam and having me on, and doing all the work that you’re doing with the Ayahuasca Podcast, and all the work that you’re doing at your retreat center in Colombia. It’s been fun to sit down and jam with you for an hour today.
Sam Believ: Thank you, Paul. I appreciate it. Guys, you’ve been listening to Ayahuasca Podcast. As always, with your host, Sam Believ, and I’ll see you in the next episode.
Paul F. Austin: I hope you enjoyed this episode.
Sam Believ: If you’d like to support us and psychedelic renaissance at large, please follow us and leave us a wherever it is you’re listening.
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