I Couldn't Empathize With Anyone. Then I Tried Microdosing.

Sean Weisbrot: Welcome back to another episode of the We Live to Build podcast. Today's guest is Mark Beneke, an entrepreneur who owns two car dealerships and has recently started getting involved in real estate. This is a very special episode for me. I've spent the entire 2021 year researching psychedelics because I believe that they're very interesting.

Sean Weisbrot: Use case for them, for entrepreneurs. Now, stick with me here. As I explained to you real quick what I mean. In the 1970s, Richard Nixon decided that he was going to make psychedelics and marijuana and all of these other things that we now call drugs illegal. The truth of the matter is before they were banned, there was tremendous research that was done, which showed that mushrooms and LSD have huge potential for helping people with PTSD trauma with anxiety, depression, all sorts of ailments.

Sean Weisbrot: But not only can it help people to feel normal again in ways that antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications can't, but it also can help normally functioning people to feel great. This is the story of our guest today, Mark Microdosed with LSD, and he found tremendous benefits.

Sean Weisbrot: Now, I haven't tried LSD, so I can only speak from. The anecdotal evidence I've heard from him and other people that I've talked to, this is the first episode of this kind that I am publishing, and I'm publishing it because it comes from a place of love. Respect for these substances, for these medicines. And so I wanted to share with you his experience because it's so important as entrepreneurs that we recognize that our lives are stressful, they're tough, we're grinding for years of our lives.

Sean Weisbrot: And oftentimes that can beat us down. We can feel burnt out, we can feel depressed. We can feel all sorts of things, and we can destroy our physical and mental health in the process of pursuing those goals and the wealth that hopefully it brings, as well as the freedom. And so I wanted to share this story.

Sean Weisbrot: I wanted to give you the opportunity to hear what he has to say about how his experience has helped change his life and how it might. Change yours too. It can help with anxiety, it can help with depression, it can help with a lot of things, but most of all, it can help with empathy. It can help with building up your character, making you a better leader, and making you more efficient at your job.

Sean Weisbrot: We are gonna talk about psychedelics. This is the first episode I've done talking about it. Interesting to have this opportunity, and I do have a few other guests planned where we will talk about psychedelics, but from different points of view. So I know you've had some positive and some negative experiences, and I think it's really important for entrepreneurs to understand both sides of it.

Sean Weisbrot: And the reason why I felt it necessary to even talk about psychedelics, even though it's illegal in the US and most countries with exception to Netherlands and parts of California, Oregon, and Colorado, is that humans have been using psychedelics. Namely psilocybin from mushrooms. Your experiences with LSD, which is manmade, but humans have been using these things for a long time, thousands of years or more.

Sean Weisbrot: There is a tremendous amount of science that proves it can be good for our brains. And I asked you to come on because I want you to tell your story about what it has done for you as a means to de-stigmatize and demystify psychedelics because. I believe when respected, they can be great for managing stress, anxiety, depression, panic attacks, and possibly make us better human beings and better leaders at smaller doses.

Sean Weisbrot: I believe there could be tremendous value. So with that said, thank you for joining me. I really appreciate it. This is something that is probably very private for you, very personal and probably not easy to talk about, but it needs to be said and, and I'm happy that you're the person to do it. Felt like you really were.

Sean Weisbrot: humble kind of a person, and I felt like you were the right guest to talk about it. So welcome to the show and why don't you introduce yourself.

Mark: Thanks for having me. And well, my name's Mark. I own two car dealerships with my brother. We also have a real estate holding company where we have three apartment buildings.

Mark: And I also do fiction writing on the side, kind of like a hobby. So, and I'm planning on doing that a lot more now that I. I guess recently retired. But I will say as far as psychedelics go, like I tend to be pretty open about my use of them. I mean obviously it, it, it's kind of depending on which audience you're, you're with.

Mark: Some people are completely against it. Other people are, you know, open to the idea but not necessarily willing to try. And then there's the other ones that are just. Super gung-ho about wanting to know everything about it and wanting to try it themselves. And

Sean Weisbrot: Why don't you tell us a little bit about why you got into entrepreneurship and then we can, as we get deeper, go into why you wanted to get into psychedelics.

Mark: Entrepreneurship. I guess it's kind of run in my family. I was born in El Salvador. My mom and dad actually had a business over there. It was actually a shoe manufacturing business. As time went on, I guess you could say like mismanagement, also just not being able to foresee that. We were kind of taking over, taken over by lower and lower costs of production from like China and, and other places, you know, and so my family ended up going bankrupt and we decided that there was no future in El Salvador for us.

Mark: And so we made the decision to come to the United States just growing up, like, I mean, I was always. At the company. There was no way about it. Like, that's what I remember as a little kid, like showing up to the, to the factory and being there with my parents, seeing like all the people that were working on the shoes, building the shoes, people coming and purchasing them there from the store directly and like going with my mom to all of her appointments, like trying to sell like different contracts to, to different people.

Mark: So I, that's all in like the back of my head. Like I, I grew up with that, you know? And so it was, it was always kind of. Meant to happen and to couple that with the fact that I have kind of a problem with authority as it is, like I can't take orders very well. So I, I kind of feel like it's, it's the only route that I really have available to me.

Mark: I definitely can't be an employee. When we were here in the United States, my mom and dad actually ended up starting the car dealership. We were pretty strapped for the longest time and I ended up going to school, but I was still working, like from the moment we opened up the dealership, my brother and I were always working there back in 20.

Mark: 14, my mom ended up getting sick with cancer and my dad decided that he didn't wanna work anymore. And so he made multiple suggestions to us that we should buy him out. And so my brother and I ended up buying him out of the company. And then, we started ourselves trying to fix, I wouldn't say fix, because he had a pretty good structure to the business, but it wasn't a structure that was going to grow the business at all.

Mark: and so my brother and I started putting it on. Systems in place that we could easily follow and continue growing. It got the business completely out of debt. Ended up growing the accounts a thousand percent. Over the course of, I wanna say, four years or so, we started funneling some of the money into the holding company and then we focused our attention kind of in between both.

Mark: And then as of, about a year ago, we started training somebody to be able to. To take us out of the business and instead of having to focus on a day to day, we can focus more on things like the overall growth of the company and kind of focus a little bit more on the real estate side of things as well and just any kind of hobby that we want to explore as well.

Mark: So that's kind of a bonus there. But, the reason that I started. Down the path of psychedelics. I will say, I was always curious about them, the fact that like the mind is so unexplored and, and it's the thing that we understand the least and being able to kind of delve into it yourself and kind of confront everything that you have in there.

Mark: It's scary for a lot of people, but at the same time, it's. Honestly, like it's the only thing that you, you really have about you that you could truly call yours. You know, there's nobody else that's gonna have a mind like yours. And so a few years back I was offered some LSD. And it's interesting because most people, like when they tell you about it, they always consider the drug to be like one of them.

Mark: Harshest drugs that you could take and one of the scariest things. And you also, there's, there's this, misconception that it, like once you take it, it's with you for life and there's no way that it ever comes outta your system. So that's complete bullshit. It's out of your system pretty quickly. Now, the experience that you have may not be outta your system for the rest of your life, but when I took it, I was expecting.

Mark: It was like this full blown trip where I was gonna see shit everywhere and it was just gonna be like hearing things and seeing and just like things just morphing. And it wasn't, it was not at all. It was like a very internal experience. Freedom is the best way to describe the experience. You just feel like your mind is opened up and your body just feels free.

Mark: you don't feel constrained by anything that's around you. You, you become hyper aware, like your empathy levels go up. You start like experiencing things and, and just like a whole other level that you would never expect. But like, as far as like the, the visuals went like. The biggest thing that I got were pretty major pulses, you know, like, breathing, like walls would breathe, trees would move around, see, waving, things like that.

Mark: And once you closed your eyes, you could get somewhat more visuals that were more based on your own thoughts. But in reality, like it was, it was mostly the experience of your mind just feeling free. It was curious, like I, I had never actually heard about microdosing, and it wasn't till after that experience that I, I kind of started thinking like, you know, what, if there was something to this, like what if I were to take a smaller amount?

Mark: When you're actually having a trip, you kind of get stuck and you become a little bit mute, or at least I did, but it's just mostly about your thoughts and your own internal experience. I got curious about trying it out mainly because when I was writing some days I had a hard time trying to sit down and focus on the writing.

Mark: I felt like my brain was just all over the place and I actually started looking up to see if other people had done something similar and I came across. Experiments of people that had run small doses of LSD, all of like the different benefits that they had gotten from it. everything that they had learned from it. But the one thing that it always came back to was just the level of productivity that they had while they were on it. And it was interesting 'cause some people talked about it, like you wouldn't ever feel anything, but you would just feel like you could focus. And then other people talked about just having this euphoric feeling the entire time that you took it to the point where you could focus on anything and then you.

Mark: Felt like you could see everything but not on the scale of a full blown trip, and nobody would ever know that you were on it because it was just tolerable enough to where you could function 100% like, like yourself, like your personality did not go away at all. It was just you with this altered experience, I guess.

Mark: And so I ended up getting my hands on some. I will say that the first few times that I did it, it was. It was the most incredible thing ever. Like there were definitely a lot of positives from it. As far as your focus, there's nothing else that could ever beat it. Like brain fog went completely away.

Mark: You were just sitting there. If anybody has ever experienced a state of flow, it is like a state of flow multiplied by a hundred times. Like you, you can sit there and focus on something and nothing could ever distract you away from it. You have tunnel vision in what you're doing. It's not like tunnel vision to where you're stuck.

Mark: It's more of tunnel vision where you feel like you're doing something like the most important thing that you could ever be doing, whatever you set your mind to. That's what you were doing and it was great. But there were also a few other things that came with it as well. Like I will say for me personally, I did feel the effects of it.

Mark: I definitely felt like I was. On something. You know, like when you take a painkiller, you definitely feel that you're on something. It's not necessarily to the point where you feel high. I definitely didn't feel high, but I did feel like there was something altering the way that I would normally see or feel or experience things.

Mark: I guess the biggest benefit that I got from it was I. The ability to be able to empathize with people. I've always kind of struggled being able to empathize with people. I have a pretty hard time feeling for other people. I'm in no way saying that. Like, I, I don't at all. It's just me, if somebody feels bad, if somebody feels sad, it takes me a really long time.

Mark: And it takes a lot to be able to make me feel the pain that they're feeling, you know? And, when I was on this, it became more apparent and I was more aware of it. People's emotions and, and I was able to perceive those things a lot better. That's probably one of the biggest benefits that I got from it, because the focus itself, it's great while you are actually microdosing, it's not like a long lasting effect.

Mark: The long lasting effects are more of the feelings of appreciation that you get for those around you and everything around you, and the level of introspection that it allows you to do. It kind of forces you to be in your thoughts. It slows down time to the point where like you, you visualize your thoughts a lot better and you're able to kind of just be there in that moment and experience things as they come.

Mark: And because of that, that's the type of things that you're able to take outside. So. One other thing too, that, that I will say is, it almost works kind of like a performance enhancer as well. I jog often, and so when you're sprinting or when you're tired, you know, like you're doing something a little bit harder.

Mark: You don't quite like it, you feel it, but you don't quite care enough to stop. It's almost like you're, you're able to motivate your mind to just keep going and going and going, and you are able to just. Do it. So it's, it was kind of interesting because it wasn't just completely mental, it was also a somewhat physical experience as well.

Mark: There's definitely that added benefit in there as well. I ran the experiment for about a year and a couple of months or something like that, and it was great for probably about the first, I wanna say like eight months or so, and then. After the eight months is when I saw that, I guess like the empathy that I had towards other people started diminishing again.

Mark: Like I still was able to see, like, perceive the emotions of everybody and, but I, I didn't quite have the feeling that I had from before. That was one part that kind of let me know that maybe I was running the experiment for a little bit too long. The biggest part was that I started getting kind of like depressive thoughts.

Mark: There were a couple of times that, you know, you even had like suicidal thoughts that I never thought that I was gonna actually like, explore them. And like, I never thought, all right, I'm, I'm gonna move forward with this. But the thoughts were creeping up and they would creep up fairly often, you know? And so, I ended up.

Mark: Stopping the experiment altogether after a year and a couple of months because of that whole thing. Like it just, the novelty has worn off. Now I did try it again a few months afterwards after giving myself some time, and most of that actually ended up coming back. like not the depressive thoughts, but most of like the, the beneficial things of it started coming back.

Mark: It was a bit scary at that point. I'm actually super glad that I did do it, mainly because of all of the things that I felt like I was. Getting done the way that it allowed me to explore myself, the way that it allowed me to explore those around me, everything like it made me appreciate my life and the lives of others around me a lot more than I would have if I wouldn't have followed through with something like this.

Mark: So it was more of a positive than it was a negative. Like way more of a positive than it was a negative.

Sean Weisbrot: How long has it been since your last dose? I

Mark: wanna say about two and a half years.

Sean Weisbrot: Do you feel like there's still lasting positive effects or negative effects?

Mark: Negative effects? No. I mean, right now, any form of anxiety or depression or anything like that?

Mark: Not there. Like as, as soon as I stopped taking it, it went away. As far as positive effects, yes, I am still, I'm able to empathize with people a lot better now. I find myself being able to pull myself out of ruts really quickly. So if ever I feel like I'm in like a negative spot or things are just not quite working out the way that I think they are, you know, sometimes all of us get those moments where we feel like, man, the whole fucking world is coming down on us.

Mark: What are we gonna do? And this person yelled at me and now I'm losing this account or whatever. And I find that it is just, it doesn't matter. Like I've always been able to figure out a way and it's easy to, to be able to just. Pull out of it and keep focusing on everything good that you have coming your way, you know, and, and, I, I would say those, those are probably like the biggest benefits that have lasted with me.

Mark: And also just the appreciation of, of my own life and everything and around me as well. Like those, those are the benefits that really stuck.

Sean Weisbrot: It sounds similar to what my ex-girlfriend told me so many years ago. When I was in China, I was in a relationship with a Chinese woman. We had a business together.

Sean Weisbrot: Things were fantastic in that regard. We had a great social life, all of this, but she had a lot of, I. Issues from her childhood surrounding her father. These things carried over into our adulthood and we would argue sometimes I tried really hard, like I really loved her. I wanted to be with her, and I tried for a year and a half to work with her and to point out to her, look, you've got these issues.

Sean Weisbrot: I can see them. I can see patterns of negative. Behavior and, and downward spirals and negative feedback loops where you end up crying and you're miserable, and I just want to help you, I want you to get through that stuff so that we can have a life together, because otherwise everything was great. And at some point I had recommended to her that maybe she should try a psychedelic.

Sean Weisbrot: I was like, I've, I've heard that these things could be helpful. Like this was 2014. I didn't know anything about them, but I had just, I had heard. I said, maybe you should try. Well, I ended up breaking up with her because I just didn't see a change coming and I didn't wanna spend the rest of my life trying to fix her.

Sean Weisbrot: About a year later, we happened to meet in a restaurant in the neighborhood where I was living. Just happened to bump into each other. Had no contact in between then, and she was like, I need to tell you, one of my friends one day, like six months ago, offered me LSD, and I remembered what you had said and I tried it During my experience.

Sean Weisbrot: I could see all of the crap you had been talking about from my past, and I felt this. Deep need to just let it all go. And when I came to this realization and I allowed this to happen, I just felt this immense freedom and I felt all of my worries just melt away. And I feel completely changed from that one experience.

Sean Weisbrot: And I have to thank you because my life is totally better now. It's so much better. And I was like, why the hell couldn't you have done that when we were together? But since then, she's moved to London and gotten married to a British guy. So congrats to her. You know, I'm glad that she's happy. That was the first time that I had ever talked to someone who had experienced it, and I kind of filed it away in my head.

Sean Weisbrot: I've never tried Ellis. D So I don't know what the experience is like. I've just heard other people talk about it, so I can only speculate. But yeah, that was so fascinating for me because in the last six months, which is how we met, I started doing a ton of research about psychedelics. You know, I believe that there's science out there that shows there's tremendous potential benefit.

Sean Weisbrot: Four people. There's, you know, even I believe during Vietnam, in the early days of Vietnam, the military was doing research with PTSD and, and other trauma with LSD and they found that it was basically curing soldiers' PTSD, and then, you know, it got banned. And so most of the world stopped doing research.

Sean Weisbrot: I see a revolution. In psychedelics happening right now in America because the legalization of marijuana has created the path for legalizing psilocybin and LSD.

Mark: So it is the gateway drug,

Sean Weisbrot: And I've talked about this in a previous episode. I used to smoke marijuana. It's been two years since I stopped. I feel like marijuana is great if you have physical pain, but I don't see there being much brain benefit where I see the research, the science showing that if you want to heal your brain, psilocybin and LSD are two of the fastest and best ways to do it.

Sean Weisbrot: Where there have been people like my ex-girlfriend who've had these hallucinogenic experiences and basically feel like a single afternoon undid 20 years of. Of psychological damage permanently.

Mark: I'd be curious to talk to her and see if she still feels the same or if anything has changed, you know, after a long period of time. Because that, you said that was back in 2014, right?

Sean Weisbrot: 2014. Yeah. And unfortunately, I lost contact with her when she was getting married. She was like, look, you know, I'm, I'm getting married. Like, I just don't think it's a good idea that we keep being friends. And I was like, if that's how you feel, then okay, fine.

Sean Weisbrot: So I'm curious through all of this, were you consuming coffee at any point?

Mark: Caffeine? Whenever I took it while I was on like microdosing first, it gave me this metallic taste in my mouth. Like every single time that I would not get with just caffeine alone or with, the, the dose of, of LSD, but then it also gave me like the jitters.

Mark: LSD is already enough of a stimulant. And so if some, some days, like if you took a little bit too much, you'd feel kind of like pulses around your, the back of your neck and, and sometimes like, over your, your skin, like your skin would just tingle a little bit. and it was kind of like the, the stimulant effect of it, you know, but when you took it with.

Mark: With caffeine, you would definitely start jittering a little bit and, and so it wasn't as enjoyable. So I kind of like made sure that caffeine was not part of it when I actually would take my dose. Don't do it with Modafinil and don't do it with any kind of stimulant, like any other kind of stimulant, like caffeine or anything.

Mark: It alters the way that you experience it. It's a lot better with it just by itself.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah. From my research, I've gotten the impression that if you're going to do anything, you should always just do it by itself. So you said it helped you to focus, it helped you with empathy. Do you feel like it made you a better leader?

Mark: Yes. Yes. Especially with the empathy part of everything, because I always try to remember that the employees are actually what makes my company. Run. And without them I am nothing. Like I am literally just some guy sitting around barking order orders at fucking nothing. And so I've also come to recognize the fact that employees have a life outside of your business.

Mark: And we always have this misconception that we're the ones that care the most about the company. But that's, that's just a fucking lie too. Like there are employees that care so much about your company and you and everything that you're trying to build. Even if it's something like, uh. Collecting bills from people, like people think that there's no purpose behind collecting that you have to do something that matters in the world.

Mark: But that's the thing, like it matters to the people that are involved in that business. And that's the biggest thing about it. Like the employees care about it when you show them that you care about them. It took me a long time to finally recognize that, but I definitely saw that the more time that I would spend trying to feel for them and trying to get to know them and trying to involve them in my life and the business.

Mark: They began getting more engaged with the company. And I just, I, I definitely felt like there was more of a connection all around the company. And again, this could be, I just feel like that, you know, but I, I do think that it actually benefited because obviously I wouldn't have gotten to know my employees more if I hadn't taken the time to, to kind of try to get, to know them better and try to, you know, feel for, for their lives and what they were experiencing while I was going through, like my whole experiment, I started talking to, to one of our collections girls there a little bit more.

Mark: Starting to get to know her, her life is a little bit better. And it was interesting because, let's just say she was going through a pretty hard time. I had no idea about this at all. And it got to the point where I ended up telling my brother, like, you know, she will quit on us right now if we don't intervene.

Mark: Sure enough, a couple days later she came to my brother, 'cause my brother was actually her superior. She started telling him about how she thought that she had to quit and everything. And it was interesting because my brother had. Zero idea. He would never have been able to tell that that was happening, but just the fact that I had tried to kind of get involved in everybody's lives a little bit better, I started recognizing that like what she was going through, it helped me be able to predict like what could happen within the next few, few months and helped us actually retain that employee for the next few years as well.

Mark: It made me feel like I was being a better leader and a better person. In general to the people around me, like without me and my brother, there's a possibility that the business could still run on its own. And clearly right now we've set it up so that it can, but what I mean is like while we were there, people don't need us.

Mark: You know, like we need them. And that train of thought would never have occurred if. I hadn't put myself through the situation where I could learn to empathize with them a little bit better and see their pain points and actually try maybe not to feel them myself, but at least understand them better.

Sean Weisbrot: Sounds like Jeff Bezos needs to do microdosing of LSU.

Mark: Hey, we never know. He might actually be doing it. Just not sharing it with everybody. I

Sean Weisbrot: don't get the feeling that he is because. I don't know when, when he got off of his spaceship and he said, you guys paid for this. Like it would sound pretty tone deaf for him to, hopefully he'll relive that moment for the rest of his life and go, shit, I shouldn't have done that.

Sean Weisbrot: But that's just very telling of who he is. and the cutthroat nature of, of his personality. So do you feel like microdosing improved your relationship with your family and you're married, right? Mm-hmm. How has that helped with her and your brother and, and your parents?

Mark: My dad and I have never had, let's say, like a super strong relationship. Like I love my dad. And I have a lot of respect for him, but I do tend to cling onto a lot of bad things that happened in the past and everything. But it has helped me kind of just let it go and realize like it already happened. Like there's no reason for you to let it keep on leading you down, like that same path, you know?

Mark: And so I do notice that I don't get into as many arguments with, with him at all anymore. I just kind of let it wash off, you know, like if I notice it, maybe like we. Start trying to get into an argument, I stop and I'm able to be more aware, like in the moment and let it go. And recognize the fact that like, hey, this is going down like a shitty path.

Mark: Like don't let it, it's not worth it. My brother and I, I would say that we're pretty good partners, but if he and I would've been like in high school together, we probably never would've been friends. But we work really, really well together. I can talk really well with people. I can get along with them really easily.

Mark: He has a little bit of a harder time with that, but he wants to go out more. So we work as partners together really well. But when it comes to outside of that, sometimes we clash a lot, and so we can get into arguments, but as for like, let's say a couple years ago, like it doesn't happen as much anymore.

Mark: Like, we're able to get along a lot better. And again, it comes down to just letting things go. I'm able to see things from his point of view a lot better. And recognize the fact that like my point of view may make sense to me, but it won't necessarily make sense to him, and I need to figure out how it makes sense to him in order for me to be able to make it work for the both of us As far as with my wife.

Mark: So fun fact, when I was coming off of the experiment is when I met her. I don't know if I'll be able to attribute it to the fact that I went through this, but I will definitely say that it helped me be able to stop seeing things in such a selfish way and recognize the fact that it was a two-sided relationship.

Mark: And not just all about me. She's my wife now, so, so maybe that's, that's the answer to it. But there's probably a million other things that I learned during my time. But just the fact that I can listen better and I can dig out things that might be wrong, I can pay attention to her feelings a little bit better.

Mark: That's all helped tremendously. We don't fight, we don't argue. Whenever there's a dispute that we have, like, it's something that for me in the past, like I was always the type of person that you need to settle this shit right now. You know? Like if you're upset with me, I can't fucking tell if you're upset with me, so tell me, and you know, let's end it right now.

Sean Weisbrot: That's not how women work.

Mark: Yeah, exactly. But it's interesting though, 'cause now with her, like she does, she does tend to want to fix things really quickly, but I'm able to tell when she's upset and so I'm able to kind of dog things out. Quick and take care of it quickly as well. And because of that, we don't get into these full blown arguments where we're fighting, like we don't yell at each other.

Mark: It's definitely a lot better than any other relationship that I've had in the past. So I'm glad for that. But take it with a grain of salt. Like I, I cannot attribute everything to like microdosing, but I do feel like it's definitely helped with relationships, in all regards.

Sean Weisbrot: I've come to the conclusion that everyone should have a psychedelic experience around the age of 26 when their brain is fully developed to help just clear out all the garbage and prepare them for marriage.

Sean Weisbrot: If they wanna get married or prepare them for life, really.

Mark: I will say one thing though, while I do think that everyone who's curious about it and people that are on the fence about it. should all give it a shot and, and try it. I do think that you have to be ready to try it, because I mentioned this at the beginning, but it could be really fucking scary.

Mark: I've had trips where things can, they can take a dark turn really quickly if your mind's not in it. Like if you're having kind of like negative thoughts or you just went through something that was a little bit sad or anything like that. Like it multiplies that and it forces you to confront it like right then and there.

Mark: And if you're not ready for that, like it could freak you out. Now, luckily I went through a couple of trips myself where I felt like I was, I was going straight down that path. And it could be scary because you know that this lasts for so long. A trip can last like eight to 12 hours. So when you start feeling like, holy shit, this is gonna be what happens for the next eight to 12 hours, but then.

Mark: Also you have like this time dilation where everything feels like it's longer. You feel like it's gonna happen forever, and you almost start feeling like questioning reality and feeling like, am I actually ever gonna pull out of this? Is my mind gonna be stuck here? And it leaves you fucked, you know? But the good thing about it that I found was.

Mark: I was able to pull myself out of those moments quickly, and I, maybe that's what helps me kind of like be able to pull out of like moments now that I feel like when things are kind of crashing down on me, I can just wash it off and feel like, all right, let's keep moving forward. I'll figure out a way.

Mark: You know, but if you're not ready for that, it could be very, very scary. And so I just, you know, I wanna make sure that if anybody does decide to try it, like you honestly feel like I'm ready to try this. And I'm, I'm ready to kind of let myself just delve into it completely and not kind of be wishy-washy because then you could have a freakout moment and then you better have a friend there that can kind of calm you down.

Sean Weisbrot: But also you don't have to have that hallucinogenic experience. The whole goal of microdosing is to take an amount that's so small that you have the mental health benefits, but not the hallucinogenic. That's been my focus on, for the research I've done and, and everything I've explored because I am not interested in the hallucinogenic part.

Sean Weisbrot: I'm interested in what can this do for me without me going through something that I may not be ready for? Where when you have this microdose, you are basically, it's almost impossible for you to have that negative. Spiral downward freaking out that your life is over and you're stuck in this parallel universe.

Sean Weisbrot: I believe very firmly that the industry is heading in this direction where we will synthesize or alter the DNA structure of these substances so that you can get the mental health benefits, but have no fear whatsoever of there being a hallucinogenic aspect. And I see this happening. I've been looking at some stealth companies.

Sean Weisbrot: That is in the psychedelic space because it's illegal. They're not allowed to talk about it so much. You can find them if you look, they're not hiding that deeply. and I'm actually going to interview a guy who has had a tremendous amount of experience with mushrooms and is creating a company that actually extracts the psilocin, which is the part that's broken down from the psilocybin, which is the more pure version.

Sean Weisbrot: He's like creating a capsule with the pure Psilocin so that you don't have the other compounds from the psilocybin that could have this hallucinogenic experience. And I think that pharmaceutical companies are also gonna try to get into that space because you see what happened with CBD, it's like, oh, well it's got all of the benefits of.

Sean Weisbrot: Of the marijuana, but none of the THC and Congress was like, yeah, sign us up for that. We'll legalize that. You're not gonna get high. No problem. Go for that. And that. So I believe that this industry is in the very beginnings and it's very interesting where science is gonna take it and where society is gonna take it.

Sean Weisbrot: So I may hold my breath and, and wait for the legalization of a synthetic version where there's no chance of having a hallucinogenic effect.