Danny Jones Podcast - #131 - Real Life Limitless Drug: How to Rewire Your Brain Micro-Dosing Psilocybin | Joe & Chris Claussen

Episode Date: April 4, 2022

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Tell me about first person. What is, well, first, I guess, give me a little bit of background on how you guys got into this world of mushrooms. Yeah, you bet. Joe and I got into this world because of a history of Alzheimer's in our family, actually, dating back to when we were younger and our grandfather, we saw our grandfather go through it. He was, you know, kind of an idol of mine because he was an entrepreneur and businessman and very successful. and then we saw him go downhill mentally through Alzheimer's. And then fast forward years later, and our dad started doing the same thing. And then Joe and I and our brothers just got together and said,

we got to change this for ourselves, right? And we just started exploring the different ways to protect your brain over the long run and learning about it and going to conferences and led us to functional mushrooms like Lions main, which is really important for brain health. and eventually into psychedelic mushrooms, which have the potential to be a holy grail of brain health as it really improves your brain's neuroplasticity and neuroconnections. Yeah, I watched a documentary last night all about, you know, I guess the first therapeutic therapy that was, or the first therapy that was researched for psychedelic mushrooms was to cure depression.

Is that right? There's been a lot of research from PTSD. depression, anxiety, phantom limb pain. There's a lot of research going on currently right now about all these different topics, for sure. They were using, you know, doing studies back in the 50s and 60s on these compounds before it was, you know, kind of the war on drugs started in 1970s and all of the ban really happened to like 1973 when all of the research on psychedelics stopped. So we've had like a 40-year hi-hage, almost 50-year hiatus from research, but they started cranking that back up a few years ago. They started allowing some studies to be done. And those studies at Chris was referencing on ADHD, depression,

and the one you're referencing on depression, Johns Hopkins did on people with terminal illness and untreatable depression. So these guys had depression and anxiety around their impending mortality that was untreatable with any prescription drugs, right? Anything, nothing touched it. They threw everything at it. And these people were miserable. They couldn't sleep, you know,

And then with cognitive behavioral therapy and high-dose celocybin treatment, they found efficacy rates upwards of 80% after a treatment for these people. They were then completely okay with the fact that they were going to die. And they lived the rest of their days happy and content. And we're able to reconnect with their families and weren't just living in misery and fear, which is 80% is amazing. Like nothing, nothing, no drugs have anything near. that it's pretty amazing so you brought me these things these three um products of yours yes what are

these can you explain explain what these are definitely so the first one is the yellow yeah that's sunbeam the sunbeam sunbeam and what kind of mushrooms are in these that one has lines main and cordyceps as well as some other botanicals and ingredients in it and it's designed specifically to enhance your dopamine system. Okay. Dopamine's responsible for reward and motivation. So that's like a classic. Take two.

Take two. Yeah. That's a classic what you would take to get you going, get work done, be motivated. And it's all of our formulations were designed towards specific neurotransmitters for a specific purpose. Where a lot of things that are in the cognitive field are a little bit kitchen sync, they just kind of throw everything at it and say, hey, this is good for your brain. Ours are targeted specifically at dopamine and the oxytocin on the golden hour, the one you have in

your hand now. Yeah. It's kind of a unique product that's, there's really nothing like that out on the market. And the concept was, hey, let's have something that you could take that would give you a relaxed alert focus and with a lot more happy and connection like oxytocin, similar to kind of what an MDMA would do, right? And we really pumped that after we got through the formulations and tried them for the first time.

That really, really did work and real pleased with that product. And you can stack those two things together. The initial feedback we got from a lot of customers is that the stack of the both of them together feels a lot like a microdose, like a psilocybin microdose, which was surprising. We weren't really expecting that. I've tried it myself, and I can say, yeah, it does kind of feel that way. These formulations were designed to stay away from the serotonin receptors, which psilocybin affects the serotonin receptors.

So these formulations towards oxytocin, towards dopamine and towards GABA for the sleep, leaves open to serotonin receptors for those who might be doing a microdose protocol. Okay. And I brought my own microdose of psilocybin, and I should, you recommended I take this with the sunbeam and the golden hour, right? It's a very nice stack. It's the first time I've ever ate mushrooms, though. Bottoms up. Cheers.

Cheers. First time you've had mushrooms ever? Mm-hmm. Well, first time I've had magic mushrooms. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Cilocybin. Right. But I've done so much, I've read so much about it and watched so much, so many documentaries

about it. I've always wanted to. I've always just been scared. Right. Yeah, there's a lot of fear out there. There's a lot of unknown and there's a lot of misinformation. And a lot of that comes from, you know, that hippie 60s and 70s and all of that psychedelia around that.

But particularly in a microdose, it's not something that you're going to have visualizations. It's just really a boost. of mental cognition. And it's proving out to really improve your neural connections. It's great for creativity. It is also great for just boosting your brain power over time. So we've been microdosing for quite a while. And I think my brain is functioning at the highest level it ever has in my life right now.

And going back to where we, you know, where it started is we both had several injuries around. We played high school football. And we know that, you know, going in, looking at Alzheimer's dementia, that we were like, okay, this is scary because Chris got knocked out a couple of times. I was knocked out. I also had a traumatic brain injury and a snowboarding accident where I fracture my skull in three places and broke my C3 vertebrae in my neck. It was a rapid deceleration onto a rock with my face. So I was really interested in trying to fix that damage. You know, I knew that I had CTE. And those, you know, make you much more susceptible to developing dementia as you age. If you've had numerous traumatic brain injuries, I mean, you just have to look at, you know, football players.

All these NFL players have had these problems, you know, gone off the deep end as, you know, as they're getting aging. And, you know, Hernandez killed some people. And it's some pretty crazy stuff happened from these traumatic brain injuries repeatedly throughout their lives. And so that's scary. So that kind of really was another motivation factor for me. personally is why I started getting into psychedelics. I really wanted to try to reconnect to those neural connections that were damaged in my traumatic brain injury.

The scary thing about CTE, I mean, I know a lot of people who have had a lot of brain injuries, and those aren't the type of people. I mean, most of them just want to drink alcohol. Worst thing you do, you know, I mean, when you have those kind of injuries, or if it's even PTSD, a lot of those guys tend to more, like, you know, they're more apt to abuse alcohol in my experience. And those aren't the kind of people who are more. more open-minded about like smoking weed or psychedelics or MDMA or that kind of thing.

You know, it's very rare, you know, and I've had the opportunity to expose some of my friends who have had like brain injuries to things like just marijuana or MDMA. And they've had, you know, an incredible amount of recovery from it. And they've experienced a lot of, you know, benefit from it. I'm not sure about long term because it hasn't been that much of a time gap. But have you like, what? What are the studies? Like, have there been any, like, long-term clinical studies on psilocybin when it comes to brain health or PTSD or CTE even?

Because I think, is it true that CTE, you can't even diagnose it until the person's dead? I think so, yeah. That's it, right? Autopsy. It's kind of go in and see the damage. Yeah. You know, there's better brain scans where you can see loss of blood flow and stuff using fMRIs. But I don't know if they can get an actual diagnosis of CTE and without.

autopsy. Okay. Yeah. The studies are undergoing really right now. So they're evolving as far as like Joe mentioned earlier, it's only been, you know, over the last few years that the studies have fired back up. But the initial reports coming back are very promising around neuroplasticity and increasing your brain cells and increasing your connections and your and your dendrite spines on your synapses that are how we think, right? And these things are growing stronger. with microdosing of psychedelics over time is what it's showing. Wow. And back to, you know, the people drinking alcohol and stuff like that.

A lot of that stuff is really blunting. You're just trying to forget all your issues, right? Along with antidepressants, really. So a good promise of what's good about psychedelics is it helps you deal with your issues rather than just blunt them and put them aside. So there's a great possibility that in a future where, as people have these problems, they're able to accept these problems and move on from them, rather than a constant medication over years just to try to forget about it,

or self-medicate with alcohol or drugs, other drugs, or weed or whatever. But psychedelics give you the ability to deal with your issues. Yeah. A lot of the people that I know that kind of push back on the idea of trying psychedelics or even marijuana are, you know, the people that are like to be in control. And their whole argument is against it. Like, I don't like smoke being high because I feel like I'm out of control or I can't control myself. But they drink. But they drink. But they drink. And then it might smoke cigarettes or they drink. Right. I mean, my whole thing is that like, When, as far as marijuana, for example, it gives you, if you as long as you get to the point where you're kind of like, for me personally, if I can get high to the point where I'm kind of on the fence of being like in hell or like meeting the devil or like going too far and like kind of being in like a balance of not being too high to where I have like I'm like having a bad trip, I can, it gives me a alternative perspective on life or giving. me kind of a way to deal with the normal problems in my life from a different perspective

or look at the normal everyday problems I'm experiencing on a subconscious level from a whole new perspective that I never would have thought of if I'm just going about my life on like the daily vibration. It gets you off of like the daily vibration of life. Psychedelics take that to the next level. Even at a microdose, it gives you like almost more empathy for yourself and for others. It makes you more tolerant of situations and people and, And at a macro dose, you get ego disillusionment. So, like, your, your ego dissolves. So the little, that's what's hard for people when they take a macro dose, right?

They feel anxious and nervous, and because when you first do that, it's very unnerving. And people think, oh, I'm dying, but you're not dying. Your ego is dying. You're separating your brain is now separating itself from this little story that you've been telling yourself about yourself. And your thoughts aren't really you, right? You know, your thoughts, you should be the observer of your thoughts. Your thoughts come and go. They're not really who you are.

You know, so it allows you to give that perspective. So it totally allows you to see yourself from a new perspective. Right. Which, that's hard to understand unless you've really experienced it, I feel like. It is. It is. But you've probably got a partway there with marijuana. Whereas the activation in your brain that you're getting with Cil-Sybin is,

will take that kind of definitely to the next. next level. If you were really interested in seeing yourself outside of your little story that you've been telling yourself your whole life, mushrooms can get you there for sure. For somebody who's never tried psilocybin or never even tried microdosing, what would be the benefits of microdosing? And say you're just like, you know, the average everyday person who works in an office, they're in sale, or whatever they're in, or they're like an entrepreneur, or they're a small business owner, what is the benefit of venturing into microdosing? It's really about brain health and performance, right?

All of our products are around brain health and performance, and it's centered around the potential of future legalization of microdosing for that reason. But it kind of got fired back up as a microdose in the tech industry in Silicon Valley as those workers were using it for productivity and creativity on creating these new products over the course of the last 15 years. And so it is spread out from there. were realizing it like, hey, this, my brain fog is kind of going away. I'm thinking better.

I'm reacting. I have better relationships with my family and my coworkers as I'm microdosing. So, you know, for us, it's, for our purpose, it's really about being the best human being we can be through our cognition, right? And that's why we started microdosing, and that's why we continue to do it. So obviously it eliminates the brain fog. And through brain scans, you guys have been able to see like dark areas become lightened up or like blood flow or what is the actual science behind how it affects the brain? There's some really interesting research being done on that where they're doing fMRIs, which really shows the blood flow to the brain and the activity of the brain.

Yeah, I wish I had some slides to show you because there's some really cool stuff. I'm sure we could Google some slides. Oh, yeah. Like, it's amazing. So like the brain, a normal firing brain and then the brain on celosybin, and it's just colors. Like just bang. It's like, so it allows, what's interesting about these serotonin compounds is that they allow your brain cells to communicate laterally.

So they say your brain, neural connections that fire together, wire together. So you have habitual behaviors that, so those neuron, those pathways are very secure and they run down the same pathway over and over. These are like addiction. They have problems with addiction. They've ingrained this neural pathway. And so you're doing it and there's a reward center at the end, right? But it allows when you take psychedelics, these neurons can now talk to the ones next to them rather

than the one just straight down the line in that neural pathway. And this is why you get synesthesia when you take high dose psychedelics. So when you... What is that? Synesthesia is when you say like you can hear colors or you can taste colors or either where your neural, like your visual pathways talking to your auditory pathways is really interesting. So that's why we're like on a really big trip. You start seeing the walls start moving.

Colors become just popping out of when you're listening to music. You see a shade of purple comes through when you hear a certain note. And that's called synesthesia where your senses are crossing over with each other. So your neurons are communicating in new ways. And this is what the basis of neuroplasticity is where it allows workarounds. And this is why they think it really helps with, say, addiction or trauma. treatment is that, you know, you're reliving this little circular path in your brain and that, that trauma, right? And then you have a high dose of psychedelics, and then you get a new neural

network happening. So your brain cells that weren't talking to each other now are, and they kind of work around that stuck spot, which is really very interesting how that works. Yeah, the default mode network, right? So this is kind of that constant talk in your head that you that you tell yourself. And when you're on a psychedelic or particularly psychedelic mushrooms, even a microdose, that calms down, right? So instead of the chatter in your head that you're normally dealing with, that starts to go away and it starts to make you more aware of your surroundings and more connected to another. Yeah, it's, it increases and helps you get into that flow state. So I'm very right brain, creative person. And it is a real boost for that. So I will

intently microdose on a day where I'm doing brainstorming sessions over product iterations or what we're going to do next in the business. So I'm real intentional with what I'm using it for. And I'm a bit more of the kind of outdoorsy, you know, adventure net. I love surfing, snowboarding, backcountry snowboarding, big wave surfing, all that kind of stuff. And I find microdose is, when I surf is the next level for surfing. It really, gets me in the flow state, yeah, because it allows you to have that, you're not second-guessing, it takes away that kind of, maybe I shouldn't go on this one, and you just kind of, you're really in the flow state, you're just reading the waves, all you're thinking about is surfing, and you're

definitely right there at that time. You're not thinking about school or work or whatever your problems are. You really dialed into the moment. I find microdosing mushrooms when surfing is the next So we've had friends that, you know, microdosing and play golf, for instance. And they're like, it changes my game. They're like, I need it. I can't like their friends were saying it was shaving off strokes off their handicap. Yeah, four strokes off their game. Four strokes.

How? Because they, because you're not overthinking it. You're not overthinking it. So he described it as that. So he's like, if I had a bad shot, that's it. The next shot is a brand new shot when I'm microdosing. He says, I'm not thinking about, he's a commercial. realtor and he's like I'm not thinking about any deals I'm not looking at my phone while I'm

golfing he's like it took my golf game to a whole new level he's like I really can't golf without microdosing anymore is what he told me so flow state you know it's definitely helps you stay in in the moment in your flow state and focus on what you're doing I don't have trouble when I'm surfing not thinking about anything like I'm I'm just in automatically in my own little world my internal voice is gone so I don't I wouldn't see an issue with that but with golf it's definitely a problem because it's just so easy to overthink every little thing in golf. Definitely. So I could see how that would help with that.

Endurance is well for surfing. It's amazing. When you microdose in surfing, you never get tired. You have an endless gas tank. Really? Yeah. So I think there was the Chinese or something. They dose their runners with some mushrooms back in the 80s or something.

Quarter steps. Quarter steps. But I think there was rumors that they had stacked it with psychedelics, and they set all kinds of records. They broke a bunch of distance records and stuff. Are there any other athletes that are microdosing or using psilocybin for anything? I mean, is that even allowed? MMA guys are, yeah, for sure.

And they reckon it allows them to see movements and punches coming that little bit quicker. They're reading people better and seeing the next move faster. So, yeah, there are MMA guys that are microdosing. Really? How long do you think it'll take before? for that it becomes like legally like across the board. I mean, obviously it's not even weed is not even legal in every state. That's the million dollar question, right?

Everybody wants to know when's that going to happen, you know, federally. We believe it's going to happen a lot quicker federally because of... Quicker than marijuana. Yeah, I mean, marijuana is still not there federally, right? So, and basically because of all the evidence that's coming out, right? And the fact that it's helping tremendously with PTSD. Like they figure, you know, MDMA might be discheduled for this year or next year for that purpose. I mean, I think everybody on the political spectrum, no matter what side you're on, can get behind that we don't want our veterans killing themselves, right?

And it's showing great promise on turning that PTSD around. So that's a good step into federal legalization as they deschedule this from a Schedule 1 on day. down to accepted medical use, right? Yeah. So, like, Schedule 1 means it's high abuse potential, which magic mushrooms are not. They kind of have an anti-abuse system built in because if you take them regularly, you oversaturate those serotonin receptors and receptors, and they won't work. It's not like you can just keep doing it and take more and more and more and more.

If you don't have a washout period, those receptor sites are not active, and they're not available to receive it. So you just will get no effect, even though. So if you took like several grams, like dosed, like tripped every day, after a certain number of days, it would have zero effect, no matter how much you took. And the lethal dose of mushrooms, if you were to take magic mushrooms, I think I was reading us about 75 pounds of dry mushroom powder or dry mushroom that you'd have to consume. It's physically impossible to do.

To overdose. To overdose. So you could have the most horrendous trip ever and you still wouldn't die. Your body would not be harmed. There's no toxicity. Really? Mushrooms are the safest drug that exists. If you look at the chart, alcohol is the most dangerous.

Mushrooms are the least dangerous. If you drink a liter of vodka on an empty stomach, there's a very good chance you're going to die. You'll definitely die. You know, so that's not the case. Like I said, I think you have to consume something around 75 pounds of dry, dehydrated mushrooms to reach LD50. Right. And that's crazy to think about. about when you think about legalization and you think about the things that you can buy from the store and get prescribed you can you can get prescribed a bottle of pills eat the whole thing be dead you can go to the store buy a bottle of whiskey drink it be dead over the counter you can buy a bottle of Tylenol right if you take a bottle of Tylenol you'll die and it's a very common way of people killing themselves actually so mushrooms are the least dangerous least addictive on top of it so what about I know a guy who when he was in his teen young teens he would took a lot of mushrooms

rooms and now he has this thing where he always is hallucinating 24-7. Are you familiar with that? We've heard stories that there are, you know a person like this? Yes. So he's in a constant state of dripping. He's not necessarily like he's obviously he's there, he's lucid, he's conscious, he's not like tripping, tripping, but he has visual hallucinations. Like he sees things all the time.

Like he sees little like things like like lights moving around. Like he's getting, he gets the visual. the visual hallucinations. That's interesting. I'd love to meet him and talk to him about it and learn more about it. He's actually, he's got a huge YouTube channel. It used to be called All Gas, No Breaks. Now it's called Channel 5.

He goes around to these crazy events all over the world and he interviews people. It's interesting because, you know, your body processes, when you ingest magic mushrooms, there's compounds in the mushrooms, several tritamine analogs, but there's celocybin is the, well, the most well, all known, right? But psilocybin is actually the active. So celocybin is the pro-drug to psilocin. And solosin is created when you defosphorlate celosid. So there's a phosphate group onto, on the celibon molecule when it, your stomach acid and the enzymes take that phosphate group off. That allows it become fat soluble and then it can enter the bloodstream, go through the blood

brain barrier where it affects your neurons, where it actually goes to the receptor sites. So So celocybin itself does not enter the brain. It needs to be defosophorrelated. And so it's actually solosin is the psychedelic compound of the magic mushrooms. Really? I didn't know that. Yeah. And mushrooms vary wildly in their concentration of those compounds.

So this is something that we're working on and through our research that we're doing in Jamaica. We have acquired a company down there where we can do our research legally. And so we can really understand what the different species, the different compounds that are contained in the all the different tryptamine analogs, like Bayocysteine, norbeocysteine. There's several and really trying to understand what those do for the feeling of it and how it affects your body and that way. And even in creating standardized dosing, because if you have just a dose of powdered mushrooms, powdered mushrooms, a mushroom can vary greatly from the stem to the cap, from one mushroom to the

next, even that's grown on the same substrate. And they can vary from like 0.2 of a percent of scyloci. and it'selosin up to 2%. So that's 10x, you know. So if you don't really know how much you're getting if you're just eating mushrooms, so the trips can vary widely. So if you were given three caps and a stem and Chris had three stems in a cap, you might really trip out because you might have 10x in a psychedelic compounds. It is a little bit. So and that's what we hope to do with our research down there is standardize the dosing so we know exact do HPLC analysis of our of our extracts and our powders and know exactly how much celocybe and psilocybin solosin and triptamine

analogs are there so we really understand what we're giving people for therapeutic doses we like to help support the therapeutic industry down there and then as well for our microdosing for for people adult consumption what are you guys biggest like obstacles to to bringing this to the market like say has become legalized. Like, who are you guys biggest competitors? What are you guys biggest obstacles you have to overcome? Because I'm sure, I mean, I don't know. Maybe maybe I'm wrong, but there's a lot of pharmaceutical drugs and companies that would not want

facilicide mushrooms to become therapy. Because I'm sure, like, you know, I don't know how many kids that are in college that are addicted to Adderall. I mean, almost every kid I know, every person I know takes Adderall every single day. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, Sunbeam was designed to, as, so you wouldn't have to take out. Really?

Yeah. Take that same approach. Adderal or Concerta are, you know, dopamine re-uptake inhibitors. And our sunbeam was actually designed to help boost the dopamine system so that you don't have to take a prescription at all and run the risk of that prescription medicine. The obstacles right now for psychedelics is really just public perception. It's still scared. Really?

Yeah. You said you were scared. Right. So there's a lot of people that just don't know. and there's a lot of unknown about it, and there's a lot of misinformation out there. And when you see people talk and even hear the language about tripping, it just sounds intimidating, like I'm going to trip.

And you say, you know, I'm going to lose control of yourself. But everybody that I've talked to that had fear before, that afterwards they would say, what was I scared of? Right. It's so weird that I was scared of that because I didn't lose control. I actually gained control. I was more in control and aware of myself than I was. was lost control. So it's just a matter of getting over our society's addiction to being told that the pharmaceuticals

know more than what Mother Nature knows, right? So there's a lot of companies out there in the psilocybin in psychedelic industry, going right after pharmaceuticals, creating synthetic psilocybin, saying that, Nothing else matters besides the psilocybin, so it doesn't have any different effect. But anybody who's taken mushrooms knows that there's a lot more to it, right? So different species have a different feeling. So there must be things that we still need to discover that tell the story of why one species of mushroom makes you energetic and get a lot of stuff done. And the other one is more of a visual experience.

So there's all those tryptomines that Joe we're talking about. So as the research starts to come out and as the stories start to come out, right? So the research is great. And we love to look at the data and that. But there's so much of our brain and psychedelics that you can't describe in words. And you can't really describe even in fMRI or labs. It's more of a, you know, it's more of a spiritual experience, more of a something that you really, it's ineffable. You really can't say. And as those stories come out and people start to

realize and experience it for themselves. I mean, right now they estimate six to 10 million people are regular microdoses in the United States. So, and I think it's, I think that's underestimating. I think it's actually greater than that. And as more research gets shown and it starts to normalize, it's getting more and more. So it's growing pretty rapidly. And, you know, biggest challenge, back to your question was, you know, the pharmaceutical industry, definitely is definitely they have a very strong lobbying because they don't want to lose that revenue from those drugs, including SSRIs. And so it's multi, multi-billion dollar industries, all of those. And so there will probably be the biggest resistance to getting laws change is that those guys will lobby against it.

And they have very deep pockets, you know. So it will really take a public upwelling of interest to get it to change, I think, on the federal level. It seems like an impossible feat, honestly. because of how much money is like these pharmaceutical companies have and with the SSRIs, even with all the lawsuits and all the scams and all the, all the freaking corruption going on with these companies. I don't think you can stop the mycelium. The mycelium wants to come out. It wants to be part of our world.

Yeah. It's our guiding principle. Like we keep saying, how did these things happen? Like our, since we've started this company, just these incredible connections and everyone you talk to, it's like, well, would you like to, you know, connect with this, scientist researchers? and we'd like to do this. And every time I talk to someone, it's not only yes, but hell yes, how do I get involved? Really?

Yeah, it's amazing. It's amazing. Every single person we talk to. And they're so interested in this. And they see the benefit. I think it's inevitable. You know, timing is, you know, it might be two years, might be three years, might be five. I don't know the timing, but it's going to happen.

It will happen. It is inevitable. So what's, tell me about the, tell me more about the farm in Jamaica. Like, how did that come about and why Jamaica? Well, Jamaica is one of the only places where it's never been illegal, right? So it's not that it's like specifically legalized. It's just never been recognized as a substance to be illegal. So it's really an opportunity to do basically cuffs off research where you can really experiment,

create, you know, different consumer products, try them legally, have other people try them, get actual feedback outside of the world of regulated clinical trials in the United States, right? So there is definitely a place for that, but there's definitely a place for the future of responsible adult consumption as well. And so Jamaica allows for that because when you do research around the Schedule I drug in the United States, It's very, very hard, expensive and control. And we're working on our own license to have controlled substance in the United States. And it's a process even getting to do that. So it allows us to fast forward in Jamaica as well.

And Jamaica is a wonderful place, and it's a wonderful place to go visit. And the people there are amazing, and they are very interested in promoting the psychedelics on the island as a place to conduct research. And we're happy to be a part of it. A lot of the big marijuana growers in the country, they grow in Jamaica too, right? There's a lot of marijuana farms up there, a lot of big marijuana business being done in Jamaica. It did. It kind of came and went. Jamaica's a little jaded because of that because, you know, Jamaica forever was known for great weed, right? So it's like, oh, that's the best gonja coming out of Jamaica.

And so a lot of big companies, when the cannabis boom was really going there, kind of took advantage of that, swooped in, made a lot of deals. kind of fizzled out really for Jamaica. So a lot of the business people in Jamaica are a little leery of the cannabis industry because they kind of came, took their goods, went elsewhere with it, and are profiting from them and kind of left the island a little high and dry. So we don't want that to happen in a psychedelic industry. We're interested in doing business in Jamaica and bringing business to Jamaica through different conferences and events and really put the focus and give back to Jamaica while we're there.

Hmm. What, what is, I heard a little bit about how, um, psychedelic mushrooms and psilocybin affects people with cancer, too. Have you guys, do you guys know anything about that? Like, what? Like, like, I've heard a lot of people who, who, um, have been diagnosed with cancer. They've, they've taken psychedelics or they've taken, uh, psilocybin. And they've had experiences that sort of help them, like, work through it and even like, like, through, like, because when you get diagnosed with cancer, obviously, there's a huge. amount of depression people go through.

It's like a curse. It's like a curse. It's a modern day curse. Yeah. You believe what the doctor tells you, you know, and it's, it's terrifying if you get a diagnosis of, you know, this is fatal or, you know, you are at stage four and it's, of course, then anxiety and depression is going to, anxiety is going to creep in first, followed quickly by depression, right? Because you're going to be like, oh my God, I'm going to die. Or I have the potential of dying very soon. I thought I was going to live to be forever. You know, we all think we're going to live forever. But psychedelics allow you to, again, kind of step outside that ego, that ego feeling like, oh, me, me, I'm going to die.

And I just understand that there's a bigger thing happening here. And you're like, oh, yeah, okay, yes, I am going to die, but everyone's going to die and that's okay. Right. Like, it's almost like it's when you get cursed with that diagnosis, it almost accelerates death in some people. It can, yeah, yeah, for sure. You know, that modern curse is very real. Like, people say, doctor, you've got six months to live and it's remarkable. I mean, people, not that the doctor knew exactly that the disease progression was going to kill him in that amount of time, but it was the curse. Yeah, they believe it. If you believe you're going to die in six months, you know what? You're going to die in six months. The placebo or nocebo effect there is very real. It's not false medicine to think

that we can cure ourselves or, you know, or even contribute to our own demise by our own thinking. The brain is very powerful. Our body is very powerful. And so when you take something and you, you believe it, that's part of the reason. That's part of the medicine, right? You're essentially the medicine. Your belief in that medicine is part of what makes it work for sure. Yeah, I heard something recently too, even about when talking about placebos, I forget who it was, but they were talking about, like, they took a test group of people, like 10 people where they actually had like ligament injuries in their knees and they actually gave them a surgery on their ligaments. another group of 10 people where they just made an incision in their skin and stitched them up

and they actually believed they had the surgery and it like healed their knees. So it just shows you like the power of the mind is like absolutely incredible. It is incredible. Yeah. It's a big deal. So some of these initial studies that are coming out saying, hey, microdosing is only the placebo effect. If it's only the placebo effect, that's great because that means our body is healing ourselves than helping us be better.

You know, I don't personally believe that. I believe that there's a lot more to it because there's other studies that show that it's increasing your neuroplasticity and your neurogenesis. So it's definitely a combination. Yeah. You know, you're stepping back to like SSRIs and stuff,

and there's been meta studies done on those showing that they're somewhere in the neighborhood of the placebo effect. You know, that's their efficacy rate is right around 24, 25%, which is placebo is like 20%. 23 and a half. So it's slightly better, more efficacious than the placebo effect. And these are drugs that make billions of dollars and cause actual damage to people. You know, these these drugs are addictive. You can't just say if you get an SSRI and you're taking this stuff

for years, you can't just quit. Like quitting is fatal. You can have a fatal reaction to just stopping taking your antidepressant. So, and these things cause structural changes in your brain. You You know, you're limiting the re-uptake of a neurotransmitter, which, you know, has his own problems. It does, you know, and if you know, people that are, that take SSRIs all the time, but they, they kind of blunt your existence, right? So you don't get super happy. You don't get super sad. You just kind of live in, meh, land. Yeah, the problem, though, with people like that is, is when you're in that state of mind, like that depressed state of mind, a lot of those people, they don't have the mentality of, like, I'm in control of this.

I can figure out a solution to this problem. just they listen to the doctor and the doctors, you know, a lot of the doctors are courted by these pharmaceutical companies and like they're, you know, you got to sell these or, you know, pump these and you're going to make more money. Trip to Hawaii, you know, right, exactly, right? And, you know, when you're in that state of mind, the depressed state of mind and your doctor saying take these is going to help you. You're not, that's not someone who's going to be like, you know what?

I think I can figure out something better. They're not in that state of mind to explore. Yeah. I feel like it's a generational change of that is happening, though, that, you know, as you go to our parents' age, which we're super accepting and just did what the doctor was told. And as you go down younger, I think just through our technology and social media and sharing actual stories, that that's starting to change. Like, they're not going to be able to have the power of influence as they once did as you start to get readily. available stories, whether it's TikTok or Instagram or Facebook or whatever of people telling you alternatives to it, right?

We just have so much access to more information now. You know, 15 years ago, you wouldn't have known all these, all the podcasts that are out there and all the information on the internet that you can just look up and go, okay, wow, this is how this mechanistically works in the body and understand it. You know, we live in the age of information now, and so, and I heard a quote was it was like in the age of information, ignorance, is a choice. You know, so you're actively choosing not to educate yourself on these, if that's something that you want to learn about, your own health and your brain health.

And, you know, I see, I see psychedelics really helping open people's mind to the possibilities that are out there. You mentioned earlier something about synthetic. There's companies that are doing synthetic mushrooms and it's not even mushrooms. It's just see the side. Yeah, they're chemically making and manufacturing it. And so, which is great because it gives them an isolated compound to study. However, it doesn't have all the entourage effect of all the other shift of main analogs. And it's exceedingly expensive right now. I think it's something like $1,600 a dose where, I mean, mushrooms, if you grow mushrooms,

they're almost free. I mean, you grow them on, like, you can grow them on coffee grounds or grass or, I mean, there's all kinds of substrates you can grow your mushrooms on or grains or whatever. And so the dosage, you know, for the medicine should not cost $1,600 a dose. It's insane. Where, now, who's making the stuff that's $1,600 a dose? It's a big pharmaceutical companies that are studying it right now. Yeah.

So it is quite expensive to make in the lab. I mean, just by its nature versus growing out a mushroom. But, you know, for those studies, and this is why these studies are not everything, you've got to have the perfect exact same inputs over and over and over again. And you can do that in the synthetic world a lot easier than you. you can do it in the naturals. There's so many different types of mushrooms. Like what is it that makes the perfect mushroom for this?

Like what is in one of these magic mushrooms? Oh, well, there's different. What makes them different from the ones that don't make you trip? Oh, like, well, you know, there's several different species. There's about 200 roughly identified species that contain the tryptamine analogs, like celocybin, solosin, beaocin, biosyn, nor biocese. So there's been about 200 identified so far. There's probably many more.

There's like literally millions. It's the most mushroom fungi are the, you know, they populate the earth. They're inside of us. They're on our skin. They're in your guts. Like fungi are everywhere. Our planet, our life wouldn't exist without the third kingdom there. And they're not actually plants, right?

That's what I've told. No. So if people don't plant medicine, it drives me a little bit crazy because fungi are not plants. So their own kingdom. There's the animal kingdom. There's the plant kingdom. And then there's the kingdom of fungi, a totally separate kingdom. So it's not like they're not plants.

It would be like saying animals are plants. If you say a fungi is a plant, they're not. They respire. They consume oxygen and give off CO2, more like an animal than a plant. That's why they're the greatest recyclers on the planet. Like without fungi, nothing would decompose, you know, and give back. And there's that, I know if you've watched fantastic fungi, It's a great documentary, and it really explains the connection between plants and fungi and animals

and how plants and trees, particularly forests, without their micro-a-risal networks of fungi, would not get the nutrients out of the soil to grow. So they're symbiotic. They need each other just like, we're symbiotic organisms with bacteria, yeast, and fungi within our digestive tract. And having a healthy GI tract means having a plethora of flora. diversity of flora in our in our gut microbiome so we can digest food these things actually create hormones and create neurotransmitters and most of neurotransmitters are created in your gut not in your brain so so this is our poor diets and stuff are probably causing some of our mental problems in our society because we're not creating the right neurotransmitters so we have a deficit of the correct neurotransmitters are more are created in our gut correct really correct how is that Though that's where they're manufactured, right? So that's the transmitter, the neurotransmitter is actually created by certain bacteria, yeast, fungi.

So it's like these things are actually symbiotic. We're symbiotic organisms. There's more other organisms living inside of us than there are us. Right. By count, by cell count. So if you count at all the organisms living inside our digestive tract, there's more of them than there are of your own cells in your body. That makes sense. That makes sense.

Wow. Yeah. That's mind-blowing. It is, isn't it? Yeah. So, obviously, the reason you guys started this was for things like Alzheimer's or, like, maintaining, like, a sharp brain into, like, later age, right? Yeah, that's, you know, one of the main, the main reasons for sure.

And, you know, for me, again, like, as I mentioned, traumatic brain injury recovery, was a big motivation factor in protecting my brain as we age. But it has a greater purpose. You know, these medicines have a greater purpose. As it, like I said, I mentioned empathy before. And connectivity. It really makes you feel more connected to your fellow man and the earth. So as you said just your first time, if you've never had a mushroom experience,

if you have a slightly larger dose, even just a slightly larger dose at a microdose, you'll find that when you're walking outside, you just stop and look at the leaves on the trees and just like appreciate nature and you feel more, you feel a connectedness to it that you've never felt before. And if you ever do decide to do a higher dose experience like out in nature in the woods or in the mountains or whatever, you will feel an immense connectivity to Mother Nature that doesn't go away after the experience. And so we hope that that kind of feeling is, you know, helps people realize a little bit more that we are connected to our planet. We're not separated from our environment and we need to like to wake up. Yeah. And stop trashing our planet.

And that's great. But I feel like, you know, the way. that this it's going to become more accepted is by is by actually fixing real problems you know like so I guess what I'm trying to get at is what is the lowest hanging fruit as far as like fixing certain things like depression or PTSD or whatever like what is the lowest hanging fruit that's a therapy that this could be a therapy for well you know part of what we'd like to talk about it first person is let's not break it in the first place right so to me, the lowest hanging fruit of taking care of your brain through supplementation and mushrooms and potentially psychedelics as they start to legalize is dealing with it on the day-to-day

basis, like realizing that you want to take care of your brain, just like you go to the gym, you want to take care of your brain every day and not let it get to the point where you have to fix something, right? So we can be proactive rather than reactive. So to us, The low-hanging fruit is, let's not break it in the first place. Let's, you know, through microdosing, through correct diet and lifestyle and supplementation and taking these things that are healthy for your brain, that maybe you don't get to the point where you're so anxiety-ridden and depressed that you need to take a therapeutic dose ever. Maybe it's a microdose over time that just makes you more aware of yourself and more connected with your life

so that you don't get broken. And, you know, I always say we're starting with these products, these functional mushroom products that... They're beautiful, by the way. Thank you. Even, like, the actual capsules themselves. They're very cool, aren't they? They look like a piece of modern art

with, like, the little colors inside, the clear capsules. Yeah, the microbeedlets are great, aren't they? Yeah, they're fantastic. So what are the beadlets are actual, like, they're like... That's the powders inside then. They've just been encapsulated in an all-natural coloring, made a blueberry turmeric.

Just help get it guided into your digestive tract to the right place to be released. My wife's never been interested in like any of the Lions main shit that I always take or all these different supplements. I'm always testing that Dom sends me. She sees this. She's like, ooh, what's that? I love the pastels. Definitely.

They got the marketing team, did a great job creating that, you know, they're beautiful. Yeah, they look amazing. And we grow those mushrooms ourselves at our farm in Washington too. You guys have a farm in Washington. Yes, we have an organic medicinal mushroom farm in Olympia, Washington, and then that's where we grow these mushrooms for these supplements.

And that's where we started with this, is we couldn't find the mushrooms that we wanted on the market. I think just prior to the start of this, I mentioned that in the functional mushroom world, there's a little bit of shenanigans that go on, and people sell powdered grains as mushrooms, and we didn't want that in our product. We're pretty keto,

and we don't just want to take a bunch of rice powder or oat powder. So we grow whole fruiting body mushrooms, and we cultivate the mycelium in the liquid culture, and then we strain that out, and we combine the mycelium with the pure fruiting body, no grains, and then we do an extraction process, and we spray dry that. So we have a very highly concentrated, pure, full fungus powders that we use.

We're very proud of that, And we're developing a B2B business, supplying a few select brands with those powders as well here in the United States. How did you guys get connected with Dom, Degistino? Dom has a pretty big story in our existence, really. And it goes back to, I don't know, it was years ago, one of his first appearances on Joe Rogan. And I was listening to it. And this was at the time Joe and I were just, my brother Joe and I were just trying to figure out how to, what to do in this whole brain health and,

and Alzheimer's prevention world and listening to Dom talk with Joe about keto and all that. It was just like it clicked. And it's like, this is it. This is one of the pieces of a puzzle is the ketogenic diet for brain health. And so that just kind of let us down into that path. And we, as we're going to different conferences, Joe ended up meeting Dom at a conference. Yeah, at a metabolic health summit.

conference that Dom is part of. And that's a medical conference. They hold every year out in California. It's fantastic. All the greatest researchers on cancer, anything metabolic health, you know, cancer has a metabolic disease, Alzheimer's, you know, Del Bredesen spoke at that conference. I don't know if you're familiar with him, he wrote a book called The End of Alzheimer's.

It really outlines kind of the mechanisms by which you get Alzheimer's that you causes, the epigenetic factors that trigger that cascade of, for your brain to develop Alzheimer's dementia. And so I was attending there really to hear Bradisson speak. And then Dom, I met him there because he was part of that conference. And then we struck up a conversation and, you know, we have a very personal story about our father having dementia and stuff. And Dom was interested.

And so we just kept going from there. And then Dom is one of our advisors on first person. So we're helping us design some of our studies and a couple of patent applications we have in on bioavailability. and stuff of psychedelics and stuff. So we're working with Dom to continue to do some more research. Yeah, diet is super connected to things like Alzheimer's, right? Like diet's one of the leading causes of Alzheimer's, like a bad diet, I think. Yeah, lifestyle in general.

That's part of it, you know. So there's, it's multimodal. There's lots of causes. But the standard American diet, the sad diet, definitely top on the list of what's helping what's causing these cognitive issues, whether it's Alzheimer's in later age or just in general right now, anxiety, depression, a lot of that you can go back to improper diet. And alcohol consumption, you know, chronic alcohol consumption. You know, I look at our own disease.

And it was obviously a multimodal, and we have the genetic markers for Alzheimer's ourselves, which really motivate us to make those lifestyle changes. But then we look back on his life, and he worked very hard. He was electrical engineer. And he commuted like an hour each way to where we live. You, you know, raised us on a country property, so we didn't have to live in the city. So he commuted an hour each way to work into the plant. He probably got a pretty heavy metal exposure.

They were manufacturing telecommunication switchboards there at that plant for 18T. And then, but he would come home and have one or two drinks, like on the nightly, you know, one or two Roman Cokes. And he didn't know, you know, he didn't know. you know, people didn't know what we didn't know that we know now, that he was just having a bolus of sugar and a bolus of alcohol every night, which probably restricted his ability to sleep deeply and get restful sleep, whereas glial swells open up and he flush out those toxins from metabolic processes, that really only happens in deep sleep that they were starting to figure out through research.

And it's like, well, if alcohol limits your ability to get into that deep cycle sleep, and you did that chronically over 40 or 50, 50 years, bang, there you go. It's going to shave a few years off. Well, it's just allows that beta amyloid plaque to build up in, which they think is like, it's actually a response from the brain trying to protect itself. The plaque that's in the brain, right? Yeah, yeah, these neuro, these tangles, these tau tangles and beta amyloid tangles that

cause, and they really think that's almost like an autoimmune problem. It's an over-response of the brain trying to protect itself from neural inflammation. And the fact that he never got into that deep cycle sleep, maybe chronically for years and years in years allowed that plaque to build up and really causes disease progression. Have you ever heard anyone talk about having psychedelic experiences after fasting for a long period of time? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I have. What is the connection with that? Because I've heard a lot of people talk about, like, a lot of people that have messed around with fasting for more than like seven to 10 days. They said they get this crazy, like, euphoric, almost like psychedelic, euphoric feeling after like six days. Yeah, I've done seven-day fast. Have you? I didn't, I never, I mean, I just felt great. I was charging, you know, I was, I felt amazing. Like, I didn't really feel like I was tripping, but I felt really good. I felt really cognitively sharp. I was still working out, you know,

it wasn't tired, you know, which makes sense as, you know, fasting as as we evolved, right? If we got tired and lethargic when we were in a fasted state, we were never evolved. We have died out. because famine would have been part of the human evolution. And so actually, you get more cognitively alert when you're hungry, right? Because you're not digesting. You're not diverting. And it takes a lot of energy to digest food. And a lot of your immune system, the majority of your immune system surrounds your gut lining

because that's the only input for pathogens to enter our bloodstream is our digestive system. So the whole digestive tract is lined with your immune system. It's concentrated around your digestive. track. So when you're eating, you're stimulating digestion, but you're also you're stimulating your immune system. So when you're fasting, it takes all that energy that you're putting to digestion and your immune system, and you've got it elsewhere. It allows your brain's got more energy. So and it's like, okay, you've got to wake up to go out. I need to go find food. You know, I need to eat. You know, so that's why you become more alert when you're in a fast state. Yeah, there's

also, I think the digestive system builds up like this platter. which is what I know like I did a seven day fast I try to do a seven day fast I only got through five days I I caved after five days but on the fifth day I was like I told Dom multiple times I was able to do three times the amount of pull-ups I normally do and I had I was able to play basketball like an extra hour and a half without having that like side cramp the stitch cramper like that completely exhausted fatigued feeling and uh you know that's what that's what sold me on that now I do it like once a year. But, um, yeah, I wonder if on the psychedelic where people are reporting that, I wonder if that

has something to do with the endogenous DMT that we have in our, in our bodies. And maybe some of that's getting released to help, you know, we're at seven, we're at 10 days. It's like stimulating us to, you, you better go find some food, evolutionary. Um, I wonder if that has something to do. I've done seven day fast as well, but I've not experienced any kind of psychedelic effect from that. It's super interesting how I didn't realize like how the gut was so important to everything in your body, like your, to your brain, to your nervous system. There's an enormous amount of neurons that surround your gut as well. So they call it the second brain. There's so many neurons that surround your gut lining and are connected directly to the brain through the vagus nerve.

The Vegas nerve. Yeah, which is a wandering nerve that's a really big nerve system that runs up from your gut to your brain. brain. So, and that, uh, that connection is, you know, they're starting to figure that out a little bit more. You know, say, you know, have a gut feeling. Yeah. Your brain and your gut might be telling you to make that decision literally. So that gut feeling might be your second brain telling your first brain, hey, no, we don't want to do that. That's dangerous. Or no, that, don't trust that person or whatever that gut is telling you. Right. Listen to it. Intuition is powerful. And it's, it's there for a reason. We've developed it over billions of years. That's what you're going.

fault. So, I mean, yeah, that explains when an animal hasn't eaten for seven days. It has to be more alert so we can catch prey, right? So we can catch food and become fed. What have, what have you guys done as far as, like, research on, like, dieting? What's the best diet to keep your gut healthy? And to, and how, along with that, how, what do you guys supplement with your diets as far as, like, stuff like this or different types of mushrooms, psilocybin? How often do you do it?

Like, what's optimal in your guys' experience? Well, for diet, you know, diet is very individual. There's no one diet for everyone. That's just, that's a fallacy. If anyone tells you that, they're trying to sell you something, there is no one diet. You know, it is really individual. I follow a pretty kiddogenic diet and drifting more towards carnivore,

keto now for me. It really works for me at my age. I feel great. I, you know, I measure my blood work, and so my traculous rides are good. My free testosterone is good. So I eat a lot of meat, red meat, fish, eggs, some vegetables, you know, like broccoli, you know, sweet potatoes and stuff now and again. I don't eat a lot of green leafy vegetables. I find they're a little bit disrupting to my gut right now.

But again, I think it's finding your own path with your diet. Obviously, we can't eat, I mean, as humans, we shouldn't be eating these processed package foods that are just made with poison. You know, really some of these things shouldn't even be considered food. these industrial seed oils that are being fed to us are a huge problem in our diets. It's a massive. It's probably more of a problem for diabetes and obesity than overconsumption of carbohydrate. It's these seed oils like rice branola, canola oils, sunflower seed oil. These high omega-6 oils were not ever in our diets as we evolved.

And so, you know, 100 years ago, they made up about 2% of our diet, and today they make up about 12. percent and it's it's really being correlated with ill health you can look at countries around the world that haven't adopted these seed oils into the diet they don't have all these problems they don't have these obesity problems they not have you know dementia skyrocketing because obesity diabetes and Alzheimer's dementia perfectly correlate on a graph as they're going up as one goes up the other two go up you know they're all they're hand in hand they're linked to our diets are these seed oils are they in foods without us even knowing it they're in everything really Everything fried that you're getting from out in a restaurant is fried in an omega-6 oil, seed oil.

Very rarely would you find something unless it's a really purposeful, healthy restaurant that is frying something in more like a coconut oil, but that's few and far between right now. Anything pretty much packaged, you're going to get a lot of omega-6 seed oils in. So you have to be very purposeful about your diet to flip that and try to get more omega-3s in, through salmon and sardines and things like that, or grass-fed, pasture-raised, ruminant animals like bee for elk or lamb, things like that. But if you grain feed an animal, like feed it full of corn, you are actually getting that omega-6 now from the grain through the animal to you.

Whereas if you go and purposely get pasture-raised animals, that's feeding on grass. and plants, those grains don't ever get to your body either. So you got to think about what you're eating, but you also got to think about what you ate, what you're eating, what they ate. Right. Yeah. I always thought that most things were cooked in like olive oil.

Like what are the good oils are olive oil and what else? Olive oil is good in, you know, in moderation, because it has a pretty high omega-6 content. But olive oil is great. I love olive oil. I eat a lot of butter, ghee. When I cook for myself at home, I use lard, particularly if I'm like stir-frying or cooking at high temperature. And everyone's like, oh, lard, yeah, like lard.

I make my own bone broths. So the fat that comes off the bones and floats to the top, I strain that off and cool it back down and put it in the tub and use that for cooking. And that is, that is, wow. And I buy grass-fed bones. So I know that the fat that's there is, it's really high-sterisk ass. it's, you know, saturated fat has been demonized falsely. And, you know, we need saturated fats. It's essential for human survival.

It actually causes you to lean out. If you take, if you eat more saturated fat, you will be a leaner person. And if you're eating other fats. Yeah, isn't the problem that you tell people that, but then they also mix in, like, lots of carbs and fried stuff at the same time. And that could be deadly, right? That's deadly. Yeah, that's the exact wrong combination.

If you throw saturated fat, like, you know, the worst thing you possibly eat probably is a donut. You know, it is gluten fried in terrible oils covered in sugar. You know, it's literally like toxic. Right. So if you think like, you know, I want to eat more red meats, eat more butter, eat more that fat, but I'm also going to have, you know, a donut for breakfast. Yeah. That's a deadly combo.

That's a bad combo, yeah. That's a hard thing. Or chips. Right. Or french fries or any of that stuff. You know, we're talking carbs cooked in, in, problems in like french fries. and potato chips and stuff is those oils when they're cooking at high temperature like that those oils get damaged and they become you know they become worse they become hydrogenated oils

which is even even worse for our system because it's more like plastic at that point so um yeah the fried food unfortunately is really a no-go unless you're doing it yourself and you're frying it in coconut oil or lard or ghee where do you get bones like where do you buy bones and get lard and stuff like that yeah so um you can just buy that like whole foods or oh really yeah you can buy Using the frozen section, there'll be a bag of grass-fed bones. And I just take, I've got an instapot and throw in my instapot with some water. He usually throw like a bay leaf in there and then throw it in. And two hours later, you've got beautiful brumbroth.

Are they cow bone? Yeah. They're just cow. They tell you what kind of, they market what kind of bones they are. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're cattle.

Yeah. It's beef. But if you can buy local too, right? So you could go to someone, you know, not far out of here that's raising their own beef. and, you know, buy a quarter beef and ask for the bones, and they just kind of throw the bones in for nothing. You end up getting all these bones in your freezer for free. That's what I do with lamb and local beef.

And I'm fortunate right now that my brother-in-law got a big elk, so I'm stocked full of elk and some elk bones to go with that that I'm making my bone broth. It's delicious, yeah. What about like the organ meats and stuff like that? Do you guys eat a lot of like that stuff like hearts, liver, and brains and stuff? I do. I feed it to my children as well.

well. Really? Yeah, like I've kind of created this recipe where I have a butcher. I live in, I've been living in Australia for the past kind of 16 years. So I have a local butcher down there that I'll make up I order, send out like 10 pounds of mince meat. And then to that, I had four pounds of heart, four pounds of liver, and two pounds of suet. And suet is the fat that stored up of the kidney. So it's very high steric acid, almost pure steric acid. And so that gets ground up. into my mince and then he just puts out in individual little vacuum bags and I break it out and cook burgers and make taco mins or whatever that kids want to eat but it it tastes more like you're eating like if you make a burger out of that stuff it tastes like you're eating a rib eye it's amazing and it's so nutritious because the nutrient density of of liver and heart is way higher than just muscle meat and you can just go to your local butcher and get this stuff if you can get a butcher to do it he just has to order a man because they don't normally carry heart liver and sue it but they can get it and it's I'm no joke it is amazing. And it, it is very affordable. It's not like you have to eat ribbys to be, you know, to afford this kind of thing. Like my, it drops the organ meats are,

they almost give them to you, they're like a couple dollars a pound, you know, versus like $12 a pound for the minceme, you know? So it's like averages out to like six or eight bucks by the time they mix it all together. It's pretty cheap, pretty cheap eating and it's super healthy. Yeah, I don't even know if there's any local butchers around here that do that kind of stuff. I know, I have like butcher box, like, you know, I've heard of that kind of stuff. And there'll be local burchers that do it. They'll be just outside of the city. You'll have ranchers out there where you can take it and take it to the butcher and tell them what you want and order it that way.

So particularly if you like take a quarter of a beef, which you can probably fit in your freezer. If you have a garage refrigerator, then you can just tell them like, I want the organ meats put into the ground meat. And nobody else on that, the other three quarters of that beef, they probably didn't ask for the organ meat. So you end up getting them all for nothing, basically, because a lot of people don't know how to prepare them, don't know to eat them. But when you put them in the ground beef, everybody loves it. It's so delicious. I bet Dom might know. Dom would definitely know.

He knows. He lives 20 minutes from here. Yeah, and he has cattle. Yes, he does, huh? Yeah. You live in Australia right now? I have done. Yeah, yeah.

I'm just relocating back to North America right now. I've been down there for a long time. Well, I just now noticed your accent. Is that you just let it out right now? Or did I might now just like... Because he said minced instead of ground. No one knows what minced is here. Oh, right.

No, no, I know what minced is. Okay, good. Yeah, so, yeah, I've been down there for some bit. But with this company, I'm back here, North America now. It's just staying, at least for the foreseeable future. Okay. I was just like, did you just travel from Australia, like the last two days? Just a couple of the last week, two weeks ago.

Okay. Yeah, so I'm fresh on the ground. Wow. What's it been like in Australia during all of this pandemic? and stuff like that. All you see in the news around here is how crazy it's been over there. It's been a little, you know, Western Australia did an amazing job of, because it's so isolated. You know, it's separated even from the rest of Australia by an enormous desert. They did an amazing job of keeping COVID out, all right?

It was, it was, there was no COVID, no community COVID spread in, in Western Australia until about two months ago when they decided to open the borders up. Living there was difficult. As I went back, we started this company in the last year. I've gone back and forth, what, three times, four times now. And each time I went back, I had to do two weeks of hotel quarantine. So they take you from the airplane, escort you to a hotel room, and they lock the door. They don't lock the door. It's open.

But they say, if you step outside this door, one foot outside is $1,000. You step in the hallway, it's $5,000. If you leave the building, $50,000 fine six months in jail. Oh, my God. That's insane. They're not joking. And they enforce it. So, I mean, I have to give respect is that they protected, protected the community.

They got their vaccination rate very high, and then they opened the borders. And so, yeah, COVID's going wild there right now. It's spreading around the Omicron spreading like crazy, but their deaths are super low because everyone's vaccinated. So, you know, you know, so they, maybe they handled it right. Maybe they didn't. I don't know. That time will tell.

But it was torturous for me because I am a very social person. I'm a surfer. I'm an outdoor kind of guy. So to be locked in a hotel room where I couldn't get fresh air was torture. So you live near like, you said Western Australia? Perth, yeah. So where do you surf? Perth has beach breaks and stuff.

Is that near Snapper, like Snapper Rocks and Kira? Opposite side of the country. Opposite side, okay. Yeah, our waves are a little bit bigger and mean around the west coast. So we're facing the southern Indian Ocean. So our swells come from just south of South Africa and the Margaret River region. I don't know if you've ever seen the Margaret River Pro. So Margie's said that's kind of where I go surf.

We have an island just off the coast of Perth. I surf there a lot, Rottnest Island. There's a crazy wave right next to the Margaret River, that right-hand wave. It's like a crazy, like, mutant-looking wave. The box. The box. Yeah, a friend of mine got seriously injured there. Broke his back just earlier this year, yeah.

Yeah, surf the box? Nope. I don't like hitting rocks. I got in tow surfing with my friends a few years ago, so I like, we use jet skis and tow into the bigger stuff out the back on some of the bombies. So that's good. The bombies? The bombies, yeah. The offshore bombies.

There's a few big ones out there. Cal Bommi is one that's kind of world famous. It's kind of in the same class as Jaws. Oh, really? It gets 60, 70, 80 foot. It gets big. But most of the breaks out there are rocky, right? It's all reef break.

I mean, there's beach breaks along there. But, yeah, in the southwest, it's predominantly rocky reef. And then you go north, tropical reef. Like, I don't know if you've ever looked it up, but there's some amazing waves in the northwest. Amazing. Tombstones is. I have a lot of good friends.

friends that go out there all the time. One of my good friends who actually was born and raised here, like five minutes from here. And this, you know, there's no surf in the west coast of Florida. But he's, his name's Corey Lopez. He's a professional surfer. And he's surfed on the world tour for a long time. And he goes there all the time. And, you know, they go and they hunt all these waves that have never been discovered.

And they find little islands off of Australia. Yeah, it's amazing. Western Australia is a beautiful coastline. I surfed just like the week before I came back, my toe partner and I, he took me to a left-hand barrel that, no one serves because it's kind of right right in front of a cliff. So there's no entries for regular surfers. You really need a ski to access this wave. But yeah, he put me into like 20 of the best barrels I've ever had.

It was just magic. Yeah, it was pretty cool. It's very lucky that you can still go do that totally by yourself. Really? Do you guys have a lot of big sharks out there? Oh, yeah. Really? Oh, yeah.

How often do people get, like, bit around where you live? It's about one fatality a year. On average, you know, when you look at statistically, that's not even worth thinking. It's not even more worrying about it because there's thousands of surfers in the water every single day. The sharks are always there. It's not like they go and come. They're always there. It's where they live, and we're in the water with them interacting on a daily basis.

I'm sure you've seen the video of Mick Fanning and Jay Bay in South Africa. That is the most insane thing that's ever been caught on video for sure. Yeah, yeah. Are they great whites out there or what kind of sharks are out there? We have, yeah, great whites are the ones that typically take people in Australia, Western Australia, particularly. But no, we have bronze whalers, tiger sharks, bull sharks. I'm going to do a lot of spearfishing as well. So those are the species that you only see when you're spearing.

I've never seen a white one spearing. My friends that have have and had some interactions with them, actually one of my best friends is a shark mitigation company. Shout out to Shannon Whirl and Shark Ice. Really? Shark mitigation. How does that work? Yeah, so he is a company where they have these stickers that you put. on the bottom of your surf craft, whether it's a boogieboard or surfboard, two big eyes that they've

designed. So sharks are ambush predators. And so it really deters the shark from coming in and having a look at you. Because a lot of times, investigation bite, right? They just come up and go, what are you? They're just like checking you out, yeah. And then grab you and they let you go. But grabbing you with their mouth, you know, it's a 20-foot-long shark, you're dead. It's going to separate you from your limbs. You're going to bleed to death. Yeah. So he started that company a few years ago now I've got wet suits and stuff and I use them. They're on all my kids' crafts and my craft for sure. And it gives you that little sense of confidence in the water that, you know, at least something's looking down. And I've experienced, you know, when I spearfish, I've seen sharks. And when you look at them, they swim away.

Right. Like they see, like they'll start sneaking up on you. But if you're not looking, but as soon as you look, they'll turn away. Yeah, I do a lot of spearfishing around here too. There's a lot of big bull sharks around here on the west coast. On the, actually on the east coast over in like New Smyrna, like three hours from here, it's, there's a shark attack. almost every day, but they're little black tip sharks or spinner sharks. They're tiny sharks are everywhere. You literally, as soon as you get in the water, a certain time of the year, there's just like hydro planning across the surface. Like you have to like wait and wait till like, like, I've been hit and hit by them hydro planning multiple times. Wow. Just surfing, but they're tiny sharks. It's not really not much to be afraid of, you know, most,

the worst that'll happen is you'll get a few stitches or something like that. Yeah. The Florida's the number one place in the world for shark attacks. Yeah. A lot of bull shark attacks here. They have a lot of estuaries and stuff where they're breeding and then they're operating in shallow water. So people get bit. Yeah, there's actually a guy who jumped off his dock not too far from here on the West Coast just their day, or a couple years ago. But he would jump off his dock and go swimming every day in one of the little lagoons. And then one day he jumped off his dock and jumped right on top of a bull shark and the thing bit him in half and killed him. Oh, that happened recently? No, not recently. It was probably eight years ago. But it was all over

the news. I mean, it was like one of the worst shark attacks on the West Coast of Florida in a long time, especially because the guy was like right behind his house. You know, and like three feet of water. Oh, wow. But you said your kids surf too? How old were they? Yeah, 16 and 13. Okay.

How old were they when you got them in the water for the first time? Oh, they've been going in the ocean since they were born. Really? Swimming in the surf, and then they do surf lifesaving club. Oh, okay. So they're all into it. Yeah, yeah. But they really just started picking up surfing recently.

It takes a bit of courage, you know, that surfing is a different piece. You're going to have to get comfortable wearing a few on the head. Oh, yeah, especially from growing up in Australia. I mean, coming here, you really don't have much to worry about. No. Yeah. Where are you going to move when you come here? Right now I'm touching base in Colorado.

Oh, okay. But I have yet to determine where I'll be permanently. Okay. Well, what is the future with first person and tell us, like, people that are listening or watching, like, where can they learn more about this stuff and find it? And, or can you buy it yet? Of course, yeah. Okay.

We just launched on the 15th. So get firstperson.com is our website. Okay. And there's tons of information on there. Yeah, the future is we'll continue to innovate consumer products around brain health and performance and lead to charge in natural psychedelics as it starts to legalize. So we're going to be very involved in both those. And, of course, you'll see our ingredient potentially first grown trademark on,

on shelves near you on different brands. First grown? That's our trademark product of how we process and grow the mushrooms up in Washington. That's different than anything else that's out there in the market right now. And so we're talking some industry leading brands about incorporating our product into their product. And that'll be happening over the course of the next six months. Okay, so when the psilocybin actually becomes legal to be on the market, will that just be like an additional product that people will be able to like stack with these or mix with these?

Correct. Can you purchase all these separately or do they come together or how does it work? Separately together with the tins are a nice little thing that stacked together just as a way to storm. We didn't want to have a bunch of plastic bottles out there and creating a bunch of waste. So we do sachets that are refillable in those tins. But yeah, I highly encourage people to give it a try, particularly the Golden Hour, which is unlike anything that's out there right now. What makes the Golden Hour different? Just its intent, right? So it's hitting oxytocin, which a lot of the neutropic products out there are more about focus.

You know, focus energy gets shit done, right? So, you know, how about just that relaxed, calm, good feeling where you're just happy your foot is tapping and you feel good, right? That's not a poison or a toxin to your brain. So super pumped about that. I'm super excited about what's coming next in that world, in the future of drink. and our social connections and redefining that, particularly around alcohol right now. We are as a society, you know, it's part of our lives.

And that's not going away, mixing a drink, having drinks together, doing that for business, social, even, you know, even just get together with your friends and family has been centered around that for so long. And just having an alternative to that that doesn't have to be so poisonous to our, to our body and our brain is something that as a company that we're exploring for the future. Is it recommend to like mix, like you can like mix this with you out and have a drink? You can take a couple of golden hours before you go out and have a couple of cocktails or something like that. You might feel like you don't need it.

Right. After having a couple cocktails. If you take some golden hour, you might be, I don't really need that to loosen me up. I'm feeling pretty good right now. Particularly if you're microdosing. The urge to drink is not there. It goes away. It's not there.

But you've got to have something in your hand, right? Yeah, I drink soda water with lime. Okay. And just so it looks like I'm having a cocktail. Yeah. Because people are like, have a drink. I like, yeah, yeah, I'll get mine. It's fine.

And I order a soda water with lime. It looks like a vodka tonic. Yeah. You know, and I'm a very thirsty drinker. So I have a very thirsty drinker. They're like, man, you can handle your alcohol. I'm like, yep. Damn, this guy's had eight vodka sodas already.

That's right. So, like, first thing in the morning, take a couple of, like, maybe like the, the golden hour or the sunbeam together. And you said that when you stack the sunbeam in the golden hour, you could have something close to a psilocybin effect? That's the feedback we're getting. That's the feedback we're getting. That was not expected.

We didn't say that this was going to happen or it wasn't an intention, but that's what people keep telling us. And I've experienced myself. One of my friends said that when I had a golden hour, is like they felt like someone had just given him a big hug. And I was like, that's like, that's like, that's, the feeling we were going for. Like that,

ah, you know, it's a nice feeling, yeah. And which one has the lion's main in it? Golden Hour and Sunbeam both. Both have Lions main. Okay.

I really enjoy the Lionsman. I've taken it with other supplements. It's amazing. I like it with my coffee. Been shown to increase BDNF, you know, brand drive neurotropic factor, which causes dendrite growth,

myelination of your neurons. It's really where the synaptic gaps happen where the neurotransmitters bind are in the myelin sheath around your neuron. So that is really exciting that that research is showing that that increases that, you know, when you stack that with celibin, we really think there's a synergy there from our own personal experience that when you have that increased BDNF from the lines main, and then you're also throwing that, you know, increased dendrite growth and stuff from the celibin, I think it's very powerful for brain health. And this is why we created these

products. So how is it, Danny? We're 30 minutes in since you popped that. that microdose and then had some first person to stack it with. I don't know. Like I feel like, I feel super relaxed. I feel happy and chill. I don't feel like, I don't,

I don't feel, anxiety at all or any sort of anxious. I just feel very calm and relaxed. Good. And focused. And focused. Nice. And focused.

I feel, I shouldn't have drank that giant Celsius, but usually like when I drink an energy drink, right? Or I drink a bunch of coffee or caffeine. Feeder Expresso, I kind of have this like, you know what I mean? Like my brain's going fast, my mouth can move.

But when, like, with this stuff, I feel more calm. I feel like I can think and talk. I can, everything smoother. I can slows down and like I can focus better. Yeah. Awesome. It's doing its job, right? Yeah, that's right. Well, thank you guys. Can I keep these?

Awesome. Well, I appreciate you guys coming down and talking about this. I'm sure a lot of people will benefit from it as well. So thanks again, guys. Thanks, Danny. Firstpersongroup.com. That's what it is? Get firstperson.com for the consumer product.

Get firstperson. Awesome. Yeah. On Instagram as well, on TikTok, that kind of thing. Okay. Awesome. Thanks again, guys. Thanks, Danny.

Appreciate it. Goodbye, world.