Right About Now with Ryan Alford - Microdosing Goes Mainstream with Cesar Marin
Episode Date: May 2, 2023Welcome to the latest episode of The Radcast, where we cover anything and everything radical. Today's guest is one of the most radical individuals we know - Cesar Marin, founder of Cultivating Wisdom ...and ex-CNN producer for 25 years.As one of Ryan’s friends, he has been following Cesar's journey closely. Cesar has a unique perspective on alternative medicines and natural sources of wellness that have historically been taboo. With many misconceptions and stigmas in this field, it's important to explore new perspectives and ideas.There is a lot of misinformation and stigma surrounding alternative medicines and natural sources of healing. But, knowing that our listeners are business executives and high-performing individuals, it's crucial to explore unconventional ways of enhancing productivity and performance. In this context, Cesar's insights will offer new perspectives that can help you stay ahead of the pack. Listen and learn!Key notes from the episode:Cesar shares his journey of discovering the potential benefits of microdosing with psychedelics in both treating addictions and enhancing performance. He also discusses his experience at CNN leading to the birth of Cultivating Wisdom. (00:16)Cesar had been working in news, covering events such as elections and natural disasters, before he was given the opportunity to produce sports. (07:03)Cesar aims to be a thought leader for his generation, particularly on the topic of psychedelics in the Hispanic community. (10:24)His career in sports was filled with exhilarating deadlines and live TV which made everyday exciting. He also shares what led to discovering his passion for cycling. (12:57)Cesar chimes in on the conversation about sports stars. How psychedelics have had quite the stigma attached to them, but new studies are showing they can be used to aid with mental health issues and enhance one's life, and microdosing. (15:50)How mother nature can provide natural remedies that can assist in battling depression, anxiety and PTSD, allowing individuals to live in the present moment. (24:21)Cesar believes that law enforcement has more important things to worry about than door-to-door searches for illegal mushrooms and points out that although psychedelics may be illegal, if they're used responsibly they can be beneficial. (30:57)Ryan and Cesar discuss the progress of psychedelics legalization. They emphasize the importance of personal testimony when it comes to destigmatizing psychedelics use. (34:30)Benefits of microdosing over focusing on the illegal aspect. (44:19)His goal is to start open conversations about overcoming mental health issues and imbalances through psychedelic medicine. (48:44)This episode is packed with energy, wisdom, and passion and we know you will get a ton of value from this.To keep up with Cesar Marin, follow him on Instagram @cultivating.wisdom and his podcast https://cultivating-wisdom.captivate.fm/listenSubscribe to our YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/c/RadicalHomeofTheRadcastIf you enjoyed this episode of The Radcast, Like, Share, and leave us a review! If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, join Ryan’s newsletter https://ryanalford.com/newsletter/ to get Ferrari level advice daily for FREE. Learn how to build a 7 figure business from your personal brand by signing up for a FREE introduction to personal branding https://ryanalford.com/personalbranding. Learn more by visiting our website at www.ryanisright.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford.
Transcript
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You're listening to the Radcast, a top 25 worldwide business podcast.
If it's radical, we cover it.
Here's your host, Ryan Alford.
Hey guys, what's up?
Welcome to the latest edition of the Radcast.
We say if it's radical, we cover it.
I don't think there's anything more radical than my guest today. He's become a good friend, trying to help one another in life and business. Cesar
Marin, founder of Cultivating Wisdom, ex-CN producer for 25 years, and a good friend of
Ryan Alford. What's up, Cesar? How are you, Ryan? Good to be with you, man. Thank you so much for
inviting me to this incredible podcast that you have. Like you said, we've created this bond that's become a wonderful part of my life and this new journey that I'm on. a lot from you. I hope you've at least learned a few
nuggets from me. And it's fun watching your journey. It's a really fascinating discussion.
We're going to be going down lots of paths today. Some surprising, I'm sure, for our listeners. I
think there's stigmas, there's misinformation, there's a lot of things out there with alternative medicines and alternative natural
sources of good that can come from things that are out there but have historically been taboo
and I think it's fascinating for our listeners especially knowing that our listeners are business
executives and hard-driving people trying to get ahead And there might be alternative ways to enhance what
they're doing. It's always great to hear new perspectives. And I couldn't think of a better
person to have, Cesar. So I do want to open it up for you, Cesar. It's a really fascinating story.
Sometimes we have people on and it's just question and answer. But I think your journey,
but I do want you to touch on the CNN and everything. But let's set the table,
Cesar, for your journey, man.
Harvard, I appreciate that, Ryan. It's been a whirlwind of the last six months. So about seven months ago, I'm in a very comfortable situation in my life, 25 years at CNN. It's a wonderful
journey. Everything's going perfect. I have a great job, a great salary, and then CNN is taken over.
It's bought by another corporation.
And obviously when that happens, these are business decisions.
Businesses say, okay, where can we cut costs?
What can we do?
And I had seen the writing on a wall a bit since I've been here for 25 years.
I make a good salary.
I'm one of those persons that potentially could be on a
spreadsheet in a boardroom meeting.
How much is number 25 make?
How long has he been here?
Maybe we just cut some of that.
So that sort of all happened in a time in my life where my curiosity
had been opened up to psychedelics.
Not so much psychedelic medicine, but my psychedelics themselves.
And this curiosity
came out of someone who had a journey with psilocybin mushrooms. And they said they felt
like a child when they had the mushrooms. And that piqued my interest. A couple of weeks later,
someone else that I was with talked to me about mushrooms. And I was like, wait a minute,
why am I getting this call? And what is it that I'm finding mushroom around every corner that I turn?
And I take my first journey and it really opens up my perceptions.
It was, it was, for those who don't know, unlike other substances,
what you get the effects out of psilocybin, out of mushrooms,
depends on how much you take, right?
There's things called microdosing, which is what I do and what my journey has become.
There's medium dosage and there's macro doses.
So depending on what you do or how much you do, it depends on
what type of experience you have.
But the first real experience I have is a bit of a medium dose and perceptions
open up like I'd never felt before from the feelings of what my
hands felt like or to what the air sensed, what the trees looked like, to what colors were. And
it really opened something up where as a journalist, I said, what just happened? What would
happen to me with this substance that this is something
I had never felt before.
And as I start to study and I start to research, I come across the fact
that psychedelics are using, they're being used as medicine, they're being
used to help depression, they're being used to help anxiety, they're being
used to help PTSD, and they're also being helped to help people manage addictions.
At the time, I was battling a bit of a cannabis addiction.
Like most humans, I'm very vulnerable.
I think vulnerability and accepting of vulnerability helps us to overcome what we're dealing with.
And I said, maybe this is a way for me to crush that addiction that I have to cannabis.
And I researched a bit more and I come across this thing called microdosing.
And what microdosing is for those who don't know is using a psychedelic
substance in a very small amount where you don't get high, it's very sub-perceptual.
And I start using this microdosing practice to overcome my addiction. And at the
same time, it opens up my neural pathways to this potential of opening up a business
and having a way for people to manifest the fact that they're microdosing using psychedelics as
performance enhancers. And that's how this whole journey of cultivating wisdom starts.
In all of this, I then do end up losing my job at CNN. I'm not losing my job. I laid off. It's
part of a business decision. And that just opens up the possibility, okay, let's take this to this
next level. Let's take this business that we've envisioned and thought up and now run with it.
envisioned and thought up and now run with it.
And it's helped open up the potential of the creativity aspect of my brain
to say, what can we do next?
Who can we align with to take this to the next step?
And that's where I am right now.
Cultivating Wisdom is four months old.
We've made incredible connections. We've made really good inroads into the psychedelic
space. And now we move forward. Now we move forward in this journey.
Man, I love it. It's fascinating. It's the last, when you and I first met and I learned about your
background, I don't know that, short of, I guess, it being, I don't know, like a lawyer or something,
a 25 year lawyer, but you just don't, you don't think you're going to hear, okay, I've been microdosing.
I was 25 years a producer at CNN.
Very straight-laced job and all that.
And then the microdosing, I think it comes back to the, I don't know,
the real aspect that's happening today with people opening their eyes to these things
and becoming more accepting of things.
But I do, Cesar, I don't want to gloss over for our audience. Talk about your 25 years of CNN
just for a minute. I know that's the past, but I think it helped like things you worked on.
What was your passion and what was the Cesar Marin of the previous 25 years up to?
I think that's a great question because it was my life. It's 25 years.
When you're doing something for 25 years, that pretty much identifies who you are. That's what
you do. That's who you are. And during these 25 years, I go into CNN as a news producer,
as someone who works on news, who works, and obviously CNN is a worldwide broadcaster.
So we start news is elections, news is earthquakes,
news is a lot of negative, plenty of stuff.
It's just part of news.
It's part of life.
It's part of the news cycle.
And five years into my CNN career,
I'm given the opportunity to produce sports.
And I'm like, wait a minute, I'm going to get paid to go to sporting events,
to read about sports and to tell stories about sports,
and still use the same production theory that I have
and the journalistic judgment to now talk about sports?
And they're like, yes, that is a possibility.
So I transitioned into this sports production world of news.
And it becomes amazing.
It becomes an incredible journey of obviously covering Olympics,
covering World Cups, covering NBA Finals, covering NFL Super Bowls,
covering Premier League, and just delving into sports.
And I was never the sports person who could tell you
who played third base for the Cubs in 1945,
but I knew that there was something about sports
that really moves people,
that there's something about sports,
especially international sports,
where you see there's countries about sports, especially international sports, where you
see there's countries where people live and die, literally, for their local teams or their
national teams, where someone's week can be, depending on how their team did, it'll depend
how their team, how their week goes, right?
So if their team wins on Sunday, the rest of their week is awesome.
Oh, yeah.
Sort of, yeah. And if their team loses, then their week goes. So if their team wins on Sunday, the rest of their week is awesome. Oh yeah. Sort of. Yeah. And if their team loses, then their week's short for fanatic for a reason.
Correct. Correct. So I really, I really tied to that as pulling in people's emotions of how sports
move them. And that's what really was fascinating about the time at sports, about producing sports, of how a result and how you presented that result
could really change someone's perspective for the week. So that became really interesting.
And the whole news factor, the whole news factor of how people consume news and how news can change
your lives, right? Whether it's political, whether it's the weather, whether
it's sports, there's something about news that's really incredibly interesting of how it creates
and molds people's thinking. And that's what was really interesting about the 25 years there at
CNN, where I wasn't in front of the camera, which now I'm doing a lot more because I am trying to be a thought leader
or becoming a thought leader for people my generation to talk about psychedelics
and also the Hispanic community to talk about psychedelics.
But not being in front of the camera and being behind the camera for all this time,
it was really fascinating to get a sense that there was a huge audience out there listening to what we
were doing and almost waiting for every word that was coming out of how their team did or analyzing
why their team lost or why the team won. So that was really interesting. That was really incredibly
interesting about the 25 years at CNN. And also, 25 years in one place helps you create these friendships and
these bonds that will go on for a long time.
Yeah.
I don't talk to these people every day, like I did before, but there's still
people that I can contact once a week.
How are you doing?
How's it going?
And they're also reaching out to me.
How are you doing?
Saw what you did, lovely.
Or at Canada, like, or wherever you were.
So that's 25 years molded me.
It was half of my lifetime. I'm 55, you know, 25 years. Yeah. It's half a lifetime. So it really
molded me. And now it's using what I've learned in the sense of production value, keeping people's
interest, keeping things short and alive that's now transitioning into this next
stage in my life. Talk to me last thing on past life before we move into the juicy stuff.
I have story or like most exciting like athlete or celebrity or anything. Did you get to cover
anyone or meet anyone or favorite story from those 25 years?
I'm sure you did a lot, but is there one that sticks out?
It's funny because with all these sports I cover, my favorite sport,
my niche sports is cycling.
Okay.
Because as a Colombian, I grew up playing soccer, right?
That was just as a Colombian, as a Latin American, soccer is part of your life.
Football. But as a childian, as a Latin American, soccer's part of your life. But I played goalkeeper.
But as a child, I loved playing goalkeeper.
And played goalkeeper as a youth.
And when I get to high school, I'm hoping to play goalkeeper on the high school team.
And the coach says, guy, you're 5'5".
Can you touch the crossbar without jumping?
And I was like, no, but I'm really good.
I'm a really good goalkeeper, and I dive, and I communicate.
And he said, it's not going to happen, guy.
The other two dudes that are trying out are like a foot taller than you are.
It's just don't waste your time.
Don't waste my time.
And it was funny because I was like, I'm not going to play then.
And at that time
the colombian cyclist started going over to europe and started doing well long story short cycling
became my passion cycle became my thing and last year a couple of people were covering the tour
to france it was the last year the tour de france and the producer that was there actually has one of my lifetime favorite heroes actually call me
facetime and all and i'm like who is this and i answer it and it's robbie niquin one of the best
sprinters cycling sprinters has ever had from australia and i'm like oh my god and he's there
at the tour de france it's the last day they're on the chambre l. And this guy's talking to me because the other producer had talked to him about myself.
And it was just one of those moments of, holy cow, wow, this guy's calling me.
This is my childhood hero or my sports hero.
Now he's calling me.
So that was definitely one moment that lived up to its hype of living in sports.
The rest were, again, there's deadlines
and there's that getting it right,
that making sure you're on top of stuff,
that's always that exhilarating on an everyday basis
in live TV, which made every day awesome.
But that moment in particular of meeting,
or having a childhood hero call me,
was like, okay, that was too much.
That's great, man i i love
hearing those stories and even you being around athletes being stars having that childlike
reaction and it's back to what you said sports being such a i don't know a moving thing for all
people and i think it's also like just the escape from all the other bullshit and yeah you're right
you're right is and go ahead it's funny though talking about
sports stars again where once you're in this a bit you realize that they're everyday people
most of them more normal just people with wives and homes and families and everything else that's
just yeah they're portrayed as these incredibly superstars or superheroes, but they're normal, everyday people.
And it was, I think, once you work in news and you break that veil of that fanhood of, oh, this is an NBA star or it's an NFL star, that they're just everyday people and I'm doing a job to cover their story.
That then you put them not on this pedestal that some fans have but then on this level of okay
they're everyday people that's right and i'm it's funny you say that i interview a lot of
celebrities and entertainers i have my wall here to my right and it's i feel that same way having
to get to know a lot of them and in my career doing marketing with nfl teams and stuff it is
like we're all human and we often put them on pedestals,
but, and they may have advantages. We all have to live life. Living life, psychedelics, man.
When we, when you and I first met, I'll be transparent. I did some mushrooms in college.
Like once I experimented, like all kids do in some way. And I remember it being, it was fun
and all that, but like, I've kind of left that life in the past, but it's been fascinating hearing about the microdosing.
And talk to me about that first time you did a medium dose or something like that.
Would you classify that as high or was it just?
Oh yeah, no, I was high.
I was definitely high.
I was there.
It was definitely high.
There was visuals.
There was perceptions of senses that weren't there before.
It definitely wasn't a macro dose, which I've done to macro dose since I started using psychedelics, which is a totally different experience. getting much more mainstream media attention as more people are using microdosing to enhance their
lives and talking about it that people's perceptions have changed right psychedelics
before until about 10 years ago again had this incredible stigma of it was people for just
tripping out and tripping balls and losing their minds or just going to raise or it's just people going crazy and as studies
start to grow and studies start to use psychedelics to treat different human
conditions that we have more people start to open up their minds and people's childhood
curiosities are poked out of, wait a minute, hold on a second. Let me go back and read that again.
Psychedelics are being used to help with depression and they're being used to help with
anxiety and PTSD. And to me, what microdosing has done was it's helped me be centered. The fact that it's sub-perceptual, the fact that it's a very small amount,
so just so people understand, a medium dose,
which is a dose where you're going to feel some sensory perceptuals,
you'll get some visuals.
That medium dose is about a gram and a half to two and a half grams of psilocybin.
I'm gonna get mushrooms.
I'm not a big fan of the word magic mushrooms, because I'm a big believer that the magic
doesn't come from the mushroom.
I could sit here and eat all the mushrooms in the world and sit here and go, okay, where
is the magic?
The magic comes from the human, right?
So it's, yeah, it's using the medicine, using the psilocybin to then open up those perceptive
neural pathways to opening up your heart to then move forward.
And what microdosing does, at least for myself, because again, I can only talk about my personal
experience, right?
Sort of everyone's experience can be different.
Everyone's what they can get out of it can be different.
So it's micro dosing to me is that practice of using a very small amount of psilocybin.
So I do 200 milligrams to 250 milligrams on a protocol that calls
for it to be one day on two days off.
So today's a dosage day.
What do you feel?
I'm going through the day and all of a sudden I go, man, my life is really good.
I have a good life.
I have a good life.
I have a wonderful wife.
My kids are healthy.
I have my own job.
I have friends.
I've made these connections.
Life is good.
Life is really good.
I don't, I'm not high.
I'm not feeling dizzy. I'm not feeling out of Life is really good. I'm not high. I'm not feeling dizzy.
I'm not feeling out of the world.
No, I'm feeling fine.
Then that second day, what they call the transition day, is the medicines.
The medicines now leave in your body.
And how do I, yesterday I had that anxiety.
How do I deal with it?
How did I deal with it yesterday?
How do I deal with it today?
And then that third day is what they call an integration day, which is you integrate
what you learned the last two days into your normal day life without having the medicine.
So that's when you're in the car and someone cuts you off in the highway, you know, you're
going to sit there and blow on the horn and shoot in the bird.
Or are you going to say, wait wait a minute i wouldn't have done
that yesterday or the day before why why am i gonna do that today that person's not gonna feel
the poison that i'm feeling in my body that rage i mean i'm feeling it they're not feeling it so
why let me just let me take a deep breath i don't know what they're going through maybe they need to
go at home their kids are sick their boss needs them to get back to i don't know so
just go ahead go ahead in other words it doesn't unless you hit my car then we're gonna have to
stop but if not then why am i gonna let these peripheral things ruin my day when they're not
feeling what i'm feeling so it's it's awesome to see that a lot of walks of life and more people are talking about psychedelic medicine and microdosing.
I'm sure that five years ago, if you were to look in LinkedIn and did a search on the hashtag psychedelics or microdosing, not much would come up.
Now, go to your LinkedIn and search in microdosing and see how much comes up and see the advances in psychedelic medicine.
And part of what I want to do, part of my mission is to show people that, hey, here's a business owner who's a father, who's a husband, who's a son, who's a member of his community, who who votes he's a normal everyday human being
and he's using psychedelics yes he's using him as a life performance enhancer he's using as a
life hack he's not using him irresponsibly he's not going off to get a high he's not drowning his
problems in it no he's using him to be a better person to be more creative to be more alert to be
more present to be more awakened of what's happening.
And it's funny.
I was listening to this podcast yesterday.
Someone said they used to tell us, don't use psychedelics because they're going to change your mind.
That's the whole purpose.
The purpose is to change your mind and not live in that rut of that constant DMT, that default mode network that
the brain is in.
They were programming us not to be awake.
Yeah.
That's what, that's the problem of everything though, is everybody thinks things happen
to them rather than for them or that they're in control.
Yeah.
And so funny hearing the, oh no, I'll change.
And it's, have you looked in the
mirror, buddy? It's like, you need to change. And I've had those talks with myself. Like you,
we all, if we're not changing, if we're not evolving, we're not growing. And that's the
point of this is I have kids and I'm sensitive to eat like marijuana and mushrooms and all that.
Not because I have, I'm really like frowned down at it,
but I just don't want it like easily in their hands.
But at this time, I'm like these things,
somehow we've made it okay for pharmaceutical drugs
that are chemically based.
And then if anything, it's abused, of course.
Yeah, you get hired, do whatever.
But we've created these categories
that are just so arbitrary,
it seems, for certain classifications. Why aren't we just figuring out? We have so many issues with
mental health and everything else. Why aren't we exhausting every avenue of things available to us?
Yeah, definitely. And here's the thing. It's sort of not to knock on modern medicine because
modern medicine is incredible. Modern medicine is amazing. But pharmaceuticals have gotten to the point where they've gotten into so many doctors' pockets that there's people potentially go to a doctor and the doctor could tell you, you know what, I don't know what you have, but I have a pill that might work.
Okay, but what is, okay, and if that one doesn't work, then maybe there's this other one that might work.
Okay, doctor, but let me ask you a question.
Are they habit forming?
Potentially.
Okay, are there side effects? Here, let me get you this sort of whole list of side effects.
I've got a scroll in the back room.
Exactly.
Okay, so wait a minute.
How about if I let Mother Nature try to heal me first?
Mother Nature put these wonderful plant medicines on the earth.
Let me at least explore that.
Let me see how that might work before I go ahead and start pumping some pharmaceutical stuff into my body.
That might work, might not work.
It might actually mask the problem, but not address the problem.
And I think that's sometimes a problem with sort of, we need to address
the mental health crisis that we're going through.
And you hit upon it, Ryan, and it's incredibly important that we have these discussions,
that we have these discussions in our families, in our communities,
that we're able to talk and say, Hey, look, we're humans.
Depression is a human condition.
Anxiety is a human condition.
PTSD, obviously that that's something different because that comes from past experiences,
but they were able to talk about this. They were, we set these buffet tables so that people come and can talk about their issues
openly and not hide them.
Because what happens is when we don't, when we hide them, that's when we have these issues.
That's when we have these situations of people going off the deep edge.
It's incredible, the mental health crisis that we're going through. And some of it, like I said, is that lack of communication, that lack of being vulnerable,
right?
We're all taught that we have to be an alpha male and we have to be an alpha female and
we have to be above everything and don't cry and don't be vulnerable and don't show
weakness.
Why?
That's the sort of, that's part of human nature. Don't cry and don't be vulnerable and don't show weakness.
Why?
That's part of humanism.
And if I show my weakness and express my weakness,
maybe someone can help me so that it's not a weakness anymore.
So that maybe I can use that weakness to make myself better,
to strengthen myself, to understand what that weakness is
and where it comes from
and address it instead of just masking it because we are going down a road that the mental health
crisis that we're going through could expand with the way things are with the economy
which is the division this that exists in the world that we have this potential of just people
suffering much more mental health crisis and if we can address the issues by talking about them
and then also poking at people's childhood curiosity that look wait hold on a second
mother nature gave me this medicine that could help me center that could help me be a little
more focused that could help me be more creative then let me see if that could help me center, that could help me be a little more focused, that could help me be more creative.
Then let me see if that might help.
Let me see if that might help close that door of thinking too much of the past.
Because let's be honest, depression comes from thinking too much in the past, right?
If I would have done this, if I would have done that, if I would have bought this house instead of that, or if I would have made this business deal
instead of that business deal,
if that's the past, it's gone.
There's nothing we can do.
We're not gonna bring it back.
So if you sit there and just think about the past,
where that brings on depression,
the ability to close that door a bit,
that wasn't gonna be anything, it's a human condition.
Or that human condition of thinking too much in the future is this really
going to happen is this it might lose my job in a year my friend got cancer am I going to get cancer
no that's just you can't live five weeks from now you have to live the present moment and when
you're able to do that when you're able to live in what we have right now,
which is the only thing that really exists, that's where the beautiful moments happen.
The past is the past. You can't really live that.
The future, that's not guaranteed.
So the only thing that's guaranteed is this exact moment that we have right now.
And if there's something, if there's a substance that Mother Nature has given us
that could help us be more present,
that could help us be more in the now, more in this moment, and more open to what's going on around us,
that might help with this mental health crisis that we're going through.
Talk to me, I think, the million-dollar question, if I'm a listener and even myself.
So we're talking about a substance that's illegal
not currently yes yeah openly two-part question one do you worry about that today I would think
they have better things to do than to be busting micro dosers but but that's a b is
are we closer?
It seems medical marijuana and certain things are further down the road than the mushrooms.
But talk to me about where that's headed and just the current situation.
Yeah.
So one, like you said, psychedelics are still a class one scheduled narcotic, right?
Yeah. class one scheduled narcotic right yeah this was a government who said it was in the 60s we can't crush the protests against the war and we can't crush
everything that's trying to hold the government accountable so let's ban the
substances of some people are using to become more awake to become more aware
yeah like you said this is still a legal substance
i grow my own medicine you can buy grow kits nowadays personal grow kits that you can grow
your own medicine at home i think that's the most beneficial way to to use psychedelic mess
especially psilocybin i know that there's a whole bunch of other psychedelics out there that people are using, whether it's LSD, whether it's ayahuasca, whether it's DMT.
I only talk about psilocybin because that's the only experience that I have.
So I have my own medicine at home.
Like you said, I think the police have too many other things to worry about and deal with to come door-to-door say hey
i heard you have a couple mushrooms in there and i mean we have a search warrant to come into your
house i don't think that's going to happen now if i was growing mushrooms and i'm driving around
with two three pounds of mushrooms delivering them or whatever that's, and that becomes more drug dealing instead of drug.
And again, anything's a drug.
It was funny.
I was hearing a podcast that someone was doing the other day and they were interviewing someone
who has a wine vineyard.
And he said, you're a drug dealer.
You're did wine is a drug.
It's a, it's just, it's a substance that puts you in a different state.
But you're not your total self.
You're a drug dealer because you grow drugs.
So, yes.
So psychedelics.
Doritos makers are pretty good, at least right at the beginning,
when I have a few Doritos or Oreos.
But maybe not later.
And afterwards, yeah.
Oh, wait a minute.
What is that?
So, yeah, no, definitely the audience needs to know that, yes,
this is still an illegal substance.
So you, but there's a lot of things that are illegal that people do.
And if you're using it to better yourself, if you're using it with intentions,
if you're using it respons better yourself if you're using it with intentions if you're using it responsibly then i don't i personally don't see an issue with it but it's
a risk you're willing to take for the benefits that you get knowing that the likelihood is very
small exactly and exactly but do you see the legislation give me your give me your you're
you're so close to this now give me your crystal crystal ball with when, let's say, a micro dosage of mushrooms might be legal.
Are we talking five years or are we still talking 10 plus?
I'd say 10 plus.
I think there's still, because let's go, let's follow the money.
Yeah.
Let's follow the money so until psilocybin is able to make money for big corporations
you think big pharma wants substances out there that's going to get people to get off of their
ssr lines of course not so and no and those people have big pockets those people have the ears of congressional lobbyists so at the
war we're on the seesaw right now the psychedelic world we're on this side of
companies like compass pathways who have patent already filed for synthetic
psilocybin who are in stage three trials of psychedelic medicine.
But these people have money.
These people have the money to also then talk to lobbies,
to also open doors to Congress.
And then on this side, we have the holistic,
I hate to use this sort of,
you and I have talked about this in discussions we've had.
The hippie community.
The hippie trippy community, exactly.
The long hair, long beard, burger socks who are saying, wait a minute.
Are you serious?
The earth grows this.
Why do I need to go to a doctor to get a prescription to then be able to microdose?
Why?
So we're on the seesaw, but there's more people standing in the middle of the seesaw,
and that's how we're getting legislations passed like it did in Oregon, like they have in Utah.
I think there's 16 states that have bills on the docket this year to either decriminalize or make the medical use of psilocybin and other psychedelics legal.
So we're going down the right pathway.
Yeah, it's just, I don't know what it takes to get it over that hump.
I don't know, like, the medical marijuana seems like it's on its way.
It's already there. It's already on its way. It's already there, but the...
It's already there.
Yeah.
It's already there.
I think it's the more people
that stand in the middle of the seesaw
and can help it not go totally one way
or the other way that's going to help it,
little by little, move.
And again, it's a perception.
It's more studies that come out,
the more mass media that talks about it
the more we can get across this hurdle like you talked about it because let's be honest
there's still a huge stigma that exists there's still a huge there's half the population if you
say psychedelics they're gonna go oh wait a minute hold on a second that's not that's way beyond i
don't know about that there's people losing their mind that's people no and that's it's that's the reason why i created the apparel brand right
someone says oh it's not trippy it's not psychedelic it's not in other words someone sees me
in this as opposed to as opposed to me wearing something tie-dye because i want to manifest the
fact that i'm using mushrooms that are helping my life.
Someone sees me with someone wearing something like that, what are they going to say?
Oh, he's a hippie.
He's a stoner.
He's out in the woods.
He's out going to Grateful Dead concerts.
And I love the Grateful Dead, so don't get me wrong.
And not that there's anything wrong with that sort of, but that's not going to help the movement get to the next step.
And that sort of, it's these people in the middle of the seesaw again,
they can wear something like this and someone can come up to them and say,
oh, you microdose? I've heard about that. I've read about that.
Cultivate me with your wisdom so that maybe I can smile like you're smiling, right?
Maybe I can find this balance in my life that I'm looking for, this
mental health and emotional balance that's missing in my life. And that's what it's going to take.
In other words, and it's little by little, right? It's poking at people's childhood curiosity. It's
people being more open to it. It's out there, more studies. It's still in diapers. Now it's still
psychedelic medicine. It's still in diapers. And again, it's still in diapers now it's still psychedelic medicine is still in diapers and again it's still that that stigma that still exists but when I
think about and I go okay I've gotten to the point that I've been able to
convince my 80 year old mother that psychedelics have transformed my life
that she is now okay William it she's seeing it in a different one she's
thinking in a different light she's okay people are using this responsibly people are using it to better than themselves then
now i get it i understand now and that's what we need and that's it but that happens like one
person at a time that happens with people like myself where people say oh wait look at him yeah
he's a normal everyday human being he's using psychedelics really okay that's interesting that's and it's
helped him overcome his anxiety of losing his job and what's gonna happen
next and it's helped him overcome his depression of yeah I could have sat
there and been depressed loves my job at 25 years at the age of 55 what do i do next what could have sat in a
puddle of depression tears but no psychedelics helped me to say okay wait a minute and that's
fine let's let's take everything into account right use the 25 years that you had at cnn
to open doors right because a 25 year career career at CNN opens up people's eyes.
Oh, wait a minute.
Okay, wait a minute.
This guy, this isn't just some guy
that had been tripping for 25 years
now all of a sudden talking about psychedelics.
This is someone who had a career
who is now using psychedelics to better himself,
to using them as a performance and answer,
to move forward in his new chapter in his life.
And he's using this responsibly.
That's, this is interesting.
So the, the question was, when do we get there?
We're getting there.
We're getting there, but it's the responsible use of psychedelics.
It's the more people talking about it, more everyday people that then we get
there, that sort of business owners.
Look, people in Silicon Valley were using microdosing to be more creative.
So the more we have these stories, the more people talk about it,
the more people are opening about what they're using and not hiding it.
Because I'm a big believer, Ryan, that if you heal and you heal in silence,
then you're missing part of the purpose.
Now, obviously, I'm not going to sit here and stand at the top of the mountain
and say, everybody, you psychedelics, you're going to change your life,
because it might not be for everybody.
But if I can talk to people and share my story of how it's changed me
and how it's helped me open up and be a better person and poke at one or two people's
childhood curiosity, that's amazing because I've had more than one person reach out to me and go,
wow, Cesar, I had no clue. Thank you. Thank you for opening up that possibility because now I'm
microdosing and I see it. I see what you were talking about. I see what
you were manifesting, this sort of sense of being present and being aware and saying, you know what,
that before I had that issue or that underlying, whether addiction or condition that I had,
then now I can look at it in a different way. I can look at it from the outside world of saying,
then now I can look at it in a different way.
I can look at it from the outside world of saying,
oh, wait a minute, do I really need that in my life anymore?
Oh, that depression, how did I, how can I,
instead of living in that depression,
being on the outside and say,
okay, what is it that's making me feel depressed?
What is it that's making me feel anxious?
And that's, to me, that's what psychedelic medicine has done to me. It's helped me open up that consciousness, that consciousness of why am I feeling this way? Why am I feeling that anxiety?
And instead of continuing that, I'm anxious, and then what's going to happen? And then this is
going to happen, and then it's not going to, I'm going to fail, and it's going to be horrible.
Instead of going, okay, wait a minute. Why am I feeling this
way? Let me figure this out. Let me, I'm not the first person that's feeling this. I'm not the
first person to start a business. I'm not the first person to be an entrepreneur at 55. Let me
take a deep breath. Let me take accountability for what I have and let me go from there. And that's,
I'm hoping that psychedelic
medicine can do that to other people. And then other people can say, this is why I am, this is
how it's transformed me. And this is why potentially it might be something that you should look at.
I love it, man. I think we could talk for two hours about this. I have other questions. I think
maybe we'll have to have a part two about,
I think it's a positioning issue.
Obviously it's illegal, but that mind goes out in marketing.
Ingredient marketing works when the ingredient isn't polarizing.
So it needs to be about the benefits and not the ingredient.
Correct.
Or even, I might even go down that road with the word microdosing,
even though that's what it is.
It helps you take control of the voice in your head.
That's exactly what it does.
You hear it right on the head.
I would be marketing that.
And mood, creativity increase, mood increase, and taking control of that voice.
Those need to lead the discussion.
And then what if I told you,
what if I could told you, you could take control of the voice in your head? What if I told you, you could boost your mood? What if I told you it was a hundred percent natural? What if I told you
that it's illegal? Would you, would that make any sense to you? So see the commercial.
Yeah, no, you're right. You're right. And you're absolutely and you're absolutely correct and guide i got a lot of that from discussions you and i had where we talked about
the moment if psychedelics is the first word that comes out of your mouth you're gonna get a lot
you're gonna turn a lot of people off a lot of people gonna change the channel a lot of people
gonna go that's not for me a lot of people and that came to me from a lot of people are going to change the channel. A lot of people are going to go, that's not for me. A lot of people, and that came to me from a lot of discussions you and I had.
That it was like, okay, the first word then needs to be transformation.
Yeah, because you're playing defense.
If you start with psychedelics, you're playing defense from the get-go.
And you can't have, it's not that you're being deceptive but you don't if you're on defense the
entire time then we're not having a productive conversation about it and like you said you're
you're already turning people off people are either rolling their eyes or they go you know
let me check something else on my phone but once you say hey how about if i could tell you that you
could turn off the voice in your head how about if i could tell you that you could turn off the voice in your head
how about if i could tell you that you can help close those doors to anxiety and depression
how about if i could talk to you about overcoming an addiction that was controlling my life and how
i did it if you use those as your entry point and then your selling point and then you say this is how i did
it yeah people are like oh wait hold on a second because once the moment that you say oh i use
psychedelics people go that's not me yeah the moment you say i suffered depression people go
so do i yeah exactly oh i've dealt with anxiety oh, I've dealt with anxiety. Oh, wow. I've dealt with anxiety.
I had an addiction that was crippling me.
Wow.
I sometimes feel that way.
Once people have that sense that he's like me, he feels what I'm feeling.
He's going through what I'm going.
How did he change?
Oh, wait a minute.
He did it through psychedelic medicine.
Wow.
How does that work?
How does, tell me more, tell me more.
I did it.
So you're right, Ryan.
It's it's especially with this subject, especially with this subject, it has to
be openness, it has to be showing vulnerability, but it, but it has to be,
I suffer what you suffer.
Yeah.
I deal with what you deal with.
And this is how I was able to overcome that, or this is how I
was able to keep that in check.
So you're right.
It's very smart.
It's a smart way to look at this and to sell this.
And if psychedelic medicine is to move forward, that's the way it has to be
presented, it has to be presented as the potential change stuff
that you haven't been able to change in your life.
And then this is how it was done.
Where can everybody keep up with you and Cultivating Wisdom?
What are the channels?
Yeah, Instagram is the biggest platform that I run on, cultivating.wisdom.
What I try to do is share my practice, share some
of the wisdom that I've gained in psychedelic medicine. So cultivating.wisdom on Instagram
is a great place. There's from there, you can find a link tree that has the LinkedIn. If you
want to have me speak at one of your events to talk about mental health balance.
And there's other places.
It's sort of, again, because nowadays everyone can have five of their own channels, right?
So we're on TikTok with a little bit more the hipper audience.
We have a YouTube channel that has some other stuff that we do and more in-depth
things that we're doing, but definitely cultivating.wisdom on Instagram is a good
place to start because you could find a link tree in there in the bio to find other stuff.
Like I said, cultivatingwisdom.net is the apparel store, which is the apparel branch
of cultivating wisdom so that the idea is that if you're microdosing that you wear something
like this and you open up these conversations you poke at people's childhood curiosities
and again it's about this discussion it's about how these discussions it's about being open it's
about if you're microdosing share with other people share that you have a dinner invite people
over and say hey come on over and let's. It's these open conversations that then people can say, you know what?
I sometimes I'm depressed.
I sometimes I'm anxious.
I'm sometimes have this mental imbalance that I'm dealing with that
maybe this might be able to help.
So it's these conversation openers that I think that that are going to be
important for us moving forward to deal with this mental health imbalance that we're all suffering.
Cesar, really appreciate it, man.
Everybody needs to go check you out, follow you.
You're very approachable.
I know once they get to know you, they'll love you and appreciate your perspective.
So thanks so much for coming on the show, man.
No, Ryan, again, I appreciate you incredibly.
You opened up my eyes
to a lot of things in the business world. So I'm incredibly grateful for you. I'm very honored that
you're in my circle and humbled that you're in my circle because again, I look up to you for what
you've done with your personal brand. I've looked up to you at how you're like me, you're a father who your most important title in life is not CEO.
It's not entrepreneur. It's not, I have all these businesses. It's father. That is the most important
label that you have. And I feel the same way. So I'm glad that we're both on that pathway. And
again, I appreciate you. I appreciate you. Thank you for having me on your podcast. Thank you for
the audience to listening all the way through. And again, like Ryan said, I'm there. If anyone has
questions or anything, please reach out. I'm more than happy to answer questions.
Hey guys, you can find us at the radcast.com. Search for microdosing. You'll actually find all
the highlight clips and the full episode from today. You know where to find me at Ryan Offer
on all the platforms. We'll see you next time on the radcast.
To listen or watch full episodes,
visit us on the web at the radcast.com or follow us on social media at our Instagram account,
the.rad.cast or at Ryan Alford.
Stay radical.