TrueLife - Unlocking Potential: Exploring Microdosing’s Impact on ADHD With Eline Haijen

Episode Date: September 26, 2023

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to Eline Haijen, a brilliant researcher and compassionate advocate whose work is redefining our understanding of adult ADHD. With an unshakable commitment to improving the lives of those affected by ADHD, Eline has embarked on an extraordinary journey into the realm of alternative treatments. Her pioneering efforts have brought her to the forefront of microdosing classic psychedelics, a promising avenue for addressing the often-overlooked challenges faced by adults with ADHD. In Eline Haijen, we find a visionary thinker, a dedicated advocate, and a driving force of positive change in the field of mental health. Join us as we delve into the remarkable work and insights of this trailblazing individual. One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear. Fearers through ruins maze, lights my war cry, born from the blaze.

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Seraphini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the special evening edition of the True Life podcast. Sometimes I feel so blessed to have so many things happen to me. And one amazing thing that's happened to me today is this incredible individual who is at the forefront of helping us thoroughly understand psychedelics, microdosing, reality, and the world around us. The one and only Aline Hayin, she's coming to us from Maastriac University. She's recently published some papers and she's been presenting them.

And I got to say, one of the most epic things that when I was looking into you, you is the fact that you're researching these real world situations. In so many cases today, people are afraid to touch people that may have, that may mess up their study. Oh, this person's bipolar or this person has ADHD. You know, it seems to me that a lot of these particular people have been excluded from studies for a long time. You seem to be taken the bull by the horn and saying, listen, let's figure out what's going on here. So as I'm kind of mowing around here, Elina, is there maybe a little bit of a background that I forgot to fill in right there? Maybe you can talk to people a little bit about who you are and what you got going on before we get into your study.

Yeah, okay. My name is Lien. I'm Dutch, so I'm from Maastricht and I'm currently doing my PhD here as well. I did my bachelor and my master's degree also here in Maastricht. And during my master's, I did a research master where you do it a long-term intern. as well like nine months I went abroad to Imperial College so where Alexandra from the Sunday night was currently working and then I in 2020 my previous mentor of the master Kim Kuypers she reached out to me and to offer me like a

PG position here and that is what I'm currently doing so I'm in my fourth year now so this is like the finishing up writing up phase I've been doing quite a lot of different things. My main project would be a clinical trial, so a controlled study in ADHD with microdosing. And I did that, but it was a bit more difficult to get it started and to do everything and execute the study. So I did also some other things, one of which is the naturalistic study that I published. Yeah, and that is something you mentioned. so we include different kinds of people.

And instead of a controlled study, you only, yeah, you exclude based on safety. You exclude many people with certain conditions or disorders. And in a naturalistic study, you can do that, but you don't necessarily have to do it. Because I think in the while, people still do it anyway. And it's actually really interesting to get that full picture and it says a lot. Yeah, it can help also future. studies to see if it is safe in these types of individuals or not. Yeah, I agree 100%.

It's so intriguing to me because it seems that we're seeing science take a turn towards the world of the citizen. We're seeing science sort of take this step into measuring variables that may have been immeasurable in the lab. And I think your work is part of that. Like maybe you can, like, what is the, what is a naturalistic? study. Maybe you can help me and my listeners kind of understand the difference there. Yeah. So yeah, it's an important question because I think many people do not know. So you have a naturalistic study or a design and an experimental study. And the difference, the main difference is that in the experimental study, you manipulate certain things. You manipulate

certain conditions. And in a naturalistic study, you don't. So it's more observational. So you observe what's going on anyway. So in an experimental study, study, you, for example, give people a certain substance or a placebo. That is what you're manipulating. And in a naturalistic study, for example, what we've done with the ADHD study, we just were looking for people who were about to microdose on their own initiative. So they would do it anyway, and then we would follow them over time. So that is the main difference. So in one, you don't manipulate anything, and the other one, you do manipulate certain aspects of it to, and like some have benefits and the other has some disadvantages, not both are very important, in my opinion,

because, for example, the experimental study, where you see people in a lab and you try to exclude all the other types of environmental factors that could have an influence to isolate one specific thing that you want to measure, which is not really real life, but you want to, like that is science, you want to isolate one certain thing. And in a naturalistic study, you can measure what's really going on in real life, but how can you know for sure that it's really that thing

that you are interested in? Because there's so many other things involved. So I think, in my opinion, that a combination of both of them is very valuable. And I don't really think that, I mean, some people see naturalistic studies as like something like that's easily done or doesn't mean anything. But I don't really agree with that. But maybe I'm biased because I've done a lot of naturalistic studies. But I think they're fun to do.

They're really interesting. And of course, they're also cheap, easy to do. You collect a lot of people's responses. you, like you mentioned, you don't really exclude any participants, whereas the experimental study or a controlled, placebo-controlled study even, is very expensive, very time-consuming. But, yeah, you can say more about the causal relationship between the experimental condition or manipulation that you want to investigate. So I hope that was a bit clear with it.

Yeah. Yeah. It might be a lot, but it is an important thing to realize. Because for example, my family here, when I say I do research, they don't really know much about research, and they see that I've done some, like a small period of my PG was actually testing of participants, and now I'm not testing anything, but I'm also doing online studies. And they're wondering, like, what do you do now exactly? They don't really get it.

It's not just only testing participants of the lab to do research. It's a great question and you answered it beautifully. I wholeheartedly, I've been thinking about this idea of truths and knowledge being revealed to us. And an example that I think about is in a heightened state of awareness or on a nice sunny day, you can go out into your garden and you can see the way in which the root structures are, have all this mycelium in there and it's moving the nutrients around. Like you can see real truths revealed to you in a natural setting. And sometimes it seems to me that the laboratory setting, while very important at times, it fundamentally changes the behavior of everything.

I think of that rat study where they have the two rats that would just press the bar for cocaine. But then they realize, well, maybe this rat is in a setting that's a horrible place for them. And they did another study where they had all these cool things, for the rat to do and it didn't press the bar for cocaine. So the naturalistic study to me is something that I don't think gets taken seriously enough. I think there should be more of that because you're really observing things the way they are. And I also love the idea that you're allowing people who were already taking this substance to take it in a way and then report their findings. What are some of the drawbacks though? There's got to be some drawbacks to it. Yeah, of course, you, for example,

you mainly reach participants who really want to participate in such studies, but that's kind of the same with experimental studies as well. You attract a certain type of person. But for example, a big limitation is that a lot of people drop out of naturalistic studies. So they participate in the first survey, but the following two surveys, they just stop participating. So for example, in the study we published, we started off with a sample. of 250 people, but we drop to 65. And then you don't have any information of why did those people stop. Was it because they just don't want to participate anymore?

Or is there something in the microdosing that was negatively for them? And then they saw, I'm out and stopping. But that's what that can create a certain positive bias towards microdosing in the case of our study, right? So all these people that stopped, maybe they had negative experiences, which we then now don't know anything about because they stopped participating. So you get what I mean? So that is an important negative effect.

And in an experimental study, people don't need to say what's why they stop, but you kind of then have more insight in what's really going on. You oftentimes observe then a negative reaction or you know, okay, just some personal situation or if someone doesn't want to continue anyway, just out of, I don't know, no time where. Yeah. So it is this, yeah, you don't know much about the reason of stopping. Also a big effect of, like, you don't really have a control group,

but you can create a control group, but it's more difficult. So for example, with the self-blinding microdosing study, that is a very clever way, they made participants blind themselves. So you have kind of a control group where you can compare the microdosing effect. to a placebo group. But it's difficult to find a proper control group for a naturalistic study. So I think that is the main. What is also important in the case of microdosing,

you attract people who will be microdosing on their own initiative, so they are very positive about microdosing probably, and that positive attitude can already create a certain positive effects, like a placebo effect or expectations effects. That is also something you cannot eliminate from your results. So you can find a very positive result, but you cannot know for sure if it was true to microdosing or if it was just driven by placebo or expectancy. Yeah, I can see the confirmation bias in there.

But then I can see confirmation bias in everything, from like neural feedback to like, you know, the placebo, it blows my mind sometimes to think about the level of abstraction we find ourselves in. You know, on some level, why do we need to thoroughly understand the mechanism of action? Like, we know it works. Like, we see these people getting better. And might the, the hopeful and beautiful tears of joy and the family members of the wife whose husband's no longer an asshole, might that be enough? You know, might that be something measurable? Like, I know it's kind of out there, but why don't we need to know the mechanism of action? I think for people or like patients, it doesn't really matter.

Of course, it doesn't matter at all. It works, it works, and that's good. But like, I think for science, you do want to know what's going on. And if it would be just purely driven by only placebo, then it's really important to know if that is the case, right? because why would then all these people, yeah, I mean, if it works, it works, but then, I don't know, it doesn't, you have to figure out a bit more about why does it work. You want to understand it better, I think, and especially if you want to legalize it or make some therapy out of it. You want to understand what's really going on, I think. But from, yeah, like you said, from a patient's

perspective, it doesn't really matter at all. And I think that's also very important to realize, And I'm wondering if, because now there's such a focus in psychedelic research on this aspect, right, if it's placebo or not, especially in microdosing. But I think I'm not sure if there is so much focus on it in other types of treatments like SSRIs or stimulant medication. Don't know. Then there is just a placebo group. And if it performs better than placebo, then cool, there is your result.

but here we need to disentangle it even further with the micro-dosing. Yeah, it can be tricky, but it's a fun and interesting challenge because people also get more inventive in how to blind more effectively or to lower the expectations. So it's also an interesting development and research that there is more thought going into designing proper blinding procedure, etc. Yeah, it's such a fascinating time to be alive. The promise of psychedelics, the idea that they can create real change in a short amount of time is both incredibly exciting but also dangerous on some levels, right?

Is that fair to classify it as dangerous on some levels, do you think? In what aspect, do you think it's dangerous? Yeah, so is it dangerous that people can have an experience that changes their life? Like on some level, is it is it too, does it make people too vulnerable? Does it put people in a state that allows them to, you know, do something crazy? Does it make them so suggestible that you can not only help them confront the problems in their life, but implant problems in their life. You know, I think about that when I think about integration,

I worry that maybe the person doing the integration, if they're not trained accurately, is doing more harm than good at some point in time. Like maybe they're putting the wrong wires in the wrong places, if that makes sense. Yeah, no, no, I get that. And I do share that concern. Especially because I think a lot of people hear all the positive aspects

about psychedelics. For example, there was a Netflix documentary, and it was so only positive. And I remember watching that. And it's like, oh, God, this is a bit too one-sided. And I can imagine I even had some people approaching me. And when I told them, I do research and psychedelics, and they said, oh, I've seen this Netflix documentary.

I really want to try that as well. And I try to say, well, just don't just try it. Don't do it. You have to know what you're doing before you actually get into it. And these aspects of integration, set and setting, preparation, If you are knowledgeable about these aspects, then I don't really see, of course, there is a risk still, but at least you know what you're getting yourself into. And you can know that it makes you in a suggestible state and that it's important to surround yourself in a comfortable environment and with comfortable people who look after you. So I don't know. I think if people are well informed and they're critical and don't just.

do it and try it, but really look into it for themselves. What do you want to get out of it? How do you want to get that out of it? And what do you expect from it? Do you think it's a magic fixed and then it's done? Do you actually want to integrate it and work with it? I think these aspects should be more clear to people, or at least it's, I think, their own responsibility to learn more about that.

But I think we as researchers should communicate that properly. I think that happens in articles, but maybe in podcasts or in like news articles. This should be maybe more importance. Like science communication is a completely, like, it is an aspect of a work, but it's a difficult thing to communicate things in a case. clear, understandable way for non-scientists, I guess. Yeah, it's well said. I think this brings up a very fascinating point.

Where you go to school, where you're at, and the research you're doing put you in such a unique position to help people understand their relationship with psychedelics. Because where you're at, there's, like, you could, it's somewhat legal there, right? Like in the school you're out, you're actually doing real, work with real people. Like that's, that's different than in a lot of places.

Excuse me. Maybe you could speak to that. Like, you're in a very unique position and have a really different relationship than most people. You mean to do research in this or? Well, in the Netherlands too, right? I don't know the law is there. But I went there, I went there, God, I'm going to date myself here.

I went there a long time ago. And I used to go to the coffee shops and they, there was somewhat of a legalized process. Only recently in the United States, in a few states, has it become somewhat legal. It's been underground there before. And it seems to me that you have insight into living in a place where there are some ways to consume it. You're also researching it. And you're also traveling around talking to other people about it.

So you have like this trifecta way of a relationship with it. That seems more than most people to me. Maybe you could speak to that. Yeah, it's like a gray area. I think it's, I don't know why it is, but I think in the Dutch law, it's written that psilocybin is not allowed, so it's illegal.

And there is a list of psilocybin mushrooms on this list as well, but psilocybin truffles or like that is not on that list, and that is why it's kind of a gray area that you can, get it, but it doesn't really facilitate research here in any way because we cannot just go to the coffee shop or like to the smart shop and get truffles there and use that in our experiments. So in that aspect, it doesn't help. I do think being like growing up here in the Netherlands and knowing that weeds was available and also, for example, truffles were available, I think personal experience, I don't think, or I do think it's good for them for young people to have

that available to them because then it doesn't really get too exciting. And if it is legal, then you are illegal, you want to try it and you want to experiment with it. But I think having it available is, at least I experienced it as a positive thing. And what was the other, the third aspect? I think the third aspect is finding a way let me say it this way. The work you're doing with

microdosing in ADHD it seems to me people often find themselves working with things that have affected them in the past or they know people. Do you have ADHD or do you know people in your family that have it? Or like, why did you choose that particular route?

I mean, it was a coincidence more I do don't, yeah, I don't have ADHD. I think I'm far from it. I think I'm very, I have a very organized mind and I like to work in an organized way. But I would actually want to know what it is like to have ADHD just to get some more, yeah, inside of it. Actually is, I read a lot about it. My nephew has ADHD and he's quite young. So I see something like from him and how he'd be.

behaves, but ADHD in adults is again different. It has a different profile, of course, than in children. So I'm also wondering how that is as an adult to have ADHD. But how I came to this topic, it was more coincidence. So my supervisor, Kim Kuypus, she reached out to me, and there was a company who wanted to do a controlled study with ADHD and microdosing, and they reached out to her. So there was like this project available, and she needed.

the PhD to work on it and we've been in touch quite for a long time and I wanted to get back into research and kept emailing her like is there something available and it's very difficult to find a PhD position. I wanted to have specifically something in like the lab where I'm currently working. And then she mentioned so I have something and it's, yeah, microdosing and a clinical study and that is how we got into this topic. But I Yeah, I enjoy it because it's nice to have like a really clinical aspect to it. You want, you can actually help people with the research you're doing. And I, yeah, a lot of people reach out and they ask questions about it and they want advice on it.

But yeah, we should be careful with that. We cannot advise anyone because there's not much known about microdosing with ADHD yet. But there's a lot of interest. So that's good. Is there any particular findings that you have found that we can talk about it? It seems to me so fascinating because for someone like myself who is a huge fan of psychedelics and probably has a problem with ADHD. I was about to ask.

I'm self-diagnosed ADHD. I've talked to many counselors, but I come from, I'm going to tell you something, not to impress you, but to impress upon you. I come from a family with a lot of mental illness. And so for me, psychedelics has been an incredible way for me to take a way of thinking that is super scattered and is all over the place and makes sense of it. It's been a way for me to grab this thing here and put it over here and grab this and put it over here.

And it's been very helpful to me. And so when I hear people talking about these particular studies, I want to read the findings. I want to know what they have to say because it seems to me, psychedelics help make sense of the scattered brain. And that's such a horrible way to put it. It's not a scattered brain. It's just a different way that you see and make sense of the world. So what are some of the findings that maybe you, I don't know if you can talk about them.

I don't want to put you in a position where you can't. But what are some of the findings or some things on the forefront that you're researching? Yeah, so we did one naturalistic study with ADHD. And there we looked into mainly three aspects. So if you look at ADHD, you think of inattention and hyperactivity and impulsivity, but there are more problems than just those core symptoms. They're also emotional problems like difficulties with emotion regulation. That often leads to a lot of functional impairments in adults with ADHD.

Also children, but I'm mainly focusing on adults then. So emotion regulation, sometimes empathy or that interaction between them. If you cannot regulate your own emotions, it's difficult to understand someone else's emotions as well or to interact with them. But also cognition. So you have, of course, attention, but inhibition, motivation. So where you prefer a small, immediate reward over a larger delayed reward. That's also very typical ADHD. And also time perception, so temporal processing is also something that is impaired in ADHD.

but this is also not really known. Right. You just think of inattention, hyperactivity, but there's more to it. And so in this naturalistic study, we try to measure all these different aspects. So we measured emotion regulation, the core ADHD symptoms, but also time perception performance. And you can measure this with a certain task where you hear a certain tone of a pitch for a certain duration. And then again, a tone starts and it's up to the participant to decide, okay, this second tone is just as long now as the first tone and you press the space bar.

So you are presented with a tone and you have to reproduce this interval of that first tone. And in ADHD, you can see that mostly those time intervals are underestimated. So it's more like their internal clock goes faster than an actual interval is. Is that makes sense? Yeah? Yeah, it does, totally. Okay.

And what we've seen in a controlled microdosing study with LSD in Healthy Volunteers, we saw that that particular task was done by individuals who had taken low dose of LSD, and it was shown that those intervals were over-reproduced. So let's say it was a two-second time interval, and people had to reproduce this interval, and they overestimated it now. We thought, okay, this is interesting because in Healthy Volunteers, there's an over-reproduction with microdosing, and ADHD normally has an underestimation or under-reproduction of time intervals. So we thought, okay, let's measure this aspect in people with ADHD who are

microdosing, and we can see if this underestimation will get more normal after microdosing, because this under-reproduction will then be over-reproduced, turning more into normal. performance. So that is what we did with an online task in that study. But we didn't find any improvement. But this is again, it's a naturalistic study and people had to fill in this questionnaire and this task was at the end. And it was quite an annoying task. We tried to limit the task duration to three minutes maximum, but still you're listening to quite annoying tones for three minutes. And I can imagine that some people were just let's get it over with.

But still, this is something we also then implemented in the controlled study. We have not analyzed this yet because the study is still ongoing. But I'm very curious to see if there's something there and that is actually happening in ADHD and if LSD microlosing might affect

temporal processing in ADHD. Because it's related to many things in your daily life, right? how you deal with time. And I think that is one of the most interesting things that we are looking at. It's not just inattention or hyperactivity, but we look more broadly in different domains. So also emotion regulation and cognitive performance.

And one other things, so for the emotion regulation, we also found improvements. So this is not published yet because we're still trying to find the control group to compare these effects to. But yeah, it's interesting also to test this further in a controlled study. And again, this is then like the benefit of a naturalistic study. You can get more information and you can develop further questions for experimental studies, right? So you can, you see something in real life happening and then you want to isolate this specific

effect and tested in the lab if it is actually happening also in the lab. Man, it's so awesome to me. On some level, I'm stuck on the idea of time and hyperactivity. Like what, you know, you don't think about that, but maybe someone who's hyperactive just, just understands time differently or they react in a different time. Like that makes so much more sense and it makes it so much more. palatable to think this person isn't hyperactive they're just experiencing time in a different way and what the hell is time anyway you know what I mean on some level how do you design like what goes into the design of these studies like how do you come up with ways to measure and ways to think about designing a study like this well maybe some background about this what is driven by this study so there is a there are certain models or theories like has been have been suggested for ADHD and one of them is like a triple pathway model, suggesting that certain types of ADHD symptoms, they occur

through three different types of pathways. And this is time perception. The other one is motivation, and the other one is problems with executive functioning. So inhibition. Yeah, mainly inhibition. So let's say you have a, you have a symptom that you make, mistakes in doing your homework or finishing certain tasks, right? And then there's there you can find different explanations for this behavior. So one of them is indeed time perception that you feel like there's not enough time to finish it and that is why you make careless mistakes. Another one is with motivation that you just don't want to do it. You don't want to do it properly because there's no immediate rewards in doing it properly or that you just have difficulties with

understanding the task or the homework that you're doing. So this is, yeah, this theory is trying to find explanation of these different types of ADHD symptoms. And that is what is also difficult about this disorder is that it's so different for different kind of people. And then get back to your question and how you design this, by a lot of reading, I guess, a lot of reading of the literature, collaborating. because my two supervisors, I have the best of both worlds.

So Kim Carpice is an expert in psychedelic research and microdosing and Betra Heurix. She's an expert in ADHD. So I have the, yeah, she knows a lot about like how to do tasks with ADHD. And we try to combine on this knowledge and, yeah, implemented in my PhD project. What about speech patterns? I bet you could measure effects in people's speech patterns because it seems to me that people that don't think linear have a very difficult time of speaking really calm and linear in a straight form without jumping around a little bit. You know what I mean? I bet you can measure that in some aspect, whether it's a four-minute conversation or a 30-second conversation.

You could see people stop and think about things or pause or use different words. words or filler words. That might, what is the relationship? Is there a way to, I don't know, is there a way to use language to measure certain things like that? Yeah, there are some studies, like separate from ADHD, but there are some psychedelic studies. Also, microdosing look into, they record an interview and they look at their speech. So the type of positive or negative words they use or different aspects of speech, they look

into and they analyze. But yeah, that's also an interesting suggestion to do with ADHD to see if there is an effect there and how they speak. Because it says a lot about how they think, right? Yes. Good suggestion. Bring it up in the brain form. Yeah. Well, I think both of us know that there's something that happens in the world of linguistics that is tied to psychedelics. I feel like, as if my vocabulary and my understanding of modeling reality has been greatly increased by my use of psychedelics.

And it's not just me, the people I speak to. And maybe this speaks to the idea of the ineffable. So many people on a high dose LSD or mushroom trip talk about, I had this experience, but I just can't explain it. Well, the fact that you're trying to explain it is causing you to use metaphors, to bring up the past to create this new information. and that there's something about that relationship between the ineffable speech patterns and modeling reality. And I think psychedelics is something that really brings those things together.

Have you noticed that as well? Yeah. I mean, but yeah, it's interesting that we do want to capture what it is, right, and how to put it into words. But, yeah, I think time and time people fail in doing so. but still we want to create something to, yeah, make it more touchable and not less abstract. But yeah, it's interesting. But I don't think we will ever get there in really understanding or like putting it into words, I guess. That's also the nice thing about it.

It's a mystery about it, right? It is. I have an interesting theory I want to run by you. I was playing with this idea that I've been reading a lot of Marshall McLuhan. lately and he's got this great book called the Gutenberg galaxy where he talks about typography and the printing press and how when the printing press came out it fundamentally changed the human ability to model reality it gave us these crazy concepts like exact repeatability which weren't that that didn't happen before it was all storytelling and passed down in a certain way but as you read that book you

learn that typography changed the way human sense ratios worked. It gave us typography. It gave us exact repeatability. It gave us this new way to model reality. It changed our sense ratios in a way. It seems to me that that might be happening again. When we look at things like social media,

when we look at the way we can use all of these different AI apps for images. And we can start putting together images. We put together images like we put together words. Is that you know what I mean by that? like A is a letter and a word is a letter. A is a block of a word. A word is a block of a sentence. A sentence is a block of a paragraph. A paragraph is a block of a story. A story is a block of a book. The same thing with images. You put one image together and you string it together and a stencil with other images. It seems like those two things are melding, especially with AI. We're getting images and words together and we're beginning to speak in a more robust way that allows us to thoroughly understand. meaning in conversations. And it seems like that's been lacking for a long time. What do you think about changing since ratios?

I know indeed about such an AI program or software that you put something into words and it creates something based on your words. It's really interesting. I see it coming by on Twitter quite a lot that people make a statement and they put this image or this visual with it. And it's like, oh, wow, that's very suited. And it matches. and they're like existing ones out there, I guess.

But maybe also something interesting that maybe researchers are doing is that they are collecting brain activity while people are seeing stuff, right? And then they use those brain signals later to predict. No, no, no. So people are seeing something and they're measuring brain activity. And then eventually they use those signals to predict what people are seeing. So that would be. I don't know. That's also something interesting. Maybe that will happen in the future.

Also, you know, following from this type of research, I guess, because before, maybe that wasn't as of interest. But now people are just interested in other people's experiences and what they are seeing and experiencing. So who knows? I don't know if anyone is actually doing it right now, but I've heard some brainstorms about it that this is something cool to really achieve. I've seen some people talking about neurofeedback when they're on high. I was talking to someone who was in, I forgot exactly where they were, but they were doing neurofeedback in conjunction with psychedelic therapy. And they were getting some really good results. They were able to find stress points and trauma points.

Have you been seeing some of this neurofeedback in conjunction with psychedelic therapy? No, but it's interesting, especially also neurofeedback. is being used as a type of treatment for ADHD, for example, but also for Parkinson's. And I was actually thinking of how interesting would it be that you could combine that with psychedelics. Because neurofeedback is more like learning without psychedelics, right? As a treatment is more about learning certain states of your brain. So you can regulate it better. So in terms of ADHD, you can see something on the screen and you should adapt.

your brain activity to a certain level and that that is a certain way of learning. What if you could give this person like a low dose of microdose and maybe this learning would be facilitated or not, I don't know, but maybe it works in synergy. But this is not happening anywhere as far as I know, but it is maybe something interesting for the future. Yeah, that sounds. I can see the trial already on a low dose or even a medium dose. If you could see the brain scans or if you could see the way your brain looked

where you were in a traumatic situation and you could tie that to how you felt, now you have these two different stimulus is coming in. I can see it. I know how I felt. Now I can change it. That sounds like some real paradigm shifting therapy right there. Yeah. Yeah.

And then, yeah, so I don't know. I hope it will happen at some point. Because, yeah, I know that I'm looking into ADHD and you have these existing treatments like ADHD mitigation and psychological therapy, of course, but you can see also that a lot of people look for alternative ways to treat with their symptoms, and one of which is neurofeedback. And I don't think there are many research or studies,

published on it, but yeah, I'm looking into this right now to see if it is effective for some people or not. And if it is effective, then it would be really cool to have a study maybe with an addition of a microdose. But we'll see. Also something that Alexandra mentioned on Sunday is that research is expensive and it's difficult to get funding and you have fun and cool ideas, but really to put it into practice is difficult. It's very competitive. It's a, yeah, it's not really a fun aspect of research, I would say. Yeah, there's always that. There's that part of it. Sorry to be negative right now. Not at all. I think it's, I think it's necessary. It's important to understand that. There's a lot of great ideas out there. And there's a lot of great

people that have great ideas that are trying to do great things, but there's not enough money to go around to help figure those things out in a lot of ways. And that's been a problem in science for quite a long time. And maybe that's what's led. A lot of people say that that's what's led to the current medical model of kind of, you know, making, using certain pharmaceuticals as a bandaid instead of a cure. You know what I mean by that? like this pill will help you get up and go to work every day,

but you're definitely not going to confront the reason why you feel like shit all the time. But you can feel good enough to get up and go to work. You can wake up and make yourself breakfast and be presentable and be productive, but that's about it. You know, it's interesting to think about it. Yeah. Yeah. It's also interesting indeed that people are unhappy,

then, yeah, there's been this whole period of time. where people indeed get then treatment to get more happy, but there's a reason why you're not happy. There's something going on. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, yeah, I think it's changing now with psychedelics, especially high doses that you go more through the root of the problem. It's maybe different from microdosing. I don't know yet what what's how if microdozing work and how it works. Of course, we're still investigating it, but there's definitely a different mechanism compared to high dose. of psychedelics. But yeah, indeed, it's, yeah, the more the problem, the root of the problem is more attacked,

I guess. You know what, as we're talking about this, and we think about mechanism of action. When I think about SSRIs, I think about the end result being a condition where you feel good enough to get through your day. And when I think about psychedelics mechanism of action, I think of confronting a problem. I'm wondering, do you know of any studies that like those seem like two opposite strategies or two opposite things happening in the brain? Maybe one is a flood of serotonin that allows you to get through your day. But there's another thing happening where you confront

something. The psychedelics tend to give people this third person view where they can see a difficult situation without any blame, without any of the emotion that keeps them from wanting to see it. Like maybe that's why we need to understand the mechanism of action. We need to understand like what is that? Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, there's some theories about it, right? There's, I think there's a paper called the tale of two receptors or something.

And it's by Dr. Robin Carr, Harrison and David Nutt. And they look more into this different type of effect with antidepressants and with psychedelics. Indeed, it's more like you're dampening the system with SSRIs and you're more attacking the root of the, yeah, with psychedelics. So, yeah, it's interesting. And I guess also with SSRI, for example, you need a long period of time right before there is a positive effect. So there is like some slow structural changes that are happening in your brain. with psychedelics there's immediate relief for some people. So it is a completely different mechanism.

And indeed, that's why we want to know what's going on, right? But again, it's different than from rikodosing, where you don't really know if there is something, if the root of the problem is being attacked. Or it looks more also like a slow, slower process, maybe because people do it for a period of time, right? So, yeah, a completely different mechanism, but very interesting, I would say also to me.

And I guess with these high doses, it's very obvious that it's not just a placebo effect, and that has also been, again, more difficult with microdozing. Yeah, with the high dose studies, it's more interesting to know and important to know, okay, what is this mechanism? Why does it happen the way it does? And with my coding, it's also you want to know what the mechanism is,

but still we need to find out if it's not just then placebo. So there's a bit more. And I guess that's quite difficult to investigate. It is. Because I'm wondering, is there a correlation? Like, can you take, like, if you were to look at the structural changes in large dose LSD trips. Would those correlate to microdosing brain changes

just only on a smaller level? I don't know. I know there are some studies looking into, they look at the changes in the cell after my dose of psychedelics, right? But I don't think this has happened yet with microdoses where they, yeah, I don't know. we just know based on some studies that have been done in our lab that people do show an increase in BDNF after low dose of LSD but again if you can find an elevated level of BDNF what does it say about your brain right is there some structural change you don't really know but it would be actually interesting to see such a study where they what they've done with high dose psychedelic psychedelics in like a in a cell what what about low repeated doses do you see also structural changes

i don't know yeah yeah i i know that you as a researcher you can't speculate on that kind of stuff but i can and i think that i think that definitely happens you know as someone who has experimented with microdosing i've been experimenting quite a bit lately with like fladd which is a derivative of LSD. And I was taking like 20. Sorry. It's called F-L-L-L-L-A-D. It's, yeah, it's, I like to think of it as LSD's more introspective cousin. You know, it just seems to me to have a little bit more of an introspective turn on it, which is, it's fascinating to me. Maybe, yeah, I like the introspection on it better. The experiment that I was doing on myself was I was taking for some time, like 25 mics like every day.

And it seemed at some point in time, there's clearly a tolerance, but it almost becomes like coffee. Like you do get a boost, even though there's tolerance. Like you can still feel it. But then I backed off and I moved it to like every three days. And you could definitely feel the effects

vastly superior than if you take it every day. That being said, the cognitive effects of it, there's an incredible clarity, I think, that comes with it. Now I know the 20, is probably not a microdose because you definitely feel it.

But I can imagine that it's a sliding scale. If you take a huge dose, you're going to definitely be incoherent. But the structural changes are probably very similar to the museum dose, which are probably very similar to the microdose, just on a sliding scale. I have nothing to back that up, but I'm just, this is my pure speculation there, you know, so let me share that. What do you experience then in this clarity when you,

what are the benefits that you experience? Because I'm also interested to hear from people who microdose what they experience. For me, it's seeing things in a way that makes sense. It's almost as if things are revealed to me. And I'll give you an example of the same way that I can go in my garden and I can see the flower. Here's something that I think is clarity to me. that I've noticed. And it's three things together.

One is that if I go in my garden and I can see this vine climb up a tree and I see the fruit or the flower expose itself at 247 on August 3rd, you know, in the, like there's a perfect rhythm there. And then I'll be reading a book and it'll start talking about how in your life you will see a certain sign that will,

okay, I'm not making this very clear. am I? So it seems to me that I can see patterns in a way. I can see patterns in the garden, the same way I see patterns in the book, the same way I see patterns in my life. And it makes those whether it's something I'm making up or whether it's something I'm actually seeing. I believe it helps me see patterns more clearly. And that helps me deal with my life a little bit better. It kind of helps me understand, well, there's an order here. If I can see the plant blooming there, and I just read this in the book that reminds me of that. And all of a sudden, and my life is more orderly.

Maybe there's a line there. All these things are coming together. That's a pattern. I'm bigger than this one thing. So I think that that is the clarity that I kind of see. I wish it could be more clear. No, it's interesting. I mean, it doesn't need to be more clear.

It's how you experience it, right? Right. Yeah, it's just interesting to hear also the words that you used to explain what you're experiencing. No, it's interesting. I also know that I remember being an empirical. and we were working on a micro dosing study that was in 2018 or something, that there was Amanda Fielding who wanted to really look into pattern recognition.

She said it back then already that she saw some value in measuring pattern recognition after microdosing. So it's funny that you mentioned that. Yeah. It's okay, well, if we just extrapolate out, what like think about all the geometrical images you see. Might that be a language that we're interpreting? Might the geometric images that we see help us understand different perspectives in life? You know, and it's, it brings it all the way back to the, you know, it brings it back to patterns. It brings it back to mathematics. It brings it back to language in its purist form and its patterns. The patterns you see in your garden can speak. The patterns that you have in your, that you use in your yard are probably the same

patterns you have in your life. They're probably the same patterns you have in your speech. They're probably the same patterns you have in your behavior. And all you need to do is recognize it outside to recognize it inside. And you can make changes. You can make changes by watching the way your plants grow if you understand the pattern. And you can go, hey, wait a minute, I am also being eaten alive by little bugs, you know, like the same way the bugs eat your plants, so too the little things that don't matter get inside your head and bother you. But you can get rid of them. You know, there's, there's patterns are everywhere, I think. Yeah, interesting. And in high dose, in high dose, you just see, like, you see patterns. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah, that's interesting. It's interesting. I've never, never thought of it that way. And, and also what you mentioned before about 25 microgram, not being a microdose, I think there's also something interesting that I want to discuss, because we have, there is this definition of what in microdose is and that it should be 10 to 20% of a full dose and it should not have any perceptual effects. But I think the more and more research we do and also based on these naturalistic studies, it's actually it seems that people do not really adhere to this definition. So it's, I don't, I don't know why this was formulated maybe already so early on, I guess, because people who microdose take quite a bigger dose than just in micro.

I think they do do it because they also want to feel something. And of course, if you feel something doesn't mean that it interferes with your daily activities. So I think, yeah, with research, I think it's also would be easier and nicer if we would just let go a little bit of this strict definition. and we don't really know what a microdose then is. Can we also just call it low or small doses? I would be, yeah. And also maybe what we also seen is that so many different people

respond so differently to one particular dose. So what a microdose is for someone that you don't feel anything is quite different than another person who is quite sensitive. So, yeah, it's very, individual and I think we're making, like researchers making it themselves quite difficult to like limit ourselves to this predefined definition quite early on. It's also something we, there's, for example, with publishing research, we show that people are taking higher doses than just a microdose, right? 20 to 25 micrograms of LSD.

But then you can get quite a lot of criticism, like, hey, this is not a microdose. But this is what people take. It is what happens in real life. So why don't we just investigate that? And if there is something that people do feel, is that a bad thing if it doesn't interrupt their normal functioning? This is something, I don't know, there's like a bit of a debate or interesting things going. on I would say but in general I think there's way too little research yet on micro dosing to say anything about if this is a proper microdose or not or if there

is a placebo effect or not I think there's like heartly yeah we don't know anything yet so and I yeah I'm a bit it's interesting because there seems to be such a debate all the time specifically about microdosey no it doesn't work yes it works, we don't know yet. And like, you just, yeah, it's sometimes very frustrating to me. And sometimes at conferences or something, you can feel this energy in, like, the audience, for example, that some people do believe in microdosing, or they don't. And as a researcher, it's kind of annoying because I don't really, I don't really care if it

works or not. I just want to investigate if it works or not. And at this moment, we don't know yet if it works or not. We have some evidence, what happens in healthy volunteers in a lab, and we know we have some studies who look more in naturalistic settings where there's no control group. But so far, there's not one published controlled study yet in a clinical population. And in a clinical population, you expect the best, like the most effects, right, where there's more room for improvement. So, yeah, I hope that there will be more and more studies looking into clinical populations. Like the ADHD one is one of them, but also I know in Australia there is a big trial coming up with depression and microdosing.

So that will also be very interesting. Yeah, and I hope there will be more coming up. It's fascinating to hear, I mean, it's interesting to hear the frustration. And it kind of reminds me of the debate between the particle and the wave. right like it's a particle it's a wave it's a particle it's a wave you know i don't know what this is so like when you look at a like the schrodinger's cat right like they're like is it a particle or is it a way here's a here's a here's a here's a here's a here's a pretty good joke i think it's a pretty good joke but it's something along the lines of a gentleman goes into a physics building and he says gentlemen you are among the most

intelligent people on the planet. Like what is going on with light? You know, is it, you know, is it, is it a particle? Is it a wave? What's going on? And one guy's like, it's a particle. And the other guy is like, no, it's a wave. And then the third guy says, it just depends on who we're lying to.

Like, nobody knows. Like, it doesn't, nobody knows. You know what I mean? On some level, are we, when I think about microdosing, when I think about psychedelics, it's so slippery. It's both and. Like, yeah, it totally. works. It doesn't work at all for them. You know, it's both of them. And I don't, I'm so fascinated

for the risk because I want to find ways to figure it out too. I want to know what's happening in there. But it seems like it's both and because both camps have really dug in their heels and are like, this definitely does it. You can't prove it. It's a placebo. It doesn't. It's, it's just, it's just nonsense. And other people are like, I saw my mom crying, man. I saw my mom crying for the first time. It works. You know, it's, it's, it's, I can feel your frustration. And it's, It's exciting because I want to get to the bottom of it as well. Cool. Yeah, I completely agree.

I think the research will go on and will go further. But yeah, I don't like that there is such a heavy debate all the time. And it's very also discouraging, I would say. We as researchers should work together and figuring it out and not making arguments if something works or not. think yeah yeah we are coming up on on our time and if you have more if you i think you have to go but if you have more damn it i mean i need and it's uh you got to go we have to do um we also have teaching at a university and i have teaching at some point in an hour and i need to go there

yes well i really enjoyed this this was a nice Yeah, me too. Maybe we can come back for a panel and we can have more people on and we can have more voices and try to figure out some more things. I really appreciate the work you're doing. And I want to point everybody listening to this or watching to this to the show notes where they can check out the work you've been doing, the work you're going to work on and the stuff that you've presented. But before I let you go, where can people find you and do you have anything else coming up? On LinkedIn, Twitter. I try to be active on Twitter or also we have our department has a social media platform or Twitter page and we're quite active there. We also have Instagram. Of course, yeah, you met you met Zeus. He is on our social media team. What's that's Zeus?

So we're trying to reach out to people and it's working quite well I think. So, you're working quite well, I think. I think. So yeah, you can reach me there. I'm happy to discuss things. What is coming up. I do have some online questionnaire studies still ongoing, naturalistic ones, that are not necessarily focus on psychedelics, but more on ADHD to get a better picture of ADHD and available treatments and alternative treatments. So if any of your listeners wants to participate, they can reach out to me, definitely be very helpful. Yeah, and I think that's that's kind of it. Okay, well, fair enough. Hang on one second briefly. I'm going to talk to you briefly afterwards, but I'm going to hang up with our people right now. Ladies and gentlemen, an incredible individual doing incredible work,

and for those who are paying attention, we're really living in transformative times. Times are changing in ways that are profound. We're going to look back on these days, like we look back on the late 50s and 60s. I think we're doing great work here. You're doing great work. I'm stoked for all the team over there. And that's all we got for today. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for hanging out. I hope you have a beautiful day. Aloha.