Hello, Keegan. Welcome to the Soul Online Self-Care podcast. It's so nice to have you here.
Today we finally managed to get together. Yes. I was saying just before we popped on
that I feel like I know you, but it's just because you move this once, I move this once,
and then I screwed up on the time. And here we are. And what I find cool about your
podcast is that we actually don't know one another. There's been no pre-prep.
You didn't send me a list of questions. And so if your community just likes raw
and authentic and organic conversations, one of two things is going to happen here.
I'm going to fall flat on my face and then you guys will have that. Or this could
also potentially be the greatest podcast I've ever recorded because it's just
going to be straight from the heart. Yeah, I don't like to really like control things
and I like letting things kind of go where they're going to go. And so I don't
think anyone will fall on their flight face if they're talking about something that they're passionate about.
So let's start with that. I would like you to tell people a little bit
about who you are, but then I really like you, I would like you to talk about your journey
because I think it's so important to share with people where you are now and where you came from
so that they could feel, you know, kind of something to relate to in their own lives.
Sure. Yeah, so basically what I do is I own it on the founder of a company called Mindful Meds.
And since 2019, we've really been on this path to develop what I consider to be
kind of the safest, the most consistent and the highest vibrational frequency mushroom
medicine that you can find anywhere in the world. And you know, it's always interesting
to share a bit of my story because, you know, really what led me here was I would say is slightly unique.
And so if you bear with me, let me share a few things about, I guess, my childhood,
just like all of our stories, you know, it all starts in childhood.
And you know, for me, I had a really cool, kind of different upbringing in the sense that
my mom and dad got divorced when I was five or separated.
And at five is when I went into grade one.
So I had one of those weird birthdays where I was actually the youngest kid in my class.
And my dad decided to go back to the UK.
And essentially abandoned my sister and I here in Canada, went back to the UK and started another family.
And so from the time I was in grade one until the year after high school, my sister and I spent every single summer
in the UK, every single one, never missed a single one.
So yeah, it was unique in that sense.
And I can look at it today in a healed way and just be so grateful for it all.
But I know as a kid, it was really challenging because my dad, he was an incredible man.
He had his masters in psychology.
He was building social programs for the underdog, people with depression and anxiety and addiction.
But the truth is, is my dad had his own shit.
He was a runaway. He was the oldest of six, ran away from home and lived on the streets of London when he was 14 years old.
And a church group actually came and saved his life and brought him in and showed him love.
And so there's so many ways that we can start this off.
But the reality is, is we had all this structure under my mom's roof.
I'm sitting at my kitchen table having this podcast and it's making me think of, you know, when I lived with my mom and my stepdad,
we had dinner on the table every single night and they came and watched my baseball games and there was so much love and structure.
And then we get on this plane and get to England.
And life was so different. My dad was much more of kind of a friend and he was adventurous and fun and, you know, dangerous and also had, you know, had a bit of a temper.
And he was a drinker. So he was an alcoholic and he drank every night.
And so as kids, you know, you develop this, you know, this way of having to navigate this world by using your senses and intuition and make, you know, you could look and make eye contact and know,
okay, dad said a few drinks, we got to navigate it this way and, but it also is this really unique period because my best man at my wedding is from England.
And my five aunts, my dad's sisters all lived in England.
And I got a chance to know that side of the family, bond with my cousins, creating incredible friendships because I went every year and I had a place to kind of escape from some of all this.
And any questions so far because that might give you an idea of how young you were when you started going to England, but I feel like it must have been very disruptive and scary for you at first.
To get thrown into that and to have to develop those survival skills that you don't, you didn't need over in the United, Canada with your, yeah, yeah.
So I feel like that's probably, it probably, it sounds like kind of wonderful and glorious in a couple of different ways, but I think it was probably quite traumatizing and scary for you when you were kids.
Yeah, I mean, honestly, it was. And I think a part of my journey was always having this almost inability to share the truth as to what was actually going on because my dad was always would always say when, you know, something happened.
Oh, my God, you cannot tell your mom this or I'm never going to see you again. And so to be honest, we've kept my sister and I've kept a lot that we've never shared.
And, and, but even, you know, my own friends that I've grown up with and I've been very blessed to have for the most part, a lot of the same friends since I was, you know, 11 years old, I'm 40 now.
But they don't really know about the side of my life. And, and so maybe, you know, a lot, maybe my mom will listen to this one day and she'll learn a few things. But the truth is is, you know, anybody that has a parent that has an addiction issue, I think the one thing that many of us have in common is, is this idea that I am never, ever going to end up like that.
And, and that was certainly the way that I looked at life was I will never be my dad. And so I worked very hard from the ages of kind of 14 to 22 to develop this life that I was proud of and then and developed this person that I was proud of.
And, but then one moment really shifted everything and I was in my 30 year university and life was going, I mean, honestly, the trajectory of my life is a 22 year old still to this day is something that,
that I look back on and I just go, wow, I was so proud of where I was at. And I wouldn't have traded my life with anybody. I was blessed to have some pretty successful people around me, athletes, models, professional sports people.
But I really loved what I was and I wouldn't have traded myself with anybody. But then I had one night that changed the trajectory of the next nine years of my life and I ended up cheating on my having a one night stand on my university girlfriend, my love at that time in my life.
And that made a huge impact on my life because I just really never saw myself as being that person and and and always held myself in this, you know, regard of, you know, not ever being that type of guy.
And then all of a sudden you go and you make this, you know, you're big. I'm sure I made lots of mistakes leading up to that. But like, this was the one mistake that kind of changed my life and my remedy to to hide from the pain that I was in and and for what I kept it a secret for an entire year.
So like I was I'm a Pisces, not a huge kind of, you know, horse gope guy, but I'm certainly a very sensitive person and I'm and so yeah, I mean, I, I, I started to kind of sip some booze in the evenings, have a vodka or two and then all of a sudden the next thing, you know, I'm sitting at the wood at the bar at the local pub while my friends are freaking studying or playing squash or
lifting weights. I'm at the bar and and it started pretty innocently, but you know, you know, I very quickly developed. I guess an addiction to alcohol.
Yeah. I think that's really what led me to this project in the end.
I do have a question. Just out of curiosity, looking back on it, you looking back on it today, would you say that you didn't have a chance because you had like an addictive personality or was it the circumstances that were weighing on you so much or a little bit of both.
Yeah, you know, it is, it is definitely both. I can tell you that generation upon generation upon generation and men in my family tree, all of them destroyed their lives from booze.
So, you know, when you look at the ingredients that create an addict, you know, the science says that is, you know, X percent is from your actual DNA and the others, the X percent is from your, your own trauma and your own experiences and my mixing bowl of life, I have a lot of both.
And so, I think it was inevitable that I that I would have struggled with addiction. I mean, looking back at my life as a 40 year old, I've been addicted to something for almost my entire life.
Yeah. Yeah.
I noticed that I'm, I shouldn't say I am a big runner because I haven't been running lately, but I've been a runner on and off my entire life.
And once I started doing like distant trail running, what I ran into was a lot of the people that did distant trail running.
And I'm not, I don't want to put this label on everybody, but a lot of them were recovering addicts and replaced it with something positive like trail running.
And I thought it was really interesting that that's the majority of the people that I was meeting. It was kind of bizarre to me at the time, but it makes sense if you really think about it, because that's, that's the way you have to be with that type of sport, you know.
Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, I think part of my challenge in life in general is that I have a really hard time with boredom.
And a lot of the time with boredom leads to these, you know, these darker places. And it's just natural this, how sensitive I am and my boredom and things like that that can lead.
I just, I just as a Monday, we're filming this or sharing this on the fifth of February.
But on the second was my three years with no boost. And thank you. I, I, you know, my story really begins, you know, so where essentially where it went from that moment of starting to drink.
I had this job that I got hired for this, so basically that happened at Christmas, the, the one night stand in the, the previous summer, I got hired to go to New York City and basically run a sales team in New York as a 23 year old.
So the time from December or January when this happened to the time that I got on this plane on, on May 1st, I had been drinking for about a hundred consecutive days.
So I showed up in New York City as a 23 year old kid, a completely and utterly unrecognizable version of who they had hired the previous year.
And nobody knew except for me that I was not it. And I was at that time, I was so very good at being able to, to mask the addiction with humor and, and comedy and poke and fun.
You know, you know, I could, I could hide it. But really internally, I was, I was falling apart and, you know, my real story with depression and anxiety started in New York City.
I remember being on top of the building that we had an apartment and, and we somehow managed, I know you're from New York is what you mentioned.
But, so we were in Long Island City and the building that we were in somehow, we, we managed to figure out how to get to the rooftop of this building.
And the way I remember it was, it was 30 stories high.
And, yeah, and we would go up and smoke cigars and drink champagne.
Never once did the security or the concierge ever come up and bust us. I have no idea how that's possible.
But it's the truth. But then one night I found myself up there on my own and I, I'll never forget it.
Leaning over having my heels clicked up, looking down 30 floors to the cement. And there was a garbage strike in New York City that summer.
So there's garbage all over the ground. And, and I was a micro second away from just ending this entire journey and just getting out of here because I was in so much pain.
And the only reason that I didn't was because my sister who is still to this day, one of the greatest heroes in my life.
She's a 13 months older than me.
She, she was getting married at the end of August and this with this was July.
And so I had decided that I was just going to make it to Kaylee's wedding, say goodbye to everybody and then I was going to end it all.
And I was going to get that first and I'm so glad I did because I met my wife at my sister's wedding.
So yeah, so I'll let you kind of pick it that if you'd like and then I'll share.
I have a couple of plots.
I have to share with you like when you were talking about going from Canada to, you know, to your dad's.
And the first thought was about your mother as a woman with three kids divorced the week ends where my kids had to go to their fathers, which wasn't pleasant.
He wasn't a pleasant person.
It was really, really unpleasant and painful. And I'm just, my first thought was about your mother, how hard.
That must have been for her. I'm sure it was probably nice for her to have some freedom every once in a while, but I feel like it was a lot harder than it was easy.
And that was my first thought. It was about your mom and I was like, oh God, I don't know if I could have survived that.
But going back to what you just talked about and I want to thank you for sharing.
And I feel like it's something so deeply personal with everybody because I feel like it's really important to share those kind of things because so many people have experienced that, but they don't talk about it.
And they don't want to talk about it.
And so thank you for sharing that.
And I am really glad that you're still here, obviously, and that you went to the wedding and you met your wife.
I think that it's kind of this, almost like this cosmic thing with the universe where the universe was like, let's give him this, you know, let's give him something, you know, tangible that he could really, really bring himself back up for.
Did it feel like that to you?
You know, I think a message to anybody that might be in that, that mind frame, I think the lesson is just to hold on.
I promise you things will get brighter. I promise you you're going to be able to get through this.
And it just showed up in a way because we didn't end up getting married until, well, we got married in 2024.
This was 2008.
Oh, yeah.
It was 14 years later.
We've been together for 13 years.
But yeah, I think she's been a huge gift in my life. She were so different in the sense that her default setting, when she wakes up in the morning is joy.
And my default setting is not.
It takes me a lot of work to get to a place to find joy.
But it's something I'm constantly searching for. But yeah, she certainly has been an angel in my life.
And I don't think I'm alive today without her to be totally honest.
My addiction carried on from my sister's wedding all the way up until September of 2016.
And so imagine I had already been drinking for a hundred days, but then it went for another eight and a half years.
Wow.
And it just escalated to the point where I was the first person at the liquor store at every single day at nine o'clock in the morning.
And if I didn't drink at certain intervals throughout the night, I'd go through a draw.
So it was about a severe and alcohol addiction. I mean, I don't know if we could get any worse to be honest.
It was just as severe as it can possibly get to the point where, you know, I think that the next step was death, right?
And so I ended up in the hospital, which is really where my intervention came from my mom and dad and Alisa, who is my wife.
I ended up getting diagnosed with type one diabetes. So my pancreas had completely stopped producing insulin.
And so I drank my way into type one diabetes.
That's crazy. I didn't know that could happen.
Yeah. And I don't think I did either.
So, but it ended up being another one of those moments that was was I can look back on it. And it was a moment that actually saved my life without that diagnosis.
There wouldn't have been an intervention without that diagnosis. My parents wouldn't have seen how severe this was because I was the master of isolation.
And I had become so good at just being able to come to family events, timing it perfectly between drinks and getting the hell out.
And not letting people see what was really happening. Although I think they had an idea, like I'm not trying to pretend like they did it.
Yeah.
But that was the moment where they could stand next to me and shed some tears and we could all cry together.
And you know, 30 days later, I went to one of what I considered to be the greatest blessings of my life was today the ability to go into rehab and start getting the help that I needed and just start to heal the pieces of me that needed to be healed.
And really, I got out of rehab in October of 2016.
And my journey out of rehab, my whole entire journey now is really wanting to help serve that community of people that I am a part of, you know, the underdog, the people with depression and anxiety and addiction.
That's who I relate to the most and that's my place in the world is being with those people. And now my role, at least I hope is to help those people.
And so, you know, my journey led to quite a successful business out of, out of rehab.
It took me a year to kind of get to that to get my confidence back.
But then some things, you know, start popping and people want to work with you again and you can start to show up in the world again.
And I always had these entrepreneurial guests, but I can never really execute the way that I ever wanted to because I was a drunk.
But my clients had no idea it was even an alcohol. It's just to give me an idea as to how good I was at masking it.
But, yeah, you know, then I started to get really bad anxiety going into my office.
And it was, I had been about three and a half years without a drink.
But now I'm having anxiety attacks just going to work.
And so that's what led to me really wanting to explore, to try to find some answers to the anxiety and the panic attacks that I was having.
And out of nowhere, I got introduced to a my college, which is a mushroom farmer.
Very quickly, I think started to shift from me.
So yeah, I am so curious about this because I do know people that have been helped tremendously by mushrooms.
And so I would love for you to like bring me into this slowly like I'm somebody who knows nothing about it, which is pretty close to the truth.
Like I don't know a lot about it.
Because I think that it's it's been helpful to a lot of people.
And I feel like it's being suppressed a little bit.
And I'm not sure why I don't know if it probably has something to do with money, obviously it always does.
But yeah, tell me about your journey into it and what you experienced when you first started experimenting with that.
Yeah, so I ended up having these anxiety attacks.
It was so bad that like now I'm starting to think, oh my God, I need to leave this business.
And what was going on in my head was, is this a sign, a universal sign that I'm out of alignment?
Am I not on the path that I was meant to be honest really what started to resonate for me?
And for the first time in a long time, I found myself at home and I started to really go down this rabbit hole of the research that was available at the time, 2019 was a very different era for mushrooms.
But unless you were a biohacker, you know, if we had a room of a hundred people today and we asked all hundred people if they had microdose in 2019, one of a hundred would put their hand up.
It's becoming a lot more mainstream today, but I can share with you this, you know, I was blown away by the research that was available.
So John Hopkins came out with some research really early on with psilocybin.
The two studies that really caught my attention were more, it wasn't microdosing.
This is more the macrodosing. So when we're talking about microdosing, we're talking about a totally subperceptual non intoxicating news.
And when I say not, you know, subperceptual, this isn't going to make the colors change.
This is going to make the music dance. This is going to be something for that for the most part, you're not going to feel in your system.
I'm going to talk about that a little bit more because there is a bit of a range when it comes to dosing.
And really, but I think, you know, why don't we just do like a bit of a one oh one, like give you some information about what this is.
So that's what microdosing is. The other side of mushrooms and what generally happens for people is they'll begin as a microdoser, develop a relationship with the medicine.
And then for a lot of people that will eventually lead to, you know, what we call a macro dose or a hero's dose or, you know, simply put a big journey, right?
This is where you transcend and and this is where you are having a full bone trap.
And so the research that I was reading in the beginning was about having these guided intentional large doses.
And one of them was for smoking sensation. So people that had been smoking for years and years and years went in with an intention to quit smoking.
And you can just do a simple Google search for the John Hopkins University studies. Don't quote me on this. I'm just kind of paraphrasing.
But the numbers were insane. I believe it was 80% 80% plus had quit smoking over a certain amount of time.
But there was also one that really stood out to me and it was very important because for anybody that's ever been around somebody that is about to pass away. This is a message for you because when I was 24 years old, my cousin, who is the same age,
he called me, so this would have been 16 years ago. And I'm so blessed to be able to have a three hour phone call right before he passed the past a month or two after that call.
But I remember the anxiety that he had about passing away and how scared he was.
So the second big study that John Hopkins did that they published was on end of life cancer patient anxiety. It was the participants. Again, it was an 80 to 90% success rate where on the other side of this very intentional guided journey.
They weren't afraid to die anymore. They weren't afraid of what was next. And think about that for a moment. You know, all of us are going to face that moment every single one of us.
And it's not something we generally speak about. But you know, I am.
You know, it's how scary it must be to be on desk door and you having children in a family in a legacy and just not knowing what was going to happen. And then you live the last pocket of your life and fear.
Yeah.
And then the second side of the mushrooms takes that fear away for people. And I want to share a resource so that everybody can go and see this because there's a documentary.
It's called DOST 2. The first one is about I began the second one is about so silent. And this woman.
My, my imagining is probably in her 60s. She had adult children. She had never used to sit before, but it was exactly this she was on desk door. And she ended up exploring civil cyber and it shows her journey with this.
It is a touching touching documentary.
And it is it is honestly, it's incredible. This woman she she survives another five or six years after the this documentary she has passed since.
But she is somebody.
You know those people that are just one of those rays of light.
And her journey is just so it's just so great to watch. And I think people will really enjoy it. I've been fascinated with the data, the research and the studies.
And so really that was the driver for me to get involved with this medicine.
Of course, you know, my mom and dad met in the late 80s when they were both working at a facility that was helping disabled development developmentally disabled adults find their path into the real world.
And they were training people with disabilities got to think this is the late 80s. Yeah, he did not exist really in in in modern society and so 20 years later.
But that's one my parents meant. I wanted to share that because it's a part of my DNA to want to help people.
And how I was raised is is who I am as a human. And I wanted to take all the pain and all the things that I've been through on my journey with addiction and other challenges.
Bring it to mindful meds, which is the is is the company that I own today.
And be able to help people with the medicine that that we we make.
And that's the mission that we've been on is it is simply this mission to want to help people that are struggling. It's a simple stuff. Yeah.
So when you got started, did you micro dose or did you do the macro the journey, the heroes journey or whatever you want to call that.
And this is a dead true story. So this my colleges gave me a bag of mushrooms. I went to Walmart. I found this little pill press.
It's the hundred capsules. I wasn't smart enough to use the pill press. So I had my buddy.
Grind up the capsules and and teach me how to basically press them.
And I was at for two weeks because there was no data and no studies that had ever been done on my could are saying that I could find.
And so I was waiting. So I got on these capsules. It's actually this product here. This is called the modern. So it was one hundred milligrams.
One one tenth of a gram.
And so generally speaking, a gram is kind of a threshold where you start to start to kind of music and colors and things start to dance a little bit off the page.
Ten times that dose.
And I was just waiting for this moment. I was waiting for this moment where things changed. And and I remember every day kind of going, OK, I didn't notice anything.
And then 13 days in. I had this undeniable thing that happened to me that was so different in any way that I'd ever problem solved anything in my life.
And they ended up writing in my journal a three page letter to my business partner.
And when I when I finished the letter, I picked up the phone and I called him and I said, Hey man, can I just get two minutes of your time uninterrupted.
And I read this letter as if I was just speaking to you now.
And it was so fluid and it was so I had confidence and conviction. I didn't stutter my words. And at the end of that letter, I hung up the phone.
And I never ever talked to him again for the rest of my life.
And he was like, yeah, he talks it. This guy was a dangerous, dangerous narcissist. And and so.
But the teaching of this was that I had figured out how to problem solve something that would have been so difficult to problem solve.
And so I circled it back to this medicine. And honestly, that moment changed my life because from there, I put together the very first micro dosing study that I had.
I had never been done in Canada. And I teamed up with a local friend of mine that had a background in psychology.
We put together a baseline questionnaire analysis. And nobody could have ever have used mushrooms previous to this.
And you know, I think there might be people that are laughing about this, but it was a citizen science project that we took as seriously as anything you could have taken.
And in the sense that I was just trying to see if my experience was replicated in other people.
Because from there, I knew I was going to build a business around it, but not until I actually saw other people's lives change.
You know, I provided this exact bottle of medicine to 40 people.
I taught everybody what I had learned over the three months leading up to that.
And I was so excited to share all the things that I've learned. I'll share a lot of that with you today.
And then we all got into a online chat forum. It was COVID. The Friday that I was supposed to do this presentation was the Friday that the world shut down.
I had to pivot. And, and long story short, we ran the same questionnaire that they started with on day one on day 42 after they had gone through the protocol.
And I hired a company to tally the data and look at the way the needle moved in these people's lives.
And it was enough to make your jaw hit the floor. We had four people come and film their testimonials.
One of the four came out and said it saved her life.
And, and that was it. That was that was how this began.
Yeah, that's really, really cool. I have, I have so many questions.
So, my first question is, well, yeah, let's talk about some of the results. So what can somebody who benefits from microdosing?
So, like, someone with anxiety, depression, whatever, who benefits from it?
And what are some of the things that you saw when you did this study? What were some of the benefits that these people experienced?
Yeah. So, I think the big ones were the needle moved in less anxiety, less reaching for the numbing agent, whatever that was for people, maybe it was cannabis.
For me, it was cannabis. For many it's sugar.
And so, it was this, it was sugar. Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I'm a sugar head. Yeah. Yeah. Me too.
And, but I'd say our client that has the most amount of success with this is simply somebody that is on this journey of wanting to become a better version of themselves.
If I could water it down to just simply that formula, if that resonates with you, you are the perfect avatar for microdosing.
And I want to explain that just a little bit to you. So, if you're somebody that isn't afraid of going to therapy, this is for you.
If you're somebody that is willing to use the other healing modalities, whether it's breathwork, yoga, meditation, walking, going out in sunlight, getting rid of some of the toxic people in your life,
if you're somebody willing to do those things in almost every single case of microdosing that I've ever seen, those people have success.
And here's why. Okay. The way that we have seen, you know, people that have depression and anxiety have seen the world work is they go to their family doctor and say, hey, I'm struggling.
I'm having this symptom in this symptom. And then they pull out the index of, I mean, there's 60 minimum 60 to 70 different SSRIs anti depression that you can choose from in the US.
I was looking at some data before this. I mean, we're talking between 30 and 50 million people in the US are on an SSRI or benzodiazepine.
It's probably higher now, because it's probably higher right now. And I want to share what I've learned about the difference between this medicine and SSRIs if you're open.
Yeah. Okay. Starting with, you know, psilocybin completely non-addictive, non-addictive.
And then there's going to be one of my questions. Now, mushrooms, they're amplifiers. Okay.
So what that means is is it is a really good idea is if you're starting a microdosing protocol to work with a therapist or at least understand that some of the emotions, some of the things, the shadows that all of us have, right, the childhood trauma is the things that make us who we are today.
A lot of that is really gently going to come to the surface so that you can process it and you can heal the root of what is causing the depression or the anxiety.
And so I want you to understand that so the root, the difference with the necessary and by the way, I have a sister that has struggled with mental health.
She's found some benefits to SSRIs. I'm a type one diabetic. So I use insulin every single day. There is a place for this stuff. And if it's working in your life, hey, honestly, fantastic.
But for almost in my experience, there's been very few people that are having a good experience on this. And the best way I can explain it is it's almost like putting a bandage over top of a bullet wound.
And it's incredible to put a lid on the pain that you're in and numb you out and freeze your emotions and and but the child with it is and the reason people can't get off of these things without an incredible amount of struggle for most.
And it's because those emotions when you take that lid off, it's going to still call it still there, right? It's like you can't run away from it. So temporarily it might be helpful. But those are the core differences between this medicine and an SSRI.
Sense the use it makes a lot of sense. I know a lot of people who take SSRIs and yes, some of them do have have had some benefits, but there's always seems to be a little bit of a cost on the other side, you know, oh, they make me tired, oh, they make me gain weight.
It's just like you said, it's like almost just like a dolling of the person and it could be and maybe they don't feel completely like themselves all the time, but then it becomes a new normal and they become used to it.
And to me, I think it's I think it's important to say that if you're benefiting from it, then yes, keep doing whatever you're doing.
But to me, it makes me a little sad to see somebody to have to like dull themselves in order to get through certain things. I think it's really beneficial if you're going through something and you just you need like a stop, you need something.
I think that it's really really good, but I I hate that some people feel like that's that's all they can hold on to, you know what I mean? And going into like the mushrooms, the microdosing.
Are any of the mushrooms addictive? Do you have that? It's it's it's not a dolling. It's a opening up more. So it's a you say it's an amplifier. So is that what it means like it's like an opening or.
Yeah, it's so and it's such a good question.
If I can just swing this to the real data, the real science, the you know, because in 2018, one of the largest drug studies ever done the world was was conducted.
And I want to clarify this in case this somehow gets chopped up in a way, we truly consider this a medicine, but study that I'm about to share with you is a drug study.
And what they were looking at was they were looking at the top most dangerous drugs in the world when it comes to harming yourself.
It was too pronged. The other side of it was how much damage it's causing to the people around you in your community.
I love this one because.
What do you think the most dangerous drug in the world is alcohol alcohol.
And it's honestly it's not even close the most dangerous drug in the world, but three million people a year are dying because of alcohol related injuries.
I was almost one of them.
And and so yeah, that's the most dangerous drug in the world.
As you go down the list. So heroines on their opiates are on there.
You start to kind of go down and down and down and then you kind of hit cannabis is on there and then you go a little lower and caffeine is on there and then you get round floor you get to ground floor zero.
The safest drug in the entire world mushrooms.
Interesting.
So I think that probably tells you a lot about why you know we can swing the conversation there too is to you know.
You know legalities and things like that, but I think before we get there let's talk about the benefits because they outweigh the risk by about a thousand times.
Yeah, a question now just to be like you know the devil's head for you.
Is the reason that it's the safest drug though have anything to do with the limited amount of studies that have to been done or it was just in this overall study that they looked at.
You know what did they look at you know what I'm saying so I.
Because I think it's going to be people there's going to be people out there that are thinking that in their head.
Let me let me lead you to the resource so we have put everything that I've shared with you is in a document that we have on our website that you can get for free 62 pages long at one time I think it was the most comprehensive microdose and guide anywhere in the world.
I do I be shocked if it still was but like I mean this document was 400 hours of our time putting it together so all the resources are in there.
Our website is mindful meds dot IO and at the bottom of the homepage you can sign up for our microdosing guide all you got to do is put your email address in there and then we send it to you.
Awesome.
Yeah but all the show notes.
Yeah so so that will lead you there but the fascinating thing about this study was it was originally done in Europe.
And it was led by this professor called Dr. David not this guy has been on the cover of McLean magazine.
He's a very famous person scientist and professor he led the charge in the study.
They replicated this study in North America and got identical results so.
Yeah and to give you an idea today Tina every single major university in the world today is studying psychedelics and mushrooms.
I know it's actually easier to find the ones that aren't to the ones that are almost every Ivy League school in the world is really deep into studying this stuff.
And you know before it went to legal in in the war on drugs in the late I believe it was the late 50 60s Richard Nixon the only reason this was illegal was because the Vietnam war was going on.
And the Americans started to wake up and realize holy shit our men are dying and coming back with all sorts of challenges LSD was becoming prevalent and people were starting to explore the hippie era.
And coming back and realizing wait this isn't right.
And it is because so that is the reason that this is this was illegal there was 3000 published studies before this became illegal.
So if you met a scientist that was born in that era and was an active scientist and you asked a panel of them a hundred of them.
And you know we're sitting in a room tell me about the biggest blunder in that in your experience in science.
It would be this it would be the fact that there was 3000 public studies that they basically pushed aside because of this war on drugs.
So that's crazy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So so moving into some of your products I would like to talk about.
So as far as safety.
So I think some of the questions that I'm thinking of that other people might be thinking of too is can you take can you micro dose when you're taking other medications is there like counter implications where you can't take mushrooms and what is the safety like long term is this something.
I know I'm very into herbalism and I know like there's many many beneficial herbs but sometimes you have to like rotate them and go on and off them.
Is that something that you need to do totally totally.
I honestly like all functional medicine should be used this way in the sense that you you find something you stick with it you got to stay consistent for 90 to 120 days.
Yeah.
I think for anything that we take it's always good to just hit the pause button take a little break and and then you reassess.
And you know for the most part we designed products for depression and anxiety PTSD OCD.
I can see some beautiful paintings behind you I'm assuming that you've got an artistic flare of some kind.
I have an artistic family.
Cool.
Yeah.
We work a lot with the creatives but interestingly on the other side of the spectrum we work a lot with the professional athletes the C suite executives and the really hustling entrepreneurs.
So people often go well how can that work for all of that.
And I heard somebody explain this as the same way getting eight hours of sleep works for everybody.
Same way you know and I just to me that was the best analogy I've ever heard.
So here's what I want to give your community every single Thursday.
I open up my entire day to coaching calls and I offer coaching calls for 15 minutes completely for free for anybody.
I'm me and my colleague Shannon so just kind of dependent depending who you resonate with.
You can book a call it costs zero dollars to have this call.
I think every single case is somewhat unique in a sense that yeah but but I will say this for the most part.
Melissa Ivan is very safe to take with SSRIs and anti-anxiety medications but where I've seen it work best is for people that are in a position with the end goal of wanting to completely come off.
And if that's your goal we can help design a pathway for you to get there in a very safe way.
It is it is something that we're probably you know I'm one of the most passionate pieces of my work is to help people get off of his SSRIs and you know the these pharmaceuticals so if you're in a place where you're looking for a path off that will help with the withdrawal symptoms not everybody experiences these but at least 50% of people that get on these have any incredibly challenging path to get off.
And and really we have you know 12 to 15 different products half of the products that we have have a micro dose level of psilocybin and the other half don't have any psilocybin in them.
So if you're looking for a product that might be helpful for depression and anxiety and you know a huge one in my life right now is women that are pre men a puzzle and men a puzzle.
I'm 40 years old it actually is the number one question that we get in our business today yeah that hits for me yeah we've developed this product with no psilocybin it's called brain bow and the active ingredient in brain bow is called affron and affron is a patented saffron extract.
It is 20 times the cost of psilocybin mushrooms luckily it doesn't reflect that in our pricing but this is a product that truly works there's 3 million people around the world that are using affron today.
If you're somebody that loves the science the data the research into know what they're taking heads to our website explore it poke around and learn.
I'm and then feel free to just book a call but I would say the first step for everybody and where I see the most success is people that go they download the guide they spend 45 minutes and they read about how our product works and all of the things.
I'm that I shared with you today and then some 62 pages but it's mostly illustrations is not really not hard document to digest.
I there's a direct correlation between people that do the research and understand what they're getting into and the success rate of people with micro no seeing in almost every case of anybody that's ever about the document they have a fruitful experience.
Yeah I have a question so is there.
Do they help with ADHD do you find do does that ever come up for you yeah big time so these two products so the one that I was speaking about the 100 milligrams.
And lions main mushrooms so I am speaking to you as a guy that has ADHD.
And I didn't get the official diagnosis until this project began because I was excuse me wandering around my kitchen at 2 o'clock in the morning I was so excited about what I was learning I just simply could not shut my brain off.
And so I went told you know did this the whole song and dance with your doctor got then did the test then got on a call with a psychologist he gave me a prescription for violence.
And to this day I've never filled that prescription what I have used in what our community use is is a very light micrnos and then a high dose of lions main mushrooms and lions main is the most studied.
New tropic in the entire world I take lines main yeah so when you stack just an ever so slightly dose of psilocybin onto the lions man you get mother nature's violence.
And it's not addictive it is not yeah I mean I've never actually framed it that way so like for you know I but the truth is is that's what I have been using as a replacement for violence.
What is violence because I don't know what that is is that it's the same as riddle in it's it's kind of modern day riddle in highly highly highly addictive.
One molecule away from method of enemies and you have an addiction and by the way every single addict in the world that I've ever come across has ADHD.
And when I went to rehab in 2016 out of the group that was there 100% of the people at 80.
Yeah that's not surprising at all.
And so yeah but the challenge with anybody that has an addiction and ADHD is you give them riddle in or violence the next thing you know they're crushing it up in the toilet stall snorting it up their nose.
That is me I'm speaking about the reason that I didn't get on it was because I was fearful that that would have happened to me.
And I don't want to see I think if I go on it five years ago I don't think I'd be here having this conversation today.
Yeah wow they're amazing amazing conversation I'm very I'm excited to go explore on your website and download the document and like look into it.
And I'm also curious about what you talked about with the I can't remember what it was called now but the the sacrum.
Brain bone so is this one here?
Yeah.
This is a product we've never seen a product that we just cannot keep in stock.
I am telling you that the reorder rate on this product has been over 70%.
If you're in consumer goods I mean you'll know that that number is just astronomical. This is a product that truly works. It took us a year to develop this product.
What is it what does it work for though like when it comes to mental courses there's so many mental health symptoms.
Yeah so honestly I'm so drawn to the studies.
Enhanced mood so just generally speaking you are in a better in you're in a better internal place so you're not as wiring and prone to.
You know the crankiness version that we all have I mean honestly and so so mood regulation and anxiety becomes less.
Rem cycle sleep goes through the roof all of the studies are on the website but I'm but those are emotional regulation is the biggest one.
It doesn't do anything that I'm aware of for the actual hormones but it's the symptoms it works on the symptoms that a lot of women experience.
South is Mother Nature's acting anxiety. And I mean honestly it is exporting across the world. The challenge with the staff on industry it's the same thing that's happening in the mushroom industry is.
It's so expensive it's so expensive that if you are getting a cheap version there's a reason that it cheap because trust me these this is not something that you can source cheaply.
Yeah it's an incredible amount of time and resources energy to grow.
But we've opted with this new to suitable which is that basically is this this pharmaceutical lab is based on Spain they've learnt how to grow this affron extract the fruits of it and then turn it into what they call affron.
It's $5,000 a kilogram and so like a pop can have an Canadian ginger ale here.
But you know you get basically this sense and it's $5,000 and so it is the most premium ingredient we've ever used this stuff works and we can ship it legally all around the world.
Nice that's nice yeah yeah when you when you're going through menopause and you're losing your estrogen you ought it's automatically triggers anxiety and if you're a person who already had like low level anxiety you're going to have like more of a reaction to that and that's what happened to me and it was very unexplainable like I started having like panic attacks that were completely like there was nothing major going on in my life I was like what what is happening.
And that's exactly what it was it was my hormones shifting and then I had to find ways to control my anxiety which is like a constant thing because when you're hormones affluxuan it's that you don't know when they're fluctuating so it's like you don't know how to keep that balance so it's a very difficult situation so being able to have.
I'm not surprised that that flies off the shelf because that if it's something that works and people are going to contain the probably stocking their bathrooms with it.
I honestly it does work it works for men as well it's something that I take every single day and then I'll stack a microdose on top of it on some days.
But I've never I've never experienced anything in in six years of doing this and millions of microdose and capsules in the marketplace today that is as effective as this product and I brought a few doesn't have any psilocybin in it.
We do have their mushrooms so lions main rodeola, bacopa, ginkgo and then methylated B12 is in here as well.
But really when it comes to giving people a breath of fresh air what you just explained is it's like almost like that feeling of just drowning and choking and just option.
And I think this is a product that can really help.
Yeah.
And the mind I'm going to try it.
I'm going to send you some and then my hope is we can get back in a call and you can tell me about your experience and.
I would love to do that I would love to do that because I some of my worst menopause symptoms are anxiety not being able to sleep now before I went through menopause I never had trouble sleeping ever like I slept fine I never understood how people like I never understood people that couldn't sleep.
And now I maybe so my sleep cycle is like one night I'll sleep for four hours then the next night maybe I'll sleep for six and I go back and forth four six four yes horrible I can't tell you how horrible it is.
So I have yeah I have to nap I have to I do like yoga knee drug meditations to get like extra rest in.
And so it's like I have to manage it constantly that's what it feels like so I would be a good test study for that.
And again this is clinically studied this isn't a rabbit out of the hat I said chat GPTing how to create a product.
The reason that I've paid for this ingredient is so that we can share the clinical studies and one of them is rem cycle sleep.
And so because you can really what it is is your nervous system with this product goes to a place of comfort and you're able to regulate your nervous system in a byproduct of that regulation is deeper more fruitful sleep.
And so we started with this product with the idea of what can we develop that would help people's nervous systems and you know a year later so now it's been kind of four months in the market so.
But a year later we brought this to the market but it was a lot to try a lot of research and a lot of resources that went into that developing this product this works.
And I hope you try it and I'm going to try whenever we wrap I'll send you my number okay and get your get your details and I'll ship some down.
Oh that would be fantastic I would love that I've one last question before you wrap it up and the question is with your products can you legally sell them everywhere or there are some limitations.
Yeah definitely definitely limitations so all of the functional products so remember I said half have still so I've in the other half don't yeah the ones that don't we can ship all around the world so that includes the one that we've just been talking about the brain bow we developed this because we wanted a product that we can ship around the world without any interruptions.
Things are moving really quick I can tell you Colorado in Washington right now I believe are the only two states that have completely decrimmed and I don't know if it's legalized but it's decrimmed what's the cities around the US have.
But the reality is is we don't really we know we don't want to mess with that right so and we developed a product that we legally could ship ship and get you to the same place.
Just as as efficiently and effectively and to be honest with you this is fifty seven dollars so Canadian which I believe is forty usd and I think for most people.
At least I hope that's that that is affordable for somebody that's going to try this for you know three months that's a but if you do start I will say give yourself a window to try it for 90 days.
Yeah you have to.
You do you do you have to because I think the fruits of it that active ingredient needs to build up in your system just like any functional medicine you see like you know your way around that world too.
Yeah.
Give it 90 days and just see where you're at I have not heard of many experiences of anybody that has done that that hasn't had.
You know a moment where they were just like oh my god I found it.
You know and just this moment of gratitude.
But if you just simply want to learn head to the website mindful meds dot IO go to the website use it as a resource get the micrano sync guide.
And book yourself a coaching call it completely free like I said every Thursday I reserve to do stuff like this and to do coaching calls and it's something to be honest with you it's the most enjoyable part of my entire job so yeah I love them.
And I'm grateful for this opportunity to come and chat and share and thank you it's been so nice to meet you.
Yeah thank you so much for coming on I think this will be helpful to a lot of people and yeah maybe we'll do another follow up episode after I test everything out and.
And we could share and go deeper into it but I really enjoyed talking to you it was a lot of fun.
That was fun yes thank you beautiful people.
Yeah.
