A Former CNN Producer Makes the Case for Honest Talk About Microdosing

Hello and welcome to the Marketing MadMen podcast. We've got a special edition today. You've got Nick Constantino here, and here we are with Cesar Marin. We are here with Cesar Marin, and we have an interesting topic today. Let's get right into it. Today we are talking about psychedelics and microdosing. And before anyone makes any crazy thoughts or gestures, just know that this is a huge topic right now in many different circles, academic, medicine. A lot of people are talking about this for a lot of different reasons. So let's talk about what I see first. Harvard Medicine is talking about this, and there are long-term studies about how this affects mood and depression and a lot of the issues that we have been afraid to talk about as a civilization for a long time. You know, one of the things I see so often: we talk about taking sick days, taking healthy days, making sure your body is okay. We never talk about the mind. I've been managing people, having to have the empathy towards other humans and know when they're having a bad day, and when anxiety and depression hit. And honestly, Cesar, I think you'll agree with me, we're in a bad state as a country. We are in a bad state. We've worked people to the bone. They don't process things mentally the same way. Everything's sensory overload. Everyone's trying to sell you something. So I think any place you can find to heal, even if there's a glimmer of hope, should be something that's looked at and evaluated.

You're absolutely correct, Nick. First of all, thank you for inviting me to your podcast. It's amazing that 300 million people worldwide suffer from a mental health crisis. It's something that plagues our country on a daily basis. And like you said, it's not talked about. You talk about getting sick from the flu, from any other diseases out there, but we really don't talk about the mental health issue that is gripping the whole country, right? I'm a big believer that some of this comes from the human brain living in that default mode network, where we're always living in the past, we're living in the future, and we seldom have time to live in the present. That's where a lot of this starts. That's where a lot of that mental anguish starts. And the way the economy is, the divisiveness that exists in the country, that is particularly a part of the brain that we're always living in. We're always living in that past. We're living in the future. And like you said, there have been studies that showed that psychedelic medicine has helped people with exactly this, with depression, with anxiety, with PTSD. A lot of people are managing their mental health with alcoholism or with other types of drugs.

And it's important to state, this is the difference here. We are not talking about going and taking psychedelics and wandering around town. We're talking about, conceptually, microdosing. We're talking about putting a baseline in your body that is 10 to 20 times below what the psychedelic limits are, to help you just feel better. And you take alcoholism, that's the thing. Nobody who's coping with depression has one drink, right? They always say this, right? Hey, one glass of wine won't hurt you. How many people really drink one glass of wine? You're doing those things because they alter your brain and your chemistry to numb you. That's not what we're talking about here. We are talking about microdosing.

Correct, correct. And for those of you who do not know, microdosing is the practice of using a very small amount of a psychedelic substance, a psychedelic medicine, whether it's psilocybin, which is mushrooms, or LSD or ayahuasca or DMT. There are several different plant medicines or psychedelic medicines that people are using to microdose. The idea is to use a very, very small amount of these substances on a protocol basis. So you have a protocol that's four to six weeks. The protocol that I personally use is called the Fadiman protocol, which calls for one day on, two days off. So you take a very small amount on one day, then you have two days off, which are a transition day and an integration day. In any type of psychedelic practice, that integration is probably more important than the dosage itself, because it helps you figure out what the medicine is showing you, what you're feeling, what you're sensing.

That's the looking inward. That's a looking inward phase. And one of the problems, as I understand it, is that if you microdose the same amount every day, your body naturally needs more. So giving those two days of rest and that day for introspection probably alleviates some of those concerns, because that's one of the first things this article in the Harvard journal talks about.

Correct. That is incredibly important. Integration is the most important part of this. And again, microdosing is using psychedelics in a responsible manner, right, on a protocol basis, as I said, where the body has a chance to adapt to what the medicine is doing inside of you. I'm also a big believer in intentions. Intentions are important. Intentions of why you're taking the medicine. It's not just, let me grab a handful of mushrooms and eat them and see what happens. No. I think if you have intentions, whether your intentions are I want to be a better person, I want to finish this project, I want to be more creative, I want to be more aware, I want to be more awakened to what I'm living, then you give the medicine a roadmap to where you want it to go. Then you move into that integration, where it's, what was it that I felt while the medicine was inside of me, and how can I deal with that? In my case, when I started to microdose, I was battling an addiction myself, and one of the intentions for the microdosing was to battle that addiction. I had done a lot of research before I started, sort of became an expert in microdosing before starting, and had read that with intentions it was helping people cope with and overcome addictions. So that was my main purpose when I first started to microdose. And on that first day, that dosage day, because I was more in tune with what was going on in myself and I had those intentions, the feeling was, okay, I don't need that now. I'm better than that substance that I was addicted to. Let me move forward. The next day it was more of, well, I didn't need that yesterday. Why would I need it today? And by that third day, that integration day, it was almost a sense of, why was I doing this before? Why was I letting that control my life, and not myself?

That had to be an incredibly powerful feeling, and an odd one, to have something that people look at as a negative be such a positive. But let's talk about the elephant in the room. One of the concerns always in these situations: you seem to be very self-aware. What you've admitted to and what you've acknowledged shows a sense of self-awareness. I don't think most people are self-aware and introspective enough to understand their flaws and deficiencies. That might be one of the stigmas with this. If you are not self-aware enough to know you have flaws and that you need to look inward, then what you're probably going to do is start taking a little bit, then take more and take more, and then have that become the problem. So how do you talk to people who might not have the self-awareness you do about how this can benefit them?

First of all, that's incredibly important. That self-awareness is a must. In other words, you can't go into a practice not knowing what it is that you want out of this, right? That self-awareness is first saying, realizing, I have an issue. I have an issue that I have to deal with, whether it's an addictive issue or a mental health issue.

And wouldn't you agree that a lot of the reason we have such mental health issues is because people don't acknowledge their own issues? They bottle it up, and they're taught as a society to just keep kicking it down the road, just keep pushing it, shoveling it down. So I think it's important to acknowledge that self-awareness is very important here.

It is. And that self-awareness, I'm going to be honest with you, I think comes from the heart. I think that as humans we have a tendency to lead with our minds, right? With the mind. And the mind is a very tricky double-edged sword, because the mind is the one that, as an addict, says, you know what? Just one more hand and I promise we won't gamble again. We'll stop tomorrow. Just one more drink and I promise you tomorrow we'll stop drinking.

Take it down.

Exactly. Just, you know what? Just one more. Just one more. I promise you tomorrow we'll stop. And it's not really until the heart starts to speak, until the heart says, we have to stop, this can't go on any longer, we have an issue, we have a problem that we have to deal with, that the human mind is able to say, okay, wait a minute. Maybe the heart is right. Let me at least try something. Let me at least try something different. And it's one day at a time, right, whatever our flaws are. I'm a big believer that we can never be as high as we think our highs are, and we can never be as low as we think our lows are. That's the meaning of it.

But that's the present, though. That's thinking in the present, right? Because if you're always thinking about your highest highs, you're always looking backwards, right? And if you're not acknowledging your lowest lows, there's going to be a moment that's worse. That's why I say, how you doing? Not too good, not too bad. I'm doing. I'm doing. And that's a good answer. That's not a bad answer. Hey, how are you doing? How are you feeling today? Not the best, not the worst. That's not a bad way to be, because you're living in the moment. And I think that's important. So I do want to ask you, because this is a sports station at its core: talk about Aaron Rodgers, talk about ayahuasca, because that was one that got into the media and people were like, what the hell is this maniac doing? And his darkness retreat. Do you think those kinds of people give a good name or a bad name to these kinds of things?

I think it gives it a good name, because it's obviously opening up that door when you see someone like an Aaron Rodgers, when you see someone that you look up to, or even myself, what I try to portray myself as. Here I am, in a jacket, a business owner who's a husband, who's a father, who's a son, who's a member of his community.

Showing vulnerability.

Who volunteers. Correct. And yes, I use psychedelics. I use them as a life performance enhancer. So when you have someone like Aaron Rodgers who says, you know what, I'm using this to enhance my life, to better my life as a human, to find out what my flaws are, to find out where I can be better, that's important. It's important that we see everyday people, people we look at, whether in media, whether in sports, whether they're out there, or everyday people where you can say, that's a soccer mom, that's a business owner, that's the owner of my corner store, and they're using this to better their lives. I think that's incredibly positive. So I'm a big proponent that if you are using psychedelics, and you're using them in a responsible manner, let people share your experience. Share your experience of how this has bettered and transformed you.

It's such a good way to put it, because one of the big problems in this country, I personally believe, is that your success level and your mental health are tied to your income. Because Aaron Rodgers has got a $60 million a year contract, one of the things is, what the hell does this guy have to worry about? Why is he doing this? You might look at it as, what is this guy doing? But ultimately he's showing vulnerability. He's saying he's unsure, he's got issues that he needs to overcome, and this is how he goes about them. I think there's something to be said about that, because the default mechanism is take a bunch of antidepressants, don't tell anybody about them, keep it inside, which I don't think helps the issue at all. So now that you put it in that context, I think there is something brave in showing that vulnerability. And if I'm being honest, I'd rather have anything that comes from the ground than something that's made by a pharmaceutical company and offset by the government any time. I'm just saying that. I'm throwing it out there because I think it's important that this medicine, ayahuasca, LSD, these things have been used for thousands of years, from ancient Egypt to now. These are not things that are new to this world. Peyote, you name it. These are not things that are new to this world. Mother Nature has been making these things for a long time. The nerve we have to be criticizing something that has existed. Everything else exists for a reason. The world blends for a reason. So I think that's really important. So, on that high horse that I'm going to hop off of right now, talk a little bit about yourself. Talk about CNN. Talk about leaving. Talk about what got you to this point, where this has become such a big passion point for you.

That's actually a great question, because psychedelics came into my life at a transitional part of my life. I'd never had a psychedelic experience until the age of 54, which is about six months ago. And it came at a time when I had a 25-year career at CNN. I was a sports producer there. But because of the merger, or the takeover, by Discovery, obviously it's a business. You know what I mean? Businesses have to look at the bottom line and have to look at the spreadsheets.

And those are very public things that happened at CNN. The nature of COVID, money changed, it's been consolidated, all that stuff. So you were one of many, I assume?

One of many, many people who got laid off, who were part of, again, a business decision. They were looking at spreadsheets and saying, how long has this person been here? How much do they make? How long have they been here?

How I could hire somebody for X amount of dollars to do this right out of college?

Exactly.

The project will suffer, but who the hell cares?

Exactly. It wasn't a personal thing. So it was incredible that at that same time, I had my first psychedelic experience out of recreational curiosity, like many people who have tried psychedelics for the first time.

I don't know about at 54, but good for you. Usually it's at a Phish concert, but good for you.

Exactly. And again, it was part of the past addiction. It was just a new high. It was a new type of high. And very quickly, very quickly, I realized that there was something much more than just a recreational property to this. With the first dose that I had, which was about a gram and a half of psilocybin, my receptors of life opened up. I felt like, okay, this is what my hands feel like. This is what my body feels like. This is what it feels like to breathe. I became more enthralled with what it was that happened. What was it that these psychedelics were doing inside my body that was making me feel something that I had never felt before? And that's when I started to investigate and do some research, as a good journalist, into what it is that's going on. And I started to realize that.

You were let go at the right time. You had the experience at the right time, but you also had the pedigree and the history of how to look deeper and look past it. Because let's be honest, journalism is dead. When you go on the internet and you Google something, you are not getting the journalistic view. You are getting the advertiser's view. You are getting what Google deems is enough to make them money. So that approach is dead. One of the problems, I think, is if people were to look this up on Google now, they're getting fed what Google wants to feed them. And this is not making Google the bad guy. This is how the nature of it is built. It is built on fake headlines, grabbing attention, no context. Because I started reading into some of the peer-reviewed studies, and the peer-reviewed studies and the placebo-based studies show real results. They show real, concrete results. I read a little bit about something called the expectancy principle, that with some of these things, people expect they're going to feel happier. But you know what? Screw it. If it's something that's going to make you feel happier and it's mental, that's even better. So yeah, it's unbelievable, as you talk through this, that the conversation is not happening more. And again, look, I think that background at CNN adds a sense of legitimacy, but it also helps you be able to talk about it in a way that people understand.

Exactly. And it's awesome that you said that about Googling stuff, that you're not sure what you're going to get, right? That personal experience, I think, is a lot more important than something you read, because you have both sides. And that was one of the reasons why I created the apparel company that I created, Cultivating Wisdom: so that there's apparel that people can wear to manifest that they're microdosing. And then someone can say, hey, wait a minute, your t-shirt says microdosing. Do you microdose? And you say, I do microdose. Oh, I've read about that. I've heard about that. Cultivate me with your wisdom. Tell me what your practice is. Tell me how it's going. Tell me how you feel, so that we can start these honest conversations. That is the reason the apparel company began: to create those conversations.

Start somewhere. It's got to start somewhere. And having a proud spokesperson for it, and you don't want to be preachy, but saying, hey, this has been my experience.

And that's exactly what it is. I don't pretend to be a teacher in this space. I pretend to be a leader. I pretend to lead by what my example is. And that's what I share with people. What I share with people is what my experience is.

When they ask. You're not shoving it down people's throats. If someone asks, hey, here's been my experience.

Exactly. And I go back to the same thing. Protocol and dosage are the most important part of a microdosing practice. With protocol, there are some people who have a job that's very deadline oriented, and they prefer a protocol that calls for four days on, three days off, because they have those days in the week where they really need to be creative and productive. So they'll do that protocol. Other people, like myself, prefer the one day on, two days off. There are protocols that call for two days on, two days off. Dosage wise…

Who gives that protocol, if you don't mind me asking? Because protocol makes me think doctor, and I don't think there are too many doctors having these conversations. So you read about it and you choose what's best for you? You're protocoling yourself?

Exactly.

But there is a regimen, and there is a plan, and there is a benefit for each plan laid out there.

Correct. And that's partly through education, right? Through education, seeing what protocols are out there, what people who have my type of lifestyle are using. It's a bit of self science. It's a bit of, okay, this week let me use this protocol, see how it works, see how I feel, see what I'm doing. And like I tell people, microdosing is very subperceptual. You shouldn't feel anything. If you feel anything at all, if you feel, oh, you know what, I'm feeling a little bit buzzy, I'm feeling a little bit dizzy, you took too much. Take a little bit less. The adage is you take your dose and you go about your day, you go to work, you drive your car, and then all of a sudden you look around and you go…

I have to imagine it's that effect where you don't realize you're on it, and then all of a sudden you finish the day, you felt so creative, you had all these juices flowing, and at the end of the day you're like, holy crap, that was an amazing day. That's the kind of thing.

That's why, again, journaling is also an important part of this practice. People sometimes think, oh, journaling, I have to sit there and write a whole book. But no, it's just loose notes. How I journal: in the morning I have my intentions. What are my intentions? You know what, come and have a great podcast, talk openly about what I'm doing, be more creative. Those are my intentions for today. And then at the end of the day, just write down what the highs and the lows of today were. And that's perfect. That's a barometer of, okay, you know what? As you're starting to dose, well, you know what, I really felt anxious about that situation. Maybe I can dose a little bit more and see if that could open up that situation, where I can deal with that anxiety.

Intentions is a great word, because intentions makes me think of living in the moment. Goals: future, right? What I did, what I did bad: past. Intentions is, this is my day. This is what I want to do. You're living in the moment.

Yeah, you're creating that roadmap for yourself of how you want to guide your day. And so intentions are a huge, huge part. I've had two macro journeys in my life, which again are much deeper, much more reflective situations, but they all had intentions. There were intentions for both of them. I find a lot of people go into this without intentions, and that's when they find themselves in a dark situation. My wife has a wonderful adage that she says: look, a macro dose is not going to take you to Nightmare on Elm Street. It's not going to take you to Freddy Krueger's house. It's not going to take you to Jason's house. It's going to take you to your own demons. It's going to take you to your own situation.

It takes the introspection too far.

Exactly. Things that your brain might be hiding.

Some people can handle that, and for some people confronting those demons is necessary, but in most cases that does not end well.

Exactly. But I'm a big believer that with intentions, in other words, if you know, and you just release, you just let go, you just let the brain figure it out for itself, you can have a wonderful experience. On my first macro dose, my intentions were to find out what was holding me back in the past, where there was a business that I wanted to start, but something always, always got in the way. It was always, oh, you know what? It'll probably fail. So let me stop there. One of my intentions was to find out what that was. And it took me exactly where I needed to go. It took me to some dark places in my childhood, growing up with a type of disciplinary regimen where if you did something wrong, you were disciplined for it. There were consequences for doing something wrong.

But at the same time, who knows if you would have been the person you are without having that discipline? Because one of the things I realized in hindsight is, had I been more disciplined as a child, I might have had a different life. Who knows which way? So you're not necessarily saying that was a bad thing, but you're acknowledging this has led to this, which is incredibly powerful. And it's something that I don't think people do. So let's take the microdosing out of this. Introspection, looking at yourself, being honest with yourself is ungodly important. If this is the tool that allows you to do that, then God bless it. This is a very important tool. And I want to get on my soapbox, and then I want to talk a little bit more about the industry as a whole and what's going on out there. So let me get on my soapbox, and that is, let's just talk about drugs in general. I have always found, being around people, and I've lived in cities my whole life, I've lived in Vegas, that the most interesting people with the most interesting things to say, their drugs of choice were the hallucinogens, the LSD. And I'm saying this: Steve Jobs, if you've ever read his biography, would go into work in the day, didn't wear shoes, didn't believe in medicine, but would take LSD all the time. I think that level of introspection and forcing yourself to confront demons is very different than doing some lines of cocaine and running around like a crazy person. So I've never looked down upon this. I think it is something that, if you are thoughtful about it and you're responsible, is good. And I do think that with the best musicians, from Jimi Hendrix to Santana, having the LSD in there brings out things in people that cannot be argued. And if you were going to sit here and argue this, you should have stopped listening 20 minutes ago. So that's my soapbox. I believe that we're having a conversation about the right things, right? There are always bad actors that take advantage of scenarios, but these are the kinds of things that, if you are capable of handling them, are important for people, right? I tend to lean libertarian as a whole. Let everyone do whatever the hell they want, if they are smart enough and equipped enough to handle the situation. I think this falls into that. So now I'm off my soapbox. Talk about the industry. Talk about the conversations going on. You know, we were supposed to record this a couple of weeks ago, and you were in Colombia. Talk about the global support behind this. Talk about some of the speaking engagements, talk about the people who are involved. Because I think that gives context for just how much momentum this is gaining.

It's incredible what's happened in the last four or five years, right? And again, I've only been in this for half a year, but I've seen the progress. I've seen where we're going. I've seen organizations like MAPS now having MDMA in stage 3 trials.

And real quick, these were trials that they stopped and then restarted. Back in the 60s and 70s, MDMA started as a drug for psychiatrists to prescribe, and it was for PTSD, if I remember. These are all things that were started, stopped because of the war on drugs, and restarted. It's not like this is coming out of nowhere.

No, you're absolutely correct. So now we have MAPS on the verge of offering an MDMA medicine to treat depression, to treat anxiety. So it's getting there. Now, the situation is that we're on the seesaw of psychedelics. On one side, we have big companies bringing in big money, creating synthetic psilocybin, creating more of a clinical space, creating more of a dollar sign way of doing psychedelics. But these people are opening it up.

But saying that they are the guys of safety. Saying if we can control everything, it's safer, but truly it just plugs it into the economic machine and more people make money off of it.

Exactly. That's exactly what it is. And then on the other side of the seesaw, we obviously have the holistic people saying, wait a minute, the earth has given us these plant medicines. Why do I have to go to a doctor? You know what I mean? Why do I have to go to a clinic?

And my guess is you're saying the seesaw because once it balances out, gets to that middle, and people can pick their avenue, that's when you'll get mainstream options.

That's exactly what it is. So I tell people, the more we can sit in the middle of that seesaw, right?

You mean like everything in life. If we weren't nut jobs on one side or the other side, and we all…

Maybe met in the middle, everything would be easier.

So you're saying there's no chance it's going to happen, because in this day and age right now, that's never going to happen.

But I think the consciousness is open, right? Most of the people in this space, obviously, like you said, you're going to have bad actors, you're going to have bad players in the ball game.

It's happening in Delta 8 and the endocannabinoid system. You see how many people are taking advantage of the sales, saying it's hemp. They're just giving out real weed, and people who should never be taking it are taking it and having horrible experiences.

Yeah. And again, we were just at a conference called Cannadelic in Miami, which was an amazing, amazing event.

How many people?

They had about 10,000 people total in three days. I think it was close to 600 vendors.

And what was the average person? Obviously average is a horrible word, and excuse me for saying it, because it's all ages. But talk about who the people there were. Who was there?

It's funny you asked that, because I've been having a discussion with a lot of people that you married two really separate entities. You have the cannabis space, which, like you said, has been opened up to everything possible. And then you have the psychedelic space, which is just starting to open. And to me, and this is again just my opinion, 75% of the people in the cannabis space, right, whether vendors selling product or people talking or the people attending, were there more for the recreational part, and 25% were there for the healing part. Because cannabis is a wonderful plant medicine when used with intentions, for people who are dealing with cancer, for people who are dealing with other types of anxieties. It's a really, really good medicine. But again, it's a very dangerous recreational medicine that can take you to situations where people are smoking all day long.

Any medicine is dangerous.

Correct.

Let's not single out cannabis by itself.

Correct, correct.

The opioid epidemic we're in was good intentions, but it's the same thing. Anything you put in your body, you can have an affinity to addiction. I mean anything: food, soda. Diet soda is killing more people than weed ever has. Diabetes, I hate to say it. So that's anything. And it's funny, because I always thought that when weed was legalized, most people would just stop doing it, because it was counterculture. Now it's become part of the culture. I've actually read studies that say younger generations have cut back on it; it's become so mainstream that they've cut back on it. They've even cut back on drinking because of it. So I get that part. So talk about the 25% of the people who were there for the healing. Was this business based? Did they just need help? Were they sharing their own success stories? Talk about those people.

Yeah, there were business-based people looking to use cannabis as a healing property, whether through medicine or through therapy. There's a lot of therapy going on with cannabis. But what I was saying was that in the psychedelic space, I found that 75% of the people there were more there for the healing. They were more there for the introspection. They were more there for, let's use these medicines to really help combat this mental health and emotional imbalance that we have in this country. And yes, 25% were there trying to find product to go trip out in the woods.

Yeah, but you could find that anywhere. You don't need to come to Miami to find that. Maybe you want to be around like-minded people. Maybe you have a desire to be part of a group. There's nothing wrong with that as human beings. We are people who want to be in pairs and groups. It's just the nature of it. So there's nothing wrong with that. Just acknowledging it. Yeah, I get it.

It was just interesting to see that space, where I came across someone who owned a cannabis company, and they said, look, all I want is for people to get high. I don't care about anything else. That's all I want. That's all I care about. You know what I mean? The fact that there are people using psilocybin mushrooms to get off of cannabis, I'm not a big fan, so I have no time for it. So it was this split between, again, capitalism, right? It's capitalism. If that's how you make your money, that's how you want to make your money, right? That's how it's going to be. And anything that's going to deter from that, then it's not.

I was shocked. I was shocked that the alcohol lobby didn't have picketers out there going against it, pretending like they care about it, because they don't want you to start getting on that stuff.

Exactly. So you get off the booze.

That's true. That's true. It's an unbelievable thing, man. I very much enjoyed this conversation. I think this is great. I think it's opened some eyes. And look, hopefully people understand that we're having this conversation because it needs to be had, and because this is a free country, and people should have the opportunity to do these things and talk about things. If you want to do it, do it. If you don't want to hear about it, then you don't have to hear about it. And I think that's what's great about this country. So before we go, give some advice to somebody who's saying, you know what, I need that creative juice. I need that spark. I want to get involved in microdosing. Give them advice on where to go, where to look. Talk about Cultivating Wisdom. Talk about how to start on the journey, because I think how you start is most important.

Correct. That's incredibly important. I myself am partnering up with Microdose Headquarters to do some workshops, some local workshops. We're going to have a Microdose X chapter here in Atlanta. So look for those situations. Look for your local psychedelic association. There are many cities that have psychedelic associations.

Do we have one here in Atlanta?

There is one here in Atlanta. There's one here in Atlanta. Incredibly wonderful, wonderful, wonderful people. They meet once a week, and it's just this open space. Look, we're in Georgia. Georgia is a very divided state, right?

There's Atlanta and there's Georgia.

Correct, exactly. So we're in a situation where elections here are won by points, right? It's not even close. So the fact that you have environments where you have people who are Republican, Democrat, who are pro-life, pro-choice, who are pro-gun, anti-gun, and they can come together and be humans and show this love for each other because they're humans, is a wonderful thing. To me, the most important thing is educate yourself. Educate yourself. Find out what psychedelics are, what they do, how they work, how microdosing works, why it works. You have to educate yourself and then find like-minded people. There's an incredible, wonderful subreddit group called microdosing. It's got close to a quarter of a million people. There's wonderful feedback there, and you can ask. The fact that we have this worldwide web where we can go and ask questions is really important, because the more we're educated, the more we know what the potential of the medicine is. And again, we realize what it is that we're looking for, what it is that we're trying to find in plant medicine. Cultivating Wisdom, like I said, has become a lifestyle and apparel company for people to manifest the fact that they're doing it, to manifest the fact that this is going on. I myself am booking more public speaking engagements to talk about my experience and how it's helped me, and how people can educate themselves to find betterment. The other thing I tell people, because we actually had a podcast about this, my wife and I, the other day: how do you tell your loved one that you're microdosing? And it's important to do that. In other words, if you're going to do this, have someone who knows what you're doing, right? You're sharing this. It's not like you're hiding, like you're doing something bad, something that you're not supposed to. No, you're healing yourself.

Maybe don't tell your boss right away, or maybe don't tell someone in the office right away. I'm just saying, maybe. But you need someone who's trusted, who's not going to judge.

Correct, correct. Whether it's your partner, whether it's one of your parents. And again, if you have open, honest discussions of what's going on, I think we can find ourselves in a really good situation. So it's education, education, education. Find like-minded people. And don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid to dive into the abyss, because you might land on a bed of feathers.

And if not, you're doing so little that you just don't like it. You don't do it every day.

Exactly.

This is not a life-altering experience. This is supposed to be a gradual, slow, figure-yourself-out thing. And that's ungodly important, right?

That's exactly what it is.

Because I don't want to send anybody…

Into a hole, where they're having a bad trip where the world ends.

And that's the point. If you're not listening, if you've done that, this is not what this is. This is not it.

Correct. And again, like everything, we're not advocating or promoting that anyone do anything illegal, right? You have to do your own homework. You have to find out what works, what doesn't work, find out what safe containers you have the ability to be in, so that you're in the right space and the right state of mind. It's all about set and setting. And the setting is your mind setting, your mindset of what you're going into this with. If you're going into it, like I said, with intentions, responsibly, knowing that you're looking for more balance mentally, then you could have a wonderful journey.

Yeah, I love it. I think that's a great place to end it. Well, Cesar, I appreciate it, my man. This has been the Marketing MadMen, and thank you for listening.

Thank you. That was awesome.