Microdosing experimentation - Part I

Hello! Many of you on instagram were curious (I would be) so I’ve decided I will document my experimentation with microdosing psilocybin here on the blog. I will start by saying I am currently in The Netherlands where truffles are legal and you can purchase them at a shop or online.

I decided to purchase from an online company called “Earth Resonance,” I was drawn to their earthy wellness vibe and the amount of concrete information they provide. They also send you a 30 page ebook with meditations, breathwork, and ways to monitor your progress over the 30 days. I don’t take this sort of thing lightly so it was nice to have some guidelines and framework from a company focused of wellbeing and self development.

As for why I wanted to do the 30 day micro dose experiment, I cannot give you a short answer. I experimented with psychedelics when I was a teenager, and although my experiences were almost always quite transformational it was still for recreational purposes. I have a lot of reverence for mind altering /expanding substances now, and to be quite frank a bit of fear, so, from more or less now until then it wasn’t something I was up for. I had been hearing a couple of people around me in different circles mentioning them, and then I had a dream where I was full on tripping. This is usually how something starts for me. I woke up one Saturday morning after some pretty wild and lovely dreams and something had changed. It was like I got a message while sleeping that this was the medicine I now needed. I asked my husband if he wanted to do some mushrooms with me (he said no.) looked up a shop I could buy them at, and walked to go pick them up. I was definitely nervous but the woman at the shop reassured me as long as I, 1. took them on an empty stomach 2. Didn’t drink or smoke on them 3. Was in either my apartment or nature 4. Went into it with openness and without fear I wouldn’t have a problem. I followed her instructions and I also set an intention. “I am open to receiving whatever I need from this.” It felt like 6 hours of intense healing for my body, mind and soul. It was really what I imagine meditating every day for an hour your whole life would do to the mind. I received some downloads, but it wasn’t anything I didn’t already know inside of me. It was a remembering. It also made me question why I was so fearful to begin with. What was I so scared of?

Something that I’ve been personally healing is a stubborn bout of eczema and this is, I think, the ultimate reason for my decision to embark on this psychedelic journey. I’ve been in acupuncture with a wonderful healer the past two months and have gotten to a point in my treatment where my condition is pretty stable. I cannot tell you what causes my eczema exactly, but that it has come and gone in varying degrees since I was a very young child. I can tell you that when you have a condition like this, you do and try everything you possibly can to get to the root cause. Especially, once you learn that western medicine is more or less what a bandaid is to a bomb. I can write more about my current eczema protocol in a separate blog at some point.

I know you may be thinking “how tf would mushrooms help eczema?” Well during my earlier experience I had this breakthrough where I understood my skin was not my enemy. It was simply protecting me from something that was disrupting the balance of my body. I also experienced no irritation or itchiness the whole 6 hours. If you don’t know eczema is linked to an immune disorder, which means my immune system sends signals for my skin to attack itself (it is basically asthma for the skin). I also got the message that there is no “good” or “bad” in terms of health, relieving my mind of the sharp emotion of fear that I was experiencing daily due to my eczema. Additionally, I had read some articles about how psilocybin can reduce inflammation.

Anyways, after the trip and revelations I was curious. What was going on with my mind during that time? Is it really dangerous? How can I access that state more often? I began to research and things like “neuroplasticity” came up.

Neuroplasticity is the ability of the brain to adapt to changes in an individual's environment by forming new neural connections over time. Neuroplasticity explains how the human brain is able to adapt, master new skills, store memories and information and even recover after a traumatic brain injury.

Psychedelics and micro-dosing seem to increase the neuroplasticity of the brain making it easier to create better habits, get out of old patterned ways of thinking, AND increase healing time.

I’ve had been doing a little bit of research on Joe Dispenza prior to all of this, and a lot of his theory deals with this concept of the minds ability to heal itself and the body in this way.

So, ultimately, I think that maybe micro-dosing could be another tool in my toolbox.

My precautions:

• Mentally, I am in a good place, but I do have anxious tendencies. I have a bit of fear that the microdosing could increase or aggravate my anxiety.

• Could it maybe make my eczema worse? I am very careful about what I ingest due to this constant concern.

• Since I am already in a pretty chill place mentally could I be opening myself up for problems? Some research points to the use of psychedelics to psychosis. With micro dosing this doesn’t seem to be so much of a concern BUT STILL ya girl’s still got anxiety (as I mentioned above.)

My intentions:

• Make space for any healing to take place during these 30 days.

• I’m open to increase insights and focus.

• We talked a bit about neuroplasticity and I am wondering if there’s any thought patterns I may have that could exacerbate the eczema. I know that fear and stress are not causes of eczema but can make the symptoms worse or illicit an outbreak. I also know that fear and stress prolonged, overtime pump the body with hormones that can disrupt the bodies ability to heal itself. So I am open to seeing if maybe I can witness where this may be occurring and dissolve any of these habitual thought patterns if they are occurring.

The Earth resonance protocol which I am more or less following calls for one day micro dose and the next day no dose- repeat.

However, I’ve done a little outside research and most other protocols call for one day micro dose, two days no dose, which seemed a bit more appealing for me personally. One reason is because your body builds up a tolerance to the psyilosiban which is said to goe away after two days, not one. And the second reason is I would like to give my mind a bit more time to integrate the experience.

So here we are at day 6.

Up until today, I didn’t notice any notable effects. Maybe because this time I took the two days off my tolerance is lower. The first day I took .33 grams, the next day no dose, day 3 I took .54 grams, and then I took two more days off. So today the 6th day I took .58 grams one hour ago. The effects I’m currently experiencing feel a bit like the Ritalin or adderal I used to be prescribed in grade school. It feels good in one sense that I just went straight from the first day of my Haar prosperity practice right into a 20 minute pilates workout, and immediately followed by laundry, vacuuming, cleaning, REALLLY CLEANING, to writing this blog post. Perhaps, I forgot that maybe I am a bit distracted on a daily basis and this is not quite how easily I typically flow into each new “task” that I do. So I would say this is a positive effect. I dig it.

A negative effect would be an increase in anxiety and also a lack of hunger. These are the same effects I felt on the Ritalin so many years ago. Although, the anxiety is quite uncomfortable it brings up themes of distrust which I’m happy to contemplate. I see that my mind starts to get “concerned” or straight up FEARFUL of this increase in bodily anxiety. The mind starts to go places, creating stories, but it feels important for me to question this, and then ask myself “Am I breathing?” and “Can I simply enjoy this increase in productivity without getting concerned?” The answer, well, that seems like what I should be nourishing right now. It pertains to trusting my own body. I think I will journal on this and perhaps share how I work though it at a later point.

So this concludes my introduction to my microdosing experiment. I am happy for you to join me on this journey.

Read here part II

Blogpost by Jewel Mondros - blogpost