Joe Rogan on Micro-dosing Psilocybin

Hello freak bitches. That's amazing. You know what's really incredible is that people are using psilocybin these days in what they call micro dosing. They can very small doses and seeing these profound benefits. And one of the things that I'm aware of is kick boxers are using it. And kick boxers are using it, a good buddy of mine is using it, says that he can see things happen before they happen. It's almost like he's reading people's minds before they're about to do something. Even on micro dosing. That's very interesting. In the intense environment of sparring and the intense physical kinetic interaction of kickboxing. He's seeing what people are going to do before they do it in a way that he's never able to do quote unquote on the natch. Right. No, I'm not surprised at all. I mean, and... Why aren't you surprised? Like, what do you think is happening? Because I think that these things let you step out of your box a little bit. They let you step out of your usual reference frame and notice things going on in the environment that again, this gating mechanism we were talking about, we're programmed to filter stuff out. Psychedelics temporarily disrupt that. They let the background come forward. And you notice things about the environment that we're... That normally you would suppress because they're not relevant to immediate survival. I don't know if you've read some of the work by Simon Powell. He wrote The Psilocybin Solution. He writes very intelligently about psilocybin. In his latest book, The Magic Mushroom Explorer, he talks about how psilocybin is a lens, essentially. You can think of it as a lens through which you can look at the world. You can look at natural phenomena. And you will notice things about that, those phenomena that you normally would overlook because we're programmed to do it. So in a sense, he talks about how psilocybin is a scientific instrument. It's a lens through which you can look at the world and see aspects of it that are always there. But you've never noticed them before because we're programmed not to. For example, you know, Kerry Mullis is famous because his discoveries in molecular biology, he attributes to his insights about molecular processes that he got from LSD, that he could get down with the molecules, as he put it, and see how all this is working. And obviously, he invented a polymerase chain reaction, which he got the Nobel Prize for. So it's not like this is a delusion. It's a real thing that he was able to notice that no one else—you know what I'm saying? He was able to put himself in a place where he could notice these phenomena. And I think that's really true if you go to take a walk in the forest with an indigenous person, you know, who in some ways is in this less of this sensory gating in a more open place all the time. They will notice things about the environment, you know, that you are completely oblivious to until they point it out, you know, and then they'll say, oh, yes, I never noticed the leafcutter ants are behaving this way or these different things. Your sensory sort of experience of an environment like the forest is very different than ours, you know, because we're used to—we're just not out in nature the same way. And I dare say, I think one of the things that in some ways inserts a barrier between us is literacy. You know, we're all literate, right? And we like being literate. It's good that we're literate. But in order to be literate, you have to have this separation between the self and the external environments, you know, you have to pick up a book and read it. I am here. I'm the point of view. Here's the book, you know, so that creates that relationship. And you sacrifice, you focus on one particular sensory modality and you sacrifice all the other input that is coming in. I don't know if I'm making sense. No, you absolutely are. You absolutely are. But that's what these substances can do. They can essentially reverse this background-foreground relationship that we're so used to. Suddenly what's right in front of you is not so important and you can pay attention to the things in the background that you're normally—your program to suppress and ignore because, you have to be ready for the saber-toothed tiger to come across, you know, over the mountain or whatever, you know what I'm saying. But it's good in that sense. They teach different ways of perception, you know, and I think that's a very useful thing to learn. You know, indigenous people call these psychedelics plant teachers and they call them teachers for a reason. You know, much of the—what you experience comes directly from the experience, but much of it also comes from your changed perception and suddenly you realize there's a different way to be in the world. There's a different way to perceive what you experience that normally you don't, you know, we're programmed to filter out. I don't know if you've ever read or had Stephen Buhner on your show. He writes very intelligently about this stuff. He's written a book called Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm and it's all about this, you know, this—essentially what his rap is. You can learn this, you know, you can learn this way of perceiving. Whether you do it with psychedelics or not, you can actually learn it and it's an interesting—it's a better way to relate to nature or more—an alternative way to relate to nature in any way. I feel like we have these pre-assumed definitions of things that we rely upon instead of seeing things for what they really are and you kind of— That's it? Yeah, you box them up and you package them and you go, oh, well, there's a car. And then one day you look at the car and you go, that's a box that has a controlled explosion encased in iron and it rolls on rubber tires. That's exactly what I'm talking about. There's a different way to look at things if you step out of the box. And yes, it is all those things and it's also a car. And it's— But if you did that all the time, you'd never get anything done. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right.