Psychedelics Impact On Neurodivergence: ADHD & Autism
Episode Summary:
Episode 9 of Redesigning The Dharma by Sahaja Soma features a conversation with Aaron Paul Orsini, an autistic psychedelic educator, author, and researcher at Autism On Acid. This episode explores the intersection of psychedelics and neurodivergence, and specifically touches on the medicine’s impact on ADHD and autism. The discussion leans heavily into Orsini’s research and personal experiences with microdosing LSD for ADHD management, psychedelics and sensory awareness, the importance of foundational practices like meditation, exercise, and proper nutrition, and the potential for psychedelics to enhance self-understanding and connection.
Episode Highlights:
00:00 Guest Background and Intro to Psychedelics and Neurodivergence
06:22 Aaron Orsini’s Journey with ADHD, Autism, and Psychedelic Use
09:08 Microdosing LSD: A Day in the Life
10:30 Strategies for Managing ADHD and Enhancing Focus
23:31 Harnessing Technology and Psychedelics for ADHD
44:52 Meditation vs Psychedelics
Guest Bio:
Aaron Orsini is an autistic psychedelic educator, author, and researcher. He has published four books about his area of focus: Autism on Acid, Autistic Psychedelic, Introduction to Psychedelic Autism, and Psychedelic Autism, and presently serves as a psychedelic autism researcher, co-author, collaborator to University College London and an advisor to an ADAPT drug education study funded by Organization for Autism Research.
Aaron is also a lecturer on psilocybin facilitation for Alma Institute, Sound Mind Institute in Oregon, Naropa University in Colorado, and the lead instructor for his first of kind focus-intensive facilitation through psychedelicautism.com.
He presently lives in Denver, where he is focused on creating decentralized and affordable community care models that can offer psilocybin and other natural medicines through grow, gift, and get together approaches.
Full Transcript
Adrian: Welcome to Redesigning the Dharma. I'm your host, Adrian Baker. And today I'm speaking with Aaron Orsini.
Aaron Orsini is an autistic psychedelic educator, author, and researcher. He has published four books about his area of focus: Autism on Acid, Autistic Psychedelic, Introduction to Psychedelic Autism, and Psychedelic Autism, and presently serves as a psychedelic autism researcher, co-author, collaborator to University College London and an advisor to an ADAPT drug education study funded by Organization for Autism Research.
Aaron is also a lecturer on psilocybin facilitation for Alma Institute, Sound Mind Institute in Oregon, Naropa University in Colorado, and the lead instructor for his first of kind facilitation, Focus Intensive, offered through psychedelicautism. com.
He presently lives in Denver, where he is focused on creating decentralized and affordable community care models that can offer psilocybin and other natural medicines through grow, gift, and get together approaches.
Aaron and I met at the Horizons conference in New York and he's doing some really interesting work on the intersection of psychedelics for people who are neurodivergent. In particular, he is focused on autism, but Aaron also has ADHD, as do I, and so that's something that I want to focus more on in, in this conversation is some of his strategies and tips, routines for working with ADHD, but specifically with respect to psychedelics, including which psychedelics at which doses he finds to be helpful for particular challenges.
And I hope that you'll find it informative and educational. Something that I want to note, Aaron mentioned it several times in the conversation, and I note these disclaimers as well on my social media channels, and I just want to say it again here very clearly, which is that none of this that Aaron spoke or that I said or from the Sahaja Soma channel in general is meant to be construed as medical advice or any other kind of advice, nor is it advocating for or condoning illegal behavior.
We are starting more and more to learn about a lot of the benefits of psychedelics, of course, these have been known subjectively through cultures throughout hundreds, thousands of years, which I want to hold up is also very important as well in terms of evidence. It's not only waiting for scientific data to validate a lot of these benefits of psychedelics, but we're beginning to know a lot more about them through scientific and medical research in the West.
And it's new that they're becoming relatively more accepted in Western societies and that conversation around the legality or that laws are even starting to change. And so, just want to be clear that this is an educational platform. And so, please take this conversation in that light. And that said, there are a lot of people out there, and this is why I share this on Sahaja Soma, struggling with all sorts of different challenges, whether it's addiction, depression, other various forms of mental health and neurodivergence, things like autism and ADHD are another one of those areas.
I think there are many upsides to those as well. And so it's really important that I don't view those as simply a deficit. I don't view that as myself, as someone who has ADHD, there's real gifts and advantages that come along with it, but there are also certain challenges I think that are not to be downplayed.
So I do think it's really important to talk about this topic and to bring more light to how this is one area I think where psychedelics hasn't covered as much up until now. There's been a lot on addiction. There's been a lot on other aspects of mental health. And I think Erin is doing really great work highlighting the potential role of psychedelics and helping people to manage, treat, work more skillfully with some of the way that people who are neurodivergent are wired.
And so I hope you find this conversation helpful. I did. I found Aaron to be really smart and informative and there were a lot of things that I was trying to take notes on myself in terms of certain routines, in terms of the way he organizes his day or his work week. So please enjoy my conversation with Aaron Orsini.
Well, first of all, Aaron, thank you so much for being willing to speak with me. Really enjoyed meeting you at Horizons and looking forward to this conversation as someone with ADHD, I was very excited to see that there was someone explicitly at this intersection of neurodivergence and psychedelics.
But just to back up a sec, even though I will have read your bio for folks, can you briefly describe what you do in this space?
Aaron: Yeah, so my name is Aaron Paul Orsini. I'm an educator, a researcher, a collaborator, divergent human, many things. I publish books. I teach classes. I work with Harvard's Mass General Hospital, the Beckley Foundation in the UK, as well as University of Toronto and University College London, doing a lot of research that's focused on psilocybin, LSD, and MDMA.
Some of it's survey based, some of it's observational trial, treating things like depression within autistic populations, or modulating social emotional awarenesses within autistic adults. And, you know, I'm also an educator, specifically, around the subject of ADHD, we just actually, in the last one hour before we got on this call, I spent an hour building out the ADHD learning portal using microdosing as a means of helping me build this learning portal.
And, so that's now available at mdpsychedelic.com/focus is where we're gonna get together all the people who are also working on this from a research perspective or, from a person who's seeking support perspective or, anything in between, we're just using this as a meeting up point online so that people can use both evidence-based findings to support like practices, and also just kind of seek out, general support, because a lot of us, what we found with the Autistic Psychedelic Community Project was, yes, psychedelics helped us and catalyzed certain kinds of insights or focus states, But there's no substitute for creating genuine community and working through problems with people that share those same challenges with you. So that's a big part of how I operate in this world.
It's like using the whole internet's intelligence all at once is a lot more efficient for solving certain types of problems. So, I try to get everyone together so we can just solve it all together.
Adrian: The metaphor of mycelium is probably apt.
Aaron: Yeah, yeah, I would say so. Yeah, it's very much so.
Adrian: So do you mind sharing with folks a little bit about your personal story in terms of, how'd you get interested in this work? What are the personal ways in which you identify as someone who's neurodivergent?
Aaron: For sure. So I was assessed as an adolescent, probably about like third or fourth grade. I was assessed for ADHD. They wanted to put me onto focusing medicines at the time, but my parents were wary about putting me onto those drugs at that point in my life. So I didn't take focusing medicines, but I did have a lot of the symptom presentations of ADHD and with more and more insight from my adulthood, I see these things totally differently also. Like, a great example of this was like, I was, I was called disruptive because I was always moving and fidgeting about in my seat. That was like my attempt to kind of self regulate my sort of nervous system.
And I would also doodle a lot because that's how I kept track of information. I would create comic books for myself to remember, like the information of like history lecture or whatever it was. And so I'd be like called out for doodling when it was like, no, I'm actually making notations for learning.
Like, and, when I, when I couldn't do that, I went internal and I would like make visual notes to myself and tell myself, like, create like movies inside my head. And that meant that I wasn't necessarily paying attention to what was placed on the blackboard, but I was paying super attention to what was happening internally.
And so all of these things from the outside, I was seen as disruptive as like, this person needs to be placed in another learning environment, whatever it might be, but a lot of these things were just innate strengths that I continue to tap into now and today. It's like how I do everything is very visual, the user interface design and all these types of skill sets.
So I've sort of leaned into that edge from that like origin point of having ADHD as an adolescent. At least like a diagnosis as such, and I've leaned into that in my adulthood and you know, there's so much I could say, whether it's like the existing research that's already out there, uh, or you know, my own approaches, like, that's why we're launching this learning portal. I'm selfishly launching it for myself to learn more too. I want to learn from people out there because there's so many use cases for so many different compounds and so many different dose ranges and like, just keeps going and going.
Adrian: Yeah. Well, let's get into that a little bit and let's talk about maybe... you know, sometimes this idea of like, what's the 80 20, what's the 20 percent of efforts that's going to yield 80 percent of results, and maybe we can talk about that through different frames as well, because part of ADHD could certainly be helping with focus, but of course impulsivity really the defining issue with ADHD, and sometimes I found there's certain medicines that are helpful for focus, but actually not so helpful impulsivity or irritability, and vice versa.
So, please let me know what medicines you find helpful for particular outcomes.
Aaron: Yeah, you know, and, you know, disclaimer, none of this is medical advice. Don't do anything I do. Don't break laws. Don't do anything like this.
But the way that I go about my workday, my functionality, you know, like, I'll use today as a template. I woke up today about 8am, and I used what's known as volumetric dosing with LSD.
And I took that about 8am, and I have about like an hour and a half where I just kind of take care of my basic physical body needs while my brain is kind of preheating. So I'll like shower, brush my teeth, like do some stretching, kind of enter the day a little bit more slowly. I find that like the more I can get into my body early in the day, the more that when I do have to take the elevator up to my brain again, I have a bit more of a balanced place.
like if I throw myself straight into my phone when I pop up out of sleep, then I just go straight into the mental space and it gets to like really anxiety inducing.
But so a lot of grounding to start the day, and then at some point suddenly my body is like wow I feel especially calm, I feel kind of ready to take on the tasks of the day, and a little bit less rumination is present within me and it allows me to really calmly kind of navigate the tasks at hand.
If you watched me work, it would look very chaotic because I run like 16 different companies all at the same time, just kind of responding to what's the most recent notification. Just kind of considering them all like one uniform pipeline of thing to do.
Whether that's like a thank you note to my mom or like a contract I have to send out to a university, like, they're all the same queue, for me. That's like one of my kind of strategies of approach to begin with.
Adrian: Oh really? So you don't have things in different folders by different themes? Like, this is this company. This is that. It's just, like, one... Interesting!
Aaron: No, I find that, and again, this is, kind of like leaning into the chaos, and I'm not saying this is gonna work for everyone, but like, in the same way, you know, my room, for example, the way that my food is in my pantry, all of it. All of it is, make sure everything is there, and everything is visible and nothing is hidden, but don't put the pressure on yourself to try to figure out where things go, cause you, that creates a whole other secondary task, of like, organizing the thing, Don't worry about organizing it.
Just like, just trust it's all there. Like if you saw my home screen on my phone, it's like my home screen on my phone is blank except for like the, the notifications that I need to actually clear.
So like my home screen has, well, there's also a mushroom, but then there's one like Omni inbox for all my notifications that I need to have clear.
So my goal is to keep that at zero by the time I get to lunch and then by the time I declare I'm done with work for the day. Um, and every other app is like hidden on another page because I don't want to have to be like triggered by being like, Ooh, look at that. Ooh, look at that. Whatever it is, like, it keeps me in like the straight and narrow of like, okay, if I want to intentionally decide I'm going to go play music on my phone or something, then I'm going to intentionally do that.
It won't just be like a squirrel running past that says, music, go do that. It'll be me directing that. So that's another kind of hack that I lean into.
Adrian: That's very wise. And makes a whole lot of sense. ,Yeah I was wondering that when you gave the example of leaning into the chaos, I thought, well, is there a way of, simplifying, because a lot of people, myself included, one response to the ADHD is like, I need to simplify certain things. But I guess that is, you, you do that in certain ways.
I mean, clearly with the, with the phone. I mean, that's the issue is just reducing those things where that one squirrel or bird flying across the screen can just immediately hook and grab your attention there. Can you give another example of where you do that?
Aaron: Yeah. I mean, I think again, cause object permanence has an association to ADHD to where, you know, another, this isn't my personal hack, someone on Tik Tok and so it's essentially like that you can remember where something is in space and that, that, that, that memory can be retrieved and applied for some sort of learning task.
So a basic example of this is like you have object permanence. So you remember that like inside your opaque takeout container contains food, that's going to go bad in two days if you don't eat it. But if you are like, if you're not able to kind of keep that narrative alive and well in your head, might you opt for a clear glass storage or maybe double down and write in a giant post it note, like eat this before it's bad tomorrow, and make it the phone backdrop on your phone for the day, just in case.
It's all these kinds of like user interface hacks that I like it makes me a good designer online, and part of me wonders if existing online makes me a bad person of existing offline, for the same reason. Like if I'm dependent on having interfaces to kind of navigate my world like how much am I really relying on more like softer reptilian skill sets?
It's kind of like hard to decipher, but with object permanence, like managing like fresh food is a great example of that. All my food has to be fully visible inside of the fridge, inside of any container, like it's all just out there and any attempt to organize, this could also be like a quality that overlaps cause I'm also autistic, some of these qualities and some of these like spectral traits start to also map over like OCD like tendencies.
So part of this is also me being like, if I start to put things into categories, I'm just going to sit there and obsess about the categories. like even on my phone, that's why I just settled on no categories.
There's just the whole thing is a junk drawer, except for the thing that the things that aren't. Everything else is just a never ending junk drawer.
Adrian: Ah, because the organization itself could become fixation rather than a helpful means.
Aaron: Exactly.
Adrian: Interesting.
Aaron: Yeah. And so I just sort of trust, and it's a bit like the way there was a study once where they gave individuals like cars that had giant spikes on the steering wheel. And they were made of foam, but everyone drove significantly better when they had a foam spike, like right in front of them on their steering wheel.
And it's a bit like, I operate that way where it's like, if there's something I'm going to forget, I'm going to just assume I can forget about it. If it's something that really matters, I'll remember it. If it's not, someone will follow up. It's a little sloppy of a way of going about things, but it's like how I get through it all.
And the other piece of my ability to manage these like 75 projects all at the same time, is that as soon as I do a task once or twice, I try to teach myself how to automate it as quickly as possible so I don't have to do it again.
So almost all of my businesses I'm operating are mostly autonomous, like, and I just kind of oversee their choices.
And it's like, then we just go out on a weird rabbit hole of like AI running an artificial errand or something. And it's going to get weird. So I don't know.
Adrian: So coming back to the morning protocol, you microdose with LSD?
Is that what you were saying?
Aaron: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'll typically take that.
Sometimes I'll take it in combination with other like functional mushroom blends as well, or things like niacin, which is like a vasodilator.
So LSD or psilocybin are vasoconstrictors. So it can be a little bit of like a tension kind of experience that you get even at subtle dose ranges.
So when I'm taking like, 30 milligrams of niacin, something like that, it tends to kind of open up those like blood pathways and also, Stamets has it as part of his stack with microdosing with mushrooms because it's also thought to help with the distribution of the medicine. Because if you think about where these medicines are going, where they're binding, something like LSD or psilocybin is binding to, uh, like, you know, one of the primary mechanisms is the 5-HT2A receptors, which you have in your gut and also in your cortex.
But in either case, as you're allowing that blood to circulate, it's kind of like adding more lottery balls to fall into the receptor sites. Like, it's kind of like expanding out how open, like, that soft tissue is, where those receptor sites are and it's increasing absorption so it can also potentiate the medicine, or maybe make the medicine more efficient in its application, potentially.
This is all based around other existing pharmacology kind of cross-translated. Also, I have no degree in any of this, so take this with a grain of salt.
Adrian: And one thing that I read about LSD compared to the other classical psychedelics, like psilocybin is really just working on serotonin. But my understanding is that LSD actually does release some dopamine. And I'm wondering if that could be why, I don't know, some people prefer it for microdosing and that it would be particularly attractive for people with ADHD. Are are you familiar with that at all?
Aaron: Yeah, I mean, again, I've spent the last ten years just obsessively reading, Google Scholar summaries of every and all research that's come out. And I'm doing a lot of meta analysis of the different overlapping mechanisms and that.
There is already a biotech company out there that's looking into this. They already completed a 2A trial, so if you're familiar with like the pipeline of you know, FDA approvals and that, it's about to advance further down that track. So once it completes phase three, it could potentially be a prescribable medicine. And that's with LSD specifically for ADHD symptom management.
And you know, when you're talking about like, why might it be a good candidate, it does agonize serotonin, as you mentioned, just the same way psilocybin might. Which can have impacts on mood or focus, emotional, emotional regulation. Also I find that like the sort of serotonergic component of both of these compounds helps me to do things like this, where there's a bit of like kind of having to listen to my heart a bit more to kind of interpret some more social information that you might be giving off as we're interacting.
Granted, we're in a 2D environment with this screen right now, but in other contexts, that really brings me into that kind of social sphere of awareness, which, it's not just about the smartest idea, it's like, how harmonious is this in a social context? Um, so thinking from that perspective, because there's also blood draws in LSD research also where they show elevations in blood oxytocin levels, after taking a dose, whether that's like a threshold dose or a higher dose.
So as those blood oxytocin levels increase, you know, there's some, debate around blood brain barrier and whether or not this is fully congruent as like a data point. But, oxytocin also facilitating that trusting and bonding, which I feel like as an autistic person with ADHD, I feel like these medicines, more than, you know, making me a great, successful person, I don't really care about that, I, it's like, it makes me comfortable in my body and comfortable interfacing and working with other people in a way that I previously was much more vigilant and much more, just defensive. Just public school, being bullied, lots of things that I faced as a child, these medicines, even when I'm just sitting down to work on a website or whatever it might be, I feel like more joyous and connected to that activity.
And that means I'm creating from like a place of love and compassion, which like, when I take Ritalin, I don't really get flooded with like love and compassion. I get lots of energy, like you want me to do something 50,000 times, I can definitely do that. But I might not stop to like check in with myself and see how that feels for me or for other people around me because it gives me like a sort of cocaine energy or something.
Not that I've done cocaine or want to do that or anything, but like there's that feeling of like, I don't know if you've ever been to like a New Year's Eve party and someone's like having the greatest moment of their life, but it's totally chemical. Like, that's kind of how I feel sometimes when I'm producing something on like Adderall or Ritalin, it's like, this is so great, and then I'll go back and reread it. And I was just like, I was just excited about typing.
And like, that was all like, so yeah, it's, it's complicated.
Adrian: It is, because there clearly is some value to it, but I actually think that that one word of "connection" really gets at a lot of it. because not only do I not feel like love and joy per se, there's something, when I'm on Ritalin, I mean, there's something, I think the reason that's almost secondary, like the reason that doesn't arise as naturally is because there's some kind of disconnection from like mind and body or heart and body.
Like I feel very switched on, you know, my mind's working really quickly, but I just feel a little like a robot, like something's a little off.
Aaron: Yeah.
Adrian: And again, there's some value to it,
Aaron: I I, to go ahead.
Adrian: But there's that disconnection. There's something about that word you use that kind of gets to the heart of it for me.
Aaron: Yeah, I mean, I think back to that 12 year old me that was sitting in a classroom that wanted to go outside and exercise because that's what my body wanted.
And I think about how much like, if I was in maybe an Adderall or a Ritalin state, maybe I'd be like, Oh my God, the blackboard, look at the blackboard, look at the black, what's what's the next thing?
What's the next, like, that's fine. That's cool. But like, if I fall out of rhythm with that harmony, if I become fully dependent on that, like I'm always being skeptical about that because these are all just words.
Like the difference between addiction and dependence and a regimen versus like, uh, you know, whatever, all this stuff is different.
And, I've said it often, like if I lived in a culture that considered six months of paternity leave normal for in the culture, or if they considered, hey, maybe four days a week of work is fine, or maybe like, maybe we can embrace more of these modern technologies and just generally work less and take care of each other.
Like, I'm not gonna go down those rabbit holes, but like, I think about it in terms of, you know, there was a young me that was sitting in public school, and that was the only context in which I was being assessed for fitness, of mental fitness. And then there was an adult me that found similar success and similar jobs, but it wasn't until I became more entrepreneurial, which I don't even like that word, I'm just, I feel like I'm just a passion worker, I just do stuff with people, and it seems to keep me sustained.
Sometimes it's because they give me money. Sometimes they just let me live at their house. I just keep surviving off of trust with people. and part of that process has become like, this is very ADHD, but follow me on yet another tangent.
And, uh, I will tell you a brief story of another model that I think encapsulates everything I'm trying to get at, which is, the title of this short form speech I'm about to give is, "Before you modify yourself internally, think about why you can modify externally first."
And, you know, I mentioned public school as one container, like, cubicle office work is another container. Some of us that might not be fit for office work might be exceptionally great at sitting there and like building wooden chairs all day.
Maybe that totally satisfies, and we're delighted and are awesome at that. there's so many other paths, and I think I grew up in a culture that kind of put down trades, or other things that weren't universities, and this, like, I had a one, it was a very narrow culture I grew up in.
Um, I think that's shifted, I think the internet's brought about the reality of, like, there's so many ways of working in this world, you can sell your stuff to anybody on earth, and now you can translate what you say to every language on earth, and reach everybody on earth, like, there's so many newly available roles we can all play.
Now that the internet has evolved from this place of let's go look at some interesting memes and laugh about them to like, oh wow, we're all in a group chat now, what should we do? Like, we're all together now, and with language translation increasingly so.
So, somehow I'm going to tether this to the notion that the way that I work, because of the tolerance profile for something like LSD, I can only take a microdose day and have a really great day once every like three or four days, more or less.
And what I describe as a really great day is like, wake up, get straight into flow state, I'll probably sit here, I've already meal prepped on my physical health day, which I'll talk about in a second, so I've already meal prepped, I've already got everything good to go, so I can just be here, be in this zone, build like 7 new projects, and just like, time dilate, and suddenly appear 14 hours later and be like, that was a lot, time to rest.
And like after a full 14, 16 hour workday I can then rest and the full next day I give myself total permission to not do any further notification checking. I'm just completely off. I'm spending time like taking my body to like the dry cleaners because it needs time to recover from like a very intense day of information processing and making progress.
And it gives me a space to just kind of enter into more parasympathetic nervous state, and there's so many ways to do this, like whether it's just traditional meditation, There's also like devices, like there's like weighted blankets, or like they have these like sensory sack things. You can also just give someone a hug for two hours, that's also effective.
Like there's all these ways of just kind of managing my physical well being. And so if you play that out, like on the third day, that day is dedicated to social wellbeing and making plans with people, connecting with people, going and spending some new adventure, experiencing something I haven't experienced before. And then that sort of gives me the perception of a full weekend happening in between every workday that I have.
So like, anyone who's ever dreamed of having a weekend in between their workday, like, you just have to figure out how to make that work for you, and I have, just by virtue of this kind of random lottery I've won with people caring about some of the stuff I'm teaching about.
But doing that really I think enhances the quality of work, because it gives me two full days where I'm not giving myself the pressure to advance something when I don't really have a new idea. I can think of so many times in corporate where most of my job was looking busy and not letting people realize that I didn't really need to be there.
Like that was most of my job, was like trying to demonstrate that I was necessary for as a job. And I got bored of even doing that in corporate and I would just sit around and like automate my job it out of existence and see if I could get away with that for a while. Like it was, that's just such a conventional work state for certain types of work.
And I think if we update that and consider this, cause using that same model I just unpacked, if I'm working 16 hours a day, every third day... if we suddenly have an eight day work week, quote unquote, uh, then that means I'm achieving, you know, 54 hours of work, which also to be honest with the tools that we're using nowadays, like the stuff I'm doing, like the fact that I really believe there's a lot of deep concerns around AI, a lot of deep concerns around a lot of these tools, but as someone who is able to imagineer a business model in the morning and launch it in the afternoon and then let it manage itself in perpetuity, it feels like I'm just launching fishing boats into the internet ocean and they're just like, maybe that'll become a thing.
I'll be back to check on it when it comes around the ocean again, like three days later. Like, but tools really are generating like, a vast amount of information so quickly. I'll be transparent in stating that my notes for this exact conversation were sourced from a combination of Claude and GPT and other tools that I used to synthesize a database of LSD and ADHD research into bulleted talking points and that's already freely available. And I did that one minute before we got on this call and like, I'm able to have an authoritative knowledge already, but the task of organizing information is very arduous to do.
It's really easy to be expert on something, to answer questions about something, but to come up with like exactly how to structure that information when you're expert on it, like to try to walk someone through the basics, things like GPTs and stuff are excellent, like, language organization tools, for sure.
Adrian: And that could be particularly helpful for someone with ADHD. It's just bringing that structure and the framework to it.
Aaron: Yeah, it's like anyone who's ever wanted a digital assistant, like, it's here. It costs free. It's just here now. Well, it costs, you're giving away all of your information, and probably all of this is going to be turned into some nefarious thing later.
But, like, in the meantime, you'll get great benefit while in this weird window before people realize how much we can get done with these tools.
Like we've definitely wandered far from the core focus of what we were talking about, but these things touch and influence all of these trajectories. Like what careers are you going to engage with? How much time do you need to spend working in a day? And is it better to like sit there and think about your choices rather than taking action all the time? Like what is that balance? And that goes back to what you were talking about earlier too, with like impulse control and that.
I find just giving myself a homework assignment to walk in the woods for an hour. Even when I'm like, but I need to progress this thing. It's like taking that hour and setting something down always improves it when I come back to it.
I think that that's just like the inertia mindset of public school or conventional work weeks that it's like, you sit there and you grind, and that grind is some indicator of excellence. But that grind is quickly being replaced. What, in the same way, the industrial revolution saw the replacement of a lot of manual labor jobs, I think this, like, AI industrial revolution is going to see the replacement of a lot of creative information organizing jobs that we just don't need to necessarily have someone else do anymore, and gives you the ability to be more in dialogue with the information you're working with, and then be able to apply that in countless ways.
Adrian: And it's, there's also the grinding isn't really focused on productivity at all, right? It's more just of a kind of saving face thing. I'm wondering one thing...
particular, like are there certain compounds that you found helpful for the impulse control aspect? It sort of sounded like LSD helped you get into the flow state, and so that was helpful for focus in a way.
I'm wondering if you've worked with anything that's helpful for impulse control or just calming the nervous system.
Aaron: Yeah, I mean, my life is like a constant state of like alchemical experimentation, really. And for the, for the 30th time, don't do what I'm doing, but like other tools in my toolkit are things like ashwagandha root extracts...,
Things like Amanita muscaria extracts and tinctures as well. If anyone's familiar, it's like the Mario mushroom, like the red with white spots mushroom, which is fully legal. At higher doses, it can be quite challenging to work with.
There's a lovely individual, Amanita Dreamer, who wrote an amazing book about how to dose with it. But I have those types of tinctures that I'll take, and those tinctures at, like, you know, three drops of tincture of Amanita can also, like, that works specifically on GABA.
The active ingredient in Amanita is muscimol, and so GABA essentially dictates stress response at some level, again, I'm not a pharmacologist, but my subjective experience with that is, if I had a microdose day, and I was like, well, I'm still alert and awake, and maybe I would not like to be, I also have really gentle options for things to assist with sleep, like CBN, a very specific cannabinoid that works well for sleep. Um, and like amanita tinctures as well, and ashwagandha.
Again, all these things are really just shortcut versions of what you can also produce endogenously through somatic exercise. Probably if everyone that was taking Ritalin or Adderall was consistently exercising 30 minutes a day, they'd probably see a dramatic increase in their focus capacity to execute on everything else. Like as soon as they did that too.
Exercise is pretty undefeated when it comes to, like, comparative trials for, like, depression, anxiety, most of these things. I I find exercise is the most important. So even
Adrian: on that 14 hour
Aaron: up when you can do it.
Adrian: So even on that 14-hour day, do you incorporate exercise?
Aaron: I mean, I'd like to say I do, just to look good, but no, there's definitely days where I'm like, oops, I, like, didn't do anything today. I have two I have two very concerning things that I'm trying to address actively.
I'm in like a period of rapid expansion and I can sound really perfect and elegant when I'm describing these protocols, but I definitely deviate from these protocols as well.
And I've definitely had weeks where I'm like, oops, my screen time on my computer slash phone was 18 hours a day this whole week on average. So some of those days were like 22 hours of screen time in a day.
Like, you know, the, granted my work has a lot of interfacing with inboxes and messaging, like, a lot of my work is really joyous to be engaged in. But it's the screen time that is therefore pretty strongly associated with being sedentary for sure.
So, you know, I can try to get hip and get a standing desk or I try to like, when I do my texts, when I do my inboxes, I'm usually walking or like, running on the treadmill and using voice to text to do this.
This makes me sound like such a terrible, like tech valley, bro person.. But it's really, it gives like my hands a rest. I'm worried I'm going to get bad hands from like so much keyboarding the same way my grandma's hands like piddled out from rolling too much pasta over time. Like, so the more that I can kind of do like lighter weight kinds of information output, it sounds so granular to think that way, but like when I'm on my computer versus my phone, it feels slower. Cause I can't go voice to text as fluidly on my computer. I'm used to like, doing that on my phone.
Um, but you know, your initial question 25 tangents ago was about things to kind of slow you down and bring you down like that.
And I, I just turned to a lot of homeopathics and natural products that are available at like lab tested places and through dispensaries in Colorado and other things like this.
Adrian: Have you ever worked with any of the Harmala alkaloids so Paganum Harmala, right? Or have you done ayahuasca a number of times and I noticed this more when I really did the Harmala alkaloids by itself. So these are Harmal and Harmaline and they're also in Pegam Harmala the same way they're in the copy vine.
And I just find that has a very helpful down regulating impact on my nervous system. And it's great for ADHD that way. I'm curious if you've experimented with that at all.
Aaron: I mean, that's interesting, like, so firstly, I'll just be very transparent and say the first like 19 words you said, I was like, I do not know any of those words, but, I will also say that one of my other kinds of supplementary tools that I'll utilize is, uh, the B copy vine extract as well.
Technically also, it's like that would be an MAOI, so like in ayahuasca, that's the ingredient that allows you to take DMT through your gut. Otherwise, like the DMT wouldn't be active without the MAOI.
So some people will combine things like bee copy extract or things like Syrian rue or even just cacao to potentiate their experiences with mushrooms or LSD, similarly. And certain people refer to that as like, Sillawaska. You have to be careful with all of these things because you're elevating the whole drug action, which can eventually lead to excitotoxicities. Also can also lead to serotonin syndrome, which feels like the worst case of food poisoning you've ever had if you've ever come across it.
Adrian: That's if you're not paying attention to the contraindications you're talking about.
Aaron: Yeah, like in and of itself, like, you know, I'll take sometimes, you know, on these off days, uh, like, you know, off of LSD days, like the washout days, again, it's very intuitive at some level and it's very activity based. It's like, am I going to be traveling into a very loud, busy city today or am I having friends over at my really peaceful home?
Because both of those require a certain kind of nervous system to show up. And so I have to kind of like, chemically put on my nervous system for the occasion. Like, so like, it's, it's a constant change in that way.
Adrian: What do you do to deal with... Do you have, I imagine like real sensitivity to sounds, to temperature, to, you know, what are some of
all the above and, and what are, do you
Aaron: Yeah, I mean, I'm just like I I navigate the world like this most of the
Adrian: Yeah.
Aaron: Like this environment, this is like this is studio lighting for for the people back at home. But like ideally I would just be like in like a dark room like just talking to you right now, but...
um, but yeah, you know, this backdrop makes it look like I'm serious about work so, I'm here for it.
So, but yeah, I mean, these types of devices are constant for me. Like these, these are the high end Sony's. They're so worth it. They're 24 hour battery and like they're noise cancel, like active noise cancel. I just live in them because even without music on. It's just like, it just keeps the sound sensitivity lower.
And something else that's another confounding layer of this is that things like LSD or psilocybin or MDMA, they do increase your sensitivity to, like, general sensations. Whether that's touch, taste, you know, anything.
So I become arguably more sensitive because of these things, but I think at the same point, I inherit an authentic sensitivity to what's going on to where it's like I feel like my normal state is like dissociation to survive it. Whether it's the taste of something, the smell of something... my body and brain have just filtered out a lot of my sensory realities just so I can just survive and keep going.
So sometimes it's like, I noticed that I'm a little bit colder on a microdose day. It's not because I have the chills. It's because I'm genuinely detecting temperature more clearly than I normally would. I'm like more embodied. I'm more like in my body.
You know, and the same way, like I've gone to meditation retreats and three weeks in, I'm like, you know, I have a lot of lower back pain that I like granted I've been sitting, but like, this is distinctly something else and I just, I haven't been quiet enough to notice that inside my body recently.
And those types of somatic awarenesses are so invaluable in a world increasingly driven through external reward and all these things, becoming attuned to our bodies is really at the bottom of this whole really weird cyclone of a conversation we've been having, it's like, how can we connect inwardly so that we can connect to others and how can somehow or another, how can we exist inside of capitalism at the same time that we're trying to do those things.
That's kind of my constant struggle is like, how can I exist harmoniously with nature in a system that seems disharmonious to nature itself?
And how can I bring those two into alignment if possible, or just let nature overtake it again or whatever. So that's kind of where I'm at. I'm just using technologies of today but ultimately my purpose, my path is to reconnect people to their bodies, to each other, and to community.
Sometimes it looks like a website that's getting people there, but it's really just that like over and over.
Adrian: And think there's something about it that you said, you know, can relate to it where, when I take Paganam Harmala in particular, I notice that I'm very sensitive to lights and screens. And it's not just me, my friend who's doesn't have ADHD or autism or anything. He has that same experience.
And one might say, well, isn't that a problem that, oh, you don't want to be on the computer as much because you're taking these beta carbolines, but I think there's a common theme, which is when you're taking this kind of medicine or any psychedelic medicine, it makes it so you can't ignore the feedback signals.
Like you said, you're not dissociating, you're more connected, paying attention and so,
Aaron: Yeah.
Adrian: The lesson there for me is actually, it's not natural to be interfacing with the screen this much. And as someone who's very sensitive to being overstimulated, actually, I need to just put down the screen and spend more time in nature and I like that it's sensitizing me to it in that sense.
It's making me more, pay attention more.
Aaron: Yeah. No, I mean, and then there's always a little bit of both on both sides too. It's A lot of these drugs will relax and dilate the pupils ever so slightly, which is going to naturally create agitation from light. Cause you're just like, things are brighter, what's the deal?
But I definitely think that there's that what you just indicated, I think that rings true across all of these types of sensitivities because people will often come to me and be like, I started microdosing and I didn't really, I didn't get happier that week. Actually, I, I was really anxious about everything. And I was like, oh, do you normally detect that inside your body?
And they're like, no, I don't like that at all. I was like, well, maybe you should listen to that. So you can be in a place or a setting where you're, where you're not hating it. Whatever that might be.
And that's a very privileged thing for me to say, like, Oh, just change your whole life. It's fine. Change your family. Change your job. Like, like, oh, just go change. A lot of these things aren't just an insight. People need like basic housing, shelter, food, community. Like, all these things. But, sometimes people do have those authentic moments come up from these really subtle dosing schedules.
I have a cup of coffee sitting here by habit, but if I drank like a sip of this, I'd be buzzing. Cause my body just processes caffeine so differently when I'm in this state. It just feels like so intense to have any caffeine at all that I just get like super sensitive to it.
And I just wonder like, is that what caffeine's normally like in my body? And I'm just drinking the mental idea of caffeine, and then I'm like, whoa, I don't know. Like, I just it's not clear because of how wildly subjective a lot of these effects really are.
Like, you know, on the ongoing arc of research, we can measure things like, did your symptoms improve? But that's still your own self perception and your self reporting and all this other stuff. And it's going to just remain wildly subjective, like for a long while.
No matter how much we are waiting for more research to kind of iron it out and finalize it. You know, even the day that the FDA is like, yes, LSD is useful for the treatment of ADHD symptoms. Here you go. You guys can have it by prescription now. We're still going to be figuring out how that's going to look like in the same way that anyone that's currently on any ADHD medicine regimen is figuring out what still works for them as they age, as their hormones shift, as the climate changes, as the amount of sunlight they're getting changes, like.
We really have to attune ourselves to the complexity of these biochemical systems where we are inseparable from, and inside of, and beside. And live in harmonious ways with them and educate each other about how to do. Cause like, I grew up with a food pyramid that was like, eat more bread. It was not accurate.
I was like, so like, uh, we're trying to get more smart with these things and we have all these tools to teach each other. And like, I could learn anything at the flash of a search now. And if I don't know how to learn it, I can ask a robot to teach me how to learn it.
It sounds dystopian, but we can also try to bend it towards a harmonious outcome.
Aaron: I hope I don't like become some perceived as like some sort of like technocrat now that I've said all these things, but it's like, we're in it. We're in it already. We have all these tools and all this information.
And I have a lot of sympathy to those adolescents and those people. anyone with ADHD basically is like, we survived public school. We all have a shared history of that. We survived it. We did the thing we were asked to do, even when it might not have been all that natural for us to do it. Maybe we should have been out there like building a bunch of brick structures outside for fun. Maybe we should have been doing something that captured that interest and let it elevate. Um, maybe, but like until we can kind of navigate that, you know, cause I talked to a lot of parents too. And they're, they're constantly having to be like the lead, like the, there's so many power structures there with school boards and principals, teachers, like how much they can establish patterns while at school.
And then how much they can keep that going at home and like the conflicts of interests in both environments. And, should I take my kid completely out and put them in further isolation? Is that the best? Like there's so many questions that a lot of these individuals are facing. And I, I just, I keep coming back to.
There are many different possible answers, but one unified answer repeatedly is to find others who are working on that problem, so they can work on that with you. Whether that's local families that are also navigating it or peers in your same education coursework that are also facing those same challenges that want to get together to like be body doubles for each other, whatever it might be. Just, you know, seek it out and be open about the challenges you face because the world is just flushed with solutions.
It's hard to discern which one of them makes sense. Even on the same call, I've told you a hundred different tools that I use, like in total random chaos. I can about systems, but like I thrive in chaos. I thrive in chaos and you know, the internet never sleeps. So I wake up and it's a totally new paradigm the next morning.
And so I just kind of keep in constant evolution with this whole cycle.
Adrian: Well one thing that you mentioned and I'll just say this in our you know remaining time together because I'm conscious of your time...
You talked about noticing the subjective benefits as well and how a lot of this is subjective, but I think it's important to acknowledge the value of subjective measurements as well because with, you know, in this society we value science so much, which I do as well, but, you know, a lot of the value of psychedelics, it's similar to meditation...
If you're noticing subjective improvements consistently in your well being, that is also a valid form of evidence and we need to acknowledge that and not only hold up did the double blind randomized control trial find that you know, and and I think that's one thing that meditation really helps us to see. And I'm curious, you referenced going on meditation retreats I'm just curious what your experience with that has been? What's it like for you as someone with ADHD for someone who hasn't
meditated a lot? Being on retreat for extended periods of time.
Aaron: So I went through a program that was actually through the Vipassana.org network of meditation centers. So those around the world.
Yeah, you can, and you can sit for free, at those, sessions. You start with a 10 day and then if you do a 10 day, you can then like serve food and then if you serve food, you can go and do 30 days, all these things. But that's like a mostly freely available service that's out there. And what they do is as soon as you arrive, you basically part with all of your worldly possessions, you're just there. You don't have a phone, nothing like this. And you just sit in meditation for about 10 hours a day with very light food served in the very early morning and then the very, very late morning and then nothing in the evenings. And you're just sitting there and just sitting there and using a very simple observational technique of just body scanning.
And for someone with ADHD and for someone with autism and a lot of trauma, I got just as much out of that. It just took a lot more time, just naturally. It's just more time spent, but it was a much more meaningful. experience than a lot of my previous psychedelic sessions because I had to keep saying yes to every little step deeper into the darkness of my mind. I was like i'm still gonna keep going.
This is horrible. Like I don't want to remember this I don't want to think back to this I don't want to listen to that voice in my head that belittles me anymore. Whatever it was I didn't want to be there and then somehow through some irrationality of how our bodies like process these things or what types of like endogenous chemicals get released when you sit and don't talk for 10 days, something just happens.
And suddenly I went from like total like I don't want to be in my body. I was coming up with like reasons to like fake and another health crisis so I could leave. Because you sign a document that's like I promise to stay here until I leave and like and like and like there's a reason why they tell people they have to sign that document. Like I wanted to leave and that was an expression of I don't want to be with my own thoughts. I don't like the way I think about myself. I don't like myself. I don't really like myself at all. And then like once I had that moment, I was suddenly like wait a minute, what if I liked myself? What if I cared about me?
And like I just sat there just like caring and loving my younger little self just being like dude, sorry I hated you for so long like so I'm so sorry. And just sat there and I just like cried for like two days after that which like That's not a medical service.
That's like that's a it was a psycho spiritual journey of a thing. And I still probably need to go back and go even deeper to realize how all the ways I'm still not loving myself and taking care of myself or other people in my life All the other people I could like seek to repair or forgive or to uplift, or to more clearly communicate with, or whatever. There's always more work to be done on this earth.
But that meditation retreat, you know, drugs are cool, they're interesting, all this stuff, but, there's, you know, exercise, eat well, touch a tree, give someone a hug, like, regulate your nervous system doing regular things on earth, and, you know, if you want to start to explore exotic tools, cool.
But do it with those existing tools in place. That's where I'll leave it off with and once again like a reiteration of like before you modify anything internally, think about what you can modify externally. And then remember that everything you're modifying externally is also already modifying your internal and there is no inside outside and the end
Adrian: That's a perfect note on which to end. It's an important message. It's really getting the foundation right.
You know, and then supplement psychedelics. That's just the extra hack for the 10, 20 percent. So, I really appreciate your time, Aaron. This was great, your wealth of knowledge and resources.
Do you want to let people know where they can find you and any upcoming projects you have that might be of interest?
Aaron: Yeah. Easiest thing is just look up autism on acid, on Instagram or TikTok or go to autismonacid.com. That's my website. And through the Instagram page, you can find links off to like every other business I run, every video I've ever, whatever. There's endless amounts of information there. So autismonacid.com or just autism on acid as a handle on any social account.
Adrian: Great. Aaron, thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it.
Aaron: Yep. Thank you.