Alli Schaper: Microdosing, Mushrooms, and Policy Reform

In this episode of Divergent States, we sit down with Alli Schaper, CEO of Supermush and co-founder of the Microdosing Collective, to explore the evolving world of functional and psychedelic mushrooms. Alli shares her journey into microdosing advocacy, the challenges of navigating the gray market for psychedelics, and the urgent push for policy reform to ensure safe, legal access.

We dive into the science behind microdosing, its profound benefits for mental health, creativity, and even athletic performance, and discuss why current regulations often overlook this powerful tool. Alli opens up about how psychedelics helped her family process grief and why storytelling is key to destigmatizing these substances. The conversation also highlights the risks of unregulated products (like gas station "shrooms"), the importance of community-driven advocacy, and the potential for cultural momentum to shape smarter policies.

With psychedelic mushrooms gaining mainstream attention, from wellness brands to underground markets, we ask: Are we "legalizing the whole bottle of wine before the sip"? Tune in for a thought-provoking discussion on the future of microdosing, the role of functional fungi in daily health, and how everyday individuals can help drive this movement forward.

Music by DylAlien.

Takeaways

• Mushrooms can have a profound impact on physical and mental health.
• Microdosing can help maintain mental health and prevent burnout.
• Psychedelics can be valuable tools for processing grief.
• There is a cultural gap in understanding and accepting death.
• Microdosing is often misunderstood and misrepresented in popular culture.
• Functional mushrooms offer various health benefits beyond nutrition.
• Community and intentional gatherings are essential for wellness.
• Advocacy for microdosing is crucial for policy changes.
• The definition of a microdose is often misinterpreted.
• The Microdosing Collective aims to represent and support microdosers. There is a need for a legal safe pathway for microdosing.
• Education and research are crucial for microdosing advocacy.
• Community involvement enhances the impact of policy reform.
• The psychedelic gray market poses risks and opportunities.
• Reducing facilitator time in microdosing policies is essential.
• Maintaining community ethics in regulation is vital for success.
• Storytelling can help dismantle the stigma around psychedelics.
• Psychedelics have the potential to change thought processes.
• Collaborations with artists can amplify the microdosing movement.
• Being intentional about consumption maximizes vitality.

https://www.microdosingcollective.org/

https://supermush.com

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Psychedelic Science 25

02:53 Ali Schaper's Journey into Microdosing

06:08 Balancing Entrepreneurship and Advocacy

09:00 Personal Experiences with Grief and Psychedelics

12:01 The Intersection of Wellness and Mortality

15:05 Microdosing Collective and Its Goals

17:48 Functional Mushrooms vs. Psychedelic Microdosing

21:01 Benefits of Functional Mushrooms

23:57 Debunking Myths about Microdosing

28:45 Legal Pathways for Microdosing

30:12 Challenges in Microdosing Policy

32:05 Education and Community Engagement

34:52 The Role of Everyday Psychonauts

36:54 Understanding the Psychedelic Gray Market

39:47 Policy Adjustments for Safe Microdosing

41:25 Community-Driven Ethos in Regulation

43:01 Cul

Transcript

0:21

Hey everybody, welcome back to Divergent States. Back with Brian, man. How you doing? Hey, what's up? you know, just working, you know, doing the, doing, getting stuff ready. been like really putting in for the Psychedelic Science 25 coming up. Yeah, that's right. We've got some cool news about that. Yeah, we got our press passes and put in for a grant. that'll hopefully cover the traveling costs for both of us. Right. So that'd be great. and then, yeah, we've been looking into like the after party and stuff. They've got Clozee and LSDream. They're doing the LSZee collab. Like how cool it be to be able to go there. yeah. So yeah, we totally been doing that. It's looking and shaping up to be a pretty good time. Oh yeah. The last time, what was it? Psychedelic science 23. had, you know, it was like governor Paul is from Colorado. I mean, Rick Perry, um, know, Melissa Etheridge, it just, it's a ton of people. So yeah, it'll be great. Um, yeah. And if you guys want to help support, go to patreon.com/DivergentStates. You guys can support us there. You know, support us like a sign YouTube, you know, follow subscribe. Right. Yeah. Yeah, we're gonna be doing like a lot of recording there and stuff like that too, right? Yeah, we'll be doing hopefully we're doing some like remote like live updates and we'll be posting a lot of those up onto the patreon too. Yeah, so should be Yeah, pretty fun Yeah, it'll be a lot of fun. just, mean, just like the cool interviews we'll be able to get just like, you know, not even an official interview, just off to the side, you know, half an hour with somebody. Yeah. Post those up too. So yeah, it'll be a lot of fun. yeah. So yeah, tonight we've got Ali Schaper. She is the CEO of Supermush and she's also the co-founder of the microdosing collective. So. right on. Yeah. I'll be talking to her about, you know, the, the gray market and the psychedelic mushrooms, know, the ones you see in gas stations and stuff. And, talking about that and microdosing and some of the microdosing misconceptions and stuff. a lot of balls to try the gas station mushrooms. It's one thing to try a gas station CBD or fucking like, what is it? Delta nine. But to go like, no dude, let's trip. Yeah, let's eat these mushrooms that I found in this back country gas station somewhere, gummies or whatever, yeah. There's some interesting stuff about that though too, so. Right, right, yeah, we go through it quite a bit, we have a good conversation about it, and so we'll take a listen, listen to some music here, and we'll be right back with the interview. Awesome. All right, so Ali, can you share your journey into the world of microdosing and functional mushrooms? What inspired you to found Super Mush and co-create the microdosing collective? Yeah, well, you know, this question differently every time because I think my my understanding of my journey with it evolves as my bulbs, but basically like the quick version is that mushrooms changed my life. And I started to explore the world of functional mushrooms. started using fully legal superfoods, lion's mane, cordyceps, reishi, et cetera, and saw a really profound change in my in my physical health and also my understanding of flow states. I'm really passionate about, you know, fungi of all kinds, but I love to focus on functional mushrooms because they were my entry point into the world of, you know, understanding psychedelics, understanding fungi holistically. So yeah, it started with functional mushrooms and then I started to have a deeper understanding of the magic of fungi and an understanding of... how it operates and how biologically similar we are as humans to fungi more so than we even are to the animal kingdom, or sorry, the f***ing than we more similar to fungi than we actually are to plants. there's just so much richness in the wisdom that mushrooms have to offer. And I started to explore my mind with psychedelics over many years and found a deep connection specifically to microdosing, which we can talk about later. You know, it blossomed into all these different projects, companies. So as it stands now, I started a functional mushroom company called Supermush. That's a very fun psychedelic friendly looking brand. Even though it's fully legal superfoods, make gummies for energy, passion, and sleep. Those are the main products we have. And then I'm very involved in the psychedelic space. I'm very involved in psychedelic advocacy through microdosing collective, which is our nonprofit. It's the first. nonprofit established specifically to focus on the legalization of microdosing and the education around microdosing. And I also host a podcast called into the multiverse mental health podcast, psychedelics podcast. And, you know, a lot, a lot of other details in there, but that's kind of the general, how I got here and why we're talking today. I mean, it sounds awesome. We kind of all just come to that place. I guess eventually we find that the psychedelics or whatever, how are we come to find them and realize the healing potential or how it helps us in some way. And it's great though. love that you're doing you're doing with it. Kind of on that same thing, how do you find balancing all these entrepreneurial ventures with your advocacy and policy work at the same time? Yeah, you know, think that the maintenance of my mental health has been very impacted, you know, very impacted by microdosing. So I've coached a lot of people through their microdosing journey. And it has been a massive part of me maintaining my mental health and maintaining, you know, I think one of the downsides of entrepreneur, know, entrepreneurs and, and the startup culture. Is that it tends to lead to this burnout where you get to the end of your journey. Maybe with a paycheck, maybe not, but usually you're not in flow state when you end that journey. so the people that I've talked to, that have kind of come out the other side of it and feel pretty battered from hamster wheel that startup life can tend to be, often turn to. natural medicines, both functional mushrooms and psychedelics as a way to kind of heal their mind. And so my approach has kind of been like, how can I heal my mind along the journey? And so I think all the projects feed each other. I have found, you know, investors for Supermush, we have 100 investors through, through, you know, microdosing advocacy things, and also people that want to become more involved with psychedelics through the world of Supermush too. And the Thank you. Thank you. It's amazing group of people, but the core of all of these things is community. love hosting parties. I love hosting intentional community gatherings. So Supermash is very focused on that. So we're very much a community led brand as is microdosing collective. So all projects are very synergistic. Nice. So do you have any like personal experiences of your own that kind of shape your that that passion for mushroom microdosing or just mushroom based wellness in general? Yeah, this isn't going to be a psychedelic answer. but, but yeah, you I, you know, I, I guess the thing that comes to mind is I'm, very passionate about the conversation around death. And so I, I've been writing a lot about that. I've been doing a lot of different speaking things around the concept of building a better relationship with our mortality. so as a kind of an interesting tie in between all the things we're talking about, my dad passed away a few years ago, really unexpectedly. And it gave me a deeper connection and. understanding of how critical psychedelics as tools for grief are and how important they've been to my family's process, both with my dad previously using psychedelics before he passed away in recent years before his death, and then my mom's ability to use those same tools for the process of grief because they just take away the harshness And a lot of times the inability to cope with, with grief in the West. And so that feels like a personal experience. It's kind of tied together all of my projects because my parents had never tried a single psychedelic before their sixties, but started to be open to the conversation around them because they started to make and started to interact with supermush as a brand and start to understand what I was up to in the world. So. Yeah, I'm really passionate about that conversation. I think the core thread of a lot of it is just nervous system regulation. We don't have a lot of tools to manage different traumatic events. We're having this conversation in the middle of Los Angeles being on fire and 10,000 structures being burned, thousands and thousands of people losing their homes. And the nervous system trauma that's created around that and the lack of tools that we have as kind of a Western society to support ourselves in dealing with trauma so that it doesn't land in our nervous system and create the symptoms of PTSD. Yeah, it's very limited. So a little bit of a tangent, but that experience has been very pivotal to my experience of life. Thank you for sharing that. I'm sorry. And Mike Nolan says, for your father, I understand. So was that what drew you to that intersection of the wellness, science, and culture, and everything? And it's just driven everything there? No, actually it was, I was was two years ago. So it kind of was a connecting the dots backwards moment. And I think furthered my passion for getting these tools and education to families, to people that we're all going to experience death, we're all going to die, even though we don't want to admit it sometimes. And I think that the lack of acceptance around that in the Western world and the lack of integration. And understanding of mortality is often one of the things that creates the most fear in people. When I ask people what their biggest fear is, it's often a fear of death. And that's not the answer you get when you go to India and other cultures that have a really beautiful, harmonious relationship with their mortality. get, you know, different answers around nirvana and death being the beginning of life. And so I think after that experience, it gave me a deeper understanding of, you know, how things can be tools. to regulate the nervous system both when you're alive and then also to help process the inevitable at the end of life. Yeah, that's amazing. think one of the first times that I ever heard of any psychedelic being used in a therapeutic setting was, fact, with, you know, and I think it was cancer patients and that acceptance of death and just the, you know, being able to move on and get it move away from that fear. But it also kind of reminds me of how in the United States, it's almost a singular phenomena that schizophrenia patients have menacing voices. where in other cultures a lot of times they could be friendly or fairy-like almost. so, yeah, think it has a little bit to do with our culture and where our minds tend to focus on in that collective. So yeah, have you faced any significant challenges in being a public advocate for microdosing? Yeah, you know, I think if we're speaking specifically to the psych, things. maybe I can just give a little color on microdosing collective. started it with Austin, who co-founded Third Wave, which is an amazing resource for psychedelic education. He's taught millions of people how to microdose. And Josh Cappell, who is one of the leading psychedelic lawyers, he helped write the policy that decriminalized, well, passed the most progressive decrim bill in Colorado and has written tons and tons of other psychedelic policy across the US. And then we brought in a bunch of other amazing people, John Downs, who's a, you know, as a microdosing coach guide and advocate. And it just built this incredible community around the passion for microdosing, which up until like a year ago was still, we had crossed the threshold from science, that it was anything but anecdotal and placebo effect based on the limited research that goes towards microdosing. All of the clinical trials and all of the research is focused on macrodosing. And the research there is profound, but you have this movement of people that are microdosing or taking a sub perceptual amount of psychedelics for all sorts of things, for creativity, for low grade anxiety, depression, healing disorders, OCD, getting off their pharmaceutical medication, specifically antidepressants, also ADHD medication. So there's such as wide pool of people that can benefit from this practice. that has relatively low risk as far as contraindications with other medications and things like that. There are some kind of caveats and notes to this. And of course with anything, there are some risks and things to be addressed. However, by and large, out of the hundreds and hundreds of people that I've worked with, with microdosing psychedelics, psilocybin specifically, have had profound results. And so what we wanted to do is create actual policy to reflect this. Because if you look at the way that is being developed across the United States, we're focused on macrodosing at service centers. And that's incredible, because these medicines need to get to people in that way as well. But if you were to really break it down, know, a friend said this to me, and I really like this analogy, we're legalizing the entire bottle of wine before we legalize a sip of wine. And there's not a whole lot of sense that really, you know, can be made of that because microdosing can be so beneficial. And so our goal is to help close culture and government. There's a study done in 2023 that audited people in the United States were using psychedelics and they found 8 million people were using these medicines, which is a pretty astounding number. was even more incredible is that 4 million of those people were microdosing. So half of the total number of people that were engaging in psychedelics of any sort were using microdosing as a tool for their mental health. And so our goal is to help close the gap between culture and government and make sure these policies are included in future bills, regulatory policy that are being passed. So we're working on a few different things. We've already made micro adjustments to existing policies in states like Colorado and Oregon, but working to create something that actually reflects. way that culture is using microdosing and also the way that they can stand to benefit from the most. Nice. How does functional mushrooms like from SuperMush complement or different from the psychedelic microdosing? Yeah, so do you know, you taken last, are familiar with functional mushrooms? I am familiar. fact, I've been my father-in-law, recently is diagnosed with Parkinson's. I've been looking into trying to find some lions mane for him just to help as a supplement. think it's a great idea for him just to look into it. So yeah, I think it's been shown. I think it's been proven to show to promote nootropics, neurogenesis, I guess, in the brain. You know the fungi, you know, just it's all part of our world and kind of you know, it interconnects everything to the mycelium, you know, and that's you know, that's part of what I love about, know, the so any of this the mushrooms and everything whether it's psilocybin or not. But yeah, that's so yeah, I am familiar. Sorry little rant there. Yeah, I know you pointed out some points that I can kind of dive into. So functional mushrooms are the same, right? Because technically all mushrooms are functional and functional just denotes the fact that it has a fit beyond just being nutritional. And so there's around 30 mushrooms, if you will. These are fully legal superfood fungi that you can find in your grocery store. And the main ones people might have heard about are Lilliputian, Lilliputian, Lilliputian cordyceps, rechi, Chaga, mitocci, turkey tail, et cetera. these superfood mushrooms has kind of catch all benefits. So they all are incredible for, you know, inflammation in your body, amazing for gut health, energy levels, supporting and reducing stress. And then there's ones that have specific superfood benefits in one area. So lion's mane is the brain mushroom. It's this beautiful, kind of like hairy looking, it looks like the mane of a lion. It's white and beautiful. And these functional mushrooms, which have been used, by the way, for thousands of years, actually grew up over in Taipei and Taiwan. so functional mushrooms were just a part of my culture. They weren't focused on in the way that we're focusing on them in the West as these are mushrooms. They're just ingredients that you find very, very commonly. Yeah, well, think, you know, I think it would be helpful. Cause I'm assuming a lot of this audience is. it using psychedelics or maybe is interested in ways that you can optimize that experience. And I love to talk about, you can use functional mushrooms by themselves, which I believe humans should be doing every single day. We evolved eating them. So for 20,000 years of human evolution, they were such a critical part of our every single day diet. And we have very much taken them out of our diet in the West. They're still a huge part of Eastern cultures, all diet, but functional mushrooms is edible. And then if you're looking to supplement them and use them in higher doses for the superpower, these incredible healing benefits, you can also stack them with psilocybin. So if you look at any mainstream consumer product in the psychedelic space, which are all still currently illegal, not available for consumer use yet are widespread across the US. A lot of these brands are going against the law currently to get people the quality supplements like microdosing. There's brands out there that are not in the right way. And then there are some that are. So our goal again with microdosing collective is how to legalize and create access for people to have access to these products. But specifically on like the brain chemistry interaction. you're psilocybin and you're combining it with things like lion's mane and ashwagandha and cordyceps and vitamin D and shilajit and all of these amazing superfoods, it's very synergistic with your brain chemistry. And Paul Stamets is huge on this. He created the Stamets, which combines psilocybin, lion's mane and niacin. And so when... people are taking microdosing, you're also feeling lion's vein a lot of the times, because if you're taking the correct dose of a microdose, it's below the hallucinogenic level, so it's sub-hallucinogenic. So that's just a little bit about how to define them, but if you take a functional mushrooms every single day, you will notice a difference in your health for sure. Cordyceps is another one that I love to talk about. It's a fungi, it kind of looks like Cheetos, it's like these little curly fungi. It increases the amount of ATP to your muscles. So it actually increases the amount of oxygen that your muscles are able to take in and use. Athletes love cordyceps for a while, around 60 years ago. People thought that Chinese athletes were using steroids because cordyceps was so profoundly improving their performance and their ability to maintain optimal endurance. So the list kind of goes on. on, could, I could go into each one more I can. but there's so many beautiful healing benefits to them. Oh yeah, that sounds great. I thinking myself as festivals or concerts would be great if you need the extraction to stand a little longer, dance a little longer. I always have a little extra. yeah, if you want to go in anymore, that's great. Yeah. And maybe I'll tell you you know, the reason we created the brand was to get functional mushrooms to people in a way that was accessible and tasted good. Mushrooms taste like mushrooms. They taste very bitter often. Some more than others, but they were really potent flavor, very earth like flavor. And so we wanted to create products that took the extracts of these mushrooms. want to take the extracts is what you want to be looking for. Fruiting body extracts is what we use in our products. And we turn them into first mouth sprays, so functional mouth sprays. And then we made mints for creativity and flow state, different stacks for each of those things. And then we made gummies for energy, sex, and sleep. And so we have sugar-free gummies. They're stacked with other functional superfoods as well. And they're delicious. So you get this high dose of functional mushrooms. But you're taking ton of caffeine into your system. So if you want to take it for a social event, the energy and sex ones are great because they're uplifting. They boost your mood, increase blood flow, and they're not going to give you a crazy... And then the sleep ones, for example, we wanted to make sure we weren't using melatonin, which if you take over a period of time, body loses its ability to naturally produce it. So if you take melatonin, it's not something you should be taking over extended period of time. And so we made something that was just made with magnesium and ashwagandha and chaga and reishi and these compounds that were down your system at night helped prepare it for rest and help your body stay asleep so that you wake up the next morning feeling energized. Because most of the problems that people experience with energy levels and kind of this wild up and down cycle that we tend to go with, we tend to perceive as normal is on the fact our bodies aren't sleeping well, we're consuming things that are making us stay awake at night, alcohol, caffeine, disrupting our sleep cycles, and then having to overcompensate for that in the morning so that we can get this boost of energy to be awake during our day. So it's something that just kind of feeds into a spiral. Oh, nice. Are there any myths about microdosing you'd like to debunk? myths about microdosing. Well, I mean. The one that comes to mind is most people when they microdosing. They're not actually microdosing. So the technical definition of a microdose. is you can technically anything, but we'll talk about psilocybin for the sake of this conversation. The definition of that falls that the amount of the substance that you're taking back to substance is between 0.1 and 0.2 of a gram of mushrooms. And so sometimes I'll talk to people that they say, oh, I took 0.6 or half a gram of mushrooms and I took a microdose. That's not, that's fine. But that's more what you would call a social dose. There's different terminologies for it, based on where you kind of fit into different subsets of culture. But the definition of a microdose is sub hallucinogenic. And James Fadiman, who is commonly referred to as the godfather of microdosing, is the one who popularized this concept. So kind of the history and the story of it goes is in 1938, Albert Hoffman synthesized LSD, but considered microdosing one of the drugs most, you know, like potentially magnanimous uses, but wasn't really, really studied effectively and popularized until James Fadiman, was, know, who was, was popularized the concept. And so he, in the early, you know, 2000s, he wrote the Psychedelic Explorers Guide, and then he went on the Tim Ferriss podcast, I believe it was in 2011, and started to talk about this concept of microdosing. And then you had this widespread you know, kind of viral movement, entrepreneurs and people that were using microdosing for creativity and flow state and accredited a lot of different inventions to psilocybin, to LSD, things like this. And so now what we have in our current culture is you have four people across the US reported at least that are utilizing microdosing for maintenance for some similar things to what the Silicon Valley entrepreneur has popularized it as. But there's this whole movement of moms who are microdosing. There is athletes that are using it for improving their athletic performance, their ability to feel different muscle groups in their body in a more specific way. If you talk to pro athletes or pro weightlifters, I was talking to some friends of mine and 95 % of the world isn't going to notice these micro differences. But if you're really like that is your world and you're training every single day, you notice when your muscles are able to do different things, you're able to put different focus there. especially for pro sports athletes, they notice a pretty profound difference with microdosing. Nice. Yeah, I could definitely see that, especially, you know, like you were talking earlier with, you know, these mushrooms are in these other diets, but not really in our own. you know, so your work with the microdosing collective, what inspired the creation of the microdosing collective and what would you say are its primary goals? Well, what inspired it was that microdosing was profound in my life. Hundreds of people I know had found incredible benefit from using protocol, really taking, know, subperceptual psychedelics as a supplement or sub hallucinogenic is technically the better term. And as I was reading policy, I realized that there was no focus on it. there was community to represent people who microdosed. And we wanted to make sure that there was a legal safe pathway and that it wasn't left out of the policy conversation because it can be so impactful if it's implemented correctly. And the fear is that all of the focus goes on macrodosing at service centers, but that leaves a huge gap in the way that culture is actually using these substances. And it forces people to go to the underground market, use substances that aren't vetted, tested, safe, usually from a guy who knows a guy on Signal or encrypted messaging apps. So wanted a way to bring this to above ground markets in a way that was safe, accessible, and limited it from being completely owned by the pharmaceutical industry. And so was kind of the inspiration behind it. And very simply, our to help legalize microdosing in the United States. We would love that to happen primarily, or I guess not primarily, but to start in California, because of what California represents as a cultural vehicle for the rest of the country. And our hope is to include policy that would allow for some sort of a home protocol with some guardrails in it with education and research supporting and helping to educate people before they're engaging in something like this. But to create some policy that would allow for that or some pilot programs and then to roll it out to other states and see where we can improve there. Nice. So what are the biggest policy challenges facing the microdosing advocacy so far? that most of the people writing policy about what we're allowed to put in our body don't know what those substances are. Yeah, that's a tough one. Just get the message out there, what they do and what they can do. How does the microdosing collective work to influence policymakers and educate the public about these things? So we have been that have been really notable. One is, you we have a policy committee within our organization. So I mentioned Josh Cappell, who's our co-founder and policy director. And then we also have a whole group of lawyers that we work with and we touch base with to kind of get an effective audit of what's going on across the country with different policies in different states, because this will be a state by state policy. You know, right now it doesn't look like few years, there's going to be a federal legalization potential for microdosing psychedelics. That being said, you know, we have a policy committee that meets, audits what's happening, and we've also gone directly to the government. So we've gone, we took a whole group of our team, around 20 people to Sacramento and met with Governor Newsom's office. Scott Weiner is a big proponent for psychedelics. Unfortunately, there were four bills over the last few years. in California that were proposed and then vetoed for a variety of reasons. We have been educating policymakers, lobbyists on microdosing and why it's important. So our next step with it is to figure out what is going to be proposed. We can potentially include our policy, our language, our community in those bills. The number one, like first and foremost is creating more education and more culture and more community around this movement because the larger group of people that you represent, the more impactful you'll be able to be in policy. And we're also really focused on research as well. We're running a study for cluster headaches, showing how microdosing can be impactful in the reduction of cluster headaches. And then we're also attaching ourselves to other studies and initiatives that are undergoing to. create more research, legitimate research around the practice of microdosing. Nice, kind of going along the same lines. Are there any countries or regions that seem to be kind leading the way with microdosing legislation regulations? There's some countries where the legalization of mushrooms. is available. If you go to Amsterdam, can buy mushrooms. different countries across the world where that is possible. would say Canada is ahead of us as far as policy and research as well. But there's some really cool studies that have come out, like from the Imperial College of London, there's a study on LSD that showed LSD can improve sleep scores, improve REM sleep for participants that are going on a microdosing protocols. That was a notable one with microdosing. There's a bunch of studies that are underway, really incredible organizations that are focusing on this as an initiative because there hasn't been much attention on psychedelics for creativity and how we can support the human mind and other ways that aren't just like mental health specific issues. And I think the more momentum that we see in that space, the better. mean, I guess to round out your question around like where, where's comparison to other countries? Like next year we'll be really telling to see, you know, we have a huge change in, you know, we have a huge change in legislation that's going to follow what's happening with the new administration coming in and around, you know, seven days the inauguration is from now. And I am excited about RFPA for what it's worth. And I you know, his, his belief in the power of psychedelics will be, I think, very influential to our ability to make policy changes, hopefully. Yeah, that is exciting, that coming up. Yeah, at least we know there's somewhat of an advocate in there for that, the Health and Human Services. What role do you see for just the normal everyday psychonaut and helping advance this policy reform? Come be a member of the microdosing collective would be, number one, you know, and the more cultural momentum that comes to the space, the better because the more headless news, all of it from, know, from there's so many different layers of how to push this movement forward and they all kind of coalesce in momentum. So the more momentum, the better because it forces it to be a focal point for politicians. And we have, you know, very simple, you can sign up on our website. donate $25 a month to be a member of our community, get invited to events that we do. We're going to be doing a few big events at Psychedelic Science, supporting the mushroom brand in general, mushroom brands supporting anything that has to do with fungal injury, cultural momentum around the forward. And so there's so many different, really fascinating communities that are coalescing around psychedelics. Microdosing, kleptoma is one of them. SuperMASH is one of them. So yeah, those are a few obvious ways to kind of get involved and stay in the loop with what's happening with policy. anytime there's an opportunity to sign a petition or call your local government to call in about an issue, like actually do that because it makes a difference. And we point to resources and tell people when and how they should do those things. Yeah, that's a good point. you know, have the supposed to, you know, have the politicians for a reason, give them a call and all this kind of, you know, it all kind of leads up to, guess, the micro dosing kind of gray market that exists out there kind of due to any kind of legal pathways for them so far. think, know, it kind of presents opportunities and risks of that. What would how would you explain the psychedelic gray market and how does it operate within today's legal landscape? I mean, you know what this is? So I'm in Utah right now. My boyfriend was at a store and was like, my mom's just at this convenience store. And you see that all across, you know, I live in Venice beach. There's like full mushroom shops operating in Venice beach. There's several in Canada. Like there's a lot of stores that are just like fully selling underground products. We estimate there's around like a thousand brands. selling and operating some, you know, a little bit more hush hush and door to door, but. The point is with these. brands, like some of them have incredible high quality product and they're taking the very, you know, illegal risk currently, except for in certain states where you can share your own, Colorado being one of those states, but they're taking the risk to get this product to people. And then there's brands that are capitalizing off the fact that it's unregulated, unsafe and creating really terrible product. You know, Polkadot has had some health concerns. Diamond Shrooms is the brand that he saw at the store. There's this whole PR scandal because people that have been consuming these products, which you can now buy at some, not legally, but you can buy them at some of these stores and hospitalized because they're not what they say they are inside of the product. And that's what happens when you don't regulate supplements. Yeah, I was going to say, think, fact, I'd heard that even the polka dot bars, people just downloading the wrapper and printing the wrapper straight out. So could be anything now. And you don't know if it really is a polka dot or anything. So I mean, I know that's part of what you guys are doing. So what kind of steps are you guys looking at to maybe try to help maybe move policy in the way of sourcing safe and ethical products? Yeah, so there's a few things. There's like a few. that we're tracking that have been introduced that might be ones that we would either support or adopt the language and take into other states. Like right now, the two kind of micro changes that we've made is reducing the amount of time that you have to sit with a facilitator while you take a microdose. Because right now, how it's legal to take a microdose and pay for it at least in Colorado and Oregon is to go into a service center and sit with a facilitator and pay a few hundred dollars. which is obviously not reflective of the way that microdosing works to sit there and look at someone that's ideally using it while you're in your life and getting that subtle neuroplasticity while you're in your day-to-day life. But either way, we're making micro adjustments to reducing the time that you're allowed, that you have to sit with a facilitator. So making changes to existing policy and then looking at bills that were introduced. There was this great bill introduced in New York that proposed by this woman, Allison Hoots is an amazing lawyer and it reflected more of a driver's license model. test model where there's some preliminary education that's required to successfully be able to take home any sort of microdosing supplement or psychedelic supplement, which is something really interesting. I haven't been tracking exactly what's happened with the progression of that, but we are looking at what would be the best policy. The interesting thing about having this community profit that's kind of a movement by the people, if you will, is we get to see what do people want? or not. a policy that doesn't act reflect, you know, how people want to use these substances. So we're kind of crowdsourcing a lot of different information, research, and then turning that into potential policy. Also noting that things that we propose may not get rejected. So we have to make certain sacrifices to make more guardrails in the hopes that we would get some accepted and then prove its safety and then reduce those guardrails to allow people to have more freedom with safe, efficacious products. Yeah, that's, I mean, yeah, that makes sense. It's kind of what you have to do. And it hopefully is, you know, things get more regulated, we will get more of that, you know, kind of a more quality, guess, or say more of a consistent. Do you think the regulatory market could maintain like a kind of community driven ethos of the gray market? So as a question, do you think that the the policy, like the legalization would maintain a community ethics. Yeah, I think like right now we see in a lot of spaces like you're saying there's some really good high quality products and people who really pay attention to what they're putting out. But then you also have the, I guess the more gray, again gray or less ethical market or vendors out there. And, you know, but I think that's part of like the that like part of the the good part of the community is where is a lot of times those are pointed out pretty quickly. fact, it kind of reminds there was a saw paper somebody had noticed today that one of the I was one of the other mods from another subreddit. He was saying that they did a paper finding where people got some of their most accurate information about drug research online and one of them was Reddit, which is community driven. So I was like, wow, that's actually really, that's kind of, you know, that's impressive. And I think that, you know, goes to show the value of just, you know, the community in that. So, yeah, I think that's kind of the question. Do you think there's any way that a regulated market that's centered around more of that, the capital and the drive, could it maintain still kind of that community driven ethos of kind of watching out for each other? Yeah, I actually just looked it up while we're talking. There's a 300,000. community online for microdosing subreddit, which is really cool. And my answer is like, I hope so. And the reality is I don't know. And I think the priority is how do we get people legal safe access to this in a way that's reasonable and timely? And so there's a lot of different considerations in that. our lawyer, Josh, would be an amazing person to have on this podcast. how. to talk about the details of that and how it's rolled out. We did a whole microdosing policy education dinner just to like lay out the framework of how this could possibly and then create the future of legal policy because there's different avenues. And my hope is that it will be community driven. And that's the reason why we started this community. number one goal right now, which we've shifted a lot of different directions and initiatives. based on the viability of entire policy where our number one goal right now is to grow the community as large as we can, involve ourselves with as many relevant cultural projects. There's an amazing documentary coming out about microdosing, kind like a fantastic fungi type of documentary, but specifically on microdosing that we're going to support as a nonprofit partner as well. And then in you know, obviously, talking a lot about microdosing collective is like my day job is a super mushroom creating a cultural brand. That's that's fun and colorful and joyous and kind of de-stigmatizes psychedelics just by the nature of the artwork and the brand and brings together community to educate around mushroom holistically and focuses on stories and storytelling. You know, with our pod, we have people come on and share their stories with functional mushrooms and psychedelics and mental health and creativity and art and those stories start to dismantle the public opinion and the stigma that we've kind of attached to all mushrooms of all kinds, specifically psychedelics are the ones that are the most heated, but it's really, my summary is storytelling, really amazing community, and then taking all of that momentum to push forward for policy change. Okay, so what excites you the most about this growing interest in psychedelics and mushrooms coming around now? I think what excites me the most. What excites me the most is talking to people who at one point in their journey were very clear that. psychedelics are bad for you or functional mushrooms were Bad for your thoughts functional mushrooms were psychedelic. There's still a you large part of the population believes that lion's mane gets you high An illegal great way, but I love talking to people that have changed their own is the very nature of these substances Are that they help you change open your mind and regrow new brain cells? and change the way that you think and process the world, change the way that your nervous system operates and their tools are just a reference point. You know, the brain of a child is very similar to the brain state of someone who's ingested psilocybin mushrooms. If you take, you can look at the brain scans are very similar. Likewise, someone who's in trans dental meditation. So I'm really excited that people are starting to understand the science behind these substances and also learning the history of them. These are. know, mushrooms have been used for thousands of years, both functional and psychedelic. They're actually the only medicine that has stood the test of time in so many ways. And so I'm excited that people are starting to learn the history and the reality of how vital and how useful these can be for our society. Yeah, I was thinking back, what was it, the 1950s with Maria Sabour, I think it was, that they, really the mushrooms really started. Yeah, Maria Sabina, that's it, and started catching back on again. it's almost kind of that same, I guess, the same kind of renaissance of the sense with microdosing today. So yeah, are there any community driven initiatives or collaborations that you're particularly proud of? Yeah, we've done so many cool things. We've done collaborations with artists like Sophie Tucker and Blondish. We've done collaborations with brands like Sun Life, Air One, and we are starting to launch further collaborations with different artists and athletes that are big advocates for mental health with actual gummy product collaborations. And we also got into some really big retailers, which I'm very excited about. So those will be launching in a few months. to see which ones. Yeah, but very excited about that. And for, for microdosing collective, are going to be at, you know, activating at the maps conference. So we'll be doing an event to honor James Fadiman who's, you know, really put microdosing on the map for so many people to honor his life, legacy, the launch of his, his book. And then we'll also be doing a big party for microdosing collective. you're listening, you're coming to the maps conference, coming out with us. Well, that'd be awesome. We're trying to get there ourselves. So that'd be a ton of fun to meet everybody that, you know, we've been talking to quite a few people. So yeah, meet everybody in person would be great. So where would you say SuperMush work and listeners learn about the work, donate to the microdosing collective or support SuperMush? He has a super. Supermush.com or I am Supermush on TikTok, Supermush on Instagram, and then Micro Dosing Collective spelled how it sounds. You can go to microdosingcollective.org or connect with us on Instagram and then check out our podcast. called Into the Multiverse and you can find it on platforms. And then if you want to chat with me, my Instagram's Ali Shaper, which I'm sure you will link up somewhere in the show notes here. Yeah. you so much for having me on. really appreciate it. No problem. guess final question, if there's one key takeaway or message you'd like to leave for the listeners about microdosing and its future, what would it be? I would say the key... The message is more so that the substances that we consume can define a lot of our life. And so to be really intentional and conscious and educated about everything you consume is one of the biggest levers that you can pull to maximize your vitality. Anyway, yeah, it was great having you here. Hopefully I'll you back. yeah, I'd love to talk to you. You know, you said you had an attorney there at the microdosing collective. Yeah, love to have you and have you back any time. Amazing. Yeah, you should talk to you should definitely get up Paul Austin on Dave Josh would be And I'll recommend some more people for you, but it was so great to chat with you. And I hope everyone enjoyed the episode and reach out to me if you have any cool ideas or collaborations. always interested. awesome you you you Oh dude, that was great. Um, I felt like I learned quite a bit about mushrooms that I didn't know before. Yeah. She's, she's really knowledgeable just about just so much. So it was a lot of fun talking to her. Absolutely. And there's a lot of ambition and drive there, you know, especially with like working with more laws and just trying to shape the industry as a whole. Right. She, yeah, she's really got her to it and just, I see her on social media all the time, just constantly posts and stuff. Yeah. She's really involved with it. It was really fun interview too. Yeah. so I did find out between the time, cause we had some time recording from the intro to the, to here we were, we didn't get the, grant. So, for the travel. So if you guys out there, want to support us, you can hit us up with a buy me a coffee. Don't think anybody's done that yet. Yes. I'm on patreon.com/DivergentStates. or even then the Divergent States dot buzz route.com and become a subscriber there. So. Right. support the show and help us get to Psychedelic Science 2025. But yeah, you guys got music or something? Hit us up out there. Send your submissions in. But yeah, we're we're getting stoked for that. Psychedelic Science 2025 should be a lot of fun. Oh, yeah, that's going to be a great time. mean, it's going to be a lot of cool people there to be a great experience. Yeah, it's I'm just I'm yeah. I'm kind of blown away by it all still, but it's just so much fun. you know, they're going to have, you know, just being able to talk to all the people and be able to just bring all those conversations to everybody. yeah, that's, I mean, that's the goal. Get it out there. Yeah, we're picking up on. I'm in YouTube, Spotify. That's right. It's up and coming. We're getting the, getting the streams, getting the downloads. guys share it out there with your friends, you know, support us on the Patreon. Yeah. Leave us a review anywhere that you're listening to. always helps. Yeah, that's a good point. Also we've got in the video or the descriptions for the podcast. can send us a text if you want. You just want to send a text to say what's up or. Say hi, or you know, got a story or something, something you might a tip you'd like to tell, you know, just send us a text. Yeah. So yeah. But yeah, we're getting ready, I think later this month, we might do a psychedelics 101 kind of Brian and I'll just be chatting. Maybe we'll find somebody to come in, maybe do like a roundtable or something. It'd a lot of fun. Yeah. But all right, guys. Yeah, have fun. Keep exploring. Catch you next time. you