PODCAST
Intro
Annika: Welcome to the Nutritional Mental Health Podcast, the podcast where we talk about the intersection between nutrition and psychological science. I’m Annika, an ADHD nutrition research expert with my masters in health psychology. If you’re not driving and if you’ve listened to a few of these episodes before, please take two seconds to rate the show so that it tells the algorithm to send this to more people. If you haven’t followed yet, do that instead and leave a comment letting me know what you’re interested in learning about next. I read and respond to as many as I can because honestly, this would be nothing without you. Now, let’s get into the episode.
Understanding ADHD and Medication Experiences
Annika: I would love to hear more about your journey into ADHD before we get into the real journeys here. What was your path into ADHD?
John: A lot of denial. Growing up, I would observe my family and various traits and think, “Oh, ADHD” — the classic, not so much hyperactivity, but mostly not being able to sit still. My mom and my sister were prime examples of that. I’d watch my sister trying to flip all the time, and my mom always getting up and getting busy and coming back down, sitting down. I love my mom — she loves inviting me over for dinner, and I’ll go over and she’s getting the food ready, brings the food over, and I’ll say, “Sit with me, let’s eat together,” and she’ll say, “No, I’ve got to put the stuff away.” I’m like, “Mom, you just made the food, it’s fresh.” So I grew up with those kinds of examples of what I thought ADHD was. I think there’s a lot of confusion, or just not enough awareness about what it’s really like.
It wasn’t until probably around five or six years ago — pre-pandemic, so it’s hard to know how much time has gone by since 2020 —
Annika: I feel that. I got married in the pandemic, and I feel like I just got married but also like I’ve been married for ages.
John: Time is weird. And then add on the ADHD time on top of that.
Annika: Who really knows what happened, honestly. What is time, you know? It doesn’t exist.
John: So, I’m self-employed, which means you have to wear a hundred different hats. One of those hats is billing people, and it’s one of the most challenging things for me. Combined with the shame of not billing folks on time, it made it incredibly difficult. There was a point where I wondered if I just wasn’t able to focus — if there was something else going on beyond the shame thing. I called my primary care doctor and told him I wondered if I had ADHD. He asked why I thought that, and I described how many months I had gone without billing clients. I could feel his response change on the other end of the phone — his voice shifted a little after I shared that. He said, “Yeah, I think you probably need some help,” and set me up to submit a urine sample and get a prescription. So I went in and got a Ritalin prescription — 5 milligrams twice a day, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. I’d like to say it changed my life forever, but I can’t say that exactly — though it did make a difference.
Annika: I’ve never been on medication myself. I’ve thought about it a lot, but I’m still waiting to finish my full psych evaluation to get prescribed. That’s part of why a conversation like this is fascinating. What was your experience with medication? For a lot of people it works really well, but for a lot of others it doesn’t, and they have to try a lot of different things.
John: It’s interesting — I think my body is pretty sensitive to certain chemicals in general, and this was a low dose; apparently 5 milligrams is really low. When I first took it, I noticed a warmness in my body, and sometimes a bit of a buzzy feeling, but that was about it. Eventually, maybe a week or so later, I did notice something. For example, pre-medication, if I’m in the kitchen grabbing a plate out of the cabinet, I’d open the door, grab the plate, put it on the counter, and look over at the still-open door — and there’d be an actual deliberation in my head: “Should I close that now? No, it’s okay, I can close it later when I’m over on that side of the kitchen” — which is literally five feet away. When I started taking the Ritalin, what would happen instead is I’d plate the food, look at the door, and there’d be a button that appeared in front of me. If I pressed it, I’d walk over and close the door. So all it did, in that sense, was put a button there that gave me the inclination to just do it, without all the deliberation and analytical stuff constantly happening.
Annika: So it’s almost like the Ritalin was giving you more access to the button itself — putting you in front of the button instead of having to walk to it.
John: Exactly. I noticed that, and I also noticed how caffeine affects me — it’s hit or miss. I could drink a gallon of coffee at night and sleep like a baby, but have a little black tea in the morning and be anxious and unable to sleep that night. It’s weird.
Annika: That feels so similar to me too — it’s honestly why I just don’t use caffeine anymore. If it’s going to give me a lot of anxiety, what’s the purpose?
John: Yeah, I know there’s some great research out there on caffeine, even some interesting longevity research, but for me it gives more emotional dysregulation, and it’s hit or miss — some days I’m perfectly fine, no issues sleeping; sometimes it even puts me to sleep instead. I like chocolate, so if I’m at a cafe working or hanging out with friends I’ll get a mocha, but mostly just for the taste — it doesn’t do much. Once in a blue moon it does the thing most people experience, and I think, “Oh wow, I can see why people get addicted to this,” but usually if it does anything, it’s more that anxiety thing.
Annika: Yeah, it feels like it just makes my mind go faster, and my mind is already really fast.
John: Totally. And the Ritalin was kind of like that — sometimes I’d feel it working, and everything would kind of zoom in and I’m on it. As long as I can get started on the thing, I stay on it and the tasks get done. Now, what’s important is what you’re focusing on — if you’re focusing on something you shouldn’t be prioritizing, like putting the laundry away, that laundry’s going to be put away perfectly.
Annika: Oh, dang, I need to do my laundry today. Good reminder — I have to do the same.
John: So that’s one of the things I noticed — when the Ritalin worked, it would do that, and then at a certain point it really stopped doing anything for me. My primary care person changed, and eventually I was able to get another prescription a couple years later, which I can get into in a bit.
Annika: In general, it sounds like your medication was giving you more access to the part of yourself that is more neurotypical. I talk to my husband a lot about this — that idea that I don’t have a single brain, I have multiple brains inside my brain, and I argue with them all the time. I deliberate with myself constantly, and it’s not automatic. I mean, habits are a thing, but they take a lot longer for me to form, and I need a lot more external motivation to do them. This might be weird to say, but I hope someone will resonate with it — just brushing my teeth is not an automatic process for me. It blew my mind when my husband told me it’s automatic for him — that automatic thing is wild.
John: Yeah, I have a toothbrush on my bathroom counter and also one in my shower, because if I see it —
Annika: Exactly, I’m more inclined to do it.
John: That’s how my brain works — if I want to remember something, I’ll put it by my keys so I know I have to take it with me when I leave the house. It’s incredible that people don’t have to do that, and recognizing that if you do that, maybe you should consider ADHD, because regular people don’t trick their brains to do things. I thought that was normal my entire life — legit. My sister, in gentle and not-so-gentle ways, tried to encourage me to consider that I might have it. It took a while, because there’s that stereotype of what people with ADHD are like. Even though I’m a big proponent of mental health — I’ve been in therapy since 2007 and talk about it all the time — I think there were still some stigmas I’d internalized. I kept telling myself, “I don’t have it, I don’t have it,” until I realized, “Oh crap, I totally have it.”
Annika: And what’s great about the internet and social media is a lot of the awareness being raised by people like myself gets you thinking, “Okay, there’s a good chance that I might.” And then you learn and learn and read, and then you overread because that becomes your hyperfocus — you basically learn everything there is about ADHD.
John: I was telling my partner the other day how I could probably do anything — like I wanted to learn something, I can learn it. I got into racing cars in my late-mid to late twenties. I always liked cars, and there was this one rare car I fell in love with — drove to Oklahoma, bought it, and didn’t want anybody else touching it, no mechanics. So I learned how to change the oil, then how to pull the engine out and rebuild it, upgrading the turbos and nitrous and programming the computers. I became an expert and was able to help other people select turbochargers for their race cars, and it becomes like an obsession.
Annika: Really resonates with me — how you said it feels like you can do anything.
John: My partner Andrew has to tell me all the time, “You might think you can do this, but your brain is not usually reality. Just because you think you can create all of this doesn’t mean you actually have all the time to do it. It doesn’t mean that if you keep doing it, you’re never going to burn out.”
Annika: Just because it feels like you’re not going to burn out doesn’t mean that you aren’t.
John: Totally. I think that’s a healthy perspective to adopt, which is hard to do when you have this superpower.
Annika: It’s like a superpower that’s also a curse — its own kryptonite, because if you don’t keep it in check, your life can fall apart.
John: I don’t know if your brain works this way, but if someone presents a problem to me — “my car is making this noise” — immediately I think of five things it could be and extrapolate from there. Problem solving is just my default, figuring things out. When I was a little kid, I had this phrase I’d tell people: “Think before you think.” I noticed how I could think in all these layers, and I thought that was such a great tool. It is, for certain things, but it can also drive you mad.
Annika: It really can. And connecting to that, I really want to know now — how has your thought pattern changed since using psilocybin?
Exploring Psilocybin for Mental Health
John: Back in ’22, I didn’t know this until December, but the whole period of that year I was very depressed. In December ’22, I remember — some stuff in my house is smart-home automated, I have an Alexa, and I can tell it to set the temperature and it’ll turn the heater on. I remember laying in bed thinking, “It’s kind of cold, I should turn the heater on,” and instead of saying those simple words to Alexa, I’d go to my phone and dial the temperature manually. I remember thinking, “Oh, that’s so amusing, I should tell my friends about it” — I did that because I didn’t have the energy, the life in me, to speak to something, to do something. That’s how depressed I was. When I recognized that in December of ’22, I knew I needed help, some kind of medicine.
Annika: Yeah. I’m really curious — do you know if the depression was more from ADHD overwork, or if it was from something else?
John: That’s a great question. I think it was a combination of things, related to some health stuff that gave me a gigantic health scare during the pandemic. Long story short, I thought I had cancer, thought I was dying. June of 2020, I’m in a cancer hospital waiting for results, thinking, “Am I going to die? Is this it?” And everyone’s wearing masks, distancing — it was so surreal. I had to wait for results over the next couple of years to find out if a nodule I had was going to be a tumor. Those couple of years were just — yeah, it was bad, just the waiting game. And that combined with being burnt out from work and the inability to focus. I woke up one day, called my sister, and said, “Hey, I’m depressed,” and she knew I would never say that lightly, because of that stigma. So she knew it was serious. I didn’t want to do the over-the-counter medication route just yet. I had a couple of friends who had done psilocybin — one was microdosing, another did full journeys. There was that documentary, Fantastic Fungi —
Annika: I think I have seen that. Beautiful.
John: Yeah, I remember watching that, and I love psychology, so I’d come across things related to it all the time. I thought maybe this was something I should explore, started reading more, talked to friends, reached out to an expert, and decided this is what I wanted to do. Initially it wasn’t necessarily for ADHD — it was mostly just to try to feel better overall.
The Psilocybin Journey and Its Effects
John: In January of ’23, I did my first journey — for folks who don’t know, that’s typically a dose of three grams or more, where you enter a full psychedelic space, whereas a microdose is way less, usually around 0.067 to 0.1 grams or so. I’ve never really done drugs at all — I don’t drink, and I did pot one time in 2016. So this was all, “Oh god, what am I getting into?” The day came, I took my dose, and went on the journey. It’s wild what comes up. I’d been working on various traumas over the years and had healed a lot — I was aware of that. But in the journey, things came up that I thought I’d already learned and healed from. I’d think, “I already know that,” and the mushrooms would essentially say, “Maybe you should look at this a bit more.” Next thing I know, I’m realizing these things are still here, still real — and those are the things that get in the way of our brain being able to function, because if we have trauma we haven’t fully healed from, it’s hard to regulate.
My journey was all over the place like that. In a therapeutic setting, it’s usually not what you’d call fun — I talked to a lot of people afterward who’ve done psychedelics, and over half said they’d only done it recreationally. In a particular set-and-setting, with intentions, in a therapeutic context, a lot of times it’s not fun, because things are coming up.
Annika: I think that is the real aspect here — the intentional part of using. I think about that with my own weed use. I’m super intentional with it because, one, I know I have more of an addictive personality, and two, I want to use it as a tool, not a coping mechanism — there’s a huge difference between those two.
John: And if you’re not being intentional with it, it can easily turn into a coping mechanism. One of the things I’ve been very hyper-aware of, related to addiction, is that my dad became an alcoholic, so that’s always been in the back of my head — probably why I don’t drink at all. Years ago I thought, “Why am I even drinking?” Alcohol has actually never affected me — I don’t know what that means, I’ve never been drunk.
Annika: I have a video on that — it’s really interesting, how alcohol affects ADHD. I’ve never had a buzz from alcohol either.
John: So I either inherited some gigantic tolerance from my dad’s side, and one day I thought — what if I somehow become addicted to alcohol and don’t even get the fun effects of it? That’d be awful. So why even mess with it? I just kind of stopped. Side note — psilocybin apparently isn’t addictive, which is pretty cool.
Annika: That is really cool, and something I didn’t know until I was researching microdosing and ADHD, because it’s so villainized — even more than weed, which actually can be addictive.
John: Exactly. It’s fascinating. So I did the journey — it was on a Saturday, and I didn’t have very high expectations, because various chemicals don’t usually do much for me, so I figured this probably wouldn’t do anything either. About 45 minutes to an hour in, I was like, “Oh — oh wow.” You might appreciate this, being a brain person — have you heard how our brain mutes certain things so we can exist in this body, in this world, because there’s so much happening?
Annika: Yeah, it’s so interesting — I took multiple psych courses, including one specifically on psychology of perception.
John: During the journey I was using headphones and also a speaker. At one point it was just the speaker — a little Alexa speaker on my end table. I’m laying in bed, blindfolded, and I hear this hammering sound outside — ding, ding — and asked my sitter if they heard that noise, like someone doing construction. They said there was nobody outside. Turned out it was from the music. Laying in bed, the speaker on one side, I heard the sound coming from all around me in three dimensions — it blew my mind. I could hear the person sitting for me, at the other side of the room, scratch their head, and hear it from way over there. I tore a piece of tissue and could hear each individual fiber. My vision was almost like a little zoom lens — I could see closer. My hearing wasn’t necessarily improved, it’s probably doing what it normally does, but the filters were gone. My vision was better too — I have a slight astigmatism and my close vision is normally a little blurry, but with the psilocybin, everything was better. It was something else.
Annika: That extra perception of life sounds incredible.
Post-Journey Reflections and Insights
John: It was really neat to experience — but what was even better was the next day. I was in the kitchen getting something to eat, grabbed my plate, put it down, looked over at the cabinet door like I normally do — and without a single thought of deliberation popping into my head, I walked over to the cabinet door and watched my hand reach out and close it. I was aware of this happening — doing it without any thinking, without any thought at all. The only thought in my head was, “What the—” I’m like, “What?” And I’m watching this and giggling. Throughout that day I’d grab something and put it away, throw it away without thinking, and every time I’d watch myself do it and just laugh.
Usually that requires some kind of deliberate deliberation — trying to be efficient, thinking, “Well, I’m over here now, I’ll wait till I’m on that side of the room to put that thing away.”
Annika: Oh my goodness, yes — the efficiency! And then it turns out you’re not actually efficient because you don’t get things done.
John: Exactly — you’re trying to maximize efficiency in your head, but it sounds like without thinking at all. This was like no thought, no deliberation, nothing — instead I was just self-aware of what was happening, watching myself. I’m not telling my hand to close the door or put the thing away — it’s just doing it on its own. I had a therapy session scheduled that week, for post-journey integration, and I told my therapist about this. He already knew about the “button” thing from before, and I told him, “There’s no button now — there’s no thinking, I’m just doing.” He said, “Well, that’s what people’s brains that don’t have ADHD, that aren’t traumatized, that’s just what they do.” I said, “Wait, what? That’s how people experience it?” He said, “Yeah, John — people just do things, they just put stuff away and don’t think about it.” I was like, “Excuse me?”
He explained that psilocybin increases neuroplasticity, and who knows if that’s part of it, or if something got rewired — whatever it was that was preventing me from doing this thing that’s autonomous for so many people, it stopped happening for me. That was January ’23 — now it’s almost two and a half years later, and guess what — I’m still closing doors and putting things away without thinking.
Annika: So you still don’t have the button?
John: No button anymore for these activities. There are some other things I’m still working on, but for this kind of thing, I still giggle, still watch myself and think, “Look at me, I’m still closing doors — holy shit.” Because my entire life, it was a struggle — it was me justifying why I can’t do that thing right now, because there was shame — why can’t I just do the thing I see other people doing so easily? Watching myself do these things automatically is still unbelievable and unreal, but also so peaceful.
Annika: If you’ve been enjoying this episode, you might like to know there are so many more resources I share. Every week I send out an email teaching you how to reduce your symptoms a little bit at a time. For more personalized support, join my monthly membership, where you get one-on-one support from me personally, a new ebook every month — this month’s was on hormones and ADHD — plus early access to my blogs and YouTube videos. If memberships aren’t your thing, check out my store for the ADHD Nutrition Manual, an eight-ebook collection that teaches you how to understand your body cues and develop a regulated nervous system, then dives into how to eat and what to eat to best support your ADHD, plus support guides like an example menu. You can find all these links in the notes below.
Annika: I feel like it’d almost be a huge grief to recognize you’ve been living your life that way and other people haven’t.
John: There’s still a lot of processing around that. When you struggle with something you didn’t know you were struggling with — especially if you’ve been in denial about it for most of your life, and grew up with shame around it, being scolded, “why can’t you just do that, why is it so hard” — I didn’t have the language to explain what was going on. I thought the way my brain worked was just the way it is, all the noise, all the background — I always have a constant soundtrack playing in my head, some song, some random tune, something I make up.
Annika: Tell me about that — how’s the background noise in your brain now?
John: Great question. After the first journey, for the next couple of months or so, my thoughts were quiet. Normally there’s all this activity happening right up front — lots of thoughts, lots of analyzing, lots of thinking. But immediately the next day, for the next couple of months, my thoughts, when present, were further back and soft — comforting, quiet, not intrusive the way they usually sit right up front. You don’t realize how intrusive it normally is because you’re so used to it. And the peace, the serenity — one thing I’ve always been good at is being able to sit still and chill; I’d tell people, “doing nothing is doing something.” But my brain was always doing something, even while physically relaxing.
John: Interesting side note — I wonder if you might have insight on this. I love to dance — lots of different kinds of music, blues, various Latin dances, salsa, cumbia, merengue, bachata, swing, hip-hop. I love partner dancing. One of the things that happens for me when I dance, and something I try to teach as well, is that I enter a zen-like state. The music comes into my body and tells me what to do — meaning my body just reacts and moves, no thinking involved at all. If I’m dancing with somebody, there’s input from them too — the music, the person, maybe the floor being sticky or slippery, people around me — but I’m not thinking, it’s happening automatically. It’s one of the only other times my brain is quiet — any dance moves happen automatically, I’m not trying to make it happen, though I could be more conscious about it if I wanted. A lot of times it’s just the music coming in and me flowing without thinking about it.
Annika: Oh my gosh, I feel like I’m going to cry — you just said that so well. That’s exactly how I feel when I dance too, especially swing dancing with my partner — you just feel the music, and it becomes part of you. It’s also how I feel when I write music — the sound is all around me, it’s part of my body.
John: And that experience is even more heightened on some hallucinogenic, and it feels even more connected.
Annika: I think that is actually it, though — it’s the connection. It somehow just wires inside your brain to where you are so present.
The Challenge of Being Present
Annika: And in reality, most of us are just not present ever, even though it feels like we are. I mean, even in this conversation, right, I’m sure you have lots of thoughts like, “Oh, could go this way, this way, this way.”
John: I don’t know if you do, but it’s been better. It’s been much better.
The Power of Music and Dance
John: That’s one of the cool things — the dancing has always been like that for me, for probably most of my life, where the music just — I often tell people you don’t need to learn dance moves or steps, the music tells you where it comes from. Learning the aesthetic of the dance, the origins, what it looks like — but the music informs everything you need to do, the emotions to feel from the vocals, the tempo, the rhythms and polyrhythms you put in your body. For whatever reason, I’ve been able to let that happen inside of me, and that’s where my brain, without any medicine, just turns off. With the psilocybin, that’s the only other time I’ve experienced something like that.
So, like I was saying, for the next couple of months after my first journey, my brain was quiet — so peaceful. Focusing was so much easier because there weren’t the distractions in my brain — we always talk about external distractions, but it’s often our brain itself.
Annika: I mean, yeah, I can totally handle the fact that there’s a car going by outside my window — that’d be pretty wild if it were the opposite. What are you taking right now?
John: But it’s definitely more that my brain is just so fast all the time.
Exploring Creativity and Focus
John: And so the creativity — one of the things people talk about with psilocybin is that with increased neuroplasticity, you have the capacity to learn and create. I’m not someone who can draw — I’ve always liked art and wanted to learn things. I came across a tutorial to draw a realistic-looking apple on an iPad, and I thought, “Well, let me try it — can I even sit down and do this?” These tutorials had multiple videos with multiple steps, but for some reason I just innately knew I could. It starts out with literally a blank canvas — you draw a circle, like a red apple, and it became — and this is no joke — I did this.
Annika: No way, you are kidding me.
John: Yeah — the background is the background I put in, but that apple I did by hand on my iPad, all of it.
Annika: No — you’re kidding, that looks legit.
John: And my experience before this was, “This is the extent of what I can draw — we can draw a circle.” And it went from that to that. I was able to focus, able to really get into it, and it wasn’t like a hyperfocus thing either — it was, “Okay, I’m going to do these things here, wow, that looks cool,” and then I could move on to other things and come back. I didn’t have to finish it that day, that hour, whatever.
Annika: That’s definitely something I’ve been struggling with a lot lately. I have my to-do list, and then there’s the things I want to do — lately I’ve been writing a fantasy book, because that’s my current thing I really want to do. But it’s been over-consuming my brain to the point where I can’t sleep, because I feel like I have to finish it, I have to write the next part — you’re excited about it, you want to get it done, and it’s almost compulsive at this point, which isn’t healthy. I recognize that.
John: What is that like, and what are the odds it’s actually going to get finished?
Annika: That’s the thing that sounds like such a breath of fresh air — being able to work on something without that urgency.
John: It was manageable. I was able to operate on a timeline where it wasn’t all about urgency. Growing up, I was always a straight-A student —
Annika: Oh, same.
John: — and school was pretty easy for me, but the part that wasn’t easy was studying. I hated studying, hard to even think about it, so I’d study the night before — “I have a test tomorrow, okay, it’s 11pm, let me go study for this test.” Even research papers we’d have months to finish, I’d calculate exactly how much time I needed. Are you that way — good at estimating time, how long something’s going to take?
Annika: I’m actually the worst at that — or, well, it’s a bit of a lie, because when I have deadlines I’m really good at estimating time, but also really bad, because then I’ll put it off to the last minute since I know exactly how much time I’ll need.
John: Yeah, that’s a skill I developed too — like how long it’ll take to get to the movies to get a seat, maximizing efficiency. I have to be able to estimate all that. What was I saying? Oh god.
Annika: Good question. Did that change at all — your need to do things at the last minute?
John: It did, for a while — not a permanent fix yet. Some things I’d consider permanently fixed, like putting stuff away, closing the door.
Annika: What about brushing your teeth — does that feel pretty automatic?
John: It usually feels pretty automatic, but it helps to have the thing in front of me, like the toothbrush in the shower — I see it and think, “Oh, cool.” Having those reminders is still a thing. There are some things I’m better at remembering now, but in some cases I still have to physically put something in front of me. It’s interesting though, because I can kind of feel — or maybe notice is a better word — that certain things are happening in my brain that are a little more… is “better” the right word? Maybe that implies our brain isn’t good.
Annika: Our brains are awesome.
John: Maybe it’s more manageable.
Annika: More manageable — put together in a way that fits how you need to live.
John: There you go, I like that.
The Impact of Psilocybin on Mental Health
John: So I did that journey and saw a lot of benefits for the first couple months, and was doing integration work for the trauma stuff that came up during the journey. Big side note I didn’t mention — my depression literally disappeared overnight.
Annika: Wow.
John: A lot of studies, like from Johns Hopkins, talk about how even with treatment-resistant depression, after one journey dose people are way better — and that was the case for me. I still have some depression, it’s still a process, but immediately the next day I felt so much better, and that lasted for quite some time — way less anxious, better ability to focus and get things done. So there’s a lot of different things this medicine helped with, in addition to the focusing thing. Since then I did another journey last year, and I’ve also microdosed occasionally — that’s something I wanted to mention.
Microdosing Insights and Experiences
Annika: I would seriously love to hear more about the microdosing aspect, especially because that’s the area I know the most of the research about. Unfortunately there’s not a lot, but there’s some really good evidence that microdosing can help brains, especially brains with trauma backgrounds.
John: What have you read about it?
Annika: I’ve written about it on my blog — let’s be honest, when you write things they usually stay, but I also have too many things I think about. I think the biggest aspect is the default mode network, which is very dysregulated in people with ADHD. That’s the part of our brain responsible for a lot of emotional regulation, focus, and motivation — very central to our experience of life as people with ADHD, and microdosing has been shown to improve that.
John: I know some folks who’ve microdosed pretty religiously, and it’s helped with things like anxiety and staying on task — kind of like a Ritalin type of effect, but in a way that feels — I hate to use the word “normal,” but with Ritalin sometimes you don’t feel quite normal, whereas with psilocybin the focusing feels more natural. I know people who take it to help overall, and one thing they notice is that it definitely helps them stay on task more.
The Science Behind Microdosing
John: In my personal experience, it’s interesting — if you research it, there are different dose-size recommendations for microdosing, everywhere from like 0.05 grams to 0.2 grams, and basically the idea is that it should be sub-perceptual, so you shouldn’t feel it doing anything. So if anybody’s going to microdose, they might want to play with different doses to figure out where they feel it. I’ve been playing with that myself, seeing what works and at what dose. What I’ve noticed, because I’m sensitive to pretty much all medicine, is that at 0.05 grams I don’t really feel much — maybe a warm fuzzy feeling inside, which is nice. At 0.1 grams, I feel it more — not a full-on psychedelic experience, but you’re like, “Oh, it is definitely doing something.”
What’s interesting is that if I’ve had a particularly anxious week with a lot of brain noise, I’ll do 0.1 grams later that day, and for the next two, three, or four days, that quietness, that calm, that peace comes back — the anxiety feels like it’s somewhere else, not inside my body, and you feel way more internally regulated.
Annika: I think that’s probably the biggest finding in the research — it’s really significant for emotional regulation. I’m hoping with more normalization of psilocybin and similar medicines, there’ll be more research into all of this.
John: With my love for research, I read a lot about these things, and one thing I wonder is whether taking a slightly bigger microdose helps with some of the neuroplasticity stuff, or maybe the serotonin receptors are doing more, which is why it lasts longer for me. This isn’t something I’m experimenting with every day — I like to consider myself somewhat of a scientist, so I’ll do something, revisit it a few weeks later, gather more data, change a variable, and see what that’s like. Also worth noting — if you had two grams of mushrooms from the same batch in each hand, one could be 30-40% more potent than the other. There’s no exact correlation between strains either — some may be more potent, but it’s very hit and miss. You can generalize, but a lot of data is necessary to figure out what will work for you. What I’ve discovered is that the slightly bigger microdose lasts several days and brings back that peace, that serenity, from the bigger journey.
Annika: It’s like a little stepping stone until the next larger journey.
John: Exactly, that’s a great way to put it. I still have noise, but what’s interesting is that focusing to be present — whether through meditation, breathing, or whatever brings you to the here and now — is often a lot easier to do now, post-journeys. It’s a lot more accessible, that “button” skill, whatever you want to call it — though there are still days when my brain is doing all the things, solving the world’s problems.
Annika: I love that — some of us think we can figure it out, solve the world, and save it.
John: I talk about this way too much — I have this delusion in my head, which is fine, that I’m going to change the world, and you have to have those types of people, otherwise nothing happens. But also — what if that doesn’t happen for you?
Annika: I’m glad you mentioned that. I’m an easy crier, I feel things very deeply, and I feel the pain in this world — so much suffering that feels so unnecessary. In my first and second journey, each time, this thing came up where the mushrooms, or your inner self, whatever you want to call it, said something that stuck with me.
John: “You can’t save the world, John.” And I’m like, “Okay — you’re just one person, you can’t do this.” And that’s okay, because that’s something that really pains me — we think we can. And then the mushrooms basically asked, “Why do you think you can?” That blew me away, coming up twice. Part of it, I think, is the ADHD thing — we think we can do everything all at once, and it feels easy even though in reality it’s not, even though we’re probably suffering. I’ve experienced that — burnt out with my job, my business. I used to run a blues dance weekly; most people in the country only do it monthly. I did it weekly from the get-go, because why wouldn’t I? We can do everything, right? I didn’t know I was burnt out with that until I stopped, five years later. My partner at the time told me, “I wish you would’ve stopped a year after you started, because I saw what it was doing to you.” We can take on a lot, and I’m very detail-oriented, so when I get something done, it’s done well.
Annika: Oh, that’s like writing the research paper right before it’s due — you know it’s going to be good, you don’t have to rewrite it, because you’re so detailed.
John: Exactly. So that was one of the things that came up — you can’t do it, you’re just one person. I don’t like that, and I know it was very humbling — part of that, I think, is my egoic mind, something I’ve been learning to chip away and dismantle every day. But it came up twice, which told me I need to really — but it’s hard, especially when you really do care, to focus on that word again, “manageable” — we can’t change the world, but we can change a little part of it. Even though that little part doesn’t feel significant, it is.
Annika: It comes back to that whole efficiency aspect — just because you can’t do everything doesn’t mean it’s not good to do something now.
John: Totally. I came across a piece of writing a couple years ago about how we’re all connected — someone designed this little cap on a bottle, wrote something on it, and I thought about how hundreds or thousands of people have looked at this and read it, and we’re really connected. When you do psilocybin and have a journey, I’ve often laughed at people saying things like “the universe, we’re all one,” but at some point you may realize, “Holy crap” — you understand it in the journey space, you get it, we really are all one, and it makes more sense because certain things in your brain are turned off where you can see and understand things more clearly than you can with all the external stimulation. I’ve also helped other folks with their journeys since then, because people know I’ve never done anything like this before, so when they hear about my experience they think, “If John says this is legit, we should look into this.” I’ve seen it help other people with anxiety, with their ability to live and do things, where depression or ADHD or other stuff gets in the way. I can see this, with normalization, helping a lot of people who are neurodivergent.
Annika: Now, can I ask if you still use medication?
John: I’m glad you asked. It’s interesting — as I mentioned, there’s still ADHD stuff happening, as you can probably tell — we’re jumping everywhere, classic. I recently got another prescription and noticed it started helping me way better than it ever had — I’d take it and get this overall sense of well-being, just feeling good. I’m not a great sleeper, so some days I don’t wake up feeling energized — that’s pretty common — but there are days when the Ritalin, more often than not now (and I never experienced this before), just makes me feel good, well-being just feels good, and my ability to stay on task is easier. Managing things is easier, starting a task — probably the biggest thing for me — is more manageable now. It’s still a struggle at times, and I’m hoping that with either Ritalin or psilocybin it becomes less of a mountain to climb, but I’ve noticed the Ritalin is helping more now. I don’t know if something in my brain changed from the psilocybin, to where the Ritalin just clicks differently now.
Annika: I feel like it would make sense — you mentioned how psilocybin works on our serotonin, so maybe your serotonin receptors are just more receptive now. When we take Ritalin, that affects mainly dopamine and norepinephrine, but it also helps normalize some serotonin release, so that could be part of it.
John: Yeah, that could be. I really wish people could actually study psilocybin properly, and not just have a lot of retroactive studies. There was one naturalistic study where researchers went into forums where people talked about ADHD and psilocybin, and a lot of people were saying it worked as sufficiently as their medication, without the side effects.
Annika: Yeah, I’ve read that too, and I think that’s important.
John: I think that’s really worth looking into, and with more normalization and acceptance, hopefully we’ll see more of that — though sadly it probably comes down to how much money the big companies can make.
Annika: It always comes down to that.
John: But I’ve read those things, and I can see how it’s helping me, whether the bigger doses or the smaller ones — I think they can be totally beneficial, and one of the side benefits, if you’re taking it for ADHD, is it helping with anxiety, depression, trauma — whatever you’re carrying from growing up in this world, because our brains aren’t always wired the best way. Maybe that’s part of how it works — taking out the extra things that are hard for us, like anxiety and depression, so we can actually manage our ADHD. My therapist said that one of the things he mentioned right after my journey was that it’s possible something that was getting in the way of me closing doors just got fixed — it’s not blocking me from doing something people just do anymore.
Annika: It’s so hard to believe people actually experience that. People don’t have voices in their head when they read things? I always have someone narrating when I’m reading.
John: That’s really interesting — I actually don’t have that. It makes me read way too fast, because I also don’t have images in my head.
Annika: Okay, wow. It was kind of a bummer when I first found out that people can actually see things when they’re reading, or visualize things like their own mom.
John: Really? So if you close your eyes and think of a red apple, you can’t see it?
Annika: No, I could describe it, but it’s more like just a description of reality rather than an actual image.
John: Wow, that’s a different topic entirely. When I read that people experience things that way, I was surprised, because I always have — like right now, if I wanted to, I could have Morgan Freeman narrating my life. Legit, I can hear his real voice, and when I hear people singing, I can hear the way it sounds exactly.
Annika: I think that is exactly why I really enjoyed using weed intentionally — that’s the big thing out of all of this, being intentional with your use, because then we can actually get healing, I believe personally, and the music, being able to truly hear everything — it’s just so magical. But also it feels like you’re finally in reality. But if you do too much, then real reality doesn’t feel as good, which is why we want moderation.
John: Moderation.
The Importance of Safe Practices
John: Also, if anybody is considering doing a journey, please, please, please have a sober sitter. It’s so important that you’re safe, that you have a dedicated safe space — I’d recommend doing it indoors, with access to a bathroom and water, and somebody who will sit there and keep you safe, because you don’t know what things can come up. Some folks do these things at raves, and I just can’t imagine — you hear people talk about having “a bad trip,” which usually means something uncomfortable came up in an environment they weren’t prepared for. Having a sober person watch over you for four, six, seven hours is so important, because this is a tool that’s been used for thousands of years for healing, and if we respect that and look at it that way, we can really help ourselves. We all need help.
Annika: That brings it back to community — the connection aspect. It’s not meant to be done by yourself.
John: Exactly right.
Final Thoughts and Gratitude
Annika: Well, I wish I could talk to you even more about this. I’m so grateful that you were willing to talk and share all of this experience.
John: Thank you for inviting me — I really appreciate this.
Annika: I just — obviously I love hearing stories, and when I first read the research, I was expecting to find that it wasn’t going to be helpful and could potentially be harmful. I don’t know, I feel like my thoughts have changed a lot over the last few months. Obviously no one should do it if it’s illegal where they are, because that could cause harm if somebody finds you —
John: That would be a very bad trip.
Annika: We don’t want that. But do it in a place that’s decriminalized if you’re going to, and be safe about it — potentially it could help. And as we keep encouraging this type of conversation, hopefully it will reduce the stigma enough to where we can start researching it better and potentially even use it more in the future. I’m thinking it’s probably not going to happen for at least 50 years, because that’s how slow our systems work, even though it was legal before.
John: Yep, that’s the life we live. But I just want to say again, thank you — I’m so grateful for your time here.
Annika: Thank you for this opportunity to share my experiences. It’s been quite the journey, and it’s going to continue.
Annika: Thanks for listening to this episode. If you’ve tried psilocybin before and you want to share your experience, I’d love to hear it, either in the comments or in my email. Remember to check out the links in the description before you go, and if you want to dive deeper into the actual research on psilocybin and ADHD, I have a few blog posts linked there as well. I wish you a lovely day or evening, and I’ll see you in the next one.