196. Can Microdosing Psilocybin Revolutionize Mental Health?
Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (00:02.028)
Welcome to the radically genuine podcast. I am Dr. Roger McFillin. I've spent years of my career training in and delivering what are considered the gold standard treatments for many conditions, including post-traumatic stress disorder. The evidence-based therapies that research will tell us work the best cognitive processing therapy, prolonged exposure, even EMDR. And I've seen these approaches transform some people's lives.
And yet if you've worked in trauma treatment as long as I have, you know there's another story. It's the story of the clients who go through 12, 16, 20 sessions, still wake up drenched in sweat from nightmares, in therapy for years. The veterans who can't sit with their backs to a door five years after their last deployment. The sexual assault survivors who desperately want connection, but whose bodies won't let them trust or be trusted.
or be touched at all. These are people who I think are current ways of thinking and approaching mental health conditions. It's just not enough for them. And then there's the psychiatric medication. We prescribe SSRIs that leave many people feeling numb and you realize feeling less is not feeling better. Benzodiazepines that
provide temporary relief while leaving dependency in their wake, sleep medications that knock you out but don't stop the nightmares or allow for restorative sleep. And the side effects read like their own diagnostic manual, weight gain, sexual dysfunction, emotional blunting, increased suicidal ideation, metabolic illness, cascade of additional drugs and higher doses. For many survivors, we're asking them to trade one form of suffering for another.
And this is the landscape that's driven me to explore what else might be possible. And that exploration has led me here to a conversation about psilocybin and microdosing. I want to introduce Charity Mills. She's the co-founder and CEO of Colorado Teletherapy Services and Grow Your Own Thoughts, a pioneering organization offering therapy, neurofeedback, and psilocybin microdosing and cultivation services.
Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (02:27.542)
As a clinician herself, Charity has worked with hundreds of clients using psilocybin microdosing protocols to address a range of mental health conditions. She's a nationally recognized speaker and educator on the science and therapeutic potential of microdosing. She regularly presents to clinicians, veteran support organizations, and the general public. In 2024, she published her first microdosing guidebook to help make this emerging practice more
accessible. She's also deeply involved in advancing safe, ethical, and legally informed psychedelic care in Colorado and beyond. I'm interested in that aspect. She provides ongoing training for clinicians navigating the state's legal framework around psilocybin use. And I'm just interested in throwing myself into all aspects of this emerging therapy, who it may work for, who it may not.
Under what conditions? How do you approach it? it's just so many questions. So I want to welcome, charity mills to the radically genuine podcast.
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (03:36.489)
Thanks Roger, I appreciate that. And just hearing your introduction and where traditional mental health services have both brought us and left us is an exciting conversation at this point. So looking forward to hopefully sharing experiences I've had personally as well as clinically and enhancing curiosity, you know, with your listeners and others out there to maybe consider looking at something different for themselves.
Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (04:03.758)
So we had a chance encounter. met out at a conference in Colorado. I think I got you probably right when you were packing up and trying to get out of there. But that encounter was really meaningful for me because I was able to start the process of some of microdosing myself and I'll be able to share some of my experiences here. But I want to first just get your background story and what led you down this road in your life.
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (04:32.255)
Well, it was not personal mushroom use. I will just start with that because the one time that I tried mushrooms previously in a larger experience just to kind of see what happened, I had no understanding of them and it was terrible and I swore I'd never do it again. So it's a little bit humorous just to consider kind of that one experience and now here I go all around the country talking about how great psilocybin is. Sure, yeah.
Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (04:57.631)
Can I ask you about that experience? What made it horrible?
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (05:02.553)
it was a lack of understanding of what to expect and there was zero purpose in it except let's just see what happens. So it was a friend of my husband's who'd given him some mushrooms and you know, at home one night and
Like, hey, let's just try it. He had prior experience with mushrooms and understood it and knew what to expect and how it impacted him. And for me being a very self-proclaimed, very rigid type A control person, taking something that I had no control over was not fun at all. And again, I had no understanding of where it was going to potentially go or what to take from it.
So I ended up in the land of, as I say, rolling green hills and Teletubbies, which might correlate a little bit to the fact that our kids were very young at that point in time. And that's probably what was in a lot of my environment was Teletubby world. But wanting it to just stop and not being willing or even knowing that there could be something to take away from it, which kind of in retrospect,
It was my first introduction to the fact that part of the healing journey in using mushrooms is a willingness to let go of control, of preconceived ideas, of any idea or expectation sometimes. But it was definitely a, just want this to end. And when it does, I will never touch this again because this is not fun.
Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (06:30.158)
Okay, so I know that we're going to be talking about things like intention, the set, the setting, the purpose of what you're doing and why. Of course, that wasn't a microdose what you did, right? Do you remember how many grams you took?
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (06:34.324)
Mm-hmm.
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (06:41.023)
Correct.
You know, and that's a part of it. I have no idea the strain of mushroom that it was. I have no idea how much. I didn't understand that there was also some onset time period. So, you you take some, you don't feel anything after a little bit. So you just take some more. So again, no recognition of any idea of what amount that might have been, which is a big part of my education now, even for people who do consider larger doses, the importance of knowing the strain and knowing the dosage and having some understanding and awareness.
around that.
Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (07:14.83)
Okay, so will take us from there. How do you then start moving towards this aspect of mental health treatments?
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (07:16.831)
Yep. Yeah.
So that was just a of a blip in history. I spent a lot of my prior career in outside medical sales, predominantly orthopedics, sports medicine, rehabilitation equipment and services. So came from a very structured, I want to call white lab coat approach to the world. My dad is a medical physician. And even with that was definitely raised in a home of you don't just jump to medication for everything. Now, if you have a headache, have you eaten something recently?
How did you sleep last night? Do you need some water? So a natural approach within our household as far as a lot of physical and mental health things went, very regimented, much whatever they say, whatever the educational system says, whatever the American Medical Association says is the gold standard in how things go. So moving into the medical sales world, a lot of it really followed that. But what I found I enjoyed about sales was not
any specific product. wasn't about the knee brace or the prosthetic componentry or their specific type of service or equipment that I was working with. It was people. And the experiences of people are very much the same, no matter the socioeconomic status.
the number of letters in alphabet soup after somebody's name or before somebody's name depending on the industry. Humans are humans. Everybody wants to feel that they are special, unique, that they bring something that is not brought by somebody else in the world, that they're not easily replaced.
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (08:52.231)
pain runs deep and it shows up in ways that are unnatural coping mechanisms often. And in working both within the sales component, developing relationships with accounts and then having an opportunity to work in more management and overseeing sales teams and helping individuals find their place in what motivates them.
That was the part of that particular experience for that tenure, which was between 15, 20 years, that I really enjoyed. It was people. was the human aspect. But seeing that at the end of the day, a product is a product.
A thing is a thing, a service is a service. We all have a role to play in keeping society going and moving forward. But how humans interact with each other, and even more importantly, first and foremost, how we show up as individuals, that is where everything stems from. And I'd have team members on sales teams that I was overseeing say, well, how do you do it? What do you say? And I try to help them understand. You can use the same words that I use, but you have to make this your own. What are you bringing?
into this conversation? What do you bring into this concept? So moving past that, I had wanted to go into mental health initially and of course my medical physician father said, nobody makes money in mental health, pick something practical. So that was how I ended up really starting in nursing school and then just really I did not want to work in the hospital environment or even within that environment and got into medical sales. But coming back to mental health has always been an understanding of what motivates people. Why do we respond the way that we do? What makes us tick?
so to speak, and then recognizing that within society today nobody listens to you unless you have Alphabet Soup after your name. So it doesn't really matter what experience you bring, if you don't go get your credentials then...
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (10:41.477)
you might as well just be, you know, a gong out there on top of a mountain, which can have its place sometimes do. We certainly have representations of those within history. However, I wanted to, you know, get the recognition, so to speak, that there is something that I felt had to offer. And so went back to school, finished my master's degree in clinical mental health counseling. husband and I started our practice back in 2017. That's where Colorado Tele-Therapy Services was born.
we started as a telehealth company, really trying to bridge the gap that existed at that point in time of access to mental health services. And I jokingly say that we were telehealth BC, meaning before COVID, because prior to COVID, there was not a lot of appreciation for telehealth services. It was kind of thought of as this, woo woo, you can't develop a good interpersonal relationship over video, which clearly now at this point in time, even just with the conversation we're having now,
shows that that is not true.
But there was a huge demographic of people that didn't have access, whether because they had lost their license for various, know, potentially alcohol-related offenses, or they lived alone and were more isolated, or due to some of their mental health issues, didn't feel comfortable coming to an office and sitting and wondering if, you know, the picture on the wall was slightly crooked, or there was a weird smell, or somebody might have seen them coming in. And the fact that with insurance, everything becomes part of a permanent health record.
And I'm certainly not going to go down the path of bashing insurance. We all know that health insurance as the system right now has its flaws and has a need that it's trying to meet. within that, we decided at that point in time we were going to be telehealth and we were not going to contract with any insurance companies. And so I've worked on a sliding scale ever since. And our goal is to meet each person's budget and where they are and come alongside and whatever it is they're going through and not be afraid.
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (12:43.453)
to step into those dark places and that's part of what has really helped build the experience that I've had in working with individuals who are in those dark dark places and need someone that's not afraid to come alongside and just kind of jump in with them and and go through it because at the end of the day it's another human who's had their own experiences and their own things that are brought them to that point. So with that we started power to teletherapy services and a lot of the science is starting to re-emerge at that point in time about
psilocybin and psychedelics in general and in wanting to really set our practice apart knowing that you know mental and physical health are closely connected then what is something that we can do with the brain at a chemical level that really marries that psychological and physiological to bring more of a complete healing to the individual and so started following the science and really digging into that and then being in Colorado of course Colorado was moving at that time also
also around the 2020-2021 time period towards decriminalization. And in 2022, that was passed here in Colorado, the Natural Medicine Act. so became decriminalized to use it. And we were already prepared at that point to start working with the mushrooms with microdosing. And that was really that final missing piece is when we look at how does sickness develop, certainly we can have acute moments of trauma or pain, whether it's
physiological or psychological but healing always takes time and Most often when we're looking at mental health issues. These are things that have happened over time We don't just wake up one day and say I think I have PTSD You know, we're I think I have treatment resistant depression these are things that come over time and likewise to be able to Say from a healing point you can't you don't do just a one-and-done and you're all better Those can have profound impact and I know you and I are going to talk about you
when there's differences a little bit more, but healing comes over time and microdosing is something that is done over time to help prolong and promote that long-term healing, not just be another coping mechanism or pharmaceutical that gets dropped into the mix.
Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (15:01.036)
Okay. Let's define what actually psilocybin is. don't want to just assume that everyone knows what it is.
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (15:04.788)
Yeah.
Yeah, so psilocybin is the active ingredient in a fungus of the psilocybe species. so psilocybe cupensis specifically is most common and is what has been decriminalized within Colorado and Oregon and where a lot of the research is focused today. And then psilocin is the active ingredient once psilocybin is in the body is metabolized to psilocin or psilocin, a few different ways to say it, but that is the active
ingredient within the system as it's digested and metabolized. And it disrupts the serotonin system. That's the predominant way that it works to produce those hallucinogenic effects.
Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (15:48.88)
And what do know about the history of psilocybin, the mushroom use, cross-culturally or even within the United States?
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (15:57.95)
Well...
the understanding and recognition of where the value of the hallucinogenic aspect of psilocybin came from is really within the indigenous cultures used in spiritual ceremonies. And when we think about something spiritual, really looking at something that is separate from the everyday life experience that we have. And this is not going down any religious path specifically. So I want to just clarify that upfront. But when we talk about something being a religious experience, it is something that
enhances the space that we are currently thinking in or experiencing at this point in time. So within the indigenous cultures using the mushroom for these spiritual ceremonies helps them feel more connected to nature, connected to each other, have a greater understanding and appreciation of the life experience on this planet as a whole. And then moving forward, I would say moving out of more of that ceremonial aspect, of course it was scientists that went down to
South America that really kind of discovered how this was being used brought it back said hey this can have positive impacts moving into
more of a scientific study of it, using it in various experiments and trying to understand, you know, how is this impactful to the brain? How can this be helpful? But today at this point, it's become a lot more regulated because again, that's what we within Western society like to do is regulate everything and say, hey, it's nature, but let's put a label on it, put parameters around it and put it in a box and tell people they can only access it at certain times and in certain ways. And that's where a lot of these complicating
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (17:37.293)
factors have come in at this point is that regulatory space. So we took something that grows in nature on its own, has had spiritual uses for thousands of years. There's even hieroglyphics that show use of mushroom being used in a ceremonial context. But fear, and I know we're going to talk more about that as well, but fear is really the underlying piece. Whatever we don't understand, there's a natural fear to, and when we compound that fear, then it becomes something that's scary.
rather than saying as natural beings it makes sense that nature would have what we need if we know how to use it appropriately or in a helpful way.
Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (18:16.816)
Okay. And the differences here, you said you've been following the research on this and I'm just starting to get into this to be honest with you. And I do have some questions, but when we talk about microdosing versus I guess, is it the word macrodosing? It's opposite. Are there research protocols for either direction? What do you know about, you know, that maybe the differences between maybe one
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (18:32.479)
Typically.
Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (18:44.034)
larger dose in a one session versus taking smaller doses over time.
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (18:50.557)
Yep.
That's a great question. appreciate you bringing that up early on because a lot of where the focus is right now is on these larger dose sessions. Macrodose is a term that I use. Other people will also use the terms a journey or an experience or a trip. Those are also common terms for these larger dose sessions. But the goal of a macrodose really is to so significantly, in a therapeutic context, let me quantify, is to so significantly disrupt the
serotonin system and get some of the neuroplasticity benefits that would take place within the brain. But really it's about that disruption of the serotonin system that produces a significant effect when people say tasting color. Then that's that synesthetic.
component of the hallucinogenic experience. What it does in that though is psilocybin attaches to the 5-HT2A serotonin receptor and that 5-HT2A receptor is kind of that core central hub of the serotonin system, that receptor specifically. There's about seven different serotonin receptors but that's that real core one. And in doing that, it causes areas of the brain that don't normally talk to each other.
to start communicating. So the brain will show an individual person something in a new way that is about themselves. And that's really where the beauty of those larger dose experiences come from because we are the expert on ourself.
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (20:29.297)
We just don't know it. So we look to these outside sources, tell me how to fix this, tell me how to think about this, tell me what I should do here. We are the expert on ourselves, but a lot of the information gets hidden and locked away through various survival and coping techniques and mechanisms that the brain puts into place so that we can stay alive. So when we look at these large dose experiences, it's causing a disruption that's so significant that the brain is able to have these different areas talk to each other and say, hey, remember this thing that happened that you've been holding on
to or this fear that you have about the future of something that's coming up, let's break down the barrier of all that fear and knowing and
preconceived ideas about it or self-protective things that have been put in place and look at it differently and honestly and naturally. And so with those large dose sessions, that's the goal when we talk about a therapeutic approach. so that would be kind of where that goes. And to your question specifically about research, that is where majority of the research has been because it's very easy to control variables in that environment. If somebody's going to do a large dose session, it's the same reason that that's really what's regulated with
within both Colorado and Oregon at this point, is controlling variables and controlling the environment. So you're taking a large amount of a psychedelic substance in a controlled environment for a specific purpose, and everything up to that point for research purposes has been controlled. They know what medications you're on or off. They know your medical history, specific diagnoses maybe that they want to be working with. So when we look at that research environment, the goal is to say, we want to just measure this variable
so we have to control all these others. It's very easy to do when it comes to a macro session. Plus the person has to be there for an extended period of time and then follow up is pretty easy with that. When we're talking about microdosing now, we're going to the alternate end of the spectrum as far as controlling of variables.
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (22:27.047)
Microdosing is about taking a very small dose, typically about one-tenth of what someone's large dose would be. So the average macro dose or macro experience dose is generally somewhere between about two and five grams dry weight of mushroom, of psilocybe cubensis mushroom. A micro dose tends to be somewhere between about 0.1 of a gram.
and 0.5 of a gram on average, depending on the person. So we're talking about 100 milligrams or 500 milligrams or somewhere in there because everybody's dose is very individualized. But you're taking it with the intention and the goal of still doing all the things you do on a daily basis.
going to work, driving your car, taking care of friends, family, pets, responsibilities, going to school for as long as you're 21 or over, so college specifically when I'm saying that.
going and living your everyday life. We're not controlling variables and stepping outside of our natural environment in a microdose experience. So there is a lot less research on that. Most of the research is what they call self-report, meaning people say, hey, I'm going to start doing this. I'm going to report what I'm noticing. And then that data is collected and larger ideas can be taken away from that. But that's really the challenge and why.
some researchers and even scientists and well-meaning clinicians will say, well, we don't really know about microdosing. It might be a placebo. But, you know, it's hard to get that same level of research in these micro-experiences for those reasons.
Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (24:08.995)
Okay. so what drew you to the micro dosing effect? If we don't have this strong science around it, what led you to believe that this could be therapeutically beneficial?
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (24:11.273)
So, okay.
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (24:22.107)
Well two things, one we can when we look at science a lot of science is if then. If this is true then this also can be true.
And when we look at physiologically what's happening in the brain, if a massive disruption in the serotonin system can cause these areas of the brain to connect and talk to each other in different ways, is it possible then that we could say also smaller doses can do that in a similar way, but less impactful in the moment and something that's more healing over time?
Also, when we look at neuroplasticity and that idea of creating new neural connections, the brain being able to have a new way of thinking, let's just go historically to some of the things that you mentioned at the beginning of the show, things like EMDR. EMDR is something you do over an extended period of time. The goal is to train the brain to create new ways of thinking. It really capitalizes on some of that neuroplasticity idea. Some of the magnetic
techniques that are out there do the same thing. Even our SSRIs and SNRIs have some aspect of not just impacting serotonin, but also enhancing that neuroplasticity part of the brain. So we know the brain is malleable and able to learn new things, able to be open to new perspectives. That's how we learn.
From the time we're born till the age we are now, we've learned that the world works a certain way. And that's because of that neuroplastic aspect of the brain itself. It is always learning new things. But at the same time, that some of those benefits are in creating new neural connections, enhancing and strengthening the dendrites, being able to say the brain is fully changing, and also looking at another area of the brain called the default mode network.
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (26:15.057)
So I'm going to bring all this back around to why microdosing, but healing again comes in multiple ways over an extended period of time. That default mode network is another area of the brain that is where all of our belief systems, our understanding of the world, our ideas of ourself and how the world works really resides in that specific space, the filters, so to speak.
MRI imaging shows that that default mode network, when psilocybin is introduced into the brain, the default mode network is quieted down and over time it resets. So when we're looking at resetting our default way of thinking and experiencing the world,
How can we say that we can fully do that with one six hour experience? Talking a lifetime of experiences and understanding and religious beliefs and political beliefs and messages that have been given to us and education that we've taken in and personal things that have happened and say, okay, well, here's an experience and now you're completely reset and you're done. Where do you pick up and integrate all of that understanding afterward?
So that's really when we looked into microdosing and following what is science saying and what do we also know to be true about human beings. It's healing comes over time. If we break our arm, you may have to go and see, you know, if you're in a car accident, say your arm is broken, you may go and see a trauma surgeon at the hospital. You won't go see him at the ambulance, he'll take you there. You might have a trauma surgeon put your arm back together, okay, and then set it in the cast.
That's your macro experience. But the healing that comes with that is keeping it in the cast, not getting the cast wet.
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (28:03.635)
the body doing all of its healing internally over time and then when the cast comes off, you're doing physical therapy. You're strengthening those joints again. You're strengthening the tendons, the ligaments, the muscles around it. So just like physical healing takes time, emotional healing takes time as well. And all of that comes back to how do we think and what is our understanding and belief systems about the world. And that's why if we look at the SSRIs and SNRIs, those were designed to be something that was very momentary.
Use these for about six months while you're in this acute experience of whatever it might be and then come off of it. And that's not what happens anymore. People stay on it. Why? Because the root issue of what they were experiencing hasn't changed. They've just blunted the emotional response to it.
if we're just blunting things, then where is that healing actually happening? And that's where microdosing is significantly different than the macro experiences.
Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (29:04.058)
And I think there's just for the audience perspective here, there's a big difference between what an SSRI does on the, on the biochemical level than what mushrooms do. And so, I mean, someone can take an SSRI and have permanent problems for the rest of their life. We know that with post SSRI sexual dysfunction, for some people this induces mania right away, psychosis.
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (29:08.095)
.
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (29:17.116)
Absolutely.
Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (29:31.528)
because it's stopping the natural production of serotonin. It's flooding the nerve cell with through the reuptake process. It has unknown consequences. Well, this is taking something that moves through your system. It's temporary. Even if you take a macro dose or heroic dose, it's limited to a period of time and your body naturally detoxifies it or whatever, whatever occurs there. So it's not, it's not actually the same, but we're talking about the serotonergic system.
which is very complex. I mean, it seems to be associated with there's, mean, there's a bidirectional relationship with so many aspects of our, our body, including our, even our gut microbiome, our home hormonal system. It's a serotonin is affected in pair bonding. I mean, there's so many aspects. So I think we can acknowledge the mystery around this by, while also accepting that neurochemicals and neuroplasticity in the brain have this effect. And we,
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (30:01.951)
.
Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (30:30.885)
any kind of drug impacts that and impacts our consciousness. But what you're saying is this very, the very naturalist, this is, this is in, in nature, it's been used for centuries and people who have used it have found an expansion of consciousness, a connection to something greater than them. It helps them rethink about their lives, the nature of their lives and their connection to everything in it, including each other and nature itself. And
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (30:35.647)
Mm-hmm.
Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (31:00.049)
the suppression of the default mode network, which is really interesting to me personally, being a therapist, being a psychologist who works with people who have very overactive minds, obviously, and who've been traumatized. And in that traumatization, there's strong beliefs around danger and safety and trust. And that is a process of survival, right? So our brains are designed to keep us alive.
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (31:12.543)
you
Mm-hmm.
Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (31:30.019)
And that fight or flight process of that default network, which is attentive to anything that could be potentially threatening or dangerous to them is necessary for their survival. But obviously what we see is then when you go through trauma, even in safe situations, your brain is still predicting threat, which leads, you know, activates the nervous system. So this smaller dose over time is yielding these effects, at least anecdotally, right, at least in what it's
it's being reported to be. I'm experiencing them myself. Is it possible that there's a placebo effect to this? I this is challenging to me because I believe our beliefs, I believe our beliefs are powerful. I believe the mind body experience once we experience something and believe it to be true, I think consciousness impacts matter. So it doesn't matter to me what the causal nature of it if it impacts or creates something that has a positive result.
whether that's meditation, whether that's psilocybin use, whether that is a new belief that you've occurred. If it has this positive downstream consequences and it alleviates suffering or improves people's lives, we need to understand it and we need to talk about it. So, all right, what is a typical microdosing protocol? Is this something you use forever? Is this something you use every day? Is this just a period of time that's being recommended in course of therapy? How is this integrated into a person's life?
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (32:58.003)
Perfect, and I want to touch just real quick on two things you said prior, and then I'll come to protocol and write that down, because otherwise I'll go on my tangents. But one thing, specifically when we talk about placebo effect. A placebo is something that, to your point, we believe that there's going to be an outcome, a desired outcome with it. So my quick question kind of back to that, not to you specifically, but just in general, is
Why are we not getting the placebo effect with Paxil? Why are we not getting the placebo effect with Abilify? With Klonopin? We do, you're right, to some degree, but...
Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (33:31.761)
We do.
Well, so here's here's the thing about that one would argue that that any primary effect is related to placebo. So when you look at the SSRI trials, the placebo groups are very close to the drug group. the drug the drug group has that psychoactive response to it. So it breaks blind and people know that they've they've taken the drug. I argue that the primary benefit is that you believe
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (33:42.559)
you
Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (34:04.445)
that there's something inherently broken about you. You're in a trial, it's called an antidepressant, and you get better because you believe you're fixing what the underlying problem is. So there is not really, if you really look at the data, and there's not many people have, I have, there is no real clinical relevance. There's no clinical benefit in comparison to SSRIs to placebo.
Now the problem with the drug is they have horrible health consequences. They make a lot of people worse. And the longer you're on it, the sicker you're going to become in various ways. The longer you're on it, the more susceptible you are to experience a chronic condition. I think they're harmful. I think they're a net negative.
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (34:50.075)
Mm-hmm. That's very true, and I appreciate the perspective on that for sure because that is correct. Even if you watch the thousands of pharmaceutical commercials that we are inundated with these days and read the fine print at the bottom, sometimes it will quantify that placebo aspect and take that into account.
I think for individuals who have been on them, then that is kind of what they're afraid of. I did want the Paxil to work. I did want the Abilify to work. wanted, and maybe they did feel even some benefit to those when they initially started them. How is this going to be different? So what I have seen clinically is that over
well, relatively quickly and then for an extended period of time, people have maintained the benefits when microdosing. It is not, and there's not a loading phase. So going back real quickly to one specific area of the brain and within the hippocampus is where we have these TRKB receptors, which are the receptor sites for the brain-derived neurotrophic factor. That specific neurotrophic factor is something that is one of the largest contributors to the neuroplasticity benefits themselves within the brain.
the TRKB receptor has a 1,000 times affinity for psilocybin over an SSRI. That's significant to me, not just in the number, not just it is a thousand times affinity, but that level of affinity for something that is natural over something that we have chemically created, know, speaks not only to the effectiveness of psilocybin in actually producing an effect,
but also it's where that fast acting aspect comes in. When somebody finds the microdose amount that is their specific amount, and I'm gonna talk about that with the protocol as well, then they know that day.
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (36:39.133)
There is no loading phase when it comes to psilocybin like there is with the pharmaceuticals. The reason there's that loading phase is because of all the various chemical half-lives and we have to find that maintenance dose and what is that for each person and when you're going to notice those effects and do the side effects worse, all the things that you've already touched on. But when we look at these specific receptors connected to neuroplasticity benefits in really that core physiological
aspect of where does depression come from.
you know, enhanced neuroplasticity is where we see positive outcomes in depression, having reduced depressive symptoms. I'll rephrase that. anyway, just to touch on one specific area of the brain and how that one chemical component of it, even outside the serotonin system, is so significant in having more positive outcomes for psilocybin over these pharmaceuticals. So talking about dose, and to get back to your question about protocol, the dose is individualized. The dose is dependent on the person.
clinically impossible. Another thing that makes it a little hard to study, you know, within a scientific research method, but it is impossible to say, you're this gender, you're this height, you're this weight, this is going to be your dose. It doesn't work that way.
It is really dependent on each person and what their brain needs. That definitely can be impacted by medications that they're on, specifically psychotropic medications, things that are already touching the serotonin system. Often individuals will need a higher microdose in order to overcome what's happening with the brain, with the SSRI, specifically in the amygdala and serotonin itself, prior to being able to notice the effect.
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (38:20.265)
But then once they notice that benefit, then those other medications can be titrated off of. Another thing that's really interesting is the body does not build a tolerance to psilocybin when microdosing. In doing this for over four years now with hundreds of individuals, I have seen exactly the opposite. There is a reverse tolerance. Over time, you need less, not more. Why is that?
Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (38:48.21)
Wow.
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (38:49.939)
Because it's healing. If we are changing the root issues of why we're showing up with anxious, depressive symptoms,
then we're not going need something to help cope and cover those anxious, depressive symptoms when the brain is chemically and physiologically changing. Now that reverse tolerance can look different ways. It can be that as people titrate off their pharmaceutical medications, they need a lower dose. So that would be A. Next is over time, the dose is not going to increase. You'll need less of the dose to get the same benefits that are still happening within the brain and perspective.
And then the other is to potentially change the number of days that you're doing it.
But when I'm working with somebody and they're starting a new microdosing regimen, my recommendation and starting out is dose every single day. Understand how psilocybin is helpful to your brain, what you're experiencing and what you're noticing. Part of it is finding that dose. So dose every day, start with 0.05 of a gram that very first day. And hopefully nothing happens. I shouldn't say hopefully because some people that's the perfect dose for them. I've been microdosing for over four years now. My dose is still 0.05.
of a gram. I did not have medications that I was coming off of, so I don't have an experience with that directly. But that has continued to be my dose on the days that I dose. What has shifted for me is I don't dose every day.
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (40:17.919)
I understand how it's helpful to me. use it when I know that I'm going to get some of those benefits that I want from it. But my perspective, would be perception and perspective put together, on the world has shifted dramatically since I started microdosing. And that is really what makes the difference in how we're showing up in our everyday lives. If you want to change the outcome of your life, you change the way that you
think.
To change the way that you think, you have to change your perspective and the way the brain is processing information, moving out of that self-protective or fight or flight mode like you had mentioned. So protocol-wise, you do not need to do three days on, two days off, five on, two off, four on, eight off. Microdose every day. Understand how it's helpful to you, and then you can decide what makes sense for you. Learning to trust yourself through this process, I do believe is a big part of that healing process.
Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (41:17.854)
Can I ask how your perspective has changed on life since you started?
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (41:19.967)
yeah, absolutely. Well my short two second answer to that is it's helped me go from being a very sharp pointy type A person like I talked about really feeling like
I needed to control as much as possible to being a nice, soft, curly-cute type A person. So, you know, I like that analogy because it doesn't change who you are as a person. know, oftentimes that's what we fear is there's something wrong with me or I'm going to be a different person or for some people it's I wish I was a different person. No, you are who you are. There is nothing wrong, broken, bad, negative about who you are as an individual. But the way that we think about ourselves,
Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (41:40.498)
ha ha ha
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (42:04.347)
and therefore the way we interact with others and the way that we go through our life experiences, those are the things that need to shift. So I had a very strong desire to control as much as possible in my life. So like I mentioned, father was a medical doctor. He was also military. I'm the oldest of seven kids, very, very tight religious environment and how I was raised. And I looked at the world in a very black and white way.
And this is not a judgment on my parents or the way that I was raised, but that was what I took away from that is the world is black and white. It is right, wrong, life, death, everything.
And with microdosing, I've been able to move much more into a more gentle way of experiencing life. Let's get rid of some of these terms of right and wrong or good and bad. If we take away just some of those black and white terms and say instead, let's look at what is healthy and what is unhealthy. Well, now becomes individualized choice. What's healthy for me might not be healthy for somebody else. So it's healthy and helpful for them might not be healthy or helpful for me.
certain things that we can agree on, Food, using the body to exercise, whether you go to the gym or you just get out and go for a walk or whatever, enjoying nature, we can look at those things and say overall we can agree those things are healthy. But using alcohol or marijuana or chocolate cake or going shopping or you know there's various things that we look at within society and say oh that's bad.
Chocolate cake is bad, it has sugar, has carbs, know, ooh, all the evil things that we're told these days. Instead of, there's nothing inherently wrong with chocolate cake in and of itself. There's nothing inherently wrong with alcohol, marijuana, those are just things, substances that exist. How we use them is where we can create things within our life that were that is helpful or unhelpful.
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (44:05.497)
And is that leading to the life that you want or is it holding you back from the life that you want? So for me, moving out of that rigid thinking and not having a fear of, if you don't agree with me, then you're wrong.
It doesn't have to be a right-wrong thing. I know what the goals are for my life, so when I'm making decisions for my life, I'm aligning with that core idea of this is the direction I'm going in my life. If somebody else wants a different outcome for their life, then that's right for them. It's not the outcome I want, therefore not right for me, but to sit and have a big debate about, know, I'm right and you're wrong, isn't helpful to either person.
Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (44:48.565)
Fascinating. Okay, let's talk about integrated into therapy. Okay, so this is something that is part of the work that you do. How do you, how do you recommend it to clients? And how do you talk about its value for them personally?
Are there people that you would not recommend it for? Like, is there any kind of screening process that might take place? And, what happens after the therapy session is done? are there certain interventions that are used to try to, I guess, for the lack of a better word, like consolidate learning, maybe that has taken place.
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (45:32.031)
Yeah, good question. So when somebody reaches out to our practice and says, hey, I heard you guys work with microdosing. I think I'd like to do that. My question to them first is always, have you had any experience with psilocybin in the past? And what, you know, if so, what has that experience been like for you? And then if you have not, what have you heard and what do you think this is going to do for you? Because humans are intelligent.
we always have an outcome that we're seeking when we're trying something new. And within that, I want to make sure that the expectation is something that's realistic for them. So that's where a lot of the conversation then will go to kind of what we're talking about today. Well, I haven't really heard much about it. I've just heard it can be helpful. All right, well, what have you heard it can be helpful for? Well, you sometimes I get really anxious. I have a hard time quieting my brain down or I get really depressed and I end up isolating or it impacts relationships.
So we'll talk about those things specifically. All right, here's how it can potentially work to help you. But really, it's always the same.
really it's always going back to these key areas of the brain that are being impacted, such as reducing blood flow to the amygdala so we're not in fight or flight and fear, stimulating the prefrontal cortex, more focus, more creativity, more forward thinking, more goal-oriented and planning, quieting the default mode network, that whole aspect in between, which I know if there are neuroscientists listening to this, please do not email me. I understand these are all part of the default mode network, but just for
of conversation, you know, we look at that area specifically, again going back to those belief systems. Where does anxiety come from? Where does depression come from? These are all thoughts about how we're experiencing the world. Well I should be doing this or I ought to be doing that or I should not be doing this or that. Then why are those things happening? So when somebody wants to understand microdosing for themselves, it really is let's talk about what's happening in the brain and how are those things going to
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (47:41.977)
impact your daily life. But also, I do not say, if you take a mushroom, everything will be fine, because that's also not how it works. This is not just a substance that you add to the body and then therefore everything is fixed and better. There is work that goes along with that and that's really the therapeutic component. So when it comes to microdosing, it's not exactly the same as macro where you take your dose and you sit with a therapist at the same time or a clinician at the same time to walk through that experience.
that's being done every day, your therapy might be once a week, might be once a month, you know, really depends on the individual. But what our clinic has done is we have a weekly microdosing therapy group. It is led by a therapist, we talk about dosage, we talk about what are you noticing, people ask questions, and there's always discussion on how is your perspective shifting. So if we are enhancing neuroplasticity and we're quieting down all of these inner
tightly held rigid belief systems, what new information are we putting in there? And the new information doesn't have to come from a book or an educator of this is what you should think, that's not it. The new information is how is your thinking about yourself and your experiences shifting? What are you noticing? I'm noticing I'm more connected to nature. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. We are connected. We make ourselves very separate from it in the way that we live our lives.
I'm noticing that when people turn on their blinker on the interstate, I'm more inclined to let them in. Okay, good. You have an awareness of other people. You know, we're not in this tight, egocentric box anymore. So I go through and describe really that some of the things you can be looking for. Microdosing, how it's showing up in your everyday life is not about what do you feel. It's what do you notice?
And that's how we measure really where those changes are happening. So the therapeutic component is paying attention to how things are changing or shifting in your awareness. And what do you do with that information? Do you do what I tried to do in a larger dose experience that I did for myself? And that is have a full on argument with myself about this is not where I wanted my brain to go. And I wanted to think about this and not that and be willing to say,
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (50:05.377)
Okay, Charity, this is the experience itself. Let go of it. And I took away something that was very meaningful from it. And that was with three quarters of a gram, 0.75. So again, I know I'm straying just slightly from that, but to touch on this.
shift between a microdose and a macro experience, there's a whole space in between that that can be incredibly helpful and very therapeutic once you have started microdosing and deal with what I call the floating variables. You know, the irritations over here and the things about your relationship and people at work and the negative self-talk. Start to quiet some of that down and then you can get to some more of those root issues of where did that stuff even come from and that can be done all by yourself at home. No shaman, no therapist.
know anything else, just your own shift in awareness.
Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (50:57.879)
I'm going to share my experience. So, I, I met you and, well, let me first ask you the question around the manufacturing of the product. grow your own thoughts has, a store to be able to purchase this in forms of like chocolate bars or honey or tea. You know, so it's very easy to obtain and to, and to utilize, but you can also grow your own mushrooms. Right. So,
How's the manufacturing process exist and how do you determine quality, things of that nature?
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (51:34.341)
Mm-hmm. Everything is done in house.
We have oversight on every single aspect of what is grown for our clinic. We use a non-GMO grain. We use an organic substrate blend, no pesticides, no manure. Part of that non-GMO grain aspect is that there's no asbestos in the processing of the grain. And then we do third-party testing. So we know that there's no heavy metals, yeast, mold, things like that coming through it. But everything is done in a very controlled
semi-sterile environment within our lab.
And then to clarify beyond that, being able to obtain the things that we have is part of a therapeutic agreement. So while we do have things that are available online and that people can come in and get the understanding and the financial exchange is for the therapeutic component. know, within the state of Colorado is still, it is not legal to just sell mushrooms or mushroom product. As a licensed clinical mental health counseling practice, we can legally exchange
money for therapeutic services and then provide the products under that. And so that's how our system is set up. If you're not doing individual therapy, then our financial exchange is for access to these online groups that are led by a therapist. And we even have two free groups. There are people, if you don't have any product or you don't want any, you just want to learn more about microdosing, you can jump on our website and there's two groups every single month that are completely free open to the public. We're still telehealth because we just are able
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (53:10.547)
to connect with more people that way and meet by Zoom. So that therapeutic component is the big part of what allows us to do what we do and to offer what we offer. But the oversight is 100 % internal and that way we know exactly what's going into everything. It's clearly marked. You know exactly what the dose is. You know what the strain is. That is very important. We do not combine strains. We do not stack things. People talk about stacking psilocybin with Lion's Mane or Niacin or
all kinds of other various nootropic mushrooms and other blends and there's no necessarily harm in that but if you have not used psilocybin before, if you haven't microdosed before, you don't need to stack, number one. And number two, the mushroom is perfect as it is. And then number two, you don't know exactly where the benefit is, what you're getting the benefit from.
And so if you're going to introduce something new, have it just be pure in its form. We also do not extract. So anything that you get from our clinic.
is just the mushroom ground into powder. We don't use any extraction because that adds heat and chemicals to things that you don't want, especially when working with psilocybin. And you lose a lot of the tryptamines and the other good parts of the mushroom when you start extracting things. It's not just about that one ingredient. It's about how the mushroom as a whole is metabolized and utilized within the body. So that oversight is third party tested, number one, but also quality
controlled within our environment and that's what makes the thought boxes and the cultivation option for individuals very helpful as well. What is used in the lab is exactly what's sent out. The same blend, the same grain, everything else. So A, we know it's working because it's what we use in the lab, but B, it gives a home grower a chance to have an amount that's meaningful to them instead of doing a humongous system where you're to have to go make, you know, 95 new friends with free mushrooms because you have so many.
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (55:13.793)
Now you're growing just enough that's really helpful for you, and there's a lot more safety in that as well.
Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (55:21.067)
Thank you. So I'll describe my experience. So the chocolate bar that you make, if you take off one of those pieces, because it's broken up into little pieces, how many grams is that?
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (55:34.289)
One square is 0.25 of a gram, or 250 milligrams, so quarter of a gram. Perfect.
Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (55:37.099)
Okay.
That's what I've been using. Okay. And that fits within the micro dose range. Okay. now I feel that it's not that I don't feel it. Like I know when I'm taking it, but I guess the best description of what I feel is a greater connection to the moment. So I'm somebody who has a pretty strict morning routine.
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (55:44.723)
Definitely.
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (55:49.951)
Right.
Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (56:08.93)
that includes like a contemplative practice, some gratitude work and meditation. It's been absolutely necessary for my progress and my evolution. And I would say using this enhances that. I also will write. I write a sub stack. And so usually every Wednesday morning, I have to come up with something to post the next day.
And I felt like this has somewhat improved my creative process. And I'm doing it about three times a week. And I've noticed benefits. So first of all, if I go outside in my backyard on a beautiful sunny day, and I want to meditate out there, if I want to do some kind of mindfulness work with my eyes open, there just feels like there's a greater connection to nature. Like I remember just following the path of a butterfly.
Right? which is not something my mind would necessarily let me do. Maybe I noticed the butterfly, but I'm not going to just continue to follow the path. It is the slowing down of that judgment, that mind working and so forth. I feel like I'm more compassionate. I, I feel like it has, it has benefits on the days that I'm doing therapy, meaning that I'll work with high risk clients and
You know, there was a fear component, if I'm really honest to myself, you know, the fear of suicide, the fear of the client not getting better, which always leads to some basic form of even mild judgment. And I see people's lives differently in a rather short amount of time. I guess it's just this greater respect for everyone's on their individual journey. And I am not to judge the pain within that journey.
or even the dark period or the hardship or the challenge that exists. Like, so let's say, for example, I'm working with a client to reduce drinking or drug use, or like they're in a really bad relationship and they're stuck in this cycle of, in this horrible abusive relationship. And they're already in shame for it, right? They're already judging themselves and we're not making progress in that regard.
Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (58:35.148)
The fact that I can have another perspective on everything that they're going through in the process of their own learning without judgment, with compassion, I think has improved the quality of my work. The patience, the tolerance, just the kindness, maybe even a little bit of expansion of emotions that
I have not felt to the same extent, certainly the reduction of fear, like the reduction in any kind of fear has been noticeable. And as we're talking right now, I mean, there's a number of things I've been involved with recently. one being the FDA panel discussion on SSRIs for pregnancy, public event, the lone treating psychologist on that panel. And I felt like I kind of just went at that without
fear. And afterwards, there was a lot of mainstream news coverage, NBC, New York Times, LA Times, all these various outlets that covered it. And I tended to be targeted in almost every single one, probably because of my message. I certainly didn't approach it from the medical paradigm and questioned a lot of things that people just accepted to be true that these drugs work, that, you know, there's such a thing as major depressive disorder that we can
evaluate and test for and it's like some underlying mental illness. And so I had no reaction necessarily to those reports about the panel discussion. any of those negative and often what they do is they misrepresent your quote, they take it out of context and they target you. But I just saw it from a different perspective. And I'm just much more willing, I think, just to share what I think or feel without
that judgment of it and that concern. I didn't, God, I wasn't even attributing it to the psilocybin until, you know, we emailed back and forth. I just thought it was part of my natural progression. I guess the ego doesn't want you to hand it over to something else, right? But if I can trace it back, it really started when I started this. And I look, now I look forward to those sessions.
Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:01:02.199)
because I just like the way that I'm feeling and thinking differently and the creative process that exists. That's kind of been my experience with it and I'm attributing it to that work.
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (01:01:18.033)
on a
I certainly appreciate hearing your experience. I mean, that's what is so exciting to me at a personal level on a regular basis is to be able to hear how the use of psilocybin, the addition of psilocybin is enhancing somebody's life and the goals that they already have. You know, within our email exchange, one of the things that I had mentioned to you was that your willingness to even try psilocybin meant you were already on a path of wanting to change some things about
your life for yourself, whatever that might have been, whether it was an enhancement to the gratitude and the spiritual component of life or a clinical understanding. That aspect of clinical understanding is even something that we as clinicians have to overcome. think probably a lot of individuals who are not clinicians, which would be most of the clients we work with, don't necessarily take that factor into account because there's a general understanding that everything we know we learned in school, which is
Not true. I'll just leave it at that. We learn a lot in school, but then we take that and add in all of our personal experiences and the work that we've done with other clients and those interactions and continue going forward with it. And so being willing to try mushrooms and something different for you, know, is something that your brain had to be on board with saying, okay, I am going to step away from fear and not let that dictate what could possibly be something that really enhances my life a lot.
That was that same place that I was at after my one experience of rolling hills and Teletubbies. And then following science and saying, as a practice in a clinic, we're going to be offering this. I now have to get past my fear of what that initial experience was and understand microdosing in a different way. So that connection to nature, and you brought up the idea of reduction of the ego too. And there's a big term that gets tossed around quite a bit in the macro experiences, and that's ego dissolution.
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (01:03:18.721)
break that down, you know, for something to dissolve is really to melt away. An ego is not something tangible, but it is an idea of self-importance. If we are melting away our idea of our own self-importance, then...
It's like a big exhale. We don't have to be self-protective all the time. We're not always measuring ourselves against other people. We're not looking at others and saying, you know, if you would just do da-da-da-da-da, you could stop drinking or you could leave this relationship or you could have your life be enhanced. It's, hey, this is something they have to figure out for themselves, just like the clinicians figure out things for themselves as well. But that gentleness,
Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:03:41.063)
True.
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (01:04:07.935)
that empathy, that emotion as you described of being willing to sit in that space with more patience, more understanding, it is a melting away of the idea of self-importance and not having to be right. There's nothing to prove.
Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:04:24.374)
Yeah. Yeah. What other thing too, and this could potentially be somewhat of a negative response is, I don't see it that way, but I think it could be disorienting to some people, is I am so much more aware and attentive to mass conditioning, especially in fear, right? Like all the society rules, what you learn in school, maybe with an organized religion.
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (01:04:44.763)
Yes.
Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:04:54.557)
social media, the government, this fear conditioning aspect of how people are easily controlled through fear. And then like very aware of when people start repeating the same messages and the fear conditioning over again, and almost like hits me like a brick, you know, it's like, oh, there it is again, you know, and the damage that it's it's done and then wanting to at least be
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (01:05:09.811)
Thank
Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:05:20.474)
part of the solution and helping people to kind of diffuse from those rules, the rules that really, I think, serve the needs of others, especially those in a ruling class or people in states, stages or in positions of authority, where it creates deference to authority. But you see that in the anxious person, right, who's so fear provoked and
so concerned about what other people may think or the judgment of others or doing something that they told to them that was wrong. But you can tell that they don't necessarily have a strong connection to any of their own values or belief system. It's really just an absorption of this from our greater society. And so it can be a bit disorienting because you don't necessarily really trust as much to the same extent that you did previously.
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (01:06:15.279)
Absolutely, and the trust was blind to start with. You if we think about a baby, when a baby is born, it comes into this world with no definitions. It doesn't know light, dark, cold, hot, you know, any of these particular things. It just shows up. The baby just shows up to experience.
Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:06:18.138)
Thanks.
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (01:06:36.935)
And the first thing that we do as parents or guardians of a child is start teaching them things. We start giving them definitions. This is red, this is green, this is a tree, this is a spruce tree, and this is an aspen tree. This is a horse. No, not everything with four legs is dog. You have a dog, a cat, a horse, a zebra, a camel. We start giving this little human definitions of all these things within the world. But then we also do that with emotions.
This is love, just that word love. And you and I could do a whole discussion about breaking down the concept of what is love across cultures and what does that mean to a person. But I'll put that out there for the listener. What does love mean to you? It doesn't always mean the same thing to someone else. But now here, little tiny perfect human, this is love. This is rejection. This is success, how that's measured. This is disappointment.
This is shame, grief, all these things and we take all those and we just tuck them in our pockets and carry them into young adulthood and then we go through various experiences and relationships and societal interactions and then we carry it into adulthood and we show up wondering why we can't have a healthy functioning relationship and why on the movies, you the idea of you complete me makes us all cry and in the reality of life, we're all looking for somebody to complete us because we don't feel complete.
just in ourselves. But then if I say to someone, to a couple, and know maybe a marital session, I say, the two of you do not need each other. It is a healthier relationship if you don't need each other, but you choose to share life together. well, if he doesn't need me, then he might leave.
That's a self, okay, what does that mean about you? Is that his choice? Or is it because there's something wrong with you, a deficit within you that he might leave? And does that also mean then that you're manipulating the situation to try and make sure he stays because the greater fear is not him leaving, but it's you being alone.
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (01:08:47.475)
You know, when we start breaking down these definitions, which is what we do within a therapeutic context, where did these belief systems come from? Where are they rooted? These aha moments become extremely significant.
And I think that's really what those macro journey sessions, people are taking away from these big aha moments and saying, now I have this more full understanding of some particular scenario. And, you know, my opposing side to that is you don't have to have the one big aha moment because it will come over time as your thinking changes, just like you're talking about. You become a little less self-aware, a little more other person aware, nature aware, getting rid
of some of those definitions, seeing how fear is used as a massive control factor. It has to. That is how a society stays in order. We can look at any international political system. Every single system has fear of some sort. If it's not the top of the government, it's the local police.
First responders don't go into these jobs because they want people to fear them necessarily, but it is the idea of helping keep control and maintenance and getting rid of bad guys and making sure that good guys can thrive, so to speak. So we have these things and these ideas within societies that help us all continue to function within a community. But if we took some of those fear factors away...
and people were able to function in a more natural mindset, which is how we're born, a natural appreciation of themselves. You cannot tell a two-year-old that they're not the most amazing, incredible thing on the planet. Everything about them is, I'm amazing and I'm incredible. And we feed that for a while until they do something we don't like, and then we teach them something else. But going back to that...
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (01:10:43.735)
You are amazing. You are incredible. This idea of looking for a big purpose, you are fulfilling your purpose right now because you exist. This is your purpose beyond the planet in this moment. What you choose to do with that is up to you. And again, this is setting aside any discussion of religious belief systems or what might happen after life on this planet.
But your purpose on this planet is to be on this planet. What are you going to do with that? And if we historically kind of go back to the 70s of when mushrooms were very available, along with a lot of other substances, where did that big message go? And why was it shut down? It went to less government. It went to less control. It went to be free, enjoy people, don't get caught up in your nine to five, know, have some freedom in your life. And then government was like,
like shut that down. And again, I am not anti-government. We have billions of people on this planet. Having an operating system that people can function within can be helpful. But sometimes we get these parameters that are so rigid and we then put even more on top of that, that we start to really put ourselves in a really tight box. And by microdosing,
quieting that inner chatter, getting rid of that fear, reducing it at least, allowing for a new way of experiencing the moment, times with other people, letting other people be more authentic to themselves. It is very freeing and it's not an anti-government, it's not an anti-society. If anything, it's more enhancing to that but in a much more natural way.
Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:12:24.239)
Well said, well said. let's talk about efforts to legalize this and where the laws stand right now. So you're located in, in Colorado. We know that it is legal, but if somebody, I'm in Pennsylvania right now. So if somebody is, you know, in Pennsylvania, they may be hearing this, they want to do this on their own and then also receive these support groups or some form of a mental health service from your group that's in Colorado. Is that legal?
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (01:12:50.751)
I'm gonna say kind of.
You know, it's right right now where things stand and legality and decriminalization are two different things. So legality means everything is available. You can exchange money for it. know, Nike shoes are legal. You can go buy Nike shoes in any state. You can exchange money for just the shoe itself. Mushrooms are decriminalized. So within the state of Colorado, you can have them grow them, drive around with them, share them with friends, family, whoever. You can do anything except
exchange money for mushrooms. Now the only caveat to that at this point is within a large dose ceremony session which has become regulated by the state of Colorado which Department of Revenue and Department of Regulatory Agencies have come together so money and regulation have come together big surprise and created this space though that was designed for therapeutic intent to have oversight for these large dose sessions. The reason I specify for large dose sessions the regulation itself does not say hey you can
can go microdose but you can't macrodose, it's not that it's the experience. The experience is sitting with an individual while you take the psilocybin. That is the part that's regulated. So there's no need for that in a microdose. That would be silly. But there is a need for that in a larger dose session. And that's where you're in a very altered state. And so the regulation has gone to that side. Oregon is the same as far as that regard in that decriminalization aspect of large dose sessions.
Now with that, we are the 50 United States, but every state gets to make their own decisions. And even within the states, different municipalities are able to make their own decisions. So there are states such as California, where certain cities have said psilocybin is decriminalized within this city. Minnesota, Washington, D.C. Minnesota has some cities, Washington, D.C. has its own distinct space, has decriminalized psilocybin. So there are a lot of areas within the country
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (01:14:53.517)
that decriminalization has happened within municipalities but not necessarily within the entire state. New Mexico actually has a state just decriminalized. that is something available there. Other states are saying, such as Texas, it's legal for there to be research on psilocybin now, but the average person is still not supposed to have it.
What we have seen and what kind of the general, I would say, understanding is across the industry at this point is
Society is moving in a direction of wanting more options to choose for their own mental health, especially natural options. We see that from food to the type of clothing and bags that are being used now or paper bags over plastic, you know, we want options and psilocybin is following that same trend. So we have two different options within our company. The cultivation side is a retail side. The cultivation side is our thought box. Like I mentioned, that's the individual propagator. It has everything.
in it, it's already inoculated, it's in incubation, but there is no psilocybin in the box until it is growing mushrooms. So anybody from any state can order that, it is shipped to them, and there's no psilocybin in it at any point in time until they receive it, until it starts growing mushrooms.
On the microdosing side, our agreement again is a therapeutic agreement. So if somebody gets on our website and they say, hey, I want to have access to a chocolate bar for microdosing purposes, they would go under the therapeutic microdosing subscription on the website. And it is a one month subscription and you get enough product for one month and you have access to the weekly online groups. And that is how we operate from Colorado. So we operate from a decriminalized zone. We will ship anywhere within the United States.
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (01:16:43.401)
We provide our therapeutic services anywhere within the United States. It is up to the recipient to make that decision for themselves.
Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:16:52.23)
Great. Thank you. the last question I'm going to have for you is around informed consent. So I think we did a pretty good job of talking about potential benefits when it comes to micro dosing. what are any potential harms and is, are there any populations that you don't suggest would use it?
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (01:17:15.817)
That's a good question.
You know, going back to that idea of fear, we like to put a lot of labels on if you have this diagnosis or that diagnosis, then you shouldn't use mushrooms because they're potentially hallucinogenic. So I don't look at a diagnosis, but the reason that we have diagnoses, the DSM-5 was created for clinicians to be able to have conversations between them without describing all the symptoms. You know, instead of just saying, well, this person has a really foggy brain and high blood pressure, their heart rate gets really increased,
sometimes they can't breathe, we say, they have anxiety. So that's where these ideas, these terms of diagnosis have come from. So to use those, an individual who may have the symptoms that equate to schizophrenia or extreme bipolar disorder, if those individuals live alone and do not have somebody that is overseeing them, our clinic does not provide any psilocybin because...
what tends to go along with a part of the symptomology that they experience and their perception of the world is a lack of...
self-regulation when it comes to certain substances and behaviors or connection to what is real and what is not real. And we don't want to participate in an aspect of anything that could cause potential harm. When we look at microdosing though, I certainly have had clients who fall under the DSM-5 description of bipolar disorder who have started microdosing and they are way more compliant with their psilocybin than they ever were with lithium or any of the other medications they were on.
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (01:18:54.631)
So to say if someone is on lithium, they shouldn't microdose, as a clinician, I don't believe that that is always a true and fair statement for the individual. But is there a way for there to be oversight with them using something in a small dose that is not just dependent on them themselves in using that?
Some of the other just physiological indicators won't be somebody with a high heart rate or high blood pressure already. Because of the way psilocybin stimulates the prefrontal cortex and can enhance some of the warming of the body and does have a stimulation effect to it, then those individuals need to have an awareness. Again, when we look at the literature, most of that is looking at large doses. So if you have a heart condition, going and taking a large dose of psilocybin could
potentially have a negative effect for you when it comes to your heart rate. That is something you need to be aware of. Microdosing, again, very, very small dose. Start low, go slow, find out what's helpful to you, but listen to your body and pay attention to it. And if you're having a negative indication somewhere else, then go backwards on it or pause. You know, there's no contraindication to missing days when it comes to microdosing either, like we've talked about. Half-life is two hours and 43 minutes. We're not trying to get that substance.
to build up in the system, we're getting the benefits to build on themselves. So I would say the most common, what I'm gonna call unwanted effect is if somebody takes too much. And that's why I say start low, go slow, pay attention to what you're noticing. If you sit down and take a whole gram and say, I thought that wasn't gonna do anything to me, well, you're going to have a very different experience and you're have to just ride it out unless you wanna take some charcoal, which, know,
know doesn't take a lot of time for that experience to pass, but if you're doing this in a methodical way, again the book that we provide really walks you through starting low, noticing the benefits, slowly increasing that dose until you find what's helpful to you, then it is unlikely that there are going to be negative indications from that. Minor things, some people say, makes me really tired for a while or I might get a headache for a little bit initially. Most of those things people will work through over time. It's really the body adjusting to something
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (01:21:16.001)
different. But that's also where there can be some strain differences. know, Golden Teacher, 99.9 % of people really like Golden Teacher. Those ones that don't, maybe B plus is a little bit more helpful or doesn't have the headache aspect to it in a microdose. So every person's body is different, but when we look at those things versus what we talk about in pharmaceutical side effects, as we would call them, it's not even apples to apples in that regard.
Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:21:44.72)
You just provoked another question for me. So we identified the range for micro dosing. think you said it was like 0.1 to 0.6 on average. And then the macro dose is, think you said two to five grams. All right. So that middle range then, right? Where you're somewhere between half a gram to two grams. What is the experience there?
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (01:21:53.819)
on average.
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (01:21:59.175)
Yes, typically.
Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:22:10.891)
And, you know, how's it different from the two endpoints of extremes.
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (01:22:15.775)
Well, I do want to quantify really quick. We have clients whose microdose is a gram every day. That is what their brain needs and they are driving a car, going to work, taking care of their kids and doing it in a way that is more functional, more present, all of the things that you described. So it really is individual in finding that dose. But for any individual, that space between what is your microdose and what is your macro experiential dose, I think that's really the beautiful in
space. That enlightening space is where you're not taking an entire day to go to another country or someone else's, you know, clinical space to have some sort of experience, but just giving yourself permission to think about some things a little bit differently. You know, as we peel back the layers of those floating variables, the daily anxiety producing things, the depressive thoughts, the self-sabotaging talk, or the things that we do sometimes to ourselves, the self-protective things that we show up in. With microdiverting,
as those are melting or dissolving away, we're left with the root issues of where a lot of those things came from. And those are things that can definitely be dealt with in a new way, a new perspective can be gained by that slightly higher dose. Get yourself in a space where you're safe, meaning your room, your backyard, your deck, wherever it might be for you, you're not gonna jump off your deck in this little, you know.
micro-macro space we'll call it. So but let somebody know, hey you know set it up with your partner or roommate or a friend that knows kind of what's going on and can check in on you just to have that safety factor there. But then shut everything else off. Turn off your phone, turn off the TV, maybe you turn on some music that's just music and no words attached to it. know turn off the lights or sit outside on the deck. Give your brain permission to think about things in a new way and don't try and
control it. I often recommend writing down some questions ahead of time. I want to think differently about my relationship specific to this or my job specific to this or you mentioned writing, know, working on a book and I feel like I'm in this mental block space. How do I move past this mental block? What is the block? And sitting and enjoying that is another way of connecting with nature by using nature. It's just a little, it's kind of like going on a retreat without
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (01:24:41.429)
having to go anywhere. Why do we go on vacation? Because we want to smell different air, know, eat different food, see some different things, spend a whole lot of money typically, but have different experiences. Vacation, we call it a reset.
Well, these resets can happen at home because it's really about the way that we think when we reset the way we're thinking and especially in that default mode network context, then we have a different perspective. We do view things differently. We understand ourselves differently and why we respond the way that we do. So I am a huge proponent. And we talk about that pretty regularly in group of that micro back row space and giving yourself permission to have a set aside time with some things you want to think about, but then giving
your brain permission to go where it goes. Don't control it. See what comes out of it.
Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:25:30.244)
Great. Thank you. Charity, where can people find you, your company?
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (01:25:35.827)
Yep, definitely online. GrowYourOwnThoughts.org and ColoradoTeletherapyServices.com. The reason for the differentiation between the sites, ColoradoTeletherapyServices.com is our counseling practice. We also offer neurofeedback within our office in Colorado Springs. And then GrowYourOwnThoughts.org is everything cultivation. is the therapeutic microdosing subscriptions. And then otherwise you'll find us all over the state of Colorado and on various other platforms. So we look forward to hearing
sharing all the questions from people.
Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:26:08.036)
Great. Charity Mills, I want to thank you for a radically genuine conversation.
Charity Mills, LIMHP, LPC (01:26:13.457)
Absolutely. Thanks, Roger.
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