Every intimate relationship will cross a critical, often make-or-break threshold moment in which the two foundational components of polarity and intimacy invert. Tune in to this episode to learn about this important milestone, what often goes wrong, and what tools can support your relationship in thriving beyond this moment.
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Jason Lange: All right, and welcome back, everybody. I am super stoked to be here with my man David Romero, who I have known now, I think for seven years, maybe something close to that, which is kind of mind blowing. Yeah, man. We are so excited to have you here, man.
David Romero: Thank you. Thank you for having me here, Jason. It's an honor, really is.
Jason Lange: And I just have a hunch we're going to be covering quite a bit today about men and growth and possible pathways of healing and medicines and limitations and just all of that. But I'd first love for you to just introduce yourself a little bit and let guys know a bit about your. Just your pretty amazing background and story of kind of what led you here.
David Romero: Sure. Well, where to begin? I guess I'll just first start off with childhood and we'll make it brief and we'll work our way up to now. But basically I'm a California kid, grew up in a military family and was a competitive runner at a very young age. So did a lot of, like, running. I think my first 10k was when I was 6 years old. So doing. Did, did a lot of athletics early on in my age and I did well in school. I got accepted to the United States Air Force Academy and ended up going there for four years, becoming a commissioned officer, and was in the military service for about six years. Did a lot of fun stuff, built rockets and satellites. My background is actually biology and engineering, so always had a huge fascination on the human body. My commander one time said, you know, if you're not waking up thinking about launching rockets and satellites into space, then you might want to consider a different position. This was a whole group talk. It wasn't pointed at me, but I thought to myself, in that moment, I was like, this is my opportunity. So I said, yeah, I don't think this is it. And I left. And I really wanted to follow a career in medicine, but I didn't want to have to go to med school.
Jason Lange: Sure.
David Romero: So I ended up becoming a medical device rep. Worked in the chronic pain orthopedic spine world for about eight years, and then kind of saw how that model was and didn't really align with my heart. I did do well at it, but at the end of the day, um, something just wasn't speaking to me. And so I decided to take a yoga teacher training and did a 200 hour, then a 300 hour, then a 250 hour and yeah, started teaching yoga, mindfulness, got picked up to work at usc, started teaching stress management and yoga philosophy there. Kept going with it. I really wanted to explore mental health a little bit. So applied to some mental health centers and you know, during that time, and Jason and I will talk more about it, but started having a deep interest in psychedelic medicine and what all that constitutes, but worked in a mental health facility doing detox work and mental health work, outpatient work for about four and a half years and, you know, basically started our own research company diving deeper into understanding psychedelic sciences and really exploring where is the boundaries of mental health and where is current mental health only able to treat up to a certain point with medications and talk therapy and then what's after that that we can potentially access. So. So that's sort of my few minute sort of rehash of my life. So thank you, Jason, for. For giving me some time to share.
Jason Lange: Yeah. And I think we're going to get into some. I'll have you speak to some of the cool research that you guys are up to and what's really unveiling itself right now in pretty real time that I think a lot of people have had intuitions about. But now we're starting to get, you know, data behind.
David Romero: Yeah.
Jason Lange: But I'm curious, I think this is where we can maybe speak to our journeys, a little bit of where our journeys led us, which then kind of lead us to where we both are now. I think in terms of specifically a relationship to medicines and psychedelics, as I have previous podcast episode literally titled Psychedelics are Not Enough. It's a really beautiful gift and incredibly potent tool, but it has to be part of a toolkit. Right. And I think that's something we're kind of on the cutting edge of, I guess maybe in some sense that, you know, in the lineage I was in of integral theory. And Ken Wilber, you know, he talks about the difference between a state experience in a structure stage, permanent change. Right. That we want to take these temporary states of consciousness and turn them into permanent traits. And I know for me that was part of where I was very hungry, you know, for the psychedelics when I first started experiencing them in my, you know, it was really my mid-20s, I think, or sorry, mid-30s, that I was really having my first experiences, some of which were with you. Like, I remember exactly where you were in the Room. Right.
David Romero: It's wild how vivid that is. Yeah.
Jason Lange: And, you know, I went towards them pretty hard, like, was really longing to have some kind of different experience in my body and got a lot of really great gifts from there. But, you know, definitely hit a point. You know, maybe for me it was about two or three years in where I was kind of like, ooh, I think I've been hitting this a little too hard. Like, my approach to it was not gentle. I was going, going heavy, going deep. Heroic doses and a lot of great insights were coming out. But I started to feel, you know, a little tender. Like, ooh. I think I'm like trying to break something open versus allowing something to open, you know, my heart in a lot of ways. And then just noticing that, you know, myself included. And this is not limited to psychedelics. I mean, I'm a men's coach and I teach workshops and, you know, you can go have the amazing weekend, blow yourself open, have transcendental experiences. And then you come home Tuesday morning and the mailman looks at you weird and all the patterning and the fights and the or whatever comes back. And that can be extraordinarily disorienting and was for me of like, wow, I thought I fixed this and then I'm back in the world. And whether it's, you know, behaviors in my nervous system or my heart or whatever are still there that, you know, I thought I'd healed, so to speak. And that's when I got really interested, you know, certainly in as I shifted a little bit away from psychedelics to, okay, well, what am I doing with the rest of my life? Yeah, like all those hours I'm not in ceremony or not taking some kind of medicine. And that's what's got me so. Just got me so lit up as you and I reconnected recently of just, you know, tracking you online these last years. Even though we haven't seen each other a ton, just like getting the sense of, you know, the best version of holistic, of like, oh, there's a lot, like, it's not just one piece here. I can feel this man is engaging in many, many levels. And I'm so drawn to that right now because it's like I as I kind of tell a lot of my clients, it's not a lot of the, A lot of the most transformational changes. For me, they're not the sexy stuff, they're like the nut and bolt, boring day to day stuff that then create an amazing, you know, container for, for the bigger stuff to Come in. But that's just one of the things that, that's really drawn me to you. And as I've moved through the medicine work and wanting to, you know, very open to re. Engaging with it and am right now, but wanting to do it in a more holistic way and then potentially you know, help guide others through some of the pitfalls that I fell into. Of.
David Romero: Sure. Yeah.
Jason Lange: It's not going to fix everything. Right. It's going to be an amazing tool along the way. And I know I just kind of threw a lot at you there, but curious. Yeah. What your version of that all is and what you've been experiencing through your journey.
David Romero: Sure. You know, I think. Well, I know through, you know, you know, through experiential wisdom, you have to go through it. Like it's, it's great in theory and you can read all about it in books, but going through it is, is part of the maturation process. And man, I definitely remember connecting with you, you know, in some of the circles that we sat with. And I remember actually, I remember seeing you for the first time and going, wow, this guy is so confident. Like, so confident. You actually had something that I wanted at that time. And I remember specifically you were wearing a hoodie that was, it was like tie dyed and colorful. That's right. And I was like, that's wild. Like, that was one of the first times. And I remember also your wife, something was very, very powerful about that experience too because she put. So she did some hands on work on me and it was like a lightning bolt went right through my body. I will never forget. It still brings, like, makes my eyes sort of weepy when I think about it because that was one of the first times I'd ever experienced the. I don't want to say paranormal because that word gets taken the wrong. The mystical. We'll just use that. Just the mystical. Something that I could not describe in words and put syntax and context. And like you, Jason, a lot of ups and downs and pitfalls. You know, we would have these weekends where our hearts would just. We were working on something personal. There was something inside of us that was itching to break out. And so that idea that, well, I gotta go hard because that was my motto in life is like, you gotta go hard through everything. And just if it's not, you know, knock me out, knock me down, then it's not right. And like, as you were speaking, I went through that. I would have these beautiful experiences and gain lots of insight. But the issue with it was that there was no one to integrate that with. And there was a lot of just being left to my own device to. To do that in. When you're left with just the echo chamber in your head and, you know, not getting any real feedback or having some. Some level of talk therapy, therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, where you're discussing whatever emotionally, physically, vision wise came up, it can kind of leave you in a little bit of a limbo. And, you know, specifically, you know, one of the medicines we've worked with is ayahuasca. And I studied that pretty hard for three years and had some knockdown, you know, got my ass kicked. You know, it took me out fighting and screaming. And the truth is I haven't sat with it since 2019. But it did show me that it helped me to connect the dots in some areas of my life that really needed connecting because I recognized I was functioning a lot from this place, and I was. And also some areas below my heart I was functioning from too. And it showed me that I needed to be more in my heart in my day to day. Just my day to day life, My day to day living, my day to day words that I choose to use. It helped me see how fast I was going through life and how I always wanted to be number one and competitive with everything. And that didn't give anybody any space to also feel valid or achieve or feel a sense of success in, you know, the, the medicine work really and still does help me look at my ego because it, it's gotten in the way in the past and I know this work helps to break through that. Now I will say, and we've talked about this before, Jason, but a lot of people use it as sometimes a crutch and certainly no shame around that. I feel everybody comes into this work at their own pace at just the right time. But it's important, I feel, to recognize that these are tools and they're tools to be utilized with a level of respect in a relationship. And it's important to develop a relationship with it. And I'm sure we're going to talk more about that. But, you know, lots of journeys over the years now it's really about supporting people as they go through their work with it and remembering what I've been through and how to put that into words for others to be able to relate to it. Because when you start to get into the mystical, things can seem sometimes unrelatable. And I feel it's. It's good to. You might be up here, but can we bring it down to here? And make sense out of it.
Jason Lange: So, yeah, Yeah, I love that. And, you know, it's. It's striking me. I'm remembering that one of the teachers we used to sit with, one of the things that always really stayed. Stayed with me, was this idea of, okay, we've. We've spent here all weekend. And, you know, with Ayahuasca, it's quite literal in some sense, letting go of things, bringing things out, releasing things, purging things, emptying the vessel in a lot of ways. And, you know, I always remember she was like, and now when you go back to life, you got to really decide, what do you want to put back in? What do you want to put back into that just beautiful, translucent, open, empty space you've kind of now created. And that was where I. I did start to feel a little tension in some of the people I got to know. And some of the journeys where, you know, they're. Bless them all, they're all on their journey, and it would be like, you know, ceremony would end and just seeing how fast things went back, whether it was food or substances, to right back to some of that stuff. And it just really. It. It created some doubts. For the first time in my life where I was around people who had sat, you know, two or three hundred times. And I. I actually got to the point where I was like, I wonder, like, what are you still sitting for? Right? There was just, like, a real curiosity in me that, you know, sounds a little judgy on the outside, but I was like, I was just trying to imagine myself having gone through that many in. In that duration. And I was like, yeah, it feels like something must be missing, right? Because to keep coming back and maybe not, you know, my story, again, this is just projection because I wasn't on the inside of everyone's experience, but that life still wasn't quite changing in the ways they wanted around the experiences. And I think that's something, like I said, this vibe I've just connected to you with is like, oh, yeah, we got to be really careful on the other end of. Or just conscious. Not even careful, just conscious of what are we bringing back in. Which starts, I mean, nuts and bolts with, like, what are you drinking? What are you eating? What are you sleeping all the way up the stack. You know, that is just as important, I think, as those unity, bliss, amazing entity, you know, all the things that are possible that are, you know, I think, to some extent, kind of the. The sexy, attractive part of, like, sure, it's the fun part of the story. To tell, you know, in a lot of ways, but then it's like, yeah, when we get back home, what do we do? And you know, I was just leading a men's retreat last week and I was telling the guys this, but you know, you could equally apply it retreat to medicine ceremony or a journey or something of that part is actually the easy part is what I tell guys now. It's the, what comes after is the hard part. Right. See, in some ways it's easy to go on retreat where someone's holding the structure and you're eating really good food and there's a safe container and all the distractions or life are gone. To have a big opening or step into some kind of embodiment. You've never stepped before or you know, in a medicine journey when it, you know, helps us touch something profound and real and true. But then what happens after that? That's the work, right? That's that like real work that I think we're coming, I, I, I guess I'm excited that it seems like there's some energy moving towards it in the space. There is medicine and what's happening and what I'm seeing in leaders like you.
David Romero: Oh, thank you. Yeah, you're absolutely right. And you know, to, to what you're saying too about the men's retreats. You know, people are medicine and I feel that there are people that are good medicine and there's also medicine that, you know, you learn a few times that maybe this isn't the medicine for me. And the one thing that I do appreciate about for things like plant medicine work is that if we're working with it right, there is a level of constitution that applies to going into ceremonies, like with a diet and changing habits around, even if it's for just a little bit of a time, I find that there's value in it because it's a whisper and a reminder that, you know, life is sacred and we want to treat this work as, you know, a sacred life and a sacred work. And that, you know, the intention that we have going into it as far as wanting to clean ourselves up, for most it starts at the physical level. But when we start to do some of the dieting stuff that brings up withdrawal stuff and that's where the mental things start to come into play. And then when we actually start to work with the medicine, that can come into even a greater light. And then, you know, afterwards there is that follow up. And you know, if we did like you're saying, if we did all this work to get to this point to have this beautiful experience. Let's try to, you know, maintain that to a certain extent and create structure in our life, whether it's through dieting or rest or more conscientious, more awareness of our day to day. And to what you said, Jason, I had the same experience. You know, I'd sit, you know, there'd be folks that'd be sitting 50, 60, 100 times. And I would even ask myself, is this what I'm going to be doing? And it's total projection. I get it. It's where I was. Because, you know, there was an element of judgment that was there. But at the same time, there's also this. Well, you know, they're also in my, my life and in my presence for a reason. And maybe there's some prayer I can offer, maybe there's some medicine I can have that can just hold space for whatever it is they need to work themselves through. And I know that some people listening this may seem like maybe even never done, you know, plant medicine work before, which is understandable. So this may seem a little bit out there, but I promise you will bring more context to it because ultimately to me, it's about insight into the psyche and insight into what's going on inside of my head. And how is what is going on inside of my head contributing or detracting from the world? Am I being of service or am I being of disservice? Am I showing up and am I in my heart or am I showing up and in my head? And I do feel it's a lifelong practice, but the more we get into a practice itself that's steady and this is where general like guys like you, Jason, are so helpful and friendships that are based around higher, higher levels of awareness, you know, I, I, and that sometimes sounds, I think, off to like this higher, lower thing, but just raising our awareness around these things because dis ease can be solved the more aware that we become. And the more aware that we become, the more insight we have into our own life as well as our contribution to the world around us.
Jason Lange: Oh, I love that. So, so potent. Yeah. Disease can be solved. I think that right there says so much as to what happens when we can bring a little consciousness to the system, you know, whatever it is we're engaging with. Yeah, and yeah, you mentioned a little bit ago, and I think this might be a nice place to explore that, you know, this idea of crutch. I mean, it's not just psychedelics, right? There's so many things we can use in this way. But I'm curious, you know, in your journey and what you've seen, what are some of the ways you've seen that manifest and how people engage with some of these medicines as more of a crutch than a. Than the fullness of maybe what's possible to.
David Romero: Sure.
Jason Lange: Using them.
David Romero: Yeah. You know, first off, great question. When I was working in mental health centers, I was working at detox centers and we would see a lot of drug use and occasionally there would be a lot of. It was more, I would say fentanyl and some of the, some, some, some harder drugs out there. But there was also this like mix and match and lack of intention behind these things. And so when someone would come in like high on mushrooms or high on ketamine or high on whatever it is and they were detoxing, they were using it as an escape and they were using it because they didn't like the life that was being shown to them. So they would take something in order to create a sort of barrier to that life or create where they felt safe internally, but they didn't necessarily understand how their actions were playing out with the rest of the world. And where I see a lot of carelessness right now is the recreational use of these. Where there is no intention. Maybe there's an intention to just feel good or maybe to feel kind of high or maybe just to let go of work or things like that. But that to me is still a little bit of escape. If we're not understanding why we're wanting to do it that way. There's a lot of other work we could do besides psychedelics to understand that. However, I do feel that if used and worked with, and I prefer to use the word worked with because it's one thing to use something and using is not a two way relationship. It's just using versus working with someone, something. We're developing a relationship with it. And my wife and I both want to teach people that what we're working with is for instance psilocybin is. This is food and it's food from our earth in. We also have to understand that there's been a lot of. In the past, really in the 1970s, there was a lot of negative clout and a cloud around psychedelics and everything was put into this whole schedule, one bucket where it has no medical necessity or no medical benefit. And we can maybe explore this later. I think I understand why that may be. However, when you go through nearly three decades of damning something and putting a negative name on it and scaring the bejesus out of people with. Makes it very difficult to approach. And now you have not just one, but multiple generations fearful of something. And because of that, we label it as bad or not good or scary or this or the others. And then you might have heard this story about who got high one night because their friend gave them mushrooms and there was no set and setting behind it and they were drinking alcohol and they were combining different things with it. And you're like, well, yeah, now that you told me the whole story, no wonder why. That's not how you're supposed to work with these things. This is about developing a relationship. Start small, have a guide, have support nearby, and have strong intentions as you go into it. And we can talk a little bit about set and setting too, Jason. But, you know, really what it is is relationship and developing a relationship with something outside of ourselves. And then if we're going to develop a relationship with it, it's just as we want respect, it's also offering whatever it is we're going to be working with, having a respect towards that as well, too.
Jason Lange: Yeah. Oh, I love that. Just the idea of that shift from. Because I totally use that languaging of using, you know, using psychedelics, I can feel just what a fuller expression working with is. And that idea of relationships, like, across the board, right? Ideally, working with plant medicines, developing a relationship with the plant medicine itself, developing a different relationship with different parts of ourselves. And then, you know, ideally in some kind of contextual, relational setting, whether it's a guide or a community, deepening the. Using that as. To deepen those relationships as well. And I. And that is such a different use, right, than the. The unconscious or the recreational or as I would kind of put it, you know, the moving away from experience. Right. We can just, I mean, you name it, any. Any transformational or spiritual technology. The good news or bad news is you can use them, use it to move towards an experience or away from an experience. And I think plant medicines, right, are no different in that sense. And even, you know, the benefit to working with a guide or. Or a trusted person is, you know, having someone to. To help you notice that, you know, is this bringing you more into your life or is it helping you distance yourself more from your life? And I think that was where, you know, I started to just notice, oh, I think I could go down that path pretty easily of using it as a way to get away from my life. Right, right. To go into the astral fireworks and. Versus the kind of Nitty gritty of just the grunt work back home.
David Romero: Right.
Jason Lange: Which I suddenly had an abundance of because of the relationship I developed with the medicine. It was like, wow, okay. You know, suddenly there's like a nice long list of things I know I can work with. And I believe that's a beautiful way, I think, to engage with them is to become aware of these different things that then take time, you know, to, to shift and change. And so for those kind of newer to the work, like, yeah, you mentioned set and setting. Can you speak to that a little bit? And how important, you know, and really I think, fundamental that is to these relationships?
David Romero: Yeah, absolutely. So there's a sort of coined phrase and they use it in the psychedelic world, but it's called set and setting. And the set has to refer to our mindset going into an experience. And the setting has to do with the environment that we're going to be having that experience in. And you know, oddly enough, we were asked to write a book by. Help write a book by a UCLA professor called Making Sense out of the Use of Psychedelics for Chronic Pain. And we wrote a whole section on set and setting. And in, in that we look at. Okay, so you've decided to make this decision that you want to work with some sort of psychedelic medicine. And there's a lot out there, but you've decided that you're going to work with this first. Have you done your research? Have you maybe watched some, some shows on it, specifically with psilocybin? I always recommend people watching fantastic fungi so they have a better context of understanding the kingdom of fungi and understanding that this is a completely separate kingdom than the animal kingdom which humans are in. And then I also recommend them to watch how to Change youe Mind, Episode two, which is all about psilocybin and Michael Pollan and he talks about it. And there's some other really great, really great books. I have some actually in front of me right now. Psychedelic psychotherapy by Coleman, Dr. Fadiman's the Psychedelic Explorer's Guide, Miller's book called Psychedelic Medicine. I mean, there's a ton of stuff out there, but these are all really well rounded books. There's another one guy over here called the New Science of Psychedelics, which really looks at all the psychedelics, but how to really work with them properly and apply them into therapeutic settings. So the first is, I would say, is just start to read up and get knowledgeable. Of course we can go down that rabbit hole of oh my God, there's bad experiences out there. Personally, I don't really feel like there is such thing as a bad journey. I think that there's very difficult journeys and if we're going to be doing things, you know, maybe out of alignment from intention or from our hearts, and yeah, it may be a little challenging, but that can easily be fixed through our intention. And so it's important with intention is like, what do you want to get out of this experience? And taking some time and just journal. And I know that many people struggle with journaling, so I always tell them, just start with gratitude. What are you grateful for? And start with just putting down some things you're grateful for. Maybe we want to invite into our life more gratitude. Maybe it is we want to invite into our life more understanding, more love, more reason, more courage, whatever it is, remembering that when we put this stuff out there, we're going to be given opportunities to practice this as well too. So, um. But whatever it is, you know, because I work on the, the psychotherapy side of things, it's like, okay, a lot of people have a hard time letting go of something, so maybe we go into a psychedelic experience of, you know, I've been holding this in my body, I've been holding onto this thought, you know, maybe there's some room that we haven't really worked with, with forgiveness. One, forgiving ourselves, two, forgiving the other person and maybe looking at that and exploring it. So we have to have the right mindset going into it. And that too also has to do with, again we mentioned earlier, but just maybe some dieting and some, you know, build up to it, one week, two week, whatever it may be, depending on the protocol, and then also the setting. And that's the environment that we do it in. And, you know, doing it at a, at a rock show or doing it at a rave opens doors for a lot of potential pitfalls. And so I recommend having a setting where maybe reach out to somebody and talk to them who's experienced. My wife and I, and you too, you know, Jason, we've been involved with this, I think about eight years. 2016, I believe, is when I met you. So about eight years and someone who is not here to tell you what you're going to experience, but just to remind you to be open to what is to show itself. In my opinion, a good guide is there to answer questions but not tell you you have the answers already inside of you. Many times we're looking for the answers outside of us through person or a deity or an object or something material. But this work from my Understanding helps us see that no, we've had the answers in us, but there may have been some unconscious operations and protocols inside of our heads that were just sort of blocking all of that. So it's a way to bring that stuff up to the surface. So we have our setting now. I have a studio. I mean, this is actually one of the studios that we do this work in, but it's a quiet studio.
Jason Lange: It's.
David Romero: It's welcoming, it's calming. There's not a whole lot of furniture that's not busy because once we get settled and close our eyes and start to look inward, we want to feel safe. You're not going to want to do it with busy cars. You're not going to do it if there's not a bathroom nearby or access to something. You're not going to want to do these things where you're having, you know, difficulty in maneuvering or navigating the landscape. Occasionally, once you become experienced, it's nice to do it outdoors and things like that where you get to connect and commune more with nature. But for those that are first working with it, start slow and do it in a controlled way with people that know what they're doing. The one thing that I will say that's very different from this type of work than sort of the allopathic Western model is that the vast majority of physicians that prescribed medications have never actually taken the pill. So there's no experiential wisdom for them to be able to tell you how to actually work with it, because they've never experienced it personally. And on top of that, the pharma rep, as well as the marketers and lab scientists and the CEOs probably haven't taken it either. So there's this huge disconnect of, well, the white paper says this, but, you know, take it in, just take it. Versus, the nice thing with psychedelic work is that guides have done the work already and can help you through whatever comes up. Because most likely with. With the years of experience, they've seen what you've seen and can help you navigate sometimes those dark areas or those challenging areas that you face, or if there's a purge that may come up to let you know that it's okay to do that and to feel safe to do that as well too. So set and setting are keys to really positive outcomes. And, you know, the more that we can create that space, the better the outcomes are. And I think that it will also push the ball a little bit further through the approval process. Right now with the DEA and the FDA.
Jason Lange: Love that. So guys that listen to me, you know, another way to think about setting is the container, right? So what's the container the experience is being had in? And certainly in my own experiences and you know, I've been in support of some others and you know, everybody gets to have their own. But the, the bad trips, the more challenging ones that I've either been part of or seen, usually what was kind of going on was I didn't feel safe and then resistance, right? And then I was resisting the fact that I didn't feel safe and so I was resisting the experience. And that's when it can get really challenging. But to not resist, at least for me, required feeling very safe. And as I got into environments where I did that, then it was like, oh, the, you know, that full content of whatever it is, it's not that it's easy, but I feel safe to be with it right now. Right. I don't have to push back against it or try not to go there, which can just be excruciating and hard. And the container makes such a big deal, right? Like you said, just the, the, the quietness or solitude or safety or people you're with are very, very impactful. Like very, very impactful on this. So it just really important to take note of and then to have that, that intention coming in of why are you taking it, right? What are you curious about finding, what are you open to Exploring is so useful. It certainly has been for me.
David Romero: Yeah.
Jason Lange: So a couple of questions for you because one thing we've talked about and I think is maybe, I don't know, flowering right now, I guess you could say, or blossoming that not everyone may fully understand is, is the idea of microdosing. And like, what's the difference, David, between microdosing and using something like psilocybin as most people think, like having a trip or something like that.
David Romero: Yeah, great question. Again with microdosing. There is a general misunderstanding of it because I am well aware that There are over 200 companies out there that are produc microdoses just here in the state of California alone. And there's a lot that are coming over across from Canada as well as China. And you know, this is a. Right now what we're seeing is sort of the wild, wild west when kind of like marijuana first came on board. And there's a lot of over promising in packaging and of what is a microdose. And in getting to your question, I have to say this because a true microdose is sub threshold to threshold, where it's just barely barely feeling anything. Many people, when they're trying to work with a microdose, they're looking or searching for a high, like feeling like, I want to feel high, I want to feel like. Like I do with marijuana, or I want to feel like when I've had enough alcohol, that kind of high feeling. That's not what this is technically for it to be a microdose. So there's a lot of different scales with this, Jason. There is what would be called a nano dose, which is between 0.01 and 0.05. Then you have your microdoses, which is 0.05, upwards to about 0.25. Then you have a mini dose, which is 0.25 to about 0.75. And there is some overlaps here. As you start to get more. There is more sensations that do start to turn on. Then you start to get into what's called museum doses, where it makes you kind of slow down and just look at, okay, this is. Colors are way brighter. Then you start to get in. That's anywhere between 0.5 to about 1.75. Then you start to get into what's called a macro, which is anywhere between 1.5 grams and about 2.5 grams. Then we start to get into more therapeutic. 2.5 is right around the therapeutic dose. But again, you gotta understand your strains. There's a lot here. And then we start to get into this thing called hero dosing. And that's a whole other thing because that's changed over the years too. And I think I understand why people do it. I've certainly done it myself. But at the same time too, I don't see it as a necessary thing to be doing on a regular basis. But we can talk later about that. But getting back to micros 0.05 to 0.25, depending on a person's sensitivity level, is just enough to start to create this sort of focus and enough to create a very slight separation from your thoughts. And what I mean by that is that, you know, day to day, our mind is full of thoughts just passing through, coming in and coming out. At the USC study back in 2014 estimated about 70,000 thoughts move through the mind every single day. And in within that, that's just like small things, but there's also big thoughts about stuff. And so what it does when worked with properly, and we set an intention and we sit with it a little bit, is that it just creates space. And so we find that we can be less reactive to a thought. It's like, okay, I see you thought, but now that I see you, you don't have as much power over me because I have an awareness that just as for instance, this mug is an object and the external, all my thoughts are, is an object that's internal and it has a voice to it. And the more aware that I can become of that voice, I can now, you know, choose, okay, is this, is this the right direction I should be going? Or maybe I need to just be a little more heart centered and let that thought pass. So microdosing, little by little, and it's a buildup over time, just starts to slowly raise our awareness again. Microdosing, when we're, when we're specifically talking about mushrooms, it's a food, it's a food source and it's just adding a little bit of food on a protocol basis. So for some people, it's three days on, two days off. We call that the Paul Stamets method. There's a four day on, three days off for individuals that are working on getting off SSRIs and antidepressants. There is also other protocols for that where you have to do a slow titration and you take it more on a regular basis. But with microdosing, it's for me and for the general people that I work with through guidance, it is take it in the morning, sit with it, carve out five, 10 minutes of time, journal, what is it you want to receive from this today, and then go into your day with those intentions. If your intention is to be more present, look at opportunities while you're driving. You know, maybe it's, it's okay. I'm catching myself on the phone more and I need to put that down. Or maybe I'm. But it's not an overwhelming experience. Microdosing is not intended to be an overwhelming experience. When you start to get into mini dosing, then we really need to be careful about who we're around and things like that because we can be more sensitive. It does open up our sensitivities a lot more because it's lighting up your nervous system. And we can talk more about the science if you'd like, Jason. But you know, with microdose, you should be able to go through your day to day with it without there necessarily being a pause. You can operate heavy machinery without an issue.
Jason Lange: Yeah, I would love to hear a little bit about the science. And you know, why microdose, right? What, what's supported in the science and specifically, you know, what are some of the, you're even involved in supporting some studies right now and like what's being discovered? What are we seeing, you know?
David Romero: Yeah.
Jason Lange: Why might someone want to consider this as part of their healing journey?
David Romero: Sure. Well, we'll take it. We'll, we'll start with about a 10,000 foot view and we'll dive into it. One, I mentioned it earlier, but we have this whole thing called the kingdom of fungi. It's, it's made up of hundreds of thousands of different species, fungi and slime molds and you know, mushrooms and all sorts of things. And some of them are extremophiles, which means they live in very austere environments. But within that you have a bunch of, you know, you have your kingdom phylum class, all these different things. And we have one specific one called psilocybin mushrooms. And psilocybin mushrooms across the world, we know there to be about 203 to 206 of these specific type of mushrooms that have a biochemical called psilocybin. Now psilocybin is a molecule that we have learned is naturally found in nature. And well, let me draw back what we also know about mushrooms. And mushrooms are decomposers as well as detoxifiers. And in fact, the largest living organism on this earth is a mycelium network. I believe it's found in Oregon. It's over 3.5 miles square, miles big. It connects to all of the forest life. What we also know is that funguses are great communicators. They can communicate things very, very quickly through their neural networks due to the cell structure that they hold and the integrity of those cells. So think of it sort of like a nervous system channel for nature. With psilocybin they have an interesting impact on the environment because when animals eat tends to suppress their appetite. And specifically insects, when they eat it, they slow down the eating process. So now you don't have an over consuming of the environment. So you have more of a balanced ecological space also for like animals, like foragers, like bears or foxes, they'll, they'll, they'll eat things like the amanita mascara mushroom. And then what they also found, what our understanding is, is it eats it and then it goes on its trip and then it sort of wanders away. So it actually protects the environment by having that chemical there inside of it. Now what it's doing from our understanding when humans ingest it is it is helping specific bacteria in the gut. Inside mushroom there is these chemicals called Phenyl alkal. Phenyl alkaloids are these just chemical compounds that specific bacteria in our gut like to eat. And what it looks and appears to do is specific bacteria that do eat them tend to produce more butyrate as well as tryptamine. And butyrate is fantastic for the mucosal lining of the gut for immunity. And when people think of the brain and the body, they think that this right here is the, the brain is up here, when in truth, our intestine is, is a brain in itself. And more and more science is showing this, that our first line of defense for our health is our gut. 80% of our immune system is in our gut. And if we don't have a healthy, strong gut, then everything else, the digestion process, the absorption process, if we don't have a proper mucosal lining, then now we're absorbing chemicals and things that our body does not need, which can result in further forms of dis ease and heart disease, chronic disease, pain, the permeability of more viruses to move into the body as well too. What we know of in the gut is that there's over 3,000 species of bacteria totaling well over 2, quadrillion, quadrillion. I mean, the average human body, I believe, has right around anywhere between 7 to 8 trillion cells. We're talking quadrillion here. And that's a huge order of magnitude. I think the whole human body has approximately. I think the last guesstimate was right around four quadrillion on our skin. We literally have more bacteria on our body than we actually do cells in the body. And by the way, I know this because I work with a company called phenobiome. It's a company down in La Jolla, Scripps Ranch area. And they are Scripps Scripps Institute area. And they are just making headlines in their ability to be able to understand the interaction of the gut biome. But at any rate, the mushrooms have a, these specific phenyl alkaloids that bacteria like to eat that allow for protection in the gut lining. But also this little chemical called psilocybin breaks down into another biochemical called psilocin, which looks almost identical to serotonin. So when the body absorbs it, it's sort of like a serotonin surrogate. It links onto the same receptor sites and it basically allows the neural networks throughout our entire system to be able to connect. So you're taking this sort of serotonin like molecule externally, you're putting into the body. The body's now utilizing it and now the network is becoming more complete and I feel a slow, steady, slowly and steadily working with this. Definitely shows a shift in neuroplasticity. You know some of the studies we were looking at, Jason, there was a pilot study done out in Colorado and they looked at, they did gut biome testing, epigenetic testing as well as EEG scans. And what they found was there was a significant increase in very. Prevalent bacteria in the gut that produce butyrate. So we found this higher increase of butyrate production and tryptamine production. What we also found was that of the individuals that did this six month study, there was a two year increase in lifespan and that was without coaching because using epigenetics. Epigenetics, if you don't quite sure for the audience out there, know what that is, Epigenetics looks at basically the details of your life. Life insurance companies use epigenetics in order to figure out your expiration date as well as your, your co payments totally. So they use anywhere between 930,000 upwards to 1.5 million methylated points on your DNA. And each one is a biomarker for habits you may have. If you smoke, if you drink, if you've done drugs, all sorts of things, AI can run through that and go, okay, this person has a proclivity for potential of this. And to give you an idea how detailed it is, it can get down to the year in almost a month in which you're going to transpire and expire unless you make lifestyle habits. And that's the interesting thing with epigenetics is that while we are born into this world with a set of genetics from our parents, things can be turned on and off. And if we make habitual changes, like maybe we don't drink as much or we pause on that, or maybe we start to sleep a little more, or maybe we start to exercise more and get outside more, we can turn those genes on and off again. And I think that's something that was missing from our understanding in the 80s and 90s when we were going through school and just learned about genes. It was sort of like this, well, this is what I have and there's no way out. The truth is, yes there is. But it means you have to change a habit and a pattern in order to do that. And that's going to take time. But the body is resilient. The body knows how to do two things. It knows how to survive and it knows how to heal itself. What was really interesting was when we were doing eeg scans. What we found was that there was a significant increase in micro voltage in the brain over the six month period of time. So what we saw was this migration of activity from the frontal cortex move towards the central parietal part of the brain. Literally in yoga they call it the crown chakra. But literally moving from this forward fear based anxiety, worry driven life to being more centered here. And across the board There is an 8 point decrease in anxiety on the Hamilton anxiety scale, which is huge. Huge. There was more left side, right side symmetry in the brain. There was a lot of people that are working through anger and frustration, resentment tend to clench their jaw and so they have an elevated jaw. What we found was that the jaw started to relax a little bit more and there wasn't as much of that. What else did we find? Oh, HRV scores, heart rate variability, short term, long term went up over time. And I feel like these are just, we're just on the cusp of understanding this. But it's so cool to be able to see that. Yes, there are indeed positive things that are showing up as a result of working with these things. And again, that was without coaching. So the big push right now, and I believe it was House Bill 3685 I think or 86. It got signed by Dan Crenshaw from Texas as well as AOC from New York work. But it's for veterans to be able to start exploring psychedelic therapies. And fortunately we are involved with several organizations that are doing that and the results are just incredible. People that otherwise wouldn't have had a have been SSRIs the rest of their life. They're starting to understand and see why and be able to let go of all the traumatic stuff that they've been through. So. So more, more to come with that. But it's really cool to be a previous service member and continue to give back to service members.
Jason Lange: Yeah. So extraordinary the research and yeah. What's happening in that space specifically where I've been working with some guys and know some of the stories of just how left hanging in a lot of ways the interior experience of service members has often been. And you know, I'm just really staying with this image you had of the way the medicine can support, you know, not only connection outside with the environment in the world, but within. It's like we're literally just turning on the connective system and when we're connected, things tend to go a lot better.
David Romero: Yeah.
Jason Lange: Heal faster, we tend to have better relationships, we tend to take better care of the planet. And the people around us and just to see that, you know, some connection being, becoming available for service, pets in particular, is just so, like, something I'm so here for in whatever way I can. And, you know, I think specifically for a lot of men, you know, this medicine really supports as well, because, you know, we've barely had time to get into it there, but just all of the. You know, we talk a lot about the patriarchy, but it's just as damaging to men in terms of what we're allowed to be, what we're allowed to feel, what we're allowed to express, how we're allowed to even connect to each other.
David Romero: Yeah.
Jason Lange: It's something I know you and I are both quite passionate about. Shifting. Right. Just shifting the. The ways we can connect and that there's a. You know, the other thing that's so exciting to me is that there's. It. It seems like a pathway is potentuating here for a way off SSRIs.
David Romero: Yes.
Jason Lange: I know. I know men who. They've legitimately saved their life, so I'm by no means, you know, anti. But I think the. They're. They're not a lifelong plan, you know?
David Romero: Right.
Jason Lange: It's like a. I think of them like the paramedics showing up and just, you got to stop the bleeding, you got to stabilize. Then once you stabilize, you need different tools to help you, you know, heal in some sense. And I've met. I've worked with a lot of men who, you know, to, you know, not necessarily to the fault of their doctors, their system. They just weren't equipped to help. You know, I know mostly men, but I know this is applicable to women, too, with that inner journey, that inner. Inner world of what it takes. And because of that, you know, as far as I understand, and you probably know the science a lot more, from what I understand of SSRIs, is the beauty and the gift of them is they narrow our range of experience. Right. So your lows can't get so low. But the trick is then your highs can't really get that high. And so we kind of got. You know, I'm using my hands here. For those watching, our range of experience gets pretty narrow, which can allow us to get through some really hard times. But then, you know, guys I work with that have been on them for a number of years are wondering, like, I don't really feel anything. I'm not excited about life. My life's just kind of here, and they just. There's, like a deadening over time. And to see that there's, you know, so great, like, you know, Mother Earth, whatever you want to call her, she, she, she knows the pathway out and it's connection and here's, here's a little molecule that is supporting that in the environment and in ourselves. So it's just so inspiring to me.
David Romero: Yeah, yeah. The, the whole SSRI opiate, a lot of these things are treating symptoms and there's a time and a place for it. I do feel like we always have to practice compassion with this work, but it's never, it should never be a. This is it. We should always be offering opportunities. Whether it's okay, let's, let's, let's go to a nutritionist and let's work with your diet some. Let's maybe get outside more often. Let's not be under fluorescent lighting as much. Let's be more in natural light. There's so many ways to heal. I strongly feel that it's like the yin and the yang, that, okay, we were born in this earth, but this earth also provides natural remedies too, to be able to work through things. And you know, my wife and I have a saying, community is immunity and a lot of that is the community. And we've lost a lot of community. And I mean, I mean, listen, we, we all went through Covid that are here today. Like, there was a lot of like separation and we were left to our own, like to our own accord to like try to navigate this experience. And there was a lot that was lost in that and there was a lot of opportunity. Well, there's, there's opportunity too, to grow in it. I do feel that. And it was all about a mind frame in which we choose to approach it all. But I know a lot of people struggled because they did. They lost their community. And community keeps us young, community keeps us, us fresh, community keeps us. There's a, it's multi leveled and layered, but it allows us to be able to work through and talk through things and connect. And when that's taken away, it's like, oh, now I'm just left with what I. What's been conditioned inside of my mind. And, and that's a big thing I think psychedelics can help with is, is the conditioning and exploration of our own personal conditioning. Because every single person who has walked this earth has been conditioned in. You know, that's another topic. We can go down maybe some other time, but because I love that topic, the work with psychedelics has helped me see my conditioning very clearly and get clear with it so that I understand my purpose here, so. Yeah.
Jason Lange: Well, I'm so amazing, man. So honored to have you here. And thank you, Jason, at a personal level, to have wisdom like you available to me. And our relationship has been very beneficial and useful and love everything that you're up to and curious for, you know, guys that have their interest piqued or want to learn more or just hear more of what you're up to. What's the. What's the best way for them to kind of stay in tune?
David Romero: Yeah. So, you know, I'm on. I'm on Facebook, so folks can look me up there. David Romero. On YouTube, you can find David Romero Yoga. If you're on Instagram, it's Heogi Dr. The Yogi Doctor. And you can privately DM me there, you know, in the little bio area. I'm happy to put my contact info with my email and a phone number if you want to reach out.
Jason Lange: You.
David Romero: Know, happy to share more about the work I do, kind of one on one, because it is a special thing. So.
Jason Lange: Yeah.
David Romero: Yeah.
Jason Lange: Awesome. Well, thank you so much, man. Such a. Such a pleasure. And we'll do it again. I think there's. We're just scratching the surface.
David Romero: Oh, I know. Yeah. I think we could explore so much, Jason, and thank you for all the work that you're doing with the men. And, you know, to the. It means so much to me to Spock. To Spock. To speak to Spock, but to speak to just another. Another man that is just full of light and sees another pathway and is very clear about their purpose. And. And also being a father and a parent, it's also nice to work and connect with a man that is raising a child in a conscientious environment. And thank you for being a friend. I really do appreciate it. And thank you to the audience out there for listening.
Jason Lange: Yeah, thanks so much. Well, until next time, guys. You're interested in working with me around dating relationships or your masculine presence in the world? Just go to Evolutionary men. Apply.
