Story

I remember the first time someone told me, "we only use 10% of our brains." I don't know if I've ever come to believe in something as quickly as I came to believe in that statement. Probably because it gave me so much hope. What does that mean? 10 times smarter? Happier? Healthier? Ten times more full?

My curiosity with the brain started at a young age. My father had a traumatic brain injury when he was 49 years old which left him paralyzed for the rest of his life. But his mind always remained so vivid and full. My brother is diagnosed with something called Williams Syndrome which has made his brain particularly unique. He feels deeply, shares emotionally-charged parables like a sage, has hardly any social inhibitions and is gifted with musicality. Yet his intellectual disability reveals itself when he has to solve problems, or use his motor skills, his concentration, regulate his emotions, or work through his very intense levels of fear.

About 16 months ago, this curiosity with the brain sparked again. This time, it was my own brain. I didn't feel good. I didn't like the man I was becoming. I wanted to change.

Change can be difficult because our brains are stubborn. There are, on average, over 1 quadrillion connections in our head which allow different neurons to speak to each other. These connections are like roads. Traffic will build in some of them. As a result, these roads ossify to highways in our brains which then allows for more traffic.

But sometimes these roads and highways are not well designed.

An example might be a stimulus that is stressful or challenging. It comes from the external world, and chooses to travel down prominent roads in a brain to the amygdala where fear is felt and to the hippocampus which brings back memories. The roads to generate a response might swerve through some parts of the prefrontal cortex where it contributes to the chatter where one creates a sense of identity. Because these roads come from the amygdala and hippocampus - they might also contribute to an identity of shame.

A lot of the roads in my brain were poorly designed. As I sought to change, breathing helped, exercise helped, and talking to people helped. But change was slow.

And then the plants came calling.

In metalwork, there is a process called annealing which means to heat a metal to the point where it becomes malleable so as to change either the chemical composition or the form of the metal. When taking a psychedelic like ayahuasca or psilocybin, it induces a state of entropy inside the brain during which work can be done, that upon cooling, leaves a lasting change.

It did for me. New connections were formed, and old ones broken. I processed mistakes and emotions. The word psychedelic comes from the Greek word psykhē which translates to "mind" and dēloun which means to "make visible, reveal". So psychedelic literally translates to "to make the mind visible."

But because of the malleability and vulnerability that a psychedelic can induce in a brain, it's important some variables be controlled. Leading up to a dose, being in the right state of mind. During a dose, the environment. Following a dose, the integration.

I feel deeply these plant medicines can bring goodness to the world. They can reveal secrets of the mind. They can help us understand the brain with more clarity. They give us tools to change.

It's why I am excited to launch Dose Dose.

This will be a platform to discover, share, and learn all things related to microdosing, plant medicines, supplements, and biohacking. Right now, it is focused on providing people the tools to begin microdosing the best way possible.