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  • Microdosing Is the New Morning Routine — But Are You Doing It Right?

    Microdosing Is the New Morning Routine — But Are You Doing It Right?

    Coffee sharpens you. Microdosing refines you. Most people confuse the two…

    In the evolving landscape of wellness and productivity, microdosing psychedelics—particularly psilocybin—is becoming as common in morning routines as matcha or meditation. From founders to creatives to burnt-out professionals, many are turning to sub-perceptual doses of psychedelics in hopes of improving focus, mood, and emotional resilience.

    But as microdosing goes mainstream, a critical piece is getting lost: intentionality and integration.

    Microdosing ≠ Biohacking

    Popular narratives frame microdosing like a nootropic — something to enhance output, sharpen attention, or replace that third cup of coffee. And while many users do report boosts in creativity, mood, and cognition, the real value of microdosing lies not just in stimulation — but in subtle transformation.

    Unlike caffeine, which sharpens the conscious mind, psilocybin can gently expand awareness, surface emotional patterns, and create space for new perspectives. It’s not just about doing more — it’s about being more present, connected, and aligned.

    But that refinement doesn’t happen automatically. Without reflection, guidance, or integration practices, many users miss the deeper benefits. Instead of cultivating insight, they fall into a pattern of overuse, expecting microdosing to be a fix-all for productivity, stress, or existential drift.

    The Science — and the Slippery Slope

    Emerging research supports the benefits of microdosing. One 2021 study published in Nature: Scientific Reports found that participants who microdosed psilocybin showed improvements in mood and mental health over a one-month period, compared to non-microdosers (Rootman et al., 2021).

    However, the study also emphasized that the effects were nuanced and heavily influenced by individual intention and context. Microdosing isn’t magic — it’s a subtle practice that works best when paired with self-inquiry, journaling, or coaching.

    Integration Is the Missing Ingredient

    Want to get the most out of your microdosing protocol? Don’t treat it like another productivity hack. Treat it like a relationship — one that deepens over time with attention and care.

    Ask yourself:

    • What am I hoping to learn or shift through this practice?
    • Am I giving myself space to notice what’s actually changing?
    • Who can support me in interpreting the emotional or psychological material that may arise?

    Microdosing is not about escaping your mind — it’s about getting to know it better.

    Citation:
    Rootman, J. M., Kryskow, P., Harvey, K., et al. (2021). Adults who microdose psychedelics report health-related motivations and lower levels of anxiety and depression compared to non-microdosers. Scientific Reports, 11(1), 21992. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-01811-4

  • The ROI of Inner Work: Why Executives Are Turning to Psilocybin

    The ROI of Inner Work: Why Executives Are Turning to Psilocybin

    Your next business breakthrough isn’t in a book — it might be in a well-facilitated mushroom journey.

    In boardrooms and private Slack channels across the globe, a quiet revolution is taking place. A growing number of executives and high-performing professionals are turning to an unlikely source for their next big insight: psilocybin-assisted inner work.

    This isn’t about escape or recreation. It’s about results.

    From Burnout to Breakthrough

    The high-stakes, high-speed world of leadership comes with a hidden tax — chronic stress, decision fatigue, emotional suppression, and a constant sense of disconnection. Traditional tools like productivity hacks, executive coaching, and mindfulness apps are often helpful, but insufficient. They address symptoms, not root causes.

    Enter psilocybin.

    In safe, structured, and professionally facilitated settings, psilocybin — the active compound in “magic” mushrooms — is helping executives drop below the noise of daily life and into a deeper layer of insight. With proper preparation and integration, these journeys are revealing the internal patterns, emotional blocks, and unresolved narratives that quietly govern behavior — and in doing so, unlock a new kind of ROI: clarity, alignment, and visionary thinking.

    What Does Psilocybin Actually Do for a Leader?

    In a well-facilitated setting, psilocybin temporarily lowers activity in the brain’s Default Mode Network — the part of us responsible for self-referential thinking, mental chatter, and habitual narratives. This disruption creates the conditions for a kind of “mental reboot.” Executives often describe the experience as stepping outside themselves to see the broader system — of their lives, relationships, or organizations — with unprecedented clarity.

    Facilitated psilocybin sessions can support:

    • Emotional Regulation: Many leaders carry unprocessed emotional residue from years of overextension and stress. Psilocybin can allow those emotions to surface and release in a safe container, freeing up energy and focus.
    • Visionary Thinking: When old paradigms fall away, space opens for new ones. Some leaders report entirely new strategies, product visions, or organizational directions arising from a single journey.
    • Relational Intelligence: Psilocybin can amplify empathy and connectedness, helping leaders understand how their behaviors and presence impact others.
    • Values Realignment: Time spent in altered states often brings people into direct contact with what truly matters — allowing them to lead from a deeper sense of purpose rather than habit or pressure.

    ROI That’s Measured in More Than Metrics

    For some, the ROI shows up in tangible ways: improved decision-making, stronger team dynamics, creative breakthroughs. For others, it’s more internal — a renewed sense of energy, a deeper connection to their work, or the courage to finally change something they’ve known wasn’t working.

    One founder described it like this:
    “I went into the journey hoping to understand why I couldn’t sleep anymore. I came out realizing I’d built a life that was completely misaligned with who I am. Within six months, I restructured my company, took a real sabbatical, and returned with a strategy that felt true to me — not just the market.”

    That’s not recreational. That’s transformation.

    Why Facilitation Matters

    While psilocybin’s potential is extraordinary, the key to real impact lies in the container around it. Without skilled facilitation, a psychedelic journey can be disorienting, shallow, or even counterproductive.

    A trained facilitator provides:

    • Preparation: Helping leaders clarify intentions, understand what to expect, and create the right mental and emotional environment.
    • Safe Space: Holding the journey itself with presence, skill, and non-judgment so the traveler can go deep without fear.
    • Integration: Translating insights into action — in business, relationships, and inner life — so the journey doesn’t end when the session does.

    This is where the true ROI is realized: in the days, weeks, and months after the journey, when clarity turns into change.

    The Future of Executive Wellness?

    In an era where performance is no longer just about efficiency — but also resilience, empathy, and adaptability — the inner life of a leader has become a strategic asset.

    Psilocybin, when approached with respect and structure, is quickly becoming a powerful tool in the executive toolkit. Not to replace therapy or coaching, but to go deeper, faster, and to support transformation at the level where it truly counts: the self.

    The business world may still whisper about it in private — but for those who’ve experienced the shift, there’s no going back.

    Because sometimes, the smartest thing you can do for your company… is disappear for a day and meet yourself.

    Learn more here – Disendarkenment.com

  • Preparation, Facilitation, Integration

    Preparation, Facilitation, Integration

    These are the building blocks upon which a new and potentially brighter is realized.

    None are more important than the other, and even though there is a beginning and middle it seems, there is in fact no end. Some could argue that the beginning was a very long time ago, and this is just the culmination of many steps toward this more specific preparation.

    Whatever your goals and intentions are, or perhaps you just aren’t sure yet, we’re here to help you get the clarity you need to best leverage the psychedelic experience.

    Yay! You’re here now!

  • Increasing Speed with Horsepower Does Not Make You F1 Class

    It makes you dangerous if you weren’t a special driver to begin with…

    Being able to produce mediocre ideas faster and with a bigger megaphone isn’t ‘better’, it’s louder, and once budgets and missteps are balanced, more expensive not less.

    I was having lunch with a young woman and her business partner a few weeks ago, and of course we talked a lot about how AI is changing the game in some significant ways. Then they shared with me from their phones some of the recent output on the marketing front. They bragged about little it cost, and how easy it was after a little learning curve.

    “All this” she said, “with no expensive marketing agency or consultants.” They beamed with pride as they sat back and pondered their increasing bright future.

    It was total crap. But at least there was plenty of it. What it lacked in quality, they up for in quantity, cranking out several releases a week with ease. Filling a calendar that effortlessly allowed them to poison their brand on every social media platform in the modern world, and then some.

    I felt bad for them. Sitting quietly by while observing observing someone else’s slow buring train wreck isn’t my fav. But they didn’t ask, so at least I didn’t have to try thread the impossible needle of honesty and integrity and hurt feelings. I just said, “That’s a lot of content.” and smiled. That was about the truest thing I could say.

    We see this more and more, and it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better, IF it gets better. There are going to be a lot of naked emperors running around for a while.

    I’ve seen a lot A/B testing endeavors fail to provide a sensible path forward because it was all crap. So they found least crappy thing to do. Yay. And now this can be amped up and automated and deliver massive volumes of content. As if doing a dumb thing harder and louder makes it less dumb.

    The few times I’ve had the opportunity to have a meaningful conversation about this has been very rewarding though, as long as we had enough time to get know one another so that the ‘harder’ conversations could be had safely and without too much drama. Part of that challenge is that there plenty of people (with massive amounts of content and volume to match) that will tell them how smart they are. Explaining that once you find your voice or niche, all will be well.

    At the end of the day though, the revenue will either emerge or it won’t. It won’t matter how loud or how much was produced, sooner or later it’s dollars in, dollars out.

    Does this make me old school?

  • How AI Changes Marketing Forever

    How AI Changes Marketing Forever

    The Agency King is Dead, Long Live the King

    Since days acted out in Mad Men marketing agencies both large and small have played a significant role in shaping how business thinks about, well everything, but especially marketing.

    Para2 here, just saying.

    I think that’s a cool logo we designed for healthcareactivist.org. What do you think?

  • BAM Team on AI

    So the AI era is upon us.

    There is a lot of talk about upskilling the workforce, whatever that even means, I for one am not sure. Does it mean to improve the speed of delivery of existing KPIs? In other words keep doing what you’ve been doing, but faster and maybe better?

    Wouldn’t it be cool

    if this opportunity to rethink so many things wasn’t wasted? Oh wait, we’re already way down that path.

    But it’s not too late. It’s never too late to take steps that may directly contribute to the survival of the organization is it? I hope not, because there are a LOT of orgs that are going to have a VERY hard time trying to justify why they exist. Just so many things that made sense to outsource for example, that can now be handled in-house or by a very small team vs say an ‘engagement’ that used to mean months of professional services resources for instance.

    This shift

    is going to cause unprecedented levels of stress. Layoffs are likely to be massive if the current ‘value’ system remains in place.

    If that happens, or perhaps I should say continues to happen, the transfer of wealth and power will be hard to fathom. The disparity that’s already obscene, will grow exponentially. Corporations and upper management will hold most of the wealth, and what used to be the upper middle class of knowledge workers will be largely unemployable.

    This of course is a missed opportunity to take a performance windfall and apply the proceeds to repair a tattered social structure. It doesn’t make sense to allow the top-heavy model to run amuck when the outcome is so predictable. And bad. As in violence and turmoil bad.

    This will make the Great Depression look like fun.

    And the punchline? It be at a time of unprecedented overall wealth creation. Little if any talk of ‘depression’ will be happening, that’s just the bitching and moaning of those that ‘should have planned better’.

    You would think that the massive overall shrinkage of consumer spending would give this plan a little friction. But then again, a lot of truly stupid and short-sighted decisions have just been barreling along lately, with little attention save the talking heads of political argument and some click-bait videos.

    Gee, it’s almost like the single political party that’s running the show in Washington and most statehouses as well doesn’t really give even the illusion of caring anymore. The ridiculous facade of at least a two party system is finally visible to any with a modicum of common sense.

    And Why

    should they? There are enough voters apparently infected with toxomplasmosis and the resultant reduction of risk avoidance and higher propensity of mental illness (i.e. crazy m’fers) to keep voting for parties, people, and processes that blatantly do not act in their interest to keep them in power.

    Ok, maybe the toxoplasmosis theory is a little RFK Jr. Perhaps Ivermectin is the solution. Or maybe it’s just too friggin late for any sensible solution to see the light of day.

    Whatever.

    Someday future generations will look back on us, if there are future generations, and there probably will be, and wonder WTF?!? Here was a gift of all the resources needed, available to solve every humanitarian crisis on the planet, feed everyone will leftovers, house everyone comfortably, healthcare available for everyone, and much much more, and it was just handed to a few people that happened to the captains of a certain industry at a particular time in history.

    Ya can’t make this shit up.

  • Keto House rides again

    and we’re glad to be back!

    A little bit of a forced hiatus, but back in the saddle ready to start tearing it up again!

    New Website, Updated Content on the Regular

    It will be fun. I’ve heard a rumor that there’s a podcast in the mix at some point, we’ll see and keep an ear to the ground for that 🙂

    This is a pretty good diagram to explain ketosis.

    Very different from ketoacidosis, which can kill you.

    Ketosis chart
    This is the goal.

    A Boulder Doctor

    once told me that if everyone would get to a state of ketosis for just a few weeks a year, they would reduce their cancer risk 70% or more!

    Ok, I’ll eat bacon and eggbites for a few weeks,

  • MindLooker

    MindLooker

    You don’t need more {advice, guidance, coaching, coping skills, tools, hacks} you need less of all that…

    The question becomes one of trade offs. If you need a spreadsheet to track your wellbeing, somewhere along the way, something very unfortunate happened. You were taught to believe that you need more, always more, you are not enough. Unless you’re too much in some way, then you need more tools to help you act like you’re less, OMG, I can’t…

    Trading one addiction or problem for 3 others that seem ‘less bad’ is BULLSHIT. Let’s say it together out loud, BULLSHIT! But if your house is on fire, and all you have is a wet sock, you’ll throw it and hope for the best, I get it. We all do the absolute best we can in any given moment.

    Tipping Point

    There comes a time when it’s painfully clear that these structures, plans, toolsets, and schemes aren’t solving the problem, they are part of the problem. Oh sure at first it felt better, cuz there was new hope. And hope in any form feels nice. But it was just another add-on on top of all the other add-ons and ‘Life Hacks’ that you’ve been stacking up for a very very long time. It’s not really a stack anymore, it’s bigger than that, and it’s damn heavy.

    What Happened?

    When a practice or skill or coping mechanism is first used, there is a hit of joy and hope from trying, again… the pride of ‘doing the work’, some more, again… and perhaps even recognition and accolades from others informing us about how well we’re doing, again.

    But that feeling doesn’t last, and no amount of support, incantations, affirmations, prayers, or chants will make that a stable baseline. And at the end of the day, what we want is pretty simple, a stable baseline. Where low ain’t that bad, we can deal.

    Now the rub is, the original ‘win’ with that feeling of hope and joy, will still require some headspace, attention, energy, and effort. It did, after all seem to help for a minute or a week or a month. If it’s not given enough attention, it will take some, and here come the narratives –

    • ‘keep doing it or you’re an asshole’
    • ‘don’t be a quitter’
    • ‘can’t you stick to anything?’
    • ‘I knew this wouldn’t last’

    And the list goes on and on for many of us. How else can the average person entertain 50,000 thoughts a day?!? It literally doesn’t stop. It’s fair to say that this no longer provides feelings like hope or joy. In it’s place, failure, depression, self-loathing, disappointment, and if followed to it’s logical conclusion, well nothing good lives there.

    The Really Really Bad News

    This terrorist in your head sounds, looks, and feels, a lot like someone you know…from the mirror. So it’s not surprising that these narratives are believed, at least long enough to disagree with them.

    Oopsie, you mean that in order to disagree with them I first had to believe them? Hmmm, well now. That begins to explain a lot doesn’t it?

    IF that wasn’t bad enough, there can be all sorts of other symptoms around these things we carry around, some physical, some mental, none all that helpful most of the time. I say most of the time because even a broken clock is useful briefly twice a day, and it’s the same with these ‘friends’ we carry around. Given the right circumstance, they’ve got the solution, perfect fit. Trouble is that circumstance isn’t around much.

    REDUCTION

    NOT JUST A NICE GRAVY

    Mindlooker processing provides the ability to see for yourself the truth about all this, and should you choose to, you can make some new decisions.

    In the meantime, what you’ll experience is a non-judgmental, non-evaluative, non-directive, safe space within which you’re the only boss.

    As practitioner in this space, I do not know something that you don’t. Or have some secret sauce that can’t be found anywhere else. Or provide a better track to run on. A winning new practice adopt. And please please please if you don’t take away anything else from here, this is the good news, you don’t need more of anything. You already have everything you need, but perhaps it’s been a little hard to see. Kinda like that salt shaker at your elbow as you are scanning far and wide everywhere on the dining table…

    What you will experience is guided looking. We guide by asking questions, that will prompt you to have a look. As easy as looking at your socks to see what color they are.

  • ACME Marketing wins BAM Team Services

    ACME Marketing wins BAM Team Services

    We are super pumped to be able to serve our friends over at BAM Team Services. These folks handle a lot of our technical needs, and are super responsive to our sometimes admittedly unreasonably fast timelines for changes.

    These guys have been around a minute, but are somehow staying not just relevant, but leaders in a space that ‘generations’ are measured in months not years. I’m pretty sure it has something to do with owning that coffee farm in Costa Rica. 🙂

    So if you’re in need of help mapping your technology requirements to business goals, scaling, or just getting a failed project back on track, give ’em a shout, maybe they can fit you in between our every growing list of requests.

  • HealthcareActivist.org

    HealthcareActivist.org

    Not another screaming voice doing nothing

    There is plenty to scream about in the healthcare space in the USA. And it doesn’t matter what your role is; patient, doctor, nurse, hospital, insurance, there is ample material to give migraine from the side-eyeing.

    But as much as it’s fun and satisfying to watch a pissed off nurse rant about the unfair treatment of nurses at facility X, and threats at facility Y, violence at facility Z, this doesn’t do much to effect change.

    Not that there isn’t tremendous value in keeping the focus going, shining the light in the corners where the roaches go, there is. But it’s easy to kinda get lost in the righteous indignation swamp and forget some very basic facts.

    • A bazillion likes won’t change a policy
    • That strongly worded Facebook post won’t move the needle of change
    • Big audiences don’t mean shit if not organized so that the attention and energy of the group is focused on enabling some concrete activity

    That’s why we decided not to be just another loud voice or cloud of angst. We want to bring the voices together, gather the wisdom and power of the crowd, and then Get Shit Done.

    So union talk, petitions to sign, political actions like ‘Send a Letter’ and ‘Send a Message’, frank and open discussions that may be hard for a single influencer or leader to discuss for fear of reprisals, all these have a home here.

    But we need help. We need a little money, Most important we need you to share this with anyone you think might actually care.

    In the meantime, we’ll keep looking for partners to expand the reach of the message without diluting the message. Adding color to false black and white choices is always a fav.

    Take care of each other, shit’s getting weirder and weirder out there. Never been a more important time for this…