Microdosing Your Way Back to Pleasure w/ Leslie Draffin | Szn. 4 Ep. 6

Hi, it's Dr. Jen Kennedy. I'm a sexologist and couples therapist. The Pleasure Project podcast is about sex and relationships. So this includes discussions on desire, dysfunction, dissatisfaction, exploration of all things sex related. So sometimes I'll do toy reviews and we'll look at trends. And sometimes I'll also enlist other experts. We'll increase your insight and enhance your pleasure. So tune in. What is a path to better sex? Wasn't about doing more, but about softening, slowing down and even micro dosing. In this episode of Pleasure Project, I'm joined by trauma informed somatic practitioner and psychedelic micro dosing guide Leslie Drafin. We explore how intentional plant medicine combined with practices like breathwork can help heal shame, unlock pleasure and bring us home to our bodies. This isn't about quick fixes or trippy escapism. It's about using sacred medicine with intention so you can reconnect with yourself, your partner and your pleasure. Tune in to learn how micro dosing might just become your next intimacy practice. All right. Welcome back. My guest today is Leslie Drafin. She's a certified trauma informed somatic practitioner and psychedelic micro dosing guide. She's also a womb mystic. She helps midlife women embrace their bodies, sex and psychedelics so they can overcome the wound of unworthiness. Leslie believes somatic practices like breathwork along with sacred earth medicine have the power to bring us home to ourselves, awaken our authenticity and heal the trauma locked within our subconscious. Welcome. Thanks for having me. I'm so excited to be here. Yeah. We've had a conversation before and I am excited to welcome you to my podcast. This has come up in different ways. Plant medicine has been in the ether and I've tried ketamine once. I wanted that experience. I feel like a lot of my clients have brought it up. My own therapist has mentioned plant medicine and I've been curious about it. When you pitch me, I was like, I want to understand this more. I feel like a lot of people are curious about it and wondering about different solutions that can help them. I feel like, yeah, let's unpack this and see what can help. I'm always looking at different options. Yeah, for sure. Tell me, well, first of all, give us a glimpse at what your journey has been and how you arrived at this. Yeah. My journey really started years and years ago, obviously, of just growing up in a religious family. My dad's a preacher and feeling very disconnected from my body using coping mechanisms, like eating disorders to numb out from a pretty early age. Then I guess the story around my pleasure really started because at 18, I got herpes right after I had had my first sexual encounter. For me, that really activated this very deep wound of unworthiness that I'd had since birth, probably because I was adopted and I had a lot of trauma baked into my subconscious and my nervous system because of that experience. At 18, I'm a freshman in college. I'm away from home at the first time. Just after I'd had sex for the first time, I get this diagnosis. It was 2005, it felt like a decidence. For me, it really- So much shame. So much shame. I just fully spiraled. I fully spiraled into alcohol abuse and even deeper into my eating disorder, toxic relationships with folks who gave me scraps. Really, what was fascinating for my story is I got addicted to overachieving and trying to prove how good I was and how worthy I was. For my entire choice, as I climbed the corporate ladder in television news, I really had this conscious and subconscious belief that, well, if I'm really successful and I'm making a lot of money and a lot of people are seeing me, then of course, someone's going to love me because I'm so worthy of it because can't you see how good I am? On the inside, I was, like I said, suffering from anorexia, abusing alcohol, abusing Adderall, and so deeply disconnected from my body that it really took a really devastating divorce in my late 20s to bring me to therapy, to bring me into, I guess you'd say, the first of my dark nights of the soul to really begin to see everything I had been doing and figure out a way forward. Now, my true healing started, I think, in 2019 with my spiritual awakening because the thing that had happened for my entire 20s is I had been deeply disconnected from God, probably agnostic. I believed in the higher power, but I didn't really know what that was. And so when I had my spiritual awakening in 2019, I really started to figure out practices to help me feel safe in my body, somatic movements, somatic breathwork, meditation that looked more like movement meditations. And finally, reconnecting with my menstrual cycle, reconnecting with my womb, which dug up a lot of sexual shame, but then finally finding psychedelic medicine to, I think, really add that extra layer of reprogramming my subconscious beliefs around what I was worthy of and what I deeply desired. That for me was really healing. And so all of that to say, I spent a really long time afraid of my body, hating my body, disconnected from my body, and all of those things when it came to pleasure as well. And for me, pairing embodiment practices, somatic practices with psychedelic medicine finally became what helped me learn to love myself, get sober, and experience more pleasure than I thought I ever could. Well, it's amazing. The concept of micro dosing has been floating in the ether. And I've been wondering, I mean, it's what it sounds like, right? It's really small amounts that, and I have not tried it. I don't completely understand. Yeah. So unpack it for us because I don't understand it. So what we're talking about here, and for the remainder of our conversation, we should just also say I deal specifically in psilocybin, aka magic mushrooms. There are many other psychedelic medicines, ketamine being one of the psychoactive medicines that you yourself said that you experienced, but you've got a lot of different psychoactive medicines out there. We're just talking about mushrooms. So a micro dose is a dose that is so small, you're not hallucinating, and you're able to go about your everyday life. And while studies on micro dosing are still coming forward, what we are seeing, at least with colloquial evidence, right, like self reported evidence surveys and so forth from the general population of millions of people who have micro dose is that it's helpful for elevated mood, elevated connection to the body, more presence, more patients, increased neuro plasticity. And really, it's can be helpful for prolonged positive change. So with a micro dose protocol, that's usually what you would call it a protocol, you would decide, okay, I'm going to eat mushrooms this many times a week for this many weeks at a time, and then I'm going to take a break. That's a protocol with my background as someone who's a menstrual cycle educator. I really teach a lot of folks to micro dose in tune with their cycle, but you can micro dose two times a week, three times a week, up to five times a week safely for three months maximum, I usually say, before you take some time off. And again, you know, the key here is you're not high, you're not hallucinating. There's a term thrown around that you may have heard called sub perceptual. In my world, I don't think you in my world, I think you can perceive the shift when you micro dose, when you are really in tune with your body. It's almost like a zeroing in. What is the goal? What is the goal when you're doing the micro dosing? Like how do you? The goal is more presence. So the goal is the zooming in. The goal is in your day to day life, feeling like you can extend the place between your trigger and your response and seeing that happen little by little. The other goal can be more energy, more elevated mood, so better happiness, more connected to nature, more connected to play and creativity. And so in the day to day aspects of it, when you're intentionally eating micro doses, your goal could be to find joy today, to see the good in people today, to be more connected to my body's sensations today. Long term, we're looking at goals like decreasing anxiety, decreasing depression, decreasing how triggered you get and how long you spiral after the trigger, because that the neuroscience, the way that this works in the brain, the neuroscience behind psilocybin micro doses is that it helps to turn down the part of the brain known as the default mode network, the high level processing center where like your habits live, your self talk lives. It's the thing that gets you from home to the grocery store without you having to put a lot of thought into it, right? If you ever like come to in the parking lot, you're like, oh, okay, I got here. So when we're operating from our default mode, those of us who are highly anxious or highly stressed, those of us who have had a history of depression, those very rigid self beliefs and those rigid behaviors and I guess habits, some of those are habits, are locked there in the default mode. And so long term micro dosing and long term being two to three months can help to soften that space in the brain and turn on other parts of the brain so that you can connect new neural pathways. And those neural pathways get like locked in based on the little daily habits that you commit to and you devote yourself to during your practice. So it gives you a little room to sort of create new habits that in theory are going to make your life better, more joyful. And for me, what I think for sure, what I think it did for me is that I was a straight A student in therapy, like I would be in my therapist's office and she would say things like, wow, you're so good at this. Like you're, it's like talking to a peer and like, well, why do I still feel like crap? Why do I still have like the same? You're so compliant. Yeah. Like how am I able to understand intellectually these things, but I can't make these changes in my life. And so what happened with my micro dosing experience is that it sort of helped me zoom out and stop like just being in the story of what had happened to me and being in the everyday muck of the anxiety or the burnout. And I really started to see patterns from my past where this root might have actually been implanted. And the mystical side of it, which you know, being a womb mystic, the mystical side of this for me really was a deep connection to my femininity and a deep connection to my birth story, my generational and ancestral trauma that I hadn't really known about because of the fact that I was adopted. And all of that helped me really make sense of who I was as a person. And you know, when we talk about the fact that I started this process because I wanted to get over my sexual shame, but mushrooms gave me, I had asked them, help me become open to receiving pleasure. And mushrooms will give you what you need, not always what you ask for. They said, okay, honey, you can't even receive anything. You've got to become open to receiving period. You are so locked up. You cannot ask for help. You are terrified of being vulnerable. And you know, I'd lived for 15 years as a news anchor at this point with a big wall around myself and around my heart to do that really traumatic job of reporting on the worst of the worst. And so they really crumbled that wall in a beautiful way. It felt terrible. The process of it really did. I was so glad to have hired a guide for my own healing process with this. Yeah. But for me, it really helped to know myself on an even deeper level. And that felt really good for someone who had been so disconnected for so long. And what is a womb mystic? It's a womb mystic. What does that mean? It is a term that I've created I was like, I've never heard that. So it's basically what I say is it's someone who is deeply connected to their womb and their menstrual cycle and lives their life in alignment with that rhythm. And I help other women also understand their cycle, their energetic blueprint, their cyclical blueprint, so that instead of feeling oppressed might not be the best word, but it's also fairly accurate oppressed by the way the world works, which is a very nine to five masculine schedule, we can start to thrive by living in alignment with ourselves. It's also because in the work that I do with micro dosing with clients and with myself, there's like this really interesting thing that happens for me and for my clients when we meditate and visualize ourselves going into the womb space, we meet ourselves at our highest level and have very interesting mystical experiences to help us understand and tune into what most folks would call intuition or the inner voice, but I choose to call it the inner goddess or the highest self. And maybe this isn't a question for you, but where do men fit in all of this? So I don't personally work with men. However, what I've really seen happen in my relationship with my husband who is a man is that the more in tune I am with myself, the more able I am to express my needs once desires. And so it's helped him. Now he has also had his own journey with psychedelics and a whole different ballgame as far as that goes, but as far as how men would microdose, I mean, you don't have a menstrual cycle, so you wouldn't need to align with the cycle in order to schedule your doses. But again, just like with women, the brain, brain system, the nervous system all can be really deeply impacted in a positive way by microdosing. The other thing that I have seen in some of the studies, which are usually around veterans, and my husband is a veteran, but what I've really noticed is that it's very helpful for PTSD. Now, women are actually as a whole diagnosed with PTSD more often than men, but because we have this deep veteran population, many of whom do experience PTSD, we have like a very good study group, right, to look at how psychedelic medicine helps these people. And so the way that I'm seeing some of that shift is really interesting. But again, I think because men are raised in this world where being in touch with your feelings is looked at as weak, psilocybin can be such a helpful ally in allowing them to open to that part of themselves and feel safe enough to, again, just like me, be vulnerable, ask for help, be in tune with the emotions. And so I'd imagine that the benefits would be very similar to some of the benefits I've seen in myself and my clients. Right. Well, and just talking about presence and talking about vulnerability and right, all those things are a human experience and beneficial across the board. Yeah, for sure. So, okay, so great. Let's take a quick break. A quick pause here to share something that I've been working on that I think you will really appreciate, especially if you've ever felt confused or disconnected from your sexual desire. It's a self-paced course that I created for women who want a better understanding of their sexual desire, especially if it's felt confusing, inconsistent or hard to access. A lot of us are taught that desires should just be there, effortless, spontaneous, always on, but that is not the reality for most people. And when it's not, it can leave you feeling frustrated or like something is wrong with you. If you've ever felt turned on one day and completely disconnected the next, or if you've struggled to say what you really want sexually, if you're both excited by the idea of vibrant sex and hesitant about what that even looks like, this course is for you. Desire is complex. It lives in your brain just as much as your body. And in this course, I guide you through the understanding of your unique relationship to it without pressure, shame or performance. You'll get short videos and guided worksheets to help you map out your personal erotic template, identify what turns you on and off and what shuts you down, understand the blocks might be getting in your way, reconnect with your body, and you'll explore your sexual self with more confidence and curiosity. You can go at your own pace. You don't need to want more sex. You just need to want to know yourself better. So if this resonates, then head on over to pleasureproject.us and learn more and enroll in the course. Now back to the episode. So how can plant medicine help women kind of revisit and reframe kind of past wounds? You know, I think for me and my clients, the key here is that when you're pairing plant medicine with what I do somatic healing work as well, it can be first a really lovely tool to help foster safety in the body. And when we feel safe in the body, we can be more present in the day to day, right? I'm sure you know that. And so for me, it's that ability to be present in the now that has a really interesting way of being able to see what's happened in the past, see how that's still triggering you, see how those past traumas or that past wounding is impacting your daily life. And from the now, the current place of I feel safe in this moment, I feel safe to explore this, making some decided choices about the way we want to move forward. Or the other thing that happens is, and again, this is a very like mystical thing. The other thing I've seen happen is when I meet with clients, I guess I should explain this, when I meet with clients, they eat a microdose and then they come to our call and I do it all on zoom. And in that time, we oftentimes go into a guided imagery type of meditation. And I never know what's going to come through and they don't either. But a lot of times when we have been digging around in the subconscious about a past wound or a past trauma, things will present themselves in those meditations. For instance, inner child, for instance, a protective part, for instance, a pain or sensation in the body that then kind of tells us what it wants. So those are all some of the reasons why I've seen this help with things like trauma and help people move through it. But I guess I really do first think that it's just the ability to stop living in the past and be hearing the past because of the present moment safety that psilocybin can provide that for me is something that helped myself and some of the clients that I work with most. And they don't know what's coming up, right? It's just going to present because it's so, I mean, they unconscious holding with so many of this wounding because a lot of times too, it's not this acute trauma. It's a lower level shame based thing that's happened. And it could have been this passing smaller trauma of embarrassment or feeling of insufficiency or ostracism or something like that that often presents. I typically am more addressing that through like EMDR or some other somatic, but interesting that. And it's a somatic thing too. So when I first started the work, like I said, I began as a menstrual cycle educator probably four ish years ago and was really seeing a ton of repressed trauma come up in the womb. And sometimes it was women who had come to me and they knew they had experienced something like sexual trauma. And sometimes it was women who had come to me and it wouldn't feel to them like anything major had happened. But it was this low level hatred of the body or fear of sex or fear of sexuality or fear of their desires that sort of started to leak out as I was doing the menstrual cycle work, which led me to additional trainings in several in trauma informed care and somatic therapy and all of those things. But what's fascinating to me is that when you add in the tiny little dose of micro dose of micro dosing, right of mushrooms, and then you find safety in the present moment and you allow your sort of conscious mind to soften, your body can start to speak to you in really new and profound ways. And so if you're someone like me who lived only in the head, like I remember I was in therapy years ago and my therapist had me draw like the body outline, it was like color in your body and my head was like bright yellow and everything else was staticky gray. So if that's been your case, if you felt unsafe because of maybe something that's happened to you, if you have felt that you've lived a much of your life in a religious world where the body is of the flesh and that is quote sinful. What I have found is that these little tiny doses of this mushroom medicine can soften your head, your brain, your thinking mind just enough so that your body starts to talk to you in really interesting ways. And so someone will say something like, Oh, there's a pain in my back. It feels very old. It does not. It feels very familiar. Oh, what is it? And I'm just kind of there is like, Okay, and what's it look like? And what does it want to tell you something? And they'll uncover these things that feel like profound aha moments that really do shift the way they move forward. Well, this was the fact that I got like stabbed in the back by a partner 10 years ago. No wonder I feel like sex hurts me now with this person because I don't feel open to being around. I'm still carrying that. Yeah, that guardedness. Yeah. Because of feeling this thing that occurred way back when. Yeah. And so those blocks, you know, or unblocking them open people to intimacy. Because I find that, yeah, I mean, most people come to see me because of intimacy issues. And oftentimes it's sort of a malaise. They don't have maybe they have an acute trauma, but oftentimes they don't. It's just a general avoidance. And sometimes it gets it gets hung on the hook of low desire. But there's not a real clear reason why. And so, yeah, I do wonder sometimes if it's, you know, because of something like this, right, where it's just this low level of some things happened or some things have happened or general discomfort dissatisfaction. Yeah. You know, my other thing, and one of the reasons why I really do see this as something that's helped me with my own pleasure, with my own libido, with my own desire is because I had that story circulating in my mind, my default mode was you don't deserve to feel pleasure. You certainly don't deserve to, you know, be loved in the way you want to love be loved. And that was kind of just like the default mode in my brain that I operated. And I felt like I had to prove constantly. And so when it would come down to like being in the bedroom, I couldn't relax. I couldn't let it take its time. I felt like I was wrong if I didn't like immediately become turned on. And so that was just an interesting story, always running underneath my consciousness that when I started to eat my eat mushrooms and use pleasure practices, use sensual practices to rewire those thoughts, let it take enough time. That was really powerful and helpful for me because I started to understand this default connection of this is the thought and this is the action doesn't compute anymore. And now we have a new thought and new action that really got solidified thanks to the neuroplasticity that happens with psilocybin. So the mushrooms, okay, help me with the mechanism of change because the mushrooms help, I guess, reduce some of the guardedness. But then what is the action that happens that facilitates willingness to sort of entertain new possibilities? So the way that it's working in the brain right is it's working with your serotonin 2a receptors, those are the ones that are in that default mode. But beyond that, what you're really asking, I think, is like what actually creates the change. And for my, in my world, in my opinion, it's daily rituals. It is daily new changing rituals that really help to relax that part of yourself that's been rigidly thinking, like I said, when it comes down to the sex in the bedroom, I have this much time. And if I don't filter in on by this time, then I'll just fake it or I'll just force it. And so for me, it was very much about slowness, rest and sensual pleasure, not orgasmic pleasure or sexual pleasure. And so the change happens or the action is you deciding to create a new ritual, you deciding to do something different. And it can be outside of sex, it can be you deciding to go for a walk in nature versus, you know, have your coffee and scroll on your phone. And so that's just like this, the tiny little change that again, helps to solidify the new neuro pathway. It can also be things that are more, you know, brain rewire, you like using a self coaching model where when you're journaling, you might think, okay, instead of immediately going to positive affirmations, you might really start to look deeply at, okay, what is this thought? What is this thought creating in me? What is the feeling then creating in this action, right? Yeah, the CTFAR, which I think is really helpful too. And then I guess finally, what I would just say is that I really, I think that a lot of us have the answers that we're seeking inside of us, but we just have been programmed not to trust ourselves. And a lot of people that I work with, I don't have to tell them what to do. Like, I'll ask them what they think they should do. If you come to me and this is your issue that we identify, and these are the things that come up for you in a session, and then we're like, okay, how are you going to solidify the change this week? What's going to be your devotion this week? They know exactly what they need to do. And it's sort of like, I like to say, mushrooms are like the ally. They help open the door to the subconscious and hold your hand while you do the work of walking through it. Turning on that self wisdom and that self sovereignty is another thing that I think is an action that helps people move forward and see long term positive changes. Yeah, it's like, when you tune in to yourself, you actually do have a lot of self wisdom. Right? Most of us know that. It's like we oftentimes sort of muscle through what we think we should do instead of knowing what we actually want to do. Yeah. And learning that you can trust yourself. Yeah. And the avoidance is telling us something. And it's not necessarily just don't do that thing. It's information about what we need. Yeah. So you gave an acronym just then that I didn't know. C-T-F-A-R. Yeah. Yeah. So it's a self coaching model. I'm going to write it out in my notes so I don't mess it up. So it's basically looking at how your circumstance, which is a very neutral thing, right? I'm having an interview with you right now. That's the circumstance we're in. We're talking on a Zoom call basically. And a thought that comes from that circumstance. Oh, am I doing a good job with this? Or do I feel like I have imposter syndrome? Well, if that thought comes up, what feeling is going to follow that thought? Oh gosh, I should probably tone it down. Right. And then if I think and feel that, what's my action? Maybe I start to stumble over my words or I feel like, oh my gosh, I have to like leave this call. And the results based on the circumstance, the circumstance was simply we're on an interview. The result might be that I don't do an interview again. Right. So C-T-F-A-R is a way for you to self coach yourself around a very fact based circumstance that often leads to spiraling. Cause that could have been a spiral, right? If I really let myself go and think, oh my gosh, I shouldn't have said that that way. And then what am I going to do next time? Right. And so what I have found C-T-F-A-R work really well for, not in the beginning of the work that I do with people, because brain rewiring and talk therapy and being in like the journaling mind, right, is a lot of what we do first. And certainly what I did first, I don't have clients do this first. It's usually like month three of my three month one-on-one container where I finally say, okay, now you have seen a lot of shifts, a lot of changes. What's the circumstance that you used to come up against? I'm anxious. That's the circumstance. I'm feeling anxious right now. Oh, the thought might be, I did something bad. Let's talk about this in like the sexual realm. So people constantly come in and say like, so somebody's anxious about their sexual performance, you know, some like say, I came to tell dysfunction. Yeah. Okay. Or I could say the circumstances, I can't get it up. I can't feel turned on. Okay. So if that is, let's say, based on the female body, right? Because that's the body I live in. Okay. The circumstance is you're not wet. You're not feeling open and turned on right now. Okay. So the thought might be something's wrong with me. Maybe you don't love my partner. Now I'm feeling really ashamed. Well, I should. This person's amazing person. I love being in this relationship, but feeling might be, I'm not good enough or I should be able to do this faster or this shouldn't have taken so long. And so the action, somatically then, what is the action, right? The body is just like contraction very much a collapse in and it's just, well, God, I can feel it in my own body right now. Like just that closing, right? That wash of shame and then that, which makes it even less likely that you're going to lubricate. That's the result. So the results is that you had this thing that happened. Oh, I'm noticing it's taken me a little bit longer to feel turned on right now. And after you spiral through was, um, oftentimes we'll call that like the unintentional CTF, they aren't model unintentionally, or I don't like to throw negative negative in there, but it is more of a spirally negative route. The result is that, well, it's now I'm definitely not going to feel turned on because I'm contracted. I feel the shame flushing my body. I'm all in my head. I'm worried about what they're thinking. So what we would do is run then a conscious intentional model. Okay. So the circumstance is I'm not really feeling as lubricated right now or as turned on right now as I'd like to be the thought then would be, and I know that I can do this and I can take as much time as I need to do this. The feeling then becomes, okay, I am in my power. I deserve this slow, slow journey into the sensual pleasure. And so the action might be, okay, maybe I need this type of touch instead, asking for what you need open. It's a much more open and empowering stance. Maybe the action is get looped. That could always be the action, right? We could just grab that as an action. But somatically knowing, you know what, it's okay that it's taking a while. It's okay. I don't have to rush this. Right. Giving yourself that addition to feels to me more open hearted, more open-legged, like really like very much more expansive versus a contraction. And the result then after that, if you follow it down would likely be, okay, I'm feeling lubricated and ready to go. And then if the result still after you sort of CTFAR that is, I'm still not feeling turned on right now, you can circulate it back. Okay. And what do I need more of now? And what is this thought? And maybe the new action is let's get a toy. Maybe the new action, another round is let's get lubrication. So that's sort of what, and it's, that would be tricky to do credit like clearly in the moment. It's a good thing to do after or before, right? To know how you're going to prep it. But that would be an example of how CTFAR could work in the bedroom. And it's basically just because it is, it's sort of rather than just self-blaming and collapsing, it's going, hey, it's permission giving. It's looking at plan B. It's looking at, you know, it's, and I, it is an intellectual exercise to some degree because you're coaching yourself through the moment and saying, hey, I'm okay. And this, this isn't exactly what I wanted or hoped, but allowance, you know. And the thing that's nice about it too, is that it really does show how something as, as neutral as like, it helps you take the weight off of a circumstance like not being lubed up, not feeling wet, which has a lot of shame and see it, okay, this is a neutral fact. This is the truth right now. And then see how your thoughts quickly judging that to be either a bad thing or an okay thing, shift everything from there for one. The other thing that I like about it is that it continues to help you understand that just because you have a thought does not mean the thought is a fact. It may feel very true to you in the moment, but you could have a different, slightly different thought and have a different feeling associated with the thought that could result in a completely different action and result. And so for me, the reason why this is a like junior to senior year of my coaching program, not like, here's your freshman homework assignment is it's about knowing yourself more deeply. And I think a lot of us, like, like we've said before, jump straight to the brain, but the somatic feelings that can come forward with this CTFAR really show us a lot of interesting things, right? And just how I had a full somatic response just thinking about that, because that's absolutely something that's happened to me. I still feel it in the body when I think that thought that I'm not good enough, I shouldn't take this time, I feel that in the body. And so when you start to feel a sensation like that contraction, that's the other thing. And this is kind of like confusing to explain, but you can kind of, I don't know what the word would be, but sort of go in it at a different route. Because when you start to sense the sensation, I'm feeling contracted right now, what could this be? Oh, I'm feeling the shame come up. Shoot. Oh, God, it's because I'm not that loop right now. And I feel like I should be. It sort of also helps you just weave your whole way around not only the CTFAR self coaching model, but just around your body and around your thoughts and your feelings and everything. It's it is because it's like, so often, I think we can all relate to it. We do this in these moments where it's like, I should blah, blah, blah. I should be doing this. I should be feeling. I should be acting. I should be looking. I should be whatever. And then it's just like, actually, oh, I'm just, I'm just here. I'm just me. It's okay. I'm all right. And you know, that's funny that you say that because one of the first things I had a coach tell me early in my self feeling journey. And one of the first things I tell clients is we have to stop saying the word should like the word should is shitty, truly. And you can change the whole vibe if you say could instead. I could, but like should is so shame based. Like it's just so judgey. I always catch people who say should I'm like, well, you could. You don't have to. You really don't. But yeah, that was really helpful for me to just start noticing how often that word came out of my mouth. Yeah, I love that. So it's just the, you know, the integration is and just on the larger umbrella of this is more self integration, right? And the micro dosing helps that sort of this, this model of self coaching helps that. So, psilocybin is not legal in California. I don't think it's legal in general, right? So yeah, it's really a gray space. There are cities in California where it's decriminalized. And there are states where it's decriminalized. Are there cities around the country? DC, for instance, it's decriminalized. But there are certainly places you can go and work with it legally. Colorado and Portland, Colorado and Oregon are the two big states that have legislation that has either legalized it or decriminalized it. You've also got places like Costa Rica and Jamaica. And then again, you know, and I have to always say this to folks, people are using this everywhere. It's been used for millennia by our indigenous ancestors all over almost every single continent has some form of psychedelic mushroom that grows naturally there. Antarctica, probably not. You know, so it's like, it's there. And for me, a huge part of what I had to do when I began the work is to look at if the risk was worth it, knowing that it is a gray space, right? And we thought, we thought we were really going to get a huge check mark. I know it was so close. We were so close and they really messed up that trial. And so now I think we are set back a little farther for MDMA and psilocybin as approved treatments for things like treatment resistant depression, PTSD. My hope though is just that folks understand that you don't all and that's certainly my story, right? You don't always have to go the western medical model to remember and start to heal. I as a witch really do think that Mama Earth has a whole lot of healing for us. There's a reason these are here for us. And for me, it was worth it to expand beyond taboo and the law of man to really understand, okay, this is what I need for my healing and it paid off tremendously for myself. So helpful. I've really appreciated this because I've been wondering and I'm like, hmm, where can I get this information? So thank you. And so tell me a little bit. I know you have a guide that's available and you're based in Austin, Texas. Yes. Yeah. So how do people work with you? If you want to do that? If you want to work with me, the easiest way is to contact me. You can do that through my website or just emailing hello at lesleydraffin.com. I work one on one and I have a group program, a group membership called the Inner Circle. The free guide though is definitely the best place to start. It's going to answer all of the questions you have, including the ones you're too scared to Google. And it also includes things like journaling prompts to help you understand that when we meet this medicine intentionally, it's not just about taking anything. And I really try to be very conscious of the words that I use, right? I don't want to be taking this, right? I want to work with this. I want to partner with this. I want to ask it to help me and assist me. I see mushrooms as sentient. I see them as medicine, not as something that I pop and forget, right? It's not a hack to help you know yourself more deeply. It's truly a medicine that can work within your body to provide mounds of positive healing when you work with it in the right way. And so that guide is activate your inner magic. And it'll also put you on my email list where a lot of the good stuff happens. The socials, you know, they don't love it when we talk about these things. So I usually don't, but that's the places for you to find me. Sounds good. We'll link it in these show notes. So yeah, you can find all of Leslie's information there. And thank you so much. This is great. Thanks for having me. Hey, it's Dr. Jen. Thanks so much for tuning in. Please leave us a review and leave a comment if something struck you. We'd love to get the feedback. It really helps the podcast. And if you want to reach me, go ahead and direct message me on Instagram or you can reach me at Jen at revieretherapy.com. Thanks.