Paul F. Austin
@PaulAustin3w
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Microdosing, longevity medicine, & earth stewardship | Leading the psychedelic vanguard | Founder, flâneur, frequent microdoser | @thirdwaveishere
La Costa
Joined April 2017
Psychedelics don’t just dissolve the ego... They actually reboot the brain, opening critical learning periods — rare developmental windows — when we learn how to bond, trust, and adapt. The experience ends, but the window stays open long enough to rewrite your entire OS. 🧵
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The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is launching a Phase 3 trial that will see 240 veterans with treatment-resistant depression (TRD) receive one of two doses of Compass Pathways’ COMP360 psilocybin (either a comparator or intervention dose).
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This guy should move to the Philippines. He’d become great friends with Duerte. We know how prohibition works. It doesn’t. Legalize all drugs and end the insanity.
@Austen I remember the "Just Say No" campaign in the 1980s. All that time has passed, and still there has not been a reckoning. As a country, we need to decide if drugs are actually all that bad or not. If they're not that bad, let's legalize and end this madness. If they are that bad,
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Newsflash to all the clueless tech bros out there: It’s not the drugs, it’s the societal systems that your utopian-libertarian dumbasses have insisted is ideal. Drugs just help to soothe the inevitable existential distress of living in an overly “technologized” world.
Being downtown in any major US city is so sad. Drugs are completely crushing people. They’re just gone.
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The third wave of psychedelics started with the mind. The next wave is about the physiology. Inflammation is the silent engine of modern disease, and psychedelics may be the most unexpected anti-inflammatory discovery of the century.
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We’re still early in this third wave of psychedelics But if current trends continue, they won’t just reshape psychiatry but ALL healthcare, including inflammation science. Imagine treating arthritis, asthma, long COVID, chronic pain, and depression with psychedelic compounds
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The biggest challenge now to mainstream approval will be placebo controls. You can’t “blind” a psychedelic. But inflammation markers are harder to fake. When TNF-alpha drops 40–60% after a dose, expectations don’t explain that but biology does, which makes this compelling.
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This is why blanket objections to psychedelics miss the point. We’re not just talking about “trips.” We’re talking about compounds that modulate immune signaling, oxidative stress, mitochondrial resilience, and neuroplasticity. It's the immune system, not just the mind.
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It also reframes microdosing. If low doses influence cytokine signaling and COX-2 pathways, then microdoses aren’t just mood stabilizers; they could also be daily metabolic regulators. Imagine microdoses of LSD as the next generation of anti-inflammatory vitamins.
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This suggests psychedelics might be uniquely suited for chronic inflammatory diseases: Osteoarthritis, cardiovascular disease, neurodegeneration, and even, depression. If inflammation is the root cause of many “mental” disorders, psychedelics may address the actual mechanism.
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What about classic psychedelics themselves? They’re showing direct anti-inflammatory effects at the cellular level. Human macrophage studies show that psilocybin-containing mushrooms suppress TNF-alpha, IL-1β, IL-6, and COX-2, in line with quercetin, one of the most-studied
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DLX-001 and DLX-159 are early examples. Derived from psychedelic scaffolds, it has zero hallucinogenic effects, yet shows antidepressant and potentially anti-inflammatory action. If successful, these would rival SSRIs, steroids, and NSAIDs without the side-effect profiles.
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That separation is the breakthrough. You don’t need the “trip” to get the anti-inflammatory benefit. This opens the door to an entirely new class of psychedelic-informed, psychedelic-inactive drugs, which many call “PIPIs.” The name is terrible but the science is strong.
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And this isn’t just happening in humans. In animal models, compounds like DOI reversed airway inflammation in asthma. Another psychedelic analogue with similar “trip potential” did nothing. Which means the anti-inflammatory effect is separate from the hallucinations.
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Ayahuasca studies found big drops in CRP; the higher the reduction, the greater the mood improvement That’s "mind-body connection" in real biochemical terms You reduce inflammation, you improve emotional regulation This isn't metaphor or mysticism; it's measurable physiology
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This is where it gets wild: Psychedelics calm pathological inflammation without suppressing healthy immune function. Steroids blast the entire system. Psychedelics seem to selectively modulate the pathways that actually matter, which is a massive therapeutic advantage.
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TNF-alpha, IL-6, and CRP are cytokines that drive arthritis, asthma, heart disease, chronic pain, and depression. Psychedelics reduce them. In some studies, a single dose of psilocybin lowered inflammatory markers for a full week, with substantial physiological changes.
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You've heard ALL about psychedelics for depression, addiction, & PTSD. But the next frontier is much, MUCH bigger: Inflammation. A growing body of research suggests LSD, DMT, and psilocybin actually downregulate key inflammatory markers driving chronic disease. 🧵
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Makes a good point
People don’t like when I call giving out SSRIs ‘population control’. Yet psychiatrists are giving millions of young people unneeded drugs that kill sexual desire, sometimes permanently. How is that not population control? What’s a better name for it?
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Just tried a microdose of 2C-E. Will report back later and let you all know what it’s like.
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