Set the Setting: May 2024
Meme Drop, Catch me IRL at EDC Vegas, Set the Setting: Young & High, Holding Remodel Duality, Honest Drug Policy: Ask Me Anything, Want to get a Microdosing Certification?, Photo Drop
Meme Drop
In two weeks time, I’ll be at my favorite festival: EDC Vegas! I’m approaching my 11th consecutive EDC Vegas with ass, sass and class. One more meme, while we’re on the Star Wars theme:
Taking psychedelics at EDC is the set and setting where I’ve experienced my most life-defining epiphanies. In psychedelic science parlance, we use the term “awe.”
Awe: a discrete emotion experienced in the presence of a vast stimulus requiring accommodation of mental structures. Awe, in turn, promotes the small self, a construct that, in the extreme, is analogous to those of unitive experience and ego dissolution. The small self is conceptualized as key to understanding the downstream effects of mystical experience occasioned in the context of classic psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. (Hendricks, 2018)
In my own/simpler terms, awe occurs when your brain is stimulated beyond its current capacity to hold what it is experiencing. So your brain expands. And as your brain expands, a new reality is created. Awe is an essential element of a “mystical experience.” The mystical experience questionnaire (MEQ) can correlate awe to specific clinical outcomes in psychedelic-assisted treatments.
In my most profound moments of awe at EDC, I shed societal expectations that told me to “stay small and blend in.” I truly understood and harnessed the power of inclusion that I use in my work today. Each year, there is a moment of awe - that I am accepted, loved, and even celebrated for who I am, my gifts, and the light I bring to the world.
Catch me IRL at EDC Vegas
Catch me IRL at EDC — you will literally have to catch me though. EDC Vegas will have 500k attendees this year! Cell service never works but if you look 30 ft. into the air, you might find the Rave Guard totem!:
Our group outfit themes this year are Blackout in Berlin, Ken and Barbie, and Mythical Creatures. If you’re going to EDC, I would absolutely love to see you under the electric sky!!
Set the Setting Playlist: Young & High
Remember being young; like really young? And really high? That feeling of invincibility… immortality even. I could eat whatever I wanted. If you had to stop an uber ride to puke, you could laugh about it the next day. Sundays were for football on the couch. Life was meant for living; regrets were a tomorrow problem!
Let yourself reminisce with this cheeky selection of songs about being young and high. Don’t worry, it’s only 1 hour long. Just enough to pretend you’re still 23 while your clothes are in the dryer or while you’re line at the DMV or other random adult shit.
Holding Remodel Duality
It’s official - I’ve been out of my house for a full year. My remodel is taking way longer than expected; partly because the scope changed, partly to unpredictable remodel/contractor fuckery. Not to mention I’m over budget and I don’t have an estimated completion date.
In predictable ways, the past 12 months have been wildly unsettling. In the physical realm, so many annoyances and inconveniences! Parking my car on the street has been a nightmare. It’s dirty all the time, I’ve gotten tickets, it’s been broken into - it even got towed once! There’s no art on the walls of my sublet, and the street noise of the Mission District can set Bauer off in the middle of the night occasionally.
But in the metaphysical realm, I can’t ignore the fact that my day-to-day living actually feels more energizing and more positive in the past 12 months than the prior 3 years of living alone in the COVID / post-COVID era.
Living with a roommate has led to a dramatic improvement in the stability of my mental health. For me, living alone has its dark days - when you’re not feeling well and you just can’t really seem to motivate yourself. You can spend a whole day, even a week, feeling a little stuck. But when you’re living with a great roommate, there’s someone to process with! Mateo pops in regularly with a “hey wanna do some yoga?” “hey don’t forget to move your car for street sweeping,” “hey lets take the dogs out for a walk.”
There’s also a mental health benefit in caring for a roommate. I actually like to get up first to make coffee so Mateo can start his day a little easier - it brings me joy to be the one to make the coffee — more so than him making the coffee for me.
So I’ve been holding a sense a duality these past 12 months. Grappling with the hard times, but enjoying the day to day and taking it all in stride. Life is a paradox.
Honest Drug Policy: Ask Me Anything
As the spotlight grows on MAPS and drugs, know that you can count of me for honest answers to your drug policy questions. I will tell it like it is - and most often my answer will be “it’s complicated.” And if there’s anything I can’t answer right away, I will ask Izzy and the Policy & Advocacy team at MAPS. As a united front, we are all committed to providing honest assessments of the benefits and risks — with a focus on marginalized populations.
The landscape around medical use, decriminalization and adult-use models are shifting so rapidly. And then, you have to consider that we’re building policies about many different types of psychedelics - each with their own profile. Some are completely western medicines and mostly synthesized in labs; some have rich Indigenous history and are being appropriated and over-harvested. You end up with an intricate web of challenges in educating the public.
Know that my professional and personal approach is to harmonize the ecosystem as it relates to equitable access, individual liberty, and public health. The policy team at MAPS works at the local, state, federal and international levels. (Yes, you can ask me about MAPS Israel and my position on psychedelics in the Arab world. It’s my job to educate folks and correct the record on our work in that region).
I also take a social justice lens that balances the opportunity for catalyzing mental health with the fact that we often appropriate these medicines out of their Indigenous contexts. All of my life experiences have prepared me to build the relationships to walk this line of integrity. I am a radical drug policy reformist who believes we should have autonomy about what to put into our bodies, that all drugs should be regulated according to their risks, and that accessing consciousness should not be criminalized.
Go ahead, ask me anything:
Want to get a Microdosing Certification?
To answer that question, you first have to ask yourself: “does microdosing work?”
It’s complicated. A recent meta-analysis, summarized on my Set the Setting website, does not show any improvement in executive functions (e.g. memory, inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility, sustained attention). However, most large citizen-science studies show there is improvement in mental health! The scientists say it’s just placebo effect, but the social scientists say that the placebo effect (and inner-healer intelligence) is real.
If you’re interested in the science of Microdosing and its application for coaching, check out Flow State Micro’s Microdosing Facilitator Training. James Fadiman called it “the most comprehensive and well-designed microdosing training I have seen.” Sweet, because I’m on the faculty 💁🏻♂️ Use the code STEVENMICRO for a $250 discount.
Photo Drop
