In Waves & War: Marcus & Amber Capone On Psychedelic Treatment For Veteran PTSD, Rebuilding Life After War & The Mission To Heal A Generation

Marcus and Amber Capone are the subjects of the Netflix documentary “In Waves and War” and founders of Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions. We discuss Marcus's 13 years in Naval Special Operations, the TBI and suicidal ideation that followed six combat deployments, the marriage that nearly didn't survive, the Stanford research into ibogaine treatment, and the mission they've built for veterans who are out of options. I also share — publicly for the first time — my own experience with iboga, 19 days prior. Marcus and Amber are remarkable examples of service. Enjoy! Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: Rivian: Electric vehicles that keep the world adventurous forever👉🏼https://www.rivian.com AG1: Get a FREE bottle of D3K2, Welcome Kit, and 5 travel packs with your first order👉🏼https://www.drinkAG1.com/richroll BetterHelp: Get 10% OFF the first month👉🏼https://www.betterhelp.com/richroll Birch: For 20% off ALL mattresses👉🏼https://www. BirchLiving.com/richroll Noble Mobile: The first phone carrier that pays you to use your phone less. Try it for just $10 with code RICHROLL👉🏼https://www.noblemobile.com/richroll LMNT: Get a free LMNT Sample Pack with any purchase👉🏼https://www.drinklmnt.com/richroll Check out all of the amazing discounts from our Sponsors👉🏼https://www.richroll.com/sponsors Find out more about Voicing Change Media at https://www.voicingchange.media and follow us @voicingchange Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 1:04Speaker 01

  So you want me to take a psychedelic and I'm supposed to get better?

• 1:08Speaker 02

  Marcus and Amber Capone. A military family, they formed vets. In their quest for healing, Marcus's fellow Navy SEAL friend introduced them to Ibogaine.

• 1:16Speaker 03

  What is Ibogaine and what was the experience that you had?

• 1:20Speaker 01

  Think of it as a single molecule that gets extracted. It is extremely potent in what's actually helping the individual work through psychological issues. I was drinking extremely heavily, really struggling.

• 1:32Speaker 04

  He legitimately thought he would be doing us a favor by removing himself from the equation.

• 1:38Speaker 01

  I'd been on pharmaceuticals for years, not getting better.

• 1:41Speaker 04

  And I thought, I wonder if this Ibogaine thing could work.

• 1:44Speaker 01

  Went from thinking this was crazy to, wait, this is medical treatment.

• 1:48Speaker 04

  When he came around the corner, it truly was like being reunited with someone that I hadn't seen in over 15 years.

• 1:55Speaker 01

  This is exactly what the guys need. Civilians absolutely can relate to what we're doing, and you know, mental health, brain health doesn't discriminate.

• 2:04Speaker 03

  Marcus Amber, thank you so much for taking the time to be with me today. I'm very excited to talk to you both. People had been recommending the documentary In Waves and War to me for quite some time. And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, I'll get to it. No, no, no, you really need to see this. And I was on a plane about two weeks ago, flying out of the country. And I downloaded it to watch on the flight and watch this documentary. Was incredibly moved by it, all the more so because I was on route to doing my first iboga ceremony. And that was 19 days ago.

• 2:45Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 2:46Speaker 03

  So this is the first that I'm talking about it publicly. But it was a life-changing and incredibly profound experience that I don't think I'll ever forget. And just an incredible gift, not just to myself, but to my wife, who happens to be here today, Julie, and to my kids. In the aftermath of that experience, I called Tyler, my stepson and my producer, who's here as well. And I said, we need to get Marcus and Amber on the podcast. And he said, we're already in an email exchange, like, you know, we've already had some back and forth.

• 3:24Speaker 03

  And I think that illustrates like the sort of synergistic nature of the universe. So it's perfect that you guys are here today and now.

• 3:34Speaker 01

  Definitely.

• 3:36Speaker 03

  Well, Rich, thank you.

• 3:37Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 3:37Speaker 03

  And it almost seems like after the medicine, all these things just happen to fall in place, just like you said, having those email conversations and prior to them even talking to you about, hey, there's this couple that wants to be on the show and you've met them halfway. And I think we've seen.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  It happened all the time. I mean, we can go far out there and call it, you know, the universe or whatever, but I think you just become more aware of all these things and kind of line up.

• 4:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, I don't think it's an accident. We're here today. We're honored to be here today.

• 4:05Speaker 03

  I think it kind of on a metaphor level, it also illustrates one of the reasons why I decided to have this experience, which is my insistence on just being willful in my life. You know, this idea that you just always have to push, you know, and you can't take a break. And the moment that you relax is a shame inducing moment where you're not being productive and you're worthless unless you're accomplishing something. And this is kind of like a core wound that I'm trying to unravel. And this experience has gone a long way towards that. But when you're in that place of just being present and being allowing, you know, like

• 4:46Speaker 03

  being in surrender, I suppose. I've been in recovery for a long time, so I'm not unfamiliar with that concept, but it's still a struggle and a practice. And when you can just be and things kind of come to you, it's like, of course, like you guys were already, you know, like, and you're here because I wasn't interfering and trying to make anything happen.

• 5:06Speaker 04

  That was such a huge part of, I think, what eventually presented itself as this opportunity for Marcus to experience I began. I thought that I should be able or would be able to fix it in my humanness, that I should be able to outthink it, to outsmart it, whatever the problem was, I was going to find a way to fix it. And I realized that I couldn't do this on my own, that I had to completely surrender this idea that I could control. And in relinquishing all control, everything fell into place. And so I think that this notion of there's power in surrender, the truest form of strength is invulnerability,

• 5:47Speaker 04

  et cetera, has been a big lesson for us to learn because we too are like, you know, just try harder and work faster.

• 5:56Speaker 01

  And we're working through that. I mean, I feel like we're in the throes of it right now. I mean, we are, I don't want to use the term grinding, but we are in a way because we're just, there's a lot coming at us right now and we're just. Trying to put one foot in the in front of the other and really just focus on the mission. I feel like if we can continue focusing on the mission, all the other stuff will work itself out or we'll surround ourselves with the right people that will help us, help guide us. But since day one, I mean, from the second, I kind of was able to think a little bit clearer my 24 hours after my IBG game. The first thing I said to Amber wasn't like, I'm better, we're good, I'm healed. I just said, this is exactly what the guys need. Like, we have to figure out how to introduce this to them.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  So similar to you, which you're 19 days in your integration, I was 24 hours going, how do we pay this forward? And I think that's what we've been doing since, you know, day one.

• 6:50Speaker 04

  And to tie it all back to what you were saying, a lot has happened over the last eight years and it has been through the power of surrender that I've allowed it to come into our lives and had been obedient in continuing to walk the path, but it is all in surrender.

• 7:09Speaker 03

  Yeah. In the documentary, there's some pretty graphic illustration of the of the more harrowing kind of deployment experiences that you had. You know, obviously, you know, that that that comes with PTSD and TBI and, you know, this is something that is happening with all of your team members. And from a kind of civilian perspective on this, as somebody who, you know, wasn't in the military, like my relationship, like probably most people with what that experience is like is from movies and television. You know, you watch Zero Dark Thirty or The Hurt Locker or American Sniper and, you know, these, you know, creative expressions do a pretty good job of kind of illustrating

• 7:54Speaker 03

  this internal experience of what it's like to deploy and then come back home, like that scene where Jeremy Renner is in the grocery store and he's just lost, you know? What can you say about what that actually feels like? Like, are those accurate representations of what you were experiencing? Or, you know, what what can you say about what people might not understand about the loneliness, the depression, you know, the the loss of meaning and purpose that is, you know, kind of part and parcel of what that's like?

• 8:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'd say the first thing is it's it's extremely subjective in nature. So what I what I went through is Maybe similar to what someone else went through, but how they're dealing with it is different. And for me, I was, you know, I don't want to put a diagnosis on it, but I was diagnosed with clinical depression and I was depressed. Like there are days where I couldn't get out of bed, you know, days, weeks. I wouldn't, I just shut off. I didn't answer individuals for years. I didn't talk to people for years and just kind of reconnecting and building those relationships back up. But trauma doesn't discriminate. And so whether it's, and head trauma doesn't discriminate

• 9:05Speaker 01

  either, right? You can, you can be in professions where it's more prevalent. So military around blast exposure or skydiving or, you know, IEDs or whatever. But that head trauma, many civilians have the same type of head trauma. So they're dealing with the same type of, let's say, brain issues. The same thing with, if you want to call it PTSD or post-traumatic stress, a civilian who may, may have been in a really traumatic car accident is the same trauma that a person has experienced on the battlefield. And the brain doesn't know the difference that it's a battlefield trauma, or if it's a civilian trauma. So that's why, you know, mental health,

• 9:48Speaker 01

  brain health doesn't discriminate. It's all the same. We've been exposed to certain things and civilians have been exposed. And that's why I never, there are many civilians go, well, hey, you know, I haven't done what you have. And so this might be kindergarten you. And I always say, like, not at all. It's like what you dealt with and what you experienced is just as bad as what I dealt with and I experienced. And that's why we're dealing, that's why we both have anxiety. We're both depressed. We're both going to brain clinics. It's the same. We're just, we just took different professions and different paths. And so I think civilians absolutely can relate to what we're doing. And we've We've really done a very diligent job and everything that we've done around veterans.

• 10:31Speaker 01

  And granted, our nonprofit focuses on veterans, but we're, we're dealing with so many non veterans now because we all have the same issues. I mean, there's definitely a mental health crisis. Terms of outreach, in terms of, well, in terms of inbound too. I mean, you know, look at our, you know, text messages and our DMs. It's constant. Like, where do I go for, I mean,

• 10:53Speaker 01

  just can't answer them. There's so many individuals and I'm talking about individuals that are just, you know, not just, but like investment bankers or teachers or nurses. They're looking for the same thing. We're looking for healing somehow. They may be drinking too much or they may be coping with, with drugs. And how do, how do they get help, right? It's the same help that, you know, my friends are asking for. And so it's similar. And then so I, we've done a really good job, I think, of saying, hey, this isn't everyone problem. We're just right now, or initially focused on the special operations community because that's where I came from.

• 11:28Speaker 03

  Yeah. And there may be quite a bit of shared experience, like to your point of like, well, if you were in a car accident, it's not that different. But there is, you know, something so extreme about, you know, the experiences that you have had. And when you see the results that, you know, are kind of illustrated in the documentary and, you know, in the work that you, you both have been doing, that is also very extreme. And I think that wakes people up and makes them pay attention, you know, versus the civilian who maybe is, you know, kind of slight depression, drinking a little bit. It's, it's harder to kind of like shine a spotlight on that situation in comparison to, you know, the veteran community.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, we definitely put ourselves out there, but we also asked, we asked for it, right? It's a, it's a volunteer military. And sometimes we used to say, be careful what you wish for, right? Like I said initially, when we started this conversation, we couldn't wait to get over there and get in the fight. And then you don't realize potentially the toll it takes down the road. I mean, we see it with Vietnam veterans. We saw it with World War II veterans.

• 12:36Speaker 01

  There was not a plan in place as you know, it's better now. There's a lot of support now, but there was really no support back then. And I always go back to like, oh, hey, remember that crazy, crazy uncle or the grandfather who didn't talk to anybody or the Vietnam dad that was distant? Well, now we know why.

• 12:56Speaker 03

  Sure. Or even World War I, shell shock.

• 12:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:58Speaker 03

  You know, not even really understanding what was going on.

• 13:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:02Speaker 03

  Um, you talk in the documentary about this idea of just feeling like you're, you want to just go and get bad guys. It's a Superman complex on some level. And then you are quickly disabused of that kind of romantic notion. But as a special operator who's, you know, continuing to go out on these deployments, there's this cognitive dissonance. Like, here's what I thought it was going to be. Here's what it actually is. I love these guys. I love, you know, so much of this life, but also some recognition of, you know, even on it, if it's on a somewhat unconscious level of like what it's doing to you.

• 13:38Speaker 01

  And I don't think at the time, we ever think of what it's doing to us, even on deployment, even in bad scenarios or bad situations that have happened, you get over them pretty quickly because you just assume this is part of the job. And we used to talk about this, like if we lost friends in a, on a mission, we're like, hey, this, this happens, you know, we signed up for this job. We knew it. We read all the books. We know we're going to lose friends. We drink, we cry, we remember our teammates and then

• 14:11Speaker 03

  Compartmentalized.

• 14:12Speaker 01

  You wake up the next day and you're, you know, next mission, here it comes. And you don't even think about what happened before. Maybe there's a little bit of that where you go, okay, lesson learned. I may not put my face in front of the door the same way that we put it in front last night because last night we lost two guys by doing that. So there are lessons learned and you try to, you know, we always make lessons off of, of bad things that happen. Um, we call them after action reports, hot washes, or whatever you want to call them. What can we do better? So we make sure we don't have this happen again. But that's all we're doing. We're fixing the problem so we can continue mission, right? So we can Charlie Mike and we can continue moving on. And like you just said, we compartmentalized everything very well.

• 14:55Speaker 04

  Master compartmentalizers, Rich, like terrifyingly.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  And you have to.

• 15:00Speaker 03

  Has that changed in the training now as a result of, you know, kind of just the undeniable amount of evidence of the long-term mental health implications of people who go through this program?

• 15:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, Rich, change is slow, as we know. Bureaucracy is bureaucracy.

• 15:17Speaker 01

  They were talking about this. I remember it starting to be talked about in about 2010. The first individual stepped forward and said, hey, I was driving my car and the whole world just like went black. Like he said, his tunnel vision came and like he couldn't even barely see anything. It was just, and he had to pull over because he was going to get in a wreck. And he went to a brain clinic and they said, yeah, you have, you have TBI. We call them TBIs. So parts of the brain that were knocked and if you do them on certain scans, it looks like they're black or there's holes there. There's not really holes in your brain, but it just means that there's blood not circulating, those connections are not communicating. And, you know, now we're finding out, you know, depression, anxiety, et cetera, because

• 16:02Speaker 01

  of those, those parts of the brain that are turned off. And so the first person stepped forward and honestly, the community shunned him. They're like, you're crazy. This is, you know, what, what are you talking about? But he was like the first one who had, I would say the gall or the courage to just raise his hand and say, hey, you know what? I'm struggling here and I need help. And then after he did, you know, and then the next person, and then the next person. And then I went to see a psychiatrist in 2011 on the West Coast when I was an instructor. And I went in there and I just was like a little embarrassed. I'm like, hey, I'm this tough guy. I'm in this profession. And I'm about, I'm gonna, I need to talk to you because I'm not doing well.

• 16:47Speaker 01

  And he said, man, Marcus, he goes, you're about the 200th guy that's come in here over the last couple of years with the exact same story, with the exact same symptoms. So first off, there's, you're not a problem. And I'm glad you came in. You know, here's some antidepressants. No, but um, there was an issue and more guys were, were stepping forward because there was, there was a problem and guys wanted to fix it. So to your point, shift happens slowly, but it's happening. We were talking outside earlier. They, they put sensory deprivation tanks at some of the commands, just for people to bring their nervous system back to, you know,

• 17:27Speaker 01

  baseline, being present, being, you know, here versus just redlining day in and day out, you know, all the time. Like, there's only so much, if I pour this, this water into this cup, it gets to a point where it's going to start overflowing. And that's what we're doing. We could only take so much before our life starts overflowing.

• 17:46Speaker 04

  There was no release valve. The release valve was just copious amounts of alcohol. And I would just like to quickly add for further contextualization that in our program at vets, we've seen hundreds, I mean, 1,300-ish um, special operations veterans come through. And the documentary does a decent job of pointing this out. There's a common thread of childhood trauma that exists in the observations that I've made. And that trauma is used to fuel, I think, a lot of the, these states of high performance. And so it serves you to a point and then it becomes, you become like a Greek tragedy. What fuels you is now threatening

• 18:31Speaker 04

  to kill you. Um, so I think that there's just a necessary component of the ideal.

• 18:39Speaker 04

  Recruit that they're looking for, that they need that sort of fueling. And then they also need that compartmentalization to be able to do the job. So it's like, how can you create a release valve that's enough to keep someone in the fight? And I think they're working on it.

• 18:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 18:56Speaker 04

  It almost seems necessary.

• 18:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's very well put. Like, it all, it all tracks back to childhood trauma. I would imagine, you know, almost unanimously, you know, on, on some level. Like, the archetype of the person who seeks out buds and kind of wants this life is wired in a certain way from very early in their life. So it becomes a self-selecting process, right? And the military kind of understanding that archetype and how to work with that archetype. And then in the aftermath, when you're experiencing these issues, so much so that you're willing to suffer the, the quote, unquote embarrassment of going to a psychiatrist. On top of that, there must also be this sense like, well, if I tell this person like what I'm really feeling, then I'm going to lose my superpower. Like, then I won't be, I won't be able to like, do my job.

• 19:43Speaker 03

  I'll be vulnerable, you know, in those high stakes environments.

• 19:48Speaker 01

  That is a huge concern of many of the folks. I mean, that's one of the concerns here with, for instance, if we're talking about Ibrigan or psychedelic treatment for deep trauma or depression, that's a concern. If I reach out for help and I tell individuals I need help, am I going to get sidelined? Same thing in athletic, you know, pro sports. It's why they hide so many injuries, bad injuries, because they don't want to lose their contract, right? And in our world, it's losing the job that you literally love doing because it's not a job, it never was a job. It's just a passionate lifestyle that you chose. And so that's a real concern is reaching out and actually going through a treatment.

• 20:32Speaker 01

  And, and not even Ibrigan, but just, let's just say, simple talk therapy and, you know, prescriptions that may help you get through. I don't know if you're able to work again after you make those those choices. So it is a that's a big struggle too. So you know what? I'm not going to go ask for help and I'm just going to continue overflowing my cup and trying to see how long that goes.

• 20:55Speaker 04

  Which of course then, you know, affects the family and the ripple out effect is pretty significant.

• 21:01Speaker 03

  So in this semi civilian sort of life that that you start to live where he's an instructor and you think like everything's going to kind of normalize and it's getting worse. One of the hardest parts of the documentary to watch is the home video footage of with the kids, you know, and like your interaction with the kids. It must be difficult for you to watch that that now.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  Very difficult.

• 21:23Speaker 03

  To see how detached you are. And you, Amber, are like, God bless you, like trying to figure out like, okay, what can we do here? Right? Like you're starting to try to see what you can do to help Marcus. You're going to brain clinics. You're you are you do. There is enough recognition where you're like, okay, I need to like try some things. Right? And there's this extended period where you're doing all sorts of stuff, but not really getting results.

• 21:48Speaker 04

  Well, yes, and naivete to the rescue again. I thought, well, if if he just gets out of the military, because the command that he was at operates at an extremely high tempo. And leaving that command was really difficult for him because he thoroughly enjoyed being there. And I thought, well, if we go back to the command, it's like going back to the game of Russian roulette. So many friends died there. If we get out of the military, maybe then that gets him out of this limbo phase. And he too is looking for a change.

• 22:28Speaker 04

  Right before we made this decision, there was a helicopter crash in Afghanistan where 31 members of the command were lost. And it felt like, and many of them, you know, friends, it felt like we can't go back to that. And so getting out seemed like the only option that we had. He was, you know, 40 at the time ish. And he had an opportunity to create an entirely new path.

• 22:55Speaker 04

  And still, you know, have a lot of his life left to live. He was put on antidepressants a year or two before that. And they were making him really numb for the most part. So I still felt very disconnected, but thought maybe this change would be what we needed. He wanted to completely forget his time in the military for the most part and went into private banking. There was like no bigger shift that could come from being a part of the SEAL teams to a part of a private banking team in Beverly Hills. And that's when the wheels really started to come off and it became pretty clear that we weren't going to make it.

• 23:39Speaker 04

  I didn't think I could survive as a single mom in California. It's very difficult to get out of the state. Once you're kind of trapped in it by the, the family court system. And so we agreed to move to Texas in 2014. We bought a beautiful dream home on the golf course. I'm still holding out hope that we can have, you know, a proper, fresh start. And that's when things really escalated because it was this perfect storm of not having community, identity, purpose, passion, now being stuck together even without a guaranteed paycheck. The military, you know, is really good on that.

• 24:24Speaker 04

  And we were completely disconnected. So Marcus started drinking much more heavily. And right around that time, a friend took his life, one of the first SEAL suicides. His wife had the wherewithal to donate his brain because she said he's not, he was not himself in those final years. And his brain autopsy was shared with the community. It was the first time that I had heard terms like CTE or interfaced astroglial scarring. These are degenerative brain conditions that come from concussive, subconcussive and blast type of reverberations.

• 25:07Speaker 04

  Repeatedly. Marcus had played football. He had been a breacher and the SEAL teams working with explosives. And so suddenly my perspective shifted on what this actually was. Maybe this wasn't in his control as much as I thought it was. Maybe this cocktail of pharmaceuticals that were causing these highs and lows and just crazy things were not his, that wasn't entirely in his control. So I did shift my approach to more of a brain thing and less of a psychological thing. He went to many brain clinics. He did many sort of alternative treatments and they were making him worse. And with every failed

• 25:50Speaker 04

  treatment, he was becoming more and more hopeless. So I knew that he was, he was battling with thoughts of suicide. And a suicide interventionalist explained it to me very effectively. I'd never thought of this before. She said, when you have soldiers who are trained to identify the threat and they identify themselves as the threat, they're taught to eliminate the threat, that's when suicide is on the table. He legitimately thought he would be doing us a favor by removing himself from the equation. And I knew that time was ticking. You know, my human mind, this brain clinic, that therapy, da, da, da, da, da. I couldn't outthink this thing because despite my attempts to get him into

• 26:33Speaker 04

  all these places, he was becoming more and more despondent because things weren't working.

• 26:37Speaker 03

  When you went to these brain clinics and you got your brain scanned, were you seeing the black spot? Like, did you get a diagnosis? They provided any clarity? Or was it just increasingly confusing?

• 26:49Speaker 01

  I only went to one brain clinic that actually did a real scan that showed that I had many dark spots. And it finally just, I guess, solidified that there was something wrong with the brain or with my brain. And it wasn't just, you know, what I thought the whole time. This is just in my head. I'm just, you know, suck it up. You know, you're being soft and you're not, you're not making it, right? And so at least that gave us some relief to go, okay, I'm not crazy. There is something wrong here. How do we fix it? And at the same time, how do we fix it? I'm still really struggling, right? I'm still have thoughts of suicide. I thought many times, I'm like, well, if I, if I take myself out, You know, Amber, I mean, I thought through this a million times.

• 27:34Speaker 01

  Amber and the kids will go to the funeral and it'll be sad and have a lot of people there. And then that'll go away and there'll be some sadness. And then eventually they'll be great, right? Because dad won't be here constantly causing the problems. And I just thought it'd be some initial pain for future success for them. And, and, and I really contemplated that at the time. And that's just like a completely backwards, wrong way of thinking, right? That's the, we call it the voice in the head. It's our voice in the head that is constantly telling us certain things. It's our ego and our ego is trying to fix the problem. That's what it's for. And it's just not the way of thinking. We have a, you know, we, we thought about a campaign called Silence the Whisper, which is basically silencing that thought that's completely untrue. It's completely false.

• 28:20Speaker 01

  But that's how I was thinking at the time. And so finally get a brain scan that shows that, yeah, hey, you have something wrong with your brain. And so I think Amber, then at that point was really trying to figure out, okay, how do we fix these, how do we fix this brain? Right? And I think that's where I began kind of came into the conversation, even though.

• 28:37Speaker 04

  Not really, not really.

• 28:38Speaker 01

  No, but I mean, eventually it comes into the conversation.

• 28:41Speaker 03

  Just before that, before you share your thought, Amber, I wanted to kind of highlight what you shared a moment ago. This notion of the soldier trained to be hyper vigilant to identify the threat. And when the, when they realize the threat is them self to take out that threat. I'd never heard that described in that way. Like, that's harrowing.

• 29:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. And that's what we're up against.

• 29:10Speaker 04

  Coupled with the fact that Marcus and so many others are prescribed antidepressants as a first line of defense, many of them don't work. And there's always a label on the side of the bottle that says can increase the risk of suicidality. So why are we treating veteran suicide with medications linked to suicide? It just didn't compute for me. There was a SEAL who knew that we were struggling. If you remember, there's a scene in the documentary about a gun, an empty whiskey bottle. He had come over to our house that night. I had gone to bed and that's the only reason he knew that we were struggling.

• 29:52Speaker 04

  Because, you know, he was able to intervene in a situation that could have ended badly. And.

• 29:59Speaker 04

  He too, apparently was struggling and eventually went to Mexico and did Ibragaine and came back and immediately reached out and said, this could really help Marcus. So a year before Marcus actually went during this time where he was much more comfortable doing brain clinics and other interventional treatments here stateside, we knew about Ibragaine, but it sounded crazy. And so he was very reluctant to go. Throughout that one year period where it was like failure, failure, failure, failure. I thought, again, I wonder if this Ibragaine thing could work. I had nothing else.

• 30:38Speaker 04

  And I knew that I was gonna have to leave because the kids had started to voice, you know, our daughter said, how much longer do we have to do this, mom? And, you know, just-

• 30:51Speaker 03

  How old were they at this point?

• 30:54Speaker 04

  That was 2016. So our daughter would have been 14, our son 16. You know, they were really tough ages. And I just, I thought, it doesn't matter how strong I am because I am inadvertently affecting them by making them live through this craziness. And so it really felt to me like this ultimatum, like this is it or I am gone. But I had to approach him in a completely different way, a way of love and no longer using guilt, shame, condemnation, this sort of raw hurt that I was feeling and just,

• 31:39Speaker 04

  I approached him in a way that I hadn't before. And I said, I will fight with you every day for the rest of my life, but you have to fight with me and we have to fight differently. And that's where that surrender came in, just knowing that I was out of options.

• 32:00Speaker 03

  For people that are listening or watching who don't know the story, let's set it up. Let's go back to the beginning. I mean, the two of you have been together since basically you were teenagers, right?

• 32:12Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 32:12Speaker 01

  I think Amber was 17. I was 20 years old. I was a sophomore in college. I was playing football. I was a quarterback. Amber's dad had recruited me from New York to play. So I played ball for Amber's dad in college, which is, you know, a whole nother.

• 32:26Speaker 03

  Dating the coach's daughter. This is like right out of Friday Night Lights.

• 32:30Speaker 01

  The program, right? Remember the program that the backup quarterback was dating the coach's daughter? And so I used to get a lot of that from the team. And we didn't meet when I was actually playing for him. He had left Pop, Coach Watson.

• 32:44Speaker 04

  Within a couple of months, we met.

• 32:46Speaker 01

  We met right after that. And then he got a phone call from one of the coaches saying, hey, you know, Marcus is dating Amber. And then Amber and I took a road trip to visit him up at Northwestern. And that was a bit awkward initially, but we have not separated since. So.

• 33:01Speaker 04

  29 years in July.

• 33:03Speaker 03

  Wow. Quarterback, you know, you're kind of like this gig at Chad dude, you know, I mean, like the pictures of you when you're, I mean, you're just like this strapping, you know, super tall, incredibly fit guy, quarterback on a team. I mean, it's like, the doors are swinging wide open. You can do anything. And you decide you want to go into the Navy SEALs.

• 33:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:25Speaker 03

  What year was that?

• 33:27Speaker 01

  That was 99 when I had the idea. And I had the idea because I stayed up late one night and watched G.I. Jane on.

• 33:35Speaker 03

  That was it?

• 33:38Speaker 01

  Shout out to me more.

• 33:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 33:41Speaker 01

  I mean, no, really, I didn't tell that story, by the way, for a very long time, as everyone can imagine, you know, definitely not my SEAL buddies, like, oh, by the way, oh, you got here from watching Charlie Sheen's Navy SEALs in the 90s or whatever. I was like, no, no, I watched G.I. Jane and I had no connection to military growing up. I mean, I grew up in Long Island, very middle class family, wasn't like very extremely patriotic. Amber grew up more. She still has a note that she wrote at 10 years old about thanking veterans that we have in a frame, which I thought is super.

• 34:13Speaker 04

  It's cute.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  It's cute. I didn't grow up that way. So for me, when I saw G.I. Jane and they talked about like, this is the best of the best, you know, as you were talking about, I've always. Yes, I was a quarterback, but I was always like a struggling quarterback. You know, I always had to work for everything really hard. Nothing, in my opinion, nothing came naturally. Like I, I worked every day in the summer. I stayed, you know, came in early, I stayed, stayed late and I still do the same thing. And so when I watched G I Jane and they said, this is the best of the best for me. It was like that, that, that, uh, what you were talking about earlier is that achievement. Can I achieve something that is greater than myself? The best of the best. And that's, that's how I got interested in it and.

• 34:55Speaker 04

  And it was a team thing too for you. You'd always been part of a team. And so this was like, you know, kind of like America's team.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  Right, right, right. Yeah, I tried to get into surfing. I grew up in a beach town, which is an individual sport. Uh, my dad didn't really like surfing too much and, but I was always part of a team. So I never played like an individual sport, except swimming. I was always, I was a competitive swimmer when I was like four years old, so like you.

• 35:15Speaker 03

  So you do the whole thing, the BUDs, the Hell Week, all of that. Um, and you end up basically spending 13 years.

• 35:24Speaker 01

  13 years.

• 35:24Speaker 03

  Uh, in service, uh, in special operations, uh, SEAL Team 10, SEAL Team 6. You become a, a BUDs instructor, correct?

• 35:33Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 35:34Speaker 03

  What is it that, that maybe people don't understand about what that experience is? I feel like we're in a period of time where there's a lot of SEALs out there doing podcasts and kind of sharing their stories and writing books about this experience. And it's in part like an illustration of the horrors of war, but it's also, there's also like a, like a sort of public fascination with this lifestyle and a, a sort of valorizing kind of romantic lens on, on it. And, you know, what can you say about what it was like?

• 36:07Speaker 01

  Well, I would say it is extremely tough. So definitely one of the hardest things I've done, which is get through training, both physically and mentally. And I think physically, everyone prepares and when you show up on day one, I had 175 individuals in my BUDs class. And I looked around and I said, how am I supposed to be one out of every five here that are, are going to make it? We had some of the best collegiate athletes, prior Olympians, guys that were really fit. I was a bigger guy. Um, they, they called me big and it was funny. I said, guys, you don't know what big is like, like my offensive line was big. Those guys were six, seven, 300. But so I was a bigger guy, which is usually a little bit tougher. Um, you have to carry your weight, right?

• 36:50Speaker 01

  So guys that are 5'10", 180 pounds have. An easier time. And so I always had, even at BUDs, I had to work. I had to work extremely hard. But what I had is grit and determination and like can never fail attitude. And I took that, you know, right to training and I got through BUDs and I got through my teams and I, you know, I guess I excelled and I did well. And, you know, going back to your question, what was that like? I would take the shirt off my back. I would give my last dollar to every individual that I served with. And I think that's the part that draws people in is that you're doing something that is much, just take yourself completely out of the equation.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  Like this is about everybody else. I remember being home one time on break in New York and I was in a bathroom and some guys walked in and they were in the stall next to me and all they kept talking about was money, money, money, money, money, money. And I remember just feeling like kind of slimy. And I said, and I remember going home and telling my dad, I said, Dad, I was in the bathroom at this club and all these guys kept talking about was money. And I was like, I don't get it. You know, like, that's not what drove me or drives me. I don't understand that part at all. You never joined the military for money. So for, for me and for Amber, it's always been about mission, even though I didn't think, I wouldn't call it at the time, mission, right? Because it was for me, this was just

• 38:13Speaker 01

  another team sport that I can be a part of. I can be like minded individuals and, you know, maybe excel at, but it was that brotherhood, it's the camaraderie, it's the togetherness that when I left the military, I lost and I spiraled.

• 38:32Speaker 04

  And purpose. And you, you were serving a purpose. It wasn't like you were just on a team. It was like you were, especially after nine 11. So there was the, you know, gap in time there between BUDs and him being in the teams where the towers came down a month before he became a SEAL. So things changed overnight. And even before that, for us as a couple, we had actually decided to break up when he decided to go into the military, despite me coming from a very patriotic family. I just didn't think that military spouse life was for me. And then, lo and behold, a couple of weeks later, I found out that I was carrying our son. And

• 39:16Speaker 04

  that was a real inflection point for me as a woman, for us as a couple. We actually spent most of my pregnancy apart. And then in the 11th hour, Marcus said, like, we've got to do this as a family. And so we came back together, got married. I went with him to BUDs. He was one of probably two or three SEAL candidates that were married. So for him, he was juggling, you know, the, the daily grind of BUDs and then coming home and having to be dad and husband. It was a lot. And right as, you know, he's about to finish training, the towers come down. And so it was this constant adaptation cycle. And from

• 40:01Speaker 04

  that moment, there was just a fight in me. There was clearly a fight within our community to be part of a force of good. And that came with a lot with feelings of tremendous purpose.

• 40:20Speaker 03

  Right. With certain deployments on the near term horizon, like in the aftermath of nine 11, there must have been a sense of like, okay, well, we're going to get sent somewhere pretty soon here.

• 40:31Speaker 01

  And we wanted to. And that was, that was the other part of it. When I first wanted to join the military and wanted to be a SEAL, I wanted to do it for just what I read. And at the time in 99, mostly books. So I read every book from Vietnam, literally everything I could get my hand on. But the, the part that I found most interesting was all the BUDs stuff, because I think that's what everybody talks about is the difficulty of getting through training and it's such a high washout rate. And I was like, oh, man, I can do that. And I would feel so good doing that. But then when it turned to war. That was the focus was like, well, now I want to use my training to go overseas and do something with this and go get bad guys. Right. It's just, it would be like you training every day, swimming in the pool, biking and running and never having the chance to compete.

• 41:17Speaker 01

  And that would probably be a struggle for you, right? If you never like put your training to work. It'd be practicing football every day and never being able to play on Saturday or Friday night, you know, or whatever. And that's what we wanted to do. And then that was the focus. And there was such a shift in, called it a paradigm shift. When the towers came down, I was in third phase. And we were, you know, we call it coking and joking and it was fun. But then we saw this shift from the instructors who'd been in for 10 or 15 years, like they knew what was happening. We didn't, we just, first we thought they were joking with us. We thought, we thought the towers didn't come down. We thought this was another gimmick that they were playing because you know, there's so many mind games in BUDS, right? They, they're trying to get in your mind and trying to make you quit.

• 42:03Speaker 01

  And we thought this was another joke, but obviously it wasn't. Yeah, we had been set, we actually turned to each other and said, why do they keep fucking with us? Like, what, you know, we have three weeks left to graduate. But it was real. They brought us into the little TV room. We watched it for 30 seconds and we went right back out. And we were doing, uh, it's called the grinder. We do physical training, PT. And we went right back to doing pushups and flutter kicks and like nothing happened. But the shift in the perspective from the instructors, they had this demeanor of like, oh, we know what's happening now. Like we're going to war. This is a totally different perspective than what was happening before.

• 42:41Speaker 03

  A new level of intensity.

• 42:43Speaker 01

  It was a completely new level of intensity. Yeah. And then, as you said, I couldn't wait to get on deployment. So I couldn't wait to go over to Afghanistan, Iraq and, and start working.

• 42:52Speaker 03

  And how are you processing that, Amber?

• 42:56Speaker 04

  At the time, I mean, I just felt like he needed to get over there. I completely supported him because, you know, there was a righteous anger that I was feeling and I just wanted to, I wanted him to be able to do exactly what he just said, you know, use the training. And now did I think it would go on forever? Did I think that the shifts would happen after every deployment cycle where he would be, you know, feeling more and more distant from the family? No. But at least in the beginning, I was super supportive. I was always supportive, but you know, certainly it's, even though humans

• 43:35Speaker 04

  have been fighting wars for millennia, I don't think the human psyche is really built for it. And when he would come home, you know, things had shifted. He didn't even want to be home after a certain period of time because he had to be always in that mindset. And if he wasn't deployed overseas, he was training to deploy. And so his focus was just not on the family.

• 44:04Speaker 01

  It's a very selfish profession, but maybe everything we do is selfish in a way because, you know, there's a lot of talk around balance these days. And I think at our stage in life, I think we could have more balance. But when you're just starting out, you're trying to do, it's very difficult, I believe, to have balance. So imagine having a family, which again, Amber mentioned, we were one of three families. The other two didn't make it through training. We were the only ones, and really were the only ones that have stayed together for, for this whole time. Balance is hard, and I think you do have to put all your effort and focus into what you're doing to be really good. And that comes at a cost. As Amber mentioned, we were gone 300 days, you know, give or take, every year.

• 44:50Speaker 01

  Whether it's training or whether it was deployment. And so you come home and you try to put a family life back together, but there really is none because you're you're already thinking about what's my next training trip.

• 45:02Speaker 03

  You're you're biding your time.

• 45:03Speaker 01

  You're just, yeah, you're just. He was like a guest in that.

• 45:06Speaker 03

  You're never present.

• 45:06Speaker 01

  You're never, you're never present. There's no, you don't even know what the term present means at the time. You're just going, well, and I can't really do that because I have to go train or I'm going on this trip for three weeks. Um, I can't take care of that. And of course, as soon as you step out the doors, when everything happens. So like air conditioning breaks, the toilet breaks, the house breaks. And then Amber has to, you know, raise two children. Which comes with a lot of resentment. Keep the family together.

• 45:32Speaker 03

  Uh, how many deployments?

• 45:34Speaker 01

  Six.

• 45:34Speaker 03

  Six deployments.

• 45:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, mostly combat, um, to both war zones, Afghanistan and Iraq, two different fights, definitely. Afghanistan was, uh, extremely mountainous, tough terrain. And Iraq was, you know, kind of like city fighting in a way. So there are two different types of war, if you want to call it that. And they were, um, they're both interesting. They were both, you know, my perspective, it was fun. I enjoyed every minute of what I did. But as Amber mentioned, every time I came home, I was a different person. Now, I didn't think so, but you know, you can, you know, from the children and from her perspective, you just become, you know, I don't know, like a machine or like a, an individual that's feelings.

• 46:20Speaker 01

  I had a friend once who told me, uh, I went to see the psychologist, the command psychologist and for a few different things, many years. And, um, he told me once, he said, Marcus, he said, men have about forty two feelings. He said, women have two hundred and forty. And when I, literally, and, uh, I told a friend that and he goes, forty? He's like, that seems like a lie.

• 46:41Speaker 03

  It's pretty high.

• 46:42Speaker 01

  He goes, I have about two. He's like, I had two feelings. So, you know, we just didn't feel. We just did.

• 46:49Speaker 03

  Well, you're specifically trained not to, not to feel. I mean, you're like at the tip of the spear of like, like feelings are only going to, you know, become problematic, you know, in theater, right?

• 47:01Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 47:01Speaker 03

  So he's only home 65 days a year. And when he comes home, he's a stranger.

• 47:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:10Speaker 03

  You know, how are you, you know, trying to manage the confusion of that and trying to connect with him when he's, you know, essentially a ghost in the house?

• 47:21Speaker 04

  I think there was, um, at some point, just a complete cessation of trying to connect. I think we were married on paper. We were living completely separate lives. My parents were divorced and so I didn't want that for our kids. Because that comes with challenges and remarriage and blending families come with challenges. I've, you know, experienced that. And so for me, it was sort of a marriage of convenience. I, I did really love Marcus, but I, I loved a version of him that was no longer present. And I held out hope that I would see that guy again one day.

• 48:00Speaker 04

  But I knew it wasn't under the circumstances that we were currently living in. And so there came a point in time after many deployment cycles and many deaths in our community that we thought taking a break would be,

• 48:15Speaker 04

  the best for our family. And that was actually when things really started to unravel because we had been accustomed to living this separate life. And I had become pretty good at it. Now he was home all the time and we were strangers and not only strangers, we just didn't like each other. So it caused issues with the kids to have him home. I think they created this mythical figure, especially our son, on what he would be. And

• 48:45Speaker 04

  What the kids were delivered back, you know, after these deployment cycles was not what they had envisioned in their mind, nor was it mine. I knew Marcus was really struggling. I felt really bad for him because his family had become his teammates. And I think at some point it just was clearly unsustainable.

• 49:08Speaker 03

  What was it that prevented you from just ripping the Band-Aid off and saying like, we're getting divorced?

• 49:16Speaker 04

  A few things. My dad, as a football coach, has always drilled in me, do not quit. And because the beginnings of our relationship were a bit controversial, he basically said, he's going to break your heart and I'm going to break his neck. And I never wanted my dad to be right on some level.

• 49:37Speaker 03

  You don't want, it all comes from not wanting to give your dad satisfaction.

• 49:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 49:41Speaker 03

  It's competition, it's competition.

• 49:44Speaker 04

  There was a part of that, but also just not wanting to quit and also not wanting my kids to have to deal with the divorce. And ultimately, like, I really, really, really loved the Marcus that I met, but he had to become someone else to survive the circumstances that were put before us. And so I think I wanted to give it a go, give it a try, one last effort. When he became a BUDS instructor and we were home all the time, I held on to this hope that we would buy beach cruisers and ride down the street as a family and just everything would be great. And that was not the case.

• 50:23Speaker 03

  We did that too. We bought beach cruisers.

• 50:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:26Speaker 03

  Were you able to kind of hold that vision of the Marcus that you knew and some level of belief that he could find his way back to becoming that person? Or had you relinquished any, any kind of like expectation that that could ever happen?

• 50:40Speaker 04

  I got into this when I was 20.

• 50:44Speaker 04

  We had two kids right before I turned 23. I think my naivete at that time was a survival mechanism that I would not have today. There was a naive hope. Yeah. But there was also this naivete that like, you know, he would get through BUDs and then our life would be normal. That's when everything started, or that they would capture Osama bin Laden or kill Osama bin Laden and then we would just get back to normal. I didn't have a real notion of reality.

• 51:18Speaker 03

  It's sort of the frog being boiled slowly in water, too, because initially, in the aftermath of 9/11, and this is kind of illustrated in the documentary, the idea was, oh, you know, you're gonna go over there and it's all gonna get taken care of pretty quickly and then you'll come back and like, life will be relatively normal. Like, you couldn't have foreseen there's gonna be all these deployments and this is gonna go on for a very long time.

• 51:42Speaker 04

  That's right. Yeah. And so I think that same naivete that I could get him back one day was very, that's very accurate.

• 51:50Speaker 03

  And what was your support network like at that time? Did you have people to talk to about what you were going through? Or were you just internalizing all of this?

• 51:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, I had become very close with the other spouses whose husbands Marcus worked with, and so we just took care of one another in ways that sort of filled the gap for having grandparents or having your spouse at home. I had them. But I also had just this really unhealthy level of stubbornness that caused me to create massive walls around my heart and just not ask for help, not tell Marcus how I was feeling. And then that caused a lot of resentment.

• 52:34Speaker 01

  And same for us. I mean, we didn't talk about our feelings or, and we would definitely talk about our problems at home because they were extremely common. I would say they were more common than not. And so that was a topic of discussion was, you know, who's having issues at home? And it was many of us. There were definitely outliers and we always look at those folks and respect them because they were able to get through it without the struggles, I think, that we went through. But you know, we were both dealing with the same thing, just in a different, in a different, like I had my team, I had my guys, I had my CrossFit workouts with them in the morning. Amber did the same thing. She had her girls, she had her CrossFit gym that, you know, they went to and they'd go have coffee after and talk about all the things. Um, so we were

• 53:18Speaker 01

  dealing with it in our own ways. They were waiting for us. We weren't waiting for anything. We were waiting to, again, go train, go back out. And so it was a different perspective of how we viewed life. And so I became an instructor and then I was drinking extremely heavily. Um, and you know, whether it was coping, probably a little bit of everything. It was a little bit of coping, it was numbing, numbing out.

• 53:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, a lot of, you know, celebrate with alcohol in the, in the community, at least in the old days of the community, you celebrate with alcohol, you commiserate with alcohol, you, you, everything sort of revolved around this drinking culture that only fueled the problems that we were having.

• 53:59Speaker 01

  And there are a lot of guys, Rich, that have stopped drinking for obvious reasons, right? It's just not productive, you know? I mean, Yeah. Right? We can, we can go down the rabbit hole here, you know, if you want at some point.

• 54:10Speaker 04

  Oh, today is two years since you stopped drinking today. Three?

• 54:16Speaker 01

  Oh, three years. Wow.

• 54:18Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 54:18Speaker 01

  You're off by a whole year. To this day? Yeah. Oh, that's great.

• 54:23Speaker 04

  He's like, been very intentional about saying, you know, I feel so much better this morning because I chose not to drink last night. So he's not even really like, at least in my observation, been white knuckling sobriety.

• 54:36Speaker 01

  It fell away.

• 54:37Speaker 04

  He has white knuckled periods of sobriety in the past, never this long. But I truly feel that he's put healthy things in that void and had a much different perspective this time. And yes, it is to the day today.

• 54:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. Of course, you know, preaching to the choir, I feel better. You know, you just, you feel like you have this glow, your skin looks better, or just everything is better. Shocking how that works, right? It's wild. Um, but I think it was early 2017 when she brought up Ibogaine and I, Yeah, so what's the pitch? I mean, the pitch was about Ibogaine and, and I said, so you want me to take a psychedelic and I'm supposed to get better from that? Like, think about someone who's never touched a drug before.

• 55:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, this is not a topic that I know anything about.

• 55:23Speaker 01

  Right. And, and here, you're gonna go take this drug, drug. A psychedelic that is supposed is going to heal you and it's going to make you better. And I just imagine being approached with that and just thinking, I mean, literally said like, that's absolutely crazy. Like, that's insane. Like, what are we talking about here? Like, what is this a joke? And at that point, again, you know, I had been on pharmaceuticals for years, not getting better. So I just thought, and this was a whole nother level. And all I could think about was psychedelics were like, Woodstock and hippies and, and, and it's supposed to heal this, you know, quote unquote warrior

• 56:05Speaker 01

  from, you know, brain injury and PTSD. And so we took, that was like a conversation and that conversation, if I remember, it was kind of compartmentalized after that because.

• 56:15Speaker 04

  Well, he was just like, oh, no, absolutely not.

• 56:17Speaker 03

  But you did have the team member who had had that experience.

• 56:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, that's right. And I think that probably really resonated with you, but you also were very uncomfortable with the idea.

• 56:28Speaker 01

  I was uncomfortable, but when, it's crazy how this works. You can listen to every Western medicine doctor from Hopkins or Harvard or wherever. But your friend does something and it works. That's all you need. I actually had a call from an officer one time, Naval Academy guy, just like a absolute stud, who said, Marcus, I have researched this topic. I've read every book. I know everything about it. I've talked to all the experts. He's like, I was still skeptical. He's like, when I talk to you for 30 seconds on this call, he's like, I'm convinced, like, I'm ready to go. So here's a person who's extremely bright, who looked at all the research and still thought it was crazy, but talked to me, who said, dude, this, this saved my life.

• 57:12Speaker 04

  That's a trust that exists within the community.

• 57:14Speaker 01

  And that's how, that's how this whole thing was built, was really off of trust. Because think about trying to talk to your psych or go to an expert at an academic institution going, hey, I'm thinking about going to do IBG. First, they might say, especially in 2017, what is that?

• 57:32Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 57:32Speaker 01

  Right? Now, now it's a little bit, it's a lot different. I mean, actually, they're, they're, they're recommending individuals to go do this. They're saying, hey, we, we don't have anything for you. You're gonna have to go do this somewhere else. But that's the trust in the community. And that's what I had from this individual who literally life did a 180, changed his life. It saved his life. And so that's what convinced me to say, okay, maybe I'll give this a try. And then, Rich, I did the research. There was a lot of papers and a lot of work done for many years. I mean, I think the drug was introduced in the 30s in France. Um, so it had been out there, commercialized and people, you know, utilizing it. The more you read about it, the more you go, you know what? This is something that I think potentially can help. So I went from thinking this was crazy to, wait, this is medical treatment.

• 58:17Speaker 01

  This is, this is legitimate, even though it's not FDA approved here in the US. But, you know, we've been going to Mexico and Costa Rica for 20 or 30 years to do stem cells for a reason, because we couldn't get them here. So it doesn't mean that it's bad.

• 58:39Speaker 03

  So Amber presents you with this. The stakes are high. Your marriage and your relationship with your family is on the line. Is that, and then you do this research. You become convinced that maybe there's, there's some there there, right? But at the same time, it's like, well, if it doesn't work, you know, it's like, what? It's gonna switch up, it's gonna just, a switch is gonna get flicked and you're gonna be, like, the expectations that you're gonna come back and it's all gonna be good. Like, you know, that's, that's a lot.

• 59:06Speaker 01

  That, that's tough now, too. There's so many, so many of the guys that.

• 59:09Speaker 03

  Well, you see these before and afters and you're like, okay, so if I come back and I'm not that, like.

• 59:14Speaker 01

  I mean, you, you feel like you're really gonna tank at that point, right? Because you felt like you've tried everything and this is it.

• 59:21Speaker 03

  And if that doesn't work.

• 59:22Speaker 01

  Right. So the expectation, I almost think it's better not to have expectations because of course this doesn't work. This is a treatment, just like a cancer treatment or something else, or it doesn't work for everybody. But, I mean, arguably, it's extremely powerful. And I laugh, I'm laughing now. I don't know if you know what I'm gonna say, but we were in, we were at a event in Texas a few months ago and there's this world renowned cardiologist and he's listening to Amber I speak on stage and he's like. This sounds like it's just kinda putting some Band-Aid on, on the symptoms. And Amber didn't know, he was like this world renowned cardiologist, older guy, he's like 85. And she's like, I, he's like, I'm gonna challenge that. And she goes on stage. She's like, I would consider this actually pretty curative.

• 1:00:08Speaker 04

  I said it's far more curative than palliative. And I'm like, granted, this is my own hypothesis.

• 1:00:13Speaker 03

  Well, most of medicine is putting a Band-Aid on symptoms.

• 1:00:15Speaker 04

  Yeah. And we didn't know what. I mean, honestly, Rich, whenever I approached Marcus with this, he, he was in California. He was doing this sort of trifecta of things, like magnets on the brain and hyperbaric oxygen. He was a patient in another clinic. And I thought, this is it. If this trifecta of things doesn't work, then I don't have anything, anything left. And I came to visit him. The trip ended in absolute shambles. It was horrible. And at that point, I thought, it's over. I've got to make my plan to leave because he's gonna run out of funding at this place. I've got to get the house on the market. I've got to know what I'm gonna do. School is starting. Da-da-da.

• 1:00:58Speaker 04

  I come home from that trip unexpectedly. I don't even tell him I'm leaving. I pack my bags while he's at Magnet Brain Therapy. And I go to the airport and I get on a flight back home. And I called my parents. It was, I'd come for, I think, for my birthday. I called my parents collectively and said, this is it. I told my dad I was quitting. And he just said, you know, you're not disappointing me. You're not quitting. You're choosing your children. And so there was like the whole reckoning. And there was peace for a moment. And then I was overcome with the reality of the fact that they would, I could move on with my life. They would be forced to

• 1:01:42Speaker 04

  live with probably losing their dad.

• 1:01:46Speaker 04

  And I had one thing left that I hadn't talked to him about in quite some time. So I reapproached him. He did run out of funding. He asked, you know, am I coming back home? And I said, yeah, come home. And that's when the surrender came in on a level that I didn't even know I was capable of. I just used sheer love, true sheer love in approaching him and complete surrender. I don't know what this will do, but if you agree to do it, I will fight with you. And we made the appointment for him to leave to go to the clinic. It kept getting pushed. And I just remember begging him to keep holding on for 10 more days, for eight more days.

• 1:02:31Speaker 04

  Oh, wait, it's 12 more days now. It just, the, the time kept changing and I thought he was gonna just say, forget it. But when I finally did get him to the airport and he got out of the car, I realized that this is all I had. And if it, if it didn't work, then we were completely out of options. And I, I flew in the next day to visit him. And I was so afraid to see him because I knew that I would know immediately if it had or hadn't worked. And so our friend was down there with him. His wife picked me up from San Diego Airport. And I got in the car and I said, I can't go. I can't go. I, this is crazy.

• 1:03:14Speaker 01

  You're gonna drive across the border and?

• 1:03:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, I was gonna go to the clinic where he had been dosed.

• 1:03:20Speaker 01

  And just to caveat that, when I got out of the car, I literally said, I don't think this is going to work.

• 1:03:29Speaker 04

  Like, don't think I'm gonna come back?

• 1:03:30Speaker 01

  I don't think this will work. I was like telling Amber.

• 1:03:32Speaker 04

  Don't get your hopes up.

• 1:03:33Speaker 01

  Don't get your hopes up. Like, this is still, I think, a little bit crazy. Like, do you think, we've tried all these things. Now I'm gonna go do this other thing. Just don't expect me to come back any different. And that's how I literally.

• 1:03:43Speaker 04

  Which was probably why I was like, oh.

• 1:03:45Speaker 01

  That was the goodbye, was don't expect anything to change.

• 1:03:48Speaker 04

  Yeah. So the next day I fly in and I'm in the car saying like, I can't go. And she said, trust me on this. He is asking, he's only asking for one thing. He's asking for you. And I was like, how can that be like? Like, we hate each other, you know, on some level. Um, how, why is he asking for me? And so I had given him my word and I held to that. I did go and I heard him walking down the hall. And when he came around the corner, it truly was like being reunited with someone that I hadn't seen in, you know, over 15 years.

• 1:04:27Speaker 04

  And, um, I knew immediately, his countenance was exactly the way that it was when I met him. Because I knew him before he was a SEAL. I knew him before nine 11, before the war deployments. I knew him before the insanity of all the shit that we had lived through following the military. And he was back. And it felt in those early days, too good to be true. Like you don't want to believe this, or you find yourself letting your, the walls of your heart down. And then immediately, um, you're like, oh gosh, just, you know, don't get too comfortable there. It's all going to be taken out from underneath you any minute.

• 1:05:06Speaker 03

  Wow. So this is where we have to talk about what it is. Yeah. Okay. So, I mean, that's amazing. Um, I want to get more into that. Uh, but I want to understand like what it is that you experienced. So you have buy-in from Amber. There's a lot of pressure and expectations. You're going to go do this thing that you know, very little about, very powerful psychedelic drug experience. Uh, you go in with trying to have no expectations about what's going to happen. Um, what is ibogaine and what was the experience that you had?

• 1:05:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I, I begin is a, just a single molecule that's extracted from the iboga plant. I guess in, in, uh, West Gabon, Africa.

• 1:05:55Speaker 01

  It's been used forever for rites of passage, for stomach ailments, for mental health, for brain health. We just haven't been introduced to it really over here. And so think of it as a single molecule that gets extracted and they found it to be the most potent and what's actually helping the brain, helping the individual work through psychological issues. And so from my experience, it's taken just like any other drug. It's in a pill form. You do a ton of preparation before it. So I was working with a psychotherapist, was also a psychedelic integration coach, was also a PhD in Tibetan Buddhist philosophy. So I had like this kind of trifecta of, you know, she had a lot of different expertise

• 1:06:39Speaker 01

  and so would approach me in different ways. And so I had good preparation going in. And then because Ibogaine is one of the few psychedelics that have a potential cardiac risk. And so there it's a it's a true medical treatment and needs to be handled that way. And so you're doing blood work and your analysis and you're doing EKGs. And so you're you have to be good medically cleared before you can go do that. You can't have any drugs in the system. You can't have alcohol in the system. You have to actually get titrated off of any antidepressants that you've been on. So that's and so think of individuals that have come in that have been on them for 10, 15, or 20 years. And we get plenty of individuals, they have to work with a psych to get off those. And it's very difficult

• 1:07:23Speaker 01

  those last couple of days. You're you're on these drugs for years and now all of a sudden you're off them. That's at the point when you take Ibogaine, it's out of your system and you take it right away. So you take it in pill form, just like any other drug, 45 minutes to an hour, it starts to get in the bloodstream and it starts to affect you. And for me, it just started to get deeper and deeper and you start hearing a little bit of buzzing in your ears because your your your senses are awakened by about 400%. You know, smell, touch.

• 1:07:59Speaker 01

  You know, hearing. So you get this buzzing and then you're just slowly like getting into the the drug itself. And for me, it was a really, really, I told you, Bud's was a hard experience. This was the most challenging experience of my life. I, I probably puked for eight to 10 hours straight. The therapist who had been working with I began for 20 years said, Marcus, I've been, I've been working with this for a really long time. She's like, I've never seen anybody struggle like you. Um, I took it as a joke or a badge of honor, kind of like that was my competitiveness. Like, oh, yeah, I had the hardest experience.

• 1:08:33Speaker 03

  Yeah. Terminally unique.

• 1:08:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I won't. Yeah, I won't. But no, it was really challenging. And so I was constantly puking in a bucket. And then I would have these visions all night. And the visions are, um, if you saw in the documentary, it's, it's really a life review. And it's subjective, because it's, it's your brain, kind of, in your unconscious, kind of, bringing forward things that you need to see. So I had some childhood issues, uh, that I was seeing with my dad. And then I had some wartime issues that I had. I had lost my best friend. That was a big part of my journey. I'd had a lot of guilt and shame that he was not here and I was still here. And then it had very light, uh, issues. And those light times during the experience was always with Amber and the kids. And it would like take me out of

• 1:09:21Speaker 01

  that really tough psychedelic experience of the traumas that I was dealing with. And it gave me a bit of like, of like, light and whiteness. And it was always with Amber and the kids. And we all, our arms were always interlocked. And

• 1:09:38Speaker 01

  what it, you know, what it showed me was that I had everything right here. I didn't have to look external for, for anything, for, for life, for purpose, for, for striving to be better, or to achieve something. I was like, wait a minute, you have everything that you need right in front of you. It's Amber and it's the kids. And those were my moments of lightness during my experience. And I loved them because it was like unconditional love. It was like, perfect. You know, it was like, you know, if you want to be called connected to the source, it was like, everything that you needed was right there. And that was it. And then it would dissipate and then I would go back until I kind of dark,

• 1:10:21Speaker 01

  you know, deeper traumatic experiences and and it was very dark. It was some of it was very ugly.

• 1:10:30Speaker 01

  Images that were ugly, scenes that were ugly, a lot of fighting, you know, a lot of struggle. And as the night went on and I had more of these light experiences, it just felt like if you had a backpack on with just filled with a thousand pounds of bricks, as the night went on, the bricks just kind of kept getting tossed out. You just felt lighter and and you felt like the weight of the world that you were perceiving just was falling off your shoulders. So when I finally, the drug wore off, I was able to get some sleep and I woke up, I just felt like, wow, like the backpack is off completely. Like I'm, you know, I just felt like I was healed. I just felt like any of the weight that I was carrying

• 1:11:16Speaker 01

  was gone completely. And all I could, all I wanted to do was see Amber because that was my moments of of love during my really dark, traumatic, I begin experience for me. And that it's not traumatic for everybody, but you know, for individuals who have trauma, there's parts of of of pain there. And so when I saw Amber, you know, we I just embraced it. I didn't say, I feel good. I'm better. I'm healed. I just said, literally, this is exactly what the guys need. Because I I had friends at the time were really struggling like I had been. And that was the start of it. It was just like, how do we pay this forward? Someone paid for my experience there. We were talking earlier about how expensive these these treatments are.

• 1:11:58Speaker 01

  And how much struggle it was for us to get me down there to get someone to pay for it. And I just thought, we got to figure out a way to get other people paid to do this, you know, and that was the kind of grassroots effort of us starting, you know, the work that we've been doing now for eight years.

• 1:12:16Speaker 03

  Amber, you were getting emotional when he was sharing that. And I was thinking, he tells this story all the time. You must have heard it many times. Like, what were you experiencing listening to him share that?

• 1:12:30Speaker 04

  I feel like, you know, every time I give public testimony, or even today, I get emotional because we walked up to such a line of no return. And it is just so overwhelmingly humbling to have, you know, a future in front of us. It's a reminder of those times and how difficult they were, how far we've come, how special our love story is, and you know, how much we fought for one another, even despite all of the hardships that we've, you know, endured and the resentment that we've had towards one another previously. Yeah, I always wanted to

• 1:13:15Speaker 04

  fight for him. I love him so much. And it's just a reminder of that.

• 1:13:20Speaker 01

  It's wild how different our relationship is now. I mean, it's literally 180, where Amber mentioned before, we almost couldn't even be in the same room with each other. Now, we literally can't not be in the same room as each other. You know, it's just, it's wild. Like, I tell Amber, if I go on the road for a day or two, I'm just like, when do I go back? Or why isn't she here? You know, it's, it's just, you know, we're doing everything together now. I mean, I consider us best friends. And it's a different, definitely a long ways away from where we were before, Rich.

• 1:13:53Speaker 03

  So for this skeptical minded person who's listening to this and is like, come on, really? You know, did it, did it have that significant of an impact? Like, what did it do? How is it possible that this could be that powerful?

• 1:14:09Speaker 01

  You know, I, I wish I had the answer to that. But I think goes back to when I was done with the experience where I just felt like I had guilt, I had shame, I had...

• 1:14:21Speaker 01

  Which is real depression. I just felt like all that kind of floated away. And of course, that didn't last forever, but it lasted for a really long time. And it enabled me to build, you know, if you want to call them, you know, new neural pathways, right? New neural networks to allow myself to not have guilt, not have shame, not regret, not be upset that you treated Amber terribly for years, or not have regret that you weren't present for, you know, our children. And so you kind of deal with that during the IBG and it goes away. And, and, you know, the weeks and months after during your integration,

• 1:15:01Speaker 01

  you're trying to build those good habits and those good, good pathways in so you can continue healing and you can change them forever because you've, you've just built up these really deep tracks that you couldn't get out of. And now you're building kind of new tracks. And so that takes work. And so Amber, I think has done a really good job of explaining it. It's similar to kind of like a stock market ticker where, you know, you always want to be going up, but after IBG, you're kind of going straight up. But then there's some points where you hit, you know, you, you have some low points, but those low points are so small now. And then you immediately tick back up. So as long as you're trending up, and that's what I feel like IBG does, you, you heal because

• 1:15:45Speaker 01

  life catches up and nobody doesn't have a bad moment, you know, maybe a bad day. And that's how it was. It was, it was, you know, it was five steps forward, one step back, five steps forward, one step back. And that continues on and it continues on today. I mean, I have to work every day to stay where I'm at. And for me now, it's not medicine work. I'll, I'll do medicine work if I need it, but I don't need it. And now it's, you know, it's breath work, it's meditation, it's, it's sensory deprivation, it's being present, it's, for some people, it's prayer, it's reconnecting back to their faith, it's having community, having purpose. And these are all the things I think you can build in once you heal.

• 1:16:32Speaker 04

  I have a lot of observations, you know, having lived through it as well as having witnessed hundreds of others go through our program at Vets. And I think that ultimately what it boils down to and why it's so effective is a couple of things. It seems to give people a completely different perspective. So ego dissolution or ego death sometimes is referred to these treatments. And I think the ego is our protector and it's our best friend and worst enemy. It's the voice that, that says, don't do that because you could be hurt. It's what put the walls up in my heart. It's stories that we tell ourselves, some of them, many of them, not even true.

• 1:17:13Speaker 04

  So it quiets the ego and gives someone a different perspective. So for example, Marcus was bullied as a kid by his dad, by his peers. And then in one of the Ibogaine experiences, correct me if I'm wrong, you saw your bullies being bullied and realized that it wasn't you, there wasn't something fundamentally wrong with you, it's that you became a target for someone who was also being bullied. And so that perspective shift, that rewriting of the narrative, that loss of ego helps someone show up in a way that's far more authentic and then the connections are authentic. Now that leads to what I think is probably the most important part of this, which is that feeling of connectedness.

• 1:17:56Speaker 04

  My observation has been that many that emerged from an Ibogaine or 5MEO or really many psychedelic experiences with various compounds are feeling connected again to self, to purpose, to God, to family, to nature. And they are able to show up for people in a different way that allows further connection. And so we've had people say, I didn't realize an avocado was green. I'm feeling for the first time ever, oranges smell so beautiful. And these are things that because they were so in their minds before, they weren't feeling connected to anything on the outside world.

• 1:18:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I had somebody recently who hasn't been able to smell for seven years smelled.

• 1:18:41Speaker 01

  At the retreat, they were, the chefs were making, squeezing fresh orange juice. And they had like 50 oranges and you could smell it throughout the house. I was like, man, it smells good. Let's go over there. He just turned around and started bawling. He said, I haven't smelled anything in seven years. He's like, that's the most beautiful thing I've ever smelled in my life. And this was, you know, two days after, as I begin experience. And that's what we seeing all the time. Like, what does it do? Like, it's doing real physiological things to the, to the body. I mean, if you want to get into a little bit of that, because you, you talked a little bit about the psychological aspect. But I think, you know, what Stanford has shown and what science is really excited about is the healing properties of the brain, the actual physiological, the biological makeup of the brain.

• 1:19:25Speaker 04

  Well, I'm happy to get into just a high level of review of that because the Stanford study is a big part of the film. Thank goodness. So I thought that I begin might buy a little bit of time. We were doing all these brain treatments because I had become afraid of what Marcus was dealing with on a physiological level from his history of football and blast exposure. And I thought this, you know, might be a temporary Band-Aid. But what ended up happening, and I was observing, was the complete return of Marcus's neurological functioning. So an example of this, he, we had a discussion about filing an extension for our taxes. One night before bed, the next morning, he says, hey, what are we going to do about our taxes? Like tax days, you know, right on the corner.

• 1:20:08Speaker 04

  I'm like, we discussed this out like, it was clearly like alarming. After that, he was reminding me, after I began, he was reminding me of things. Don't forget X, don't forget Y, what about Z? And so I was just astonished. And I reached out to anyone and everyone that I thought would care, researchers, doctors, pathologists, clinicians, military leaders. No one took me seriously. Finally, I was connected to Dr. Nolan Williams at Stanford Brain Stimulation Lab. And he said he would study this because he believed my hypothesis, what I was seeing in regards to the neurological function. And so that component of the film is really what validates so much of this work. The, the.

• 1:20:54Speaker 04

  What they observed in that study was both psychological and physiological PTSD, depression, anxiety, effect sizes improved 86 to 93% cognitive functioning. But then the brain imaging was what was really, really interesting. There was just this return of neurological capacity that they'd never seen before, which is They'd never seen a drug do that. Obviously, more studies need to be done.

• 1:21:21Speaker 03

  Right. Nolan Williams, unfortunately and tragically, has passed away. Is the work at Stanford ongoing in his absence?

• 1:21:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, his team is, he became a very, very close, personal friend of ours. And so his loss has just been tremendously impactful for us, especially because he was such a pioneer in this area of study. And yeah, his team is continuing, but I think everyone has taken a giant step back for just the grief process.

• 1:21:54Speaker 03

  The movie, the documentary opens with interviews with, with veterans who are participating in this Stanford study and kind of closes with them. And you're immediately struck with the vacancy in, in these people's eyes. Like they're just, these people are checked out, you know? And you can see to some extent, like what they're like in the aftermath. And I was craving, like, I want to follow these guys. I want to see what happens with these guys. But it's basically telling the story of the birth of the scientific community, starting to take this seriously and to look at it. The personal testimony is like so wild, you know, like that, that it could be this impactful

• 1:22:34Speaker 03

  from a neurological perspective with respect to TBI, the rewiring of the, you know, neural pathways, the impact on depression, PTSD, and also the very long tail of it. This isn't something that wears off in a week, like at 30 days, at 90, you know, a year later, you know, the significance of the impact is still very resonant, right? Like this has staying power in a way that other treatments.

• 1:23:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would say duration, right? Duration they talk about in the, in the science world, and it seems to have long duration. Many individuals do go back for retreatment. It's still. You know, it's still a drug and it's still a treatment and nothing works one time forever. Um, I liken it to if you go to the gym for a month or two and you get in shape and you stop, probably going to get out of shape, you're probably not going to feel well. So this is something that you may have to continue. I know individuals that go back once a year, just as a reset now, but it's never ever as difficult as the first time. That first time is a real purge. You know, I feel like the first time is like the 70 to 80% there.

• 1:23:44Speaker 01

  And then they may have 20 or 30% to clean up after that. And so individuals now, some go back once a year, just as a reset reboot, just to continue cleaning out the, you know, the filter and making themselves better and, and they're constantly improving. I never hear anyone going back and having like a bad experience after like, oh yeah, I feel incredible again. You know, everything is good. And I'll go back again next year, just as a reboot.

• 1:24:10Speaker 04

  Marcus has gone back, I think he's six times total in eight years almost. Um, so about once every year, but I would say he started in the basement of his soul and what he was experiencing there was so much darkness. Was a reflection of what he was carrying on the inside. And so each year that he's gone back, I think he's gotten a floor higher. He's in a pretty tall skyscraper, but I think he's like standing on the roof now. I think that, you know, the experiences have gotten easier. The last one he called blissful, where before, you know, the first one was really dark and difficult.

• 1:24:40Speaker 01

  Hard to imagine. The last one was, you know, my, my small periods of lightness that I had with Amber and the kids. My last experience was like six hours of nothing but pure bliss, unconditional love, complete kind of connection the whole time. Right? And so that's where I'm at now, at least with that medicine. And I'll just continue doing the things I do every day to continue to heal and. You know, promote that there are treatments out there that, you know, may help individuals that are struggling. And, you know, I do definitely want to say this is something that should not be done on your own. I definitely, you know, we believe full heartedly that or wholeheartedly, um, this needs to be regulated, be done carefully, or especially with the right experts and the

• 1:25:25Speaker 01

  right medical support. And when you put all those things together, then we have even, you know, more healing, right? If you do this kind of wonky, we're going to have bad outcomes and individuals can get hurt. But done the right way, this is true, true healing. And we're not just saving ourselves, we're saving our families, we're saving our children, and we're helping generations. And, and, uh, you know, I mentioned it right from the start, this is the work that we can't get away from. We love doing what we're doing and we'll continue doing it.

• 1:25:56Speaker 03

  I want to get into, uh, the work that you're doing, the service aspect of this that has obviously gendered your lives with so much meaning and purpose. Uh, but, uh, this is the opportunity for me to share what I just went through a little bit. I was gonna ask. Maybe I don't want to be indulgent about it, but you know, I am in the early kind of aftermath of this, you know, experience that rocked me. I mean, I would say to your point about taking it seriously, like it's, it's not nothing. Like this is not for everybody. Like this is an extremely intense experience. Uh, and I didn't, I didn't take the opportunity lightly

• 1:26:35Speaker 03

  either. Uh, and it really, um, it really rocked me. I went into it like it was, it was different from what I saw in the documentary, what I went through, because we did the, the Iboga root. So I'm curious around like what you know around the differences there. So it's all however many alkaloids, uh, not just the ibogaine alkaloid. And it was done, it was conducted. In the Buetti tradition, for the most part, and it begins on Friday night. There's, you know, the indoctrination and kind of there's a lot of ceremony. And, um, and then from Friday night, you know, all the way through the morning, just being just inundated with the, I hesitate to even call it music.

• 1:27:19Speaker 03

  Like, it was just the most confronting, you know, cacophony of sounds. It's wild. That made me feel like I was, you know, chained up in Guantanamo and couldn't escape. Like, it was, and I had a head full of the documentary and I'm like, when am I getting the Polaroids of my childhood? And like, when am I going to reconnect with my inner child? You know, like, I went in for, very much for those reasons. Like, I've, I've been sober for quite a while. Been in 12-step, I've been in talk therapy for decades. I have a men, like, I do a lot, like, and I have healed a lot and grown and evolved and changed and transformed in so many ways. And yet, I'm still hamstrung by some early childhood stuff or, you know, deep, deep

• 1:28:03Speaker 03

  grooves and these patterns that, you know, make me behave in a certain way that no matter what I've done, I, I'm still sort of like prey to them, right? And so, you know, this has the promise of hopefully rewiring some of that or helping me to kind of retell that childhood story. But because I was so attached to that, you know, and like, when am I going to get this? You know, and I'm not getting that. It's like the, the medicine, which is really this consciousness, is provoking me and prodding me and, and trying to root out my defense mechanisms and, you know, all of my resistance around this and like, I'm not doing it right and I'm not seeing what Marcus saw and, you know, and why is this not happening?

• 1:28:45Speaker 03

  You know, and I'm like, you know, it was extremely uncomfortable, like, to the point of like, when is this going to end? And there was a lot of darkness and the hallucinations and the visuals after four spoonfuls of this stuff were coming at me so relentlessly, but I couldn't, I couldn't fixate on any of them and none of them were recognizable. And the moment I kind of focused on one, it would go away and something else was coming at me. So it was a, it was an experience of total disorientation and, and extreme discomfort.

• 1:29:17Speaker 03

  And even now, like, I don't remember a lot of it. So it's not like, oh, I had this specific thing and I can tell you this story and it helped me resolve like this confusion that I had around that. It wasn't linear in that way at all.

• 1:29:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you know, the facilitators and the ones who've been doing this for a long time say about 15 to 20% don't see even any visuals at all. So they go through this whole tough experience without seeing anything, but they're getting the results from it. And so even though they haven't looked into those deep traumas on the, on the drug, on Ibogaine or on ibogina, the weeks after with the integration, you know, the brain's feeling better.

• 1:30:01Speaker 04

  Is that happening for you?

• 1:30:02Speaker 03

  Yeah. So.

• 1:30:04Speaker 01

  Cause you're 19 days.

• 1:30:05Speaker 03

  19 days. Yeah. So essentially, and then, you know, I was comatose the entire day. I couldn't move like the whole next day and then it kicks up again. And this is more of a rebirthing and a reparenting process. And it was very beautiful and, and extremely healing. And it was overseen by women, you know, that in my case was, was, was good. Like there was this like beautiful maternal energy, you know, this like unconditional love that I found to be very helpful. And at the end of it, like, it was really this magical experience of like coming home and, and having kind of, even though I didn't

• 1:30:49Speaker 03

  get like that kind of visual experience of confrontation with my past, a sense of completion and the beginning of telling a new story around that, that has left me feeling resolved in many ways over stuff that has caused me just anxiety. And, you know, at the root. Similar to you, like, I grew up in a household where it's like, if you're not achieving, like, you're, you know, you have to earn love, basically, you know? And the way you do that is by distinguishing yourself and going out in the world and conquering and accomplishing things. And, um, and so it's always this kind of external drive to be recognized, to be validated,

• 1:31:34Speaker 03

  or to feel like you're only as valuable as, you know, what you're able to kind of show other people in terms of like what you've done in the world. And, um, that can be incredibly empowering when you're building a life. And as you were saying earlier, like, these superpowers become your Achilles' heels. And it's really a weakness now that has gotten in the, I've built this incredible life. I have everything I ever wanted and then some. And yet I struggle to experience joy and gratitude and, and, and the ability to be present and the full extent of intimacy with my wife and, you know, the richness of my relationships with my children. Like, these, these things are difficult for me to connect with.

• 1:32:16Speaker 03

  And I went and did this because I, I recognize that and that's what I, that's what I want, you know? And, and, and that's what my family deserves, you know, that I've been unable to completely fulfill. Uh, and, and like I said at the outset, I do feel like it has been this incredible gift to myself and to my family, but it's also not a panacea. Like, my wife will tell you that I was crusty this morning, you know? I was working out in the gym and she came by to say hi and I was a little like, you know, like, and, but I caught myself and I'm like, hey, that you're off your, you're off your game a little bit.

• 1:32:53Speaker 03

  But I would say, overall, in the balance of things, I feel incredibly calm in comparison to how I'm usually just kind of like clenching and anxious and hurrying and rushing around. Uh, and then also, as somebody with a long history with, you know, alcoholism and addiction, Just my relationship with craving has changed a lot. Like you were saying, like you can't do stint, you know, like I didn't have coffee for, I can't go a day without coffee. Like I had to go, you know, I didn't have coffee for a couple of days before the thing Friday, you know, by the time it's Monday, like I'm still hallucinating. Like this is so powerful. It's not like psilocybin,

• 1:33:36Speaker 03

  like it's in your system. I'm seeing stuff, you know, even though it's been a couple of days afterwards. But by Monday morning, I'm like, I'm gonna have a cup of coffee. I'm so looking forward to this. I can't wait. Make the coffee, take a couple sips. And I was like,

• 1:33:50Speaker 04

  You take it or leave it?

• 1:33:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was like, I'm really, you know, and I poured it down. And that's not to say like, there's coffee in there. It's like, I have a quick coffee. Like, I am not, you know, but I'm probably drinking 20% of what I was like, it's just, it's different. Like, I didn't expect that. And when you hear these stories of the impact on addiction, like now I can really understand that. Like, I've never known what it's, what it's like to not feel that pull, you know?

• 1:34:19Speaker 01

  Coffee, tobacco, alcohol, these are all the things that most of the guys just get rid, like they're done once or after the, they go through the treatment. Do you feel like the, the bricks have been kind of pulled out of your backpack after?

• 1:34:33Speaker 03

  I do feel lighter. I just feel like it's fine.

• 1:34:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:34:38Speaker 03

  You know, it's like, I don't, everything's good. I don't have to, I'm not, I, I, I don't feel that like attachment to things having to be a certain way in the same way. And like I said, like, I'm not cured or anything like that. I'm just noticing it's subtle. And it's making me understand the importance of the integration process. So I've heard both of you talk about, like, yeah, it's, you gotta do the work. It's about the, and it's like, those still sound like, Vague terms to me, like, what does that mean? I don't know that I really have like a program locked in for how I'm practicing that. And I want to make sure, especially in this special time of neuroplasticity, that I'm doing what I need to do.

• 1:35:23Speaker 03

  So that I'm taking full advantage of like this moment that I'm experiencing right now. So that I can take the actions that will lead me towards the reason why I did it in the first place.

• 1:35:36Speaker 01

  Like you caught yourself quote unquote crusty in this morning. I think that's one of the biggest.

• 1:35:41Speaker 04

  I was gonna say that.

• 1:35:42Speaker 01

  That's one of the biggest takeaways is that I can catch myself now before I react. Where before it was pure reaction off of like impulse. We're now impulse control or where you're just more aware before you say something that may hurt your wife or your children. And I will catch myself now. And that's taken years to be able to do that where before it just may happen.

• 1:36:08Speaker 04

  Even if he does it and acknowledges it to me, it sort of like erases the fact that it ever happened because he's never been able to acknowledge it. So he's not only aware, he's, you know, apologizing or just not, it's just not happening. But I think that those micro shifts are actually macro in the lives of those that they impact. So are you working with an integration coach?

• 1:36:35Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:36:36Speaker 04

  That's probably the number one.

• 1:36:38Speaker 01

  I would highly recommend that.

• 1:36:39Speaker 03

  You gonna hook me up?

• 1:36:40Speaker 01

  For sure. We have plenty. I work with, again, a different person, but he's a, works with a lot of first responders and veterans, licensed therapist, psychedelic integration coach, actual Buddhist monk.

• 1:36:53Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:36:53Speaker 01

  He was everything right after my last treatment. And he goes right to the soul of it. So he's a surgeon. He's like, I don't want you as a client for the next three years. That's not what I'm doing here. Like I want for three weeks, I want to fix it, get you on the right path and then move on. And that's what we do. And we just work through. Cuts right to the heart of it. And I think that's would be, you know, someone like him is someone that I always feel everybody should work with because you're just kind of solving all the issues that you're kind of talking to us about right now. And they're able to just get to that point. So I highly recommend healing compounds with the right integration coach after these.

• 1:37:34Speaker 04

  It was explained to me that, and even though your experience wasn't exactly maybe how you had envisioned it, maybe the next one would be completely different. Years have been completely different. Did you do five MEO DMT?

• 1:37:45Speaker 03

  No, that was the other thing. So, so first of all, yeah, like I'm beating myself. I'm not doing it wrong. What am I missing? This is not working. I traveled all this distance.

• 1:37:53Speaker 01

  And that's common, by the way.

• 1:37:55Speaker 03

  This is a way.

• 1:37:56Speaker 01

  That's everybody, right?

• 1:37:56Speaker 03

  I've been told, like, you're not doing it wrong. Like, it's doing exactly what it's supposed to be doing. And you're going to get out of this what you need to be getting out of. So, you know, disabuse yourself of that. But I didn't do, yeah, didn't, this didn't have the five.

• 1:38:11Speaker 01

  Components.

• 1:38:11Speaker 03

  MEO DMT. The DMT aspect of it. And so I'm curious around like, why that's part of the protocol that you did and that you take veterans through. And maybe did I miss something? Because I didn't have that.

• 1:38:24Speaker 01

  I don't think so. This, the Stanford study proved that you, you don't need five MEO DMT after the IBGAIN, because it did everything it needed to do in terms of when you.

• 1:38:32Speaker 04

  They just looked at IBGAIN.

• 1:38:34Speaker 01

  Right. So they did the imaging, and then the symptom rating scales, and everybody's scores literally just went down to practically nothing. That was without the five, because we had to do an observational study, and it was only on IBGAIN. What five MEO does, there was a doctor in Mexico years ago that saw, because IBGAIN could be so difficult, five MEO is almost like the polishing. It's very, very spiritual psychedelic, you know, extreme connected. To oneness, source, unconditional love, however you want to do it. So if you have a very difficult I begin experience, you have your gray day. Five MEO kind of brings you back to like making sense of all the darkness that may have just happened. And so that's where the balance.

• 1:39:19Speaker 01

  However, again, going back to the Stanford study, it just shows as the weeks kind of pass by, you kind of get to that place anyway. So it's almost like doing it overnight or slowly.

• 1:39:31Speaker 04

  I think that if I were to describe it, I begin for those in our program, anyway, has been really effective in closing the door on the past and no longer letting that impact how you're showing up in the world. But five MEO tends to open a door to the future and really, you know, get someone into feeling more connected.

• 1:39:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, or, you know, I like what Trevor down in Amber says. He says, the way he explains it to people is I begin kind of power washes you from the inside. And we know how hard power washing is. It could, you know, takes the skin off you and five MEO kind of polishes you after that. So you kind of have like the hard sandpaper initially to, to, you know, get to the root cause. And then five kind of just polishes you and kind of makes it, makes it final. Yeah, that's a non-medical perspective, right?

• 1:40:21Speaker 04

  One of the coaches, I think, also described this to me that like, you know, we naturally have these deep rooted neural pathways and Marcus's neural pathways and actually mine for a long period of time were just like straight to the bottom of the hill. And so, you know, anything could have sent him just straight to the bottom of the hill. What I began did for him and has done for so many others is clear those or not clear, cover those tracks. And then what working with an integration coach does is whenever you're naturally wanting to get in them, they're covered, you can pivot, pivot and create new tracks. And so that makes a lot of sense to me. I think that it's, you know, it's been very intentional for those in our program to work with the coach to create those new tracks and really to give advantage of that period of neuroplasticity.

• 1:41:05Speaker 03

  I can tell you that I do feel different. And, you know, after decades of trying lots of different things, I mean, my situation is nowhere, it's, it can't even be classified in the same universe in terms of like the intensity of what you've experienced, but we all have our, our pain, right? We've all, we all have our lived experience and our challenges and. It has been quite profound in that regard. And I just want to say that this is something that I changed my mind about over an extended period of time. You know, I'm very, people who listen to this podcast have heard me say this before, but I'm so indoctrinated into 12-step. I mean, it saved my life, you know, and it continues to save my life. You know, and it's

• 1:41:48Speaker 03

  very binary. It's like you don't, you're using or you're not using. You know what I mean? And there's no room for a conversation around like what we're talking about today. And the notion that an extremely powerful mind-altering substance has the answers to all the questions that you've been seeking your whole life, like is in and of itself a powerful intoxicant. And it's, you know, it's scary for somebody like me because it represents a potential portal back to the person you were before, you know? And it took me a long time to kind of overcome that, that idea and my resistance around this. And it happened because so many people had have come on the podcast and not because

• 1:42:33Speaker 03

  they were here to talk about this thing, it would just come up, you know, and they would share some experience. And so very slowly over, over a period of time, combined with all the, you know, evidence that is coming out from Johns Hopkins and, you know, Stanford, et cetera, it just became undeniable that, that there's really something here to, to look at and take seriously. And, and I'm so glad that I've had these experiences. And again, they're not, I don't know that they're for everybody. I don't want to be in a position where I'm recommending this to anybody.

• 1:43:03Speaker 01

  We never do. And I'm extremely careful about that. I don't preach this. I don't tell people when they come to me, like, this is what you have to do. I say, hey, here's all the information. You should do your own research and decide whether it's for you. Because when you were saying earlier, This is not for everyone. It is sort of the nuclear option. You know, it's, it's, I would, it's one of the hardest things you can do. Not everybody needs to do that. And so I think it's very important that you do your own research. You look into everything, the, the risks, the rewards, you know? If it's something that, hey, I've tried almost everything and it hasn't worked for me. You know, then this is something I think that you can potentially, you know, explore further.

• 1:43:44Speaker 04

  How long were you sitting with the decision? Did it?

• 1:43:47Speaker 03

  For ibog?

• 1:43:47Speaker 04

  Take a while, yeah.

• 1:43:48Speaker 03

  Well, I did a, a year and a handful of months ago, I did a psilocybin, psilocybin and MDMA experience. And that was my first experience with, with psychedelics. So that kind of broke the seal.

• 1:44:00Speaker 04

  How was that?

• 1:44:00Speaker 03

  So it was many years building to that experience. And when I was drinking and using, I never did psychedelics. So I had no frame of reference.

• 1:44:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:44:09Speaker 03

  I didn't really know what to expect going into that. And that was a very beautiful and, and life-changing experience. It was quite profound in many ways. And it was also, you were talking about ego death. Like I had that ego death and that disillusion of self and the, the merging and the oneness and the, the collapsing of, of linear time and birth and death. And it's all happening in multiple timelines. Like all of that, you know, I had that experience, which was amazing. So I guess I went into the iboga experience with some, because that was my only experience. Like, oh, this will be some version of that. And it was, I did not have ego death or, I just felt like I was literally, you know, like a prisoner.

• 1:44:54Speaker 04

  Oh, no.

• 1:44:55Speaker 03

  It was very difficult. It was very, very difficult and uncomfortable.

• 1:45:01Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 1:45:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:45:02Speaker 04

  I'm so sorry to hear that.

• 1:45:03Speaker 03

  But no, but I, that's obviously what I needed, you know?

• 1:45:06Speaker 01

  I think you become more grateful, right? Because of that hard experience, say, okay, I don't want to. Ever do that again? I want to experience life again. And you know, they say that when you do have these near near death experiences, that you come out the other side with this gratitude of just being able to breathe and being on earth and being in a country and having a wife and children.

• 1:45:27Speaker 04

  The fact that you're not in prison.

• 1:45:28Speaker 01

  Right. And you just have a new perspective on everything. And I think it allows you to connect with people more, to not be as angry, not be, take things as seriously, as you said, be able to let go a little bit.

• 1:45:42Speaker 04

  Also, like, you are truly right in the smack dab of your integration period. At Betts, we recommend that for a period of 90 days, that someone is just solely focused on

• 1:45:54Speaker 01

  Them.

• 1:45:55Speaker 04

  Them. Yeah, yeah. Because so much shifts and changes.

• 1:45:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, we don't, we don't ask for any favors. We have a rule, like, there's no, we don't ask you to

• 1:46:03Speaker 04

  We don't even allow people to

• 1:46:04Speaker 01

  Go on a podcast or interviews.

• 1:46:05Speaker 04

  Someone could say, I've got a donor ready to write a check for you.

• 1:46:10Speaker 01

  And we're always like, go, go in great.

• 1:46:12Speaker 04

  Let's talk to you in 90 days.

• 1:46:13Speaker 03

  That's not been my, I just flew back from South by Southwest last night. It was just insane for like the last five days. I've not, yeah, I haven't been like in some kind of Shaolin monk, you know,

• 1:46:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:46:24Speaker 03

  Repose.

• 1:46:25Speaker 01

  Century deprivation might be a good, might be a good thing.

• 1:46:29Speaker 03

  I want to talk more about the impact that you guys have had through the work that you've done. And maybe let's contextualize it by talking about the mental health crisis that is experienced by veterans and first responders. Like, what are the depression rates and the suicide rates? Like, what are we actually contending with?

• 1:46:50Speaker 01

  We're just, in, in the US alone, we'll just look at the statistics. One in five individuals have a mental health issue. I think those are the individuals that actually come forward. They're saying maybe closer to 30% of individuals are literally struggling with depression. About 30 to 50% of those individuals have something considered treatment-resistant depression, and it has nothing to do with the individual. Like, there's nothing wrong. It would be similar to a person taking a cancer drug and it just not working. Similar here, right? How we're treating individuals, really, right now, the standard of care is, is antidepressants and some type of talk therapy. But when it doesn't work for millions of individuals in the population, what do you do? And so advanced treatments are, you know, slowly coming to

• 1:47:35Speaker 01

  market, they're slowly getting FDA approved. We know psychedelics are An answer to these individuals that don't respond, but this is a serious issue. I think with veterans, you're you're likely, the percentage to say you're likely to die four times greater by your own hand than in combat. Some numbers that are just astounding. We've lost just over 7,000 after, you know, nine 11. We've lost over 150,000 by individuals that died by suicide.

• 1:48:05Speaker 03

  Seven thousand due to

• 1:48:07Speaker 01

  Due to combat.

• 1:48:08Speaker 03

  Combat.

• 1:48:08Speaker 01

  Due to combat.

• 1:48:09Speaker 03

  150,000.

• 1:48:10Speaker 01

  Over 150,000, might be over 155,000 due to suicide.

• 1:48:13Speaker 03

  That's a shocking.

• 1:48:15Speaker 01

  It's a shocking number that we've known for all along. We've talked about it, but I don't think we've really highlighted it. And when individuals, civilians hear that number, they usually just go, wow. Like, I didn't know the issue was that strong. And it really is. I mean, we do have, and it's not just in the U.S. It's globally, right? It's, there's a lot of factors and I'm not going to make believe I know all the factors. Social media, there's just too many inputs and too many things out there telling us what we have to do to get better and what we shouldn't be doing. And so there's a ton of anxiety. I mean, you and I are wearing our whoops and God forbid, we're not in the green one day. You know, we, we tend to overanalyze that and think there's something wrong with us.

• 1:48:57Speaker 01

  So we might be even causing more anxiety on ourselves because of what's going on. And so we have to figure out a way to, to get to the root cause of that.

• 1:49:05Speaker 04

  You know what started out, I think, as a quest to help our friends was accelerated by the suicide death of one of them. Like, you know, it's very non customary in our community to say that you're struggling. And so I think the veteran community at large, especially once their civilians feel completely disconnected, and then there's a further like issue there with not admitting that you need help. And so there's a lot of suffering and silence happening. One of our close friends took his life and that really forced us to come out with our own struggles and basically have the courage to start a conversation that it was very taboo.

• 1:49:51Speaker 04

  And the eight years since.

• 1:49:54Speaker 04

  I think the conversation has become much more front and center. And we have to think of new ways, like, you know, war technology changes, the battlefield changes, the SSRI was, is over 30 years old, so like 35 or more years old. We would never be fighting a current day war with technology from 35 years ago. But yet that's what we're fighting this horrific suicide epidemic with. And so we hope that by advancing the conversation and changing the narrative around like this sort of new innovative way of looking at mental health, that it will eclipse the veteran community.

• 1:50:37Speaker 03

  Ironically, though, it's, it's the ancient way. Like, this is better.

• 1:50:41Speaker 04

  That's so true.

• 1:50:42Speaker 03

  This isn't new. Yeah. And that was one reflection that I had on, on having done the iboga route as opposed to ibogaine and kind of reflecting on the Western insistence on like, okay, like the Buie, these people have been doing this for, I don't know, however many hundreds of thousands of years, you know, like, and over that period of time have like developed a very specific ceremony. And then the Westerner comes in and says, okay, well, we'll take it from here. Like, yeah, we just need this and then we're, we'll, we're going to do it this way because we think we know better. You know what I mean? I think that's the danger in the commodification and the commercialization around this.

• 1:51:25Speaker 03

  Do you guys think about that aspect of it?

• 1:51:28Speaker 01

  We have, and we know that there's really good iboga operations that are going on throughout the world. And for us as a veteran 501(c)(3) that's operating in the US, we've had to be very careful about how we've taken this to the public. And we've sat down with a ton of lawmakers in many states and Texas and federally. And, you know, it was a very common theme of saying, hey, this has to be done a certain way or we're not even going to talk to you. And so we've had to stay very hard lined on, you know, FDA approved, clinician guided access to, to these medicines. And granted, You know, going back, we know the traditional approaches work.

• 1:52:11Speaker 01

  You know, are we going to be able to get the traditional approaches here in the U.S.? Is that going to be a model that we are going to be able to use? Or I just think that as, as these treatments get FDA approved, it's just going to open up more of the traditional market outside the U.S. For people to explore those and just at least feel more comfortable traveling out.

• 1:52:32Speaker 04

  There's also an endangerment issue with the aboga plant. And from like a scale issue, there's also a sustainability issue. And so I think that, you know, a synthetic drug offered in a VA setting, in a subsidized manner, in a VA setting would be, you know, what's best for our constituency. But there's, there's a lot of considerations.

• 1:52:57Speaker 03

  There's a multitude of issues. I mean, on the one hand, you're fighting the kind of legal regulatory landscape. This is illegal in the United States. You have to travel outside of the country to do it. And there are, I'm sure there's good actor, I know there's good actors and there's, I'm sure there's a lot of bad actors, right? And the first hurdle is like FDA approval and kind of clearing the, clearing a path towards this becoming legal and taken seriously. And so much of your work is around the conversation, this conversation that's going on right now about how to achieve that. And we're seeing progress in places like Texas and Colorado, where these discussions are happening right now. I think we're probably still a long way away from it.

• 1:53:40Speaker 03

  And, you know, not for nothing, like, how is Big Pharma perceiving this? Like, it's an existential threat to the SSRI, you know, market and how, you know, we've been traditionally treating mental health disorders. And perhaps at the same time, it's also an opportunity for them. And what does that look like for them? No pharmaceutical company wants a one-time treatment. They're never going to make any money off that. And so, you know, that's a whole thing that's going on in the background that I'm sure you know a lot more about than I do. And yet, if that pathway gets cleared and there is a regulatory framework for this becoming legal in the United States, what does that look like?

• 1:54:22Speaker 03

  How is it, how is it regulated so that, you know, there are guardrails and, you know, policies and processes so that it's administered in the way that you would like it to be administered? And then there's the accessibility issue, which I know you care a lot about. Like, right now, you can go to certain clinics and some of them are really expensive, you know, and this is obviously preventing the people who could benefit from this the most access to these kinds of treatments.

• 1:54:50Speaker 04

  Yeah. There's so many issues, you're right. And Rich, it's, there's, there's an issue every which way you look. For us, we've chosen to stay so focused on our core constituency, which is veterans. And so advocating for veterans has actually proven to be a very bipartisan issue that we've been successful at achieving milestones that others thought would be impossible. One of the biggest challenges is that iboga grows in a completely different part of the world. And so because it's Schedule I here in the United States and because the cardiac risk exists and it's practically impossible to even research, you can't get it here even if research were approved.

• 1:55:35Speaker 04

  Well, if research were approved through the FDA, you, you could get it here. But, you know, the problem right now is that it can't be grown here and it is Schedule I.

• 1:55:45Speaker 01

  The resources are starting to dwindle. You know, we heard recently that this is not just a US issue, it's a global issue. But we've heard recently that there's a ton of Chinese influence now in Gabon and West Africa and they're buying up as many iboga, iboga plants and iboga farms and they're bringing it back to China. And, you know, this is just, you know, what happens. And so there are so many issues. Like when you stopped before, like you had opened up a wide array of things that are happening. And so we're just trying to stay focused like on what we do. You know, we can't do everything and so we picked a path and that's the path. You know, we support many different paths, you know, but we do have to be careful about like

• 1:56:28Speaker 01

  where we travel, especially with the individuals that we're dealing with.

• 1:56:32Speaker 03

  So in the aftermath of your first experience, you you basically have this epiphany like I we have to bring this to, you know, the people we know who could benefit from this. And you've realized that you've manifested that you have two organizations. You've got this organization, VETS, Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions. And that's the organization that you you sort of get a inside look at in the documentary where you're bringing other first responders and veterans, you know, through a version of what you experienced. A 501(c)(3) that basically helps to bankroll these experiences and make them available. And then you also have this other organization, Tara Mind. Can you talk about what that is?

• 1:57:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, Tara Mind, I was approached by investors a number of years ago to just say, hey, what you're doing with vets and veterans is amazing. And you've had so much success there. How do you take what you did for them and take it to the private sector? And so I was hired into a VC to try to figure out a business model to say, okay, how do we take what you did for veterans? How do we transfer that to the private sector? And it was really difficult to figure out because first off, these drugs are not FDA approved. And so we can't really do that. And so we started out with what was FDA approved? And what the platform is, is really it's a technology platform to be able to connect integrative clinics, psychiatrists,

• 1:57:56Speaker 01

  advanced psychiatry with patients, make that whole experience like easy and accessible and like a white glove concierge approach. So similar to what we did with vets where a person applies, they come in and we kind of handhold them the whole way. We give them therapy, we get them to treatment, and then we monitor their outcomes. It's the same exact thing that we're doing with Tara Mind, except the business model is we take it to employers. So think of like JP Morgan or Goldman Sachs offers up healthcare benefits for their employees. This is a healthcare benefit. Today, it's not Ibogaine or psilocybin. Very soon, today it's. IV Ketamine at a, at a advanced psychiatry clinic, or it's the TMS Saint protocol that came out of Stanford

• 1:58:39Speaker 01

  that just was FDA approved and has a three day remission rate for someone who has major depressive disorder. So there are treatments out there that weren't here just four years ago. And that's what the platform does, right? And it's a, it's a commercial business. We work with healthcare systems. We work with payers because the idea is we've built the chassis now. So when IBGAIN comes through, when psilocybin comes through, we've built the network across the US, working with employers, working with healthcare systems. We could just take those treatments and plug them into our system. And so if I'm an employee and I have, I've struggled with antidepressants and talk therapy and it don't respond, well, what's available? So then we step in and say, well, Saint TMS is available, Advanced TMS,

• 1:59:22Speaker 01

  or maybe IV Ketamine because you have treatment resistant depression. Eventually it'd be psilocybin assisted therapy or MDMA assisted therapy. So that's the commercial business that TARA Mind is exploring. And what I talked about earlier with subsidies, the reason we're doing that is because most people can't pay for these advanced treatments.

• 1:59:39Speaker 04

  I would love to talk about Vets. Um, Vets is the grassroots effort, which has since turned into a truly, I'd say we have global reach 501(c)(3) that came from Marcus's declaration immediately after IBGAIN was this is exactly what his teammates needed. Now, what we weren't prepared for was what was intended to help his friends and former teammates would have global impact. We are more or less three organizations operating under one umbrella. We provide programmatic services. We conduct research or, you know, partner with academic partners like Stanford. And then we have a very robust policy and advocacy department. When the three work together, they're in perfect coordination

• 2:00:23Speaker 04

  to take the voices from our programs paired alongside the data like from Stanford to go to state capitals, to go to Washington DC and educate and advocate and then actually put legislation together to unlock funding. What many don't realize is that it's practically impossible to get research going on a Schedule I substance. It's, you can do it, but it takes years and millions of dollars. So we work to reduce those barriers to research and expand access to care. Programmatically, we're providing a wide variety of services to the veterans that come through our program.

• 2:01:01Speaker 04

  We do the integration support, the subsidy to go have the treatment. We have offerings every day of the week, workshops, spouse support, an ambassador program so they can plug in and give back. So, you know, we're really proud of that. But the, the way that we're going to reach scale is through the policy piece. And the difficulties around research are enough of a hurdle, but veterans are largely excluded from those studies anyway because their health histories are too complex. So this is why we are so committed to the policy piece and giving veterans access here

• 2:01:43Speaker 04

  in the United States. What we're doing is great. It's not sustainable from the vantage point of like the film, for example, we received a 500% spike in applications immediately after the film premiered on Netflix, when we were already only able to provide support for one out of every 10 that we received. So we were getting 45, 50, 60 applications a day and we can approve five per week.

• 2:02:12Speaker 01

  Right. So if we can, let's say, fund 300 special operations individuals in a year, and we are, and then we're saving 300 lives and families and generations, but what is 300 compared to the numbers we were seeing earlier, millions of Americans that, you know, we can't support at this time. So as to Amber's point, policy change, changing policy enables to open up that access for more individuals to receive treatment.

• 2:02:38Speaker 04

  100% donor dependent. So at any time, you know, the work could stop if we don't raise the funds to continue. So it's a serious.

• 2:02:47Speaker 03

  Has the documentary opened doors on the Hill? Do you have champions in the Senate or Congress who are, who are fostering this conversation?

• 2:02:56Speaker 04

  Very much so.

• 2:02:56Speaker 03

  Or subcommittee hearings or anything like that?

• 2:02:58Speaker 04

  Very much.

• 2:02:58Speaker 03

  Like what's happening?

• 2:02:59Speaker 04

  Yes. Marcus was actually part of the first ever Senate hearing on, or it was a Senate roundtable.

• 2:03:06Speaker 01

  On psychedelic. Psychedelic treatment. They had some of the top pharmaceutical companies there that are developing these drugs, psilocybin, MDMA, they had the VA there. We showed the documentary, which is an extremely powerful, moving, educational film. And we did that in Texas. We were able to get passed a bill in Texas that appropriates $50 million, paired with a drug developer, so $100 million, but it was all from the film. We show the film. Individuals or politicians who have never been exposed to any of this see that and they go, I didn't know, right? It's kind of like when I was approached with Ibogaine initially, like this is some hippie drug. They go, oh, wow, this is like real and people are healing. Like, we need to get behind this. We need to research it.

• 2:03:52Speaker 01

  And so the film has been such a

• 2:03:54Speaker 04

  It's been shown in a number of states and we're working in this session alone. We're working in 22 states at various levels. Yeah, so.

• 2:04:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:04:01Speaker 04

  And we've unlocked, I think, we just got another 5 million. So probably around 130 million in research funding just in the last couple of years. Yeah.

• 2:04:11Speaker 01

  Wow. And not us, but like the different institutions and studies.

• 2:04:15Speaker 03

  And it takes time, right? Like, and you still have to be patient. This is like, it just moves at a glacial pace, right? But I do feel like you are approximating like an inflection point with this. You know, it's reaching a kind of saturation point in terms of awareness. At least it feels like that to me. Maybe I'm in my bubble.

• 2:04:33Speaker 04

  I think you're right.

• 2:04:34Speaker 01

  No, you're right. And even if a politician doesn't necessarily today have the ability to, let's just say, approve something, that same politician is sending us a friend or a veteran to go through treatment. So at the individual level, I think everybody gets it. But when you're talking about the system, you know, the system has risks and they have to think of, you know, a lot more than just helping an individual. So those same individuals that are not sure yet are actually, they also actually send us individuals all the time and say, hey, this person tried X, Y, and Z. You really need to take care of them. So we're seeing that starting to happen.

• 2:05:11Speaker 04

  There's an open mindedness, yeah.

• 2:05:12Speaker 03

  Yeah. You mentioned testifying on the Hill or being part of a subcommittee hearing where there were pharmaceutical companies. Like, what is the vibe, you know, from? Those organizations and like, are they seeing the future with this?

• 2:05:26Speaker 01

  They are.

• 2:05:27Speaker 03

  Are they resisting it?

• 2:05:28Speaker 01

  They're seeing the future and what they're doing is just like many commercial businesses. You have the, the folks that are the startups. So you have the small pharmaceutical companies that are doing this with.

• 2:05:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, there were no big pharmaceutical companies.

• 2:05:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, pharmaceutical companies have stepped in and, and said, we're taking this through the FDA. So it's all the typical startup biotech companies. But then as they get through their clinical trials, maybe phase one, maybe now in phase two. That's what we usually see. They get to phase two. Now J and J steps in or Merck, more Eli Lilly. So they're jumping on once like the risk has gone away and they're seeing that there's a possibility for this to get through. The pharmaceutical companies are coming in. They're just coming in the later stages of what we're seeing.

• 2:06:11Speaker 03

  The corporate behemoths that stand to benefit the most though, are the insurance companies. Because when you look at these statistics and the impact, you can imagine them seeing like how much money they can save. Because if this is so effective, then they're not going to have to be paying out down the line on, you know, when these mental health problems metastasize into, you know, worse, worse conditions. And that's a very powerful lobby to like have on your side, you know, like this juggernaut that could actually, you know, help drive change.

• 2:06:41Speaker 01

  I think once the payers realize that this will save money in the long term and maybe not overnight. Because as we were talking about earlier, these are expensive treatments. They'll probably continue to be expensive. But saving an individual from years of suffering, the cost of that, the productivity, the absenteeism, if you're talking about in the workforce, the ER visits, you know, the payers are and eventually go, well, wait a minute. If we give this person like psilocybin and all those problems go away, how much money do we save? So to your point, yes, I think payers are starting to see that in the insurance companies that if they get behind this, then, you know, it will save them in the long run.

• 2:07:17Speaker 04

  Well, the entire system needs to level up, but I, I have hope that it's happening in treating root cause versus symptoms. Like there's so much of that happening and so much waste because of it and delaying of the inevitable.

• 2:07:30Speaker 03

  But there's still a lot of baggage. And I say this from personal experience, like when you talk about these kinds, it's like, really? You know, what are we doing here? You know, so what is it that you want to say to the person who has been watching this whole thing and is still skeptical?

• 2:07:47Speaker 04

  I would say. Good for them for not ever having been in a place where they're willing to do anything to save someone they love. I would say, um, let's count your blessings because

• 2:08:03Speaker 04

  when you're in that place, nothing is off the table.

• 2:08:06Speaker 01

  And I would say be interested, be curious. I think we need to be lifelong learners and grow. And, and if we just, um, you know, put our hands over our mouth and our, over our ears and didn't see what's being innovated and what's being out there, then we're just like, you know, to me and Amber, like, it's always about growth and innovation. And so those that are skeptical, like, just do your homework, do your research. Again, we're not here to preach, but you'll find out, you'll talk to enough people that have been through these type of treatments and had their life turned around completely. And, you know, don't believe us, you know, believe everybody else. And that's the same thing I do. When people ask me, should I do this? I say, well, do you want to do this? Are you ready for it?

• 2:08:48Speaker 01

  Have you talked to anybody? Like, I'm not going to convince you. I just give you all the information you need to make an informed decision. And I think that's what we're trying to do with the film and with the work we're doing.

• 2:08:58Speaker 03

  With the veterans that you've worked with, what is, what is perhaps the most extreme example of before and after?

• 2:09:05Speaker 04

  I would say, um, we try to not get involved in like an active crisis situation because we just aren't equipped to handle. However, there have been a couple of, um, situations and referrals, friends of friends or whatnot, that have had active suicide, like intervention during suicide, that have come through the program and are some of our most ardent ambassadors today. And to see that sort of turnaround where one life that was on the cusp of being ended is now having such a positive impact on countless other lives

• 2:09:46Speaker 04

  is just the most gratifying thing. And I look at Marcus's life and how close, you know, we probably were to losing him. Having him back for our family and generations would be more than enough. But I look at the fact that he's still here and how many other people have heard his story and helped someone, gotten help for themselves, or turned their lives around. And it's just remarkable, the power of one life.

• 2:10:15Speaker 01

  To your point earlier about, you know, following individuals after treatment. So just the two guys in the movie and the documentary, Matty and DJ, they're literally living their best lives right now. It's incredible to speak with them and just like, kind of what they're doing. And this is years later, right? And they're, they're just doing things that they've never done before. They're looking at the world completely different. Their lives are good, their families are good, and they just keep getting better. You know, it's, it's, uh, it's pretty wonderful.

• 2:10:43Speaker 04

  Living life, I think, is on this sort of like continuum of white knuckling and thriving. And most people who come through our program, us included, were white knuckling slash surviving. When you can take someone from surviving to thriving, and they show up for themselves and the world in such a different way, it just creates a ripple out effect amongst humanity that holds so much promise.

• 2:11:12Speaker 03

  The ripple effect is something I've been thinking a lot about. Yeah, I mean, just both of you and, you know, the power of you together, like the, the extent to which you have effectuated change by taking this personal experience that you had and turning it into, you know, a service on behalf of humanity. And what has blossomed from that is really remarkable. But on the individual level, like, the notion that you can leverage this, this medicine to heal a very old wound, a wound that has persisted through generations, that you have inherited, you know, by dint of just being born into the life that you were born into,

• 2:11:54Speaker 03

  allows you to interrupt this pattern that would go on unabated. And so the ripple effect continues across future generations that aren't even born yet. And, you know, take somebody who has inherited, you know, a generational trauma wound.

• 2:12:11Speaker 03

  That's spilling into their kids and their, you know, it's like, and then it gets perpetuated, you know, on and on and on and on. And then to be the intervention and say, no more, this ends. Like, is there any more powerful, you know, thing that you could do with your life? Like, on some level, I think about like, that's what we're here to do, right? We're here to spare the next generation our pain.

• 2:12:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:12:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. What I, what I want to say, Rich, is like, you know, we're doing our work. And I don't know if you've thought about this yet, but for you now speaking about this in your platform, think of how many thousands of people are gonna, are gonna start reaching out for treatment, are gonna start looking into these, are gonna get better just because of you. And that's kind of how we look at this is that individuals have platforms that have been, have had success, are able to perpetuate to everyone else that is seeking, searching for answers. And so just remember that, that now you're a person that has the ability to literally touch, yeah, millions of people that are, you know, struggling like we were.

• 2:13:17Speaker 03

  On that note, for the person who now is thinking, all right, I'm excited to learn more. Where do I go? How do I get involved? How do I, how do I contribute to vets? How do I learn more about what vets is doing? How do I connect somebody who I know is suffering? Or if I'm suffering myself, how do I?

• 2:13:34Speaker 04

  There are a couple of things.

• 2:13:35Speaker 03

  Find the solution.

• 2:13:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, there are a couple of things. So the website of vets is vetsolutions.org. And it's, you know, all about the organization itself, the nonprofit. We are donor dependent, so always looking to partner with people who are willing to give whatever to the, to the cause. And then Marcus and I have, you know, typically been pretty private and found ourselves sort of thrust out amongst this movement as.

• 2:14:02Speaker 04

  Leaders and it hasn't always been comfortable for us because you know, we've been going through our own processes over the years, but also pretty private. We have recently decided to sort of, and we've been building, building companies, building movements, et cetera. We have recently decided to step out from behind the laptop and launch a podcast where we talk more about our story and things that have worked for us, both as a couple and individuals. I think one of the really important things about our story is that I had to, to get out of the caretaker mode and get on my own path of healing. This wasn't all Marcus. This was, you know, a lot of my own personal inner work as well. And when I got on my path and he got

• 2:14:44Speaker 04

  on his path as individuals, we finally met up. And in doing so, we've been able to carve out a whole new future for ourselves. And so we're really excited to share more about that on our podcast, which will be launching soon. So in addition to vet solutions.org, our website is thecapones.com.

• 2:15:03Speaker 03

  Is the capones, that is that going to be the name of the podcast?

• 2:15:06Speaker 04

  Conversations with the Capones.

• 2:15:08Speaker 03

  Okay, great. That's great. You can't possibly answer all the emails that you must be getting, especially in the aftermath of the documentary.

• 2:15:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's not possible. A lot of content opportunities though, to speak to some of these things. I mean, it's so interesting to me how everyone is, if they're not personally dealing with something, they're one degree separated from someone who is. There's just this suffering in our society.

• 2:15:31Speaker 03

  Nobody's untouched from this in one way or another.

• 2:15:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:15:35Speaker 03

  You know, and when you hear the statistics around loneliness and, and you know, just the, the, the mental health, like just the average person who's just trying to live their life. Like we're, we're all impacted by mental health considerations to one extent to another. And the fact that, you know, there are other solutions out there beyond like what we've been programmed to believe is the limit of, you know, what science is capable of is, is, is exciting. And it's courageous, I think, what you're doing. And it's a tremendous public service. And I feel like you're just at the very beginning of. You know, this fantastic journey.

• 2:16:11Speaker 01

  We do too. We feel like eight years has been a lot and, and you know, there's been struggle and, and a lot of late nights and weekends. But I agree with you that I tell everybody, we're just getting started. There's like so much more work to do and it's okay. It doesn't feel like work. So.

• 2:16:30Speaker 03

  Final thought for you, Amber, you mentioned earlier that that's your organization is careful not to work with somebody who's in the midst of a suicidal crisis. Like when they're in that crisis state, but for the person, the audience member who's watching right now, perhaps their, their, their, their partner is in that state. Or, or somebody's watching or listening to this right now, who is having suicidal ideation, thoughts like that. In such a hyper crisis state, is there a place that you can recommend they, they like a phone number they can call or a website or who they can talk to? Because obviously you can't get that person in that state immediately into some kind of psychedelic therapy situation.

• 2:17:13Speaker 03

  And probably they shouldn't go into that situation in that state.

• 2:17:17Speaker 04

  There's the suicide crisis line, which is nine eight eight and operates same as nine one one. But these are trained suicide interventionalists on the other end of the line. So if someone is in immediate crisis, that number could be a lifeline truly. I would say start doing diligence because in some regard, just a glimmer of hope is enough to keep someone grounded and take, willing to take the next step in pursuing healing. Psychedelics hold tremendous promise and yet they're seemingly, you know, can, can feel impossible to access. Currently in the United States, ketamine treatments are available.

• 2:17:59Speaker 04

  It's an off use label of ketamine, but incredibly effective for breaking cycles of treatment resistant depression or active suicidal ideation. There are ketamine clinics in every major city.

• 2:18:11Speaker 01

  I would argue a person in a suicidal state, the number one treatment right now is ketamine, is IV ketamine, intramuscular ketamine. But again, you know,

• 2:18:19Speaker 04

  Under a doctor's care.

• 2:18:20Speaker 01

  Under a doctor's care. There is unfortunately too many reports of individuals that are getting these prescribed at home and doing them on your own and. That's not recommended, but for an individual that's really struggling or an immediate case, probably IV ketamine at one of these, you know, advanced mental health clinics is definitely a short-term fix, enough to put a tourniquet on that individual to get them stabilized, to then be able to start looking into some of these more advanced treatments. So.

• 2:18:48Speaker 03

  This has been amazing. Thank you. As I said earlier, you're just remarkable examples of service and it's so heartwarming and inspiring to see a couple on the precipice of, you know, like going beyond a place of repair to, you know, not only repair your relationship, but build this, you know, really impactful, meaningful relationship with the ripple effects of helping so many lives. It's really quite something and I salute you both and I'm here to support you. So let me know what I can do to do that. I am at your service and I can't wait to see how this continues to evolve for you.

• 2:19:26Speaker 04

  We're so grateful.

• 2:19:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, Reg, we are extremely grateful for being here and having an audience and hearing our story and just thank you for what you're doing and your story is inspirational and, you know, everything that I read, I was just, you know, inspired and, you know, a bit of me was like, well, why can't I do that? You know, it was just like, but coming from where you came from and like what you're doing today, like people should be able to see that and.

• 2:19:48Speaker 04

  I dare you to run an ultra marathon.

• 2:19:50Speaker 03

  No. I gotta, I need to learn, like clearly I need to learn something about how to work out in the gym. No. Maybe we can trade notes at some point. For me, it's surfing and golf. It's about what I, what I do now. So. Right on. Well, you're always welcome back here and I would love to, if you could keep me up to date on all you're doing. So. You will. Thank you.

• 2:20:11Speaker 04

  Sure will.

• 2:20:12Speaker 03

  See ya.

• 2:20:13Speaker 04

  Thank you.