Episode 160 – Plant Medicine, Ayahuasca, Healing Trauma/PTSD From Shock to Awe w/ Matt Kahl

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as you take your seat consciousness relax your senses and allow us to take you on a journey we are the intimate strangers thank you for listening the human experiences in session my name is Xavier katana my guest for tonight is Matthew Cale matt is a US military

combat veteran PTSD survivor and founder matt has been on the frontlines of drug policy advocacy and reform in regards to plant medicine and using unorthodox treatment methods to treat PTSD and trauma since 2013 Matt served in the hundred and first

Airborne Division in Afghanistan where an accident sent him home sent him sent him home injured traumatized and suffering from crippling PTSD Matt is the founder of veterans for natural rights and organization that aims to build community support and resources

for veterans that are suffering with PTSD and trauma he is also the president of we the weed for warriors project in Colorado and host of the 1620 show on the veterans Channel he is one of the people featured in the documentary we're gonna be talking about tonight from

shock to aw Matt it's such a pleasure welcome to hxp thank you for having me so Matt I mean where do we begin let's let's tie mean I love the documentary I watched I got a chance to watch it a couple times and I mean let's start with a little bit of your

background what what led you to choose military service why did you decide to do that with your life oh wow that is a whole can of worms right there it's actually not clear at what drove me to military service I grew up with a father who was

colonel in the Marine Corps and he's pretty authoritarian and his parenting style and we just didn't really get along so I kind of swore off military service early on in my life but by the time I had a son of my own I was working in I was working in a music recording

studio as an audio engineer and the money was good but it was intermittent I'd get a contract and it'd be great for a little while and then you know there'd be a month or two where I didn't have any work and that that kind of lifestyle works well for a single guy but not so

well for people with dependents so I started examining other options and one of the things that has been constant in my life is pushing my own boundaries and doing things that I never thought that I would do and one of those things was kicking down doors blowing stuff up and

unfortunately part of the job is killing people and I really didn't know if I was up to the task but I was willing to challenge myself to see if I was so I signed on the dotted line and I raised my hand and I swore to support and defend the Constitution of the

United States and was deployed shortly after but unfortunately it turns out that not many military people are really charged with supporting and defending the Constitution of the United States and the oath of enlistment is all but bankrupt in its meaning these days so

there's a definite sense of moral injury when someone who signs up for all the right reasons ends up being a stormtrooper for the empire essentially yeah you know and so moral injury actual trauma and then survivor's guilt I really characterizes three separate

things but they're all very comorbid and they have a lot of the same symptoms but the three are very different but I have all three definitely from both of my deployments it's incredible and you know let me just thank you for your service because it's

important I think to cover you know this and it led you to exploring plant medicine because Western medicine had failed you know you had tried to commit suicide and you you were you lost all hope right absolutely I was completely at below rock bottom

there was no bottom to this this whole that what I was in it just kept going down and I was completely hopeless bereft of any kind of idea of a normal life that there was there was not even the the inkling of a normal life in in my head I believed that I was a murderer

and that I deserved die you know I don't I don't think that the human brain and psychologically I don't think the human brain is wired to take another life you know and so when when soldiers come back from combat they're mostly forgotten about you know

we forget about you know our combat veterans and and there's so many suicides that happen and it's horrifying you know what happens to these people that serve our country and like you said I mean it's it's morally bankrupt so eventually you came to a point where

I mean how did you hear about ayahuasca how did you find out about this believe it or not I actually studied all of the Indo alkyl amine hallucinogens slash entheogens in college back in the late 90s I was a behavioral neuroscience student at Appalachian State University

and I did a lot of my work on the anatomy and how it corresponds to the function of the brain but I spent all of my spare time researching the psychopharmacology of endo kill amines and cannabinoids so I was kind of well prepared for my life after the service

but but I had to overcome my hasn't my hesitancy to re-engage these substances again I mean a when you first get out of the military its transition is very difficult for almost everyone they spend so much time teaching you to be a killer but they don't spend any time to

deprogram that killer and so when I got back to the civilian arena you know I was still trying to be the good soldier and still trying to do everything that I was told everything I was ordered to which included taking this massive and debilitating regimen of pharmaceutical

pills so this this constant stuffing my face full of pills really kept me in a sort of psychological stasis and I wasn't able to address the trauma or even recognize the trauma that I had undergone not just in the military but in my childhood too believe it or not

that the common thread for all of this stuff whether it's PTSD suicide or addiction is childhood trauma dr. Gabor Monta does an amazing piece about how the the roots of addiction are based in childhood trauma and people are trying to medicate the pain away and they use

all of the the tools that are readily available but extremely harmful you know things like cocaine heroin methamphetamine or in my case it was the opiate pills and the benzodiazepine pills and all of these other substances that kind of numbed me to the pain but

it also numbed me to the variations and the goods and Bad's in life so I was just completely destroyed I mean my body was starting to fall apart I gained massive amounts of weight I was a zombie in every sense of the word I would fall asleep in the middle of my

sentences I wasn't able to carry a conversation it was it was horrible the quality of life was absolutely terrible and eventually I had to start looking for other options and that's really when I stepped outside the VA system and their method of trying to

treat these illnesses which falls far short but that the plant medicines are particularly good at treating yeah yeah I mean we've had dr. Korb or amante on the show several times and I mean I've been such a huge proponent of of this research for so long you know Rick

Doblin has been on the show Rick Strassman Dennis McKenna so I mean this is right down our alley and everything you're doing with from shock to odd and like I said I'd love the documentary because in the beginning it really kind of showcases the the I mean the the pure

pain of coming back and trying to reassimilate and being unable to and and then you know it changes its shifts I mean you can feel this perceptual shift when you get to a point where you drink the tea and I mean I want to get into that you know there you know Western

medicine has failed you you've tried to commit suicide nothing is working for you whatsoever you get to this place and you're about to drink this hallucinogenic tea which you've researched I mean neurologically tell me about that first session how did it go for you oh

wow it was absolutely revelatory I mean it changed everything the first session just in itself and it seemed actually pretty simple at the time but in actuality I I was sitting there and you know that he kept coming around with the cups of tea and I kept drinking every

booster that was offered and I think I got up two to four cups and I was sitting there and my I keep you know making these faces he's trying to like kind of contain my stomach because my stomach started acting up and it was just like okay shut up stomach that we

got this hold it together and so you know I was kind of like you know just making faces in an attempt to kind of keep it down and the the facilitator there came by and he said hey how you doing man and I said well you know I'm a little bit uncomfortable but I'm not really

entirely sure I don't know what I'm supposed to be feeling really I don't know what's supposed to be different and he said okay we'll try a few more things and he came around with these little kichaka's they're they're like palm fronds sort of rattles and he would

he spread this like flowery water onto the the kichaka's and shake them around your head and um there was something about that sound that set me off and I just couldn't contain it anymore it just started coming up and I grabbed the the bucket really quickly and I just started

hurling as hard as I could into that bucket and I puked up everything it was not just the contents of my stomach it was the contents of my soul for the previous couple years and what I found is is I I was I was purging out a kind of a demon almost it I looked at the

bottom I could see through my white plastic bucket I could see the the vomit at the bottom of the bucket and it was dark black and it just looked like demon to me so I kind of personified it that way and I realized oh man I just I just expelled a demon out of me how the hell

did that demon get in there and then I realized oh wait a second you put that demon in there so you have wronged yourself by putting this demon in there and then your entire struggle over the previous couple years has all been an attempt to control this thing that is

now imprisoned inside of you and I keep pushing it back down and pushing it back down and holding on to it trying to control it but it kept bothering me it kept screwing up my life and getting in the way of a true experience of existence and once I let

it out and into the bucket then I realized oh my god you didn't just do this to yourself you did that to the demon - you took this thing that was just like flying out here in the ether and you imprison it in your own body you have violated not just

your body but you have violated the demons freedom also and I had to apologize to the demon and I I I did I cried and I said god I'm so sorry how could I have done this and and what do I have to do what what how can i how can I make this up to you and the demon just

said just let it go just let it go and I said it's not that easy I can't just let it go I can't just do that and he said back to me yeah it is just let go and at that moment it just made a lot of sense to me and I let go and at that moment is where you see me

stand up and raise my arms to the sky and I've had never felt freer man Wow it's incredible I mean that there is a compound on this planet that you know possibly hypothetically theoretically that you know indigenous populations have been using for thousands of years

you know these shamans drink this herbal tea and you know maybe the they have these vision quests and and go and they can you know diagnose like what's going on with with these people spiritually and then you know somehow it infiltrates you know Western culture there's this

psychedelic Renaissance that's happening with plant medicine ayahuasca namely ayahuasca maps the multiple in area Association for psychedelic studies were at doblin I mean they're there at the forefront of this and I mean this is why I love the documentary from shock to all

so much is because you know we've like I said we've had so many of these these shows now over the six years that we've been doing this this broadcast and I remember there was a service woman that emailed me once and she said and she said Xavier you

know I've I've never really considered this ever you know but after listening to the show you know I'm changing my mind about this and it really struck me you know it really struck me that you know it it it is possible for this this plant to help people right and you know

I want to talk to you about neurologically you know I'm sure you know what neurogenesis is and there are only three four or five compounds handful of compounds that do this in the brain - tell us about neurogenesis and what's going on in the brain when a

person drinks this tea are you Oscar well both the beta-carboline switch inhibit monoamine oxidase and also DMT they both stimulate neurogenesis in the brain and it's actually true of most of the Indo alkyl amines almost every entheogen out there will stimulate new

connections and new neuron growth in the brain so these substances are really taking advantage of a route of healing that has kind of been known to psychology for some time there's a reason why the SSRIs and the SNRIs they say that you have to take them for 30

days before you start to feel the effects of it and that's because it takes about 30 days for those substances to generate new neurons and new neuronal connections mm-hmm so these substances especially the tryptamines they tend to jumpstart the process and

you start having massive amounts of neural connection between areas of the brain that are formerly unconnected and neurogenesis between all of these disparate sections of the brain all almost immediately so ayahuasca having the dual components of the

beta-carbolines that inhibit Mao and the DMT which is a straight tryptamine that stimulates your brain to connect in all kinds of different ways it normally doesn't these two substances together probably with a number of other substances that are also in the plants

they serve together in order to create a one-two punch to your brain to really kick it out of all of those bad and negative thought loops that you have become so accustomed to that your ego continually beats you up with so these things can really change your mind about

how you are in relation to your trauma how your trauma defines you most people when they're really deep in that dark hole their trauma completely defines them but when you step outside of yourself with this ego reduction that the tryptamines bring you can finally

see that your trauma doesn't really have much to do with you it made you who you are but it does not have to determine who you will be and you can heal from these things that's my lesson from the use of all things and Thea genic is that PTSD trauma it's curable mmm yeah I mean

it's so powerful and I think I think probably your you know your first session with the tea could probably be branded the I Love You session do you know in all regards and I think that's a huge part of it is just remembering that we you know there's there's love it is

love and it's it's capable you know it's there we're capable of reaching it within ourselves and you know so so ayahuasca is made of two plants that it's the vine and the leaf right and the the vine is the mo I and the leaf is it has the DMT

uh-huh but there are all kinds of alkaloids that are that are in the plant themselves yeah correct especially in the vine the vine itself is the maoi so there's all kinds of beta-carboline in there there is harming there's harm main there's harm of law

there's tetrahydroharmine there's tetrahedra harm of all there are dozens of different entourage elements in this plant and they all add up to some kind of mono amine urge ik inhibition and they just they simply take your enzyme that normally breaks down things like

serotonin or anything that looks like it and it inhibits that enzyme then in the chacruna chacruna is the leaf and it's from a different bush in the Amazon and chacruna has dimethyltryptamine in it it also has n methyl tryptamine and a number of other entourage elements in

there with it that are similar to DMT it but DMT is the primary alkaloid DMT is possibly one of the most visual hallucinogens on the face of the planet it is an extremely potent experience especially by itself too but it's very short-lived because of the monoamine

oxidase enzyme if some people have been known to extract DMT from either chacruna or mimosa hostilius there's several other plants acacia confuse a that all have high levels of DMT so this is everywhere in nature DMT is one of the most ubiquitous chemical

substances on the face of planet Earth it's present in so many species hundreds and hundreds of plants in in at least dozens of animals so we take these two substances that shook the the chacruna the bush in the Amazon and then the vine the ayahuasca vine and right yeah

Banat been a stereoscopic yeah so you could combine these two ingredients and the copy inhibits your enzymes of the dmt can actually reach your bloodstream and then you have a relatively long-lasting DMT experience so the DMT whereas normally if smoked can go to

your brain and disappear in a matter of 15 20 minutes the MA Aoi allows it to persist in your bloodstream for two to three hours so you have a lot more time to sort of interface with the chemical and go to this place where you renegotiate your relationship to your

ego and renegotiate your relationship to your trauma and then bring something back that you can apply to your everyday life that will then change you forever more it's so incredible to me Matt like this that this exists and we have access to it you know the only problem is it

seems like you know these pharmaceutical companies and drug policy is completely backwards I mean this is illegal by law and you know most people are you know flying to down to South America just to access this they're you know struggling to find it

what's going on with drug policy right now is it just you know this corporate banker thing or they're just trying to farm humans farm are suffering keep us sort of addicted to these pharmaceutical drugs what you know what's going on with drug policy and it's reforming

we're starting to see a bit of reform very slowly but it seems to me the drug war is an abject failure would you agree absolutely I mean it does nothing but criminalize the population in the United States and indeed the population of the entire

world I mean if you are guilty of using the substance it doesn't happen to be on the approved list in order to improve your life then you're a criminal period so it's not really a war on drugs it's a war on people it's a war on the citizens of the United States and of the

world yeah and I mean I think it was the Controlled Substances Act 1971 Richard Nixon and then the Reagan administration and and their campaign just say no you know it's it's amazing where we have sort of ended up and you know I'm so glad there are organizations such as

yours and what you guys are doing especially for veterans because I mean here are people that go you know to serve our country and you know perhaps they don't know what they're getting into you know perhaps they're going over there because out of necessity perhaps

you know they they just can't afford to do anything else they can't afford to go to college you know yet unless until they serve and they come back and they're broken in pieces and you know it doesn't just have to be veterans it many people go through this many people are

walking around with trauma and as you said absolutely the work of dr. Gabor Monta you know we carry around this childhood you know trauma for our whole lives and you know it seems like we're just searching for something anything and I you ask a plant medicine seems to

be that thing right now I think that especially you hit on an amazing point there the fact that trauma is the one thing that really ties us all together it doesn't really matter who you are there's some kind of traumatic experience in your past that you could

benefit from facing feeling and then moving through so combat veterans universally they tend to also have a little bit of childhood trauma that's usually the predictor for what adult PTSD is so if you have a little bit of childhood trauma and then you have the

military trauma on top of it the military trauma is really just the thing that cracks the egg open and then once the egg is open the yogic flying it all back inside so that's what I found with my own trauma is the fact that the military trauma just really I found that

the the the veins and the roots of it went so deep into my being that they didn't just stop with the military it went all the way back to early childhood I think that that's something that we all feel to some degree or another we have 22 veterans at the upper end that

are committing suicide every day and maybe about 39 who are overdosing every day and dying from as a result of the overdose but if you look at the larger numbers it's about a hundred and twenty one individuals in America today that are committing suicide every day 22 is a

my normal ready give that and granted veterans are a tiny minority the population we definitely have an outsized influence on that number but the fact is is the vast majority of trauma is in the civilian population and with addiction and overdose you're

talking about a hundred and ninety-eight people dying that's ridiculous every single day 121 from suicide and 198 from addiction and overdose so that total you're getting about 320 people a day who are dying from untreated trauma that's it that's

the bottom line untreated trauma is what is causing this massive not only human toll but societal toll an economic toll how many days are lost because somebody just can't pull it together enough in order to go to work how many days are lost how many how much

productivity is lost because somebody loses a job because they keep screwing it up because they just can't handle it because of their trauma how much of the crime in America is actually caused by criminals who are simply acting out the trauma that was done to them at a very

early age what kind of economic and social impact could we have if we started opening these medicines up to all people regardless of what their background is veterans you know we're the poster boys for PTSD right now but it's our job to call attention the fact

that the main repository of trauma in our society is in the civilian side and we all deserve recognition for our pain and nobody's pain is any more important than anybody else's Wow such a powerful statement you know I think you mentioned it a little bit

earlier when you were talking about your journey and you you know you said there was there was something about using the opiates that numbed the pain for you and you know I've been there I've you know I've I remember after my first session and I I never drank again you know but

in a world where alcohol is available on every street corner you know and it just seems like it's it's resistant to this healing aspect of things and you know I think it's so important that we we recognize we change the perception of these compounds because I think some

people you know they hear ayahuasca or psychedelics which I'm not really fond of that word but you know they hear about this and they just they just do they turn off you know it's like a switch but I mean it's it's obvious that this is helping people and you know like

you said this this comes to it's not just your service that that you looked back at and and you know saw that there's trauma here it went back all the way to your childhood and it affected something deep down in in your soul yeah and I really think that that's sort of

the the crux of it veterans you know like I said we are the poster boys with PTSD right now and love us or hate us we're natural leaders so we get back to civilian life and if we find something that works for us there's not many veterans that are gonna just shut up and

like go melt away into a corner we're gonna start speaking up about it because hey this works guys I don't want another one of my brothers or sisters to die so please please please listen and take advantage of these methods of healing so that is really where the veteran kind of

fits into the whole drug war agenda is the fact that we have a unique voice and we can speak to a certain segment of the population that normally is completely unfazed by any sort of argument Pro psychedelics namely the the it's it's the conservative side of the

spectrum the fact remains is that veterans we yes we have raised our hand and we have pledged our life to the support and defense of the Constitution of the United States and also to the people of America and there are not many conservatives out there who will deny

that and they will even if they disagree they're at least gonna listen they're gonna give us a chance to say our piece and I've really taken advantage of that by going into the capitals of state governments and also national governments I actually held a

congressional brief in the US Capitol in DC on December 12th where I talked about psychedelics as treatment for PTSD myself and another veteran - his name is Jonathan lieu Becky and he was part of the MDMA trials so you know there is some small change happening but I really

believe that veterans are going to be the linchpin we're really the tip of the spear on this we are pushing the idea of plant medicine right up into the centers of power in Washington DC and every State Capitol across the nation yeah it's it's amazing and and I applaud you

for your work and doing this and bringing it to the mainstream as it were you know can you imagine can you imagine if there were you know ayahuasca centers on every street corner instead of alcohol just available freely I mean and people could access this and maybe

treat you know some of that that struggle and find you know healing true healing and it wasn't just you know you found you found healing in the family aspect as well can you talk a little bit about you know how it helped you in your connection to your family and your your

sort of everyday life and your your connection to your wife and your kids yeah absolutely um so when you have a psychedelic experience or an anthea genex experience however you want to term it um you are basically shown an open door which leads you to a vision of

how things could be but psychedelics themselves aren't the answer psychedelics can show you the way but really the work has to be done in your everyday life you have to start making changes in the way you actually live your life the way you think from moments

a moment the way you react to certain triggers and stimuli you have to change that on a basic fundamental level in order for you to get better and that's what they talk about quote doing the work you know there's a lot of people that go to the psychedelics and then

afterwards they have to do the work and doing the work involves changing the way you interact with your experience interact with reality interact with life so I had to immediately start reviewing almost everything that I did in life and believe it or not it wasn't just

ayahuasca that I pursued as soon as I tried ayahuasca I realized that these things can really work and I determined that I need to know everything there is to know about all of the indle alkyl amine entheogens and so a month after I took ayahuasca on from Choctaw I went

down to Peru and I recorded a movie called soldiers of the vine which is available for free on YouTube and then a month after that I went down to Mexico and I took ibogaine and also toad which is five methoxy DMT a month after that I was exploring peyote here in the States

and a month after that I was trying mushrooms under the guidance of a gringo so uhm 2016 was a bit of a crazy year for me but I emerged from 2016 a completely different person with a completely different relationship to my trauma my trauma no longer determined

who I was as a person it was simply something that was a part of the greater whole yeah so yeah anyway so the the point being is is that these substances can can really catalyze profound changes in your life but you have to be willing to do the work in

between you can't just go back to your old habits and your old ways of interacting with with the universe around you you have to actually change and one of the ways that I started changing is I started rien gauging my family in a huge way my son was born

just before military service and then when I got in the military I was never there I was gone from sunup sundown training and then a few months after that I was deployed for almost you know a year and a quarter and then I was home for a few months and then I deployed

again for another year except that time I got medevac'd and when I got medevac'd it was even worse because I was home but I was on all these medications so I was really truly absent I was completely messed up in the head and I was a zombie I was drooling on myself I couldn't hold

a conversation there was no way that I could actually father my children you know I couldn't be there for them so I was absent for their entire childhood and it really really messed with me and I talked about it a lot in in the film but what the medicine led me back to is

the fact that I needed to rebuild my relationship with them and I needed to start from ground one like the ground level you know and so the first thing I started to do was re-engage with my wife and even though I was reengaged my wife I was still doing all of these other

things that had been important to my healing up to that point which is like helping other veterans and it's really just recently just within the past year that I decided that I needed to really start fixing all the lack of attention that my kids had gotten from me so in

August of last year I actually pulled my oldest son out of school and I started homeschooling him and I have actually I've believe it or not I have complete completely rearranged our relationship and I have a completely new understanding and

appreciation for who he is as a human being I don't yell at him anymore we just talk and we talk about everything we talk about school and we talk about friends and we talk about girls and we talk about hopes and dreams and we talk about the future we talk about College

we talk about life and it's wonderful it's completely changed my own feeling about myself and my feeling about myself in relationship to my family - yeah I mean that's so powerful man I love your words I love that I love what you said about

not you can't be lazy about this you know it's not like it's not like this cure-all there is no magic pill you don't show up to a session and suddenly you're just sort of healed and you know you kind of move around and that's it you have to as you said you have to

do the work you have to take it very seriously I mean it is very serious and I think for me you know the tea showed me so much and I would classify my life as you know pre ayahuasca and post ayahuasca just flat-out and you know it took me a long time just to be

able to talk about some of the things and I I don't remember you know when I cried the last time that I had cried and my first session it was like I was my face was you know wet sloppy mess and you know and what you said about purging I think is so on point you know there's

something about it that is almost spiritual you know I think maybe it does go in there you know if your cells store memory Faced or trauma maybe it kind of finds those things those attachments those demons and and then it's it's out its out of you you know and as such it's

such a powerful experience you know in every angle and every facet but you know as you said you know I I think we have to be ready to do the work within ourselves and and I'm so glad for you that the relationship between you and your son has evolved and you know I

think it's about the collective it's about the network that we create around us it's not just about the the just individually us and our own evolution but it's also the evolution of you know our family and the people that we care about and our friends and and

the reason that I do this show to be honest yeah it's the evolution of everyone that you come into contact with because each time that you take a step forward you're kind of pulling along everyone that is on the ride with you there's there's no other way to really

describe it but you know the fact that I have found this way out of a deep dark hole this horrible horrific trauma has basically created a roadmap by which hundreds maybe thousands of other people are now first starting to take their own steps on that path I love it man and

there's a quote there's a quote that of yours that I've really liked that I found it no one in no one is free in America so long as nature is illegal and it's so true you know absolutely because if nature is illegal then what what the heck is read them to us like if I can't

plant a seed in the ground watch it grow and then use it in order to feed clothe or medicate myself then I am NOT free period there is no no kind of reality in which a person is free who can't simply put a seed into the ground that's we are

under a completely backward and totalitarian and tyrannical edict and regime that creates these restrictions upon us we are living in a jail in which were not allowed to touch certain parts of nature and I cannot abide by that period I was I swore to support and

defend the United States Constitution and when I read through the United States Constitution what it tells me is that it was created to restrict powers of government and not the people it was designed to protect the rights of the people to do anything they want so long

as they hurt no one else so if I decide to drink a tea from an Amazonian jungle plant so be it that should be completely within our rights and priorities as individual human beings and there is nothing in the world that should come between us and nature I love it I had

loved it so much and I couldn't agree more I think it the the current system is absolutely archaic and I can't see a reason for it to exist the way it does other than to enslave humanity and you know it's it's time for us to do something about that you know Matt we've

got about 15 minutes left and you know I really want to reach out to you know the people that maybe there's a veteran that's gonna hear this and maybe they're on the fence about this you know or there's a person that is struggling from this internal pain what's your what's

your sort of take away from this whole journey that you've been on and what do you do I mean what do you say to that veteran your brother or sister you know whatever it may be what do you save these people that are suffering out there and they they just can't seem to

find you know that thing that works for them I think I would say you need to live for yourself and not for other people because so many of us are stuck within the prison bars that society and other people have created around us in our own minds and you need to step

outside that box that box it was made by other people for you but it's not your box you need to find out where you actually live where you can actually go as a human being not just bodily but mentally - if cognitive freed is not a right guaranteed by the

Constitution then I think Terence Mckenna said it that it's not worth the hip that it was written on its right the Constitution is not worth the hemp it was written on so I think that if you were on the fence about these treatments you don't need to be I know

Green Berets I know SEAL Team six members who are using endo alkyl amine entheogens to improve their lives and to get over trauma that they have incurred as a result of service and as a result of their childhood I know people in Delta Force people in CAG who are

actually exploring their own minds and their own souls with the help of these plants and these substances so if you're on the fence about it don't be these things are very well proven with thousands of years of use and the fact is is Western medicine it's like a child

it's like a screaming baby and it has no idea how to use all of these appendages that are given to it there is so much more that your mind is capable of and there's so much more that your body is capable of there's so much more that you are capable of and these plants they're

simply the beginning of it they will show you the way but you have to walk that path yourself indeed indeed my friend um you know and what about what about the people who you know haven't served at all the the you know people who haven't served in the military and

perhaps they're they're suffering you know as he as you noted in your story you know this this goes back to childhood and youth you know dr. Gabor motty's work which i think is revolutionary and he he talks about how we carry around these traumas for our

whole lives and we never truly face them you know whether they're abandonment issues or something else we never really addressed them no one really asks us what happened to you as a child what happened to you you know and so let's let's talk about that a little bit

and then we'll wrap up but you know what do you what do you say to someone who hasn't served at all yeah I mean we we spend our whole lives of voiding these topics I mean if something bad happened to you when you're a kid and somebody asks you about it when you're adult are

you totally gloss over it you're like yeah man it was a messed up thing and you know my dad was totally absent or angry and he hit me or my uncle touched me wrong it there's all these different things that happen to us but that we don't really incorporate we don't we

don't actually integrate them into our personality we push them away and we lock them into a deep dark closet somewhere and we use all kinds of defense mechanisms in order to avoid talking about these things whether it's self-deprecating humor or it is a simple

avoidance there are so many different tactics that we use to try to erase these things out of our history but the only way to really truly reconcile these things and reintegrate them into the whole of your being is to truly sit there and delve into them experience

them fully and then just like the rain clouds come and go so will these memories and so will these traumas so the the clouds may come and obscure the Sun for a brief moment but you know that eventually the clouds will go away and the Sun will shine again I'm sorry dude

sorry too bumpy there go ahead no but another thing I would like to tell the people who have never been to combat listen I have when I first got out of the military I had a very common prejudice that is present in a lot of infantryman I mean our job is a kick

down doors blow stuff up and kill people straight up this is like trauma 101 and I started realizing I got out of the sir and I was really mad at the people who claim to have PTSD but never really did any of the stuff that I did and I had a

prejudice against them but gradually in the process of my advocacy I would sit down with some of these people and I would say all right man like what what really happened to you and they would say things like listen nothing I didn't really do anything like you did I can't

even imagine what it's like being you let me tell you what happened to me and then they would tell me this story and half the time my job would hit the floor and I would come out of that conversation thinking to myself how the heck did you deal with that I have no

experience in being able to try to pull myself together after an experience like that some of these are horrific horrific trauma it could be being kidnapped and systematically tortured it could be a ace a rape or a number of rapes over a long period of time this betrayal by

authority figures and people that you're supposed to trust I have no idea how some of these people pull themselves together after this and so I still have to tell people yeah you may not have kicked down some doors and blowing stuff up and killed people but your trauma is

just as important as mine is and don't ever ever ever let anyone tell you anything different yeah for sure Matt there's there's a question that I really really like and it's from cosmos of compassion and they asked if one has a rough mental history psychotic breaks

is there ever ever a chance for such people to use plant medicine having such a bad history will I ever be approved plant medicine if you have genuine psychosis in your background like psychotic breaks I think that the chances that you would

experience a a psychotic break under the influence of some of these substances might be slightly higher so definitely proceed with caution I think that there are a lot of people who advise those with histories with psychosis to never engage in any of

these substances but personally I have had a psychotic break I there was a period of time where I didn't sleep for over a week in Fort Campbell Kentucky and I was imagining Taliban outside my window flitting around in the shadows and I would routinely go and clear my

house with a firearm and then clear the outside of my house with that same firearm and I was I was not right in the head I was imagining things I was I was legitimate I think psychotic I it felt like I was going crazy so the fact that I have been

able to at least come to a different portion of my life all of those incidences are way far in the past I have been able to use these medicines to help fix myself so that kind of thing never happens again I think it depends on the person really

and you really have to proceed with caution if you are prone to psychotic breaks and there are no substances involved like let's say you turned 18 and you just had a schizophrenic attack and you weren't on any sort of medications or drugs or anything like

that you are at risk for being for undergoing a psychotic rape while underneath the influence of these substances but if you had some kind of incident in your past in which you may have imagined things or heard voices or something like that especially it under

the influence of medication then if you eliminate the medication then more than likely you're going to be able to eliminate the psychotic symptoms and you can then re-engage with some of these tryptamine substances in a safe manner yeah I mean I I like that answer and in

a proceed with caution I think is that the general rule and you know we we are not medical professionals and we're not pretending to be so you know constitutes medical advice here so this is for entertainment purposes only and your information so please you know proceed

with caution and make sure that you know you're making wise choices and decisions with your mental health and and what you decide to do with with your body you know Matt I I think one of the most important things also is to have someone around that you trust that can monitor

you for these kinds of symptoms so if you are undergoing a psychedelic experience having someone that you know love and trust that is close to you that can help you through these things and then also tell you if you're starting to slip and having them available is

extremely important yeah yeah and you know if these compounds weren't illegal people wouldn't you know be trying to order them on the internet and cooking them in their kitchens and then you know maybe jumping out of windows or something because they're you know like

they're not guided by a shaman or you know someone trained to do this do not do this by yourself you know I think people ask me you know they they they think you know it's something that they can do just sitting alone in their living room I do not recommend this

whatsoever do not order it on the internet go to someone that is trained in guiding you through a session because there there is an an integration period that that you need you need to be able to talk about your experience is so important a friend of mine tried to cook

it in his kitchen and he was like burning incense like drawing like war paint on his body he it was not it was not a healthy thing for him to go through that yeah I think um the vast majority of people could benefit from having either a trip sitter or a trusted

friend together or both honestly I think that these things can work in concert and provide layers of protection for you there's another thing that you really need to do when undergoing any sort of psychedelic experience to sort of develop a spiritual practice of your own

it doesn't need to be anything from any major religion it can just be stuff that you pull from several different religions things that resonate with you things that make sense and they make you feel good and they ground you so having this sort of ritualized

approach to entheogenic exploration can be extremely valuable but I also want to say that there is so much focus these days on integration and having a proper shaman and all this stuff and you know believe it or not all of the best shamans that I have ever come across

have said I don't do anything the medicine does it in concert with you and actually they're just providing the safe space they're just they're just simply containing the area and letting whatever comes out come out and I think that there is intrinsic value to these

substances whether it's ayahuasca or even just plain DNT or v methoxy DMT toad Bufo mescaline with a San Pedro and peyote I think there's intrinsic value to mushrooms and psilocybin I think there's intrinsic value to all kinds of different plant medicines you can do

these things yes alone but those things are for the advanced practitioner only very very important I think that the vast majority of people could benefit from using some kind of support system whether it's a shaman and a trusted friend or a shaman a trusted friend a

psychotherapist to talk about all of your experiences with afterwards because you've got to unpack everything you know your shaman is gonna be there or your facilitator is gonna be there through the experience and they're gonna let you talk about it a little bit

afterwards but really you're gonna really start unpacking everything that just happened to you over the MA and years after your experience not in the 24 hours afterwards so it will continue to develop layers of meaning as you go on and and you experience more of

life you'll start to realize how different things that you learned are more applicable to each individual situation indeed indeed and you know I I think I've heard you know something like it's years of therapy in one sitting one session and I would agree with that so

you know I think there's a there's a lot to unpack there Nomad I think we're out of time man where can people find you know you your work where can people find from shock to all tell us how we can get there and and watch the documentary please you can find a link to all of the

ancillary materials for from shock to odd at from shock to a calm and you can actually rent the movie itself from Amazon Prime from Google Play and I think you can also do it from iTunes so you can actually watch the full hour and a half two hour movie if you'd like for

a nominal fee and you can find me at least online I've actually divorced myself from Facebook recently but I I still run the organization called veterans for natural rights and it's found on Facebook it's found on Instagram it's found on a bunch of

different platforms you can follow me and my activities there you can also go to the website veterans for natural rights dot org and there you'll find trailers for the 16:20 series which is more about cannabis and how it helps pull us out of the pharmaceutical health

and also you'll find links to from Choctaw trailers there and and soldiers of the vine which is a full hour and minute movie about ayahuasca as healing for PTSD yeah Wow Matt you know I really want to thank you for your service in on all levels I mean there's it's so

important the work that you're doing here guys that's gonna do it for us I mean what a show what an amazing you know thing to learn about ayahuasca and plant medicine is something very close to my heart and I truly believe if there's anything that's going to turn

things around here on the planet probably gonna be plant medicine so I hope you guys enjoyed this in this broadcast we will be back next week with yet another show if you are subscribed to us on YouTube make sure you click the like button if you are listening to the

podcast version of this please get over to iTunes leave us a review please make sure you share this broadcast with your friends family people you care about thank you so much for listening we will be back next week