⚗️ alembic

Search

SearchSearch

011 - Psychedelic Therapy for Veterans

May 29, 2017, 41 min read

Program Notes

https://www.patreon.com/lorenzohagerty

Ian Benouis

Guest speaker: Ian Benouis

Date this lecture was recorded: May 2017

This week we talk with the veteran Ian Benouis who works to connect those who served with the plant medicines. He works with the Weed for Warriors project and the Veterans for Entheogenic Therapy.

You can see their project of taking 6 soldiers with PTSD to the Amazon for Ayahuasca in ‘Soldiers of the Vine’:

You can see him in the documentary ‘From Shock to Awe’ and on the Viceland episode ‘Stoned Vets’ and follow his blog, the Psychedelic Musalman.

“Ask the green plants of the earth & they’ll teach you.”
-Job 12:8

Here is the donations page link for Lorenzo.

Previous Episode

010 - Stories from Boulder, Colorado

Next Episode

542 - Shamans of the Global Village

Similar Episodes

Transcript

00:00:00 ►

Greetings from cyberdelic space, this is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in Psychedelic Salon 2.0.

00:00:24 ►

Now here in the States, Salon 2.0.

00:00:29 ►

Now, here in the States, today is a holiday that we call Memorial Day.

00:00:34 ►

For me, well, it’s a day where I remember not just our fallen military veterans,

00:00:37 ►

which is the main purpose of this national holiday,

00:00:43 ►

but it is also a day that I try to remember and thank everyone who has come before me and who helped to make my own path a little smoother.

00:00:47 ►

Until 1971, this holiday was called Decoration Day, and it was traditional in our family to go out to the cemetery where my grandmother and great aunt were buried,

00:00:59 ►

clean off their grave sites, and then decorate their graves with fresh plants and flowers.

00:01:06 ►

gravesites and then decorate their graves with fresh plants and flowers. Much later, when I was living in Florida, I would join some of my veteran friends and attend a memorial service at the

00:01:12 ►

nearby military graveyard. But lately, I hate to admit, I no longer make it to the local military

00:01:19 ►

cemetery. However, I do try to spend a little quiet time thinking about my own friends and acquaintances who have lost their lives in a war.

00:01:29 ►

So it came as a really nice surprise this morning when I received the email from Lex Pelger with today’s program.

00:01:36 ►

It’s an interview with Ian Benoist, who I’ve talked about here in the salon before.

00:01:42 ►

I’ve never had the opportunity to meet Ian, but I’ve known about

00:01:45 ►

his work with veterans for quite some time now, and so I am very much looking forward to listening

00:01:51 ►

to this interview along with you on this Memorial Day in 2017. Now, here’s Lex.

00:02:01 ►

Hey everybody, I want to put in a word about our sponsor for our sponsor.

00:02:07 ►

Everybody knows and loves our host, Lorenzo.

00:02:10 ►

If you want to thank him for his years of hard work on this podcast,

00:02:14 ►

he now has a Patreon where you can do so.

00:02:17 ►

It’s to support his new project creating a postmodern autobiography.

00:02:22 ►

If you know his earlier book, Scattered Thoughts, which is excellent,

00:02:27 ►

you’ll get an idea of what he’s up to. Support him on his Patreon for updates, but most of all,

00:02:33 ►

support him because he’s Lorenzo. As it says on the donations page of the Psychedelic Salon site,

00:02:39 ►

his only income, besides a social security check, is donations from listeners like you.

00:02:46 ►

income besides a social security check is donations from listeners like you so if you smoked at least a bag of grass listen to this show you can afford to donate those 40 bucks lorenzo directly via

00:02:52 ►

paypal or to support his work monthly on patreon go to psychedelicsalon.com and click donations

00:02:58 ►

if ever there was a psychedelic grandfather who deserved it. It’s Lorenzo.

00:03:25 ►

I’m Lex Pelger, and this is Symposio on the Psychedelic Salon 2.0.

00:03:34 ►

Today we talk with Ian Ben-Weiss, a veteran working to get plant medicines out to others who served.

00:03:39 ►

Ian is a former Black Hawk helicopter pilot, a graduate of West Point,

00:03:44 ►

and a former Army officer involved with Operation Just Cause in the Republic of Panama.

00:03:50 ►

That was the largest operation in U.S. history that focused directly on the war on drugs.

00:03:56 ►

Now, many years after his service, he works through groups like the Veterans for Entheogenic Therapy and the Weed for Warriors Project to bring the plant medicines to the soldiers.

00:04:01 ►

To see more about his work, there’s a feature-length documentary called

00:04:05 ►

Shock to All, an episode on Viceland titled Stoned Vets, and he writes an intriguing blog

00:04:11 ►

called The Psychedelic Musselman. There, he references the book of Job, chapter 12, verse 8.

00:04:20 ►

Ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you. Here’s Ian.

00:04:23 ►

Ask the plants of the earth and they will teach you.

00:04:24 ►

Here’s Ian.

00:04:30 ►

Hey Lex, great to be here man.

00:04:31 ►

Awesome.

00:04:40 ►

Well, I think my first question is, what was the background that brought you to doing this work at the intersection of veterans and plant medicines?

00:04:41 ►

Sure, sure.

00:04:47 ►

Well, I really got started in plant medicines when I got out of the Army and started healing myself.

00:04:48 ►

I didn’t know there was a thing called trauma.

00:04:49 ►

I just knew somehow I needed to get myself back in so I could be integrated back in society.

00:04:56 ►

And then really, plant medicines were occasional in my life with my family, my kids, and my

00:05:02 ►

wife growing up.

00:05:04 ►

But really, kind of just to keep the tune-up going, and my family was my family my kids and my wife growing up but uh really kind of just to keep the tune up

00:05:06 ►

going and my family was my medicine and then uh about three years ago through an event that

00:05:12 ►

happened here in austin with the local normal group it was the first time they had a veterans

00:05:17 ►

conference put on by normal and i went there and just hearing the stories of these other veterans

00:05:22 ►

from iraq and afghanistan and even other wars in Vietnam just share their stories

00:05:27 ►

and how they were still broken and not healed.

00:05:31 ►

And it was just – it brought all these things out of me that made me realize

00:05:36 ►

that I still had more healing to do.

00:05:37 ►

So that was kind of – I started my Healing 2.0,

00:05:41 ►

and I’d already had all this experience and connection to these plant medicines,

00:05:45 ►

and it was time for me to dive in for them personally.

00:05:47 ►

So yeah,

00:05:48 ►

almost a year,

00:05:49 ►

two years ago.

00:05:50 ►

Now I took ayahuasca for the first time in what?

00:05:54 ►

Yeah.

00:05:54 ►

18 years.

00:05:55 ►

I’d taken it 18 years earlier.

00:05:57 ►

So,

00:05:57 ►

yeah.

00:05:57 ►

So I,

00:05:58 ►

so I dove back in and knowing what these medicines have done for me and

00:06:03 ►

have continued to do for me and having the veteran connection open me up and see the healing that went on between veterans connecting, it was pretty self-evident that those two things needed to work together.

00:06:17 ►

And I’ve just been committed to doing that since then.

00:06:23 ►

Wow. How did your first experiences go on the 2.0 with the

00:06:27 ►

plant medicines? Wow, that’s a great question. So, yeah, about two years ago, so May of 2015,

00:06:35 ►

Mother’s Day weekend, I took ayahuasca over a three-day weekend with a group of about 30 other

00:06:41 ►

people. And I’d taken it about four times, you know, back in the day.

00:06:48 ►

Once Terrence McKenna’s brew the first time,

00:06:50 ►

and then another time with the shaman here in the U.S.

00:06:53 ►

But just, you know, really limited experience

00:06:56 ►

and just had a real, you know, a beautiful introduction to the mother.

00:07:01 ►

But, yeah.

00:07:02 ►

And so now then coming back to it i was really wide open and

00:07:05 ►

i had all the benefit of a daily spiritual practice for over 20 years and doing yoga and meditation

00:07:11 ►

and more conscious eating and all those kind of things and i brought all that in there my own

00:07:16 ►

personal work that i’ve been doing on myself i wouldn’t have said oh i have trauma you know i

00:07:20 ►

didn’t know kind of understand things like that but basically I took ayahuasca over a three-day weekend.

00:07:26 ►

The first ceremony was really just getting cleaned up,

00:07:28 ►

and then the second, it was really all about heart work

00:07:31 ►

and blowing up my heart and polishing it and cleaning it

00:07:34 ►

and then blowing it up and putting it back together over and over again

00:07:38 ►

until it was done for a while, and I said to Mother Ayahuasca,

00:07:41 ►

let’s take this thing out for a ride,

00:07:43 ►

and I went to this sexual trauma that I had in second grade. And I was able through that experience to, it was

00:07:51 ►

like almost like a holographic memory that I was able to, you know, move myself around and view

00:07:56 ►

and look at. And my attention initially going to myself back at that age is where it naturally

00:08:02 ►

would go for anyone. But then I was able to shift to the person who was doing this and have empathy

00:08:08 ►

and compassion for that person.

00:08:10 ►

And when that transformation happened inside of me,

00:08:12 ►

the whole sort of whatever emotional residue or energy or power that was still

00:08:18 ►

locked up in me just basically evaporated and just, you know, moved out.

00:08:23 ►

And yeah, so I, yeah, exactly. So it was

00:08:26 ►

that powerful. And of course, you know, there’s other work that led up to be able to have that

00:08:30 ►

kind of work and there was work in ceremony to get there, but yeah, that’s, and so, uh,

00:08:36 ►

and then I, then I had just a lot of, uh, opening about other things in my family and about veterans

00:08:40 ►

and suicide and the afterlife and all these other things. And, yeah, that was the beginning that got me here, what, a year and a half after that,

00:08:49 ►

having taken ayahuasca 27 times and other plant medicines as well along the way.

00:08:57 ►

Did it seem like it was almost orders from the plant to start working with veterans

00:09:02 ►

or to help spark that idea in yourself?

00:09:06 ►

Yeah, definitely a mutual interplay for sure.

00:09:09 ►

You know, I could see the healing potential.

00:09:14 ►

I was, you know, trying to figure out my part in all this to make this whole system work, you know.

00:09:22 ►

And I just knew the power for myself, reintegrating myself,

00:09:28 ►

reintegrating myself after I got out of the military, back into society.

00:09:32 ►

And now the process of rebuilding myself and remodeling myself, yeah,

00:09:36 ►

I could just see those two were just, you know, completely in alignment.

00:09:41 ►

And, yeah, then, of course, starting to connect with veterans,

00:09:44 ►

that completely reinforced

00:09:46 ►

in other words initially it was just maybe more the power of the veteran struggle the whole

00:09:50 ►

need to reintegrate and then it was more the specific of meeting people that are like yes

00:09:55 ►

i’m using plant medicines to heal myself to reintegrate myself yeah and then that just yeah

00:10:01 ►

that’s that’s where a lot of the stuff you know know, it flowered from. It grew from, for sure.

00:10:05 ►

Wow.

00:10:06 ►

How was it approaching the first veterans that you reached out to

00:10:09 ►

who hadn’t been working with these plants before?

00:10:11 ►

What actually happened was about two years ago.

00:10:15 ►

So first off, I had been invited with a number of other veterans to Washington, D.C.

00:10:20 ►

for the Americans for Safe Access Conference soon after the firing of Sue Sisley

00:10:25 ►

with her work around supporting veterans and PTSD and cannabis.

00:10:29 ►

And that really is kind of the beginning of the veterans’ cannabis movement

00:10:33 ►

or concrescence of it, bringing people out and connecting them together.

00:10:36 ►

And then in Austin, Texas in April, the month after Robert Barnhart screened his movie,

00:10:43 ►

Psilocybin, A New Understanding,

00:10:45 ►

that was just one of those great nights you could feel

00:10:47 ►

just the connections of people that were going to be there

00:10:49 ►

that you knew, you already knew,

00:10:51 ►

people that you knew somehow you were going to meet that you’d never

00:10:53 ►

met before in your life.

00:10:55 ►

That night I ran into a veteran,

00:10:57 ►

Eric Glover, and we’ve been

00:10:59 ►

kind of partners and

00:11:01 ►

buddies and supporting each other

00:11:03 ►

on this plant medicine path for the, you know, the past two years since then.

00:11:09 ►

Yeah.

00:11:10 ►

So that and then, yeah, the response was immediately amazing.

00:11:15 ►

You know, these substances, whatever doorways are coming in through MDMA or psilocybin or cannabis is a great tool are pretty self-evident.

00:11:28 ►

So then it was just really meeting more veterans and already honestly discovering

00:11:32 ►

and finding out how other veterans who were ahead of the curve or whatever

00:11:36 ►

had already figured these things out around these plant medicines.

00:11:39 ►

And now with the Internet and everything else, knew who Terrence McKenna was

00:11:42 ►

and had watched this DMT, the spirit molecule. And I was like, are you kidding me? Yeah. So these people had figured

00:11:48 ►

it out on their own and gotten off the meds and the alcohol and everything else and gotten on

00:11:53 ►

cannabis. And then it was just a logical step of like, okay, you know, what other plant medicines

00:11:57 ►

are there that can help me? Cause I’ve gotten off all these things and I know that I feel better,

00:12:02 ►

but I still know there’s a moral and spiritual injury here.

00:12:05 ►

And so there’s still that seeking to address that.

00:12:08 ►

Wow. So the ground was that fertile. People were looking.

00:12:12 ►

Yeah. You know what? Yeah. But it’s still a kind of, you know,

00:12:15 ►

many are called a few are chosen is that really,

00:12:20 ►

I guess I just realized that it’s a,

00:12:23 ►

it’s a small group of people, a relatively small group of people that are really, you know, figuring this out.

00:12:30 ►

That’s been my job is for all of us is to try to find and connect with each other.

00:12:35 ►

There’s a lot of people that are just they’re still in the pharmaceutical, you know, prison.

00:12:43 ►

Yeah.

00:12:44 ►

So, yeah, my godmother is a psych nurse with, uh, two

00:12:48 ►

children in the military. And she says, we, these, we bring these soldiers back and we give them

00:12:53 ►

benzos and these heavy duty antipsychotics and it makes you gain weight and often become sexually

00:13:00 ►

impotent. And how hard is it to integrate into society, society you know when you’re fat and can’t get

00:13:05 ►

laid and no one understands what you’ve been through yeah exactly and you can’t relate to

00:13:11 ►

anybody and these things give you suicide uh and suicide suicidal ideation you know and so

00:13:17 ►

you’re stuck there in your own meat suit and you’re fogged out and you have these this moral

00:13:23 ►

injury that’s just eating away at your brain.

00:13:25 ►

Yeah, exactly.

00:13:26 ►

You can’t do any of the fun.

00:13:28 ►

Ultimately, you can’t sleep.

00:13:30 ►

That’s the biggest thing is why cannabis is a lifesaver.

00:13:32 ►

These guys, they can’t get to sleep because of the nightmares, the hyperarousal.

00:13:36 ►

Cannabis gives that sleep, and if they’ve got pain.

00:13:39 ►

A lot of people have been blown up.

00:13:41 ►

That’s just like the sort of one, two punches.

00:13:43 ►

Then the anxiety during the day part.

00:13:47 ►

So anxiety, sleep, and pain.

00:13:49 ►

And that’s why cannabis is the, you know, it’s a gateway to health for these veterans.

00:13:55 ►

Wow.

00:13:56 ►

Yeah, one thing I’ve seen a lot is veterans dabbing really high levels of cannabinoids.

00:14:01 ►

And I see it freak out some of their doctors because it’s a lot of THC they’re taking in,

00:14:06 ►

but it also seems to be the amount necessary to really calm these reactions.

00:14:12 ►

Absolutely, absolutely.

00:14:13 ►

And then obviously we’re understanding that the other power things in the plant beyond the THC,

00:14:18 ►

like the CBD, where you can get those kind of benefits as well without having to get as high in the right strains for vets.

00:14:27 ►

But, yeah, dabbing definitely works for veterans.

00:14:32 ►

So how would you – what’s the ideal for setting up a ceremony for a veteran

00:14:37 ►

who might have been used to smoking pot to calm themselves down

00:14:40 ►

but now wants to advance to ayahuasca or Ibogaine or 5-MeO?

00:14:44 ►

That’s a great, you a great question, right?

00:14:46 ►

And sort of like, yeah, what are the protocols?

00:14:48 ►

What are the school pathways?

00:14:51 ►

And we’ve been all figuring that out and making that up as we go along for sure.

00:14:56 ►

But I think it’s safe to say that, and I’ve seen it where the shamans talk to a participant and said,

00:15:02 ►

oh, great, so you have some experience with mushrooms.

00:15:04 ►

Well, excellent.

00:15:06 ►

That’s really helpful. Now you’ve taken that a couple times said, oh, great, so you have some experience with mushrooms. Well, excellent. That’s like, you know, that’s really helpful.

00:15:09 ►

Now you’ve taken that a couple times even, just that’s it.

00:15:09 ►

Cool.

00:15:14 ►

That’s, you know, that’s, if the person is comfortable with the amount of personal work that person has done,

00:15:16 ►

separate from more of their experience with the medicine, you know,

00:15:19 ►

then you can be okay with that.

00:15:22 ►

And I’ve taken a veteran through a ceremony where the shaman,

00:15:28 ►

the healer had never worked with a combat vet before.

00:15:31 ►

So there was definitely a mutual interplay.

00:15:34 ►

And that veteran having had experience with cannabis and mushrooms was really

00:15:39 ►

sufficient in their personal work to do it.

00:15:43 ►

But, yeah, I think definitely you want to.

00:15:45 ►

You’ve got some people where they just need to be in cannabis for a while

00:15:50 ►

where they can work out their stuff in a really kind of safe environment

00:15:57 ►

before they get there.

00:15:58 ►

So it definitely really depends on the person.

00:16:01 ►

That makes sense.

00:16:03 ►

How many veterans have you been able to work with through your various programs?

00:16:09 ►

Wow, so this is really just getting started.

00:16:11 ►

This is just, you know, grassroots.

00:16:13 ►

You know, obviously Ryan LeCompte, right, took, I think,

00:16:18 ►

six veterans down to Peru in 2014 with MAPS and CNN with Lisa Ling.

00:16:23 ►

And, you know, I kind of joke that was,

00:16:25 ►

uh,

00:16:26 ►

I guess that was the sort of a beta test.

00:16:28 ►

And then we went out and did it in,

00:16:30 ►

uh,

00:16:30 ►

2016,

00:16:31 ►

uh,

00:16:32 ►

kind of as the trial.

00:16:33 ►

And I think the trial good news was that,

00:16:35 ►

uh,

00:16:36 ►

just like that,

00:16:37 ►

it really showed promise for the healing of war trauma,

00:16:40 ►

service trauma.

00:16:41 ►

We really didn’t get to military sexual trauma.

00:16:44 ►

We invited some, uh, some women and just ultimately didn’t happen.

00:16:48 ►

But yeah, so I think it’s just really proving out that model

00:16:52 ►

and getting the people who want to do this connected up.

00:16:55 ►

So on the flip side, I know that over

00:16:59 ►

30 veterans have gone through SoulQuest in

00:17:03 ►

Florida. And Chris young down there is uh so and

00:17:08 ►

i know that they’ve taken more veterans through the u.s you know or anywhere else that i’m aware

00:17:13 ►

of uh than anyone else although you know i and i joined some of our fellow veterans for a ceremony

00:17:19 ►

last colorado in colorado last summer well yeah we’re 25 of us that did medicine.

00:17:27 ►

And, you know, so that was probably the biggest gathering of veterans.

00:17:31 ►

We had to gather, trying to work to heal each other, really just trying to figure it out, you know, as we go.

00:17:37 ►

And so, yeah, so really this is the beginning of that.

00:17:41 ►

We did this, you know, we did that kind of trial.

00:17:42 ►

We were lucky enough to capture it in a movie.

00:17:44 ►

And then now we can share that movie and start to bring people out and

00:17:47 ►

connect people who, you know, are interested in this and start to build a

00:17:51 ►

real infrastructure around it. So this is now just from a

00:17:55 ►

visionary and a proof of concept kind of stuff to start doing it.

00:18:00 ►

That’s great. Especially because the most important data here is in the stories.

00:18:04 ►

It’s not in any mouse trials.

00:18:05 ►

So for you to put out a movie like Shock and Awe is such a great way to spread the message.

00:18:12 ►

What was it like to work on that, to pull a movie together while also doing these ceremonies?

00:18:19 ►

Yeah, so, right, so, you know, the thing we did in Peru was, you know, Soldiers of the Vine,

00:18:23 ►

So, right, so, you know, the thing we did in Peru was, you know,

00:18:26 ►

Soldiers of the Vine, and then I’ve been working with Janine and Luke and Ryan and Matt and all these folks on Shock to Awe.

00:18:30 ►

And, yeah, so they were, you know, not only did you do this unique thing

00:18:36 ►

that was kind of crazy and obviously a little bit underground,

00:18:40 ►

but they were filming it as well.

00:18:42 ►

And so that kind of made it even crazier.

00:18:47 ►

But I think everyone’s trying to work towards the same thing, right,

00:18:51 ►

which is to share the message about what these plants can do.

00:18:54 ►

And so I’m down with anyone who wants to make that happen.

00:18:59 ►

That’s great.

00:19:00 ►

Yeah, Ian has a really cool piece on his resume.

00:19:04 ►

He does continued legal education courses on cannabis to fellow attorneys,

00:19:09 ►

which I think is a pretty cool angle, teaching lawyers about POD.

00:19:14 ►

And also the Weed for Warriors project as well.

00:19:18 ►

Yeah, those are good friends of mine, Sean Kiernan, and really doing good work.

00:19:24 ►

They’re like a really frontline force.

00:19:26 ►

These guys, you know, those people who just got back and really want to kill themselves,

00:19:30 ►

ultimately just need a buddy, just kind of like a sponsor, right?

00:19:33 ►

Somebody that they can call and say, dude, I know exactly what you’re feeling.

00:19:37 ►

I know exactly what you’ve been through.

00:19:39 ►

You know, don’t do it.

00:19:40 ►

And here’s why.

00:19:41 ►

And here’s other people that we’re with today that are living proof of

00:19:45 ►

that there’s another way you know and really just focused on that level just really creating that

00:19:52 ►

community more than anything so wow so weed for warriors often gets people just to get there and

00:19:58 ►

as veterans for entheogenic therapy then somewhat of a next step for people yeah then you know that’s I think

00:20:06 ►

what Ryan’s been trying to do is put you know the top of the plant medicine

00:20:12 ►

pathway there right you know on offer as a is a regular track that can be done

00:20:19 ►

and you know the honest truth is that as veterans, let’s just say we haven’t been able to kind of make that happen yet, right?

00:20:29 ►

He’d set up that sort of infrastructure to want to be able to do that and just haven’t had the money dedicated to take people down to Peru.

00:20:37 ►

So our sort of going as veterans to Peru and kind of totally doing a GoFundMe but then kind of bootstrapping it and any way we could pull it off just to do it.

00:20:46 ►

You know, hopefully that’s, again, a more genesis to try to build more infrastructures to do it.

00:20:53 ►

And the real challenge, Lex, is that, you know, Peru’s office or South America is really not sustainable ultimately.

00:20:58 ►

And, you know, just the cost and, you know, the sort of ayahuasca tourism that it generates by it.

00:21:04 ►

And we need to be able to do that here in the U.S.

00:21:06 ►

And I think that’s why veterans are at the tip of the spear of the, you know,

00:21:10 ►

ending the drug war so that we can get these plant medicines available here in the U.S.

00:21:15 ►

and not have to go to South America or even just across the border of Mexico, you know, to do it.

00:21:20 ►

And it really blows your mind when you start to travel around the world

00:21:23 ►

and you step across one little line and another and you go, wait, wait, Ibogaine’s legal here and it’s

00:21:29 ►

not legal here. Like the state of mind that I had is legal here, but not acceptable here. It’s,

00:21:35 ►

yeah, it’s just, it starts to get crazy. Yeah. And from your perspective, what do you see as these

00:21:43 ►

legal ayahuasca churches start to spread across the U.S. with their legal protections?

00:21:48 ►

What kind of space does that set up?

00:21:51 ►

Yeah, it’s really interesting, right?

00:21:53 ►

You’ve got the UDV and the Santo Daime that are two churches that originated in Brazil that have now come here to the U.S.

00:22:02 ►

And they have, you know, legal protection that they’ve obtained through,

00:22:07 ►

you know, basically Supreme Court cases. And so, yeah, they’re totally entitled 100%

00:22:12 ►

to do ayahuasca in their churches. And, you know, you’re seeing other

00:22:20 ►

organizations that are contemplating following in those same kind of

00:22:26 ►

footsteps in other traditions.

00:22:29 ►

I know a church, you know, out of a different country, right,

00:22:31 ►

in a different tradition that was looking at filing that paperwork.

00:22:37 ►

So there’s two ways you go about it.

00:22:38 ►

You wait until you get in trouble and then you fight it as a defendant or you

00:22:41 ►

get a declaratory judgment as a plaintiff where you say,

00:22:44 ►

I want you to rule on this, right?

00:22:46 ►

And so that person was entertaining going that route.

00:22:49 ►

And then we had this whole Trinity the Guzman ayahuasca healings,

00:22:53 ►

the United States’ first legal ayahuasca church on the Internet

00:22:56 ►

with all the heavy modern-day kind of Internet marketing.

00:23:02 ►

And, yeah, that really kind of blew things up.

00:23:05 ►

And also kind of like we can see with Trump, you know,

00:23:07 ►

started a whole kind of debate and dialogue that right previous to that

00:23:11 ►

really hadn’t existed.

00:23:13 ►

And so then you had the, you know,

00:23:15 ►

the ONAC church throwing their protection onto the Ayahuasca Healing Church.

00:23:20 ►

And my personal opinion kind of is just a way to say to the U.S.

00:23:23 ►

government, what are you going to do?. government, what are you going to do?

00:23:26 ►

What are you going to do when you already had an ONAC church in Florida, right?

00:23:30 ►

SoulQuest, which is no longer the ONAC, advertising ayahuasca and other plant medicine ceremonies on Facebook.

00:23:38 ►

And so the SoulQuest eventually did get a letter from the DEA.

00:23:49 ►

The SoulQuest eventually did get a letter from the DEA and through all that chose to leave Honak.

00:23:57 ►

But you still have a scenario where this ayahuasca healings really kind of brought this thing out as to what is legal.

00:24:03 ►

And people that might be in churches that are totally legit or maybe more underground because of that. And then you’ve got people on the other side now, like soul quest,

00:24:06 ►

they’re saying they said they were going to follow the exemption, I believe.

00:24:10 ►

And then, uh, which they wouldn’t drink any more medicine,

00:24:12 ►

but my understanding is they’re kind of going forward now and still doing that

00:24:15 ►

and kind of saying to us government sort of, you know, what are you going to do?

00:24:19 ►

And yeah, so there’s a really interesting, uh, uh, environment.

00:24:23 ►

You got more of these churches come online.

00:24:25 ►

Are they going to be more public or underground?

00:24:27 ►

And then, yeah, so it’s a wild west.

00:24:31 ►

Wow.

00:24:31 ►

And can you explain ONAC to people who might not know it?

00:24:34 ►

Yeah, Aquavon Native American Church is a church that basically came from the formation of two tribes in Utah.

00:24:43 ►

The leader of that church was basically giving plant medicines to addicts in Utah.

00:24:51 ►

He was arrested and prosecuted and took his case ultimately to the Supreme Court,

00:24:57 ►

where he won, even though he was not part of the Native American church.

00:25:01 ►

This is a different church.

00:25:03 ►

You could call it maybe a neo-Native American church

00:25:06 ►

and one protection there.

00:25:07 ►

So it’s kind of like a chink in the system.

00:25:08 ►

So the only way it ever turned out

00:25:09 ►

is the U.S. Supreme Court would, right,

00:25:12 ►

which Utah would have to appeal to,

00:25:14 ►

which they haven’t, didn’t.

00:25:15 ►

Or you have to have some change in the U.S.,

00:25:18 ►

you know, legislator, right, in the laws.

00:25:20 ►

But we’ve got this religious freedom restoration stuff

00:25:23 ►

enshrined now.

00:25:24 ►

So it’s kind of like a chink in the matrix or something where they can’t really close it down,

00:25:30 ►

but, you know, they don’t want to kind of let it grow.

00:25:33 ►

And that’s why some of these ONAC churches then have taken cannabis,

00:25:37 ►

which is a sacrament in the ONAC churches,

00:25:39 ►

and tried to do some cannabis activism through their churches,

00:25:44 ►

which has actually caused some problems for some of the other groups and

00:25:48 ►

concerns that the church being used to do that.

00:25:50 ►

So it’s this weird kind of legal quirk that different experiments happening

00:25:55 ►

with.

00:25:55 ►

And that’s when,

00:25:56 ►

you know,

00:25:56 ►

that the head of ONAC gave that protection to ayahuasca healings saying

00:26:02 ►

they’re going to do a church in the U.s to me is a way to kind of say

00:26:05 ►

to the u.s government okay you know go ahead and prosecute these guys they’re kind of going crazy

00:26:10 ►

yeah yeah it’s very brave because it is the people it’s not very politically sexy to be going after

00:26:19 ►

native churches yeah and all those people the interesting little sidebar here is every person

00:26:23 ►

who’s in the leadership of ayahuasca healing is not a U.S. citizen.

00:26:28 ►

And the U.S. government solved their problem from their perspective and banned every single one of them for life.

00:26:34 ►

Wow.

00:26:36 ►

Yeah.

00:26:37 ►

Wow.

00:26:37 ►

That kind of hammer for plant medicine.

00:26:41 ►

Yeah.

00:26:41 ►

So it’s, yeah.

00:26:42 ►

So, you know, they’re not in jail like, you know, Donna

00:26:46 ►

St. Campos was, the practitioner from Peru who was in France recently, and, yeah, but

00:26:51 ►

still, they basically, they’re never coming back in the U.S.

00:26:54 ►

Yeah.

00:26:55 ►

Wow.

00:26:56 ►

Man, oh, man.

00:26:57 ►

Yeah, everybody say thank you to your ayahuasca people, whoever they are, if you’re in the

00:27:03 ►

Western world, you know,

00:27:07 ►

thank them for the risks they’re taking.

00:27:13 ►

Now, you had an interesting personal gift lately that you gave to someone else, correct?

00:27:16 ►

Sure, yeah. I gave my son

00:27:20 ►

a gift of a three-day ayahuasca ceremony for his 18th birthday you know

00:27:29 ►

and definitely wasn’t expecting to ever be giving that gift or having to be

00:27:33 ►

received and you know since really right there’s two things to take ayahuasca

00:27:38 ►

from my perspective is that you have to be called to the medicine which is

00:27:41 ►

obviously something personal then you have to have the integrity to receive it

00:27:44 ►

right which is the kind of spiritual, physical, emotional integrity

00:27:49 ►

that you’re committed to do the work and to do the work after

00:27:52 ►

to put yourself back together.

00:27:55 ►

And, of course, my interest in these plant medicines,

00:27:58 ►

which has been ongoing but really rekindled in Healing 2.0,

00:28:02 ►

I didn’t expect any of my kids to be into this stuff because I was,

00:28:09 ►

but when that happened and my oldest was, was called to that,

00:28:11 ►

I was like,

00:28:12 ►

wow.

00:28:12 ►

And then I put myself in his shoes.

00:28:14 ►

I was like,

00:28:15 ►

wow,

00:28:15 ►

can you imagine being 18 kind of your whole life ahead of you and getting to

00:28:18 ►

do this?

00:28:19 ►

And we don’t have rites of passages in our society.

00:28:21 ►

This is,

00:28:22 ►

you know,

00:28:22 ►

this is cool.

00:28:23 ►

This is,

00:28:24 ►

this is bad-ass, you know, just look, look badass. Look what we’re missing out on. At the

00:28:29 ►

same time, you’re seeing the chance to give this gift to someone else. Yeah. So we participated in

00:28:35 ►

the ceremony, a three-day ceremony with about 30 other people. And yeah, it was one of the best

00:28:42 ►

experiences of my life.

00:28:48 ►

Wow, that’s beautiful, to be able to go with your son.

00:28:49 ►

And it’s so true.

00:28:53 ►

Rites of passage is just such a lost concept here,

00:28:54 ►

and it would be so helpful for people.

00:28:57 ►

Yeah, yeah, and I’ll tell you, like, what, you know, sort of from his perspective he learned

00:28:59 ►

and then what I’ve seen in our family dynamics since then.

00:29:04 ►

So this was, you know, with people,

00:29:05 ►

we had a lot of good family stuff where there was, you know,

00:29:07 ►

a husband and a wife or, you know, multigenerational stuff.

00:29:10 ►

And where everyone and people had known each other too

00:29:15 ►

and drank together before in other circles

00:29:18 ►

or in the same circles before.

00:29:20 ►

And so there was a super degree of vulnerability

00:29:22 ►

where you got these adults, you know,

00:29:24 ►

from him as right coming into adulthood, anywhere from his age, you know, young adults all the way up to 60s saying, you know, their vulnerability around their personal stuff right off the bat, you know, fears and doubts and insecurities and weaknesses and faults and shame and anger, you know.

00:29:47 ►

Wow, that’s just such a revelation to your own little ego living in this beat suit, right, about, like, I’m the only one that’s, you know,

00:29:53 ►

messed up here or screwed up here or different or whatever your feelings are.

00:29:57 ►

So that was really powerful.

00:30:00 ►

And he didn’t come in there with a lot of, you know, with trauma that he needed to work on.

00:30:04 ►

Like, you know, I brought him to my work.

00:30:07 ►

And so it was just, you know, more, you know, love and growth and openness.

00:30:14 ►

And so, yeah, we got to walk around together outside

00:30:19 ►

because some of these were going on during the day.

00:30:21 ►

And, yeah, that was just like, you know, something as simple as walking around with, well, in this case,

00:30:28 ►

it felt a lot of brothership and kinship rather than, like, dad to sonship,

00:30:33 ►

you know, and because he’s coming into adulthood.

00:30:36 ►

So I’m kind of like, dude, like, I know I’m your dad, but, like,

00:30:38 ►

we’re, you know, we’re, like, more like spiritual brothers

00:30:42 ►

in this kind of thing together.

00:30:43 ►

You know, we’ve been put together in this setup.

00:30:46 ►

But just simple things of just walking around outside in nature were just some of the most memorable things that I’ll have.

00:30:52 ►

And, yeah, then just all the positive changes that rippled into the family were really amazing.

00:30:59 ►

Wow.

00:31:00 ►

Wow.

00:31:01 ►

That’s beautiful.

00:31:02 ►

It just seems so sane.

00:31:04 ►

Wow. Wow. That’s beautiful. It just seems so sane.

00:31:08 ►

But I’m curious about I’m curious about pushback. If you’ve gotten any about family work or, you know, your work more in general.

00:31:16 ►

I guess if I’m honest, those are probably most of the challenges within our sort of greater family.

00:31:21 ►

Right. You know, it’s not the more public stuff because then you’re already kind of connecting

00:31:26 ►

with people who generally, you know,

00:31:27 ►

you’re connecting with them because they share your same vision.

00:31:31 ►

It’s more of those people who really know you well,

00:31:32 ►

who know the old you too.

00:31:34 ►

You’re like, well, wait, I know he’s an asshole.

00:31:36 ►

Now he’s what?

00:31:37 ►

Is he claiming not to be an asshole?

00:31:38 ►

No, I’m still an asshole.

00:31:42 ►

Yeah, just been doing some work.

00:31:43 ►

A little bit less.

00:31:44 ►

Yeah, so I think it’s really just

00:31:45 ►

family dynamics that are

00:31:48 ►

still the challenging stuff

00:31:51 ►

to work on.

00:31:52 ►

The pushback I have gotten, and it’s totally

00:31:55 ►

fair, is, hey, where’s the

00:31:57 ►

apology?

00:32:00 ►

Where’s the compassion

00:32:01 ►

for the people that you killed, basically?

00:32:03 ►

That’s totally legit. That’s just way further down the line.

00:32:06 ►

That’s just putting the cart before the horse.

00:32:08 ►

You have to,

00:32:10 ►

the,

00:32:10 ►

the,

00:32:10 ►

the message I’d approve for the veterans was self-love,

00:32:14 ►

self-acceptance,

00:32:15 ►

self-healing,

00:32:15 ►

self-forgiveness.

00:32:17 ►

And that’s what you have to have for all this stuff,

00:32:19 ►

veteran or not.

00:32:21 ►

So you got to go there first.

00:32:22 ►

And then,

00:32:22 ►

then that other stuff will naturally flow from that. So that probably the only only pushback so far anyway but you

00:32:30 ►

know I mean people I’m sure will ask it I’ve asked the question I asked that to

00:32:35 ►

my fellow veterans is this natural plant healing just so we can put more veterans

00:32:39 ►

into the war machine you know and asking is an open, honest question, you know, just, and certainly

00:32:46 ►

with more medicine work myself, I don’t find that to be the case, because I’ve just, you know,

00:32:50 ►

come to the conclusion that war is just inefficient, forgetting any of the morality,

00:32:55 ►

so it’s just inefficient, it doesn’t get us what we want, so let’s be more efficient with our

00:32:59 ►

resources, and so, yeah. That’s great. It’s good work.

00:33:06 ►

Yeah, and one question I’d like to end up with is, especially someone like you, if you had the chance to write the laws about how this stuff went out, or if you were given a big grant to just keep continuing your work, what would you want to see done the most?

00:33:26 ►

your work what would you want to see done the most well i want to set up some kind of reintegration system to bring back veterans from war and reintegrate them back in society with

00:33:33 ►

plant medicines and all these other technologies you know yoga acupuncture flotation tanks emdr

00:33:40 ►

are you know any kind of body, all those kind of things.

00:33:50 ►

And then that would be the model for how you’re going to heal other non-veterans, not civilians, you know, right, who have those traumas themselves, or hospice carriers.

00:33:56 ►

It’s basically veterans being the ones to prove out the model for this kind of holistic healing

00:34:01 ►

with platin medicines being being like, you know,

00:34:07 ►

integral to it, integrated medicine.

00:34:12 ►

So, yeah, that’s what I’m trying to do is to show people that this is a viable option and get people to start supporting it and, yeah,

00:34:18 ►

investing in it, you know, committing to it.

00:34:22 ►

That’s great.

00:34:24 ►

Yeah, thank you so much for your work.

00:34:26 ►

And where should people go if they want to hear more?

00:34:31 ►

Thesoldiersofthevine.com.

00:34:32 ►

That’ll point you to our Facebook page

00:34:34 ►

where you can watch our video there

00:34:36 ►

or watch it on YouTube or Vimeo.

00:34:39 ►

And yeah, then you can connect with myself

00:34:42 ►

or any of us on that page.

00:34:46 ►

All right.

00:34:46 ►

Well, Ian, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today,

00:34:49 ►

and thanks for all this great work.

00:34:51 ►

My pleasure.

00:34:52 ►

Thanks, brother.

00:34:56 ►

Thanks again for listening to Symposia on the Psychedelic Salon 2.0.

00:35:00 ►

Do us a favor.

00:35:01 ►

Go to iTunes or Stitcher and leave a rating or review.

00:35:04 ►

Tell your friends. That’s how you can really help us out

00:35:07 ►

thanks to Matt Payne who engineered the sound Joey Witt for the intro music

00:35:14 ►

California Smile for the outro music and Brian Norman who produced the show

Graph View

Backlinks