On Your Lead
On Your Lead
|int| From Battlefields to Breakthroughs: Mark Cunningham on the Healing Journey of Veterans Through MDMA-Assisted Therapy | Ep 106
What if the key to healing trauma lies in the unexpected fusion of military discipline and psychedelic therapy? This episode features an enlightening conversation with Army veteran Mark Cunningham, who reveals his journey from the battlefields of Afghanistan to the nuanced world of MDMA-assisted therapy. With a rich background in anthropology and marriage and family therapy, Mark shares how his experiences overseas not only reshaped his view of military service but also fueled his passion for addressing moral injury and PTSD among veterans. His story serves as a powerful testament to the transformative potential of sharing one's experiences in the quest for healing.
Together, we explore the profound impact of military service on personal identity and moral beliefs, diving deep into concepts like moral injury and its distinction from PTSD. Mark introduces wisdom from figures like Claude Anshin Thomas and Thich Nhat Hanh, highlighting the role of mindfulness and Zen Buddhism in addressing these complex issues. We also venture into the evolutionary lessons from our primate relatives, bonobos and chimpanzees, examining what their cultural adaptations can teach us about human evolution and the modern challenges young men face in defining masculinity.
The episode wraps up with a look at the transformative power of MDMA-assisted therapy and the broader societal implications of psychedelic use. Mark shares insights from his therapeutic practice, discussing how MDMA therapy can calm the fear response and foster trust, offering veterans a path to profound healing. We also touch on cultural perspectives around psychedelics, considering decriminalization efforts in Portugal and cannabis legalization in Colorado. As Mark and I reflect on our own journeys, we emphasize the importance of community and shared experiences, underscoring the healing power of connection for veterans transitioning to civilian life.
Contact Thad - VictoriousVeteranProject@Gmail.com
Thanks for listening!
I didn't know what to do with that experience. I just thought I was some unique. You know, I was an atheist at the time and so I felt like there was something about that and my major and I didn't feel like I could talk to anyone about it, so I just buried it down. But I just knew like I'm going to write out my remaining years and find another path is what I decided from that experience. And it took oh gosh, I don't know how I don't remember how it was, but how I discovered the term moral injury or soul wound, but it was probably took seven or eight years before I discovered that term and when I did I was like bingo, like yeah, I definitely had, you know, some milder PTSD symptoms coming home and there's a lot of overlap in how these show up. But there's a really different way of healing and working with it. That is really different when we know that it's moral injury, more so than PTSD, of what we're working with.
Speaker 2:My name is Thad David. I'm a former Marine recon scout sniper with two deployments to Iraq. As a civilian, I've now facilitated hundreds of personal and professional development trainings across the country, and it struck me recently that the same things that help civilians will also help veterans succeed in their new roles as well. Join me as we define civilian success principles to inspire veteran victories. Welcome to another episode. I'm here today with Army veteran Mark Cunningham. How are you doing, mark? Awesome, thank you. I know we met just recently through another veteran at a get together where we were just supporting vets and really supporting this project that they had going and sparked up a really great conversation. Actually, me and Mark have doppelganger daughters. That it shocked us. I think that was one of the things that drew us to have a conversation. But, mark, if you could tell everybody a little bit about yourself, what are you currently doing right now?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so after serving seven years in the Army National Guard as a military police in Afghanistan, I came back and finished my bachelor's degree in anthropology. So I always had a love for studying evolution of human behavior, and I got out of the Army in 2014 and I finished my bachelor's at that same time. Afghanistan really changed my mind about my service and because I was before going to pursue becoming an officer, and so I, yeah, went and traveled a bunch through europe and southeast asia and then came back and started grad school here in fort collins at colorado state university. For their, marriage and family therapy is the focus within human development, and family studies is the Masters of Science track, and now I am in private practice.
Speaker 1:So I graduated in 2017 and did a few years working at the Student Counseling Center and then, when COVID hit, that kind of motivated me to branch out on my own, and so I have since then, added specializations I always wanted to become. I was always really focused on sexual behavior, even back in anthropology days, and so I'm now an ASEC certified sex therapist and I am a MAPS MDMA trained therapist. They're the ones who have kind of done the research with MDMA and developed a training curriculum. So yeah, I use the label psychedelic therapist and, yeah, I serve half couples half couples and half individuals in my practice.
Speaker 2:There's so many things inside of that sounds like just a very, very interesting job. You said something earlier that I would actually be curious to ask you about. You said it being in afghanistan changed your mind about service, and just curious, before we jump into what you're currently doing what what changed your mind about it?
Speaker 1:yeah, so, um, yeah, so my mom was in the Air Force. My grandfather was retired from the Air Force he died when I was five, but he was in Vietnam and there was definitely some abuse in the family from him that I didn't really learn about until later on. And my aunt retired from the Air Force, so I definitely had. Yeah, I was the one went to Army and wanted to be different. My father was a Marine. Although he was never in my life, I definitely had that military culture on top of wanting to go to school and whatnot. I volunteered to deploy to Afghanistan. I even switched units to do it and, as I said, I was doing my anthropology degree while I was in the army. Right, I paused for three semesters to go deploy. And there's not a lot of anthropology people in the military about other, at least in the army. Um, so I was a bit of a unique guy that, you know, didn't feel like I could really be my authentic self very much, but, um, I adapted and figured it out, as we all do. Um, and I say all that prior context just to give you more coloring around, maybe, how I was thinking differently about my experience um, so I was, yeah, doing convoy security, detaining operations, um, helping train and, in you know, check the afghan national police or afghan national Afghan National Army would enroll them in a bat and hide system to make sure they were clear, but mainly convoy security. And fast forward to coming back from that.
Speaker 1:And I was back in my anthropology class at 21 years old and we're in our theory course and we're talking about conflict theory and the ways in which you know, throughout history, when, when war is being brought up, that you know one culture will dehumanize and label another culture as savage or subhuman in order to make it easier to justify or motivate people to want to kill our enemy. And after, after having just been in Afghanistan for a year and now sitting in this class now with you know all these getting all intellectual and nerdy, it was a really there was something about that lecture that really stirred a big shift. It honestly felt like, um, this overwhelming kind of almost like a frag grenade went off inside of me. I was like I felt like my parts uh, just went in all different directions and then I was just sitting there because there was something about that discussion that I think formerly was compartmentalized in my mind around and and I had kind of realized how, like, yeah, I had participated in some of that culture of dehumanizing and how that actually conflicts with what feels like my moral foundation and my values. And that was that was kind of this moment of reckoning, and and I was asking myself a lot of stuff like what was me, what was family, society, culture that drove me to want to participate in that? It was just running through my head.
Speaker 1:Uh, I didn't know what to do with that experience. I just thought I was, um, unique. Uh, you know, I was an atheist at the time and so I felt like there was something about that and my major and I didn't feel like I could talk to anyone about it, so I just buried it down. But I just knew like I'm going to write out my remaining years and find another path is what I decided from that experience.
Speaker 1:And it took gosh, I don't know how I don't remember how it was, but how I discovered the term moral injury or soul wound, but it was probably took uh, seven or eight years before I discovered that term. And when I did, I was like bingo, like yeah, I definitely had, you know, some milder ptsd symptoms coming home, and there's a lot of overlap in how these show up, but there's a really different way of healing and working with it. That is really different when we know that it's moral injury, more so than PTSD, of what we're working with. So I'm gonna pause there and see where you're at, because I just you just struck something.
Speaker 2:I just spoke with someone actually she's local as well, but Mary Scott does that ring a bell.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she actually introduced.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she introduced me to the term. So that was I don't know if you saw my aha that I had. I was like, oh, I literally just talked to her not long ago and and she introduced, um, that topic. But that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2:And you said you didn't talk to anybody, kind of bottled it in for a little while for sure which is an interesting because I really enjoyed um, obviously not that you went through it, but that that analogy used of a frag grenade going off on the inside, where it was like got it but then to hold it all in and now, as a therapist, the goal I would imagine is to get people to share. Did you eventually start sharing your thoughts and what was going on?
Speaker 1:yeah, what I don't again. I don't remember exactly how I discovered the word, but you know it led to finding um vietnam elders I don't know if you've you've seen claude and shin thomas at hell's gate, but he was a door gunner, uh, and he, at 18, was in vietnam and came back and spiraled through, you know, homelessness and various addictions. And then then do you know the Vietnamese monk who passed a few years ago, thich Nhat Hanh? No, so he's pretty famous, written a lot of books and really well-known in the mindfulness community. Anyhow, his social worker, claude, tells him about these meditation retreats that Thich Nhat Hanh is facilitating in Europe at the time, and so he finally ends up going out there and he talks all about you know.
Speaker 1:So Thich Nhat Hanh is a Vietnamese monk, and so he's triggering his old enemy response, right and same with other staff are also Vietnamese, and so he's just constantly getting triggered into his PTSD by these people, who are also teaching him, though, how to work with that through Zen, buddhism and how to de-enemify his former enemy.
Speaker 1:And later on he goes through his beautiful childhood and being raised by World War II vets and the glorified hero narrative, and then the difference of being a Vietnam vet and and he talks about, you know, reckoning with like, am I a bad person because of what I did? Versus zooming out and viewing the collective layers of like, our conditioning and being born at a certain time at a certain place, in a certain family, in a certain culture, and just like how that shapes our actions. And, yeah, we're responsible for our actions, but that doesn't make us a good or bad person. That's, that's judgment. So all that to say that like yeah, looking to elders who have written about these experiences really started to help me to like resonate with their experience and find language and find ways to start working with. And then I yeah, I just nerded out started doing research on moral injury because yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 2:No, I was gonna ask you what is your favorite book on moral injury if somebody wanted to jump more into it or favorite place for context um, you can go check out voaorg.
Speaker 1:Um, they've got some videos and articles that are easily accessible. Um, and just voaorg slash moral injury. Um, I don't want to, yeah, get too into the like research articles, but, um, no, that's perfect. Dr eduardo duran, he's also a vietnam vet and he wrote healing the soul wound and he comes, he's raised indigenous native american and so he brings it and he's a psychologist, so he brings some really interesting perspectives on on working with this spiritually. Because that's the main difference between PTSD and moral injury is because they can look a lot. The symptoms can look a lot of the same stuff, but in the core of it, moral injury is losing trust in self and in other, compared to losing a sense of safety With PTSD. There can be overlap, for sure, but moral injury soul wound requires a lot of spiritual healing to address it.
Speaker 1:That is a little bit more different from PTSD tracks of healing.
Speaker 2:Got it. Very interesting. Thank you Thanks for sharing that I was nice, unexpected aha, and that I was not expecting to jump into. But thank you thanks for sharing that I was nice, unexpected aha, and that I was not expecting to to jump into. But thank you for that. And so here you are now, a sex and psychedelic therapist, which is very intriguing. What does a sex therapist do? What do you do as a sex therapist?
Speaker 1:yeah, I um therapist. Yeah, I um. Sex therapy is a really broad, wide, open realm that you know. We can talk about things like gender identity and exploration to different ways of loving and relationship orientations. You know, non-monogamy kink, whatever it might be, and we can help partners who maybe have differences in desire or and are struggling to figure out how to have sexual compatibility or find compromise, or or they were just raised with a lot of sex negativity from really strong religious conditioning and that makes it really hard for them to know how to talk about these things. To sexual health, there's a lot of.
Speaker 2:Definitely you know it's a sexual trauma and so much more um, okay, the deep, like you said, very broad and there's, it's very like that's a. There's a lot of things to unpack inside of that what I've been loving recently.
Speaker 1:You know I definitely get a lot of male clients, you know, coming in for like performance, anxiety, erectile dysfunction. How do I talk to my wife about my porn? I'd be like I have to hide it and lie about it. So I finally created a men's. I was sitting on it for a little while but, uh, I'm in my fourth week out of six weeks of them. It's called evolving lovers men's sexuality group, so I have six men who gather here and we, each friday and I will share different readings or videos and then we'll do a little meditation and then we'll move into discussion. And it has been so exciting and fun and beautiful and vulnerable and real and supportive and, uh, it's just such an honor for me to like hold that space and be in it with them and, uh, to feel the, the, the walls of loneliness and isolation just unfold as people really dive into authenticity around these discussions rather than like locker room talk of trying to, you know, seem cool or impress their friends right, well, we never had any of that in the military.
Speaker 2:Uh, as you think about that loneliness, isolation, what, what's, where does that stem from? Like what and again. I don't want to get into anybody's personal items, but just out of curiosity, you mentioned to kind of lift the wall, that loneliness and isolation. Um, where does that come from and what is that like?
Speaker 1:the first thing that popped into my head because there's so many things that that can come from, you know, as I'm sick, like with religious kind of or other societal or family conditioning. Um, you know, was your family sex positive? Were they open to those discussions and having those throughout your development and? Um, were they accepting of different ways of talking about sexuality and loving and relationship styles? Or were they sex negative? Right, there's only one right way to do sex. Everything else is a sin and is bad.
Speaker 1:And or were you more sex neutral, where they didn't really talk about it ever? If it was on the tv, if there was something sexual content, they'd kind of look away and pretend it doesn't exist. These things, right, really start to shape what we think is okay to talk about or not. Um, that combined with um, yeah, perhaps rigid expectations of what it means to be a man or not to be a man, um, classic patriarchal societal impacts on on boys and men and how that limits what we feel we can express or talk about are, yeah, some things popping in interesting.
Speaker 2:What are your thoughts on, because this is now it's totally different pathway, but, um, there's a lot of stuff, it seems like, coming out about just raising a boy, raising a man these days and just kind of where everything is seems to be going and, society-wise, like, what is your thoughts on, just on that in general, just raising a boy, raising a man and just how it's currently done, thoughts just in general.
Speaker 1:Change is the only constant and we humans, just like our environment, need to adapt to that change, and culture is highly adaptable and is dependent on local environment. Um, I don't know if we'll have the time, but I love nerding out about the difference between chimpanzees and bonobos and how that shapes their culture and how that shapes their sexuality and ways of relating to one another and also their relationship with violence I have no idea and I really now want to know about those two things.
Speaker 2:So, if you don't mind, what is the, what is it, what is the difference? And, yeah, I would love, love secret about it.
Speaker 1:Okay, and then maybe we'll go back to masculinity and rites of passage and yeah. Yeah, for sure, there's a book called sex at dawn. That's really a great overview and deeper dive into this.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Have you heard of that, christopher?
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:Just like the way it sounds. I have not. No, I just like the way it sounds. So bonobos and chimps are both current living modern day ancestors right From about 6 million years ago. We diverged evolutionarily from them, but they're both our most common recent living ancestors, so we can look to them for clues to our evolution. They live in the Congo and they're separated by a mountain range, and that separation creates an environmental difference, although it's a very similar environment.
Speaker 1:Gorillas live on the same side as chimps, and so gorillas are another big ape, and so they occupy similar niche as the chimpanzees. So they're competing more for the same access to local food resources and shelter you know home environments and so there's more struggle and competition for resources, right Whereas bonobos are not competing with those, and so in that environment they have less of a struggle, and that brings about a few things. So for chimps they've developed a patriarchal culture where males will use violence as a way to ascend the social hierarchy and to gain more access to more food and more mates, whereas bonobos are matriarchal. So the females are checking if there is any male violence. They're they're. They're either going to socially exile that male or they're going to calm and soothe him in with some form of physical pleasure, uh, sex, uh, and they also have within bonobos. They have a lot more variation of sex. They help. They'll have male, male, female, female genital rubbing. They'll have oral sex. They'll have what we call um ventral, ventral or missionary style sex, where they've actually got eye gaze going on, which brings about attachment and oxytocin, like in humans, whereas chimps only have um dorsal, dorsal or doggy style sex.
Speaker 1:Um, so it's really fascinating what that all leads to, all these different types of sex, but it also leads to a lot more um, I'm gonna let that go. I'm gonna let that go, um, okay, so what's what's really interesting about this? Right, is we can start to unpack and learn how environment relates to culture and how these ideas of what it means to be masculine or feminine or are flexible and and ever evolving and changing, and especially when we think about humans throughout the whole world and our access to resources and competition shaped by our local resources and economies and whatnot. You know it? That? That's what that's a lens that I think through um on this topic. Very interesting.
Speaker 1:I also think through the lens of how most collectivistic cultures will have rites of passage where you know there is some type of ceremonial ritual for male or females to gain their manhood or their womanhood, and how you know, sometimes in the West that might look like getting your driver's license at 16 or drinking at 21, or and you know not to say that people don't create their own versions, but it's not standardized in our culture. Other cultures, like you know, go off and go, take a few days and go and hunt some animal, or go and survive on your own, or take these psychedelics and really shake up your sense of what you think the world is and yourself is, and then come back and integrate what you've learned and show that you're, you know, gaining maturity and understanding of yourself I'm jotting this down.
Speaker 2:I really it's intriguing to me. What do you think about the rites of passage? Because I read a book recently that that was one of the things that they had mentioned had left and that it was difficult for boys to grow into men and not into the um, not to put any terms around it, but to essentially depart the mother of as the caring and like I'm able to take care of myself and kind of push away and it would. The context of it was around how many men these days, or boys, seem to not really leave the house, not really leave home, that far more boys are not going to school, they're not going up to college, they're not getting jobs, they're not leaving the house, and that was one of the reference points that he had towards it. Did you have anything, any thoughts on any of that?
Speaker 1:well, there's a um, yeah, I mean not having that, those standardized rites of passage that other cultures might have, definitely is a handicap to human development.
Speaker 1:Um, and so when you think about generations and generations of that and those fathers and parents raising kids without having had that themselves, you know well that progresses, that progresses, and it's beautiful that we are not getting stuck into these rigid boxes of what it means to be a male and a female, and there's a lot of opening up there for people to be able to express parts of themselves that they used to have to feel like they had to hide from themselves or others. But it also creates this paradox of choice where you define your own version of what masculinity is and like, wow, how do I even begin to start figuring out what that is? It's a really wide open terrain. Figuring out what that is like it's a really wide open terrain, so it can almost feel overwhelming and challenging to know where to begin. Compared to just like, oh, a man is this? You learn how to fix all the things in the house and you wear blue or you don't wear this color. You know you like whatever it might be.
Speaker 2:for some people that's easier to have a box it's interesting that you you mentioned that because we we talk about it often with our kid. We're pretty with our kids do whatever they want, to do within reason. I mean, uh, as far as what they want to play with or what toys they want, what things they want. Somebody said it was commercials, but they've never really seen a tv commercial. They don't get a lot of tv. Just the other day they got to pick.
Speaker 2:We bought a little donut making kit and it was like pick whatever color you want. And my daughter was like I want pink. And my son was like I want blue, like why do you guys want those colors? And my son was like I love blue, I love sharks. My daughter was like I love unicorns and it was like, with no priming, no reason, you know, it doesn't feel like we put them in a box or the confines that they seem to be so naturally gravitating towards that. And it's always been intriguing to us because we're like look at our basic, you know basic kids just doing their thing and we love them to death.
Speaker 1:But it was just, it's curious that you mentioned that this is a blue and you're put in a box, but he seems to be just naturally drawn to that anyway, and the same with my daughter. Yeah, well, yeah, who knows? I mean, we're never raised in a vacuum. There's always so much influence coming at us from so many different. You know, even by age four, three or four yeah, there is.
Speaker 2:It was just a very interesting, very interesting thing. So, sex therapist we went way down a different rabbit hole. Uh, that I'm very happy that we talked about. So thank you for sharing all of that. So sex therapist also psychedelics. So what do you do as a psychedelic therapist?
Speaker 1:yeah. So I'll just back up and say that I was military police. I was the kid who listened to dare, uh, and enforced that right and okay. And I had friends. You know, I was in las vegas and I had friends that were in the raving environment. I'd go to some raves and I'd only drink alcohol and try to keep up, but I'd see and I'd feel their different energy and was starting to get curious.
Speaker 1:So I then went to Amsterdam on my Euro trip after getting out of the army and that was where I did MDMA and marijuana for my first time.
Speaker 1:And that was just a really big moment, that a feeling.
Speaker 1:These are two different moments, but doing MDMA for the first time at a festival there was, yeah, a really I felt presence, I felt grounded, I felt like I could trust myself and others, I felt my mind calm down, I felt music in my bones and in my cells and that led to me going wow, I need to know more about this substance, this medicine, and I need to also know how to reach this state of compassion and love and connection and trust, sober.
Speaker 1:And that led me to pursue meditation and yoga and other practices. So after grad school I met some local the maps was still doing their research on their phase three study and there was actually a group of therapists doing that locally and so I got connected to them to kind of learn more about what they're doing. And that led to me getting a really a big blessing of getting connected to an opportunity to go and attend the training specifically for therapists working with veteran populations. So I did that at the Bronx VA and was with like 45 other people that were like therapists in the VA system Bronx VA and was with like 45 other people that were like therapists in the VA system and, yeah, it was really a rewarding and incredible experience.
Speaker 1:I was one of like five veteran therapists there in the training and you had to watch the veterans go through the treatment. We were watching videos of them going through the medicine and I experienced a lot of like both having my therapist hat and my veteran hat during that, and watching that unfold was incredibly powerful. So that's supposed to be legal. The FDA just received their full packet from MAPS and they're supposed to be deciding on that in August and that'll be federal approval for therapy.
Speaker 2:So you said you loved being able to watch that. What, what was that like what? What did they actually go through? As much detail as you can provide I'd love to, especially from the veteran side. What did you witness unfold?
Speaker 1:Have you heard of internal family systems? It's hard to work, so I'll put it into a nutshell, but Dick Schwartz, no bad parts is a great book to look into on this. But it's this idea that the self, the mind, is not a unitary self, but rather we have kind of these different parts. We have these wounded, exile parts that are carrying the shame, the trauma, the fear, the sadness, whatever it might be. And then we have these protector parts managers and firefighters they're called, and they have these different strategies, these different ways that they've learned throughout life to protect us from those X, those wounded parts getting triggered.
Speaker 1:Maybe it's using substances to avoid or numb, or maybe it's using video games or computer or whatever it might be to avoid, numb, block, run away from, shut down, and yeah. So MDMA helps to calm the fear response in the amygdala, the fight or flight part of our brain. It also boosts trust in self and other. So when you think about PTSD, moral injury and you're in therapy, that's some really good things to be feeling improved trust to go into that terrain, and it also increases empathy, which is why I want to do it with couples as well. It's really ideal for couples work.
Speaker 1:But so, yeah, you watch these veterans as they go through and they're able to not get stuck in the normal defense strategies and blocking and avoiding, because the fear response is calmed and their trust is improved and they're able to go to those core wounded places with a shit ton of love and compassion from all the oxytocin and dopamine and serotonin and they're able to rewrite you know whatever stuck beliefs about themselves or about the world that are maybe maladaptive beliefs from those experiences that are maintaining internal conflict or relational conflict or other challenges in their life. And so what they found is that, yeah, 70 percent of veterans responded so favorably after going through the um, their their 12 total sessions, three, three, mdma, uh, seven, 70% are no longer diagnosed with PTSD. Yeah, so it's. That's incredible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you said 12 sessions, only three had in sessions are eight hour long and then the rest are kind of prep and integration sessions.
Speaker 2:Okay, and you had said earlier just because I could hear people asking the question of great, so I'm just going to take drugs, more drugs for the rest of my life. But you had referenced earlier that your goal was how do I feel this way sober? Is that the overarching plan? So, when somebody goes through this sort of therapy is to achieve a state where they aren't taking this drug any longer well, at least to treat themselves yeah, yeah, and it's up to the individual to decide what their relationship is going to be with that substance.
Speaker 1:But to be intentional about what is it? And and yes, overall the goal here is to not make it just another psychotropic med that we have to take every day for the rest of our life or whatever to numb or dull symptoms, but that there's more transformative healing going on here. And but for some, maybe they do three, five sessions and they're done for life and they decide that they're good. For others, maybe they come back in and they do one or two a year, you know, on their own or with a therapist. That's that's up to them decide. And there's a lot of factors to kind of consider there around. Yeah, each individual's relationship with it. But, um, yeah, does that answer?
Speaker 2:yeah, for sure. I was just very curious. I I thought it was interesting that you had stated that that's what integration is really.
Speaker 1:You know about is mining. From what happened during the medicine session, what came up and what did you do in that, in that altered state, and what did you learn? And how do we take those insights and and those new ways of relating to yourself and others and how do we, how do we find other ways to maintain those changes into your life? That's that's really key that the, the medicine, whether it's psilocybin or mdma or whatever it might be, is not the magic fix, um, but it, combined with your inner healing intelligence, the, the force, the wisdom within you that heals your wounds, um, if you get a scratch or cut right, is always looking out for you and trying to help you heal and evolve and to adapt. And so how do you take that, in addition to the medicine and maybe working with your therapist or other support systems in your life, and figure out how to create changes in your lifestyle and in your relationships to maintain feeling better?
Speaker 2:so what is some common kickback that you hear from people that might know, because I'm very interested in this, just because I mean 70%, that's a big number. That's not like 15%, like it worked for some people, like 70%, that's a large number of veterans to be no longer diagnosable with PTSD. So what is some common kickback you hear, or maybe cons there or reasons that people say they're against it.
Speaker 1:There was a lot of misinformation with the DARE era and the Reagan era of the war against drugs that are still definitely in our culture and shaping people's assumptions around. Drugs rot your brain the old frying the egg commercial. Drugs rot your brain that will fry in the egg commercial. And yeah, there was really the main contraindications. The main concerns are that you don't have any heart problems, right, because it does elevate your heart rate, but they didn't have any adverse side effects. So it's really amazing how because it does elevate your heart rate but they didn't have any adverse side effects, so it's really amazing how healthy it is. We still need longer-term research on the effects on neurons. There's some rat studies that show the potential for some breakdown and some nerve endings and I'm speaking not with a fresh review of this and this again is also why we're not trying to take this every day and do more and more higher, higher doses long term.
Speaker 1:This is where it is something to have reverence with and and to moderate that makes a lot of sense other people might have concerns, just given their general distrust in all the years of big pharma and the medical establishment, and then they'll just see this as another new round of that. That. We have to kind of work with those very wise concerns and cautions and, uh, but this is very different, you know, and it's therapy combined with the medicine, not just throwing another medicine. So it's creating a whole new systems in our, in our government and in our medical field when we're combining this interdisciplinary model into the same practice, yeah, which turns into a whole slew of things.
Speaker 2:No, that makes it makes a ton of sense. I love, mark, just your perception of being a veteran and how you're able to bring this to the table, because you know essentially a lot of veterans might be struggling with being open to something like this, and I love that you've got your deployments, or your deployment over to Afghanistan, and just it's a connection point that I think a lot of people will listen to your voice about it some more, and I just think it's really cool. You're definitely the person to be talking to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, thanks.
Speaker 2:Now you had said earlier about echo chambers and we kind of get stuck in our own little spot of.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm just hearing our thing and I'm definitely connected to a lot of awesome veteran organizations that are doing this work, like heroic heart project Uh, they they bring. I actually went with them and did ayahuasca in Peru and they send down vets to do that as well as. Uh, they have a sister project that just formed for spouses called the hope project, um to send spouses down um to do psilocybin and the mission within is in Mexico and they do um, I think they do five MEO, dmt and invoke, they do other psychedelics and there's also vets, which is veterans exploring treatment solutions, headed by Marcus Capone, former Navy seal, and his wife. Uh, so, yeah, I'm definitely like always in those realms and so it just feels like there's so much traffic around these topics. But yeah, that's cause I'm in, you know those circles.
Speaker 2:But yeah, for sure. You mentioned ayahuasca. I actually just talked to a buddy that just went down and had an experience, quite the experience about. He was raving about it. What were your thoughts on ayahuasca? How was that experience for you?
Speaker 1:man it was. It was um, to just be in peru and be on the like we were right off the amazon river. So just for me, like I used to want to be a wildlife biologist like. So that was just like a for me, like, so happy to be around wildlife biologist, so that was just like A for me, so happy to be around all the insects and reptiles. We'd swim in the river many days and to see the dolphins in the river go by was incredible.
Speaker 1:But, yeah, definitely one of the most intense psychedelics on planet earth that you know has been being used for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, ceremonially, um, and we are very much altering, right through consumerism and two or a psychedelic tourism, we're very much altering. That practice again changes. The only constant so I'm not trying to say good or bad, but different impacts when you know what was formerly a shaman operating for free because of reciprocity in a community, is now monetized and so that brings in all different types of, you know, variables to that container and to what that, what that is, um, yeah, it's much more.
Speaker 2:You want to just kind of hear and like I wonder what questions you have, because just curious to hear about it and I know my buddy's story about it, um, but I think anybody listening might benefit from understanding what it what it was like. I don't know what yours was, but he actually went down because you said with the shaman and I don't know. I know that he paid.
Speaker 1:It was definitely a tourist uh adventure, without a doubt, but it sounded like it was more of a guided experience I was just curious what yours was like we did 10 days there and we did five rounds of doing, uh, ayahuasca, so we'd have a medicine day and a break day and a medicine day and a break day. But the break days were very action-packed. Uh, we would do, you know, and this wasn't their first time do it working with heroic hearts project and having veterans come through. So they've been doing this now for years. And, uh, we did things like trauma release exercises, we did ecstatic dance workshops and holotropic breath work.
Speaker 1:Um, you know, they're feeding you a special diet the entire time. That's really friendly to ayahuasca because you, it is a purgative. So a lot of people, most people, every time they drink will, will vomit or throw it up, which that in and of itself can be therapeutic. While you're in that altered state, um, and they, they really view purging as a way to cleanse the body, like it's the body's natural way to get rid of toxins or, uh, sickness, right, whether through either end. Um, and so they'll have. Yeah, I mean, I'm getting all over the place. My mind can start just kind of shotgunning in all these different ways. I want to keep, yeah, but, um, sometimes, when you're vomiting and you're in that altered state, there's memories or visions or images that are associated with what you're purging. You know, maybe, what about your identity or your traumas or your pain? You'll kind of feel it coming out of your body. Uh, so as as as.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's very challenging, but also can be beautiful, um and on the break day did you feel as if that was actually purged from you. Like those, those feelings, that trauma, those thoughts, did that actually feel as if it was purged from you?
Speaker 1:I definitely did some. You know, none of my medicine ceremonies have done all the work. There's always different layers that come at different times. Um, that I was ambushed in afghanistan, um, and so I definitely had some strong protective parts that were constantly operating in in looking at, you know, in social situations, looking to be re ambushed, and not maybe literally, but maybe in other ways. Just this, this narrative of this part that's concerned that others are planning something, they're all in on something that not necessarily they're going to try to kill me, but that there's planning something they're all in on something that not necessarily they're going to try to kill me, but that there's just they're planning something that I'm not aware of. Um, so I was able to do some deep work with that protective part and really appreciate how much it's trying to protect me from being surprised and overwhelmed and panicked and how long it's been operating that way to try to look out for me and and to really sit with that gratitude and um, that helped it to really uh calm down a significant amount. Um, yeah, it's hard to, it's really ineffable and hard to describe all the ways that these experiences uh translate and unfold in your life.
Speaker 1:I was recently doing psilocybin with a group of veterans here in Colorado and had always had. You know, I had this moment of freezing during my ambush and the freeze response, right, is a combination of of being stuck and I don't know if I should fight or if I should run right. That energy gets stuck in the body and the nervous system and that would show up for me. You know, even like, recreationally, I would sometimes, you know, go to parties or concerts and take psychedelics and then I would have kind of a free shutdown response where I would just get overwhelmed with what was showing up in those various protective parts and I would just kind of look to my wife and just she'd know that I was struggling and my, my way to cope with that was to just kind of shut down.
Speaker 1:And so it was really powerful recently to have a really strong container where I knew, you know, one of the facilitators, tim Spola, good friend and a fellow.
Speaker 1:He's an army ranger and deployed to Iraq three or five times and he's also a psychedelic therapist here, and so he was yeah, we've connected prior to this event and he's the one who invited me to it. So me having the knowing that he was a facilitator was really different in terms of shaping that container for me to feel, especially because he's disclosed some of his experiences in his journey with moral injury and PTSD. So that allowed me to feel a greater trust in not feeling like I need to protect or take care of or be worried about the people around me, need to protect or take care of or be worried about the people around me, which allowed me to move through that freeze response and into actually deep rage and sadness and fear and to really like let it all out. Um, which was really yeah, I didn't get to experience that my ayahuasca journey because I didn't quite have the same trust in the container of the facilitators who were not veterans.
Speaker 2:Um, yeah, so curious sounds like it's, it's no, I'm just a really grateful for you to share just really in depth these experiences and kind of what, what you've gone through, because I think it's very helpful for people listening to be able to understand that you know they're not on the journey solo, and they might be on the journey solo, but there's other people that have been on similar journeys and I think it's just really, really incredible that you're open to sharing it and also that it takes, like you had said earlier. It's not just the one like the ayahuasca wasn't just the one time fix that there were. It's a journey of continuing to explore where you're at personally, and so I'm just appreciating you sharing all of that. Thanks, yeah, well, thank you for sharing it. It's pretty incredible stuff. Anybody listening right now that might be contemplating, jumping in just attempting to experiment with some psychedelics what thoughts, what would you tell them?
Speaker 1:There's a great Netflix series and book by Michael Pollan called how to Change your Mind. Okay, and the Netflix series has like six episodes or something like that and covers the history and the culture and the current research around MDMA, psilocybin, ayahuasca and, I believe, lsd. So that's a great way to start learning and you'll learn about things like set and setting, which are set is the mindset that you're bringing into the experience, based on where you're normally at in your mind day to day, based on what you do in prepping and coming into your consciousness. You know like or how you're shaping your consciousness. You know before you take the medicine and then what you do for the setting is well, where are you, what's the space like inside, outside, who's around you, what's your feeling of trust or what's your relationship like with the people around you. That's going to really shape what can come up and where you're at emotionally, energetically. So these are some of the variables you need to start considering.
Speaker 1:I'm not at all a person who says that it's only therapeutic and good and healthy if you do it on a couch with a therapist, with headphones and eye shades. That's one way, but it's also been extremely therapeutic for me to be at a rave and on MDMA with really close friends and to have just all this heartfelt sharing of what we love about each other and just really enjoying music. That is also therapeutic in many ways, um. So I'd also want to rep the fireside project. They are providing free, anonymous, um, psychedelic harm reduction support, so so you can call them. They're open like 20 hours out of the day or something like that, and if you're having a difficult time and you're wanting to talk to someone maybe you're not trusting anyone around you and you want to get support, they have therapists who are on the phone waiting to help you kind of walk you through that experience. So that's a good resource to have. Help you kind of walk you through that experience. So that's a good resource to have.
Speaker 1:There's also drug testing drug testing kits that you can get from dance safe and other organizations that can at least help you to learn what's not in your substance. You know, especially when we're talking about a, two CB or MDMA, or you know the risk of fentanyl and other things getting in. You want to be more cautious, for sure, about what's in or not in your substances. That's where psilocybin is a little less scary. Yeah, there's bad mushrooms out there, but if you know it's the right species, you're good to go.
Speaker 2:It seems like there's definitely some bad press around that you always hear about just different drugs out that there's, you know, I guess the news and the media throws out if there's bad batches of just whatever that's killing people, I think that that stuff is good to be aware of it and also probably creates, I would imagine, a negative connotation around some of these things yeah, and is that the drug?
Speaker 1:or is that our culture that has put a war on drugs and we're not regulating and making healthy versions that are accessible for people to use, like they've been in portugal? You know what? What are we really vilifying here?
Speaker 2:what have they done in Portugal?
Speaker 1:Oh, they decriminalized. I don't remember when this was, but decades ago they just learned that it wasn't working the war on drugs and so they just made them regulated and accessible and they offered therapeutic services and they have seen addiction rates and other maladaptive symptoms plummet because people are able to not get stuck in the prison pipeline and are getting other resources connected to their use and they're getting healthy access to and not wanting to buy it on the street or from distrusting sources. Because it's regulated.
Speaker 2:Right, I think that's. I travel around the country and usually people find out from colorado. Every now and again I'll get asked still, like, what's it like to have weed legal? Like, honestly, it's like it's not for me and I, honestly, I wouldn't even notice it if any more than anywhere else I've ever lived. You know, I think it's so interesting that we we made it massively just available. You know, you can walk down the street go buy it. But I don't think, personally, I don't think it's really changed anything as far as what people do and don't do. I don't think it became legal and people that were never going to try it anyway just like, well, I gotta go do it now. You know it didn't create people, just created a space where somebody can go buy it without having to do so illegally.
Speaker 1:It's interesting and we have a lot, you know, as we go through what we call our psychedelic renaissance in the west, like this is yeah, that's what we're going through in the west, but psychedelics have been used for throughout human evolution.
Speaker 1:Like you know, there's there's there's the stoned ape theory that's thought that it might've had a really important role in our brain evolution. You know, finding fungi and what that led to, um, as well as other cultures using it medicinally, intentionally for thousands of years. So it's not a psychedelic Renaissance in the scope of human human history, but it is in our Western paradigm, um, human history, but it is in our western paradigm and, yeah, it's going to bring up a lot, you know, dropping that, this emergence into capitalism and into, in, you know, our, our culture that hasn't had these practices be normalized and held by elders and be passed down intergenerationally. It's going to create all different versions and types of how we commodify it and adapt to it or don't adapt to it. In our education and practices that we really need to learn and look to folks like the Mazatec in Mexico or the Shipibo shamans in Peru and really learn and respect and appreciate and give back to them, because they've been tending to these medicines far longer than we have.
Speaker 2:Very interesting you had and I'm curious to ask you about it. But you mentioned the stoned ape theory. Yeah, what is that?
Speaker 1:Oh gosh, I haven't read a a deep dive on it, but it's that. Look up. Uh, paul stamets is probably. There's probably someone else who's coined it, but paul stamets definitely talks about it. He's a famous mycologist. Um, it's this idea that you know. There's a lot of variables that led to the brain growing from our use of fire and cooking food and providing protection, and how that changed our sleep habits. I can nerd out on that, but it's thought that, additionally, there's something about the use, you know, finding these psychedelic mushrooms. It was an accident, you know, and but something about that may have contributed to more prefrontal cortex expanding. I wish I knew greater details.
Speaker 2:No, that makes. That makes sense, though, like what you're saying. Makes sense what?
Speaker 1:With sleep when we moved from sleeping more as primates in the trees to using fire. What that allowed is it allowed a form of protection and warmth for us to move from sleeping in the trees to sleeping on the ground. And what that allowed is deeper stages of REM sleep, because if you got too deep into the REMs you might fall out of the tree and break a limb or die. So when you're sleeping on the ground you can have these longer periods of deeper REM sleep. And REM sleep is when we go into the dream state, and the dream state is thought to be where we come up with ideas and birth new cultures. So you add psychedelics to that mix.
Speaker 2:Interesting, Wow, I had never and it makes perfect sense, but I've not heard of that. We're just and it makes again crystal clear whether we move from the trees to the ground, then we can actually sleep better, which further enhanced just evolution and growth. So you're, I would imagine, a firm believer in getting good, healthy sleep yeah, yeah, why do you do you?
Speaker 2:no, I'm just curious. It's something that got brought up earlier. I did an interview with a gentleman. He actually just had a book come out, um chris free, and his book is operator syndrome, which is this term. He actually worked in the va for 25 years. I think an operator syndrome is a different um, different than the mortal injury, different than ptsd. But he breaks it down.
Speaker 2:But one of the things that he talked about pretty heavily was sleep as well and just the importance of it and how a lot of times it can get disrupted with some of these things and it prevents us from getting the sleep that we need. So I just like to pick people's brains. I think sleep personally, I believe sleep is very, very important and I think I'm very excited to see this shift in narrative where it used to be back to the masculinity, where I was like, oh, I only need to sleep two hours a night. I was like okay, great. Like how healthy is your body? Like what is that doing to you long term? Like yes, I can operate on two hours of sleep, but what is the most effective thing? So just anybody that piques the interest of it or mentions it, I just love to pick their brain like what what thoughts do you have about sleep habits currently?
Speaker 1:so my primatology professor for anthropology was dr david samson. Um, he's written, he I think he's got another. His recent book is our tribal future our tribal future but he uh does research on sleeps sleep in primates, um, so he might be someone that you're interested in. But yeah, when you think also about being nomadic hunter, gatherers in africa and how this system evolved for over 200 000 years, um, prior to modern agriculture societies, and, um, we were going and foraging and, and then we bring back the food, we eat it, we'd sleep, we'd go out and do that again, or we'd play, or we'd connect and we'd sleep again. Like we were sleeping a lot more, uh, in different especially just to cope with the heat, um, and so there was just a lot more intermittent sleep throughout the day, rather than just this you know, sleep eight hours so that you can work all day, kind of paradigm.
Speaker 2:It's very interesting. What did you say his name was? Dr David Sampson yeah, he's definitely done a lot of research on sleep, but yeah, I'm excited to dive deeper into that and another, another time, and thank you so much for sharing all of this information, all of this knowledge, for for anybody that wants to reach out, is there a good space that somebody could reach out, pick your brain, ask you questions is it okay?
Speaker 1:yes, uh, I want to come back to one thing. Did you? You said you down, you downloaded tribe. I did yeah. Have you already been listening to that, or is that on your?
Speaker 2:list. I didn't, it is, it's next up. I just finished um this book. There I'm training for a big run that I'm doing. I'm doing a 40-mile race this summer so I've been reading a lot about ultramarathons. So I just finished this one book about the rise of ultramarathons and I just started this other one called Do Hard Things, which came recommended and the Tribe is up next. So no, and I will get to it, I would say, by the end of next week. I'll be into it.
Speaker 1:Cool, cool. Yeah, what made you bring it up. You're our conversation at the veteran event about. You're wondering around differences in vet integration and why some struggle more than others is wondering. Yeah, one, go back to that yeah, absolutely, I'm glad you did.
Speaker 2:I was actually going to ask you before we closed out, like, what have we not talked about that? Uh, we should be talking about? But yeah, for me it's. It was something that I was I really spent a lot of. For me, it was something that I was I really spent a lot of time thinking about because it felt like we had me and my unit and a lot of my buddies.
Speaker 2:We all went through very similar experiences and so, after getting out, I was wondering why did some people struggle more than others? And again, I know, even though we weren't, if you're right next to each other, you're looking through a different lens, which is something I've appreciated. What you shared earlier, even when you talk about different topics, that this is the lens I choose to look through this with, and that's essentially what's happening with everybody. You know we all have our filters that we look at the world through and correct me if you have contradictory thoughts with any of this, but I would imagine that creates a lot of the perception of the experience that we're in is the lens that we have currently at that time, and it's just something that's fascinated me is why is it that some veterans. A lot of people go through the same things, and some people tend to thrive, some people struggle, and so, yeah, that's something that's always on my mind.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was something that I really struggled with and asked myself like why was I struggling and beating myself up so much about when my moral injury kind of set in in that anthropology class?
Speaker 1:And later on like why and I I don't know if I have a definitive answer you know I've wondered and explored the roots of that of growing up with, you know, family development and growing up with a single mother and how that created just challenges to feel confident response to my military service and coming from like a place of guilt or shame. So I wonder about people's relationship already with what traumas they had already in their life and what insecurities they already had and how that connects to what they did in their time in the military and then how that connects to then integration. I think about what is your local culture that you're returning to. Are you returning to an anthropology class or are you returning to a lot of other people who are pro-war and pro-military and and and you know it's that same type of echo chamber to where you're not getting challenged as much to kind of look at yourself and what you you know what you've done in new ways and how that unfolds in shaping our yeah, our development so wonder to the isolation.
Speaker 2:It seems like some people get out and isolate and instead of being exposed to all of these things, now we're just, you know, in isolation and there's so many things coming out, I mean, and it's stuff we've known about for a long time, but just how connected we are and how much we need human connection in our lives, and that the isolation, even without trauma, somebody that isolates is going to struggle, but now take all the trauma that led up to it and then isolate, and that's not a great recipe.
Speaker 1:Yeah, gabriel Mate is an MD that does a lot of work with trauma. He's wrote the Myth of Normal. He does a lot of work on ADHD. He's like the worst part of trauma is not the actual not the actual traumatic experience, but the ongoing state of feeling alone with your experience and not understood and not seen you know and not able to bring a loving witness to that, that experience. Curious for you that what your response to integration here and and what you think was supportive or not supportive to that.
Speaker 2:It's a great question, I think, for me. Looking back in hindsight, I think I can see it all like this was great and this was great and this was. These were these great things that helped me. Yet they weren't planned out, things like I didn't. So I share, I share it, and but it wasn't a strategically planned out thing.
Speaker 2:But I got out of the military. I followed a girl up into northern california and I was supposed to go stay with her and I got enrolled in a school there and I used to be a swimmer in high school and I swam and you know, being a recon Marine is big time, swimming is huge. I was like I'm going to join the swim team and, um, right after the school started up, I found out the girl uh, and just insert just another ticket of girl cheats on guy while in the military. And so I found out about her cheating and instantly just left. But I had nowhere to go.
Speaker 2:All my family lives in New Orleans. So I'm like I don't think I could be further away from my family and friends. And I remember swimming in the swimming pool at practice and I told my buddy, craig, I was like dude, I need a place to live. I don't know where I'm going. He's like oh, corey needs a place to live, and Corey was this guy that he was getting ready to join, and this is the dumb luck part of this he was getting ready to join the navy and he wanted to be a navy seal and I was like, yeah, of course, like everybody wants to be a navy seal, like whatever, but I need a roommate.
Speaker 2:And uh, he ended up being a really cool dude. We became roommates and we swam on the team. Well, he, uh, he had a great plan because all he did was everything he did his last year before going to boot camp was he was on a marathon running team, he was on a swim team, the water polo team, he did one year of prep work to go past Buds and he did. He went and he did go past Buds and he's a Navy SEAL he's about to retire soon. But all that to say that I ended up as a roommate with him. We were the hub where everybody from this junior college that we went to came to hang out, and so I immediately got integrated like force, integrated into just all these really cool people that were very opening and welcoming. That I never had. I never had friends like that, even before the military, and it was just a beautiful, beautiful experience for me to get forced into, because I know that I wouldn't have had that, even if I would have stayed with that girl, I wouldn't have had that, and that's where I say a lot. It was really lucky, so that was really good.
Speaker 2:I'd always wanted to get my skydiving license, which I think I'd recommended that book to you the Stealing Fire so I started skydiving, which there's a lot of studies done, and then there's a correlation, similar but different in that, that sense of presence and focus that you talked about with mdma, that that anytime you're in an experience that it forces your mind to be present, you know that's skydiving is one of those like I might die right now and you are. There's nothing else that you're thinking about except what is going on and how you're falling to the ground and and, and it's a fascinating thing. Again, I didn't know the healing that it was most likely doing for me, um, but that was, that was excellent. So I think that one year of my life was pivotal for a pretty solid transition for me personally, um, so, yeah, I don't know if that does that answer your question with it yeah, I mean I'm hearing the ways that you you found pretty quickly a new sense of tribe or community.
Speaker 1:You know that that I'll support it to you and that's one thing I'm hearing. And, um, I shared some of the ways that I, through the labels of my identities, created barriers to feeling like I could talk about my experience with veteran peers wilderness retreats where we do deep readings and hiking and we do yoga and we have deep discussions and how much that helps me, in addition to veteran writing workshops I participated in to help me just to kind of like seeing that everyone can have their ways, that they will isolate or create reasons of the not belonging or not feeling understood, and and to get more of that cross talk and more of that support outside of the military with um, still with the veteran culture. But being able to have just different types of conversations to to heal together is really so important, as you're saying oh yeah, well, I think that's important, as you're saying.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, well, I think that's it's very important. And it's one thing you know and I look over this way because it's you know, I got lungs peak this 14er sitting over here and actually I did an episode a long time ago about it. But you know, it's kind of like if we went and climbed to the top of that 14er up there, this is a beautiful mountain and it would be a just a wow, it would be an amazing experience. You know, some crazy stuff would happen, like we'd run out of water, there'd be laughs and there'd be jokes and and we would go up there and take pictures and then we'd come back down and we try to tell people about it and they're like oh yeah, that's cool, but it's like no, but this picture doesn't like you're not as excited as I am, because I was there like it was crazy and you just don't get it. And it's like, well, you can't, unless you climb to the top, you won't know, and it doesn't make anybody right, wrong and different. And I often think of that comparison and that you know, as veterans, like we climb to the top of that mountain and it doesn't mean it's like mountain, as if, like, that's the best mountain, it's just to the top of the mountain.
Speaker 2:People that weren't on the journey. They're not going to know what it was like. They can't. It would belittle the experience if they could know what it was like without being there. Yet I think a lot of veterans expect people to have that they can't. There's no way for them to. They won't know what it's like. They never will. They can empathize and appreciate, but they won't know and appreciate, but they won't know.
Speaker 1:I agree and I disagree. Okay, how so? I love disagreements. I agree that they have not climbed to that mountain that you climb to and so thus they will never know that full depth of that experience.
Speaker 1:And when we hold on to that, the narrative especially for veterans like that maintains that isolation. So how can we find parallel or similar bridges to like, oh, have you had an experience of shared suffering with others in a team dynamic where you're relying on one another and you're moving through a shared suck together? Like like you've got on a sports team. You're moving through a shared suck together? Like like, yeah, you've got a sports team. Or have you been, like, trying to find ways that we can, because we all have the same ability to feel our feelings? Yes, maybe we haven't had the same types of traumas or levels of traumas, but but when we can find language of exploring similar ways to access these feeling states, that can start to form bridges of connection, which then decreases the othering of like us versus them, veteran versus civilian, which means the trauma being stuck in us and not being integrated into the community, into the culture.
Speaker 2:Yep, well, and so I would say I don't think of that so much as a disagreement as more of a yes, and totally, because that's to me that what I and I love where you're at with it. But that's step. Step one is like, okay, just don't come down from the mountain and get pissed off, cause somebody doesn't know what it's like to climb it. But step two is let's empathize and find out what mountain they've climbed, like what mountain, okay, where. And that's the empathy state, because there is a shared connection that you can find with somebody, but it's when you expect theirs to be similar to yours. It's just. But any, I talk to civilians all the time that have been through some stuff, like man, that was tough, like what you went through in life was tough, and and you know, I don't, I don't know anybody that thinks that life is easy.
Speaker 1:I got it's just tough and yeah I'll say that that's the greatest gift of my job. Uh, not only getting to see and witness people's healing and evolution, but like how much I get to see parts of myself or my journey through them, but with their wisdom and their gifts and their, their different ways of healing, like I get, so spoiled I will appear. A friend of mine calls the reflective healing. You know, like I'm healing with them while they're healing and it's just they don't know what I'm getting out of it near as much, but it is such a bonus of this work.
Speaker 2:That's really, really cool. I love that reflective healing.
Speaker 2:Well, I really am excited to get our daughters together and see if we can identify whose is whose I don't know about yours but my daughter we always joke like we had a new babysitter, that we had come over, and we're like we had to prep them. Like she's bleeding at least once a day or the day's not over. Like she is such a hard charger, like and I mean that like she does the most ridiculous things where it's like what are you, what are you doing? And I mean that like she does the most ridiculous things where it's like what are you, what are you doing? And I mean like she'll just get hurt and then she just picks up and just runs back to redo what just hurt her because she wants to go conquer it. So yeah, she's, she's.
Speaker 1:But I'm excited. I'm gonna say to you what people say to us when I describe that about my daughter. They're like yeah, look at, look at you and your wife, look at what you two read, look at what you guys read yeah Of course.
Speaker 2:Yep, yep.
Speaker 1:I'm still thinking about the apple, but yeah, well, this was a blast that I could do this for yeah.
Speaker 2:Thank you, mark. I appreciate it. If anybody does have any thoughts, questions, is there a way they can reach out, contact you just to just to pick your brain about anything you're doing or working on totally yeah, I'm on linkedin, I'm on instagram at adaptive therapy llc.
Speaker 1:My website is adaptive therapy LLCcom. My wife and I are looking to pivot into doing psychedelic couples retreats and so that will be called evolving lovers psychedelic retreats, to be to be continued, but yeah.
Speaker 2:Very cool. Well, I really appreciate you. Thank you so much. It was a blast to get to meet you just like two weeks ago, and this was a wonderful conversation. I'm looking looking forward to the next time yeah, let's hang out and get beers again soon. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it, mark, thank you.