OODA Loop PTSD Breakthrough: Marine Aviator, Ibogaine Therapy, and The Mission Within

A Marine aviator who once introduced himself as a “raging asshole” sits down with us to share how everything changed—fast. Jay Kopelman had years of TBIs, PTSD, and white-hot anger had wrecked his home life and numbed his spirit despite therapy, SSRIs, sleep meds, and nightly drinks. A scholarship to The Mission Within took him to a clinically monitored retreat in Mexico, and the ibogaine journey hit where talk therapy couldn’t: the root. He saw his son always wearing a clown mask—a painful metaphor for forcing a mini-me that never fit—and walked away ready to meet the real person in front of him.

We get specific about safety protocols, screening, and why integration matters more than any single peak experience. He describes 5-MeO as cleansing and sacred, the moment a lifetime of guilt finally drained and love had room to land. Sobriety followed. So did a hundred small choices where calm replaced rage: the kind you only notice in the DMV line, with your kid watching. This isn’t hype; it’s habit change.

From there, we zoom out. As CEO of Mission Within Foundation, he’s now working with Psychedelic Medicine Coalition on a bipartisan bill to let five VA centers, paired with leading universities, research and deliver psychedelic-assisted treatments like MDMA, psilocybin, and ultimately ibogaine. We tackle stigma in veteran and aviation communities, outline the guardrails needed for safety, and talk incentives—how a sick-care model resists one-and-done therapies. Then we look at the science: brain imaging from Stanford and UT Austin pointing to neuroregenerative effects, early signals in Parkinson’s and MS, and ketamine’s role and limits.

If you care about veteran mental health, policy that saves lives, or simply how families heal, this is a candid, grounded listen. Subscribe, share with someone who needs hope, and leave a review to help others find the show. What question do you want answered next?

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Transcript

Meet Jay Copelman

Mark McGrath 0:20

Jay, uh Jay Coppelman, welcome to No Way Out. Yeah, thanks, guys. Good to be here. We know you're gonna fit right in with our uh our conversational approach to talking uh all things, you know, wherever the road, uh, wherever the road takes us. It's good to have another Marine on board, but also an aviator too. We're all uh we're all we all have some common bonds in this conversation. Yeah.

Jay Koppelman 0:40

Yeah, absolutely. Although I will say I had more fun jumping out of airplanes than flying them.

Mark McGrath 0:46

Than flying them? Well, and I guess I'm a little I'm slightly envious in the sense that it's like freaking freezing here in your back home in beautiful San Diego, which uh Potch and I love too.

Jay Koppelman 0:57

So yeah, it's not uh it's not super warm today. Last week we had a really big warm spell where it got like 75 degrees every day. It was beautiful. Uh today it's probably 50s, look maybe 60, but it's the warmer than where you guys are.

Mark McGrath 1:12

Yeah, Manhattan freezing. Um and fixing to get a whole lot colder. So why don't you paint us the picture of who you are and how you got here talking on this topic with uh a brother marine and a brother aviator? Yeah, sure.

From Marine Aviator To Rock Bottom

Jay Koppelman 1:28

Thanks. Thanks for the opportunity to do that. I am now the CEO of Mission Within Foundation, which is an organization providing scholarships for veterans and first responders to access, let's just call it, alternative therapies for mental health, for emotional support. And I came to this role after having experienced a retreat myself at the Mission Within back in March of 2024. Prior to that, I was pretty much a disaster dumpster fire of a human being. I was I was a raging asshole and um really quick to anger, had a lot of pent-up frustration and and a lot of guilt and self-hate that I didn't even know I had. Did a couple of tours in Iraq toward the end of my career. I retired from the Marine Corps in late 2006, early 2007. When I retired, I was the deputy director for advisor training at first Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Pendleton and had been asked to stand up Marsock with a guy called Denny Halick. He was a two-star at the time. So I told Denny that, you know, respectfully I was gonna decline his offer. And to this day, he still reminds me I should have gone with him to Marsock. But, you know, I I had met a gal here in San Diego that I was really interested in. We were having a good time surfing in the mornings and you know, just hanging out. Things were great, and I was gonna end up marrying her, which I did, and we had a son together, and that's kind of when the wheels came off. You know, all the anger and frustration, guilt, self-hate started coming out in ways that were not acceptable. And after about nine years of putting up my shit, she finally threw me out. My son didn't want to have anything to do with me. I was, you know, I was a patient at the VA in San Diego, great, great hospital, you know, affiliated with UC San Diego Medicine, which is a fantastic health system. But what they were doing for me, like so many others, just didn't work. You know, I had multiple TBIs, traumatic brain injuries. I was diagnosed with severe PTSD. And like I said, I I was a dumpster fire of a human being. Excuse me. And so took took a lot of my frustrations out on my wife and the kids, and it was understandable why she did what she did. So I started going to therapy, you know, religiously. I was there every week on Friday to meet with my therapist, and it was fine to have somebody to talk to, but it didn't get to the root of things. You know, she had some good, some really good advice on how to approach things. But again, if you're not getting to the root of the problems, then there's really no way to get out of this cycle of just anger and frustration. I mean, I was the guy we lived in La Jolla, which is a beautiful area of San Diego, and I hated my neighbors. I hated the people that live there, you know, for no reason, right? It was just I saw them all having a sense of entitlement and walking down the street, I just wanted to punch everybody I saw, which is no way to live. COVID. This is way pre-COVID. This is way pre-COVID. This is like, you know, 2008, 9, 10, that time period. So I don't have an excuse.

Mark McGrath 5:13

We missed your call sign, by the way. It's appropriate here. Well, sometimes the stories aren't appropriate of how call signs are uh you know given or earned. Call sign was slugger. Slugger.

Failing Treatments And Self-Advocacy

The Mission Within Retreat

Jay Koppelman 5:26

So I had a little bit of a temper issue even before the deployments. So so we gotta go way back in time if we're gonna cover this. So before all of this, I was a pilot in the Navy. And um I got in a fight with a squadron mate, broke his nose, gave him 10 stitches. The squadron immediately tried to take my wings, boarded me not once, twice, because the first board got kicked back by an admiral's staff saying, no, this was not comprised the right way. It's clear you guys were out to get this guy. But between the two boards, I requested orders to Buds. And you fellas know that military bureaucracy is like molasses. I had orders the next day to go to Buds. That's how happy they were just to get rid of me. Well, in the interim, they reconvened the board and it came out in my favor, barely. So I had to go see a three-star admiral over at NAS Oceana. And long story short, he said, no, we spent too much money on you to train you as a pilot. So you're gonna stay as a pilot in the Navy, and that was that. So in 92, 91, I applied for an inner service transfer to the Marine Corps. I didn't want to be a part of an organization that wasn't, you know, willing to fight. You know, it's just it's just my nature. And and so, like the Scorpion. And so got my inner service transfer, and in February of 92, I woke up one morning as a Navy lieutenant, went to bed that night as a Marine Corps captain. So I had originally applied to the Marine Corps when I was joining the military. They weren't taking pilots, and so I went to the Navy, but ultimately ended up in the Marine Corps for So you went to TBS with a bunch of second lieutenants? No, I did not. No, I did not go to TBS. They sent me in uh summer of ninety-two to a school called Amphibious Warfare School at Quantico, which is air-level school for Marine Corps captains. And so that was my my first introduction to Marine Corps schools, anything like that. And so I am that oddity of Marine officers who did not attend uh TBS. Currently General Amos didn't that's what I was just gonna bring up. Jim Amos didn't go either. So I know I know Jim and his wife Bonnie pretty well. And uh Jim famously did not go to TBS and became commandant, so commandant, there you go. But I managed to fall through the cracks long enough to become a lieutenant colonel. Well, there you go. You know, these things happen. Going back to Yeah, you're doing all these therapies, you're a doctor fire. Right. And you know, this continued. I took the meds for a long time, and it wasn't until I moved up to Idaho in uh 2020 that I spoke with my doctor there and told him that look, these meds aren't really doing anything for me. Can I come off them? He said, Yeah, you absolutely can. He said, What you're on, you can either titrate them down and come off them, or you can just quit cold turkey. So I titrated down. I started taking them every other day, then two days a week, then one day a week, and then done. And didn't see any appreciable difference in anything. My sleep was no better. I started taking THC gummies at night to sleep. I was a pretty heavy drinker for a long time. Easily four bourbons a night. In the summertime, it was tequila. Yeah, cigars every night uh was just kind of my routine. Just sit outside, read a book, have a cigar, four drinks, go to bed, which is not really good for your body or your mind. And then in about 2021-22, a buddy of mine, a 30-year Teams guy, called me up and said, Hey, bro, I just went and did this thing. You gotta go. It's gonna change your life. And so I finally had an opportunity to do that and was awarded a scholarship to do so by an organization called Boot Campaign. And went, you know, knowing really nothing about this, I didn't do any research because I didn't want to have any uh I didn't want to have any preconceived notions of what was going to happen or establish any expectations of what an outcome should be from this. So I just went in cold, and which I think is the best way to do it. Got my treatment at the mission within, and everything changed. I my life just overnight it felt like just changed for the better. So I was walk us through that. Walk, walk our walk us through that. So, you know, you go to this retreat with five other guys. There were three of us on scholarship and three who weren't. So I had uh two SEALs. One guy was a former devgrew guy, uh the other guy, forget what coast he had served on. But you go down to a place in Mexico, you get in a van with five guys you've just met, uh, all there for the same thing. And one one of the guys was like he seemed dangerous and uh like really just pissed off with life. And uh we get down there, they kind of go through some ground rules for the weekend, and there's a lot of ceremony around what's happening. And you sit down around a big coffee table in the living room, you're on couches and chairs, and you have a share circle. It's the first time I've ever done something like this, right? Where you've got five other guys like yourself who are who are down there for healing, but now you're expected to kind of just say why you're there, what brought you there, what you're hoping to get from the weekend. It's really an uncomfortable feeling at first to be able to sit down and just tell complete strangers your your innermost darkest secrets. Um, but you do it. And it's very cathartic, actually. I'm so grateful for having that opportunity and that that experience. It just kind of from the outset reshapes your mindset and the way you look at others, right? Because there's no judgment. You know, the the folks who run these retreats are absolutely angels on earth that they do this work and provide this this space for us to to heal. So that night you have ceremony going into an ibogaine treatment. It's all very safe and effective. So clinically, it's very safe. EKGs, echocardiograms, everybody has to pee in a cup to make sure that we're clean and we can do the ibogaine. Uh, one of the one of the requirements is that you refrain from alcohol, recreational drug use for one to two weeks prior to the retreat. Start eating a cleaner diet, taper off of caffeine if that's your big fix. Um, and then you go into the ibogaine and it's surreal. You're wearing headphones, noise-canceling headphones, an eye mask. And when it kicks in, it's just, you know, it's it could be brutal. Some guys had just a really brutal, horrible experience, but it's what the medicine knows you need. You know, the medicine gives you what you need. For me, it was seeing a lot of the things that I had done to people, but not so much in a clear, concise manner. There was a lot of symbolism there that I had to either ask the medicine what it meant or it was left to my own devices to interpret. And for me, the biggest thing that came out of it was during my journey, my ibogaine journey that lasted 12 hours. And I was not one of those guys that puked all night. I had dry heaves probably four times throughout the night. But the biggest thing that I gained from that was how I saw my son and how I and what led to how I treated him. So every time that I would see him during this journey, as he got closer to me to where I could see his face, whether it was him in the car seat when he was like two or three years old, driving with his mom up until he was 16 years old, every time I saw him, he had a clown mask on. And, you know, what the medicine showed me with that was that I wasn't seeing him for the person that he really is. So during my service, I had the opportunity to serve with some really high-level operators, you know, tier one units. And that's that was how I got my scholarship was having that background. But, you know, guys like that, like me, you know, we want our kids, our sons especially, to kind of be mini-mies, right? Like I had been a walk-on football player at the University of Miami. I compete in jujitsu. You know, I'm I'm a world champion in jiu-jitsu. I train MMA with Chris Lieben, who fought in UFC for 10 years. You know, I that's kind of what I expected my son to be, and he's not. And that's perfect because he's a wonderful person. You know, he's brilliant. He's speaks three languages like a native. He's studying uh equine science and human anatomy at Colorado State, with his goal being to become an equine orthopedist, which I didn't even know existed. You know, so he has talents and skills that I will never have. And interestingly, during his Christmas break, he said to me that he wants to start training in a martial art. So now, you know, these things come when they're supposed to. We can't force things as people to happen on the time frame that we want them to. And we certainly can't force a person to be something that they're not. And it was such a great learning for me to have that realization and that recognition that I would never have had without the medicine. So you you do the Ibogaine, 12 hours, like I said, for me. For some people it's a little less, for some, it's longer. You know, I've known and heard of people having like 24 hours of this. But the next day is kind of a day off for reflection and introspection. And, you know, you eat if you can, if you're if you're able to. And then the following day after that, and we call that next day grade A. And so the day after grade A is our 5MEO experience. And we are taking one at a time to do the five MEO. And for me, the times I've done 5MEO, and I've done it a few times now, it's just a very spiritual experience. You know, my first dose of 5MEO ever was really cathartic. It'll it allowed me to let go of all the anger and self-hate and guilt that I had carried from years of you know abuse as a child through all the traumas of combat, everything leading up to that day, just gone. Just it just flooded out of me and allowed me to just accept love, to know that other people loved me and that it was okay to love myself, which up until that point, and I was 64 at the time, I had never done. I didn't know how. And so it's no surprise that every relationship I ever had until that point was a failure, just an utter disaster. You know, if you can't love yourself, you can't possibly love someone else. And it's only by the grace of God and these medicines that, you know, I learned these lessons and that I'm able to be a completely different person today, you know, somebody who is acceptable to society and is working to do things for others, to give others this opportunity at healing and freedom, really. You know, one of my goals now, I'm partnered with another organization called Psychedelic Medicine Coalition. And we are working on the Innovative Therapy Centers of Excellence bill that they have put forth to Congress and Senate. So last week I was in DC for meetings with Senate staffers to educate them on this bill so that it can be passed. And this would allow five VAs co-located with universities that are already doing psychedelics research to start doing research on psychedelics and bring them into the VAs so that we can have these therapies, whether it's MDMA, psilocybin, or ultimately ibogaine, to allow veterans to heal. And it's it's a much bigger lift than just that. You know, we have to be able to bring in the right people to the VA who know how to serve these medicines and can provide the therapy and the coaching on the back end, because it's not, you know, this is not a magic pill. There's no panacea here. There's a lot of work that goes into it on the back end. Uh, I was fortunate to have 12 integration coaching sessions given to me after my retreat, which were invaluable, and then 10 guided meditation coaching sessions, one-on-one coaching for meditation that stays with me to this day. Even if I'm not actively practicing meditation one day, there are times I'll find myself in a semi-meditative state, just reflecting on what I learned from that. And it just allows you to relax a little bit and kind of recenter during the during how were you received in DC? Very well. So I was there working with uh Melissa Lavassani from Psychedelic Medicine Coalition, and it it it's good. This bill has tremendous sponsorship from both sides of the aisle in both houses of Congress. And so the Senate is working on rewriting a few things into their bill and that the House will eventually adopt into their bill as well. You know, sending up prayers for this. And as Morgan Luttrell says, we've got one shot to get this right. We don't want the community, you know, the psychedelic community at large to do anything that could hamper the chances of this getting passed.

Inside The Ibogaine Journey

Brian "Ponch" Rivera 19:58

Yeah, I mean, can we talk about that for a minute? Uh, because let's go back about a year, I think it was there was an Alaska Airline pilot that jumps in the cockpit and, you know, walks out and says, Hey, it was a psilocybin, the psychedelics that made me do this. That is a very bad thing that happened. No, no doubt about that. But those are the type of incidents that people connect and go, those things are horrible, right? And the next thing that could happen, and I think this may happen, is uh there could be there could be Trojan horses within the community, military folks that are doing things because there's money involved with this. So, what is Morgan Luttrell talking about when he says we got one shot at this and we got to be careful?

Jay Koppelman 21:31

Yeah, so so what he's talking about is that we write these bills the right way, that they are presented so that all the guardrails are written into the bills, right? That there is enough in there with regard to oversight that nobody can say no to us. That that everything is done so perfectly that it's impossible for uh, you know, one legislator to vote against it, or for you know, some other agency, I don't want to start naming names, to come back and say, no, we can't do that. This stuff is illegal, it should never be legalized, because there is support from HHS. There's even support from the president on this. The the difficult part of all this is getting to the president. And it's not that he's not in favor of it, but I'd say he has a few things going on right now that he's got to focus on. And it's really getting his advisors, getting time with them to sit down with them and then have them take this forward.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera 22:37

Well, we know Kennedy's on we know Kennedy's on board. Uh uh he's he's come out publicly with that. And of course, you know, when podcast hosts and guests talk about this, and I remember years ago going through uh Ibogaine and Five MEO treatments and coming back and talking to folks in our community. I'm talking the the fighter aviation community, they thought we were freaking crazy, right? They're like, you guys are this is nuts. And then a few years pass and they hear about Ibogaine from Brian Hubbard and Governor Perry on Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan, right? And they come back and like, this is real. And we're like, yeah, man, this is real stuff. This is actually so, so I think the credibility factor within our community, and I'm just saying this, people look at us and let's talk about this. Aviation community. So having done podcasts with other generations of fighter pilots and aviators, they look at this conversation and go, you guys, there's something wrong with you guys. You shouldn't be talking about this. This shouldn't be happening. So that's another, that's the Vietnam generation of aviators, what we're getting a sense of. So within the community, we have to communicate to them and say, yeah, we get it. We know you're an airline pilot and you're probably fucked up like anybody else, but you're flying these passengers around and yet you're hiding all these things. And it's not because they are they want to, it's because they have to, right? In order to continue flying. So the system's driving that behaviors. So within the aviation community, and we're lucky we have somebody like Governor Perry out there who used to fly C10s talking about this, right? It's okay. It's it's okay. And we need to break that stigma to allow folks to go do this. And the FAA needs to get involved. And I think that's that's a next step, maybe a couple of years down the road when we get this resolved. But at the end of the day, had you come in here and told me about this treatment five years ago, I would have walked away. Right. It takes somebody with credibility to come in and go, hey, let me tell you about this, let me walk you through this. And we had that through Wiz Buckley. Wiz went through this and he said, Hey, I went in there with uh Marcus Lutrell, I went in there with Marcus, coming out from Capone's Capone, right? So he he started, and you know and if one of the football players, I forgot his name too. Anyway, he comes back and I'm like, I know Wiz. I've known Wiz for a long time, and I know he's a straight shooter. But it took him, somebody like that, to go down there and come back and go, let me tell you about this. And I remember sitting down with my wife, and this is during COVID, and I looked at her, I'm like, have you ever heard of this crap? And she's like, Yeah, it sounds legit. And that's how we ended up getting involved with this, is it took us a huge, it was a big reorientation for me to go, hey, I'm Catholic, I drink beer, I think everything with marijuana and psychedelics is horrible. I went to the University of Colorado, not too far from CSU, by the way, to, and that's where I grew up, right? But to shift that thinking was a major lift. And I imagine that's the same issue you're having now, maybe not just in the community, but outside. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Jay Koppelman 25:23

Sure. What we're seeing is that it's not such a lift anymore, right? So, you know, you talk about Vietnam era guys. Well, I grew up in the 60s, and I remember being told, you know, look at those hippies all strung out on acid and whatever, right? And so psychedelics got a very bad name. And, you know, that's in 71 or whatever, when Nixon classified all these things as Schedule One. And Schedule One is interesting because it means that a substance has no medical application and it it's addictive. These medicines are the opposite. They are not, you're not gonna become addicted to Ibogaine. You know, it's you're gonna you're gonna do this once, maybe in your entire lifetime. And if you do it right, and if you follow through and do the work, it's gonna have lasting effects for the rest of your life. You don't need to do it more than once. MEO, yeah, you it you can do this multiple times a year, even. Well, but it's not a butt but you're not addicted to it. It's not like I'm gonna have a stash of five MEO at home. That would be stupid. That would be reckless. Yeah, well, other than uh Mike Tyson, right? Um well, yeah, people do get those vape pens of it and they they kind of microdose it, I guess, but I'm not doing that.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera 26:43

So let's go back to the time when you you were introduced to some type of uh SSRIs or whatever via the VA, right? It was a it was easy to convince you to do that, right? Absolutely.

5-MeO, Forgiveness, And Faith

Jay Koppelman 26:53

Well, it was everybody did it, right? So it let's yeah, this is what the this is what the doctor is telling me to do. Right. So but I wasn't smart enough to ask, well, what exactly is this and what's it gonna do for me? And I did learn later on to become a much better advocate for myself as a patient. And it wasn't just with that, it's with with everything. I've had cancer twice, you know, and the first time I had it, I had prostate cancer in my mid-50s. And and I was being treated at the VA, and the the doctor said to me, the the serogist, she says, Well, you know, you're a perfect candidate for surgery. I just looked at her and I said, Well, why is that? Why am I a candidate for surgery? And before this, a very dear friend of mine had had prostate cancer. He ended up doing proton radiation here in San Diego, actually, with the preeminent proton radiation oncologist in the world. I mean, this guy gets flown all over the world to lecture on it, and he's he's an amazing guy. And and my friend who did it, he could have had any treatment he wanted anywhere in the world. He's wealthy enough to do that and to go and get the best. And so she said, Well, you know, you're young and you're healthy and you're you're in good shape, so you you should have surgery. I said, That's exactly why I'm not going to have surgery. I said, I'm 55, God willing, I got another 30 years to live, and I want to make sure that everything works. I don't want to risk it. Well, it's very safe. You know, we used the robot. Okay, I said to her, Look, I said, this is what I know, and this is what I want to do. I want to go have proton radiation therapy based on all my labs and my numbers. It's going to be effective and safe. And she said, Well, there's no efficacy. At which point I went back to old Jay. I'm still old Jay at this point. I said to her, I said, Look, I have as many degrees as you do, and I think I'm smarter than you are. They've been using proton radiation since the 50s to treat pediatric brain tumors. There's a ton of efficacy. And there's also a ton of literature. I'd be happy to give you my PubMed subscription so you could read it. And that was the end of the meeting with the doctor. I walked out. I get a letter from the VA, we're going to pay for your proton radiation. So, so you got to advocate for yourself. And going back to the SSRIs, I didn't. I just took it at face value. I said, okay, give me the SSRIs, and I'm sleeping three hours a night for seven years at this point. I'll take the sleep meds too.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera 29:15

So there's a phrase in here that we talk about just because something is doesn't mean it ought to be. So our, you know, the way we look at doctors, we look at them as, hey, they have our best interest in mind and all that. And we talk about systems-driven behaviors on the show quite a bit.

Jay Koppelman 29:27

And I and you know what? They they do. You know, people don't just get into practicing medicine just to make a lot of money. I I I believe that that doctors, you know, my experience, 99 times out of 100, is doctors have your best interest at heart. Now, do they all have the latest and greatest information? No. Is every patient exactly the same? No. Right, right. You know, we're we're all different and and we all have different needs to treat the same thing, right? Like, you know, I have a great primary care provider now. She understands me. She knows who I am. When I went to when I started seeing her, I was still drinking and smoking cigars and smoking a little weed. She didn't tell me no. She said it would be better if you don't, but she also knows I'm an athlete that I still train jujitsu six days a week and I compete, and she's all for it. My previous primary care provider said I should quit because I was too old.

unknown 30:27

Yeah.

Jay Koppelman 30:28

Are you out of your mind?

Brian "Ponch" Rivera 30:29

Keep moving. Yeah. Keep moving. Yeah. I'm curious about maybe we could talk about this. We don't have to, but having seen guys gone go through the treatment and and blood test before, blood test after, it's just amazing what happens. Uh, and it could be attributed to the diet, the reduction of alcohol or whatever. But it's you know, having been through that, I'd like to know, can you talk a little bit about maybe what you're what happened to you internally biologically after?

Policy Push In Washington

Jay Koppelman 30:54

Yeah. So I quit drinking six days before I went to my retreat. And that was March 16th, 2024. I've had not had a drink since then. I have not used any cannabis products to sleep. Sleep better now than I ever did. I I don't have the inflammation in my body from the alcohol. You know, like I said, I'm 66 and I train jujitsu six days a week, unless I'm badly injured or really sick or or traveling for work. But otherwise, I'm training. And so I feel my body feels as good now as it did 20 years ago. Maybe better because I'm not doing those things. I'm still capable, you know, with some limitations, of course. I mean, I I'm not gonna just go and jump over a six-foot wall the way I used to, but I can do things, I feel great. I mean, you know, when I was even 45, you know, looking at a 65-year-old, that's an old guy. Well, I I don't I don't think I'm an old guy yet. You know, I haven't got to that point. And maybe it's because I'm still somewhat immature and sophomoric, but you know, I think mindset helps a lot when you're talking about aging and how you feel and how you act and what you can do. It you gotta have the right mindset, and then you have to take care of yourself. Since doing these medicines and every time I do five MEO, I just feel so much better afterward, because it's not just the experience of it, it's deeply spiritual for me. I mean, I'm I'm a Christian, you know, and it was only because, I think, not only because, but greatly because of the five MEO experiences where I have sat with God. Like I don't see him, you know. If you see God, you die. So he doesn't reveal himself to me, but I have felt the spirit of God of Lord Jesus in me during a five MEO experience to where it was like spiritual warfare between me and Satan. And God was not, he wasn't Emmanuel, wasn't God with me, it was God in me. And that's that's how I fought Satan.

Mark McGrath 33:07

When you were in DC, what were any pushback, opposition? What were any trends on that?

Jay Koppelman 33:14

None at all. The folks that we met with were all very much on board. This the Senate staffers that we met with. In the Senate, the bill will be introduced by a Democrat with uh strong, strong bipartisan sponsorship from the Republican Party. So it's being very well received. I think part of it is the fact that there are so many veterans now serving in Congress in both houses, you know, and they understand the need for this. And and that the that the VA has an obligation to not just treat veterans, but to heal us. Yeah.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera 33:51

So let's project that a little bit. We have Texas and Colorado, I think Kentucky uh might be on the list for Ibigaine as far as Mississippi just signed yesterday.

Mark McGrath 33:58

Yeah, so I think it was in contact yesterday. Not exactly a liberal, those are not exactly liberal states.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera 34:05

Yeah, so so let's project out a little bit. What does it look like uh in the state of Texas or Colorado, Mississippi, maybe Kentucky in the next six months, nine months, if if uh let's say mission within can come to Texas, right? What does that look like for you? What does that mean? What are the challenges? Uh what's what are the blockers in in your way?

Jay Koppelman 34:24

So it for me running a foundation, the work they're doing, I see as a net positive so that I can someday retire, right? Like, you know, I I should be spending my time training jujitsu, surfing, fly fishing, hunting, and skiing, but I'm working, you know, crazy hours, putting in a lot of work, a lot of travel, just to ensure that my brother and sister veterans can heal and first responders as well. And so this work is just too important. And if these states can pass legislation, pardon me, that uh that will allow them to perform the right research and the right studies to show the federal government that these these medicines ought to be legalized for the right clinical type of use, then I can work myself out of a job, which is my goal. You know, I I don't need to be doing this, but I want to. I have to because it's just too important to save lives. You know, we talk about 22 a day. Well, that's bullshit. It's closer to 40 veterans who commit suicide. We talk about homelessness in general. Well, on any given day, you've got more homeless veterans than all the service members who were killed during the Vietnam War, and that's 52,000 plus. So what are we gonna do about it? Clearly, what we've been trying to do isn't working the way we hoped it would. And it's not a knock on the VA by any stretch, right? The VA has guidelines. These medicines aren't legal to be used right now. So what are they gonna do? They're gonna do what they know and and what does work. So in medicine, you have uh uh a number needed to treat an NNT. And when you talk about treating patients with SSRIs, you've got to treat probably 244 of them to have a good outcome, a full positive outcome with one. When you talk about plant medicines, it's a one-to-one ratio, right? So it's a one one-time deal.

Mark McGrath 36:37

Say that again unequivocally, so people take that. Say it one more time, crystal clear.

Jay Koppelman 36:44

So with the number needed to treat using the standard protocols that we have now, you got to treat SSRIs and other things. Yeah. Zolofs, all those things, right? You got to treat 244 and you have a good outcome with one. So 243 patients don't derive the benefits. With plant medicines, you treat one and done. I don't know how to why is that controversial? Well, because there are organizations and there are companies for whom that's not beneficial. It doesn't matter.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera 37:13

You don't have a customer if you can cure them, right? Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The whole purpose of having a customer is to make sure you have a customer, right? Yeah.

Jay Koppelman 37:22

I mean, if you want to if you want to talk dollars, right? So if we're looking at it from a business standpoint, from a financial model, it don't make sense.

Mark McGrath 37:31

Norman Oler was on talking about his research into LSD. We had a we've had him on twice, once about LSD and once about methamphetamines with uh with the Nazis, which was phenomenally interesting. I just read the book, Blitzed. Yeah, yeah, he came on to talk about that. It's unreal.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera 37:47

Yeah, he's he's coming back. He'll come back on to talk about Ibigaine and some trips to America or whatever it's soon.

Mark McGrath 37:54

He he came, we talked about tripped. So the one episode we were talking about tripped, he was saying how when Hoffman was doing his original work, he figured out that lysurgic acid or LSD was a one-time mental health use, and that was it. Like you didn't have to you didn't have to use it again until it became as Ponch was saying, there's there's no there's no customer rotation on that. Like you can't keep somebody in the in the system on that. Correct. Yeah, yeah.

Jay Koppelman 38:19

And you know, the way I look at it now is that we have a sick care system, not a health care system. Yeah. It's in it's in a lot of people's best interests to keep us sick. And uh, you know, I think that RFK Jr. recognizes that and he wants to make changes to the way the system works.

Stigma, Safety, And Guardrails

Mark McGrath 38:38

We had just the stumber to treat. So ketamine is one that we've we've had some discussions on, and we had uh Nico Grundman from Dr. Nico Grumman that runs Ember Health here in the city talking about, but you know, the you you you you hear ketamine dismissed as a psychedelic, but you never hear people say, no, it's an alternative to anesthesia. It's a generic drug, it's been used for a long time. And there's a lot of valuable research that shows that it does mitigate depression and suicidal ideations and that sort of thing. And it's actually helping veterans and PT, you know, PTSD survivors.

Jay Koppelman 39:11

Yeah, um, look, there's a lot of great application for ketamine. Um, I'm never gonna be somebody who's going to downplay the benefits of any of these alternative therapies. That's that's not my place. I'm not a scientist. I you know, I I think that if something works for you, then by all means you should use it. I mean, look at J and J has a a nasal inhaler version of ketamine.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera 39:39

Did you see how much money they made last quarter on that or how much revenue they brought? It came out yesterday, I think. It's insane. It's insane. I'll I'll grab it right now.

Jay Koppelman 39:47

Yeah, but you know, it's if it's efficacious for somebody, absolutely use it. Um, I've never tried ketamine, I've never been exposed to it personally, so I I don't know. I know people who have, and they've had some good effects from it. Um, you know, some good outcomes. It doesn't seem to have the same long-term benefits that without having to do it multiple times that something like Ibogaine does, but certainly we're seeing positive outcomes from it. And, you know, if if that's what works for somebody and it is available through the VA now, then by all means, if it's indicated, absolutely somebody should take advantage of that. Yeah. I I would like to go back to what Ponch was mentioning earlier, though, about about the uh, you know, the blood tests before and after. Well, what's even more interesting and truly remarkable is the brain scans. You know, it goes back to Nolan Williams, may he rest in peace, research at Stanford and the work that Dr. Greg Fonzo is doing now at UT Austin at the Gordon and Sherraine McGill Center for Psychedelic Research and Therapy. So we are actually funding some of the SEALs who go through that program, through that research program. We got a few more to go, and then we'll have a sample size, I think of 40. So doing brain scans before and after the IBEGA therapy and seeing just incredible results. You know, from Nolan's research, from the work he did, the outcomes were that within one to three months, the average patient's brain age went down by 1.7 years. And that was just like immediately after. So, what that's showing is that because of the neurorregenerative properties of ibogaine, it's actually regrowing white matter in the brain. Wow. Which is really it's a mirror.

Mark McGrath 41:51

That's like really that's amazing. Yeah. You just hear so much about like the endemic or the epidemic of dementia and Alzheimer's and things like that.

Jay Koppelman 42:00

Well, find me something else that can do that. So there are studies, you know, they've been doing studies in Switzerland, and I think that now even Ambio is beginning to do some research on Parkinson's and MS and the positive outcomes that we're having with ibogaine for those diseases. It's it's just remarkable. Where a guy with I've seen it, a guy with Parkinson's could not get out of his chair. And post-Ibogaine, he is walking. He's walking, he has full motor control. What else done that?

Mark McGrath 42:35

Yeah.

Jay Koppelman 42:36

If that's not a miracle of modern medicine, I don't know what is. And and it's not so modern as you know.

Mark McGrath 42:43

Well, that's I think that's the biggest to me, it's the biggest scandal of everything. It's like this stuff has been around for thousands and thousands of years. This is nothing new. It's just like there's this like in in the scope of human history, there's this period that we're hopefully coming out of where ancient remedies like this can be used without I mean, yeah, I get I get it, the recreational crowd gives it a bad rap, but you know, there's the therapeutic value of these things, particularly when you you talk about 40 a day and other things. It's not just cybogaine, right?

Jay Koppelman 43:12

Like my my ex-wife was a professor at uh Cal State and she taught medical anthropology, which was really uh a course on comparing traditional medical belief systems with Western medicine. And, you know, you talk about some of the practices of the Hmong in Vietnam or what some of these curanderas are using, like the guinea pig and the egg and the all these things down in Central America or something. You know what? They've worked for thousands of years. These remedies, the these treatments have worked for thousands of years to cure people. And some of it is just pure common sense. Like when somebody's sick, you don't give them cold foods, you give them warm foods, and they get you know, it's just it's crazy that that we just have put so much stock in Western medical beliefs, which don't get me wrong, we've got tremendous things from that, right? Penicillin, just to name one, right? And there's a guy at Columbia who you may want to talk to, his name is Dalibor Samos, and he runs a lab at Columbia. He's part of a company called Gilgamesh, and Dolly is working on a molecule of Ibogaine that will not have the cardiac effects that it currently does in its present state. So he talks about two miracles that he's seen in his life, and he he attributes one to antibiotics that he would not be here if it wasn't for that. But he said that ibogaine is the other miracle in medicine that he's ever seen, and that's it. And he's a brilliant guy, brilliant guy.

Mark McGrath 44:51

Well, we've just uh we've had two Columbia people in the last week or two record with us um on on similar topics, so we'll have to reach out to him.

Jay Koppelman 45:00

It's a very yeah, Marissa can put you in touch with Dolly.

Mark McGrath 45:03

Okay, very cool.

Jay Koppelman 45:04

Yeah, great guy.

Life Changes And Sobriety

Mark McGrath 45:06

Very cool. Wow. I'm just I'm I'm still blown away by those numbers of uh what was it, number needed to treat. That's just that's just an unbelievable ratio.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera 45:14

Yeah, I've got the yeah, I've got the numbers on Spravado, just so you guys know, and this is this is. For those interested in what this could look like. A quarter for 2025 sales, $103 million. Run rate above $2 billion. Looking at 2027 to 2028, 0 to 3.5 billion in sales. That's what they're projecting. That's just bravado right now. So there is there is money involved in this. Let's not say there isn't. You can look at the the market in the last couple months. You can see a run-up in several companies that are working on either LSD, some type of derivative of DMT. I'm not following anybody who's doing Ibogate or working on Ibogaine other than uh you say Gilgamesh, is that right?

Jay Koppelman 45:51

Gilgamesh, yeah.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera 45:53

Yeah. So there is opportunity here for those that are interested in profiting from this, but I don't know how you make money from something you can get in your backyard.

Jay Koppelman 46:01

Well, that's the you know, that therein lies the problem. You can't patent Mother Nature. That's right. They try. They they certainly try. You can create different molecules of it and patent that, right? Like J and J has with Spervado. Like and I and I want to be clear that I don't I don't think that's wrong. Right. If you if you're if you're providing something to the public that if you're working and spending billions of dollars to provide something to the public that is for good, you should absolutely be allowed to profit from that. There's nothing wrong. Obviously, I'm a capitalist, believe me. I there's nothing wrong with making money.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera 46:42

Yeah.

Jay Koppelman 46:42

And I believe everybody should have the opportunity to do so. It's just are you doing it for the right reasons? Is it going to benefit society or be a detriment to society? And if they can come up with something that is beneficial and can provide healing to society that we desperately need, then absolutely do it.

Mark McGrath 47:04

Yeah. All for it. Well, winding down, Jay, where where do uh we want to send people to learn more about your work?

Brain Scans And Regeneration

Jay Koppelman 47:11

Yeah, so uh our website is missionwithinfoundation.org. They can follow me on social media on Instagram. I'm J underscore Copelman underscore USA. Uh, and I think just like J underscore K USA underscore USA on Facebook, something like that, also on LinkedIn. And we've been pretty active on social media lately, posting some things from the trip to DC. We had an event uh last Wednesday evening with representatives Lutrell, Lou Correa from California, and Jack Bergman from Michigan, all huge proponents of of this and advocates for it. They're they're all sponsors of this bill in the House. Representative Correa actually introduced the bill. And so it's gaining some traction. And like I said, I hope to be able to do enough good to work myself out of a job here one day and see not only our veterans and first responders heal, but have it available at some point to society to make sure that you know we we can all heal. There's a lot of trauma out there, and people need this. You know, I I I think we'd be better as a society and whole if more people had access to these medicines. And one of the things that helped me quite a bit was looking at others and seeing others as people, right? You know, my neighbors aren't my enemies. And, you know, one one last story about all this. So after my retreat, my son had gone to Costa Rica for a couple weeks with his mom the day I was getting back. So when they finally got home and I had some time with him, which was good because I needed that time to integrate as well. You know, I sat down with him, told him all about it, and uh, I said to him, I said, you know, I'm really sorry for being such a shit dad for all these years and being an asshole of a husband to your mom. He said, No, it's okay, it's okay. I said, No, it's not okay. I said, I wish I'd have had this 20 years ago. And he just looked at me, he says, nah, then I'd have just been raised like a sissy. And I told him, I said, that's not the case. I said, believe me, if you were ever in danger, I'm just as capable of extreme violence as I always was. But I know that's not how I have to be. Like anger shouldn't be my first response. So a couple months later, I was taking him to the DMV to get his learner's permit. Being a Idaho resident, I didn't have, I don't have a California driver's license or California ID. So I had to show like a mortgage or electric bill, and I had all that on my phone. We get to the DMV, and the lady says to me, sorry, that's gotta be in paper. We don't do electronic. Old Jay would have like cursed her out, slammed doors, gone outside, been pissed off to the end of the world. And I wasn't. I was able to understand that this isn't her fault. You know, maybe I didn't read something right. You know, she she just works here. I said, Thank you. We left. I said to my son, I said, I'm really sorry. He said, No, it's okay. I said, No, I I'm your father and I've I let you down today. And this is what's so wonderful about the medicines is that it doesn't just affect the person who is able to have access to them, but others in your circle pick up on that and they change their behaviors too. You know, previously I'd have been pissed off, then my son would have been pissed off, but the way I handled it made all the difference that day. Because when I when I said that to him, that I I let him down, he said, no, Dad. He said, now we just have more time to spend something doing something together that's more meaningful to me. That never would have happened. Never would have happened. I can't think of a more perfect, more beautiful outcome to a bad situation than that.

Mark McGrath 51:06

That's awesome. Well, Jay, we appreciate you uh coming on and sharing your insight today. You know, there's still a lot of runway to go and the learning, I hope. There's a very long runway.

Jay Koppelman 51:15

There's a very long runway. But I think we can get it done.

Mark McGrath 51:19

Yeah, and it's good to see that the destigmatization is taking when I you know when I first met Ponch in person several years ago and he talked about psychedelics, I thought he was nuts. It's just like you were describing earlier. So, but but having known people that took their own life that were very close to me, that were veterans, I tabled, I tabled it as an option to understand it as best I could, really quick, because you know, I'd I'd I'd give anything to have my friends back, you know. So yeah, but anyway.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera 51:48

Let's all get in a van and go to Tijuana, man. This is awesome. Let's do it.

Mark McGrath 51:52

Just like midshipment cruise in San Diego. But so we'll we'll cut the recording. But Jay, thanks for joining us. And thank you for having me. And thank you for coming to the service, guys. Thank you.

Jay Koppelman 52:02

Yeah, Semper Fidelis. Semperfi.