Retired Navy Chief’s HONEST Truth: PTSD, Church Trauma, & The Ayahuasca Trip That Saved Him

In this incredibly raw and unfiltered episode of the UnHolier Podcast, host Jennifer sits down with retired U.S. Navy Chief Troy Ulshoeffer (Founder of Vines and Valor and Co-Founder of Change Unchained). Troy’s story isn’t just about military service; it’s about the terrifying moment your entire reality—religion, politics, and identity—collapses at once.

Troy opens up about the "TikTok rabbit hole" that forced him to confront narcissism within the church, the heartbreaking mental health crisis his son faced, and the devastating loss of his mother to suicide in 2023. After facing his own "dark night of the soul" and a suicidal crisis, Troy turned to a controversial path for healing: Ayahuasca.

From the rigid theology of Liberty University to the jungles of spiritual medicine, this is a journey of deconstructing a life built on patriarchy and finding a new mission in anti-trafficking advocacy and veteran healing.

If you’ve ever felt lost in your faith, struggled with PTSD, or wondered if there’s a better way to heal, this episode is for you. #ptsd  #deconstruction  #navychief  #ayahuascahealing  #churchtrauma  #VinesAndValor #mentalhealthmatters  #religioustrauma  #veteransupport  #UnHolierPodcast

@troyulshoeffer       (IG & TT)

@changeunchained (IG&TT)

Changeunchained.com

@vinesandvalor (IG & TT)

Vinesandvalorretreats.com

@Symphonyofdeconstruction (IG&TT) 

http://www.youtube.com/@UCEh1zzgGsgfVyg4N5jnzH5A

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome back to the Unholier Podcast, where we question everything we were told not to. Today's episode is heavy, it's powerful, and it's honest. It's also a little controversial. I'm sitting down with Troy Yu Schoeffer, retired U.S. Navy chief, founder of Vines and Valor, and co-founder of Change Unchained. Troy has lived through the kind of pain most people spend their entire lives trying to avoid. We're talking about PTSD, not just from his time in the military, but from deep personal trauma, losing his mother to suicide, navigating the aftermath, and trying to rebuild meaning when everything you once believed starts to fall apart. At one point in his life, Troy was deeply involved in the Pentecostal church. He lived inside that belief system, but after years of questioning, breaking, and searching, his path led him somewhere many people in religious spaces would never dare to go. Ayahuasca. Now, through Vines and Valor, he helps veterans attend retreats designed to support healing from trauma. And through Change Unchained, he's working to create tiny home communities for survivors of exploitation and human trafficking, helping people not just survive, but rebuild their lives with dignity. This conversation dives into deconstruction, spirituality beyond religion, and the ethics of plant medicine, and what happens when the version of God you were given no longer makes sense. So if you're easily offended, deeply curious, or somewhere in between, you're in the right place. So let's get started. Was there ever a moment in your life where you realized you might have been wrong about almost everything that you believed?

unknown 1:59

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 2:01

Uh, yeah. Nothing.

SPEAKER_01 2:03

I know. That was a big question right off the gate, right?

SPEAKER_00 2:06

It's gonna be funny what the catalyst was. And maybe not funny. It's it's it's definitely, I feel, like, a unique story to where all of this really began, at least to the part point where I felt I needed to start doing work to not only process what it was that I was believing for 40 plus years, but also to ultimately reconstruct back into some semblance of stability and sanity. And what that was was in the summer of 2020, I joined TikTok. You know, the the algorithm is really funny when you first join because it doesn't know you yet. It doesn't know what you like, what you dislike, what it hasn't curated. And the very first thing that TikTok stuck me in as the niche of what they were going to provide me content-wise, was narcissistic personality disorder. It was a bunch, it was a bunch of content creators talking about NPD. And so I was listening. And as I'm listening, I'm like, oh no, oh no. That's all of these things, uh unbeknownst to I didn't, I didn't even know there was a phrase for how it was my mind was Rubik's Cubing, how I maneuvered through life, or the fact how generally unhealthy it was for those in my immediate orbit, wife, kids, what have you. And it was then that aspect, that algorithm, that moment in the summer of 2020, the tentacles of that started touching every single aspect of every single foundational belief that I had from religion to politics to patriarchy, societal norms, all of it.

unknown 4:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:19

That's amazing. That is amazing. So you talk about like the the algorithm and and all of that. It's kind of creepy, isn't it? So when you log in and you start a social media presence on TikTok, and then it's feeding you this stuff that it think is thinks is relevant to you, and then you have this almost an awakening moment where you're like, holy crap, why is this sending this to me? And then you're then you're seeing other accounts that kind of draw you in, and you're like, okay, that's interesting, and that's interesting. And like you said, it just sort of branched out into this whole other thing. And then you start making videos. So how how did that how did that start morphing into that?

SPEAKER_00 5:01

All right, everybody get comfy. Stretch it out. Stretch it out, stretch it out. All right. Context is super important. And in order for me to provide you context regarding this, we have to go on a journey together. All right. So grab your backpack, a cold drink, because here we go. So I was still active duty military in the summer of 2020. I retired in the spring of 2023. I joined in 2003, 20-year retired Navy chief veteran. The summer of 2020, I had recently moved back to Pensacola. It wasn't supposed to be this way. I had just fulfilled a set of orders that took me from Colorado in the winter of 2019 and took me to Utah in that same month, December of 2019. Both of my sons had graduated high school. Tiffany and I became empty nesters, and we went and purchased a tiny home in Eagle Mountain, Utah to start a set of four-year orders. And the timeline is super important how that how all this works out. So my two sons are off doing their adult thing. Tiffany and I are now over in Utah, starting a new set of military orders. And then March of 2020 happens. I don't think I need to remind anyone that listens to your podcast or yourself what happened in March of 2020. In fact, the actual announcement of the global lockdown occurred on my wife and I's anniversary, March 13th of 2020. Oh my gosh. In that week that the lockdown happened, we got a very alarming phone call from my youngest son. And he was having a mental health crisis. I want to preface the road I'm about to go down. It's it may get a little dark. I want to let you know one, there's a happy ending. And two, I have the permission of everyone that I that I talk about in this story to share it because it can be very personal. So my son is having this mental health crisis, and I mean taking your life type of mental health crisis. And once we talked him off the ledge, literally and figuratively, we really started to drill down and ask him, like, son, what is it? What has happened? We've been gone three months. We left in December of 2019. It's March 2020. And it was revealed to us that a part of the reason was that there was something that happened to him when I was stationed in Pensacola, Florida, between 2010 and 2016. And there was a certain type of abuse that occurred. And I don't, I don't feel that I for this story to pack a punch. I don't feel I have to go into the details. Everything will kind of come into vision for everyone as I continue the story. And so upon learning that, my wife jumped in her car and went and picked my son up in Colorado, where he remained. And Pensacola's home. That's Pensacola, Florida, is where we have family and friends and a foundation and a support system. And we knew we were about to, we were about to have to embark on a really huge restorative healing journey. Okay. And so we still owned a home in Pensacola that we had rented out while we were gone. It just so happened to be free. So my wife and my son go back to Pensacola and begin that process, therapy, counseling, all of the things. Okay. He's mind you, he's just an 18-year-old man. Okay. In the Navy, there is a thing called Hums Orders, H-U-M-S. It's short for humanitarian orders. And essentially what that means is that you are going to tell Big Navy that there is such an emergent thing occurring that they need to cut off whatever set of orders that you are fulfilling and send you to be a part of this emergent situation. You need to understand this is March of March of 2020. Nobody was moving. And that included military. All orders had been suspended. Nobody was PCSing to different duty stations, nothing. And because of the details of what had occurred with my son and the subsequent uh mental health crisis that ensued, they obliged and cut me these Hums orders to go to Pensacola. And essentially, I was paid the final two and a half years of my career to be a part of my son's healing process. Yes, I had to check in and fulfill minor responsibilities within the command that they sent me to, but I got to attend all of the thing, the appointments that he had to go through as needed, right? And I'll forever be grateful to the Navy for that. I know a lot of people will badmouth their military career, not me. I owe the Navy big time. They did, they did write by me. And so it was at that time when I had just moved back to Pensacola that I had started my TikTok account. But as a dad, I was having my own mental health issues with everything that was becoming uncovered. I'm dad. I'm the protector. I'm I'm the man of the house. Like no one hurts, harms, touches nothing to my family. And come to find out, I feel I felt at that time I failed. Bad. Bad things did occur. And the ramifications for it reach out even through today. Now, mind you, we're in a much better place now, but still, it's a topic. And it also bled into how I, in the summer of 2020, felt I needed to almost, let me think of the word, I needed to make amends somehow for my failure. I also want to say that if I start crying, it's okay. This is stuff that I have worked through, but it's still very emotional to talk about. When I had been stationed in Pensacola before from 2010 to 2016, when this incident occurred, along with being an active duty sailor, I also ran and ran an outdoor fitness boot camp. So I was a personal trainer for five years. It was very lucrative, a very popular outdoor fitness boot camp, burpees and tire flips and battle ropes, kettlebell swings, all that good stuff. And what I decided I was going to do was I was going to restart that boot camp for free. I was going to provide five workouts a week for the public for free, under one condition. If you come and take part in this service that I am providing, every Friday, I brought in a different area nonprofit that worked in the field of trafficking and exploitation. And you had to give 10 minutes of your time to them. Learn about internet security for your children, learn how you can get involved locally because this is such a trafficking exploitation. If any, like this is a big topic now in 2026 for all the wrong reasons, right? But this it's so much bigger than people that aren't in this world that work in this world realize. And instead of trying to focus on the Mac on the macro aspect of it, make your aperture on your aiming device a little bit smaller. You can do stuff in your area, local area. So I digress. So while I was doing that, there one of the nonprofit organizations that is from Pensacola is an organization called Call to Rescue. It's ran by a retired master chief and a dear friend. His name is Brad Dennis, and he is all the right things about nonprofits and working in this world. You may have never heard of him because he keeps it that way. This is a very personal endeavor that he has embarked upon. He's not looking for the public to pat him on the back. He doesn't make a bunch of content, making himself look like he repels out of helicopters and kicks down doors. Because no nonprofits do that. What they do is working in tandem with law enforcement, they'll gather intel and provide actionable intelligence for law enforcement to do the kinetic portion and all of that so justice can be served. Now, your original question was how did you start making the content that led to this? So the content that I really started with in the summer of 2020 had a lot to do with human trafficking and exploitation and child internet safety and what have you. And all of this led to my wife and I beginning to work with that organization called to rescue for a time. And there was something that we saw while we were working in this space, a gap that needed to be filled because what we were seeing was the recidivism of survivors, meaning we would help out with a missing person, okay, was usually how it all starts out. We would help locate them. And sometimes they were just runaways, or sometimes they were victims of being trafficked and exploited. And then six months later, we would see them. And what we learned was there is a lot of good resources and organizations out there that work in this space. But usually in the chain links of restoration in this world, the final link is a state certified safe house. And that can last six, 12, 18 months. And the focus on that is one, if they need to get sober, because a lot of times drugs and alcohol and substance abuse is used in order to for to use force, fraud, or coercion, the three pillars of exploitation and trafficking. And then also just start like healing from the sexual trauma or whatever trauma it is. But a lot of these individuals, both men and women, boys and girls, uh, it's not it's a gender-neutral crime that occurs, is that there are vulnerabilities in these individuals that lead to them being preyed upon, lack of education, financially unstable, hungry, homeless. All of the there's a bunch of different things that leaves these people vulnerable, and not all of those things are able to be addressed during that stint in a state-certified safe house. And so my wife and I really took a pair of dice and just said, we have an idea. Let's give this a whirl. And it was it was the bet of all bets. And what that bet was that we owned a beautiful 3,200 square foot home in Pensacola. And we decided to sell it in February of 2021. And at that time, like the market was super peak for sellers, and we bought 21 acres of raw land. And Jennifer, when I tell you it's raw, I mean it's 21 acres, and there's no power, no water, no structure. It's just a raw piece of land. We had nothing, there was nothing to go to. And we sold our home and bought this land and came out here in a borrowed RV that we got from that same uh master chief that runs the search and rescue nonprofit. And our big dream was we're going to build a tiny house village and allow survivors that need additional time after a state certified safe house to get on their feet, financially stable, go back to school, learn a trade, whatever. For six to 12 months, we will house them. And as of this moment that we're recording, which is I don't even know what today is, Thursday is March something, 19th, I think.

SPEAKER_01 18:15

March 19th, yep.

SPEAKER_00 18:16

March 19th. We have been able to fulfill that. I'm sitting in our personal tiny house currently, and 200 yards that direction is four tiny homes that we have been blessed to be able to fundraise and build. And we've been doing this now. Our five-year anniversary is tomorrow, March 20th is when we opened our very first tiny house.

SPEAKER_01 18:40

Wow, that's cool.

SPEAKER_00 18:41

So going all the way back to your, I know that was a long story, but I promise you it'll play into the topic you're having me on down the line, right?

SPEAKER_01 18:50

Yeah, I'm I trust you. I trust you. Good, good.

SPEAKER_00 18:53

Good. So all of that became my content. It's my life focused around trafficking. And so I start our organization, it is called Change Unchained. Change Unchained. And we started a TikTok account for that. And then I noticed like the very first time that I posted one or two videos, like it all became that topic. Everything on TikTok that I saw on that account was human trafficking and exploitation adjacent. And so I sat there and on my personal account, Troy Uchaufer, I'm wondering, like, what is it I what is it that I'm doing and saying and behaving like that is making the algorithm think I need to learn about narcissistic personality disorder. See, I told you I'd land the plane. I told you I'd land the plane.

SPEAKER_01 19:51

Whoa, okay. I can't wait to hear what this is.

SPEAKER_00 19:54

And so, and so I put down my ego, I put down uh my arrogance, and I brought this up to my wife. And I was like, Tiffany, I need to broach a conversation with you. I want you to know it is safe to say anything. I want you to be 100% honest. And we watched my content together, but she has another unique perspective of being my wife for over two decades. And I asked her, I was like, I'm showing her these videos of people talking about the symptoms and actions of someone who is moving in that space of being a narcissist. And I could tell right away just the look on her face of seeing her husband kind of awaken to something that had obviously impacted her. And it wasn't, it was very uh, I felt very demoralized, but very ashamed. Like the first emotion was like, oh my god, like this is terrible. How could I not have recognized this? And so I started sitting with that, and I needed to grow. I I my my spiritual walk had really been stagnant. At that time, I would have, if someone would have asked, I would have said I was a Christian. And before I start talking about this, I want to tell your audience and I want to tell you something. Because we live in an age where this topic can be very combative, and people feel like if you are talking negatively about someone else's beliefs, that I'm not here to shame you or demean you or say that I don't like you or that, even that you're wrong. That is not what this is, at least with me. What I'm going to share is my experience and my experience. Experience alone, it has nothing to do with you. This has nothing to do with you. If your path has brought you peace, love, joy, healing, sprint towards it. Why I've become so vocal about this topic is because this thing that you're sprinting towards for many people that are still in this space is creeping into legislative actions that impact me and it impacts my wife and my children. And we don't believe what you believe. As I'm kind of drilling down on this narcissist thing, why do I feel like my wife should be the one to cook dinner? Why do I feel like the man needs to be the sole breadwinner? All of these very superficial, topical, at least in my upbringing, that's just how this space worked, right? At the end of the day, dad has last say. If you and your spouse have come to an agreement together, that is how you want to live your life, go live it. I think that's fantastic. But this is a life that I brought in with my wife back in 1999. For those that know Tiffany, and I'm sure once this goes out and it's promoted and clips show up, um, there's gonna be people that know my wife and I that watch this, and they also understand that my you probably hear my rooster in the background.

SPEAKER_01 23:50

But anyway, um I just barely heard it. I just barely heard it with that.

SPEAKER_00 23:56

We're on we are out in the sticks, sticks, and obviously that's for privacy and security for what we do.

SPEAKER_01 24:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:02

But my wife is a hippie in every sense of the word, meaning not in an aesthetic way. She is not on TikTok, burning sage and sound bowls and all of that stuff, but that is her. That's who she was when I met her. That's who she is now. And I remember back in 1999 or 98, we lived in a little town called Burlington, Iowa. We went into a bookstore and she picked up a book regarding Wicca. And me, yeah, so the cover of this book had a pentagram, not an inverted pentagram, big difference, okay? But in Troy's world, in Troy's upbringing, Wicca, a star with a circle around it, somebody's gonna burn.

SPEAKER_01 24:55

Right. Because you were raised how you were raised Pentecostal?

SPEAKER_00 24:59

Yes. Okay, but my background. Let me just let me put a pen in the bookstore, and if I get lost, drive me back there, okay?

SPEAKER_01 25:08

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 25:09

My upbringing, I was raised incredibly deep evangelical, Pentecostal Christianity. It was everything growing up. Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night. For those out there that are Gen X, remember Royal Rangers. I hope you remember. I don't know if anybody out there remembers Royal Rangers, but Royal Rangers was the Christian option. It's it was the alternate halftime show, if you will, to the Boy Scouts. And you would go and not just learn how to build fire in the woods with a stick and stone, but you were also memorizing Bible verses and you earned merit badges. And I mean, everything about my life was curated around this upbringing. And even as I got older, I even went a little deeper, which we'll touch on something else we'll eventually get to. I dipped my toe into the New Apostolic Reformation. I don't know how familiar you are with NAR.

SPEAKER_01 26:12

I am not familiar with that. I mean, I've heard of Apostolic, but I've not, I don't know what they believe.

SPEAKER_00 26:19

Yeah, so New Apostolic Reformation is just another denomination, and probably the most well-known uh church is Bethel. Bethel Church in California falls.

SPEAKER_01 26:33

Is that the one that has the music, all the Bethel music?

SPEAKER_00 26:36

Pastor Bill Johnson.

SPEAKER_01 26:37

Interesting. Interesting. Okay, proceed.

SPEAKER_00 26:41

So new new apostolic reformation is a lot of things. I'm not an expert on this, but fruits of the spirit is a big thing. Speaking in tongues, fire tunnels, and slain in the spirit, all very big things that fit within the five senses, which I needed. I needed. Yes, I could walk around and talk about Christianity and my faith of a mustard seed. But deep down, I'm thinking, man, it'd be nice to see some shit. You know what I mean? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:13

How about we see some results here, people? Like maybe heal somebody.

SPEAKER_00 27:17

I would like to witness something tangible that I can. I had my anchor, but I just could never seem to grasp it and hold on to it when it came to my faith. But it was just something that was such a big part of my upbringing that everything else scared me. That it wasn't it became less about my faith and more about fear. I was scared of how terrified, eternal, eternal fire and damnation, separated from the people I love. Holy crap. So we're back in the bookstore. Um I I got it. I got the steering wheel. I'm like, okay, all right.

SPEAKER_01 27:54

Yeah. I was about to bring you back, then I was like, wait, are we going back to the bookstore? Because I'm like, what you're gonna have in like an existential crisis with this book, right? You're looking at this book, your wife's picking it up, you're like, do not open that book. It's like the labyrinth, right? They're gonna open it, Pandora's box, you know, whatever.

SPEAKER_00 28:12

It's gonna be it was a it was a game change. It would, it was something that at that time would have, we were unequally yoked. So therefore, you know what I mean? Yeah, and and she she didn't and shrunk herself a little bit in the big picture because this is who she is. And in order to make her husband comfortable or or fiance at that, whatever, it was very early on in our relationship, she decided to make minimize herself to appease me.

SPEAKER_01 28:49

No, she she hadn't converted to Pentecostal or anything like that.

SPEAKER_00 28:53

Okay, no, she eventually did get saved in in 2000, like the mid-aughts at some point, and um was a big player, like ran small groups, ladies' group. And then eventually, you know, I've always felt the next step for me was I never had a problem public speaking. So I always just thought the natural natural step for Troy was to be in some sort of leadership role. And I was a part of a we were a part of a very large church back during my days in that original time in Pensacola, Florida, 2010 to 2016. So I used my military post-9-11 GI Bill and I went to the University of Liberty. We could talk about Liberty University forever, but we're not gonna. But unless it'll I I chose the major of world religion.

SPEAKER_01 29:58

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 29:59

And the goal was to get a degree, and that was the prereq with the program I was in involved with this church to land in my ordainship, which happened in 2015. All of the original building blocks to start my deconstruction occurred in two different, very distinct events. Number one was when I was in the 300 series, it was uh Theology 301, as I was working towards my degree at Liberty University, compliments of Jerry Falwell. And uh when we started, when the topic of dinosaurs was brought up, I was not familiar with the young earth creation theory, even as someone who grew up in the I did not know that that was a thing. Are you familiar with a pastor named Kent Hovind?

SPEAKER_01 30:59

Yes, of course, yes.

SPEAKER_00 31:02

Kent Hovind is from Pensacola.

SPEAKER_01 31:05

Oh, I didn't know he was from Pensacola.

SPEAKER_00 31:07

He is, and in that time when I'm going to Liberty University, I was deep in that belief system, the new Apostolic Reformation Pentecostal merger, a lot of Mark Driscoll, Bill Johnson, Stephen Furtick when I wanted to the cool guy uh sermon. But Kent Hovind, uh oh, in and Todd White. And I wanted to land on Todd White. Are you familiar with Todd White?

SPEAKER_01 31:38

No, uh-uh. I don't think so.

SPEAKER_00 31:39

Black guy, big black guy with dreads.

SPEAKER_01 31:41

Oh, yes. Actually, I just saw a really cringy clip of him talking about God watches you watch pornography.

SPEAKER_00 31:50

What he is he is watching through watching through the window of your soul as you watch pornography, yes.

SPEAKER_01 31:55

That so he if you guys haven't seen that clip, go look it up. That is the most that it's so inappropriate and cringy. I'm like, who is this guy?

SPEAKER_00 32:04

Okay, he he works very intimately with Bethel Church. So if you ever wondered what N-Ar is, he's a he is at least a big shows a lot of of that type of behavior. And he always used to wear a shirt that said, Yay God. Yay God, yay god was his shirt. And I was so invested and so I wanted to be his mentee. I reached out to his ministry, it's lion, brave lion or lion heart. And I was like, I will quit the military and follow you it into your his, he was doing street ministry. I was so bought in, so bought in that I went to a local t-shirt print shop in Pensacola and got a shirt that says, Yay God. The reason I'm bringing this up is the day that Kent Hovind got released from prison for tax evasion, I was there to greet him. And somewhere on the internet, there's a picture of a much younger Troy U chauffeur with his arm around Pastor Kent Hovind. Wow. On the day after he was released from prison. Yeah, yeah. So we gotta find it. It so here's the thing, right? It was always in my Facebook albums. My wife and I deleted Facebook two months ago.

SPEAKER_01 33:17

Oh no. But did you delete it or do you deactivate it?

SPEAKER_00 33:23

No, we deleted it, but we downloaded. We I don't know. I I have a thumb drive with all of it. It's gotta be on there. It is on there. Okay, it is on there. If if I find the time, Jennifer, I will bring it up and you can like splice it into it. We'll put it in.

SPEAKER_01 33:37

Yeah, we'll put it in here.

SPEAKER_00 33:39

And so, anyway, we were talking about young earth. Holy crap. Sorry again.

SPEAKER_01 33:43

No, it's okay. You're good. You're good, you're good.

SPEAKER_00 33:46

So Kent Hoven is the he's the young earth dude.

SPEAKER_01 33:50

Yeah, he's like the poster child for it. He's the one who goes around and debates uh evolutionists and atheists all the time about this stuff.

SPEAKER_00 34:00

If you if you ask him, he'll tell you he wrote a pterodactyl to a freaking Bucky's just a couple weeks ago. They all coexisted at one time, anyway. The whole reason we're talking about this. I'm clipping that is because in my 301 class, they started teaching that train of thought that the carbon dating and all of these things were a deception, a lie from the pit of hell to cause you to stumble. I'm gonna use a lot of trigger words for the evangelical crowd, right? And I'm sitting there doing my online class, and it's I'm just dumbfounded. I'm like, is this really what I'm supposed to believe? Because I had never heard this before. I didn't know this was a topic of debate. And why? Why are we debating? What purpose does this serve? So that was number one of the building blocks that led me down a questioning path, something I never did. I was always told that questioning was evil. You don't question, you do not question. And you will accept the answer because he works in mysterious ways for every single thing that can't have a provided answer for. You will accept that. And that's how that's kind of how I grew up. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 35:32

And that's how they explain it too. Like if you have a question about something that's not adding up in the Bible, or you're seeing a contradiction, or uh you you just have a question about something simple, they're like, Oh, well, God's ways are not our ways, his thoughts are not our thoughts. Like, we can't even begin to comprehend God's mind. So you just have to accept it by faith. And that was never good enough for me because I'm like, I need, I need like proof. I need things to add up because things aren't even adding up. I mean, and I've said this probably 50 times now, but even just the simple fact that the God of the Old Testament is supposedly the same guy as Jesus in the New Testament, and they're two totally different personalities. And I'm like, how can this be if God is the same today, yesterday, today, and forever? It just doesn't add up to me. And they can't answer that except to say, well, that was the old covenant under the law, and the new testament is the new covenant under grace. Yeah, I think I'm not even talking about covenants, I'm talking about personalities.

SPEAKER_00 36:38

Yeah, yeah, there's it doesn't mirror up at all. But it I would I would never even allow myself to question that stuff because at the pinnacle of our old former belief system was faith. And if you didn't have that, you didn't have anything. So I that's kind that was that thing I just held on to. Like, I may not understand this now, but eventually this will come and I'll understand. And even if I don't, your ways are not our ways. So there was that event in that same year. I had decided to, even though I felt like I was very much progressed past this point, I took and joined a small group in our church called Alphas. Alphas is typically for baby Christians, new newbies to the church, and newbies specifically to this church that I had attended. And I was like, you know what? It's it's good to kind of get the broom and dust the cobwebs off. Let's start from scratch and kind of reinforce the foundational bricks in this thing that I'm committing my life to. So I go through, it's an eight-week small group class, and in the final class, one of the path associate pastors from the church comes and baptizes you in the Holy Spirit. Okay. Now I had told you that I was desperately seeking something. I wouldn't tell anybody this because it sounded like doubt and backsliding, but I needed something to put my hands on, see, feel, touch. And according to what I was being told, when I was going to be baptized in the Holy Spirit, I was going to speak in tongues, something I had never done before. Even though it's something I had witnessed and wanted, like I wanted this thing. I watched other people do it, I watched other people interpret, and I'm like, wow, supernatural, freaking sweet. And there were eight people in the class. I was the very last one. All seven stood up, took his oil, put his hand on their forehead, prayed over them, baptized them in the Holy Spirit, and every single one of them either spoke in tongues or was slain in the spirit. Now I'm I figure that if people are watching your podcast, or maybe not, understand. Do you want to just you want to give a uh description of a being slain in the spirit?

SPEAKER_01 39:21

Yeah, I was gonna ask you that because I think people can go. I mean, anybody that's watched TV for any length of time back in the day, there were people like you know, Benny Hinn and these guys that would go on and and talk in tongues and all that kind of stuff. But slain in the spirit, okay, let's let's define what that is for those listening.

SPEAKER_00 39:41

Yeah, so slain in the spirit essentially is the Holy Spirit will move in a way that takes your ability to control your body's actions and strips that from you. Many people will look like they're convulsing or they'll faint, fall to the floor. There's all kinds of things. But in theory, what is occurring is completely involuntary and the actions of one-third of the Trinity of creation. Okay. And a lot of times this happens a lot at revivals. You had the Benny Hens and the Jimmy Swaggards, these are not new things at all. Being slain in the spirit is is been around since Christianity's been around. So I watched these seven people go through this, and one of the one or the other thing, tongues are slain, or both, occurred, and it was my turn. One of the things I hear from people that push back at me about going down the deconstruction path is that I never truly believed. I was never really saved. It makes me very emotional just saying that. Because when I tell you, I need whoever listens to this, I need you to hear me. I was all it. I am 100% yours. Take me. I'll do your bidding. Okay. And so I went into this very open, very vulnerable, ready. Nothing happened. To say that I was deflated.

SPEAKER_01 41:35

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:36

Oh, it started opening up new questions like, what is wrong with me? Why am I not good enough? I I just watched everybody that I just did this small group with have this amazing, profound experience. Why why can't I have that? Is there something wrong with me? Am I doing something wrong? Am I Christianing wrong?

SPEAKER_01 41:55

Yeah. And what was the reaction of everybody, including the person doing it to you? What was the explanation?

SPEAKER_00 42:03

You know, so two things happen. The initial thing was I could feel that he became a little bit more aggressive as he was praying. I'm not kidding.

SPEAKER_01 42:16

Okay. But did he end up slapping you? Because we just talked about this recently.

SPEAKER_00 42:22

No, no, no, no. It didn't get it to that level, but I he I could feel like he was trying to prompt a reaction. And I just wasn't willing to fake it.

SPEAKER_01 42:35

Yeah, because you're like, this is real for me.

SPEAKER_00 42:37

I needed it. I needed that.

SPEAKER_01 42:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:41

And uh when all of that didn't happen, the aftermath was just a lot of faith testing. Your faith is being tested. Uh-huh. Are you going to deny now and walk away? Or are you going to continue to say yes and submit? And for a while, I said yes and I submitted. But the first cracks in my foundation were for me in a massive way. So those two things occur. I have to go back a little bit because context, again, is important. Jennifer, I promise, if you if you need to butt in, just tell me to shut up. I feel like I've talked for an hour straight.

SPEAKER_01 43:27

No, you're good. This is just so interesting to me. And sometimes I feel like I interrupt people too much because I get very like into the story. And then I'm like, I want to be because I'm thinking about again, I'm thinking about you're in this small group, you're having all these people are having this reaction to whatever is being done to them, be it sincere or insincere. And you're like, you're you genuinely want it to happen to you, and it doesn't. And I'm just picturing what everyone's reactions are, and then what you're then Being conditioned to believe about yourself at that moment. And it's like, I know what that feels like. Now we weren't, I wasn't raised Pentecostal, but I know what that feels like in the sense that you ultimately think, I must not have a strong enough faith. I must not be a strong enough Christian. I must be, you know, lacking something. I need to pray harder. I need to be in the Bible more. I need to, it's all all this weight and pressure put on you. And it has nothing to do with you. You didn't do anything wrong. In fact, you were probably the most genuine person in that entire room.

SPEAKER_00 44:35

I and I was so defeated, along with the fact that I was a very insecure person. I grew up a fat kid. And so if you know anything about fat kids in junior high and high school, they're the people that, you know, along with always grabbing a pillow when they sit down, it there's a lot of insecurity that's with that and people pleasing, and please like me, and am I good enough for you? And those things never went away, even when my appearance changed and my, you know, all of that stuff. And so one of the things that was running through my head is you need to understand, at this, I wasn't just a congregant. I at that time I was leading the men's ministry at this church and it large, large church, very large. And so I was thinking to myself, man, are they gonna think that I'm not good enough to lead? Am I not measuring up? Because I'm supposed to be like one of the beacon beacons that you look that they look at to uh emulate and follow. And I can't even have this experience at the alphas small group. Alphas, the begin baby Christian small group? What is wrong with me? And so I I had said just a little bit ago that I'm gonna give context about something. I grew up in a home where, along with being raised like that, my mom was very mentally ill. Uh, she was manic bipolar, which also fed into a lot of I'm gonna shut that door so the rooster can you hear that rooster?

SPEAKER_01 46:12

Is it too loud for the I I only heard it the oh barely the first time, and then I heard it just recently, but it's fine.

SPEAKER_00 46:20

Okay, well, I'm totally fine.

SPEAKER_01 46:22

I love it.

SPEAKER_00 46:23

All right, hey, all right.

SPEAKER_01 46:24

If you don't buy it, unless he's distracting you, he's not distracting me. I like it.

SPEAKER_00 46:28

Perfect. All right, perfect. He's just being a Kenny's a jerk. His name is Kenny, and he's an he's an anyway. So her being on the pot, it's fine.

SPEAKER_01 46:38

I get it.

SPEAKER_00 46:40

Right. Her mental illness played a lot into the ebbs and flows of how religion drove our household. As you, I mean, it's it's no secret that those type of illnesses will drive you into religious psychosis.

SPEAKER_01 46:59

Isn't that interesting though?

SPEAKER_00 47:01

It is, and unfortunately, that that did touch my mother's life then every now and then, right? She started to do a lot better in the 2010 or in the 2000s. Um, she got on some medications that kind of finally balanced her out. And then in approximately 2014, an episode occurred that she never came out of for the remainder of her life. And it I remember being this is so post-the theology class, post the letdown at the alpha small group, I pled with God like this since I could not have been more sincere when I begged him, please, please heal my mother. In June of 2023, my mother put a shotgun in her mouth and ended her life. So obvious to say that prayer went unanswered. And things had been spiraling so bad in the years before, where I just told you the beginning cracks, I told you what I was seeking from God in our relationship, because I I'm told all the time it's not about religion, it's relationship. And so when I'm in my car, when I'm in my car talking to God and to Jesus, a relationship is a two-way street, and it's not just me screaming into the ether, which it really felt like. And so all of these things happened, and then the thing with my son happened, all of these different things, and I really found everything underneath my feet crumbling, and in 2021, the bottom fell out. I could not Tetris all of these different things that I had been taught over the last 40 plus years into a sane reality. I want to remind your listeners, this is not about you. This is not about you. This is about me and my experience with a belief system that maybe we shared at one time in some way. So the floor fell out. I get re I get medically retired in March of 2023. So my career just ends very unceremonious. And for those that knew me before my retirement and before the version that is sitting on your podcast today, I was your textbook cover boy for the U.S. military, Captain America. I drank all of the Kool-Aid. I loved every bit of it. I loved the uniform, I loved the flag, I loved the combat. I loved it all. And I had no intention of that career ending anytime soon. I had crawled up through the ranks. I was a chief petty officer, and I had a medical condition that had arose that they said you're no longer fit for full duty, fit for service, actually, and we're going to medically retire you. And it was just very unceremonious. One day I was chief e-chauffer, and the next day I'm just a dude. And my entire everything I knew, everything I loved, everything that I was, my entire identity is wrapped up in being this person in this field of work. And just one day it was over. This is March 2023. I remember I walked in to the office on my final day to grab my DD214, which is just your separation paperwork. It allows you to get your VA benefits and the dictates all of your awards and your time of service, what have you. In one hand, I had that. And in the other hand, I had a brown like lunch bag that sounded like a rattle because it was just chalked full of different medications. You know, I had I had been previously diagnosed with combat-related PTSD. I had pills to sleep, pills to wake up, SSRIs, the whole nine. And it was a very helpless time just with that incident alone. And then you fast forward to June, March 2023. All of that happens with my career. June 2023, I get the call from my father. And so there was these, whoo, there was these two tent pole events, life markers, that occurred very close in proximity. For those that don't know, a suicide scene is not a crime scene. And the reason I'm bringing this up is when the dust settles from a tragedy like this, there's no magical group of people that comes in and cleans up the aftermath. No, that's on there. That's it's on the family. So this all happened in our family home. It happened in a very violent way. I wasn't gonna I and I'm Troy. I'm the combat veteran. I'm also the oldest of three. I have two younger sisters, and my father is the one who found her. And Papa Bear manifests itself in me. I'll take care of it. I got this. I've been to Iraq, I've been to Afghanistan, I've done all these things. I could handle this. Now, the big the biological aspect of this, there's companies that will come deal with that because it's a biohazard, a company called ServePro. But there's still, I right when you walk into the front sliding glass door of our family home is this foyer with framed pictures of our family throughout the years. And at this time, there was broken glass everywhere, holes in the wall, holes in the Venetian blinds, stains on the ceiling.

SPEAKER_01 53:46

No one should ever have to do that for their parent or family member. I mean, that is, I can't even imagine what that would be like. Like this is I can't even imagine what you went through, Troy. I am like I'm shook.

SPEAKER_00 54:05

So my brother-in-law goes with me. Marine Corps vet, he's actually back in the army now, uh, as a as a helicopter pilot. He goes with me because it's it's our family home. My dad is staying at my sister's house a few towns up the road, and eventually life has to keep it pushing, right? But we weren't gonna allow him to walk back into the home in the state that it was. And so I was able on that day to I I'd become really professional at compartmentalization where I could take some huge traumatic event and I could snapshot it like a Polaroid. I could put it in an envelope inside of a shoebox, inside of a safety deposit box, and store it somewhere in the recesses of my mind. And I did that. Meanwhile, we went through and completed the task, had the home looking like nothing happened by the end of the day. So I stayed there for another couple weeks into the July 4th weekend of 2023, before I had to eventually come home to the ranch that I'm talking to you on right now. In the past five months at that time, I had lost every bit of identity that I had known. And I had just had to deal with one of the most violent, tragic things I feel like I ever could have dealt with. And I began to spiral really, really bad. Now, here's the wonderful thing about my wife, the empath. My wife, the one who works in holistic spaces, someone who minimized that aspect of herself to appease her husband for so many years. And she saw the writing on the wall. Like I wasn't trying to hide it, and even if I was, I couldn't have. I got to the point where in December of that year I had my note written. No was written, mechanism was chosen. I was checking out, I could not handle the page. And so, this is gonna be a hard segue. Bear with me, because we're about to pivot hard. In a Hail Mary pass to save her husband's life, because there were many people that knew what was going on, many people that were the thoughts and prayers crowd, the, you know, we're going to, we're going to pray for you, lean on this, lean on that, yada yada, yada. Okay. None of this was working, right? And so in a Hail Mary Pass, my wife purchased me an ayahuasca retreat. Now, I'm going to give a very brief overview of I don't know what your personal knowledge base is with ayahuasca.

SPEAKER_01 57:13

Probably on this platform, too many people don't know what it is.

SPEAKER_02 57:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 57:19

Okay, so first for me, I do know that it is a uh as considered a psychedelic. And so I think depending on the crowd that is listening, the older generation might be, what is what are they talking about? Lsd.

SPEAKER_00 57:34

Oh, we're gonna touch on that all comes into play.

SPEAKER_01 57:36

I and then and the newer crowd might be like, okay, I know what ayahuasca is, but maybe more familiar with like DMT.

SPEAKER_00 57:43

Yeah, so DMT is the active ingredient in ayahuasca. It is a plant medicine found in the Amazon that has been used for millennia. It's only now gaining traction here in the United States over the last few years, but the usage of it and the sacredness of this medicine has been used by people, the indigenous, for generations.

SPEAKER_01 58:11

Yeah. And some people might be listening and thinking, you want to stay away from stuff like that because it could invite evil spirits in. It could be maybe they think of like, okay, well, if the uh indigenous people were using it, they were very like into like paganism, according to what they're believing, you know, what these people are thinking. And we don't want to invite any of that in. Because you came out of evangelical Christianity. How can you explain that to somebody who is still in that?

SPEAKER_00 58:44

I got you. Okay, got all right, because it it all this entire 62 minutes of me bumping my gums leads to okay, it all leads to this. At this point, I felt I I would have called myself a deconstructing Christian at the time. I was not practicing the faith whatsoever. I'd walked away. I mean, at that at that point, December of 2023, like I just felt completely abandoned.

SPEAKER_01 59:12

Did you still believe in God at that point?

SPEAKER_00 59:15

I would call my I would have called myself an agnostic. I didn't I didn't know. I didn't know I didn't know my from a hole in the ground at that time. I didn't know anything. I knew that the single lane that I had been driving on since birth, there's a road close sign. Like it, I can no longer drive on it. It was not drivable. It wasn't even a road. It was the edge of a cliff for me and my experience in Christianity. Okay. So I I uh capitulated with my wife and accepted the retreat and went in January of 2024. We're talking this. What I'm talking about is something that happened 25 months ago. I was depressed, suicidal. I had put on 40 pounds since my retirement. I was at 242 pounds. I was a mess. I was just a wreck of a man. But I was so desperate that I was like, you know, whatever. I kind of knew what ayahuasca was. I I had watched some documentaries. I know that a lot of people had shared their testimony regarding how I had healed them from substance abuse. That was the big thing in a lot of in a lot of documentaries. You'll hear about alcoholics that sit with this medicine and then just simply do not desire to drink anymore. It's a it's an incredibly spiritual experience. And whatever I'm able to formulate together for your podcast today regarding who and what this medicine is, I won't do it justice on how deeply it impacted me spiritually. I feel like my DNA was rewired. And I mean that's what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:06

I've heard that from people, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:09

There is Troy Uchaufer BA before Aya, and then there's this guy that you're talking to today because even the cadence of my voice, what I talk about, the music I listen to, the food I eat, how I treat strangers, how I love my neighbor, how I hug my son. Zuh. How everything is different, and it's incredibly more intentional. And so I get to this retreat, January of 2024. There is 50 people at this retreat, not including volunteers, and then you had the tribe, the Yawanawa tribe from Brazil, who led this retreat and served the medicine. And I'm gonna use, I'm going to use a title that in my growing up, and I assume from your listeners' perspective, is going to there's gonna be a jolt. And that word is shaman. A shaman led this retreat because it's their medicine, and they're sharing it with me, Troy from Florida. Okay, I'm in Alabama now. Anyway, and so there's another plant medicine that is served to you before you take in this medicine, before you swallow your dose of ayahuasca. And it's a medicine called hope. All it is is ground-up roots in some other plants and tobacco. Tobacco is the active ingredient in it, and it gets blown in your nose. Okay. And the purpose of it is for all of the busyness that's in your head, especially if you're the first time at a retreat like this. Woo woo, you're buzzing. What you it's the unknown.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:06

Fear of the Yeah, I would be nervous. I would be so scared.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:09

I was, I was, I was, but I was at a place where it's like, what do I have to lose?

SPEAKER_01 1:03:15

Yeah, you were ready to end everything. So you're like, whatever, I'll try this. Almost like a last ditch effort to figure out whatever you're gonna figure out.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:24

If this didn't work, we're not talking today. And so the tribesmen went around the big ceremonial space, and whoever wanted to take the hope, this tobacco medicine, took it. It was blown into their nose, and it's to clear your mind. It and it works. It literally takes all the busyness, and you're just like centered immediately.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:46

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:48

And I go up and all of the men get in line and they're served their medicine. It's not something that happens immediately, especially if you're a first timer, it could take a couple hours for it to take effect within you. And I get back to my mat out in the woods. I'm underneath this huge tree, and I'm just laying down and I'm looking up through the limbs of this tree, just kind of waiting.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:14

Were you by yourself?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:15

No, there's 50 other people at this retreat.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:18

Okay, yeah, but under the tree, are you by yourself or are you with other people?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:22

Do they like there's there's people on mats all around me?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:25

Okay, so you're not just like out in this oh no, they this I'm like, I would be even having a bad trip at that point if I was like sitting under a tree in the middle of the woods that I don't even know.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:37

No, no, there are facilitators there, the entire tribe, the entire tribe, medicine women, the shamans, they they guide all of this, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:47

Okay, did your wife go with you or did she send you?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:50

She sent me. She ended up sitting, she ended up the I'll get it. Are you gonna get to it? Come back to that. Come back to that.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:59

Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:01

My gosh. All right. So you're under this tree. Yep, the medicine hasn't kicked in, but apparently there was someone else that was coming to this retreat who had an upbringing very similar to mine. And the reason I know this is because 10 minutes after we took that, took our dose, I just hear this blood-curdling scream. And it was coming from a man that was on the other side of the ceremonial space who had been given hope and had taken his dose of ayahuasca and had gone back to his. And I mean, he is freaking out. Oh my.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:00

Gosh, now that would freak me out. If I was there and somebody was doing that, I would be like, okay, I'm out of this. I can't do it.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:08

It was the first time where there was a measuring stick, a barometer. Troy, how much have you really deconstructed this ideology? Because from the bottom of my feet to the tip of my head, my fight or flight went, woo, whoo.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:27

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:28

I was literally like, I need to, I need to, I have to go. I have to go. Now I'm one of those people when I get involved with something, I typically like research it to death. I will watch every documentary, listen to every podcast, read every book, listen to every testimonial. And ayahuasca was no different. When Tiffany bought me the retreat, I went down the rabbit hole. And there was a lot of things I could learn. Nothing can prepare you for that experience, but there was one common thread that I could pull from every one of those documentaries, books, podcasts, testimonies. And what that was was three words. Just say yes. Meaning, when this medicine takes hold, submit. Healing is very hard work. I am not under a tree in the middle of nowhere because life is great. I'm there because has hit the fan. And I remember feeling all of that emotion, that fight or flight. And I remember I put my hands on the earth and I was like grabbing at the dirt on either side of my mat that I was laying on. And I took a deep breath and I looked up and I said, literally, verbatim out loud, I submit. And it is the greatest choice I ever made in my life. Now we don't we don't have enough time to go down the actual my ayahuasca ceremony journeys. If anyone is interested in this, uh here's a cheap plug. I have a podcast. It's called Symphony of Deconstruction. It's on Spotify and YouTube. And the first six episodes of season one is nothing but a deep, detailed, vulnerable recount of every ceremony I have sat in with ayahuasca. Now, what I do want to bring up about this medicine was while it dealt with a lot of things, to include my mother. I my there was no note, there was no end. Closure.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:56

There's no closure. Yeah, there's no closure in that. Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:59

And and I got that. I was able to get that with this medicine. I was able to have an experience where I was able to communicate with my mother, which I know even that alone, some of your listeners is are like. Sure. I hope that if you're watching this, the video and not just the audio. If you're watching the video, whatever you're doing, I just need you to look in my eyes and look at my body language and hear the tone of my voice. This medicine, it's not a drug. Nothing was recreational about it at all. Whatever the opposite of recreational is, was what this experience was. But there was nothing evil or demonic or anything that would push me towards wanting to not be the absolute best version of myself with all of the stabs and scabs and wounds that life had been giving me. She didn't just provide a band-aid, she came in and carefully and lovingly stitched those wounds closed and did it in a manner for those that that work in the are in the space of plant medicine, specifically ayahuasca, you'll hear it referred to a lot as Mother Aya or grandmother, because it's a very feminine medicine. And I don't know how to explain that in a way that doesn't sound woo-ey-woo-ey, but I I can't apologize for being woo-ee-woo-y because I I am I'm woo-ee-woo-ey. Yeah. And there's other plant medicines that do similar things. The plant medicine's called ibogaine, which is the big one in the veteran community. You hear people talk about it all the time. And ibogaine is called the father or the grandfather. And so you have these two different modalities. And ibogaine is a very takes your traumas and the things you need to deal with, and it's done very direct and very here. It is deal with it, nerd. But not so many, you know what I mean. It's just it's very in your face, and here's what you need to deal with it, deal with it.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:24

It's very more of a masculine energy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:29

Ayahuasca, yes, it's very direct, and yes, you are dealing with all of the uh hard things. You're dealing with your mother's suicide, you're dealing with childhood trauma and abuse and all of that stuff. I wasn't abused. I I definitely don't want to insinuate that I was abused, but just many people talk about all of the different things it brings up, but it's done at the end, you get that motherly hug. And uh for someone that arrived there because I lost my mother, my mom and I were close. And no matter how old you are, no matter how far away you live apart, mom is mom. And there's no affection that matches a mother's affection. And this medicine stepped in and provided that for me in a way that I can never pay it back. I'm attempting to in a way that I'm sure we'll eventually get to. But I just want to let your listeners know that you're hearing a lot of vernacular and a lot of terminology that I know being brought up a certain way in a certain belief system are absolute no-go's.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:04

Major taboo. Major taboo. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:06

My goodness. Oh my.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:08

And I'm sitting here thinking, okay, what are these people that are still in the church? There's they're listening to this, they're thinking, I can't believe she she's having this guy who went to a witch doctor, who's having him have this, he's talking about this experience he had and the whole thing he's submitting to some kind of demon that's been gonna show him all these things in his life. And these are the things they're probably thinking through their head, right? I have, I recently had on a psychic medium, and I'm sure they had the same thoughts when I had her on, because we talked about past lives, we talked about reincarnation, we talked about soul contracts and and all of those things. And and I'm like, I was never taught any of that. I was never even introduced to any of it. So the possibility that there might be something other than this narrative I was given and handed to me at birth is very interesting to me. I and it and like I said before we even hit record, that this is very serendipitous, that you and I are sitting here today and that we're talking about all of this because I feel like a lot of this thread is being woven through the past few guests that I've had or people that I've recently connected with. And so I'm definitely interested in learning more about this. And I've obviously have heard of ayahuasca before, but it's just some of the videos that I've seen, of course, were like people are vomiting and the purging is a big part of the page. And I'm like, I was taught that when an exorcism happens, a lot of times people are vomiting. So I don't want to I was like my it's that cognitive dissonance, right? So my mind is like, wait, is it really this or is it this? You know, I don't know. So um I'm sure when people listen to this, they're gonna have a little bit of uh a mind struggle with it.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:17

Yeah, I'll and I think fascinating. And I get it, it sounds just outrageous. It sounds outrageous as I've continued to go down this path, you know, that getting veterans access to plant medicine is a full-time gig for me at this point. We run an organization, a legit 501c3. You can verify us on irs.gov. Uh, it's called Vines and Valor. And for those that feel called to this path, they can apply to receive one of 50 grants that we issue out, fully paid grants to attend a three-day ayahuasca retreat. If you feel called. Our next one is coming up in April. All of those grants have been handed out. And if you're a veteran that finds yourself interested in this, it can be pricey, right? It's a it's not cheap to go and sit with these modalities for three days, but we cover everything except for the travel, which is a grand or two of coverage with these grants that we raise money for.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:23

And then they would be going to like where Brazil or so.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:26

Here's the thing there there are two churches in the United States that have their religious exemption waivers fully approved. And one of those places is called the Pachamama Ayahuasca Sanctuary, and it's in Casco, Maine. Oh you have to we so yeah, we were just there last September. Dozen veterans got so much healing. And if people are interested, you can go to vines and valor retreats.com or dot org, either one. Uh, or you can find us on TikTok and Instagram, Vines and Valor. People share their testimonies. And I want to encourage those of you right now that are sitting there belabored by what you're hearing coming out of my mouth and struggling and just naysaying. This did not push me away from Jesus. I need you to hear me. Plant medicine and I psychedelic therapy did not push. I am, I have more an in-depth relationship with Jesus now and the red letters than any other point in my life.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:34

Because it actually makes sense with what he taught, and that's what I think they try to shy away from. I was just talking to somebody yesterday, the episode that's gonna air before yours.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:48

I'm gonna give her a little plug too, because look at the title of her book. Can you read that?

SPEAKER_00 1:17:55

Or is it what if it calls you zodiac in the holy texts?

SPEAKER_01 1:17:59

And so she's like, people don't realize that when Jesus was, he was doing energy work, he was doing rekey on people, and they don't want to talk about that in church. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I never thought of it that way, but it's so true.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:15

Well, ever since I had been very I've been very public about my testimony with this, I it was one of the portions of one of my ceremonies where I was told, like, you need to take this gift you have for public speaking and your ability to be vulnerable to the masses, and you need to tell other people about this. I've testified on Capitol Hill twice. I was there in April 2024 and in May of 2025, with I where I shared with the VA subcommittee uh my experience. And this isn't some outlandish witchy thing. This is stuff that Capitol Hill is looking at providing veterans because of what is happening with people with PTSD, because we've been sitting at 22 a day for a long time, and SSRIs just aren't cutting it, at least not for the whole. But when it since I've come out talking about this a lot, and so is my wife, we're finally going to pull that pen out. When my wife saw the dramatic, the dramatic, no, not the book that you had asked if she had gone with me to see. When her husband came home and she was able to witness the change and witness the healing that occurred, she later that year sat with the medicine herself and so and received the you know the same type of healing for the things that she needed to deal with. And so we both have been a couple out in the social media spaces and public spaces talking about this. And I'm not gonna lie, there's been a really significant blowback from the community that may be listening to your podcast. And everything from demonic to possessed and what have you. I am not here to change anyone's mind. That is a fool's errand. I will talk myself into an early casket if I try to change anyone's mind. But you need to understand that all of these things that you call my wife and I, and others that are on this spiritual path, you your yourself are partaking in, but you just use very softer words. It's a symbol or what you know what I'm getting at. My whole goal isn't to do a bunch of podcasts or write down my thoughts about an old belief system I had. I want people to look at me and watch me from afar and eventually say, what that dude has, I want that. Yeah, I want that because it's authentic and it's real and it's tangible, and this path that I'm on, there's so many things that get to fit within my five senses that it only emboldens my belief in this and my following this, and I'm not looking at it as a bad thing, it's not something to send me on a wrong path or deceive. That's the word I was looking for. It's not something that it's not the devil trying to deceive me. It's not, it's not. It is it at the end of the day, if you were to boil down all of this stuff I just shared with you, love. It's love, it's literally the only language that this belief system gives. And love leads to healing, and healing, real healing, childhood trauma, combat-related PTSD, sexual abuse, those things are available. It's really hard. It's really, really hard work. And I'll close out the whole ayahuasca aspect with this because I don't want the notion to be that I was one way, I took a thing, a switch was flipped, and I was healed. There's a thing called integration. Integration is part of the psychedelic therapy and plant medicine community where you take all of these lessons that you learned in what feels like 700 years of therapy fire hosed at you for six hours, and you codify them into your life. I am not some hippie tree hugging drug peddling. I haven't sat with any of these medicines in almost two years. It's not something that I have to habitually do. But every day I implement practices, be it meditation, journaling, yoga. I take what I learned and I put it into practice because I was shown during these journeys how everything and everyone is in fact connected. We are, it is all one. One. You, me, your listeners, your neighbors, the people who vote differently than you, the president, the Ayatollah, everyone.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:51

Wow. So do you feel like your concept of God has completely changed?

SPEAKER_00 1:24:01

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:03

Okay. Yeah. So my how would you describe what your belief in God is at this point?

SPEAKER_00 1:24:09

Yeah. Troy Uchaufer has to, in his mind, I call it something different now, whether it's the universe or source, just because there are still things that I'm working on, because God, for decades, was a bearded dude in the clouds that rained down wrath on the bad and had streets of gold for the good, right? And I know I I know Troy knows this isn't about you. Troy knows that that isn't what it is. God, in Troy Eushoffer's humble opinion, is the collectiveness of all of our consciousness, who is now dispersed itself into each one, we all have the divine in us, every single person. And we are all going through this experience in order for God, us as a collective, to have those experiences through this lens. If you're an all-being, all-knowing, omnipotent, omniscient being, you don't know what it's like to have your heart broken, to have your house for house foreclosed on, live through prop poverty, experience love, have a wedding, be at the birth of your child, first child. And all of these things are happening across the globe. And it's of my woo-y opinion that all of those experiences funnel up into one singular point of divinity. And that is when I I still I still pray a lot of the actions of a Western evangelical Christian still play a part in my life. I bless my food before I eat it. I'm grateful for it.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:18

Um it's so what does that look like when you pray? What does that look like for you? You're are you still saying kind of the same kind of prayer as you were before, or is it different?

SPEAKER_00 1:26:30

It's different in this way. I am never asking for help from something from the past, and I'm not looking into the future. It's whatever that being being grateful and thanking source, the universe God, for this present moment, for those that it's not a deconstruction book, but I can't recommend enough the books of Eckhart Tole, who the one book in particular is called The Power of Now. And just being able to exist, there is nothing more important to me, Jennifer, than me talking to you and sharing my experience with you and your listeners right now. I had some things happen earlier today that absolutely could have impacted my behavior and my emotions. And I also have things that are happening later on today and down the week that I could be dwelling on and having anxiety about and what have you. It doesn't matter. The only thing that is going on and matters is this second, and now this one, and now that one. And so it's vastly, vastly different because a lot of the my prayer time and spending time in my prayer closet, which I absolutely had, was spent. was spent asking for something from the past to be changed and something if in the future to be granted. And uh I don't do that anymore. I what it is I want and I need I feel like Troy Ushaufer, this isn't about you. But I can manifest that. And if it doesn't happen, then I am not supposed to manifest that. And I have and I'm okay with the universe, God, source, what have you saying no. So if that hopefully that answers your question about my prayer, it's very that moment. I am so grateful to be sharing this dinner table with a wife that loves me as we break bread together or what have you and insert that immediate moment.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:53

And that's beautiful. To me, that is beautiful. And when you said that your prayers used to be focusing on something you could change in your past or something that you were asking for him to grant for the future that is so that rang true for me because that's like so many people when they pray that's what it is. Yeah. You know yeah yeah and you just being grateful in the present moment is so beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:20

We literally have no idea how long we're going to be here. This is going to sound super cliche and and and pontificating if you will but it this is such a fleeting experience. It is literally boop you're in and you're out and there's so much to experience that all of the years that I spent fearing something that was going to happen to me not even in this lifetime post post existence how much that drove how I ran my household what I taught my children how I maneuvered in my career all of those things were that was a a fruitless endeavor. That was it was numb scholary. And for those of you that are still operating in that I really do hope the best for you and I hope you find the uh the courage because it is scary to leave something that you so deeply think you believe and it it can and it was it was a few years there that this entire process was like a free fall and I'm scraping at the sides of this black pit just trying to get some footing like holy holy shit man when does this end? Is there a purpose is the am I just gonna be a nihilist and think this is all pointless and yeah it isn't and I found my footing.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:56

That's amazing and coming from the religious upbringing that you did have and I can relate to a lot of what you said that's your whole identity everything is about that your whole life is about that and then when you when you start to experiencing experience those fractures it's like oh my gosh my identity is literally dissolving in front of my eyes everything like I was Pastor Troy it was a very small segment of time.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:31

Yeah but it was my entire life led to that point. It wasn't long after my ordainship that uh I started to embrace and not just tuckle when the questions arose I didn't turn away from them I embraced it listen if I'm going if I'm gonna be all in I need some answers. And the more I dug you know going through Bible college at liberty nothing nothing arose more questions in me than Bible college to truly to truly learn the counsel of Nicaea I oh my gosh like I would just implore you that if you're going to have a belief system and this brings you joy peace love healing and you're going to stay on this regardless of what this tattooed bearded knucklehead says during a two hour podcast that's fine but know what you're reading and how it came to existence. That's important. It is important because if you go into it and someone told you at a young age this book was written by God I want to tell you and this I'm not trying to be blasphemous I promise. No it wasn't no it wasn't it was written by a bunch of men in different time periods many of the gospels written decades after Christ's crucifixion it's a big big game of telephone translated from languages that have nothing to do with ours I mean we can't even agree on what version of the Holy Scriptures that were supposed I how many different between between the different versions of the Bible and the different denominations it's this mix and match Baskin Robbins thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:28

How the hell do you where do you even go to make sure you got the right flavor who knows oh yeah knows yeah I was taught that the King James Bible is what's going to be on the right hand of the thought the Father in heaven that's going to be up there King James Bible no other version just the King James Bible that is the authorized version and that is the word of God you do not question it is our final authority you don't even look at the Greek in Hebrew if you look at the Greek in Hebrew then you're gonna question the King James Bible and questioning the King James Bible is questioning God's word. It was this like circular reasoning that just was like oh my gosh and there was no there was no objective thought outside of that it was that's it and if you question it then you have a problem and then again like you said if you just look at where the Bible originated where it came from and all these men and all the the time period and the languages and all this stuff but then I've heard this before people would say that's just even solidifying more proof that that's God's word because he used all these hundreds of men and all these languages and all these time periods and all these places to preserve his word into one book. And it's like well how then you go down this if they're able to critically think, then you should be asking questions like well why are there only 66 and who decided there were going to be 66 and how many other you know manuscripts have they found and books that they found but they just decided not to put in and who made those decisions and when did this happen? I mean nobody's asking those questions not in the circles I was raised in.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:20

And you and you really need to and maybe after you ask after you ask those questions because I want to I want to play devil's advocate for this argument maybe after you ask those questions maybe you arrive and it codifies your beliefs sure okay but you need to ask them you need to know who King James was you need to know you need to know what was happening politically you need to know it all plays a role it all plays a role and I'll say that one thing I have to throw in here this is just an abstract curveball at from my time as a Christian that I want to say to your listeners stop following Paul the end okay yeah that's thank you for saying that oh my gosh yeah yikes just yikes yeah yeah Jesus is rad love Jesus love his teachings love Troy Uchauffer loves Jesus of Nazareth the end full stop but man a lot of skinny jeans and designer sneakers and big LED screens and smoke machines aren't teaching a lot of that they're teaching a lot of Paul so I'm just telling you be careful that's it be careful.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:39

Yeah I a hundred percent agree with you on that and you know as a woman I uh have some concerns about Paul yeah as you should yeah yeah yeah and I just think of like you know I've had people on here who are um they've come out of the IBLP which I don't know if you're familiar with that that's Institute of uh biblical life principles and or basic life principles and that was under Bill Gothard Bill Gothard was an unmarried man who had these you know these books and pamphlets and this this learning material for all these Christian families to come to the these arenas thousands of Christian families would come to these arenas and listen to him speak about how to raise your kids and how to be a good spouse and how to be a good wife and how you should dress as a woman and all of these things and he was never married he was a Paul type of person he was never married never had any children and yet he is sitting there being the spokesperson for all of those things that he's never even he doesn't have any criteria in it. And it's that's kind of how I think of Paul it's like maybe you should sit this one out dude I don't know just say totally agree totally and never mind the fact that he was like persecuting Christians and then becomes like the poster child for Christianity like make that make sense I don't know that's kind of like taking Hitler and then being like hey he's the now he's the the poster child for the Jews now like yeah and and we that and that's actually used for the counter argument of just how amazing the grace and forgiveness is I mean yeah I know you do. I know you do I've heard it well okay so I think there is definitely a lot to digest in in this episode. But no I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I think this has been fascinating and heartbreaking but like you said has a good ending and I think it's in it should be encouraging to people and I hope it makes people want to do their research and and look some of this stuff up and maybe experience some of these things but I would love for you to tell people how can they find you and your podcast.

unknown 1:39:05

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:05

Yeah so there's a lot get your pen and paper gang so if you want to know if you want to follow or know anything more about me personally I don't have a Facebook I just have an Instagram and a TikTok and they're both the same username it's just my first and last name at TroyUchauffer. Now I talked about two different organizations and a podcast. I'll end with the podcast. So our organization with the tiny homes out here on the ranch that we give housing to survivors of exploitation and trafficking uh you can go to changeunchained calm and learn more or you can follow on Instagram and TikTok same username at changeunchained. If you want to know more about the medicine that I talked about and our role with helping veterans find healing through psychedelic therapy we are on Instagram and TikTok at Vines and Valor. Vinesandvalor.com is our website and if you're a veteran that's interested and want to apply for a grant that's where you go. And then lastly the podcast all we have is season one it's 18 episodes we put a pin in that last May but it goes very in depth everything that we talked about today just imagine drilled down in even more finer granular detail it's symphony s i s y m ph o n y symphony of deconstruction and we're on Instagram and TikTok username but the podcast is on YouTube and I did confirm it while we were talking it is still on Spotify. So Spotify and YouTube is where you can go to listen to it and if you just need a small segment because you got a lot of Troy U show for today and you're like I don't know if I can handle much more of this guy the first six episodes speak solely about my experience in healing with ayahuasca and so if that is something that intrigues you that's fantastic that you can go there and learn more.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:11

Okay thank you um do you have any final thoughts for the listeners?

SPEAKER_00 1:41:17

Yeah one final thing the world is in a very exhausting place right now and the very last thing I feel that we need is more combativeness and aggression when it comes to the church and deconstructionists. I know there's a lot of animosity for everyone's own personal reasons on this end and there's a lot of animosity and belittling and shaming from the other end. And both of those things come from a place of ego it's coming from a place of you as an individual you were hurt you were traumatized or someone is out there and they're belittling my beliefs and minimizing what the foundation on which I live upon I want you to know that there's many more deconstructionists that feel the way I do where I don't want to be abstract from you. I don't want to be separated from you I want to do life with you I want to show you that that isn't the only way and I know that that's hard to hear but I can love my neighbor now much more better than I did before because the restraints of black and white good and bad evil and holy those things have been massaged quite a bit and uh I hope this kind of serves as a white flag for many of us out there that you know we don't we don't hate you we don't even for the most part dislike you we want you to find the freedom love joy peace and healing that we have found over on this side and if you find that in the church and in the Bible sprint towards it just don't legislate it in any way for those of us outside of your circle that's it I love it.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:25

Thanks so much for being here Troy you're welcome thank you for having me. Conversations like this aren't meant to fit neatly in boxes they're meant to crack them open. Troy's story is a reminder that healing doesn't always look the way we were taught that it should. And sometimes the path forward means questioning everything you were taught was sacred. If you want to learn more about Troy's work with Vines in Valor or Change Unchained, I highly encourage you to check them out and support what they're building real tangible pathways for people to heal and rebuild. And if you're on your own journey whether it's deconstructing rebuilding or just asking better questions you are not alone here. Make sure that you like share and subscribe if this conversation hit home or challenged you in a way you didn't expect because the truth is growth isn't comfortable but it is necessary. I'll see you in the next episode. Thank you for listening before we close out I just want to share a quick reminder. The stories told on this podcast are personal experiences and perspectives. They're shared to create awareness and connection not as medical legal or mental health advice some of the conversations here focus on abuse, trauma and other heavy topics so please take care of yourself while listening. It's always okay to pause, skip an episode or step away if you need to and if anything we talked about brings something up to you we encourage you to reach out to a trusted professional or support resource. You don't have to carry any of this alone. Thank you for listening