¶ Start
Special Operations.
Cobert SB and I.
The Teamhouse with your hosts Jack Murphy and David bark.
Hey.
¶ Guest Introduction
Folks, this is episode three hundred and fifty nine of The Team House. I'm Jack here with Dave and our guest on tonight's show is Clayton Smith. He served as a recon platoon leader in Afghanistan, recipient of the Purple Heart. A whole bunch of different experiences over in Afghanistan that
we'll get into. But he also works with an organization called Beyond EBO Gain that is b E O N D I b O G A I n E dot com that's helping veterans and part of this movement of psychedelics being used to treat veterans that are dealing with PTSD and other ailments. And so we got a lot to talk about. Clayton, thank you for joining us tonight.
Yeah, thank you guys for having me. I really appreciate being here on behalf of the Beyond team, the Beyond Service Team and Beyond team down in Mexico. Super appreciate the ability to talk about the program that we're building uh and and what we're you know, what we're doing for veteran mental health first responders and their family members.
You know, it's it's something I try to lead with is you know, we hear about twenty two a day, and it's time to do something about it rather than just do and.
Push ups on Facebook.
You know, it's time to actually end or make a significant difference in this veteran suicide.
And you know, we'll talk about the family side of it.
But oh, by the way, everything that the families carry. So yeah, IM super grateful to be here. Thank you to your viewers and your audience as well. Uh, and I'm really excited to share what we're doing and share a little bit about about this medicine and and the process that that we do.
So Clayton, I'm going to store off asking you about personal story and how that leads into all this other work that you're doing today. Can you tell us a little bit about you know, your origin story and what took you towards military service as a young man.
Yeah, for sure.
So I I didn't really grow up in a military family. I grew up very rural, small town Maine, you know, a town of seven hundred people. I think I had eleven kids in my elementary school class and you know, I blue collar, blue collar entrepreneur parents and who you know, worked real hard, gave gave us, you know, a good life. Growing up one of one of six brothers and sisters, and I was the runt of the litter.
I was the sixth of six.
And you know, I I I ended up going to a military college after after high school, found out that a RTC and and you know, play an army and doing RTC was something I was pretty good at.
Signed a contract my second year, and then in two thousand and nine, I commissioned missions and second lieutenant. And you know, for me, it was just it was for me, it was about getting out of getting out of Maine, doing something different, trying to trying to do something different than the folks that I grew up with and and didn't have, you know, didn't have the best high school experience and wanted to do something different with my time.
And I'm also an idealist, so I thought that, you know, that was that was a way to make the better the world a better place, you know, keep the nine to eleven generation veteran and and you know, I watched nine to eleven when when I was in middle school, and you know, I thought that you know, doing this and raising my hand was the way to keep you know, America safe and and made me make a positive impact
in the world. So so that's where that's where we ended up putting gold bars on in two thousand and nine.
And answered the higher calling of serving in the airborne Infantry.
Yeah. Yeah, so I I say this is you know, kind of to my mother's chagrin. I graduated with a mechanical engineering degree and decided to go be an army ranger. And she, you know, really wanted me to be you know, in the Navy or at the Air Force and you know, do something employable after and you know, I thought, you know, girls might like it if I was an army ranger. So that was that was the extent of the decision making as pretty much you know, ninety five percent of the guys that go that route.
Yeah, a tale as old as time. Yeah, exactly, exactly.
So you commission as a infantry lieutenant, what's the next phase of your journey? I mean, they send you to ranger school right away, right.
Yeah, So you know I didn't. I wasn't. I wasn't a West Point guy. So all the West Pointers get to go first, So I got to got to hang out in limbo there at Fort Benning. So I spent about a year and a half at Fort Benning between you know, the Infantry school and different officer leader courses and then finally going to ranger. All real rangers recycle, so I got to take the extended day. I got to do Darby twice as a result of my own
ego and action, So I'll own that. And then you know, eventually after eventually I made it through and headed up to Alaska. So my my duty station was was it Fort Richardson up and up in Alaska with the four two five?
And correct I correct me if I'm wrong, But that unit was like relatively new as an airborne unit, wasn't it.
Yeah? I think they stood up in six or seven, and it was they they had an seven deployment to Iraq and a twenty ten deployment to Afghanistan. And I got up there followed twenty ten right after they pretty soon after they got back from their first Afghanistan deployment.
You know, just I'm gonna probe a little bit more about this, you know, do you know what the rationale was of putting placing an airborne unit in Alaska.
Was was there like a strategic purpose for that?
Yeah, so, I mean I certainly wasn't making decisions. My understanding is it was the you know, we were the only airborne unit in user Pak, so in the in the Pacific theater, we were the only you know, because you add one hundred and seventy third in Sentcom and Europe and of course the eighty second, but we were, uh so there was like we were on a two hour QRF even for like humanitarian missions.
So I don't know if you.
Guys remember there was the tsunami and I think it was the Fukushima nuclear plant probably you know, disaster in Japan. We were on a two hour recall to go to Japan on humanitarian because we were the closest you know, we were the closest airborne unit that could get into the Pacific theater. So that's that's why they had us there.
That's interesting.
So tell us about kind of getting into your platoon, meeting the guys, what that experience is like being a new pl.
Yeah, so I definitely had you know, so I had two different platoons that I had the privilege to lead. The first one I went to a like a standard line unit and let A let A platoon had a great group of n c os, you know, and and I certainly, you know, tried to do my best to listen to the n c os in all the officer courses and just shut up, you know, just just shut up and listen. Don't go in there and try to
put your stamp on anything. You know, what the the guys are doing that, they've been doing it for a reason. And I had a really just solid, you know, really my group of n c os that I came to it for my first platoon was if you could have you couldn't have a better group to mentor a lieutenant who was you know. And and after about a month of just showing up and saying teach me, they they did and they schooled me up. And you know, I wouldn't have been as successful in my career if it
wasn't for them. And then nine months later we did our e I BS. I was one of the lieutenants to get their e I B Expert Infantry Badge and I was moved over to the Scout Reconnisance Platoon. So
¶ Recon Platoon Experiences
there's one reconnaissance platoon in a in a I guess in an airborne infantry battalion, and I had the privilege to lead that. Woh, that was a different situation, man. Like those those guys were those n c os. They were not They didn't want to build you up. They wanted to chew you, chew you up, and you know you had to. It took it probably took six months of proving myself day in day out. You know.
It was, uh, can you know you.
Go for a rock march and you got to put a forty five pound plate in your pack because got you know, there is no way that that sergeant Fenton is going to have a lighter ruck than I am. And oh man, you know that was a crucible of those guys. But they they were fiercely passionate about their soldiers, like incredible NCOs and and once you were in their trust, it was it was a team that I I I can't believe still that I had the privilege to be
a part of. We did eighteen months of train up together, which is abnormal for or for a lieutenant and uh, you know in a at least a line platoon or conventional military to have the eighteen months to train up together and then go down range together like it was. It was a it was a dream come true, and I was exposed to so much more than I would have normally.
I imagine you guys doing a lot of like snowshoe training up there.
Yeah, snowshoe a lot of You know, when you when you jump in the winter in Alaska, you know it's you have, especially a night jump, you have a fifty to fifty chance you're either going to hit a snow drift and it's going to be the softest landing of your life, or you're going to hit the sheet of ice that snow blew off of and it's going to you know, it's going to hit you like a truck. So a lot of that and then a lot of cold walk back from.
The d Z.
You know.
The the way we trained our our platoon and the way we did it was, you know, even if the rest of the Italian was getting picked up on buses, we were walking our happy asses home and an you know, that paid off downrange, and and it did because the guys we really we really took the mentality of you know, practice should be harder than the game, and and it paid off. You know when we when we went down range, because it was honestly, it was nothing. If we had to if we had to get out and walk for
eight miles, that was it was. It was what we were used to doing.
So and you know, as you're going through this extensive train up, I mean, what is the mission that you're training for? What what are you guys being brief at that time that you're going to go into.
Yeah, so we were we were kind of our our platoon was on paper supposed to we're a reconnaissance element, but we were also supposed to be a bit of a kinetic element at the battalion commander's discretion. Uh So we were you know, we knew we were going to be centrally located within the battalion's AO, and we were.
They were kind of two. We had a sister battalion within the brigade, and we knew that, you know, our reconnaissance platoon and and our sister one and the other battalion, we're going to be a mix of kinetic and a mix of reconnaissance work, which I mean in in twenty twelve, you know, and even more so now reconnaissance work is kind of more just like train denial, using sniper teams
to do to do train denial. It wasn't you know, we had as you guys know so much ir that that it wasn't like we were going and just sitting on a ridge line to see if there were trucks.
You know, we knew there were trucks, right.
It's also a very difficult area to do recky in just because you know those little villages, everybody knows the train. They're all out there walking around all the time, and it's very hard to remain you know, you know, to not get your not get blown.
Yeah, I mean it's not like there, you know, as soon as those American trucks leave the gate or you know, it's kind of hard to hide a chinook in a in a high altitude desert when it when it's landing on a rich line. Yeah, I get there. There is really no such thing as a as an infiltration in the in the classic WRECKI sense so. But a lot of train denial, a little bit of kinetic work, that's what we're that's what we were training up to do.
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So, in your was there also a sniper element or were you guys the sniper element?
So my breakup, we had three sniper teams, so spottershoot and a security security guy. Uh. So I had three sniper teams. I had two rekie teams which were kind of like six man.
Strong fire teams.
Light squads that were that were our kinetic element. Those guys were they were they they did eighty percent kinetic, were twenty percent reconnaissance work. And then we actually we this was this wasn't in the MTOE. This is something that we wanted to do and we brought in was we had a kind of a heavy weapons team and it wasn't a traditional infantry heavy weapons squad.
It was five guys, so.
Kind of a team leader, squad leader, and then to two forties and you know, they carried, they were they they were the boys with strong backs, and it gave us gave us a lot more tactical flexibility when we could drop in, you know, whether we had our own mortars with us. We had heavy guns. You know, it just gave us a lot more flexibility. We had long guns, we had two forties, we had orders, and then we had two kinetic teams that that could go do their things.
So it was fun. Like as as an as a platoon leader, it was what you dreamed of, like you had all the resources and you had hard charging n c O s and then a bunch of E one to E fours that were really strong and vollied orders like it was. It was the ideal situation as a as a platoon leader.
And so tell us about getting through Afghanistan, and I believe you said earlier the mission changed.
A little bit.
Yeah, so about two months before we before we hopped on planes, we are AO shifted and we covered down. There was a we went. We ended up going to the Paktia province and there was a National Guard unit that was there before us, and they were having some struggles. It was like two or three years of.
National Guard.
AO management and they were they're having some struggles. So we were repurposed and Big Army sent us into Paktia. And yeah, so we we kind of had to learn the area. We had to learn the hot spots mostly on the fly. And then we also what we were not prepared for at all was we.
Were the because of the because of the.
Unit getting pulled out was infantry and MP, and we were getting like an MP or excuse me, an infantry and airborne infantry and a replacing We actually I had to I was the only or my platoon, our reconnaissance platoon was the only conventional element in our FOB because everyone else was spread out. So we had to own a partnership with the Afghan police, the AUP, and the Afghan Army and the Afghan commandos that were across the
street with the s F guys. So about six weeks before we went down range, we figured out where we learned we were going to be training police officers and we had to get you know, that was not at all in the train ups. So we had to to get smart on r OE and and you know the things that that you when you have to train a foreign national force and also police and arm So.
Uh, tell us about your first night in combat and what happened.
Yeah, so first night, we truly truly first day ended up getting off the helicopters. Half foot platoon is there. We're starting our left seat, right seat with the so that the unit that we're replacing where we're start starting the process. So you know, we're we're laying out inventory and looking at serial numbers. And then there was a QRF response, so we were the quick Reaction Force assigned
to our FOB for that time. And there was a predator drone, an armed predator had crashed in Rao and we had to go secure it, and so hoping trucks and I mean, look, I did a lot of train up. I was still a cherry lieutenant, so like, how do you how do you get your headphone connected to the truck, where's the combat lock? How do you? Like? Look, I was, I was a soup sandwich leaving the gate and and I was like, holy cow, this is real. This is
this is getting getting real. Roll out the gate and we you know, I mean, the first part of the day was very boring, and as as you guys know and probably a lot of your listeners know, it's it's ninety boredom with with ten percent moments of chaos.
So we went out, we.
Secured this drone. The Air Force flew in their guys and and also a couple other units came out to help secure the site. Air Force flew in their people. They cut out all the sensitive equipment. We recovered the the missiles. Found the missiles, EO D went to go dispose of them.
And.
Right before EO D set off the charge to destroy the missiles that that were recovered, there was a like a ground shaking explosion and as it turns out, one of our one of the units that was out there there to recover this predator, they left early. And so we had a whole route clearance package. We had EOD and then you had us as a as the dismounted security like we had a full convoy package that made it out there. I mean, we were all sprinting to
get out there. We had we had our legit. We had a logistics convoy that had to recover the drone like we were. We were probably twenty twenty five trucks at that point, and we were going to convoy home and do a route clearance. Well a you know, this other unit for whatever reason, they decided to leave early and they went home the same way they came in, and there was a three hundred and fifty pound id UH under the road and it was the same road that we drove in on, same road we drove in on.
But you know, and at least in that time, in the area we were in, we could defeat the remote detonated IDs. We had a way to defeat those, and then pressure plate IDs. You could defeat those because we had mine rollers on the front of all of our trucks. But there was there was no way to defeat a
command wire. And so they, as we found out, they ran a command wire three hundred yards away, you know, and there was I'm sure a dude on a motorcycle just waiting waiting for the trucks to come by, and he knew where his culvert was, he knew his aiming points, and the trucks were lit up with their marker lights. And the blast crater was about six feet deep ten feet wide. It flipped a max bro on its roof.
It actually flipped it twenty feet in the air. It bounced off a kalot wall and then dropped down to the bottom of the clot And you know, we instantly responded to that because i mean, you had the like the blue force tracker display and then all of a sudden, the radio blows up and one of the icons goes gray like you kind of know, even without knowing, you kind of know what's going on. And at that point I ended up being the the facto ground force commander,
so we had to secure the crash site. Unfortunately, there were three American k as, there were two or three wounded that survived, so we were having to secure secure an LZ callin medovax. We were uh NAFCAN and police are out there, so we could kick doors down and go into buildings and try to find if we could find the triggerman.
It was a it was a rough night.
It was a it was a rough night, and it was definitely a baptism. I mean this was I was twelve hours into sixteen hours into being on the ground at our FOB and hooking a change to a bumper of a of a Ford Ranger and uh going into a Collot nods down rifle up with three of my n c o's. So that was a hell of a hell of a start to to a deployment and it and it really it was unfortunate that it happened. It was preventable, and it really reinforced me just how quickly things can go wrong if you're sloppy.
And that turned into a pretty busy deployment for you guys after that, didn't it.
Yeah, so we were we were outside the wire. I didn't as events happened later, I didn't. I didn't stay as a stune leader the whole time, But our first hundred days in country, I think we were outside the wire. Ninety of those hundred days in some way, whether it was multi day, single day, you know, convoys, logistical support, we were. We were outside the wire. Yeah, ninety of one hundred days.
And you said that you had to respond to pretty much every mascal situation in your sector that year.
Yeah. Personally, it just it just shook out. And I don't know for sure, but I'm pretty sure that I ended up being the ground force commander for the three major mass casualties in RC East in twenty twelve. One was that first night with the ied, The other was the day that myself and five others were awarded purple hearts, and then the third was there was a suicide vehicle ID in a marketplace that killed two or three Americans, an interpreter, and about twenty local national afgcans in the market.
And I wasn't even supposed to be there. I was on a convoy returning three vehicles. At that point, I was an exo. I wasn't even leaving the wire.
I was an exo.
And we had to put nine guys together to go return some trucks to a depot on the other side of a pass. And I was gonna drive there in a twenty vehicle thirty vehicle logistics convoy, drop off the trucks, take a helicopter home that next day, and ended up, uh, you know, getting ambushed in the past and destroying a truck, having to fight our way out of the past and then respond to the suicide vehicle.
So yeah, so the so the close, the close ambush and the s V B I E.
D thing, it's like all connected. Yeah yeah we should Yeah, okay, can you.
Tell us so if you're okay, tell us a little bit more like detail about you know, running into that ambush and the rest of the events that day.
Yeah. So, I mean that's that day separate from when when the purple heart. Yeah. Yeah, those those were a couple of months apart. So after after I got my purple heart, and because it was you know, it was it was a result of concussion TB I. I was moved out of my platoon leager position like I couldn't. I could. I was medically cleared to go on patrol. But it was like a month or two and I was.
I was rotated out. So so yeah.
Those are those are two separate incidents.
But yeah, take us, Why don't you take us through the SVB I D first.
Yeah, So that day that was the the SVB I D was the was the logistics convoy where we were turning trucks in and uh, you know, we had a route clearance package. We had a I don't know, fuel had to get moved by local national trucks. So we had a we had like a twenty truck fuel convoy with extra containers and food was moving and we just jumped in that with our trucks that had to go get turned in to the supply depot Salerno. And so I just I grabbed. At this point, I was the
company executive officer. So I grabbed a handful of my scouts who were they They were going on on midtor leave and they were flying out of Salerno and I and I went and sold them, well, boys, sorry, you don't get to take a helicopter there, you got to take an eight hour convoy. Uh glad I did. And then a couple of a couple of the other headquarters guys. So we we did minimal manning, minimal radios, minimal you know, load out because everything we took there we had to
fly home with. And so we took this minimal load out. And then going through the KG pass the coast Guard does pass super windy mountain pass, get hit with an RPG ambush our trail truck. It's like, why did they have to pick us? Man? There is a bunch of other ones trail trail truck RPG straight through the radiator disabled pass. This the driver this might have been his
first time outside the wire driving. He was a supply clerk and managed to get the truck kind of half into the ditch instead of going off the cliff.
So that was helpful.
And then you know, I mean, dude, we were like, it's not like we weren't prepared, but like we had weapon systems on these trucks.
That we had.
There are the weapon systems that you use day and day out, and then there's the ones that you don't. And we were in the case that you don't. So, you know, sometimes we had like the remote weapons system where you stay inside the truck and use like the
video camera to aim while that went down. So I've got one of my NCOs is on the roof of a truck, and I mean, this is a knockdown, drag out gunfight in the past, and he's on the roof, standing on top of the turret trying to manually aim the two forty while the guy inside squeezing the trigger.
It was. It was chaos.
We could only communicate with air support using theft because we were in a hole with no radios. Satellites went down. It was just it was just one of those things where you just get out of there. So we hooked up, you know, another truck came back, We laid down covering fire, hooked up a tow rope, and then just dragged everyone out of the pass and regroup a couple of miles down the road.
And then and then you had to get to the market. Right.
Well that was so now we're we're dragging you know, a destroyed truck into into town.
We've got one destroyed truck.
We've got you know, my truck is gon ricochets and holes in it. And you know they the like water drug was had a bullet hole. Like. It was just it was a firefighter, right like, So we're just limping our asses into town.
Uh.
And then you know when something's wrong when you get into town and all the doors are shut and there's no one in the street.
It was that, you really something's wrong.
And and a mile later, the route clearance half mile later the route clearance uh stopped and it was like, you know, they called for all medics and the convoy to come up, and it was it was, it was bad. It was it was.
Really bad again like the the.
It was a it was I think an MP unit that was hit. They were totally combat and effective. You know, we had to they they lost enough of their leadership that they were completely combat and effective. So we had to triage and get there. Fortunately, we were only five miles from the actual FOB, so we were able to get the wounded loaded and out. It would be quicker, you know, we did a vehicle e back instead of
a helicopter. We got the wounded in the trucks and and got them out of there and uh, then we stayed and picked up the pieces, and it was it was.
It was messy, man, it was.
It was one of those days that you don't forget, and you know, when you're I'll never forget.
Having to climb in. We were in matt vs.
So they were like.
Souped up humbies. So two seats in the two seats.
In the back, and a gunner in the middle, and you know, I had to go in and and we ran out of room to put the casual, you know, the the k I A the deceased, and so I had to climb in and tell my gunner and was like, hey, man, I'm sorry, but you have to you know, we had to fill these seats and you got to lift them in there.
And that was a that.
Was a day you never forget. Just the complete, the the complete, indiscriminate loss of life.
Yeah.
And just to contextualize this a little bit, you're a how old XO at this point in time?
Twenty six, yeah, twenty six years old, and.
Your boys were like eighteen nineteen.
Yeah, man, I am in the in the yeah nine eighteen nineteen, twenty twenty one ish.
Yep, yep, yeah.
You know the kid, the kid that the guy that
¶ Ambushed in Afghanistan
you know had to lift those two deceased bodies into the back of our truck. Might have been twenty one years old, twenty two years old.
Yeah, yep, YEA.
Our first night, we had a that that first night that I e that we were talking about and this is this is why I'm so passionate about the work that I'm doing as well. That that first night we were pulling wounded and kia out of the out of the truck that was hit with the IE, and we got a call that we think we found were the building. The trigger man we you know, ISR says, we think we've got something. So I had to to take my
rt o my radio. My radio guy is kind of supposed to be attached at the hip with me, and this was his first deployment, first twelve hours being down range, and I had to look him in the eye and say, hey man, you got to pull these bodies out because
I have to go. And you know, I had to go lead the kinetic part of it, and to leave this guy who, you know, his only crime in life was being really good at running a radio, and now he's he's exposed to what what has to be an incredibly traumatic event and the fortunately, you know that night and I tried to whenever possible put my NCOs in the shittiest spots, and and there was a lot of respect for that, you know, mutual respect, Like they knew I was going to take the shitty job, and I
was gonna give them the shitty job. And the guys that were you know, privates and specialists were going to pull security instead of pull pulled out of trucks. But there's just sometimes there's no walking back from that, you know, when you're twenty years old.
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Thanks guys. Tell us about that.
Then the the urban ambush where you were awarded the Purple Heart and so were many of your soldiers.
Yeah, that was it was tax day. Well, I'll never forget it is April fifteenth, so you always remember his tax day and so you know we were we were at a point at least in twenty twelve in the AO that we were in. You know, we we would say that kind of all the dumb ones were dead, the dumb terrorists were dead. You know, these guys knew that we outgunned them, they knew that we could hear them, they knew that we could see them, they knew we
could reach out and touch them. And so we were mostly fighting, you know, an insurgency, a an i D insurgency, and there was kind of a cadence to things, and you know, we found several i DS by getting out of the trucks and walking.
They were waiting to blow us up.
And that was that was really if they could, if they could blow you up, then they'd engage. But there there were no ambushes in the region that were not just like i D induced. And then a firefight after so we were again q r F and this a neighboring cop or FOB was getting some like harassing fire. So there was a PKM so like a light machine gun was shooting at the SPOB from a building, and so we got spun up on QRF and at that point I was so.
That the long version of this story.
At that point, I was already starting to do my replacement as EXO from platoon leader to XO, and the guys were getting called out. Half the platoon was out on mission and they needed to have sixteen sixteen bodies in four trucks to be able to roll outside the wire or twenty I forget what it was, but it was something like that, and we had to fill the trucks.
And so.
I was in flip flops, ranger panties and a T shirt strapping a fifty cal onto the roof of the truck because we didn't have enough bodies and I could at least help the boys get outside the wire and get out on time. So I was just on the roof and flip flops of a Max road getting the weapons systems hooked up and running and the guy that was replacing me comes running up and he's like, hey, we need like we need more, go grab your ship. So I ran up to my room, threw my kid on,
and and met the trucks. You know, I was running out the gate basically of the fob while the ramp was down, and they you know, hop in the back and off we go, and like we didn't have a medic, so we grabbed the the medic platoon leader who was an E eight Ranger or E seven at the time Region Ranger Regiment guy who then you know, went medical.
So like our the back of my truck was just like a hobbled fire team of our senior sniper team leader are the senior Battalion fo Ford observer, myself and then an East seven Ranger medic and uh, you know, we're all just riding the truck like.
Shit.
Man, I was supposed to go to the gym in an hour, like you know, because we knew how it worked.
They they they get us.
To come out and then we're going to drive to where it's happening. And by the time we get there, everyone's gonna be gone, and We're gonna get out of trucks. I'm gonna hear it, and we're gonna, you know, do bats and hides, and we're gonna look at all the military age males and then everyone's gonna be gone because as soon as those trucks leave the gate, they're they're gonna have someone on the phone telling them they're gone. So you know, it's not like we were complacent, like
we were all kidded up. We were ready to go.
But we had seen this movie before.
And so it wasn't like this super adrenaline like, oh, we're gonna go get in a firefight. It was a like those sons of bitches. I was just gonna work out in an hour. And we get to the building and then all of a sudden, like you know, the popcorn starts going off on the sides of the truck. I was like, oh shit, like shoot back. So we you know, we the convoy goes up drives by fools of ui and now we know, okay, we're we're in
a firefight. We're gonna something's going on. So we're gonna we're gonna get out of here a dismount and you know, see what's going on. And so and it was just a string of really bad luck. When we turned around, our mine roller hit us feedbump and like fell apart. So like our lead truck is just kind of like pushing the metal carcass of a mine roller down the road and it stopped a little short, so like they had to leave spacing for all four trucks to get
past the building. And it just so happened where the lead truck stopped. The trail truck. The fourth truck, which I was in, was in the kill zone and straight in front of this building. And it was a three story concrete structure, probably three It was three stories high, probably one hundred and twenty one hundred and fifty feet long, so a fairly large like kind of what would be an apartment building. And we were square in the killson,
like we were dead center in the killson. Ricochet start popping off the truck, and you know, we're in the back, just like, let us out, let us out because this goes nowhere good, like, you know, and the four of us in the back we were, you know, we're light infantry. Where we wanted to get in the fight, like there was no there was. The only argument in the back of the truck was who got to be the first one out the door? Not who had to be the
first one out the door. And we get out, and I just remember, man, like you know, those trucks are dark, they got little little porthole windows, and it was super bright and and I'm I'm running the ramp, so I couldn't be the first one out. I had to be the second one out. My fingers on the little button to drop the ramp down, and the world just goes
super bright because the sun. And then as I'm running down the ramp, I see the asphalt just splintering all around me, and there's like little chunks of asphalt just flying up around my feet. And uh, I remember, like it's like oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, Like I got to get behind cover because this is this is way worse than what we thought. We dove in a ditch. There was a little back hoe digging a utility ditch next to the road and it was piling up dirt.
So we had a little like three foot ditch that we could get into and our we had a gunner. The gunner on my truck. He was he was the newest private to the platoon. So this is you know something he said before, like, you know, these are eighteen nineteen year old guys. Yeah, this is the nineteen year old guy. He was the newest member of the platoon. This is the first time he had been in a firefight, first time he had been in anything like this, And
he had the only fifty calm in the fight. Because all the other trucks were parked outside and they couldn't really engage.
One of the trucks could.
And so you had four of us in a ditch, realizing we are way outgunned like these guys. You know, as soon as we're in the get the ditch, like RPGs are flying over our heads. RPG hits the truck and it hit the hit the driver's door, the passenger door, the TC's door. So our TC has shrapnel all.
Heat because he stayed in the truck.
TC's got shrapnel all through his kit, you know, under his kid. He's bleeding. So the medic runs out of the ditch. He runs out of the ditch, goes back to the truck to plug holes. And now there's three of us in the ditch. Thank god we had the FO because now we had Apache's coming on stations, and you know, so he's calling in apaches and there's you know, there's two of us trying to get a suppressing fire.
Myself and my the Stiper team leader. We're trying to suppress We've got a Pachies coming on station and who fortunately we're in the AO because of the QRF call and we had you know, I was like we're laying in the ditch watching, you know, so you lay on your back as the apaches coming. You watch these apaches come come over, you know, twenty feet off the ground. They peel off. Then you jump up and then the
RPGs just start raining back down on you. Uh. You know, at one point everything went brown, dirts and rocks and shit went everywhere.
It was.
It was the time that our medic was coming back into the ditch and I watched him fall over and I remember like, you stupid bastard, you can't even run, and uh, an RPG hit so close is what happened. I mean, there was an RPG that hit about five feet and it hit the dirt berm in front of us where the backo was piling the dirt for the utility trench. And you know, that was the one that that got us all pretty good as far as concussions
and shrapnel. And you know, whether it's rocks or or everyone, everyone left that day with the tv I that was in the ditch at that point. So uh, you know, and I will you know, there's there's so many parts of this. Uh. One one that needs to be mentioned is that they're one of the guy that was in
¶ TBI Diagnosis & Challenges
the in the truck in the turret. So when that the turret, when the truck got hit with the RPG, the whole smoke fire suppression system goes off, and our turret gunner fell down all the way from the you know, he was standing up in the turret. He fell down into the bottom of the truck. And again this said nineteen year old kid who's in his first firefight. And it was the it was the only it was a fifty cow and it was the only thing that was giving the four of us in the ditch any suppression and
in any way to engage or maneuver. And you know, this kid could have laid in the in the bottom of the truck. He just fell eight feet onto his back and all the fire suppressions going off. He could have absolutely done that. And the only thing he did was he grabbed his pocket knife and he slashed all the ratchet straps on the AMMO cans and threw four ammo cans up on the roof, then crawled, you know, climb back up and re engaged.
And you know, that's that's valor, that's.
Bravery, and and your rank should have nothing to do with a with a valorous Award. You know, there's four of us that are alive because of Ian mcinty and and his actions that day. And you know, at by the end of it, after maybe I don't know, twenty minutes, we had two flights of apaches went full Winchester. They shot everything they had, rockets and rockets and and bullets, and then we eventually were able to get out of the ditch. And then it was a three hour firefight
we had. There was a Romanian special forces team with a with an Afghan attachment that was trying to get at the building. There was you know, us on our own trying to get at the building from another direction. We had two A tens come on station and went full Winchester with everything they had UH and the and these guys were like they were there to die that day. They were they were in the building to die. And they reinforced both sides of the building so they could
engage from either side. They had to have had hundreds of sandbags and stuff in there. So you know, two apaches, two or four apaches, two A tens UH, we did our best to get in the building. The Romanians tried to get in and then after a couple hours the decision was made. You know, we we requested authorization to drop a five hundred pound bomb, and it was it was danger close or sure that one the first one that dropped the detonation. Something happened with the detonation and
it went through the building and never detonated. And then we dropped another from an F sixteen, another five hundred pound bomb, and the fin broke when it released, and it like dolphined on its way in and it missed. You know, we were so close. It's like the Romanians were here and we were here, and it you know.
The bomb hits here. We were we were so lucky.
And then finally they the I think the brigade commander it might have added to have been like a general authorized me to release a two thousand pound bomb from a B two, and we were like, from a concussion risk perspective, we were we were danger danger, danger close, you know whatever the one percent PI is like, yeah, we were. We were way.
Inside of it.
So but it was effective and it certainly ended the firefight, and it certainly ended the structural integrity of that building. So yeah, that was you know, it was it was one of the fondest days because we won, like we were we were infantry men that were trained to go do that, and it wasn't That was not the traumatic day of my deployment or and I can speak for most of the guys that were there, like that was what we trained to do and we got to go do it.
You know, the other two.
Events I told you guys about, we're certainly the much more traumatic than that day. But the part for me that that I didn't you know that that goes into kind of part two of this story is on the way home, my head hurts so bad that you know, I took my helmet off, I took my headphones off, and I just rode in the back of this truck with my hands cradling my ears because I had such bad headache, and I thought it was just adrenaline. Like I justified it to myself as like, oh, I mean,
you had so much adrenaline. Now it's leaving your body and you just have a headache. And then three days later I was trying to do Yeah, we took the concussion test. I cheated, I listened to someone else's answers and gave them as my own. And then three days later, we're doing inventory I'm back to my job as an XO and we're doing we're doing inventory checks and I can't read.
You know.
A PFC is like, hey, Sar, do you want me to read those numbers for you? Because because you can't read? And that was like, oh man, I actually can't read, like letters and numbers were confusing, and then I had to go self report.
Wow, I guess this involves you know, you're coming back home from Afghanistan and you know, getting out of the military. But I'd also like to ask you about you know that you got a purple heart for having a TV and I mean, was that kind of like a hard flat thing for you and the guys, because I mean, like the one soldier you mentioned who had shrapnel wounds, of course he's going to get a purple heart, but guys, who have you know this this invisible wound? You know
that that is not readily apparent. Was that kind of a struggle for you guys?
We had a.
I don't know how other like how it would go for other people.
We had a a paho Is captain and he did a concussion analysis, like so three of the guys were clearly marked a concussions.
Also a lot of the three of us also had lung damage as well, So like we all had lung damage from the overpressure and the chemicals, like we had to we had to sit down. I would bring myself and one other guy, like we would bring stools with us for the for the four hundred meter walk to the chow hall, because we would get winded about halfway there.
H So, like you know, the battalion Star Majors walking by and your in a stool just trying to get to the toow hall, like there's like something something's wrong there, and and we had the like everything was documented fortunately,
and and everything was documented very clearly. So like the administrative part of the Purple Heart process was I wouldn't say any more difficult because it was it was combined with you know, there were there were two of the guys had shrapnel, five people had tv I s, like three of us had lung damage. Like it was, it kind of all just got looped into a well. They they dropped a two thousand pounds bond that day and watched it.
So good good. What was was it difficult for you to.
Go and self report because I know you guys as young army officers are like thoroughly indoctrinated.
And but it's true of all soldiers.
I think like no one wants to say, like, hey, I have a problem.
Yeah, I mean that's that's a part of the culture. I wouldn't say it's it's just the the officer or or you know, and and certainly there's a part of it that is encouraged, exacerbated whatever you want to call by the ranger culture. You know, my my platoon sergeant who now is actually coaching, would beyond service as well. My platoon sergeant when with the reconnaissance platoon he broke
his ankle on an insertion. We ran out of the back of THEGE forty seven's He broke his ankle running out of the back and I think we had a twelve click something like that, twelve click X pill. It was a three day mission with a twelve click X fill to get to trucks to drive home. And no one knew that he broke his ankle. He tied his boot tighter, he just like cranked his boot.
Down and spent.
He knew that was you know, he was a senior, he seven, He knew it was probably his last patrol. He knew he broke his ankle. It was his last patrol with the boys. And so he's not coming out of the game. He's not getting a metavac called for mean, he's certainly not going back on that helicopter. And so he tied his boot tight and he walked twelve clicks and full kid on a broken ankle across the desert. Now, like that mindset is how you are in your tab It's how you you lead soldiers.
It's how you you like.
There is there is no.
It's how you survive in combat.
Yeah, yeah, like you can put your body through physically, mentally, anything. Right, So, like you take that mindset, and and the mission is more important, like how like you are taught, the mission is more important. It's something you believe in. It's a
part of the culture. And you know, whether my mission at that point was leading soldiers or whether it was doing serial numbers for a change of command inventory, the mission was the mission, and and the mission was more important than me and and and it has nothing to do with worthiness, It has nothing to do with self esteem, Like there's there's just a cultural part that the mission is more important than the man. The team is more important than the man, and you just execute and do
your job. So yeah, it's it's hard to self report. And also, you know, I had a path that I was pursuing of, you know, going the Green Beret route, and like you don't you don't self report anything. You need to make sure your medical is clear and you're good to go. So you know, the only reason I self reported was because I couldn't read and I and I knew there was a bigger problem that I had to I had to say something right.
And after you did that, you know, what did the out of the command respond and what kind of treatment did you start to get?
Yeah, it was I mean we were we were in a very remote part of Afghanistan. We didn't have like level one or two right medical facilities. But I was put on myself and and the other guys as well. We were all put on like a cognitive rest, like a ninety six hour hold for cognitive rest to assess.
And I, I swear to God, man, I think I slept twenty hours a day and and I I would wake up to go to the bathroom and to go to the chow hall once or twice a day, and I thought, you know, because you can't read, you can't be on your computer, you can't you can't do anything. And I thought, like what the hell am I going to do with myself? And all I did was sleep, you know, my my brain was trying to heal. And then you know, and then after that, like I I
went back to work. I wasn't supposed to go outside the wire except for you know, taking taking three trucks to Sealerno to turn them in because I was just going to be a day trip. And yeah, I mean it was. Yeah. I would say, like command was generally supportive, like there was no there was no like good command, good command, like took care of the guys.
Yeah, yeah, it was good. Oh that's great.
And then talk to us about rotating back home after that deployment and kind of what happened next.
Yeah, so I you know, I made the decision.
I was.
I was at a timeline in my career that I had to make a decision. I had to either accept my position into the q CORUS s FAS and the Green Beret route or I had to get out. And and I I was kind of long in the tooth in the in the four or five year officer initial commitment, and so I quickly made the decision that I had done.
It was a hard decision.
It was a hard decision because because earning a green floppy hat was the one thing that I hadn't done yet, and I was it was that was the one thing in my military career that I hadn't done. But I had worked with green bereay teams. I led Afghan commandos on you know, kinetic patrols in in coordination with green berets. I trained local National soldiers. I'd been in firefights. I pulled, you know, picked up pieces of people, wrote on a lot of helicopters, jumped out of a lot of aeroplanes.
Like I felt like I had.
I had ninety eight percent from my personal journey, ninety eight percent of my journey, and the things that I
wanted to do were complete. I knew I wasn't going to be a lifer, and I made the decision to pull my packet and get out, and that I that I was married to my wife and not the military, and and honestly, at that point, so I like I have a view of leadership where it's a sacred privilege and you know, sometimes sometimes we fail, but leadership is a sacred privilege and I couldn't, in clear conscience step in front of twelve other guys on a team and I have one hundred percent of my heart and one
hundred percent of my brain there, you know, I felt like I had checked the box. And if you're not bringing one hundred percent as a lead, then you shouldn't be there, not not in that way, not in you know, taking guys down range into harm's way. So so yeah,
I got out, and my wife and I traveled. We you know, in this whole process, I'm going to a tv I clinic on on Fort Richardson, and you know there's there's a whole tv I component there where I basically had the what I would say is kind of the vocabulary of a seventh seventh grader, seventh or eighth grader,
¶ Breaking Point & Seeking Help
short term memory of a of a goldfish, irritability like emotional instability and irritability. My hearing was affected, and it wasn't just hearing damage from you know, from from like uh, ear drum damage. It was it was my ability to decipher noises that were coming in. My brain would get confused with background noises, So you know, I had a
whole collection of tv I related response. I never self reported with PTSD, and I never I never you know, despite having gone through a lot of experiences that one would consider traumatic, I never self reported or thought that I had PTSD. But I went through a lot of tv I work, and then summer fallow twenty thirteen, I was a civilian, gave my last salute and walked out the door.
And what did you do in the civilian world.
I worked as much as I had to to travel as much as I could. So my wife and I we took an eighteen month we through hike the Appalachian Trail. We lived in New Zealand. We took a long road trip, and then we ran out of money and had to get jobs. So I've spent most of my career in entrepreneurship, startups, went back to grad school, got my MBA, worked a lot of really cool projects, worked in tech, traveled again.
In twenty eighteen, we quit our job, sold literally everything we owned except for two lamps because we couldn't sell them on Facebook Marketplace, and moved into a Toyota Tacoma and drove from Maine to the Arctic Ocean in the Northwest Territories to Peru and a Toyota Tacoma over eighteen months. Like I was, it was cool, man, it was it
was bucketless. But holy cow, did it bring up some unresolved trauma around planning and security and your loved ones being in harm's way in third world countries?
Yeah?
I mean, I think like something I'd like to ask you about is that you know, on paper, from what you're describing on paper, you're doing great, like you're kicking ass, You're you're exploring the world, you're getting an advanced degree, you're working these tech jobs. But there's something else going on beneath the surface that is kind of eating away at you.
It sounds like, one.
Hundred percent you could have had a better segue. Everything on LinkedIn and Instagram was dialed. I was living a life that I should have been fulfilled. I should have been thrilled. I had an an incredibly loving wife who told me and showed me that she loved me. I had supportive friends and hobbies and everything. I should have been happy. I should have been fulfilled. I should have been happy, which then starts the cycle of why aren't I have, How How damaged must I be? How broken
must I be? So this this inner monologue starts, and I had been searching for purpose since I left the military. I had been searching for healing. I had doing therapy and self help. I mean, I walked six months on the Appalachian Trail thinking I would discover who I am and find myself and at the end I just had some blisters and some clothes that smelled offul and and
and a ponytail, so like didn't find myself there. So constantly doing things on paper that are supposed to be fulfilling, things that you should be proud of, and just every time I did something that I was supposed to be proud of, I felt more and more hollow and more and more empty. And then self medicated. That was you know, that was that was where that was a portion of where the alcoholism came in, of self medicating to not feel that way.
And when did that sort of like reach a breaking point for you that you had to go and get some additional help.
Breaking point Memorial Day weekend of twenty twenty four, So you know, it was a it was a situation where it was kind of like a frog and a boiling pot of water. And you know, as you guys know, and I'm sure many of your listeners know, alcohol is a celebrated part of military culture. Sure, it's how we celebrate, it's how we grieve, it's how we fill boredom, and it's how we bond. You know, it's it's pretty much every powerful emotion can be associated with alcohol. And I
already had an unhealthy relationship with alcohol. So whether it was familial or just me in general, I already had an unhealthy relationship with alcohol. And then over the course of about ten years, it started being used more to instead of feel good, it started being used as a tool to not feel bad. And then really the last two years of my addiction really like the slope started getting steeper, and then the last six months was a true fallof And so Memorial Day weekend of twenty twenty four,
I came clean to my wife about everything, everything. And there's there's a lot of lying, in deceit and betrayal that goes with being married to an alcoholic, and I came clean about about all of it, all of it that I that I could, that I knew, And so that was on a Sunday, and on Monday, I moved into an airbnb as a result of my own actions, You're right, So, like I was no longer welcome back at the house, So my dog and I went to an airbnb. I had had the pleasure of detoxing from
an alcoholism there. Scheduled my first call with Beyond on a Tuesday, and I went to my first AA meeting on a Thursday.
Wow, talk about cold turkey, Jesus. Yeah.
Yeah, So as far as you know, beginning the process of your recovery, tell us about you know, AA beyond anything else that you know helped you, you know, start to take those steps forward.
Yeah. So, you know, the the first thing that I had to do was.
I had to want to change.
Like. It wasn't because my wife wanted me to change it that point, you know, I I didn't. I didn't know, but I had come to terms that I destroyed a thirteen year marriage to the love of my life. My actions were the cause of that. And you know, but getting sober was for me. It wasn't just for her. You know, I wanted to show up better, but I was. It was finally, you know, it was time to change, and I decided to change it, and it was it
could have gone the other way. I at that point in my life, you know, I had daily suicidal ideations, and I daily suicidal ideations, and I would have gladly have drank myself to death like that was a that was a happy path for me. The only thing that kept me from doing that is I promised my wife Lindsay, that I wouldn't kill myself, that that I would never kill myself. And I promised her. And there were times
where I was damn close. There were times where I was on my motorcycle, and this was a Memorial Day weekend, which are typically harder for me. I was on the motorcycle, my helmet was unbuckled, and I premeditated all this. When
I stopped to get gas. It was raining, and we lived in Oregon and it was rainy Zorini Spring roads were wet, and the plan was to lay the bike down in a tight corner with the guardrail, pop my helmet off as I slid, and then the rest would be history and it would look like I forgot to buckle my helmet. But I knew. I knew that Lindsay would know, and I knew that she knew me well enough to she would know. So I couldn't do it.
And I was riding helmet unbuckled into the corner, like I identified the corner that I was going to lay it down. So, going back to the recovery side of it, I couldn't kill myself, even though you know, if the relationship was over, the relationship was over. But I couldn't kill myself and at least not yet. And I wanted to give her answers. So I went to AA as A as a triage. My brother, My brother, I joke, he taught me how to be an alcoholic, and he taught me how to get sober. So he's a couple
of years ahead of me and his sobriety. And you know, I talked to him in the parking lot of my first meeting and and I just went, I went all in.
And you know, detox sucks.
Detox is not fun, and you know, owning those truths aren't fun. But that first meeting that I went to, there was an old timer with a lot of sobriety. There were three of usk new guys there and there was an old timer with a lot of sobriety, and he got up for his share, and he looked at us and he said, listen, no one comes here on a winning streak, Like no one comes to AA on a winning streak. You're all here as a result of
your own actions. And if you keep making the same choices, you're not going to go anywhere else, and you're going to constantly be showing up for your first meeting. And you know, I really took that to heart, and honestly, like that guy doesn't know that, he changed my life forever because it took the mindset of that you keep doing what you're doing, you're always going to be here. So I was like, I can't keep doing what I
was doing. And then that brings in beyond. So a good friend of mine went to this IBA gain clinic in Mexico. This civilian guy went for a cocaine addiction, met some veterans, I think some Navy seal guys there, and was talking about all the benefits of iv A gain for veterans. And he came home and he told me you need to go, You need to go, and I I said, oh, that sounds great. Not now, in reality, I was terrified. I was terrified of what I was going to find I didn't feel worthy. My problems aren't
that bad. I can get on top of this alcohol. I knew I was alco I knew I was an alcoholic for the two years before I got sober. I can get on top of it myself. I can control this. Quintin didn't. And then eventually, at rock bottom, I said, well, screw it.
I've got nothing else to lose.
I've already lost my wife. I've got nothing else to lose. And she told me she would wait to see who came back from Mexico. And so thirty days after coming clean, thirty days after getting sober, I got on airplane to go to Mexico, and I knew almost nothing about Ivagain, I knew almost nothing about psychedelic medicine. I didn't look at any other clinics in the United States or in the world other than this one that came referred to.
Me, and I just said, let's you know, let's go.
And you know, I'd like to say that I was doing this for healing, that I was doing it to grow and become a better person. In reality, I wanted to come home with answers for my wife for why things happened? Why did I destroy our marriage? What happened to me? And then, you know, I knew that I was incurable because I had been trying to solve this with VA meds and VA therapies, and I was trying to solve this for ten years, and I knew I
was uncurable. But at least if I could give her the answer so she could have closure, I could then finally go kill myself.
And that was the plan.
I was going down there to get her the answers so I could go kill myself. We were okay, financially should be fine. Everything would be okay, and finally I would stop burdening being a burden on the people around me. They loved me because their life would be better with me gone.
Person. And what was the process?
Says when you got down to this clinic, If you can like walk us through what that you know what that entails, because I know it's more than just you know, taking you know, plant medicine and what that experience was like.
For you when you got there. Yeah, so thank you. Well.
So as a part of that commitment to killing myself, I knew I couldn't do it without with it. I had to have a clear conscience, and that clear conscience meant I had to do all of everything in front of me at this clinic one so like that same that same willpower and drive that you know recycled Ranger school and painted the curb with a one inch yellow you know, paintbrush was the same. That's the same person,
That same person was in there. So if I was going to to kill myself with a clear conscience and know that nothing worked on me, I had to lean into the process one hundred percent. I didn't know that this didn't work for me, and I couldn't just finger drill it.
So on the flame.
Down I read, you know, I buttoned up my work because I was still working as a tech executive. So my my my co founders and my company gave me the space to go do this and supported me, which was incredibly important. I'm grateful for. You know. The only It's funny, the only thing that didn't suffer was my work. I let my family suffer, but I didn't let my work suffer. What the hell is that about a lot of alcoholics? Will we'll do that? And so I read
everything that they gave me. I went no contact with everyone on the outside. Basically turned my phone off on the when I arrived. And Beyond so Beyond iv A GAIN is an iv A GAIN treatment clinic in Cancun, Mexico. You typically go for seven to fourteen days, depending on your treatment protocol. And Beyond is a is a mix of Western clinical medicine and the Eastern, a more Eastern holistic approach, and it's really like a fifty to fifty mix. So I begain, will I again needs to be monitored,
so you do EKGs. There are effects on the heart from my beginning, the effects that could happen from I begin So you do EKGs.
For your heart health.
You'll do a lot of like blood urine tests or urine drug tests and blood tests. You do all of these clinical procedures. But at the same time, you're doing daily meditations, and you're doing chakra work, and you're doing sound healings, and you're doing you know, creative expressions, and there's like every day there's a workshop just like a group work workshop, and you're given a workbook. And it's basically the way that I went down. It was a it was a kind of a choose your own adventure
and lean into it. As hard as you want. Like, if you want to talk to a coach, you can talk to a coach. If you want to hide in your room and play video games, you can hide in your room and play video games. And and I now know, you know it's for a reason, and you know I self selected and I leaned in, and I went to every therapeutic event. I went to every workshop. And you know when I when I went to sit with this medicine. The day that I that I went to sit with
this medicine, I was terrified. I was terrified. I wrote a letter to my wife because I have I have a totally normal heart, congenital heart defect that has nothing to do with I have again and nothing to do with how I beganin would affect a heart. But I again ego. I was convinced that I was so special. I was going to die. Uh So I wrote a letter, left it on my pillow, and I walked in that room ready to die, totally ready to die.
But I was also going to give it my all.
And so there's some some things with I begain. First of all, I have again. It's a psychedelic, psychedelic experience. It is not a recreation drug. So we think of psychedelics and in our common colloquial am I going on a tanta?
No, you're good? Yeah, okay.
So in our common like colloquial understanding of psychedelics, we think of psilocybin or LSD, and typically in a recreational sense. So it's the grateful dead, concert burning man, whatever, you know, whatever recreational context you want to put to it, shiny colors, unicorns, you know, woo, and it's all happy and good. It's supposed to be all happy and good, right, So, like that's the framing that ninety nine percent of the United States has around the word psychedelic. So I will tell
you I've again is not a recreational experience. It is a therapeutic experience. And it was hands down the most profoundly positive experience in my life.
But it wasn't recreation.
Like you don't, no one is going to leave.
I mean I can't say no one.
Ninety nine point nine percent of the people aren't gonna leave an IV again journey and be like let's do another one tomorrow, Like hell yeah, I'm hooked, Like let's trade one addiction for another. It's just it's just not how it works.
I've remember someone saying that I've never tried it, but that when you do eyebo GAIN, that like you have this journey of like confronting every failure in life. And it sounds like maybe not a very fun experience, which maybe that's why you're saying no one would want to do it again.
So everyone's journey is different, and everyone's journey is different. There are some themes so and and since standing up this program, you know, I've had the enormous privilege to be associated with fifty people that have gone through and done an iv A GAIN journey as a veteran first responder or a spouse at no cost to them as a as a non off it and we've been able to open these doors for fifty people now to get access to healing. There are some common themes. First of all,
the experience. So some people will ask, like, how long does it last for My answer to that is twelve hours to twelve years. And that depends on you, all right, So there's an acute clinical observation window that lasts for twelve hours.
In that twelve hours.
Because that's the effect on the heart that needs to be monitored by a clinical team. So you're in a bed on the side of a gain journey and you have you're hooked up to an EKG and a pulse ox cimeter and you have an electrolyte IV drip and it's again it's not what you would think of like doing psilocybin or LSD, and so you're going through this experience. The first four hours are typically maybe the more visual
some people have visuals. For me, it was it was like watching scene of my life through like a four K ultra HD drone footage where I wasn't having flashbacks, but I was I was reliving impactful moments in my life.
And then typically the next eight to twenty four hours are like a deep introspective meditative You're really malleable and gaining understanding for things, and a lot of times like we can process trauma through acceptance and understanding, So it's a really helpful way if you want to dig into those discomforts. So like for me, the first hour of my journey, I had to come to terms with a
¶ Founding Beyond Service
childhood sexual assault that I never told anyone about, and I had to accept that and I accept the person that perpetrated me right, and I had to accept emotional abandonment and emotion unfilled emotional needs from like childhood and family, and I had to accept those very painful learnings. But the journey was done with love. So like this journey and the story, you know, I expected it to be twelve hours. If you guys have ever seen the like
Netflix show Stranger Things. I expected to be trapped into the upside down for twelve hours and all of the demons, all of the things I hated about myself, all like it was.
Just gonna be. I had to pay a penance, I had to get.
Nailed to a cross to pay for my sins. Like that's what I was taught. And what happened was I was hugged and I was loved, and that little five year old boy or nine year old boy was hugged and loved and he was told that he's enough and he was told that he's okay. And I was able to love myself for the first time in my life.
I was able to.
Process anxiety for the first time in my life, like first time in my adult life. I spent my entire life looking at how things were gonna hurt me made me a great infantry officer. Like most dangerous course of action, most likely course of action, contingencies for contingencies man like made me a great infantry officer, always looking at where things can go wrong. It makes me a great corporate leader in the role that I have of contingency planning.
Doesn't make you a great partner, doesn't make you a great scuff And so this anxiety of where is where am I going to get hurt? I was able to release that and it wasn't comfortable, like and that's really like, it's not recreation, Like this shit is not comfortable. But one of the things that we coach our participants is like, you know, using a physical train, Like you go to a heavy squat day, it's probably gonna hurt to go to the bathsand the next day, or it's gonna hurt
to walk up and down a flight of stairs. But you know that discomfort is gross. So why can't we apply I like veterans and you know I can only speak for veterans, but veterans first responders, Like there's a mindset elite acids, same idea, like you can push your mind and your body through any sort of discomfort like I will walk until I pass out, but like emotional discomfort, no way, give me a bottle of bourbon. Give me a bottle of bourbon before I feel emotional discomfort. So
we try to coach. What we try to coach with the eye begain is like, you will encounter some discomfort. I hope you do, embrace it, go through it, because like on the other side of that is where the healing happens.
I mean, it's unreal.
And so tell us about coming home from the clinic then and being reunited with your wife and what was like, what was the next steps like in your life, because I mean you don't you don't get cured overnight.
Right, It's a it's a process, right.
No, So you know, I begain is not a magic pill, and I've said it, I'll say that till I'm blue in the face. It's a tool, and that tool is incredibly transformative.
But it's not a magic pill. And like you said, you don't get cured. You don't get cured.
What I realized is that by using this tool, I could become the person I've always wanted to be.
Not go back.
It wasn't going to help me become the person I was. I didn't want to be the person I was. I wanted to be the person I wanted to be, and I could use this tool to try to get there. So on my last couple of days, I really started thinking.
So I was down there for ten days, my last couple of days, after you stay with the medicine three times, and after the last time, I really started feeling this call to paying it forward because I knew that there were, you know, soldiers of mine, and really I just wanted to pay it forward to a couple of guys who I knew had had some troubles from the same deployment
I went on. And so I sat down with the CEO and co founder of Beyond, Tom Fiegel, and I said, Tom, you know, if I were to put together, you know, if I were to use some of my network and venture capital and if I could raise some money, could I bring a group of five guys down here and I have it at a discount? And he like, straight face, just stonefaced me. He's like no, Like all right, man,
Like you're running a business. I totally get it. And then he was like, no, I want to treat two hundred people a year for three but I don't know how because I'm not a veteran and so you know there and I wasn't the first person to think of doing this, God though, I just fortunately have an operations project management start up building background professionally and volunteered to do it. So I volunteered to Tom and said, look, can I can I help? Like, I'll work for free.
I just want to build this And my goal was to treat to get one person access tiving. If we could get one person access cybagain that couldn't have it. It was called to it and couldn't have it. That was that was enough. So I return home with this idea.
Now my wife and I were no contract, no contact, and I texted her that I was, you know, coming home when I was going to land and then I was going to go to the house and I was going to get the RV and I was going to be gone like just so you know, like I'll be home in town the sem She's like, well, i'll pick you up at the airport.
That's surprising.
And she picks me up at the airport and five minutes into their drive home, she's like, can you stop, Like can you just can you just stop talking? I thought I was toning it down, like I well, I was toning it down. That was even very prompt, like I was toning it down. But the person that left was a alcoholic, anxiety filled, depressed, suicidal ideation asshole needed himself.
The most important part is I hated myself, and the person that came home loved myself, loved who I am, and like even told her, I was like, look, if we don't if we don't end up together, that's totally fine. Can we just be friends? Like you're my best friend? Can we just be friends? Like it's okay if you want to be with someone else, I just want to be your friend. And she's like, who the hell is this person? And uh, six weeks later she went to
Beyond for her own oh wow. And she comes home six weeks later and she knew that I was working on this idea with the tree veterans and first responders, and before we even discussed anything that has to do with our personal relationship, she's like, I'll sensor most of it. She's like, screw you, guys. This isn't just for veterans, this is for spouses too. We deal with your bullshit. We deal with your trauma, We deal with hiding the gun, We deal with thinking about are we going to come
home and find you dead in the bathtub? Are we going to find you dead in the car. And we deal with this shit day in day out when you're having a bad time. And this isn't just this healing is not reserved for veterans. The families deserve it too. And that's amazing. Are we still together? Like are we going to be in a relationship? He's like, yeah, we'll figure that out. So we are. And I'll tell you
that it's been an incredible journey. And if it wasn't for Lindsay, there wouldn't be a spouse's program, and she really championed that.
And you know a big.
Part of Beyond Service is offering equal and equitable care for spouses and family members. And we've had five husband and wife go through on their own time, like we do cohort genders gender cohorts, so like a group of guys goes down, group of women goes down, but we've had five couples now go through this process and then it's incredible, like the healing that is needed and the weight that is carried by the family is unimaginable and I don't know how to explain it because I've never
felt it. But you combine that with the complete lack of resources, so like all of these programs are for veterans and there's not enough, and how many of them for spouses and family?
Right, And you know that that goes back to here's something we've talked about. Something that I recognized my relationships was that what we did in the military. You know, we didn't have a draft. We all volunteered, and you know, and what we did it was kind of selfish. It was it was what we wanted to do. It was a calling that we answered. It was for a life we envisioned, and we left our spouses behind, you know,
¶ Ibogaine's Efficacy & Access
and we were out there going through the stuff but living every day.
You know, it was what we wanted to do.
And meanwhile they're at home and worrying, you know, not knowing what's happening to us, you know, not knowing what's going on from day to day, dealing with our bullshit when we come back. Like it's not just the post service life that that they have to wrestle with, but a lot of times it's it's it's that continuum.
Yeah, no, it started.
You know, it started for Lindsay when I went down revenge, you know, or even before, you know, pressure from her family to you know, should you not get married to this guy because what happens if he doesn't come home? Like it's you know, the families carry so much, and I like, I don't I don't want to compare traumas
and I don't want to compare. But I think there's a fair argument that could be made that the families that the adult children who grew up with dad or mom going to war and wondering if dad or Mom's ever going to come home, and the spouses who had to hold the fork down at home and then how much worse can it get when we get home, they might need access to this and to heal more than the veterans. Like, there's an argument that could be made.
Yeah, it's fascinating.
And so the veteran component of Beyond Iba game that you've helped set up is Beyond service. And you said you've sent like fifty people down there so far.
Yeah.
So we started our first group in January and we'll have actually this week will be our fiftieth, so our tenth cohort, and we go in groups of five. So you know, by the time your listeners and viewers see this, well, we'll have put fifty people through the program. Our goal is to do as close to one hundred as we
can this year. You know, funding, funding is certainly a part of that to go to beyond and to sit with this treatment as a civilian as about a fifteen thousand dollars investment, I would say, hands down the best investment I've ever made, bar none. But it's not cheap, and it's because of the clinical safety.
It's because of all the components.
That go outside of the capsules and the clinical observation. It's the coaching, it's the mentoring. Like there's a whole ecosystem that goes with being successful long term integration. So like we we are the probably the most structured program, and our participants go through So our participants go through a program, and you know, I think there's two things that people are often missing most when they get out of the military, and it's teamwork and structure, and we try to offer.
Both of those.
So instead of going on this big experience by yourself, you go with a team, you know, it's it's a lot easier to run out the door of the airplane when there's someone behind you who's going to push you out. And then also the structures, so you have a peer facilitator who is not a We're not therapist, and we're not social workers, and we're not psychologists.
It's a peer.
It's someone like me who has sat with this medicine who can say, hey, this was my experience. It's normaliz things a little bit. So it's pure guided, but they also give you homework. You have writing assignments, you have reading assignments, you have video assignments. Like it's not a free ride, you know, just because it doesn't cost you anything financially besides the plane ticket. You do four weeks of pretty intensive preparation to get ready for this experience.
You do eight days on site, and you do four weeks of guided integration afterwards. And that's the most robust preparation and integration program that I know of in the in the ibanking space.
You already mentioned a handful of takeaways from the Eyebo Gain experience. Are there any others that you want to touch upon? Uh with this topic?
Yeah, I mean, it's look, it's it's everyone's you know, there's there's a couple here. Everyone has a unique experience.
But it's effective.
Okay, so we see, you know, let's look at statistics.
We see, you.
Know, what's the problem. Well, the age adjusted suicide rate for veterans is over twice the national average for non veteran adults. We see almost two times the divorce rate in military and veteran couples as we do in the US standard. Twenty twenty four Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment says that substance abuse among veterans is twenty to thirty percent higher than the ag justin national average. Like there is a problem, and this is it can work. It
does work for those who want to do this. So like there's there's a couple parts here is like I begain is not for everyone, but the fact that one's clinically proven to work. So look up doctor Nolan Williams. The Stanford University research that shows eighty percent, eighty percent eliminate I believe it's elimination of moderate or severe PTSD. Six months after sitting with ibagain, eighty percent of their participants did not qualify for PTSD. On the p OF
I think it's PSQ nine. We do neurotransmitter testing. It's anecdotal, but it's still data, and so it's not like brainscan. It's it's qualitative, not anctdotal. It's qualitative research. This shows a seventy percent increase in dopamine and serotonin reuptake a month after sitting with this medicine. And that is that's now across an average of about forty people who have gone through and have been a month out of their their treatment. Like this really works, but it's not a
magic pill. And so as we you know, right now, I estimated of the post nine to eleven veteran community point zero zero four percent have had access to IV.
It's never going to.
Be one hundred, and it doesn't have to be one hundred, but we need to democratize access to this medicine. We've partnered with a company Born Primitive, which is an apparel company, and we did a fundraiser and we're trying to change the paradigm and say to companies commercial ventures for profit commercial ventures that instead of be a part of the movement, be a part of the change. We don't want to
rely on philanthropic donations. We want to take companies like Born Primitive who say, hey, we want to end veteran suicide and do a corporate partnership to sponsor people. And there's a cohort that's going down as a result of their partnership. It's incredibly beneficial work. And yet it doesn't, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't just happen overnight, like
we have to build to this. But one hundred people this year is an incredible start, and it's it's a drop in the bucket, and we know what we're trying to do is get to a point where we can you know, me having this conversation whoever listens hopefully destigmatizes it destigmatizes psychedelics in some way.
You know, we don't.
We didn't talk about my experience because like my visuals were unique to me, my learnings were unique to me. If it come to be on service, I'll tell you all about it. But like it's more of the theme of like this healing does work and and wanting to get that out there. But also it's not a magic pill, right, So when we look at things like the Texas Ibagain Commission, who you know, thank god, has committed fifty million dollars to a private public partnership to research and hopefully get
FDA approval for I have again as a therapy. That's amazing, but it doesn't happen in a sterile va hospital bed.
It's not a magic pill.
So we need to change the paradigm of how and that's what we're trying to do with Beyond Service. We're trying to set the gold standard of how this care is given. And oh, by the way, in five years, when the FDA does their clinical study and in collaboration with Texas, they'll probably put twenty people through. Well at the same time, why can't we put two thousand people through by then? And you know, if we we have a goal and it's it's it's a north star, but
we're like, I want to get there. Is if twenty two veterans a day are dying from suicide, why don't we treat twenty two people a day? Why don't we treat six hundred and sixty people a month? Why not?
Yeah?
Did you I know that you before you didn't do a lot of research and it you know, it was your friend who had who had done the IBA gain. But can you at all, can you speak at all to like a perish into like, uh, people are doing similar things with ayahuasca or psilocybin, you know, the like. There are clinics popping up everywhere trying to help and tackle this problem.
So there's there's no wrong way. I mean they're they're wrong way, that's sure. They all have their place. So so I am you know, I'll never say, oh, psilocybin doesn't work. Still seven absolutely works and ayahuasca can you know, does too? And five at B O d M T. One of the benefits of ibogaine which you know, we talked to some of the spirituality part of it, but also there's the there's like the neurochemical part of it. So I begains the longest period of neuroplasticity of any
of the plant medicines. Okay, So when we look at so IV again, when you take the capsule, it metabolizes and is stored in the body as nor ivgain as the metabolite. Nor I gain is stored in the liver and it's slowly released over sixty to ninety days. If you take care of yourself and you get some sleep and you you know, you don't drink. That's a huge part of storing nor I begain in the liver and
it's slowly released. Nor I'VE again increases the production of BDNF and GDNF in the brain and it is that is one of the key parts of neuroplasticity. So people leave I'VE again with about a sixty to day, sixty to ninety day window of being able to learn like you were a seven year old. Again, like your brain becomes a sponge and if you nurture that, so like you can whether you want to learn German start a
meditative practice. What if we want to rework trauma responses and go through like your brain can literally learn faster and retain learning more. So that is a unique difference of iv A GAIN and other plant medicines. And what we try to do is we try to like we try to do everything we can, so we do this preparation work so people can maximize their spiritual healing, but then and their trauma healing and like the emotional side
of it. But then our integration work is based on the neuroplasticity, like how do we change and the thought process And we've got this ninety day window and how do we make the most of it. So like there are you know, many of these medicines are complementary, and people will be called to different medicines at a different time.
But you know, one of the things for me that made IV again so special is in a that ninety day window to really like our military experience has hard coded so many things in our brain and then to have a ninety day window to recode our brains is I think incredibly important to the longevity because we're trying to build something that doesn't require a re up. We're trying to build something that doesn't require a prescription. Like one of our coaches sat with this medicine three years ago.
He hasn't relapsed, He hasn't gone back and sat with it again. Like he took those learnings, made changes to his life and is now running with it and doesn't have to have a sustainment.
He is his sustainment. That's what we're trying to build. And then how does it work with.
You know, so many other things, Like we had doctor Chris free on last week talking about operator syndrome, and it's such a compilation, right, It's not just the post amount of stress or the blast injuries, you know, the sleep deprivation or sleep apnea.
You know, all these different things that line up.
So how do you ensure that, like in those posts ninety days, that there aren't other factors that may not be you know, the sort of psychological factors or the spiritual factors, but that they don't you know, sort of put somebody in this neuroplasticity or you know, this kind of phase where they don't sort of compound and you know, uh revert people.
Does that make sense?
Absolutely? And they may, you know, and that's where where they're you know, we're not we're not your parents, right, and we're not therapists, right, So we can we can show you a roadmap and then it's up to you whether or not you want to you want to stick to that roadmap. So those things do come up. Four days after coming home, I was a dumpster fire and
I'm like, where did all these good things go? I'm falling apart and in my coach and I want all so we have access to one on one coaching, and my coach is like, dude, you're doing exactly what you
were doing before you went down there. You have to do something different and that like reset the learnings from my first AA meeting, and I was like, wait, I can't fall back into old habits if I want to change, So that coaching is now brought into our into our like the stickiness, the integration, the stickiness.
Do a lot of work with needs.
So you know, unknown needs are unmet needs. And I can tell you as a thirty six year old man or thirty seven when I went down there, I didn't know what my needs were, right, I thought I did. I thought it was shelter, food, security, you know whatever. But I didn't understand my needs of community and my needs of nature and like for needs. So we try to do a lot of work with our participants if they want to and if they choose to do the
work to identify needs. So that like when and it's all and that's a tool, right, So it's a tool to understand yourself a little bit better. So inevitably, when all of those things you mentioned that are in the very complex realm of operator syndrome, within the first seven days, when you're home and you're by yourself and those things are going to come in, do you have the tools and a community to fall back on to navigate it. If yes, then we might be successful.
Yeah, that's fantastic, interesting Clayton, Where can people go to find beyond eyebo gain and beyond service People who want to get involved or or want to get the treatment themselves, where should they look?
Yeah, so beyond ivagain dot com is the website. Beyond iv A, gain, B E O, n D. Beyond ivagain dot com slash Beyond Service is our portion right now. We are fully booked for twenty twenty six and we are doing everything we can to grow the program to double our capacity for next year. So there's a there's just a component where you have to do a medical screening within a certain amount of time. So admissions is closed because we have a backlog that.
Extends three months.
But if someone goes there, you can put your information in, submit your information, It goes to a real person, It goes to me and other people on our team. And as soon as we can open admissions again and we're in that window to do the clinical questionnaires and the clinical screenings.
To get people seated with the medicine.
We're going to reach out and we're going to do another round of admissions. So look, we're growing this as fast as we can. The need greatly outstrips the demand, and the need greatly outstrips the resources. But we've got a team of volunteers and the team of people that are dedicating it sounds like hyperbole, we're dedicating our lives to doing this to open one more seat.
Like that's it's still the mission.
If we can get one more person in a bed that needs this treatment, we're going to do it right.
Clayton, thank you for sharing your story with us and informing people about some of these, you know, kind of cutting edge treatments that are coming about.
Thank you.
Yeah, there's you know one thing that I I really I really appreciate it. And I know we went you know this is this is long form. It was fun. We didn't have to keep everything to dense to twenty minutes the top talking point. And I appreciate you guys letting me ramble. You know, there's there's one thing to kind of leave you on.
And you know, our generation.
That we share as a generation at war and you know, not not everyone went to war, but a lot of us did and for twenty years, and this can't be solved with just VA prescriptions and talk therapy. We've got to do everything. We've got to do everything for our community. We have an entire generation of men and women who matured their brain, fully formed their frontal cortex. We were talking about the eighteen to twenty two year olds that
were in firefights. You know, as men, we fully form our brains between the ages of eighteen to twenty five. Women mature a little sooner. We have an entire generation that fully formed their executive function, their ability to understand emotions at war or preparing to go to war, taking life or fearing that their life.
Would be taken.
You think we have a problem of people that don't know how to feel love, who don't know how to feel forgiveness. It's an epidemic and this is a tool. It's not for everyone, but it's a tool, and there's an entire generation of men and women who can heal and their kids don't have to take this trauma forward.
And that's what we're trying to do, is like, if we can teach these men and women to love and forgive and grow me included, Like I'm patient zero, Like I am on the same journey as everyone else, and I am certainly not a guru. I am just paid zero and I was there a couple of months.
Before the rest.
And if we can continue this work, maybe kids won't tell the story that our generation told of our Vietnam alcoholic dads. I didn't have one of those, but certainly there's a lot of those stories of oh my dad didn't talk about it. He just got drunk and yelled at my mom. We can stop that, and this is a tool. So thank you guys for having me on to raise awareness and to continue this mission and hopefully share this with a few folks who wouldn't have considered
it because it's too fringe, it's too hippie. Look, I'm a I'm a tech executive, uh with a with a clean haircut. Like the ship's for everyone. It's not just it's not just hippi stock.
Yeah, thanks Clayton. We really appreciate it. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, we we.
Appreciate you coming on and sharing your story, your journey and and you know in this kind of information.
And we'll see all of you guys later in the week. So thank you again, Clayton, and we'll see you then. Hey, guys, it's Jack. I just want to talk to you for a moment about how you can support the show. If you've been watching it, enjoying it, but you'd like to get a little bit more involved and help us continue to do this, you can check out our Patreon It is patreon dot com slash the Teamhouse, and for five dollars a month, you can get access to all of
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