Have I Used Psychedelics and Do Test Boosters Work | Ask Me Anything

Chris Albert 00:00:00 (link to this point)

This is Chris Albert, and I'm here to remind you of one thing. Someday, you're going to die. Now that's not some morbid statement or scary idea. It's solid fact. Your time here on this earth is limited.

And you need to be reminded of this as much as possible for one simple reason, to live your best life while you can. This is the Warrior Soul Podcast.

What is going on, ladies and gentlemen? Welcome to another edition of the Warrior Soul podcast. My name is Chris Albert, and the purpose of the Warrior Soul podcast is to empower US military veterans and anybody else who's willing to listen to live their absolute best lives. And I do that by delivering tools, tactics, strategies, and ideas that they can implement right after listening to one of these episodes and in their lives that'll help them to become wiser, stronger, more capable human beings in the civilian world or in their own lives if they haven't served in the military. If you're not a veteran, stick around because obviously, like I said, anything I talk about here is going to be able to apply to you.

A lot of times, I am speaking to somebody who is a lot smarter, a lot more accomplished than I am. Somebody like Robert Greene, the author of the 48 laws of power. Somebody like Grant Cardone. Somebody like Gary John Bishop's who who I'm gonna be having on next week. It's gonna be a great episode.

I'm looking forward to speaking to him. He's the author of Unfuck Yourself. That's a great title. And today, what we've got going on is an ask me anything episode. And in these types of episodes, I do them once a month.

I ask for questions from our private Facebook group, the Warrior Soul Agoge empowerment and resilience group that anybody can join. You guys can go there and join right now. And in fact, what I'm gonna ask you to do right now are three different things. Number one, if you are not subscribed to the Warrior Soul podcast, go to wherever you listen to podcasts and subscribe. Make sure you subscribe to the show so that you're getting all of our episodes that we put out.

Number two, join that group, the Warrior Soul Agoge, that's a g o g e, empowerment and resilience private Facebook group. It's absolutely free. I'm putting up advice in there all the time. I'm answering questions. I'm putting stuff out there about fitness, and that's where we gather and we basically discuss a lot of the issues that we talk about on this show.

Number three, I don't ask for anything in return. Like, I really don't care if you ever spend a dime with me. Of course, you can if you want to, but here's the deal. All I really want you guys to do is to spread word about the show. Let people know that the show exists.

So if you have an episode that you enjoy, that you love, then please share that episode out. It's so important for getting this information to the ears of more veterans and more people who can use it. But beyond that, what I really need you guys to do is to head over to iTunes and write us a written rating and review. It helps so much to drive the algorithms. I know a lot of you don't listen on iTunes, but iTunes is what drives the podcasting algorithm.

So I really appreciate it if you guys do that. Now I've got three big questions I am gonna be talking about today. The first one has to do with psychedelics and what my opinion on psychedelics is. The second one has to do with health supplementation. Somebody asked me what supplement I think that every athlete and every person should be taking at a minimum.

And I've got some some answers on that, some that might surprise some of you. And then number three, somebody asked me what I think of over the counter testosterone boosters. Do they work and are they harmful for the long term? So those are those are the subjects we're gonna be covering for today. I'm gonna get into those in a second.

First, I just want to give a quick shout out to our sponsors, F Bomb Nutrition. They make delicious packets of fats, macadamia nut butters, nut butters. They mix them up with chocolate. They mix them up with sea salt. They're absolutely awesome.

Absolutely outstanding. And you can go, you could pick yours up at www.dropanfbomb.com. Use the code Warrior Soul and get 20% off your first order. These are great. You can use them to supplement your MREs.

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Number two, I wanna give a quick shout out to my friends over at Save the Brave. Save the Brave is a five zero one c three charity for veterans. They run camaraderie events, they help gold star families. They are an absolutely outstanding organization. Their board does not take a dime in salary.

Their board does not take a dime in salary. And my good friend Scott Huesing, former commanding officer of Echo Company two four, and also the author of Echo in Ramadi, really great person. He is on the board, so you definitely want to go and check them out. Finally, I just wanna say this. If you do wanna support the podcast and you wanna do so in a way where you're not gonna have to buy anything that you wouldn't have all otherwise bought, I highly suggest heading over to warriorsoulagoge.com/support/affiliates.

That's warriorsoulagoge.com/support/affiliates. What I've done is I've created partnerships with a few different companies that you would absolutely love. Among those is Amazon. So the way this works is a lot of you are gonna shop on Amazon anyways. So you go to this page, you click on the Amazon banner, and you bookmark it.

And then whenever you wanna buy something on Amazon, just go to that bookmark, and then a very small percentage of that is gonna go to supporting the podcast. Helps to pay for bandwidth and other things like that. I've also got some partnerships with a few other great companies, and I'm not gonna waste your time going through those right now. I wanna get into the material. But like I said, if you wanna check that stuff out, you can head over to www.warriorsoulagoge, that's agoge.com/support/affiliates or you can just head over to the Warrior Soul Agoge main page at www.warriorsoulagoge.com and click on the shop Warrior Soul affiliate link in the menu.

Alright? So with that, let's get into some of the questions for today. Alright, so the first one here. Have you done psychedelics? What's been your experience?

Do you think this is a good way to treat PTSD or only in certain cases? Alright, guys. I'm gonna be really honest with you here. I have done psychedelics. I have done DMT, dimethyltryptamine.

I have done LSD. I have done which is lysergic acid. Right? And I have done psychedelic mushrooms. And in each case, here's what I will say.

These are not just things that you can use and expect to get a bunch of magic from them if you have not done the work. Alright? They are very powerful. They need to be respected, and they're not something that I recommend doing as a way of partying or a way of loosening up for the night. Right?

These like I said, these are things that need to be respected, and they need to be held in a light where your intention is that you are coming into this trying to learn something. Right? Because if you go into this saying, hey, I just wanna loosen up, I'm gonna take a bunch of mushrooms and I'm gonna have a really good time and act crazy, you might get yourself into a situation where you're not going to be very comfortable. You're going to be dealing with a world of hurt. And I've known a lot of people who've taken too many mushrooms and have gotten themselves into some dangerous situations because they did not respect the compound.

Right? They did not respect the molecule. You've got to respect this stuff, and you've got to do it in a way where you are coming into this with the intention of learning something. Now here's the deal. If you are looking to do this to learn about yourself, to really heal yourself, and you're looking to consult the plants, there are organizations out there that can help you with this.

Right? I had on Jesse from Heroic Hearts Project, that's heroicheartsproject.org, and they actually run trips for veterans to go down to South America to do Ayahuasca ceremonies. Now Ayahuasca is a very powerful psychedelic, and what they'll do is they'll bring the veteran into the program, they'll work with that veteran, and then they will take them down and they will do the ceremony. Having had my own experiences with dimethyltryptamine, which is the active ingredient in Ayahuasca, and with mushrooms and with LSD, what I will say is this, you want to be with somebody who really knows what they're doing, and you really want to put the work in beforehand. Like I said, it's because you might run into something that is going to be very disturbing, might run into a very uncomfortable situation, you might not be prepared for it.

Do I think that these could definitely be relevant treatments for treating PTSD? My answer is this yes, but not for everybody. There are definitely people out there who should not do psychedelics. There are definitely people out there who are not going to be ready to experience this type of thing. So even though I think that there is a lot of promise within psychedelic plant medicines, I think that some people are a little bit too overzealous in promoting them as an answer for everyone.

I don't think they're an answer for everyone. I think these things, could be the answer for some people, but for others they might actually make the situation worse, and we don't know enough about them to, to actually know whether or not they're gonna make the situation worse. Do I think they should be schedule one drugs that are completely illegal and not being researched in any way? Absolutely not. I think that these definitely have a use, they definitely have a therapeutic use, they could be so helpful to so many people.

And I think it's ridiculous that we have not studied them, that they'd been used for thousands of years, and yet we have not studied them. So again, there's some great organizations out there. Heroic Hearts is one of them, MAPS, they're doing a lot of work with MDMA, and they're also working with a few other substances out there. They if you are interested in this, I highly suggest you work with experts. You work with people who are who who are in the know as to how to use these therapeutically.

What I also advise against is maybe going down to Peru and trying to find a shaman off the street that's gonna take you out to the jungle to do this because given the fact that these things have become extraordinarily popular over the last few years, there are a lot of people who are looking to take advantage and scamming people, scamming psychedelic tourists who come down there to try to experience the Ayahuasca and experience the psychedelic stuff, and, you might get robbed, you might get yourself into a situation that you don't want to be in. So again, make sure you're with a reputable organization, make sure you've done your homework, make sure that you've done the work necessary to get what you want out of the experience. And if you do go and you do decide to do the experience, my suggestion is to be present, to keep your mind open, and to be willing to accept what you learn. Right? Because that's a big part of it too.

Now, I don't want to color any of your experiences with my experiences. Maybe that's a subject for another episode. But what I will say is, once again, things are extraordinarily powerful, and you don't really know what you're messing with until you've gone a little bit too far and you're gonna experience it anyways. So again, I just want to emphasize that don't go into this frivolously. Don't go into this happy go lucky.

Do the work. Prepare the right way. Do your homework. I'm not trying to scare you off from it, but I'm also telling you to be extraordinarily cautious if you do use these. And, hopefully we come to a better time and place where there's not as much of a taboo or stigma associated with psychedelic plant medicines.

One other thing I want to note here because I've been a big advocate for cannabis. Cannabis has helped me. It's helped me with my autoimmune disease. It has helped me to stave off the effects of the corticosteroids that the doctors are putting through my system right now to help me with my ulcerative colitis symptoms. But I also think you could go too far with something like cannabis.

I think that far too many people look at cannabis as if it's a completely benign thing, when the truth is it also definitely needs to be respected. You can get yourself into some hairy situations if you take too much, and if you are not getting the proper dose for what you are trying to use the cannabis for. Since I've done psychedelics, what I can tell you is that my perception of drugs, I will never look at drugs in the same way again. I see them as tools, not as party party objects. They're things that, like I said, definitely need to be respected, in all manners.

Otherwise, like I said, they they can backfire on you. So if you're looking to learn a little bit more about this stuff, I'll put some links to a couple of episodes we did with veterans organizations that, take veterans down and put them through Ayahuasca ceremonies and psychedelic ceremonies, just because I want you to have access to the resources that are gonna put you in the proper place. Second question today is from my friend Ryan. He said, what supplement do you think every athlete should be taking at a minimum? Now this is a an interesting question because in some ways everybody is going to need different types of supplementation, right?

Because everybody has a different diet, everybody is eating different things, some people are getting lots of vitamins and nutrients to where they wouldn't need as much supplementation, and others are not getting as much as they should, which means they're gonna have to take some other supplements. With that being said, in our modern diet, there are certain things that are are lacking in most people's, most people's nutrition regimens. And what I'll do is I'll talk about a few of those. So the first one, and this is one that, you know, most people have a deficiency in, but vitamin d. Vitamin d is something that if you're living in the Northeast, if you're living in the Pacific Northwest, particularly now that it's wintertime, and even those of us out here in Southern California, who are spending a lot of our time in offices and sitting in office chairs and not getting a lot of exposure to the sunlight, most of us have vitamin d deficiencies.

And if you have a vitamin d deficiency, you should consider taking thirty five IU of vitamin d per pound of body weight. Now, here's the thing, if you're going to take vitamin D, you should also take vitamin K too. And that's because supplementing with vitamin D, if you're not getting out in the sun and you're supplementing with vitamin D, supplementing with vitamin D could actually lead to calcification, because vitamin D leaches calcium into your bloodstream. And if you're getting calcification, can harden up your blood vessels, it can harden up your arteries, and that is not a good thing. That could lead to heart disease and a lot of health problems.

So vitamin k two, taking a hundred mcg's of vitamin k two along with your vitamin d dose, is actually a way of staving off that calcification influence. There are a lot of vitamin D supplements out there that are actually combined with vitamin K2, that way you're getting both at the same time, and I'll link those up on the show notes for this episode so you can check those out. Another thing that a lot of us aren't necessarily lacking, but we're getting too much of something else. We're getting too much omega-six in our diets and not enough omega-3s. Now, here's the deal, in nature, omega six fatty acids, it's not like these are unhealthy.

I'm not saying that they're unhealthy. We need omega six to survive. But the problem is that in most of the food that we eat here in The United States, it's very high in omega six. And omega six in nature raises inflammatory levels. So if you're eating a lot of plant oils, a lot of us, eat a lot of canola oil.

Canola oil is in almost everything we eat. A lot of us eat a lot of seed oils. A lot of the packaged foods that we eat has very high omega six inside of it. So we're getting a lot of omega six already. And if that's out of ratio with omega three, it can send your inflammatory levels out of check.

So you you could they they could go uncontrolled. So a good way of staving off those inflammatory levels is to supplement with, omega three fatty acids, from cold pressed fish oil. Now another caveat to this because we have so many veterans who listen to this show is if you have ever been exposed to gunshots, you've manned a machine gun, you've thrown a grenade and had it explode in proximity to you, if you've done parachute jumps, if you've done anything where you are in proximity to an explosion, or if your head got knocked back and forth, or let's say you're not a veteran and you did high school football, or you you box or you're doing MMA or anything like that where your head's gonna get knocked, there's a potential there that all that could affect you. Now studies have shown that omega three fatty acids actually have a really, really positive effect on helping people to stave off, you know, traumatic brain injury and some of the implications of traumatic brain injury like early onset dementia and, you know, brain fog and some of the other symptoms that you get from it.

If you ever wanna read a good book on this that I'll link in the show notes, it's called When Brains Collide. That's by doctor Michael Lewis. We've had him on this show. And whenever he has dealt with people with traumatic brain injury, severe traumatic brain injury, he'll put them on as much as ten thousand milligrams a day. And that's been shown to have very positive effects in protecting the brain as you get older.

Now, we are dealing with a lot of this in the veteran community. I don't want to understate this. I just had on Nick Koumalatsos. We talked about testosterone deficiency and how low level traumatic brain injury can affect testosterone deficiency. I've done a bunch of episodes with Andrew Marr from the Warrior Angels Foundation, and he's a Green Beret.

He never got directly blown up, but he got a full blown TBI from being a breacher and just being in proximity to explosions. So don't write this off, guys. If you served in a combat MOS, if you manned a machine gun, if you ridden helicopters, a whole host of different things could cause this. And if you have low level TBI, that could completely turn off your hormones. Now what omega threes do is they tend to heal those myelin sheaths that are within the brain that protect your neurons, and that has a regenerative effect on your brain.

And again, I'm probably screwing up a lot of the science here, but I highly suggest you check that book out, When Brains Collide by doctor Michael Lewis. He does an excellent job of explaining this. I will also link the interview in the show notes. So omega-three fatty acids are definitely something that I recommend everybody be on. And I'm talking between three to five thousand milligrams a day if you don't have a TBI and I would go along with Doctor.

Michael Lewis's suggestions if you have experienced TBI and maybe go a little bit higher than that. Another supplement that I think everybody should be on is something called n acetylcysteine. Now what n acetylcysteine is is a cellular precursor to glutathione. Now glutathione, what it does is it helps with cellular turnover. So why is this important?

Well, your intestinal tract, which is extremely important for your health, the interior lining there has to heal quite often in order for you to have a healthy intestinal tract. Right? Now remember what I've talked about, and I've talked about this in a bunch of different episodes. Your intestinal tract is important because it houses about 75% of your immune system. It's directly connected to your brain.

It's really the center of your health. And if your gut health is not on point, then you could be in a world of hurt. You could end up in a case of autoimmunity like me. Because your immune system is there and it's separated from the waste products inside of your intestines by a cell lining in some places that's only a single cell thick, you really need to be constantly rebuilding that lining in there in order to remain healthy. So N acetylcysteine can definitely help with this.

It can also help with cellular turnover in the brain and it can help you to regenerate a lot of brain cells that might have been damaged from something like TBI. It could also help with liver health. Right? If you've done things in the past like heavy drinking that are going to affect your liver, and acetylcysteine has been demonstrated to help with cellular turnover in the liver and bringing back liver function. So definitely something I recommend.

It's not an expensive supplement at all. I take between, six hundred and twelve hundred milligrams a day. I'll usually take a six hundred milligram pill twice a day on an empty stomach and that's definitely something I recommend people to be on. In addition to that, I think that most people, maybe not everybody, but most people should be on some form of probiotic whether you're getting that from fermented foods or a probiotic supplement to maintain the healthy gut bacteria in their intestinal tracts. In addition to that, if you are dealing with heartburn, agita GERD, whatever you want to call it, then you probably want to be on digestive enzymes of some sort because that means you're actually lacking stomach acid, you're probably lacking a lot of the enzymes that required to digest your food properly.

So those are the supplements I would recommend. I know I'm not the end all be all of nutrition. I know quite a bit, but, those are definitely the things that I'm going to be on for the rest of my life. And again, I'll get all that linked up on the show notes for you guys, when I get them up there. So don't worry, we will have all this stuff listed out for you.

Finally, my friend John, he asked, what do you think of over the counter test boosters? Do they work? Are they harmful for the long term? You know and again this is one of those things where some test boosters back in the day when I was actually still in the Marine Corps they were selling something called one AD and they would sell it out of the there was a little supplement shop in Camp Schwab and it was right next to the gym They would actually sell this stuff and it's a steroid precursor. Meaning that this stuff actually turned into andro when you ingested it.

It wasn't an actual steroid but it would turn into one, that's what a precursor is. And, here's the thing, a lot of these types of test boosters whether you're taking SARMs or whether you're taking one AD or three AD or any of them, they get to have just as much effect in turning off your natural testosterone as injectable testosterone could. So in some cases, here's the deal, when you're injecting testosterone and it's coming from a doctor, that doctor knows how to get you off. That doctor knows how to withdraw you. That doctor knows what you should be taking as far as Clomid, as far as Anastrozole, as far as luteinizing hormone, things that are going to restart your testicles.

With some of these other cases like SARMs or some of the other things that you get over the counter, I mean it's more of a Russian roulette. They don't know what the effect could actually be. So in these types of cases what I would say is I'd avoid a lot of these. If you've got a testosterone deficiency, go and see a qualified physician. Go and check with Core Medical Group, who we brought up when we were talking to Nick Koumalatsos a couple of weeks ago.

I'll put a link up there. They've done a few specials for veterans, they like working with veterans. So if you guys are into that and you're trying to fix a testosterone deficiency on your own, I would definitely go and check that out. In addition to that what I'll do is I'll put up a few articles that I've written on the subject with supplements I think that you should be on if you believe you have a testosterone deficiency, things you could do before you go to full blown HRT because for a lot of people that's expensive and if you're still young and you're not so severe that you're going to be required to go to HRT there's certain things you could do to get your testosterone back on track. As I alluded to before, improving your digestive health is one of them.

Making sure you're taking care of your brain that's another one. So guys definitely go and check out the show notes for this episode because I'm going put a lot of resources up there. I don't recommend either taking steroids off the street or dealing with some random test testosterone booster that in one case might not work and you wasted your money or in another case might end up working but might cause lasting damage. It's just definitely not something you want to be messing with you don't want to mess with your reproductive health and your hormonal health. Alright, that's all the questions I got for today guys.

I hope this ask me anything was informative. I've been doing these once a month right now. I might extend that and bring it to twice a month or even every week as we get more questions. If you wanna join the group and you wanna get your questions included in the ask me anything, like I said at the beginning of the show, head over to Facebook and go and find the Warrior Soul Agoge empowerment and resilience group. I'll also link that on the show notes for this episode and you guys can join up for free.

There's no cost or anything like that. Beyond that, you wanna support the podcast. I mentioned some ways earlier. There's some new ways as well. You can head over to warriorsoul.academy.

I've got a bunch of programs that I've written, fitness programs, fat loss programs. I've got some business programs up for those of you who are thinking about maybe starting your own clothing company online or an e commerce brand online. I've got courses on that. I've got courses on how to become a coach. I've got some really awesome fitness courses up there and some really awesome fitness ebooks up there.

So go and check that out. That's up at warriorsoul.academy. And as always, if you want to support yourself, we have the Warrior Obituary Society and that is our mastermind. And when new members come into this mastermind for the first eight weeks, they're going through a development program, they're customizing their own fitness plans, they are customizing their own finance plans, they are getting held accountable on all their goals, they're outlining their vision, and it's a really awesome group. We run live calls every single week, we're supporting each other, We're trying to push each other to do some big things.

We got about 16 members in the group right now, and they're awesome guys. We've got civilians, combat veterans. We've got we've got some active duty military in the group. So if you're interested in that, head over to www.warriorobituarysociety.com. That's warriorobituarysociety.com, and you can check it out.

And if you've got questions just email me at chris@warriorsoulagoge.com and I will be happy to answer for them for you or to even set up a call to talk about it. Alright? Again, hope you guys got a lot out of this. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast. Make sure you write us a review.

Please do. And, I'll be back at you later on this week with some more awesome content. Get out there and live your best lives while you can. And this is Chris Albert, and I am out.