Understanding Psychedelic Plant Medicine as Treatment for Veterans

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

What's going on everybody? Welcome to episode number 68 of the Warrior Soul Podcast. And today, we actually have a very, very controversial subject. The subject is psychedelic plant medicines to treat issues like post traumatic stress, depression, and other symptoms that Veterans face as they're transitioning from their military lives into the civilian world. And when we talk about psychedelic plant medicines, we're talking about things like Ayahuasca, which is a vine that grows in the Peruvian jungle, and it's brewed up into a type of tea that people drink.

And when somebody drinks this, the first thing that happens is they begin to purge. Most of the time they begin to purge. Some people don't purge, But when I say purge, means you're literally shitting and vomiting for a little bit before you go into a psychedelic trip. And this is not just seeing colors or anything like that that you might have heard about. This is literally some stuff that that will bring up some fears, it will bring up things about your life, and you're literally, there is literally really no way I could just describe it in an introduction.

Just know that it is pretty heavy. I do not have experience with Ayahuasca myself. I do have experience with dimethyltryptamine, which is the active ingredient in Ayahuasca. But when you take DMT, as opposed to Ayahuasca, it lasts for a much shorter period of time. A DMT trip typically will last between fifteen minutes and a half an hour.

And, I go into my own experience with DMT in in this, episode, and I talk quite a bit about it. But what I wanna say before we get into this, this talk with, Ryan and Matt from the Veterans for Entheogenic Therapy is that, yes, this stuff is controversial. And yes, we've been taught to kind of have a perspective about psychedelics that that they're really kind of opposite direction of where most of us have gone in our lives. And and so a lot of us have written this off as something that's not helpful. Now my opinion is this, yes these things can be very very helpful, and we're learning more and more every day about how these plant medicines could help people.

And I say could, because this is not for everybody. I think that you do have to put a good bit of work in in order to actually benefit benefit from something like this. And you know as as Ryan and Matt go into in this conversation, there's certain things you want to watch out for. If you have certain pre existing conditions, if, you know, you, if you're suffering from certain mental disorders, a trip like this could definitely not be the thing that you want to do. But if you are otherwise healthy and just suffering from some of these other symptoms, then then this could be something that that could help you to come to a point in your life where where you're gonna make a change.

And, a lot of veterans and a lot of people have taken these medicines and completely changed their lives. And again, you know, if if it's not for you, it's not for you. But, what I'd ask you to do during this conversation is just to keep an open mind about it, know about the risks, do the research, and come to your own decision about whether or not psychedelics could help you, or could help people in general. I'm very libertarian in my views on drugs, and as many of you know I am an advocate for cannabis usage, and not for everybody to use cannabis, but for everybody to have the opportunity to use cannabis as an alternative medicine. And I very much feel the same way about psychedelic plant medicines, though I think that we have to really respect them.

And I also think that the Veterans for Entheogenic Therapy, and Ryan and Matt, they have developed this respect and through organizations like these, veterans can do this the right way. What I'd advise against is just doing it by yourself or doing it without the proper guidance. So I'm talking a lot here and again it's because it's a very controversial issue. And I wanna get into this interview, but I I just need to give you a quick note from our sponsors. F Bomb Nutrition, they make amazing portable delicious packets of fat.

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And as I said before, keep an open mind.

Chris Albert 00:06:13 (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 we need to be reminded of this as much as possible with one simple reason, to live your best life while you can. This is the Warrior Soul podcast.

Chris Albert 00:06:52 (link to this point)

What's going on everybody? This is Chris Albert with the Warrior Soul podcast. And today we've got a really, really interesting show for you. Now, a lot of you out there, you may be familiar with some of the alternative therapies for veterans dealing with post traumatic stress, dealing with depression, dealing with the transition from military life to civilian. A lot of these alternative therapies have have taken different routes and one of the most promising in my opinion, most promising, but also is getting a lot more research these days is dealing with plant medicines.

And today we're joined by the Veterans for Ethnogenic Therapy. Forgive me if I'm mispronouncing Ethnogenic, but Veterans for Ethnogenic Therapy. And I'm joined today by Matt Simpson and Ryan LeCompte. How are guys doing today?

Matt Simpson 00:07:49 (link to this point)

Doing great. Thank you for asking.

Chris Albert 00:07:52 (link to this point)

I screw any of that up?

Ryan LeCompte 00:07:53 (link to this point)

It's pronounced entheogenic.

Matt Simpson 00:07:55 (link to this point)

That's Okay. It's you're close.

Chris Albert 00:07:57 (link to this point)

Okay. Okay, cool. Cool. Yeah. Entheogenic.

Yeah. And I that's the first time I'm I'm hearing that term because I've always used plant medicine. I've used psychedelics before. I've used different terms. But where does that term come from specifically?

Ryan LeCompte 00:08:15 (link to this point)

So that broken down in Latin means divine within. So it's accessing this place within yourself that allows you to sort of gain the resiliency skills and the coping skills, and the overall sense of knowing who you are beyond just your PTSD and your human story. So it follows along the same lines as like plant medicine, shamanism, different types of modalities.

Chris Albert 00:08:42 (link to this point)

And you know, we're starting, I started off by talking about, you know, plant medicine and shamanism and psychedelics, but this is really a tool to get to a certain place, right? And exactly what you're talking about, which is knowing yourself and knowing yourself in some ways. You know, one of the things I've learned is that I'm not my thoughts. And that sounds funny to some people, right? Because, you know, we think we're all inside of our own heads and we think we are our thoughts.

We we think we're we're everything we think. And, you know, I I've had so much negative self talk in the past. And one of the things I've had to teach myself is that that's not necessarily me. That kind of the road you guys are going down here when when you're trying to access these different mind states?

Ryan LeCompte 00:09:34 (link to this point)

Yeah, absolutely. My The founding of this organization really came out of inspiration from my early undergrad work studying William James and Carl Jung, who was one of the founders, helped the founder Bill Wilson start AA. And the basic idea behind William James was describing therapeutic value as a result of a peak experience or a mystical experience. And there's four qualities of that experience that he gets into in his book, The Varieties of Religious Experience that he published back in the late eighteen hundreds. And in it, he describes four qualities of having this mystical experience.

Noetic, ineffable, transient, and passivity. And all of those broken down really look at like noetic for instance as an understanding beyond rational thought. That transcends rational thought. So again, it's like I'm not my thoughts sort of is related to this, getting out of your own waking state of consciousness to see something beyond the veil. And then, transiency, which is it doesn't last for, it's a temporary experience, it doesn't last for more than a couple hours.

The third quality is passivity or passive, which means there's a power greater than yourself that you sense in and around and through you during this experience. And then ineffable, which is beyond language, that it's hard to describe in language. So based on those four qualities, that really interested me early on after I got out the Marine Corps, and I actually did a research paper on it, and how psychedelics can reliably induce this mystical state, and then connecting that to how that can hold some therapeutic value in veterans with PTSD in a recovery.

Chris Albert 00:11:24 (link to this point)

Talk to me about me a little bit of both your backgrounds. Talk to me about your history, how you guys came to this and how you guys came together.

Ryan LeCompte 00:11:36 (link to this point)

Alright. You wanna pick it up?

Matt Simpson 00:11:37 (link to this point)

Sure. Sure. I came across Veterans for Entheogenic Therapy in April of this year. I was finishing up, I think, it was in month 16 of an eighteen month travel journey, and I am not a veteran. I am a civilian.

My background is, you know, I spent thirteen, fourteen years in corporate America and Chicago, and just got to a point where I realized that I wasn't living my dream. I was living the dream of society and sold a business and wanted to just take some time to decompress and figure out where I can best serve. I had some profound transformational experiences with the plant medicine Ayahuasca, And so I set out and gave myself the eighteen months of travel and coming across Ryan's organization, I was at the MAPS conference, Psychedelic Science in Oakland and came across his work and reached out and had a couple really great conversations. I was actually in the process of starting an organization that was going to be in service to Veterans offering holistic healing, you know, yoga retreats and whatnot, and to come across, you know, Veterans that are already at it, already at this, and have been doing this work at the time when I first reached out to Ryan. There was 150 Veterans that have been through the Program, and everyone's gotten better.

The PTGI, the Post Trauma Growth Index has increased on across the board, so that was enough for me to think, man, this has to be this has to be shared. People need to know about this, And then coming across, before that, coming across the twenty two veterans that die by their own hand each day, that was something as a civilian, we're shielded to that. It's just not even on our radar in the busy business working world. So for me, it was amazing to come in contact with this organization knowing that I could be of service to help share this message and get ultimately the veterans that are hurting. We have 500 veterans, 100 low income, some homeless veterans on our waiting list to get them the medicine and get them this transformational healing that they desperately need and deserve.

Chris Albert 00:13:50 (link to this point)

Cool. And Ryan?

Ryan LeCompte 00:13:53 (link to this point)

I'm a former United States Marine. I served on active duty from '7 to 2011 as an 0311. And before that, I was raised for most of my life as a military brat. My dad did twenty years in the Air Force. So I came from both perspectives, both seeing how military life affects our abilities to transition.

And my dad being a 20 year guy and his dad being an Iwo Jima Marine at 16 years old, it's been in my heritage from the beginning to fall in the tradition. So I joined when I was 20 after two years of pursuing community college. Just wasn't working out, and, you know, nine eleven hit. When I was in high school, I felt called to that. I felt incomplete to me.

I felt like I needed to go and and join my brothers and sisters. So me and four other guys joined the Marine Corps together, all childhood friends. And then did four years on active duty, eighth and I, first Battalion, six Marines, eighth and I Marine Barracks Washington and DC, White House duty with Secret Service UD, and carried caskets at Arlington National for fallen marines. And then my journey from there, really, after folding flags for fallen Marines and handing them to family members, really started opening my eyes to the cost of freedom and the sacrifice that we make on a daily basis as vets. So from that experience, I lost a guy while I was in to suicide, Sergeant Leon Alsavar, who just picked up Sergeant about a week before he committed suicide in the barracks.

And I shared a barracks room. And he was a good friend of mine. Found him. He'd hanged himself with five fifty cord in his barracks room, didn't show up for muster. After all that happened, I started noticing how PTSD starts to manifest itself through excessive drinking, anger, yelling, all the barracks life that I'm sure you're aware of as well.

And so I got out, did my honorable, and then got out and started pursuing undergrad, utilizing the VA GI Bill post nine eleven to pay the bills, and that's really why I started off going in that direction was to pay the bills and take care of my family. I had had my first son at the time, and so we moved to Alabama for a little R and R. Started doing some contracting work for the Department of Defense for the Army in Huntsville, Alabama, and had an underground psychedelic experience after being in the VA lines for medications and treatment and all that stuff. And from that underground DMT experience, I had a clear message to spread compassion for all beings and also had a message to share this message with others, with other veterans, my experience, strength, and hope, and start Veterans for Entheogenic Therapy. And from then on, I was pursuing mystical states, trying to decipher how psychedelics could be used therapeutically.

Like I said, did my capstone project for my undergrad on psychedelic experiences and PTSD. Graduated and then found Naropa University here in Boulder, Colorado, which is a Buddhist psychology graduate master's program in counseling. So I came, moved my family out here, and that was in 2014. Completed that program, got my master's in mental health counseling, mindfulness based mental health counseling, and just been trying to create the building blocks for integration for these psychedelic experiences. And Buddhism was one of those things for me that worked really well in terms of mindfulness sitting with the body, connecting the soul, body, and mind.

That's what I've been doing as the founder and executive director of Vet is providing those integrative tools and techniques for Vets who, after their Ayahuasca intervention, are able to use. It's been a cool journey to see that unfold.

Chris Albert 00:18:16 (link to this point)

So let's try to define a few different terms for everybody out there, right? So we've got dimethyltryptamine or DMT, right? And then that is a psychedelic substance that's found in every living thing, right? It's found in us, it's in our brains, it's found in a lot of other mammals, it's found in plants around the world in varying doses, but it's particularly potent in this vine that grows in the Peruvian jungle mostly, right? The Ayahuasca plant.

And so tribes down there have been using it to take psychedelic journeys for a long, long time. And there's varying forms in which you can access dimethyltryptamine. So you can actually take the Ayahuasca brew, which to my understanding, it'll it'll send you on a trip for about a long period of time. So it kind of like a gradual up and then and then you go into this to this other dimension or world or other mind state. And then you also have concentrated DMT which you can smoke and that's more of like a fifteen minute kind of thing, a rocket blast which I actually have some personal experience with myself.

I'm just trying to clarify this for everybody at home because they might be hearing these terms like Ayahuasca, like DMT and they might not have full experience or knowledge about them. I just wanted to get that out there. Was there anything inaccurate in what I said there?

Ryan LeCompte 00:19:55 (link to this point)

No, other than the vine, the vine itself doesn't contain the needed amounts of DMT required for the brew. It's actually the chacruna leaf that provides the NN dimethyltryptamine alkaline. But the vine itself acts as an MAOI inhibitor which helps extend and prolong the DMT experience. These Shamans in Peru were geniuses in their pharmacology, like you said, thousands of years spanning back that have been doing this. And it turns out that most of our pharmacological medications that we have here were inspired and some of them taken from the shamans in South America.

Chris Albert 00:20:39 (link to this point)

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I kind of want to give everybody an example of of what, like, a DMT would feel like and and an example of, I guess, what what Ayahuasca would feel like. Just because, again, this is really education and about about trying to put this knowledge out there. Can you can you guys, and I know this is hard to like really put into words, like you can't really talk about it and you said that in your description of this this. But but, you know, I can and I can go into my own experience with DMT, but can you guys explain, you know, maybe an Ayahuasca journey for somebody who's never even tried it or been in that place before?

Matt Simpson 00:21:24 (link to this point)

Yeah, I'm happy to give a stab at it. Again, putting the ineffable into words. It's a deep, deep experience. You know, you drink this tea. It's very earthy, almost pungent.

Tastes like you're drinking earth, you know, if there's one descriptive word that would come to mind while you drink it. The experience comes on half an hour, an hour later and, yeah, it's bizarre. It's otherworldly. You step outside of yourself. You step outside of, like Ryan said earlier, your stories that you have.

So in terms of those that have trauma, whether it be war trauma, childhood trauma, sexual trauma, matters none the same. You know, it's an opportunity to really create distance and space from that trauma and the reaction to that trauma and, you know, a great opportunity to look at yourself with compassion and empathy and to realize that we aren't our thoughts. We aren't our past. We aren't our memories and, you know, it's a great tool to release and let go. There's a purging effect, you know, where

Chris Albert 00:22:45 (link to this point)

When you say purge, mean you're, they're gonna shit and vomit, right?

Matt Simpson 00:22:48 (link to this point)

Yeah, exactly. You're power bar for your trauma and it sounds, sounds a little wild, but, you know, Dan, one of the guys that's been through our program, we were having chicken wings and beer a couple months back in Milwaukee and he said, and he used that term the first time I have heard that, but it is true. Yeah, they power barf the trauma and the toxins that we hold in our GI and our gastrointestinal intestines. There is more neural nets in our GI than there are in our heart and our brains combined. So it's a deep cleansing experience.

It's not fun, you know, but once you pass through the really the there's always like a blitz, like a storm, the first quarter, first half. It's almost as if you're fighting through hell to get to heaven. And on the other side of that, there's, know, Ryan calls it the pink cloud. There's a thirty day period of thirty to forty days where the medicine is still inside of you and you feel so good and, you know, it gives you that opportunity to create the healthy habits maybe that people were unable to create at that state with the PTSD. And we always say that the peak experience is great but the real work is done in in the valley.

You know the Ayahuasca is not going get you get you up at six a. M. Every day to do your meditation or to do your you know whatever grounds you to to be a good person.

Chris Albert 00:24:19 (link to this point)

Cool. Did you have anything to add to that, Ryan?

Ryan LeCompte 00:24:22 (link to this point)

No, that was illustrated perfectly. There is a process in the experience itself that I, from a psychotherapy point of view, that the VA uses a lot called exposure therapy. Have you heard of this?

Chris Albert 00:24:41 (link to this point)

Yeah, that's one of the approved treatments as far as what's it called psychoanalysis, right?

Ryan LeCompte 00:24:51 (link to this point)

Yeah, it works. I would consider it more like humanistic versus psychoanalytic because it veers away from sort of this Freudian Aristotelian approach to mental health and mental illness. But what it does is it focuses, like say for instance you had a fear of snakes, they would put a snake in a clear box in the center of this room and a therapist would work with you and gauge how close or how far you need to be and what comfort levels you are at being closer or farther away. Ayahuasca, in order to overcome a fear about snakes due to an earlier incident that you might have had with snakes. The same can be said in the way that ayahuasca mimics that same experience. There are points in the experience itself where you have to sort of face up and assimilate your trauma. Once that happens, then the purging begins.

Then you start to say, Okay, I have this. It's real. I've been able to see it in a box in front of me, and now I can purge it. And that's usually the point where it gets from hell to heaven as Matt was describing.

Chris Albert 00:26:01 (link to this point)

Excuse me. Excuse me. A little bit of a little bit of dust getting up in there. One of the things I want to I wanted to just mention, you know, the experience I had with DMT just in in I'm I'm being really real here and I'm going to try and play in and believe me, my mind is very open to this stuff, but I'm going to try and play devil's advocate throughout this just because there's so many people out there who are on the fence who need the facts and everything like that. Own DMT experience I had with a group of people that I'm associated with some of them are veterans. Some of them are or, you know. I guess you could say Wellness experts and things like that. And so, you know, I was in this space.

My dog was there. My girlfriend was there. And, you know, when you take DMT, it's not like Ayahuasca where it gradually hits you. When you take DMT, hits you right away. It's like boom. And so I took three hits of this off of this pipe. The first hit, I breathed in deep. The second hit, I breathed in deep. And then the third hit, I breathed in deep, blew it out, closed my eyes and laid back onto a couch.

Right? Now, in this period, all of a sudden, I start seeing gears and these, like, little beings, and they're they're turning these gears and things like that. And all of a sudden, I'm like, it's like going through a tunnel with gears and and these things. And then I'm in this room with these beings. Right? Now I know a lot of you at home are are gonna be like, holy fuck, this guy's crazy.

But I I need you to understand that this was an altered state. Right? So I end up in this room with all of these beings. And and the first thing I I it's not language that I heard. It was it it was them talking to me, but it wasn't in language.

It was a sense. And the immediate thing I got from it was, why are you here? Or it wasn't just why are you here? It was why are you here again? Now I've never done this stuff before.

To my knowledge, had never been to that corner of the dimension or or mind or wherever I was, but I wasn't in that room with my friends anymore. And they they're like, we told you not to come back here until you're ready. And then they go, okay. Here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna take you through this one more time.

And then again, we don't want you to come back here until you're ready. So they take me through a bunch of different things like why I was there. You know, I was I was on earth to learn humility. I was on earth to to to, you know, learn about being humble essentially. And so they took me through through that.

They took me through some of my past lives on earth. And then they said, alright. So we showed you that. Again, we don't want you to come back here, but go play. So when they say go play, I came back into the room, but I wasn't in my body.

I was saw my friends and then my dog saw me, but not me as in my body. She saw me in my other form and me and my dog started talking. Now we started talking in the same mental language. Right? And the the funny thing was that while that was happening in my mind, because I described the the the trip afterwards to everybody that was there, they said that, you know, while I was down on on the the couch that I was lying on, me and my dog were like growling back and forth for five minutes, like not staring at it.

My dog had literally walked up to try and growl at me. And then, yeah, and then, you know, me and my dog, like we went off on a little journey and, know, we played with some other dogs and then we came back. And I know that sounds batshit crazy to everybody at home. I'm probably gonna get emails saying what the hell are you talking about, Chris? But these are the kind this is what I'm talking about.

This is the most powerful thing that I've ever taken in my life. And I will literally never look at a drug in the same way again, any drug. I don't look at marijuana the same way. I don't look at mushrooms the same way. I don't even look at the drugs my doctor gives me in the same way because I realized in that moment the power that narcotics or not narcotics, but drugs can have on us.

Now, the one thing that I need to mention here to all of you too, is that we are all made up of drugs. So, as I said before, all of us have DMT in us. All of us have cannabinoid receptors. All of us have opiate receptors. All of us have these things inside of us.

And what we're really, I guess you'd say doing is is taking the DMT from another source here on Earth because we all have a source of DMT in a gland in our brain called the pineal gland and and I guess that's my my understanding of it. Right? Is it up here or over here?

Ryan LeCompte 00:31:19 (link to this point)

Right here where the where the Hindus put their their third eye.

Chris Albert 00:31:25 (link to this point)

Cool. Cool. Yeah. And and that's that's my experience with it. Now.

I wanted to put that out there because I wanted everybody to know that that yeah, I'm not foreign to this. This is not something that's I haven't done Ayahuasca before or anything like that. I've had a lot of friends who've done Ayahuasca, but I wanted to put that out there at the beginning of this conversation just just so everybody kind of knows what what something like that's like and and so that everybody kind of knows that that I've been through this and and kind of know the power of one aspect of this. I won't I don't know the power of Ayahuasca because I've never done it, but I know the power of one aspect of this. And it is a very, very powerful thing.

So my question, I guess, to you guys is this knowing that it is a very, very powerful thing, knowing that it is something that. Can scare somebody to death, that it can can can completely lift the veil on consciousness. Do you think that this is for that this will be helpful to everybody out there? Or is there some work that needs to be done before they get into this?

Ryan LeCompte 00:32:36 (link to this point)

I think it takes a lot of I'll just go into my our program and what we do before and after state of mystical experiences. For someone like you and for someone like me who did these things in a DMT form, you get the blast off. But unless there is enough of ego strength that we call in therapy terms, if that state is not well put together prior to breaking Humpty Dumpty down, And then there may be regression, we call it, in therapy, where people dissociate. People are not in their experience. Even when they come back out of it, there's a psychological turmoil that can take place if there's not the proper integrative abilities through ego strength help.

So what we do is pre integration, before they even go down, we screen for contraindications with medications. SSRIs are considered fatal and high risk. Those are reviewed and submitted by psychiatrists that we use for consultations. We also look for any sort of dissociative disorders like schizophrenia and other really, really dissociative pathological disorders that could ultimately lead them to a chronic state of really, really dissociative and dysfunctional non therapeutic paths that they could be on for the rest of their life. So we really screen hard on those areas particular before we even get them down.

We're also working, providing them tools before they even go down, keeping a journal, setting intention for the experience, like why are we doing this? Are we just smoking to see these other realms? That's all great.

Matt Simpson 00:34:35 (link to this point)

It is.

Ryan LeCompte 00:34:36 (link to this point)

It's the number one almost because we can do this stuff. We can have a breakthrough experience. For some of us, that be pretty rough. For other vets, that experience could be just what they need. But we don't know that unless we do screening.

And helping them set their own intentions like, what do you want out of this? Sort of like how the machine elves asked you, what do you want out of this experience? And you didn't really have an answer, but they're like, Okay, we're going to show you this. We're going show you this one last time and then don't come back. That's sort of the same way that we approach vets. It's like, why are you seeking out this service?

Because it works based on attraction, not promotion. We're not reaching out to vets to say, hey, do you want to do this? We get emails every day from vets saying, I'm tired of being on these pills. I've sort of been in the hell realm for the past five years trying these medications and these therapies that aren't working. So there's a sense of willingness there that has to be there before they are accepted into the program and a level of acceptance that what they have done has availed them nothing up to this point.

So with that, with the amount of suffering that they have, it turns out to be a good experience in the long run as long as they're continuing these practices but after they get back as well. And we make all of those referrals and recommendations and resources along with hooking them into a peer support network of vets who have already gone through this program. They're then assigned to a peer mentor who has completed our year long program, and they can call and reach out to them at any point when they feel like they're having a difficult experience assimilating some of these insights that you were describing. It could have been, I went through this one realm and they said this one thing and I just can't wrap my brain around it. For you, that was humility.

That was the message you got out of that and interpersonal connection with your dog and that leading ultimately to interpersonal healing with human beings in your life that you might have wronged due to actions related to PTSD. So there is real therapeutic value but it takes a lot of this nurturing and integration work that is required to ultimately lead to lifestyle changes and recovery models that work for each individual.

Chris Albert 00:36:53 (link to this point)

Nice. So the big thing here is to remember that the medicine just by itself. Right? If you at home were to magically have some some Ayahuasca brewed up for you, which which I don't think anybody here is suggesting that you do it at home alone or anything like that. Don't do not do that.

But if you were just to have some brewed up for you, taking it without putting this extra work in is is not gonna it's not gonna be a good idea. You need to put that work in. You need to put that work in to to improve your life. Otherwise, there really isn't any external thing that can help you here. Right?

Ryan LeCompte 00:37:33 (link to this point)

Right. I mean, all goes back to safe, set and setting, which I think Timothy Leary and a lot of the pioneers of the psychedelic sixties movement were talking about toward the end of the movement, they started realizing that you can't just pop LSD and change the world. There needs to be a lot of groundwork done. And as you know, as a Marine, there's a lot of SOPs and ROEs that we go over before we actually engage in combat. It may not always work to the T that the commissioned officers want us to execute, disrupt missions or whatever, but at least we have a general sense of what we're doing and a direction to move towards.

Everything in between that, Marines are trained to adapt and overcome and sort of make the mission happen. And it does seem like organized chaos. But as long as we're sticking to what we remember, going back to basic understandings of tactics and small unit leadership stuff, Just remembering those basic things like meditation, praying, if that's something that vets want to do after they get back, or even before setting intention, making sure they're taking care of their body. We take the whole model of mind, body, and soul and recognizing the needs is a big one for vets because we're trained to muscle through experiences. And now no one's shooting at us, so we have this chance and opportunity to sort of relax into this experience and slow down.

That's been a common theme for most vets that they've taken away from this experience is I need to slow down. I need to relax. I need to really take time for myself and utilize tools that are in front of me and not feel so rushed to have to do anything in this moment. So it takes a lot of that, like mindfulness, contemplation, making a fearless moral inventory about your life, getting honest with your experience, making amends where possible, and then service work. That's the end result to the program is we've got vets that are part of that peer mentor program where they're on standby twenty four hours a day waiting for a vet that comes through that's a newcomer that they can reach out to and say, hey, I'm having this difficult experience.

It's really helped a lot of those guys continue their practices and be of use, meaningful work.

Chris Albert 00:39:48 (link to this point)

Now, you mentioned before that there are some contraindications with SSRIs and that you really shouldn't do Ayahuasca while being on SSRIs. Is there a cleansing period prior to actually taking the brew and doing the ceremony? Is there a special diet people should be on? Are people coming off of their drugs to do this?

Ryan LeCompte 00:40:14 (link to this point)

Yeah, we have a titrating thirty day plan where if vets are on any sort of SSRIs, that's at the top of our list and that poses high risk. So we absolutely have a boundary. You have to be off for thirty days to allow your body to metabolize the reuptake inhibitors. We explain that and most vets are pretty compliant in that because at that point they're already sick of being on these drugs. Some of them have already found things like marijuana and have gotten off 20 different pharmaceuticals as a result of smoking pot.

Pot has no contraindications with ayahuasca. So we encourage that in taking a harm reduction approach. It's not sobriety but it helps alleviate those symptoms and it doesn't have nearly as many negative side effects. So that's a huge part, staying in contact with them and making sure that they're off these medications before we send them off. Yeah, and along with diet.

Diet is a big part of it, we're looking more as an organization to make sure that safety is number one. So we focus more on the medications than we do the diet. The diet would help in the long run maximize the experience of staying away from meats, salts, sugars, processed foods, all the crap that we shouldn't be eating anyways, although meat's okay. But that's important. Alcohol, taking time to really, from a sensory standpoint, anything that dulls or numbs our senses, it's encouraged to take, you know, three to five days beforehand to make sure you're coming into this ceremony you know, pure and you know, from that standpoint.

Yeah.

Chris Albert 00:42:00 (link to this point)

I was going say you got to be careful about talking crap about meat on this podcast. We might get some angry emails.

Ryan LeCompte 00:42:08 (link to this point)

Well, that's that's the thing is we make suggestions in terms of diet, but in terms of medications, we have strict boundaries of no. No, you will not be in the program if you are on medications and that's part of the screening process. But with diets, they are suggestions.

Chris Albert 00:42:23 (link to this point)

And then so you mentioned cannabis and I've been I'm a huge fan of cannabis and not necessarily for the high because I don't really like being high. But but it has helped me quite a bit with with working with my own ulcerative colitis and an autoimmune disease that I have. And and it's one of the few things that that's worked for me. But one of the things I actually had to go to the VA the other day in order to to get a physical and part of the physical was getting blood work done and everything like that. VA tried to sneak something on me and I'm sitting in, you know, you go up, you take the number and they give you your stickers that you're supposed to stick on the bottles and things like that.

And I see a urine test and then I see the word random on it. And I was like, no, I'm I'm dehydrated. I can't take this test right now. And and one of the things that worries me about cannabis right now is that veterans who are getting helped out by it a lot are gonna be in fear of losing their VA benefits in in the case of testing positive for cannabis, which I think is an absolutely horrible thing. And do you guys fear any of this stuff as far as working with Ayahuasca or in your other work here?

Ryan LeCompte 00:43:47 (link to this point)

No, absolutely not. We had a guy, most of our vets that we treat are homeless. So from start to finish, one of my guys, who I'll call M, started in our program, got off all his meds, was living on the streets in Salt Lake City. Got him on a plane, got him down to Florida, did Ayahuasca, brought him back, and when he got back, he basically had his house in his hands. So I worked with him to get him plugged back into the VA system in Salt Lake City.

Shortly thereafter, they did blood work on him, got him hooked into the whole system. Nothing came back positive there. And he's now on a HUD voucher and is receiving housing and is in an inpatient treatment program without medications, which he that was his fear of going back to the VA and seeking help. That's why he lived on the streets because he didn't want to be on the meds to accept the help. Now he's So more to be more boundaried and say, I don't want the meds.

I'm willing to do the therapy. I'm willing to do anything you ask of me. I don't want to be on the meds. So his worry also was that he might pop on a random piss test. None of that happened with DMT.

That's not something that's on the radar. With cannabis, too, going back, I'm on a board called Veterans for Safe Access and Compassionate Care. And it's founded by an Army combat veteran who's in the Boston area who started this a couple years back. And his whole idea was challenging the VA on providing ethical and compassionate care for veterans, even if that includes supporting their right to use cannabis in states where it's legal. Pushing a bill, I think, two years ago, or maybe a year ago now, that allows vets in states where it's legal to actually share with their doctors that they use cannabis to alleviate their symptoms and doctors can actually make recommendations for those vets to get their red card, which is called red card is a medical card for marijuana. So the spree is changing with cannabis at the VA. It used to be like that where they take your benefits if you pop. I definitely remember that. We used to lobby in DC about it. I actually went to DC with another group called Weed for Warriors founded by a good friend, Sean Kiernan.

We went to the VA HQ in DC and took all our pill bottles and threw them in front of the VA. Everyone lit up joints right there in front of the VA. So it was like this act of defiance to say, Dude, we're going to smoke our pot. You can take your 20 different meds that you give us for this one plant and we're going to smoke our pot here. So it really took off. I think from that, it sort of catapulted the entire movement to say, if we're going to recover and get better, we need to be able to share deep parts about ourselves, including cannabis use. I haven't seen any issues here in Denver in terms of sharing that information.

Again, we live in a state where it's legal, and it's still not the case for every state. But hopefully, moving forward, the cat's out of the bag. We know that marijuana helps due to state research and stuff like that. Doctors are getting more on board with that now as we progress forward.

Chris Albert 00:47:13 (link to this point)

Yeah, it's going to be legal here in California next year too. I mean, we've already voted on it, but one of the problems that's actually come up is the backdoor thing now. We actually have cannabis deserts because of the the the legislation, and people are saying it was the worst thing that ever happened to medical cannabis because towns now have the option to to deny dispensaries, to to make sure that no dispensary has them. So literally, I think I I was reading this between San Francisco and Los Angeles. It's really, really hard to find a dispensary.

People have to travel a long ways in order to get their stuff. More and more delivery services are coming about, but it's insane. And it's crazy what the government will do in order to try to keep a plant that has no side effects, that makes people feel good, that's been demonstrated to heal away from from people who need it, and in turn, give them pills that have, you know, lists of side effects as long as my arm. And I think it sucks. Right?

Ryan LeCompte 00:48:21 (link to this point)

Yeah. It does. Yeah.

Chris Albert 00:48:24 (link to this point)

Big time. Big time. Yeah.

Ryan LeCompte 00:48:28 (link to this point)

Hopefully, Trump just called out the opiate crisis epidemic, we start shifting the way we look at pharmaceuticals. We're facing a real crisis with that. So I'm hoping that that kind of stuff starts creating that global or that national shift and how we look at plants and alternative treatment options in general.

Chris Albert 00:48:50 (link to this point)

Yeah, it's ridiculous. It's it's it's freaking ridiculous. I can start cursing up a storm over here over it, but. So when a veteran comes to you guys, what's the process? Do they sign up on your website? Do you guys meet with them? Do you have a phone call or video chat with them? How does it come about?

Ryan LeCompte 00:49:16 (link to this point)

So I usually submit a submit form on the website. That comes directly to our email. We start the screening process from there, asking a set of formalized questions that is standard across the board for every vet that submits that interest ticket. And then we basically, from there, do a clinical history background and look at what are their intentions, what's the history, what VA therapies have they tried. Each veteran that comes through has to have tried six months or more of therapy in the VA before we consider them.

This is for research purposes to start looking at therapeutic value for what we're doing. We also look at deployment history, diagnosis history, when were they diagnosed, a little bit of history on family background, interpersonal conflicts that have been affected by PTSD, what medications they're on, what state they're from, you know, basic background information. And most of them are national lists, so either we'll meet like we're doing now on Hangouts or we'll just continue the email chain and eventually meet on Hangouts after they pass that, what we call, phase one screening. Once they get past phase one and they've either had issues with being on medications, they're put on the back burner, and then we check-in with them after a thirty day period based on that treatment plan for that vet. Then once they get to phase two, phase two is the booking process.

We set a date to get them booked with a flight and sponsor their retreat costs, which cost up to about $600 on average per vet, including flight, including retreat costs, which we've worked a partnership out with the retreat center that we use. And then they go down for a weekend shot. That's phase three, is execution. They go down phase three, spend a weekend, get there on a Friday, sit in ceremony Friday night. Prior to that, they do intention setting with me or with a peer mentor in our network.

Then they go through their ceremony, wake up Saturday morning, have a little bit of breakfast, do an integration circle at the retreat center, connect with the community. Then they're then offered a day ceremony, which they do around eleven or twelve. That ends, they do another integration circle, connect again with the community, sort of hang out at the retreat center until nightfall, and then they begin their third ceremony, and then wake up on Saturday and rinse, repeat, do the same thing. Sunday. Sunday, yeah, and then Sunday they're on a flight back home and then they start their year long integration process, which we call phase four, That lasts for a year where they get connected with peer mentors that are provided psychoeducation about Ayahuasca, what to expect within the first two months, how to correct for Pink Cloud syndrome which is everything's fine, everything's great and then once the Ayahuasca wears off they sort of forget if they're not doing their practices. So we put all these risk markers in place for them so that they can expect those things when they do pop up. Yeah, and then just continue working with them and reaching out, seeing how they're doing, checking in on their practices, checking in interpersonally. I've had Skype conferences with family members of Vets like wives, husbands, and kids all in a room doing family therapy with them to sort of help them understand what's happened and sort of mitigate the risks that are involved after someone has an experience like this and they get home and wife and kids are still left in the wake of PTSD. So we sort of work with the dynamics that could come up in that experience to help mitigate potential divorce that might come as a result of vets sort of stepping into a new path of recovery.

Meanwhile, the wife is sort of still in her secondary PTSD mode, enabling codependency, all that stuff. That's just a few of the things that we provide after they get back. Like I said, the peer mentorship is a great avenue that they use a lot. They'd be able to reach out to another vet who's gone through this and can connect. And we do all that based on personalities, like who might be a good fit.

In the moment, we would say this person might be a good fit for this person. Let's connect them. And then they exchange numbers and work with each other for a year. And then once the end of the year comes and they graduate from the program and are offered a peer mentorship spot to be able to provide their journey, experience, strength, hope with other vets that are just coming into the program.

Chris Albert 00:54:11 (link to this point)

Now, so forgive me for asking this, but but how do we make this legal? How does it happen so that it's legal and nobody's going to jail or anything like that?

Matt Simpson 00:54:23 (link to this point)

Well, I was gonna mention a moment ago that last month we did get our 501c3. Are officially recognized not for profit and in terms of legality, it's a little hazy, I believe. There's religious rights, freedoms in Florida, Native American church, yada yada yada. You know, this is all above board and, you know, with that declaration with the five zero one(three) it's our take that our federal government is not going to get in the way of Veterans healing other Veterans that are desperately in need of this therapy. As we're, again, dealing with those that have been through the VA's program, taking the uppers, the downers, sleep aids and are at the end of the end of the line, so to speak.

So we're just going to keep moving ahead you know, day by day, step by step and sharing this message of hope as long as that number of 22 to, you know, could be as high as fifty to sixty per day, you know, when you really look at the reporting, you know, that twenty two is based on that 2012 VA suicide report. It only included 21 states. It didn't include Texas, and it didn't include California. So so we look at it as there's a far bigger issue with the suicide problem than than the potential legality problem.

Chris Albert 00:55:44 (link to this point)

Yeah. I I have to ask that just because I get I'll get a lot of emails about it and people are gonna be because people really do not wanna break the law in in in in these types of cases, like, for the especially amongst the veteran population. Nobody nobody really wants to break the law. There's people who will break the fuck out of that law. Not that I have for anybody who's listening, but but, you know, as far as everything goes, like, you know, people want to know that what they're doing is is Okay and that that they're not going to get their family life interrupted or their professional life interrupted because of it.

No.

Ryan LeCompte 00:56:22 (link to this point)

And that's the other piece that we value. This is sort of my psychotherapeutic lens is confidentiality and keeping their information confidential. We let them know upfront that this is all confidential. I've had several concerns about that. Even though what we're doing is above ground and is legal and we're out in the spotlight, still, I mean, if somebody if they were to pop up in, say, a documentary or something and their boss sees it, we want to make sure that they are okay with them being out in the spotlight.

So we also ask that question during the screening process. Are they willing to be part of a documentary if that ever comes up or a follow-up or something like that where we could sort of spread the message to potential donors or just the general public and raising awareness and testimony and stuff like that. So anonymity is definitely a foundational piece, and we respect and honor that in our primary purpose. In fact, that's embedded into our primary purpose. And to second what your concern is with the religious freedoms, it's really important to note that the Supreme Court ruled in a case earlier where they actually raided and invaded, the DEA raided and invaded a church called the Santo Daime Church, which is based out of Brazil.

They had their religious freedoms in order. They had Ayahuasca listed as a sacrament and their bylaws were considered a religious organization. All their paperwork was in order and the DEA hit the go button on raiding their house. I actually know the gentleman that happened to in the 90s. They fought the Supreme Court and they won and the Supreme Court granted them the DEA exemption.

That doesn't set precedent for any churches that want to do this. There's an extra step that each church has to submit an exemption form to the DEA even though they have all their ducks in a row, they are following religious freedom protocol. They still have to apply for that exemption. And so the church that we're using, they didn't raid their house in the beginning. They just simply sent them a a nice, kind letter that said please apply for this exemption.

Along with the Supreme Court ruling, the DEA knows that they don't want to fight that battle in the future. If one church made it through and the church that we're using in Florida has their ducks in a row, which they do and have submitted and have been fully cooperative with the DEA on submitting the proper paperwork and credentials for this, and the fact that the DEA just simply sent a letter saying please apply for this. We're in a good state in terms of legalities. The other approach that might help is research. Pushing this through the FDA would really help with making this into a medicine and removing that scheduling on the DEA list.

That's part of the work that we do. We're not only a treatment organization that provides this alternative We have the immediate front where we're sort of seeing the crisis at hand and doing the front end work, but we're also collecting data for long term longitudinal studies looking at PTSD severity, which we use the gold mean standard that the VA uses to assess for PTSD called the CAPS evaluation. CAPS is administered to each vet. We also look at sleep quality. We also look at depression, anxiety inventories that we use that are all scientifically sound and are used by the VA.

And we're compiling all of this data over the course of three years now. Eventually we want to get to a place where we can seek out an IRB approval process and get published and then submit our findings to the FDA and start clinical trials. So that's the ultimate goal. If we can get to that point and raise enough money on the research side, we can eventually start a real clinical trial given what we've already got in place now.

Matt Simpson 01:00:13 (link to this point)

Following in the wake of, like MDMA right now is in phase three clinical trials. There is no phase four. It's set to be illegal medicine by 2020, 2021 where you, through a therapist, you are administered your pill and I believe that, and I was reading the other day, that out of chronic depression and chronic PTSD, the average person had a symptom or that for seventeen years. And two thirds of those that had taken, you know, one to three MDMA treatments were symptom free a year later. We completely shed their diagnosis which is really, really powerful that, you know, that there's other medicines that are game changers that are out there too, you know, and they're being pushed forth.

So we're not the only ones singing this song. There's other ways that are healing. Too many people are hurting and, you know, science is huge right now. There is science coming in from all over planet Earth. Objective science is saying when these things are held with reverence, intention, and safe settings, they are highly effective.

So we can't deny that anymore. In 1970 with the CSA, Controlled Substances Act, science was not at that table. So we have a long way to go in terms of rescheduling these compounds and psychedelics and medicines. But, you know, we're feeling good and we're just going to keep moving forward.

Ryan LeCompte 01:01:47 (link to this point)

Yeah, that's been a huge part of our program has been connecting with professionals in the field that have been doing psychedelic research since the 50s. And that research was all shut down, like Matt was saying, in the 70s. It really was left to like unfinished business. Four decades. Four decades has been sort of sitting in limbo.

And I'm good friends now with big names in the field that have come out and come above ground, like Doctor. Dennis McKenna is a good friend and close trusted ally of mine that has helped us with our protocol, helped us with just consulting and referencing him, Doctor. Charlie Grob at UCLA, Doctor. Roland Griffiths who's a behavioral psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins who's heading the psilocybin research with terminally ill cancer patients. NYU, I've got a huge crew at NYU, UMass, all over the country that have helped and have offered their services to the vet and support what we're doing. So just keeping that in mind with research and how we do this from a research approach. And in the meantime, Religious Freedoms covers us on the front end to make sure that we can still provide necessary treatment for vets who are killing themselves at that rate.

Chris Albert 01:03:07 (link to this point)

Cool. And when we're talking about religious freedoms and things like that, and again, this is something that I have to ask because people are gonna ask. But if you are associated with a church or anything like that, does this mean you're giving up your faith to try to do this? Or or does this mean that you're you're you're changing your religion or anything like that?

Ryan LeCompte 01:03:29 (link to this point)

No, you just you become a member of the church. And the church that we use, you know, we have Christians

Matt Simpson 01:03:36 (link to this point)

Yeah, of all all paths. It's a deep spiritual cleansing experience. All faiths, all paths, you know, unite and it transcends, the experience itself transcends the limiting beliefs and yeah, that's something that I've seen on, you know, with that and outside of it, it's, you know, that yeah, it is in all paths.

Chris Albert 01:04:01 (link to this point)

No, I agree. I just I think to some people, you know, their their faith is really important to them. You know what I mean? And, you know, I don't think I don't think you realize that until till you actually, you know, until you go to boot camp or you go to to some of these places and and you realize how religious people really are. I mean, my my boot camp platoon, we had we had a we had a pagan, we had we had all kinds of different religions in there.

But but but people were extremely, extremely virulent about their faith. And I know throughout the military, there's a lot of people who to whom their faith is extremely important to them. And so I just kind of want to get that out there just to because I know that there might be some very faithful people out there who are still suffering and who don't necessarily want to give up their beliefs and wouldn't consider their faith to be a limiting belief or anything like that. You know what I mean?

Ryan LeCompte 01:04:56 (link to this point)

Yeah. I mean, I consider myself to be a Christ follower and and conservative in a lot of ways. So I'm sort of stand out like a sore thumb in this in the

Chris Albert 01:05:06 (link to this point)

Ayahuasca.

Ryan LeCompte 01:05:06 (link to this point)

Yeah.

Chris Albert 01:05:07 (link to this point)

Yeah. Do too. Amongst anybody who the whole cannabis thing, too. I'm very conservative on a lot of issues. And to some extent, I think that that the the idea that these things should be legal is actually a more conservative point of view, in my opinion.

Ryan LeCompte 01:05:26 (link to this point)

Yeah. Less government control, the drug war, all that stuff. Yeah.

Chris Albert 01:05:31 (link to this point)

Right. Right. Well, it sounds like you guys are doing some amazing work, and it sounds like you got a really, really pretty awesome complete program here and and that you've got a lot of the bases covered. Where can people find you if they want to get in contact with you?

Ryan LeCompte 01:05:47 (link to this point)

Yes, we have a website, vetentheogenic.org. For any vets that are out there and they need help, you can click the contact us tab. For people that are interested in more in what we're doing, we have tons of resources and links and podcasts and videos and testimony on our website, as well as meet the people that are helping run Vet. There's a place about us that sort of starts where we started from the beginning. It gives you a little bio on that.

And we have a Facebook page, facebook.com/vetentheogenic. And then we have a private group for vets integration. And you can get resourced with that if you're a vet that's gone through our program. You then are referred to the group there to be able to share your experience, strength and hope with other vets. And then, like I said, you could probably Google Veterans for Entheogenic Therapy and find tons of information.

And we've also got a documentary on, I believe it was on Netflix. I'm not sure if it's on there anymore, but it's called This is Life with Lisa Ling.

Matt Simpson 01:06:57 (link to this point)

Yep.

Ryan LeCompte 01:06:58 (link to this point)

And so that's readily available. I found a couple that were on YouTube. And we also have another documentary coming out called From Shock to Awe which talks about our experience before, during, and after an Ayahuasca intervention and really follows two vets up close and personal where the documentary team goes in their homes, talks to their families, interviews their wives, their kids, and sort of sees how this really affects interpersonal stuff when they get back. So yeah, that's going to be it's expected to release this year, if not early next year. So keep an eye out for that.

And they have a website, fromshocktoawe.com.

Matt Simpson 01:07:37 (link to this point)

I also wanted to mention there on our vetentheogenic.org website, there is a donate button. We are a five zero one(three) and the cost is roughly $600 to get a United States veteran to go through our program. I am also going to forward on a video for you, Chris. Three weeks ago in Chicago, Ryan and I, with three participants that have been through the Veterans for Entheogenic Therapy Program, we had our Vet inaugural Real Talk in Chicago, Illinois. Ryan and I put on our bow ties and we had a really special night honoring our Veterans for struggling deeply with PTSD and suicide.

We had a great turnout and a lot of very concerned civilians that want to get involved and want to find out more about how they can help and we're going to share that with you as well. There's three, you know, two Marines and an Army Ranger that have been through a program that speak in-depth about their experience, how that it's affected them and, you know, that's something that we just got back from our videographer last night and we're gonna be posting on the social media world right after we get off this call with you.

Chris Albert 01:08:44 (link to this point)

Awesome. Yeah, I'm definitely gonna put that up. All this stuff is gonna go up in our show notes. And I want that picture of you. I don't know if there is a picture but if there's a picture of you smoking a joint in front of the VA, up on my Instagram.

I think that's why I

Ryan LeCompte 01:09:02 (link to this point)

wasn't smoking but yeah, dude, I'll get one for you from Sean.

Chris Albert 01:09:06 (link to this point)

That'd cool. Yeah, I kind of want to put that up on Instagram and maybe maybe make it a thumbnail for this for this episode. Is there anything else that you guys want to get out there before we sign off? I know we've covered a lot. But is there anything else that you want to put out there before we come on?

Ryan LeCompte 01:09:29 (link to this point)

Yeah, like I said, we're a 501c3 nonprofit, so we rely solely on public donations. So if anyone's out there listening that this work resonates with you, these vets get sponsored through public charity donations. If we don't get donations, we can't

Matt Simpson 01:09:47 (link to this point)

provide treatment. And right now we have 500 Veterans that are on our waiting list. So that's really the call to action. We do envision breaking ground in 2018 in a veteran healing ranch in Florida. It's something we didn't get to.

But that is our next step, would be able to bring the entheogenic therapy in house and provide a thirty day outpatient. So that's, I mean, that's really what we're working towards right now.

Chris Albert 01:10:19 (link to this point)

So that's a goal. Right? You gotta raise $300,000 to get those veterans through. Right? To get every one of those veterans that's on the list right now through.

Right? Maybe maybe my math's off. Right?

Matt Simpson 01:10:29 (link to this point)

Yes. Yeah. And three from a cost standpoint, it'll be it'll be more effective just to, to go, go big for these, this Veteran Healing Ranch and, you know, be in a position where we could heal, you know, 30 to 50 a month to start and potentially far more than that, you know, where we can really do some systematic and start digging into that number of six hundred thousand to a million U. S. Veterans that are really mired in the month with the PTSD, TBI, and depression right now.

And, you know, we look at our Veterans that are struggling as our greatest potential resource, hidden strength, you know, reforming the hearts and minds of those that have that integrity thing down, have that honor thing down, and have that courage thing down, the three things that I think that our world is sorely lacking right now. So that's what we're really, really hopeful for and we see that this is a potential game changer for the problems that ail our collective society.

Ryan LeCompte 01:11:31 (link to this point)

Yeah.

Matt Simpson 01:11:32 (link to this point)

Right on.

Chris Albert 01:11:33 (link to this point)

You guys should do some crowdfunding. Yeah. Have you done any crowdfunding campaigns or anything?

Ryan LeCompte 01:11:38 (link to this point)

We have a GoFundMe out right now.

Chris Albert 01:11:40 (link to this point)

Well, make sure you send me the link for that and and we'll make sure we put down in the show notes too because I'm sure there's probably a lot of people out there who wanna donate and and, you know, we'll we'll we'll try to push you in that direction. So

Matt Simpson 01:11:55 (link to this point)

Good, man. Thank you, Chris. Thanks, buddy. I really appreciate you having us on your show.

Chris Albert 01:11:59 (link to this point)

Yeah. It's it's no way, you know, it's you guys are very, very one very informative and two, you know, it's amazing what you guys are doing for people and I think that's great. So well, for everybody out there, I I think that the overall message of the show is is one, you know, educate yourself and figure out what's out there. Right? Because there there's a lot of different paths you can take besides the old pharmaceutical route.

And that's the path that's been imposed on us. But but, you know, there there are many other things that are coming out. And and, two, there's a lot of good people who are really trying to to bring these other methods to the light. And so, you know, we have a couple of them here with us today. We, you know, we we know about the good people at MAPS.

We know about a lot of that. You know, we've had people on here who are advocates for cannabis before. But again, the choice is always up to you. You've got to do your own research. And if you want to do something like this, you got to take it upon yourself in order to educate yourself as much as possible and to make the choices that are going to be necessary for you to heal through something like this.

And then, you know, finally is that it doesn't end. There's not one single event that you can do that's going to heal you for the rest of your life and keep make everything rosy and have, you know, unicorns fart and rainbows and stuff like that. You've got to constantly put the work in in order order to live your best life. If you want a good life, that's that's what you need to do. So to everybody out there, I say this every week, but I really, really mean this.

Get out there, put the work in and live your best life.

Matt Simpson 01:13:49 (link to this point)

Right. Love it.

Chris Albert 01:13:50 (link to this point)

Yep.

Matt Simpson 01:13:52 (link to this point)

Yep.