Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to Otherworld. I'm your host, Jack Wagner. The story you're about to hear comes from a man named Jake, who is a Navy Special Operations veteran with an incredible story that is not only relevant to the themes of this show, but also sheds light on how ancient plant medicine is making major breakthroughs in Western medical science.
Unfortunately, humans have been fighting wars long before recorded history, and only recently have we begun to understand the hidden wounds that soldiers come back with and suffer from long after their time in the military, including PTSD, CTE, and traumatic brain injuries.
It seems like every day we learn more and more about how devastating and widespread these types of trauma-related disorders are, but also that it's much easier to get them than most people ever thought. And the worst part is these are not at all limited to the military. PTSD is something that can impact anyone who has gone through intense trauma.
Traumatic brain injuries and CTE are caused by concussions and especially impact athletes. We've been finding out more and more how many players in the NFL suffer from CTE, and a recent study has shown that even playing youth football could cause brain damage that leads to devastating consequences in adulthood.
It's tragic to think that we're only just now discovering how severe and common these things are, especially when you think about how many individuals went completely untreated up until this point. But fortunately, we may have some treatments to give relief to people suffering from these disorders, thanks to emerging research in psychedelic and plant medicine.
Even though these types of treatments are new to Western medicine, most of them have been used by shamans, healers, and medicine men for thousands of years in ceremonies that combine health, spirituality, and a bit of the supernatural.
And even though the research into psychedelic medicine is a bit difficult because it's still primarily outlawed in the United States, the research and treatment that is being done has been showing incredible results. And this episode is a story from someone who experienced it himself very recently, actually.
It's a story that starts on Coronado Island at the very, very southern coast of California and eventually ends on that same coast, just about 15 miles south across the border in Rosarito, Mexico. So I will let Jake take it from here and tell the story himself.
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Chapter 2: What challenges did Jake face after his military service?
This episode is called Down the Silver Strand, Part One, and you're listening to Otherworld.
Hello? Is this Bobby? Yes, it is. At its core, the science, you can't argue with. I'm worried about all the science. Up in the sky. It's almost frustrating that it's happening. I'm going to die.
His limbs were just like, wrong. Everybody moves back into the light, even if it takes them a minute.
My name is Jake. I'm a pretty private person, so I'll probably keep most of my personal details to myself, but I will tell what's needed for the story. Despite being pretty private and keeping stuff to myself, everybody who I've told this story to has told me that it's something that I need to tell more people.
It's been made apparent to me that there's new options out there for people struggling with mental health, PTSD, traumatic brain injury, addiction, and that stuff greatly helped me. So I want to tell that story and help as many people as I can. And also, I just think it's a pretty good story.
I'm from Cincinnati, Ohio, grew up a pretty normal childhood, a little rough at the beginning, just socioeconomic things, but my parents have always been amazing, my family's always been amazing, so pretty great childhood, nothing to complain about. And then sometime around 17, I was kinda, I won't say lost, but just absolutely no direction.
I started kinda looking at the military, but I didn't wanna just do
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Chapter 3: How does traumatic brain injury affect veterans and athletes?
anything, I guess, in particular until I found, so I just decided that I wanted to do something really, really hard. I didn't know what it was. So I ended up signing up for special operations and got my contract, went out to selection, made it through, went to the teams. And that was, You know, that was great by all accounts.
I had a pretty lackluster career, no Hollywood deployments or anything. I got in after the global war on terrorism was over, but I still, you know, I did my deployments. I did my job. And just from the nature of that job, because of my expertise, I ended up with a TBI, a traumatic brain injury. So I was, I was a Navy Swick. I, um,
went to, so I, and it's not, you know, none of this is like classified or anything. It's more just personal preference. My team was just outside of New Orleans, Louisiana. And then, so our inherent job is being the best in the world at shooting heavy weapons, 50 cal machine guns, mini guns, 240s, everything like that. So the big guns that shoot a lot of rounds and,
we're just finding out now, do a lot of damage. The average gun you're gonna see in a movie is gonna shoot a 5.56 round, which is smaller than anything coming out of a minigun or a .50 cal. When you see, I guess, one of those massive sniper rifles in a movie is the best way I can explain it. And you can assume, because of how big the rifle is, that it's longer than the person shooting it.
That's a .50 cal round, and that's what, you know, these machine guns are shooting hundreds of every minute, multiple of them a second. The minigun is shooting a round slightly smaller than that, but still a pretty massive round, and you're shooting 3,000 of those a minute. So 50 of those a second are coming out of that gun.
Yeah, it's a pretty, like when you hold a .50 cal round, you feel like you're holding something pretty crazy. You don't feel like you're holding a bullet. There's heft to it. It's actually almost impossible to explain how loud they are. A minigun is so loud that if you're not wearing hearing protection, it's going to ruin your hearing. We always were hearing protection.
Our communications, the way that we communicated through radios and stuff, have built-in hearing protection. But if that would slip off while I was shooting, it was a wrap. It would ruin my hearing for at least the rest of the day. And obviously, that's taken a toll on me hearing-wise. So, yeah, I was a minigunner. That was my expertise, and that's what I worked on the whole time.
And putting all those rounds through that gun definitely left a mark on my brain. And then besides that, you know, knocked out a few times, normal things that I guess come with any job in the military. So, yeah, that's kind of the conditions I was put in, and yeah. they're trying to take care of guys.
The teams are doing what they need to, but the new science is coming out that, you know, naturally doing that stuff isn't good for you, which it's, you know, it's, we kind of always knew that, but now we're, we're kind of proven that unfortunately. So it's not just, it's, it's not just what's actually happening to you.
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Chapter 4: What alternative treatments are available for PTSD and TBI?
No light, no sound. I had a washcloth on my face that my wife got for me. And literally like any sensory that came in was, was excruciating. And, um, the best way I can explain it is it's, it's a heartbeat in your head, but every time your heart beats, it hurts.
So you get like a, you get a second of relief and then you get a second of this excruciating pain and then that kind of just beats until you can get rid of it. That was when I knew something was wrong initially. Looking back, that's when it started. All the other symptoms started setting in probably in college.
So I've always had ADHD, but it set in to where my ADHD by itself became a legitimate disability. I couldn't focus on anything. I would have to leave class early. I actually at one point started failing my classes because there was just no way that I could handle the workload that I was getting.
conjunction with the other things that were going on which uh i started getting double vision like my vision became blurry my mental health started taking a turn uh depression anxiety came on and then later down the line uh i developed an actual twitch because of it so i developed a physical twitch where i would i would shake my head multiple times a minute
which started taking its toll on my neck. I wasn't able to properly meet with people. I ended up getting a great job after college that I love, but you can't really do a professional meeting while you're sitting there tweaking the whole time. So yeah, I mean, these things just started setting in. Whatever you can think of going on in the head started going on.
They diagnosed me with more than I can count on my papers at the VA and the brain clinics that I went to. But at the end of the day, it's all just a TBI to me. It's all under one umbrella.
So they said that I had, you know, from normal concussions and stuff like that, people who play football, people who box, and then people who do our job, when you get concussions and you get knocked out, you're naturally going to have some issues. We're seeing that in the NFL with CTE. And the brain clinic that I went to was actually for us. It was for special operators and also ex-NFL players.
So it was great that we were there together. So they said that that's possible. But then also because of the inherent nature of our job, we have these low-grade blast waves that come out of the ammo. And every time a round goes off, and again, we're shooting way more of these than we can count, that wave is going through your brain and it's doing some damage with every single round.
So when you're shooting 10 to the millions of those, that's just going to add up and add up and add up. But yeah, so that's kind of what they're figuring out now. That's kind of what the science is showing is that You know, these rounds aren't just going off and disappearing. They're sending something out that goes through you and does some damage.
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Chapter 5: What is Ibogaine and how does it work?
I mean, I'm not shy about it at all because I'm proud of where I am now. And I want to share with everybody that there's a way out of that dark place. But I was bad for years. But the thing keeping me from doing the worst thing and hurting myself was that I never wanted to hurt my family. And... I don't know when it was. I can't pinpoint it at the moment.
But my mind finally played the trick on me that my family would be better off without me. And I got pretty close to being a part of that statistic. I can't possibly emphasize that I thought about it every single day just because... it gave me power over what I was experiencing.
So, you know, I would drive into school and I remember coming over the hill and seeing the mountains as I drove down into campus and seeing all this beauty and listening to my favorite music, but just being in utter despair inside and simultaneously having a headache and simultaneously having my vision blurred and my neck hurting and my back hurting and all of this.
And even if you're not planning on doing it, it just feels really, really nice to know that you're in control when you're in that spot. So yeah, I mean, I thought about it dozens of times a day because it gave me control. And... I absolutely have the insight now. And I know, you know, there's gotta, you know, I, I know plenty of guys who are going through it.
And unfortunately I've got to sit here and know that that's going through their head. Cause it, you know, it went through mine and thank goodness the voice of reason came through at the, at the last second and was like, uh, pretty much said, you know, your family, you will destroy your family if you do this. And yeah,
That was enough for me to simultaneously make the decision that first of all, I'm not doing this, and second of all, I'm not gonna be this miserable burden, so I gotta pick myself up off the mat, and I've gotta get better. So I was in therapy, and I mean, I had exhausted everything Western medicine had to offer at this point. I'm privileged enough to have good health care. I have VA health care.
And then I also, from being in special operations, have access to foundations that most people don't have access to. And the only reason I'm saying that is because I was able to use everything Western medicine could give me. And not only did none of it work, I only got worse. I tried an antidepressant and anti-anxiety, which were both absolutely terrible.
Antidepressant I got off of within a week because it just, it destroyed me. The anti-anxiety they believe is what gave me the twitch.
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Chapter 6: What was Jake's experience during the Ibogaine retreat?
I tried restless leg medication, which did nothing. Sleep medication, which made me sleepwalk, so had to get off that. I tried traditional therapy, EMDR therapy, psychedelic assisted therapy with psilocybin, which is magic mushrooms, which that was the only thing that gave me any relief at all. And it's kind of why I got pushed towards this is because that wasn't a lasting relief.
But for the first time in years, I had a couple of days where I didn't have a headache. I could sleep and I felt okay. But I mean, on top of everything else, I already kind of mentioned it, but I went to a three-week outpatient clinic at a brain institute with the most amazing doctors in the world, the most amazing people that I'm extremely grateful for. But I only got worse.
Western medicine just wasn't answering the questions. So I was in therapy in Colorado where a lot of the psychedelic-assisted stuff is legal. And I had tried the psilocybin and felt a little bit better for a couple of days. And that kind of gave me some hope that there, you know, there is something out there that's going to help.
And I was in therapy and I got to a point where my where my doctor said, you know, you're not getting any better. You're getting worse. You're in a really, really dangerous spot right now. So you need you need to go do something drastic. And she introduced me to Ibogaine.
And right now there are a handful of retreats going on where you can legally do the substance Ibogaine and 5-MeO-DMT, which is kind of a compliment to Ibogaine. I prefer to call these things, you know, sacred medicine or medicine because drugs, the word drug gives it a stigma. And it is, I mean, these things are put here on this planet to heal us. Like they're nothing short of a miracle.
So Ibogaine is the alkaloid that is derived from the Iboga plant, which grows only in Gabon, Africa. So Ibogaine was used by, I might butcher it, but I believe the Bawiti tribe, B-W-I-T-I. They're from Gabon and they used it for generations for their traditional purposes.
So Ibogaine puts you into something similar to a REM state, but where you're awake at the same time and cognizant and conscious and And so, yeah, that's where it's from. And that's what they've used it for. I can't speak to their exact traditions or rituals, but you can, I mean, you can look it up right now. And Ohio State, University of Texas, and especially Stanford did the big one.
They've all done multi-year studies on this. And even in medicine, like even in Western medicine, looking at this from an academic point of view, it's doing unbelievable things that you know, seem impossible. Uh, they say that it's reopening neural pathways. Um, it completely, it resets your receptors in your brain.
So that's actually how, where Ibogaine started is it was being used to treat people with addiction because it completely resets your opioid receptors. So if you're addicted to heroin and instead of taking a year of the most horrific withdrawals that, you know, you can possibly go through, you go do this You go to Ibogaine and you're cured in a day or two.
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Chapter 7: How does the medicine facilitate healing during the journey?
other views besides Western medicine. And so by the time I got down there, I was already in a better spiritual place than I had been in a long time already.
And that's another thing, man, if anybody's going through it, even if you don't believe in the teachings of meditation, like the Eastern philosophy, the chakras, the different states of consciousness, at the very least, you're taking 10 minutes a day to yourself which we just don't get in this world anymore. And it made me, I'm not gonna say that it fixed me, but it made me exponentially better.
I was better after three months of meditation than I had been in the last five years. After the pre-screenings, we stop at a cardiology clinic in Tijuana and get checked again, get all kinds of heart tests and make sure that we're good to go and that there's not gonna be any health risks. get cleared, head down to the house. You get there, you've been fasting for 24 hours at this point.
It's this beautiful mansion that is perfectly decorated and covered in art overlooking the Pacific Ocean. And the way that I describe it is... It felt against nature to do anything negative in that home. So I couldn't have yelled at somebody or said something like terrible anymore than I could have jumped up and flown. It just, the healing energy in that house exists and it's real.
And the retreat I went to as well, because I wanted to give them a major shout out as the mission within. I got permission from them, you know, to give the shout out. And if you are a vet, a first responder, I can't recommend them enough. I mean, they, you know, nothing short of saved my life. So after we get set in, we spend a day there.
We don't eat because you do have to fast before the medicine. There were six veterans total there, including myself. There were two guys that ran the retreat, a psychologist and then the ops lead. And they're both very credentialed Western medicine guys. There was the Corndera. And then we had chefs and tons of nurses rolling throughout the weekend to help us out.
And every single person there was one of the best people that I've ever met. Again, I don't know if it's the energy in the house or if they're finding these people somehow. But everybody there might as well have been an angel on earth. I mean, their demeanor, the... The way that they treat you, the way that they talk to you, everything there was perfect.
Even if I didn't do the medicine, that would have still been a helpful retreat because of how amazing it was. And yeah, the other guys that were there with me, they tell you that when you go... So I got kind of nervous because they tell you that you're going to do... you're going to do this in a group.
And I'm sitting there kind of abrasive to that idea because I don't want to trip and go on a journey around strangers. That sounds terrible. But they tell you that you're supposed to be there with who you're with and you're going to have a give and take from them and they're going to learn things from you that they didn't know they needed to know and vice versa. And that's exactly what happened.
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Chapter 8: What insights did Jake gain from his spirit guide?
You can ask it to turn up the intensity, turn down the intensity. It's not always going to listen, but you can ask. And so I said, you know, I said my prayer to the medicine. I grabbed my pills. I wrapped up my hands and I said, if tonight has to be a battle, you know, I trust you. Let it, you know, bring it on. Let it be that.
But if you can come gently to me, please do, because I'm really sick of fighting. And so we stood up, went up a spiral staircase, got blessed with, um, They use Palo Santo, and I think White Sage is the other thing, but Palo Santo is Peruvian Hollywood. And so they have a Corandera there.
She's a female shaman who has spent decades learning this medicine in its native lands, that and the 5-MeO DMT. And she was the thing that put the whole experience over the top. She truly put, you know, a... Spiritual is not even the word. Whatever's above spiritual, divine, you know, she put that on this experience. So having her there was, you know, just brought it to that next level.
And so they say a prayer, they bless you, and you go and lay down in your bed. Once you get in your bed, you put on an eye mask. I began super weird, at least for me. I could lift my eye mask at any point, and I was completely clear in the real world. No issues whatsoever, like not even drunk, like no blurriness, no just normal, the normal world.
But then as soon as you pull your eye mask back down, you are somewhere else in the universe. And so you wear this eye mask. They give you these headphones with music playing. And it's this beautiful dreamscape music that I still actually use a lot when I meditate. They say that the point of the music is so that you don't get stuck in one spot.
So the medicine changes in tempo, beat, like it changes to a whole new song every whatever song is, three to five minutes. And the intention is so that you don't get stuck in one place. If you are kind of getting stuck in your journey, it'll push you into somewhere else. So all that, and then they hook you up with the medical stuff. So they put an EKG on you.
They hook you up to a magnesium drip IV to alleviate or help out your heart while you're under. They check your blood pressure, and they put a heart rate monitor on you. So you are all hooked up for this experience. So I laid down. Nurse hooked me all up, and pretty much immediately I fell asleep. And I wake up, and there's no clocks in the room or any way to tell what time it is.
But my internal clock is telling me it's been about three hours. So the medicine should be kicked in. Again, I think they said the average is between an hour to an hour and a half for it to kick in, but it shouldn't take any longer than three hours. And I'm sitting there after three hours, and... Nothing's happened at all. And I take my mask off.
I look up and everybody else is clearly going through it. Some people are throwing up. Some people are going to the bathroom and their legs are shaking. So they're clearly, you know, like they're clearly in the medicine. The legs are shaking because of ataxia. Like when you kind of, you start to lose control of your physical body. Everyone else is clearly in it and nothing's happening to me.
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