Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to Otherworld. I'm your host, Jack Wagner. This is part two of Down the Silver Strand. If you haven't heard the first part, you should definitely go back and start at the beginning. In part one, we met Jake, who is a Navy SWCC veteran who sustained a traumatic brain injury from heavy machine gun fire during his time in the military.
This injury, also known as a TBI, had horrible daily symptoms that only got worse with time and pushed Jake to the point where he considered taking his own life. After exhausting every available doctor and resource at his disposal, Jake decided to travel to Mexico to undergo a treatment using Ibogaine and 5-MeO-DMT.
These are two ancient sacred medicines with long ceremonial histories that are now being examined by Western researchers for their potential to treat a wide range of conditions. I know that part of the reason Jake wanted to share his own story on the show is that treatments like these might be intimidating or completely unknown to the people who need it most.
I think sharing this is important and also incredibly fascinating to hear such a vivid description of it. With that, let's get back into the second part of Jake's story. He has just woken up in Rosarito, Mexico after taking Ibogaine and is about to begin his day of DMT. This episode is called Down the Silver Strand Part Two, and you're listening to Otherworld.
Hello? Is this Bobby? Yes, it is. At its core, the science, you can't argue with. A story 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.
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Chapter 2: What led Jake to explore the use of Ibogaine and DMT?
I woke up the next day and the first thought that popped into my head was, I get to feel like this every day. Like that's how good I felt. I woke up for the first time and I don't know how many, but years. And I wasn't tired. My neck didn't hurt. My head didn't hurt. And I just felt good.
And I knew something had happened and something had worked already just because of the way I felt that morning. I hadn't felt like that with anything I'd tried over the past few years, trying to get some relief. And so that's how I started that day. We get ready to do the DMT. So we all get together in a circle and they kind of tell us all about it.
So DMT is poison from the bufo toad or the Sonoran desert toad. They're all over the southwest, northern Mexico. They dry this poison and you smoke it through what appeared to me to be like a very specialized pipe. It's unlike a pipe I've seen. Down there, you do 5-MeO DMT, which is the most concentrated version of it.
It's the heaviest version of it, but it's also, you know, fleeting and it goes really fast. There are other types of DMT. For example, ayahuasca is an N-N DMT. And so, you know, down there you are doing the 5-MeO. And this medicine... is unlike anything else. It only lasts 10 to 20 minutes when you take a hit, but time legitimately does not exist when you do this medicine.
So the time really doesn't matter. You can take one hit. You can take, I think, up to five hits. It's up to you. Most people take two or three hits. And what they do here is they do what's called a handshake dose first, which I think is really awesome. So they do a lower dose so that you're... kind of introduced to the other side and not just thrown into it.
And that way you're able to experience a little better. Cause I mean, it's, to say it's overwhelming is to do it a disservice. There's not a word to describe it. You know, again, in my notebook, I wrote, I cannot describe this, but you know, I'll do the best I can. So we get in our circle and they do the same thing. They kind of try to explain it to us, but they're like, we can't explain it.
You just have to experience this. And It's pretty intimidating. So there were some guys that were, you know, iffy about it. But ultimately they said they have never seen a single person upset that they did this. Every single person is happy that they did this medicine. They decide, you know, who's going to go first, last.
So the way you do this is you go individually and you go to this room, they call them Bufo Room, and it's this... It's this room that's all by itself. Nobody's allowed in there except when it's your turn. And it's extremely spiritual. Like if the house is already spiritual, this room is a sacred place. I mean, you can feel it when you walk in there.
Everything that's happened over the past few months, I don't know what I believe anymore. I'm kind of, I'm really setting my own beliefs now and I'm kind of chasing that and determining what I think of, you know, our existence in this world and everything.
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Chapter 3: What are the effects of taking Ibogaine on Jake's mental state?
was using a psychedelic sacrament. So they were using a bread, a wine, whatever their sacrament was, and it had a psychedelic substance in it. And so early Christianity, how were they going to be able to compete if these people were literally experiencing God in the woods? You can't just tell somebody to come to church. That's not really an option.
So the book goes on to argue that early Christianity used a psychedelic sacrament. So the blood of Christ, the wine that you would typically drink, actually had a psychedelic aspect to it. And with that, there are monasteries in Greece with a very old phrase written on them that says, if you die before you die, you won't die when you die.
And that phrase was probably the most impactful for me before this journey. To me, I interpret that as if you can have such a profound experience here on Earth, most likely with psychedelics, because I'm not sure how else you're going to get this unless you're very advanced at meditation.
But if you can have an experience on Earth where you feel God and you experience the other side and the universe, then when you die, it's not going to be this scary, horrible thing. It's going to be like welcoming an old friend. So... my last intention that I had not accomplished in Ibogaine was that I wanted to die. I wanted to experience death.
And so I, I headed down to the Bufo room, walked in and all the providers, like, I mean, this is like as spiritual as it gets. So the court in there, the shaman is in there and she blesses you again. She does her prayer and,
everybody's wearing like linen and cotton and clothes that are you know very from the earth and they didn't tell us to bring those but i was uh i was staying in san diego the week after the journey and so i had brought like a linen shirt and some stuff to go out in so i i actually had some clothes like that so i did the same thing after seeing you know the way they were dressed
And so you walk into this room and there's these prayer curtains hanging from the ceiling. There's this angelic music playing. And there's this soft white mattress in the middle of the floor. And they welcome you in. There's a provider. There's a shaman. You sit down. They tell you to take as long as you need. And then when you're ready, just look at her and tell her you're ready.
And so I tell her I'm ready. She puts the pipe up to my mouth. And you have to inhale for like... 20 to 30 seconds. I mean, it's a pretty long inhale, but the smoke is unlike any smoke I've ever experienced. There's nothing to it. It has a slight, slight taste, but it's very easy to deeply inhale.
And once you get it all the way in and you've taken all the medicine, she puts your eye mask down, lays you back and counts down from 10. And when she hits zero, you kind of blast off. That's the best way to explain it. Or that's how everybody else explains it. But the word I actually used was dissolve. It kind of feels like your physical body dissolves. Either way, it's a similar feeling.
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Chapter 4: How does Jake describe his experience with DMT?
Everything, just this energy shift goes through and everything turns into the love of my wife. So... My wife was with me from the beginning. I actually met her when I was going through SWCC school, our selection out in Coronado, and she's been with me for 10 years.
She's dealt with the deployments, she's dealt with the trips, she dealt with me not being the best person at the beginning of my time serving. And then she's dealt with this injury for the past, you know, at least five years. And that was a really hard thing to deal with. I mean, we went through it. And looking back, most of it was my fault.
And I just couldn't realize it because, again, I was completely consumed by my injuries. And she stuck out through all of it. And we're doing amazing now. But every molecule turned into her love. And... I mean, I just, I wish everybody could experience that.
Cause that like my wife, when I, like when I say she's my whole world or she's my everything, I mean that from the bottom of my heart because that's what I experienced that day. So then I start to come out of it. As I'm coming back into my physical body, it feels like this cord gets pulled and I get ripped back in to the collective consciousness. And this is where the intuition comes in again.
Something just told me that there was one more thing for me to see before I was done with all of this. This was the end of my journey with these medicines and this was the last thing it wanted me to see. I guess the only thing I saw with air quotes is like a gold kaleidoscope.
But everything is feeling or a sense that we don't... Like a way to feel that we can't necessarily experience in our physical bodies. And that's how this entire experience took place. So it pulls me back in. And the energy changes again. And this time, it shows me... I wrote down divine femininity. Like it showed me what women are. So like, I grew up with all kinds of strong women in my life.
I've always loved and respected the hell out of my grandma, my mom, my sister, my wife later in life, obviously. So I'm not sure why it chose to show me this, but I'm eternally grateful it did. I love my place in the world. I love being a man, a protector. I like that. I enjoy it. But I can never experience what femininity or being a woman is because of that.
And the universe pulled me back in, and it showed me that. It showed me what the pure essence of bringing life into the world is. It showed me the power to uplift others. And... Again, I can never tell you why it showed me that, but I'm really, really happy it did.
And that's when it got super weird to me that I instinctively knew to call the DMT a she in my Ibogaine journey, because obviously I had no idea this was going to happen. And then after I get done, that's another parallel that I find out that other people are having happen to them is they're encountering this thing that they describe as a divine femininity.
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Chapter 5: What is the significance of the 'Bufo Room' in Jake's experience?
I got, you know, we went to this burrito place that everybody goes to when you're there. We drove the Silver Strand. I even got to see the students running across, you know, in their helmets and stuff. I went to the Hotel Del where I met my wife, like everything. And nothing happens. No emotion is invoked. And I'm not disappointed because at this point I'm high on life, but it just didn't happen.
And so we go through the rest of the week and my friend leaves and it's my wife and I's last day there. And... For our last meal, because we were leaving the next morning, so our last meal before we fly home, there was a place that was very, very special to me when I was there. It's called the Classic Malt Shop. It's in San Diego.
And it's like this 50-style diner owned by these two brothers who are just the best guys. And... I would go there like probably four or five nights a week during selections, like all the time. I mean, you're burning like 10,000 calories a day, so you can eat whatever you want. So I would go and just, you know, eat everything on the menu. And me and my best friend would go there.
As far as I recall, nobody from selection would go there besides me or if I brought anyone. Like I never saw anybody else there. uh, from Coronado because it's like a 20 to 25 minute drive. And it is, most people don't have a vehicle. Uh, I was, I was lucky enough to have my truck while I was out there. And so we would go there, you know, nonstop.
It was kind of our safe space while you're going through, you know, hell you're going through this really tough training and it was our safe place. It's where we would go and kind of get away from it all at least, you know, for an hour and eat some good food. And when I left, when I graduated, I had my whole family come out there. I believe there was eight of us. And I brought him in.
I go up to the counter and I tell the owner who's, you know, he always runs a cash register. I said, man, I don't think you know what you've done for me. I appreciate it more than you know. I did make it through and it's time for me to go, but I appreciate everything. And he said, he said, congratulations. We're proud of you. Thank you. And then he said, your meal's on the house today.
And so that was amazing and a really important moment for me. So my wife and I go back there for the last meal before we fly out. And we pull up in our rental car and normally like my whole life, I have had to like, if I get somewhere and other people are kind of getting out of their car or parking, I want to get up and get into the restaurant so that we don't have to wait in line.
And then once we get in, I have to like face the door because of the military stuff, like just all this ridiculous stuff. And this time I didn't do that. We just get there and I'm chilling and there's no rush. And so this family gets out in front of me. And this blew my mind. So I've had some synchronicity since the journey, and I completely understand confirmation bias.
And I'm sure there's things that have happened to me since the journey that are me just confirming that bias. But there are a handful of things that I can't explain, and this is one of them. So we get in line, and the family that I didn't go in front of is this family of eight. And there's a guy standing in line and he's super tan.
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