00:00 - Chase (Host)

The following is an Operation Podcast production. Just this year, almost 20% of US adults reported currently having or being treated for depression. That projects to almost 48 million Americans, and symptoms of depression among these adults have increased from about this 18 to 20% in 2019, to now 22 percent.

00:23 - Ben (Guest)

When I look around at this society, I see a very disconnected, lonely and angry population in general. I think we have a society that encourages anxiety. I think we have a society that encourages depression. I am a true believer in plant medicine. You cannot argue with the data, and I think that's really important. The data is so compelling that even the skeptics need to pay attention to it. Five years ago, when I walked into the emergency room of a VA hospital and asked for help, that was the moment that changed my life. That was being honest. Ask early on and save yourself from going through the pain that I went through. Hi, I'm Benjamin Forrest, retired military officer and author of Trip of a Lifetime, the Psychedelic Guide to Healing, Loving and Living. And this is Ever Forward.

01:23 - Chase (Host)

Lieutenant Colonel in the house. Lieutenant Colonel in the house. The salute, indoor salute. Oh man, I haven't done that in a minute. Well, you know, as we're going live here, veterans Day 2025,. Happy Veterans Day to you, benjamin. Yeah, happy Veterans Day to you as well. I found some pretty wild stats when researching, kind of just you know, in America last few years key mental health statistics looking at depression, anxiety, mental illness and treatment rates, even mental health crisis events. In 2025, just this year, almost 20% of US adults reported currently having or being treated for depression. That projects to almost 48 million Americans, and symptoms of depression among these adults have increased from about this 18 to 20% in 2019 to now 22%. Does that stat surprise you at all and what is your kind of take on the current state of depression in America?

02:22 - Ben (Guest)

It doesn't surprise me at all. When I look around at this society, I see a very disconnected, lonely and angry population. In general. This is an extraordinarily difficult time. I think we all are longing for belonging and community and acceptance and love, and that's not what we're being presented with today. You know I can speak about, you know my depression and what's at the root of it, but I think just we're in a cultural depression almost. I think the happy, healthy people that we can find in this world are the exception, not the rule. Hmm, it doesn't surprise me a bit. I think we have a society that Encourages anxiety. I think we have a society that encourages depression.

03:19

You know you can go back in history and obviously you know it appears that we are in a golden age. Like I reflect that before I found psychedelics, I was living better than a king did 300 years ago in terms of my ability to travel and indoor plumbing and just the ability to seek, you know, medical treatments and everything Like. In theory I should have been the happiest man in the world, but I wasn't. I was disconnected, I was lonely, I had sleep disorders. I had all of these things going for me Like I had checked every box on what it is to be successful as a man in America and I was fucking miserable and I think a lot of people are in that same place where they're going through and they're checking all those boxes or struggling to and finding that even when they do, it's not the answer. There, he's amazing. So one of them was I wish everybody could be rich and famous, because then they would know that that's not the answer.

04:29

Now, don't get me wrong, I'd rather be rich and famous and miserable than poor and miserable. But another quote he had around depression is depression. Is your body saying I don't want to play this fucking character anymore? And when I think about my depression, yeah, yeah, that was it. There was a character I was playing for 25 years, you know, in the military and as you know, the husband and father and leader and all those things and all that's good, great. But it was a character that wasn't actually me and I think in part of what I was longing for was to play a character that reflects, you know, the genuine Benjamin, the me inside, and not you know, the mold, the character, the script of who you are supposed to be. There's a quote by Joseph Campbell the privilege of a lifetime is being who you are. And before psychedelics, yeah, I was not who I was. I was playing a different character that did not resonate with my soul.

05:29

And after psychedelics a lot of things changed, but what I think maybe was so important was to actually find who am I, and to be able to live from that authentic place that, maybe, more than anything, was the cure for depression for me. Well, I definitely want to get there.

05:48 - Chase (Host)

I've definitely talked about psychedelics and altered states of consciousness in a variety of ways on the show before, both with guests and experts and scientists and psychiatrists, and even my own experience with them over the years.

06:01

But before that, I think if we can kind of maybe peel back a layer, I feel like you have and I have, and a lot of other veterans and service members listening and watching, have this other layer to identity that I sure as hell didn't know I had during when I'm a bright, bushy, tailed, you know, 17, yes, I enlisted 17, young man boy stepping into this role, this identity of warrior, and that becomes a very easy thing to do and to have and to keep, because I mean, for lack of a better term, you know it's kind of your brainwashed that way and it has to be that way in order for a military to exist and to survive and thrive, even At least just that's my experience with the US military. Sure, walk us through this extra layer that you think military service members are experiencing, that they might not fully realize is there before we even get into just the standard veil that we need to peel back to get to our true self.

07:07 - Ben (Guest)

Sure, and before I do that, I want to express, you know, after years of reflecting upon it, I kind of loved the military too. Like I went into basic training a boy and I left a man and it gave me so many opportunities and so much adventure. And I'm not going to pretend I didn't love the adventure. That was so, you know, exciting and as a young man like, ah, what an opportunity. So there was so much about it I loved.

07:35

But I think there is some dangers in there as well. Like you know, you talked about some brainwashing. I mean, yeah, that kind of is what basic training is. You know you break them down and build them up and you know the image you want to be them in, and so there can be like a loss of identity. That happens with that we were talking beforehand about you know my appearance, yeah, so after I got out of the military there was kind of a conscious effort of I don't want to look like an Air Force officer anymore and along came the hair and the beard and the tattoos and you know the style of the image.

08:08 - Chase (Host)

I found off to throw it up on the screen. The image I found was very different than the one that I saw of the my guests here coming on the show today. You guys have to watch the video to find it, but you can see there we go this is the same man.

08:22 - Ben (Guest)

That's the same guy, everybody yeah that was my days as a squadron commander, yeah, yeah. So there's that, you know, having to fit the mold and that identity piece which, yes, is necessary but also can come, you know, at a price. And then there's this other you know price that I think I paid in the military. So, you know, I'm a man of a certain age and I was raised in, you know, the era of, you know, boys don't cry, and I have a very stoic father, and so there was a lot of emotional suppression that was going on there.

08:55

And then, being in the military and being in Iraq and being in Afghanistan, there is a necessity to put aside all your fear, put aside all your feelings and do whatever has to be done.

09:06

And that is so essential and helpful. Even and it makes sense biologically, like it makes sense when you know there's a tiger at the door to shut down all of your feelings and do what has to be done, or in a war zone, or in a meeting, or, you know, with your kids, who need something like. That biological mechanism of shutting down feelings is very helpful and as men we're very trained to do that, but after a while, oh, there's a price there, and if you live in that space. You live in that space of more honest about it. Almost a lifetime of of suppressing feelings and emotions and pushing those down, like, eventually, that became this, I don't know, like metaphorical cancer, uh, within my heart, um, I was living as a, you know, half a human being because I was unable to, you know, to access what was going on inside and meanwhile, all those feelings, all that grief, especially after my father's died, was just begging out for attention, begging out to be felt, and I was so ill-equipped for that.

10:30

There was so many things in this world I could do, but I didn't know how to process emotions or feelings in any kind of healthy way. And I think a lot of humans are in that place, and I think especially a lot of men are in that place, which is why men lead the charge in a lot of really negative ways in terms of alcoholism, drug abuse, suicide, incarceration. It's, I feel like we're raising a generation of men who are lost because they don't know how to even be men anymore and there's so much messaging going on right now about masculinity and about men. That is so negative. Like I mean, my, you know, experience was was challenging, but I think it's even more challenging for young men growing up today. Like, where is the role model of healthy masculinity today? When I look around, I see so few.

11:31

You know this book is so important to me. It's, you know, my heart on paper, but when I think about what I want to write next, I think it is specifically about men. It is specifically about how can we be healthy and manly, how can we be full human beings, you know, without shame and without suppression.

11:53 - Chase (Host)

What do you think, if you can maybe go back to a memory of a feeling you had as this young boy becoming a man, civilian, becoming an airman, going through this rite of passage, this warrior rite of passage in the military, to your own experience, but also maybe, collectively, you think, what is the feeling that you could paint for somebody that they could actually put their finger on and go oh, I know that. Oh, that's what I'm covering up, oh, that's the feeling that wasn't in my field manual that you know, it gives me a SOP to follow, to like to mitigate or to get rid of. I can handle all these other things. You know, I'm this trained killing machine.

12:37

I'm a proficient warrior things. You know, I'm this trained killing machine. Yeah, I'm a proficient warrior at my task, yeah, but yet there's this thing that I don't know what to do with.

12:47 - Ben (Guest)

So I just stuff it down. Yeah, yeah, I mean, the most extreme example I could give was around grief. I mean, this came at the end of my career, but when my father passed, it was the first major person in my life to pass, and the loss of a parent, maybe even especially the loss of a father if you're a man, it's like oh, it made me question everything, like what am I doing with my life? What are my priorities? And, yeah, who do I? Who would I turn to now? Like is a man looking for for wisdom? And it was like a part of me had died.

13:34

And you know, a lot of emotions can come and go very quickly if we're willing to feel them, but the one that does endure is grief. And what do I do with that? And for me at that time, my answer was drinking. I didn't know how to deal with the grief, so I would turn to alcohol and in that alcohol I was able to cry and sob. I actually couldn't cry about my father's death unless I would drink.

14:08

It became this like vehicle to let stuff out and of course, it was ridiculously unhealthy. It was causing, you know, significant and was causing significant problems in my life and, earlier than that, experiences in Afghanistan, diving into bunkers, dodging rockets. It's natural to feel fear there, but no, I'm not going to express fear. I'm not going to feel fear, I am going to just press on like you's natural to feel fear there, but like no, I'm not going to express fear, I'm not going to feel fear, I am going to, you know, just press on like you're supposed to.

14:42

How can I show fear in that environment? And I don't know, it didn't cause a problem immediately. Like for much of my military career, I actually really fucking loved it. You know, when I was 19 and looking at joining the military, like I needed that, like there is this chaotic male energy that was inside me, and so the military, and especially basic training, became that like rite of passage, and I wish more young men actually had that kind of rite of passage. Today I've joked that I don't think the military is for everybody, but I wish every young man could go through basic training.

15:33 - Chase (Host)

Yeah, I can. I can get on board with that as well.

15:34 - Ben (Guest)

Yeah, yeah yeah, board with that as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know the other part of that is is that that playing of the role while you're in the military? You know, certainly, like as an officer, like the last thing I wanted to do was ever show vulnerability, because we have this myth that vulnerability is weakness, and the thing about not being able to be vulnerable with another human being is you can never have, you know, true intimacy and you can never even really have a deep friendship.

16:06

It's very interesting to me when I look at my own life, like today, I have all these wonderful friends still from my teenage years and I have all these amazing, magical friends that I've collected since I got out of the military in the last six years. I'm actually not really in touch with 25 years of military friends Now. They'd be there for me in a heartbeat if I reached out and they're good people. But because we're not able to be really vulnerable with each other, typically the friendship can only go so far and I think that's really typical of a lot of, you know, male friendships, and so we men in this world we tend to be very lonely, like there's this loneliness epidemic going on in America, and it's especially acute with military. Women seem to have this a little more figured out.

16:57 - Chase (Host)

Yeah.

16:57 - Ben (Guest)

With their ability to more figured out with their ability to have close friends and their ability to share vulnerably with each other and their ability to support each other. But with men we're just, we're so closed off that it tends to create very shallow friendships and it tends to create loneliness. It was a few years ago, while I was writing an early draft of this book, the Surgeon General released a report about the loneliness academic, and I think in there he said that loneliness is the equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day in terms of the impact that it has on health.

17:30 - Chase (Host)

Yeah, it used to be, you know, I think it was sitting was the new smoking. But over the years that has turned into, or in addition to, yeah, loneliness, yeah, and we're now. You know. You think loneliness is just something you can just shake off, right, yeah, but we're now seeing, unfortunately, the downstream effects of mental health, physical health, of what happens when you are siloed. Yeah, mean, we all went through it globally for years, yeah, and now we're on the shit end of the stick of it.

18:01 - Ben (Guest)

Yeah, and we are wired for belonging. We are wired for belonging. I mean, if we were to use our imaginations and go back to the days when we were cavemen. A caveman alone in the jungle is going to die. He's going to die. So that loneliness and that craving of belonging is actually a survival mechanism, because if that caveman can go find a tribe where he can belong and be accepted, ok, he's a lot more likely to survive now. And so our ancestors that survived were the ancestors that found a way to belong. And so flash forward to today. How much does the average person, how much does the average man feel like he belongs?

18:42

The past often provided community through churches, were becoming increasingly secular. The fastest growing religion is the nonners, meaning not affiliated with any religions, and so what is the replacement for that? So I have found you know, since you know my awakening, if we want to call it that, I have found community after community after community where I can belong, and that has been so soothing to my soul and so healing, and I wish that we were in a culture where there was a way to belong in healthy communities, because when we don't belong in a healthy community, there are people who can prey upon that, there's people who can exploit that and we can go into communities where, you know, maybe we're being taken advantage of or manipulated, because we're so desperate for that connection, so desperate for that end of loneliness, so desperate for that longing. And the military was interesting to me.

19:47

Maybe that's why the military worked so damn well for me, because there is a community. There is a community. They're going to give me identity, they're going to give me my place in that community and these people are my brothers and literally in a war zone, you know, hopefully they'd be willing to die for me and me for them. And so it's not lost on me that me growing up with that longing for belonging and community. Oh, of course I found the military. There is the ultimate community, yeah.

20:12 - Chase (Host)

Yeah, I was going to say I think that's another part of the military experience that we don't fully comprehend or appreciate until we're out. Because, think about it you go through, whether you enlist or you're commissioned, there's a rite of passage. There's basic training, there's training of some sorts for a lengthy period of time and whichever version you go through, you all go through the same shit. Whichever version you go through, you all go through the same shit. And so there's this, this, this bond, this unspeakable or unspoken, unbreakable really to some degree bond that you have with these brothers and sisters at the end of that experience. That, to your point, same here.

20:51

I'm not as in touch with my military homies as I am with some other people in my life, but if I wanted to call them up right now, they would pick up and they would be there for me most likely. And I think that you don't really comprehend. I remember kind of that first realization of that for me was when I ETSed. So when I my contract ended, basically in the military, when I signed out for the last time and I drove off base, I remember looking in the rear view and I didn't know it at the time, but I had this just kind of like this gut feeling of like I'm really leaving something. At that point I was a little excited to get on with the next phase of my life, and I was going through my own rehabilitation at the time, so I was ready to just like get my life back.

21:55

But now, years, years, years later, don't realize that until it's too late, until you have this unexplicable depression and anxiety and mood swings and lack of knowing who to call for what. Yeah, we step away from an entire support system. Yeah, we have people to tell us or we can go to them to find out where to be at what time. You know, where do I go to get my pay? Where do I go to get my money? Where do I go to get my pay? Where do I go to get my money? Where do I go to get my uniforms? What's my job, what's my mission?

22:22

And you all, you can rely on that system, that community, yeah, and then literally overnight, it's all gone. Nowhere else, you know, maybe I don't know, you know if first responders or something, I don't know. I can't think of any other community where, like you, go through something so significant for that period of time and then, literally overnight, is all gone. It's like almost unfathomable for somebody to comprehend that. Going in, yeah, but you unfortunately have to go through it on the other end of it.

22:54 - Ben (Guest)

Yeah, yeah, and our experiences were different. I think you said you left after four and a half years and probably six years, and probably with a little bit of like regret, you know, because the way you have Lee maybe yeah, my plan was to do like you go the full 20 years retire.

23:08 - Chase (Host)

But yeah, I've had other plans for me.

23:10 - Ben (Guest)

Yeah, and my, my experience was different. After 25 years, I was exhausted and I was done with it and I remember in my retirement speech I said most of you don't know how this feels retiring right now, but I'll tell you what it feels like. It's like a combination of being released from prison and winning the lottery. Like that's how I felt at the time.

23:29

So for me it was kind of like fuck you guys, I'm out of here. And it took me years to actually appreciate what the military gave to me, like they molded me, they gave me opportunities, they gave me adventures, they gave me community. Like my joke is like I love the military if it wasn't for the wars right. So with distance I can see actually how amazing and beautiful that opportunity was, despite some difficult periods.

24:00 - Chase (Host)

Of course, like everything right, you have this incredible speaking of your book, this incredible kind of part two of your title Trip of a Lifetime the Psychedelic Guide to healing, loving and living. It made me go. So then, the assumption is that we are wounded, fearful, and I don't want to say dying, but staying stagnant. Yeah. I really feel like to say that we need a guide to healing means that we have a wound or wounds that need mending. Yeah.

24:36

And to say we need a guide to loving means. I don't think the opposite of love is hate. I think it's fear. So my question then is how are we wounded? What are we fearful of, and how or why are we staying stagnant?

24:51 - Ben (Guest)

Ooh, that's a brilliant interpretation, thank you. So how are we wounded? I mean that's going to be different for everybody, but I think you know, after years of working on myself and years of working with clients around a psychedelic experience typically, typically, those wounds are back in childhood. It's, you know, mom who didn't know how to love us as we needed to be loved. It's father who didn't know how to express his feelings in a healthy way. It's the kids bullying us on the playgrounds or whatever unique manifestation of those childhood traumas are.

25:29

Because as a child we don't know any better, we don't know any different and we're so vulnerable. And so these maybe slight little wounds can really shape us. And then for others, there can be, you know, traumatic experiences. You know in adulthood, either in a war zone or some kind of you know sexual assault, or you know who knows what it might be. So those wounds can all be very different, but everything I just mentioned has one thing in common it's all relational. Every wound I just mentioned is in relationship to another human being, and so when I think about healing, I do think about it in terms of relationships. And so how do we heal those relational wounds and my experience and those of my clients, has overall taught me that just as we are wounded in relationship, so do we heal in relationship.

26:26 - Chase (Host)

What do you mean by that? Can you kind?

26:28 - Ben (Guest)

of unpack that a little bit, who was unable to express emotions or he was abusive in some way. Then maybe my healing comes with finding some sort of you know, metaphorical father and later in life, who can be, you know, healthy and supportive and kind of be, you know, the father that I need. Or you know, maybe it's learning to be, you know, a father to myself. We all have these. Like you know it's learning to be, you know, a father to myself. We all have these. Like, you know, inner childs within us. So I have had to learn how to be a father to my inner child and to give him the love and support and encouragement that you know perhaps I didn't get as a child. And the other bit of healing is around the feeling of. You know those feelings, as I've talked about before. I see feelings as these little creatures that just want to be acknowledged and given their time on the stage and then they'll leave.

27:31

So a lot of you know the work is going into those. You know, yeah, wounds and hurts that we have kind of buried there. And in terms of loving, I realized I have not done a great job of loving. I was at a ayahuasca ceremony just over the weekend and one of the comments I made to one of the other men in the circles was I feel sorry for any woman who fell in love with me up until you know. This last year, like when I think about how I was showing up in romantic relationships, I was showing up with, yeah, damn it, this kind of like wounded inner child who would throw tantrums from time to time, like I actually didn't know how to love well. And so, since psychedelics, like that has been kind of my main goal in life is learning how to love well and that is so important to me that literally last month I went and got a tattoo on my hand, memento mere, which means remember to love, because that's how fucking important it is. Jesus was right, right Love your neighbor as yourself.

28:44 - Chase (Host)

Not a bad motto.

28:45 - Ben (Guest)

No, yeah, and in the living part, when I was in a psych ward about five years ago, on Veterans Day, there was this thought that kept going through my head over and over again, like a mantra I'm doing life wrong, I'm doing life wrong, I'm doing life wrong, like I just kept saying to myself over and over. And then there was this little click of like, well, what would it be like to do life right? And so ever since that moment I have been, yeah, exploring what is it like to do life right? And I think of Henry David Thoreau in Walden.

29:21

He made the comment most men lead lives of quiet desperation.

29:26

And he wrote I want to live deep, to suck out all the marrow of life and to not come to the end of my life and find that I had not lived. And that quiet desperation, it's like being a zombie, going through life, going through the motions, living the script that's handed to you, staring at your phone six fucking hours a day. It is like this imitation of life that I think a lot of people are living, that I think a lot of people are living where it is autopilot, it is a script, and we're not feeling the passion and the joy and the bliss of life that actually is possible. We can't be there all the time. How would we get anything done? But to never pursue those passions and to feel that joy and that awe, I think is missing the whole point of this existence. I mean, this life is a goddamn miracle. It took us 14.5 billion years to get to this point and the mathematical odds of you and I existing are astronomical, like we can't even fathom them.

30:31

Yeah, it's like in the tens of billions, something like the chance that I'm existing and you're existing, yeah yeah, and all of our ancestors who had to meet at just the right time and connect Like I really have come to see this life as a miracle. And, boy, I did not feel that way before I felt like it was a burden.

30:49 - Chase (Host)

And so do you credit all of this new found zest for life and this kind of work that you call it? Do you credit this only to the experiences you've had during and because of psychedelics?

31:04 - Ben (Guest)

Psychedelics were the catalyst. They were the catalyst. There's a very famous psychologist, bessel van der Kolk. He wrote this book the Body Keeps the Score. Light reading.

31:16

Yeah yeah, light reading. And the book actually begins in the VA. It begins with him working with veterans and the recognition that a lot of these traumas we're not going to solve them up here in the head. We need to solve them here in the body. And I had the opportunity to meet with him earlier this year at a workshop and he wound up talking about psychedelics during the course of that week and he described all the different types of psychedelics and listed them off and he said at the end of it but all of them lead to the same place, the opening of the heart. And I found him afterwards and I said hey, I'm quoting you on that in the book.

31:59 - Chase (Host)

Yeah, it's entheogens, right, you know there are some more so than others, but you know their core psychedelics are called entheogens, heart openers.

32:06 - Ben (Guest)

Yeah, yeah, entheogenic, exactly yeah. And so I think it is through that opening of the heart that we heal, that we love and that we learn how to live. I love it when we can find a phrase or a quote that just takes this complex, extraordinary thing and just distills it down into one little beautiful phrase, and I do think that's it. My book talks about preparation and navigation and integration of psychedelic journeys preparation, how we get ready. Navigation, how we, you know, work through those challenges in the experience. And then integration, how we bring it into our life. And in one of the couple of chapters about, uh, navigation of the medicine, while we're in it, I decided to chat title chapter, the Opening of the Heart, because I do think that is at the essence of this life and if we open our heart, like, it doesn't mean we're not going to experience pain and hurt. Oh, it actually means we might feel it more intensely, but it also means we are going to be truly alive.

33:16 - Chase (Host)

I feel like the last several years psychedelics have really risen to the forefront of awareness and, dare I even say, pop culture. We have progressed in the last five years. Well setbacks progression, but even at like a federal and state level of legalization and at least decriminalization.

33:40

What we've done in the last five years, we haven't done in the last five decades, but we're still not quite there in terms of, in my opinion, mass public access in a safe and effective way. The VA shout out to the VA. This is, in my opinion, one of the very few things they're doing right now is actually they're spearheading a lot of this MDMA, psilocybin, ketamine, therapy for depression, anxiety, ptsd, with the veteran community, with the veteran community. In your opinion, what do you think is it going to take from, let's say, you know, a legislation level or just a big brother here level, to get the mass on board, to get it, you know, safely and properly introduced to these people that really need it the most, so that we can break through this mental health pandemic?

34:30 - Ben (Guest)

Yeah, I think we're getting close. I think if we want to pick some milestones of the last five or six years, I think first we have to give credit to Michael Pollan's brilliant book how to Change your Mind. I think that was the first book to really get it in the mainstream radar. And then what happened after that? Covid, which just intensified our depression, intensified our loneliness, intensified our anxiety, and so it just kind of turned up the heat, just as all this, which just intensified our depression, intensified our loneliness, intensified our anxiety, and so it just kind of turned up the heat just as all this stuff was unfolding. And then, you know, a lot of research has come to light and it started catching the attention of, you know, some folks from unexpected corners. In the introduction of the book, I quote Texas Governor Rick Perry, former I was in the first Trump administration and he was a former Air Force officer as well. Yeah, and I was astonished by some of the statements that he was making earlier this year on Joe Rogan. I'll quote a few of them. I am a true believer in plant medicine. You cannot argue with the data, and I think that's really important. The data is so compelling that even the skeptics need to pay attention to it. He said I am the Johnny Appleseed of Iboga because he works with veterans and he sees how transformational this has been for veterans and he has a genuine care for us, you know, as a veteran himself and as a human being. And another quote that's in there is this could be the most important medicine ever brought to mankind. And I really do believe that.

36:04

After I had my experience and did some integration around it, I went off to therapy school. I was studying to become a therapist and I ultimately left for a few reasons, but one of them was, I realized, the professors I had that semester. It was a small sample, but none of them really knew anything about psychedelics. They didn't have personal experience with it. They didn't even seem to have enough curiosity to go explore it from an academic, professional perspective. And I feel like too many psychologists today are missing what to me is the most important tool and discovery in the history of psychology.

36:43

But fortunately there's enough momentum going that I think we are very close to legalization. There are already various places in America where it's being decriminalized. It's still, of course, schedule 1 at the federal level, but I think we're so close to that shifting and to answer your question of what is it going to take to shift that over? I think it's actually people like you and me, because veterans have this unique position in society where we are sympathetic to both the left and the right and the whole political spectrum. So, people across the aisle, this is actually one conversation that they're willing to have and I think veterans, because of you, know, whatever the respect or maybe the obligation the government owes to us, or however you want to phrase it, we have this unique role.

37:32

And Rick Doblin, the head of MAPS, he sees this as well. He's been studying public policy around psychedelics for years and he sees like, oh, this is the pathway, this is the gateway. The military people can bust open the doors for psychedelic healing and then everybody else can follow through, which is great. I mean, that's what we're supposed to do, right? We're supposed to go out there and be warriors who bust down doors. Let's go bust down this damn door, yeah.

37:56 - Chase (Host)

Yeah, I'm here. I'm here for it. I'm here for it. Let's be honest, though Not not everyone soldier or civilian are going to be willing or want to ever participate in a psychedelic experience, despite maybe people like you and me, or loved ones, friends telling them hey, I was suffering like you, I went through this, went through that. You know me, we've known each other for years, decades. You trust me, you love me, they're not gonna do it. Is there an equivalent of a healing journey, a healing experience?

38:35

in your opinion for those people that will never touch a psychedelic.

38:38 - Ben (Guest)

Yeah. So, first of all, I never push people or encourage people to do psychedelics if they're not comfortable with it. I don't want everybody to take psychedelics, I just want them to have the opportunity to do so if they feel so called to it. But the good news is, yes, psychedelics, at the end of the day, are just a tool. I happen to think they're the most powerful tool in this realm, but they're just a tool and there are other tools. Stanislav Grof was an early psychedelic researcher and in 1970, when psychedelics became schedule one drugs, he thought OK, well, how do I work with this? And he developed something called holotropic breathwork where, through the power of the breath, in the right environment, in the right setting, in the right people, you can actually create a psychedelic experience. Through breathwork you can essentially get high on your own supply.

39:30 - Chase (Host)

My first psychedelic experience, my first out of body experience before I ever touched psychedelic, was in a breathwork class.

39:36 - Ben (Guest)

Yeah, and I've done holotropic breathwork five days at the Esalen Institute and, yes, that is akin, I think, to a psychedelic experience. Now, is it as intense, as deep? For me? No, it wasn't, but oh no. I can definitely see that as a path and I think for people who, for whatever reason, don't want to or maybe even shouldn't do psychedelics, there is a way to explore. A way to explore it's safe, it's just using your own body and, unlike a psychedelic experience where, once it starts, you can't get off the train with the breathwork, you can get off that train If it becomes too intense, if you need to back off, you can simply go back to your normal breathing. So I think that is definitely a path of healing.

40:20

About a year ago, I found another non-medicine path that was, to me, as intense as a psychedelic experience. It was a seven-day therapy boot camp for lack of a better phrase called the Hoffman Institute. They're all over the world, they've been around for decades and in this seven days they take away your phone and they have you for 13, 14 hours doing really intense therapy through somatic means. And what do I mean by somatic? I mean using the body to release the pain that's stored inside One of the exercises. I won't tell too much about it, but they had us take a bat, an actual bat, and bang on this pillow that had all of these patterns that we wanted out of our lives, and they said, okay, now bash this pillow with the bat for 45 minutes lives.

41:12 - Speaker 3 (Host)

And they said, okay, now bash this pillow with the bat for 45 minutes and I thought 45 minutes, jesus Christ.

41:15 - Ben (Guest)

But I'll say that 45 minutes went back by really fast. So we're screaming, we're bashing, and at the end of that week I felt like I had found greater insights into my psyche than I had in almost many medics and experience I've had. And so there's ways to get there without these medicines, and I know I can sound like a zealot and a pied piper around this stuff. But I make it very clear in the introduction to the book psychedelics are not for everybody. There are some people who don't feel called for it. There are some people who, frankly, shouldn't do it. Most people recommend if you have a genetic predisposition to schizophrenia, that it's a bad idea. And I think I have a line in there too that some assholes can take psychedelics and just become bigger assholes like this is not a cure for every mental disorder or character flaw at all at all, and there is no medical solution that is going to work for everybody.

42:15

So I don't think this is like the answer for all people, yeah, but I also haven't seen anything be so powerful in myself and in the clients that I've worked with I was going to say have you ever seen anybody who has had a psychedelic experience that regrets it.

42:32 - Chase (Host)

But I want to kind of piggyback that and say I have seen, know some people that you know they have has one psychedelic experience, become shaman kind of thing. You know they what? What I love this phrase they have what's called a spiritual bypass. Yeah, basically, yeah, what is unique about these experiences? You think, where someone can go, for the most part I don't regret that. And then how does someone go from like this catalystic change in their life to becoming just a bigger spiritual asshole?

43:02 - Ben (Guest)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, so yeah the bad experiences around psychedelics, the most common answer is that they were poorly planned. So there's set and setting. Setting, excuse me. Set being the mindset what's going on in here, how prepared you are, and the setting being where you're doing it, who you're doing it with. Uh, you know, can you trust the people around you? And so forth. The, the people who do psychedelics, I think, irresponsibly, around the wrong people. That's where it can get really messy. Or the people who, yeah, don't plan for it well and it's maybe impulsive or irresponsible in the way they do it. And there's a third group of people too, who can go have an incredible psychedelic experience but there's no lasting impact because they're not willing to do the work on the other side or they don't know how to do the work on the other side. The people who go and have the interesting experience and they don't integrate it. It's very likely nothing's going to change.

44:02 - Chase (Host)

What does integration look like?

44:03 - Ben (Guest)

So integration can look different for every person. In essence, it is the bringing in the lessons from the psychedelic experience into your daily life. For some people, that could be a new practice of journaling or meditation or yoga or exercise. I'll share a couple of my integration experiences. The second time I did mushrooms a heroic dose I did it with a friend who was watching over me, and the integration for that one was an apology tour. What the medicine had to show me is all the times that I had wronged people or been an asshole to people who loved me, and so when I came out of the experience, I opened up my journal and I started writing down names. These are the people I need to make amends to, and so my integration was actually going and sending apology letters to each of these people.

44:56

I had another psychedelic experience where the answer was really clear Stop drinking, this is not good for you, stop. And so sometimes it's that crystal clear. Other times it's lifestyle changes. It could be leaving a long-term relationship that's not healthy for you or the other person. It could be a career change. We need to be really careful with those, because there can be this exuberance as you come out of an experience and you can make some ultimately like bad decisions. And your second question about these people who take psychedelics just become spiritual assholes. I can see that actually, when I first had my experience and my life was transformed like that, I could feel that impulse to go be a prophet, right To want to go shout from the rooftops. That's a big word, yeah.

45:48

And go convince everybody to take this.

45:51 - Chase (Host)

But fortunately To champion these experiences. Yeah, and go convince everybody to take this.

45:52 - Ben (Guest)

But, fortunately, champion these, yeah, yeah, yeah, and it might be coming from a pure place, but that's that's not what we're called to do is to go push our way on other people, necessarily. I think we can be a model of what change can happen and that can attract people in. But to go be, you know, somebody who feels like, oh, I just saw God and I know the way and I'm instantly awakened or enlightened, like that, that is the danger and from there other temptations can come in, like there are people unfortunately, I think a lot of people in this world who go from their big psychedelic experience to becoming, you know whatever leaders or self-appointed shamans or something, and there is a lot of danger there. One of the dangers is around money. Another danger is women. I'm sickened by some of the abuse that has been done of women while they're in these vulnerable places looking for help and get taken advantage of.

46:52

That does happen. And the last one is ego. You know we can start thinking that you know we're God. I do think we're all divine, but we need to be really careful with that and how we hold it. And I think the answer to all of those is just being brutally honest with ourselves about where we're at in each of those areas. And, yeah, if somebody is a no kidding narcissist taking psychedelics, if they're not going to look at their shit, oh, they could be very dangerous afterwards, couldn't they?

47:29 - Chase (Host)

Yeah, very, yeah, very, very shit. Oh, they could be very dangerous afterwards, couldn't they? Yeah, very, yeah, very, very yeah. And then, um, you know they have all the right language and all the right looks and all the right everything. Yeah, to then pass on information, misinformation, to people that are actually really looking for something like this and really have a lot of hope to benefit from this, but then you're in that room, that environment, that community with someone like that and it can really taint the entire experience.

47:58 - Ben (Guest)

Yeah, yeah, and everybody's kissing your ass and you start believing your own press releases right.

48:04

So for me, like I felt that impulse, I actually did feel that impulse Like, oh, I've seen the light, I've seen God, let me spread the good word. And so what I did is I put myself on probation for two years. You know, I wasn't, you know, working with this medicine other than beyond a few close friends here and there. And then after two years, I thought, ok, I feel like I'm in a place where I can begin coaching. And so I went and got a coaching certificate and I began coaching people where I can begin coaching. And so I went and got a coaching certificate and I began coaching people.

48:32

And with the book, it's been about five years since it occurred to me to write that book. But I realized, like no, I need to work through my own shit before I can start coaching people. I need to work through my own shit before I can actually write that book from a wise place and not a place of exuberance. And so I think the patience to work through our own work before we start helping other people is essential. Because if I had gone out there very quickly and started working with other people, I think that could have been dangerous If I had released that book a year after. My experience, I think it might have come from a place of foolishness instead of a place of wisdom Too premature yeah.

49:14

Yeah, so there was years necessary before I could reach this place now where I feel like, okay, I'm grounded and centered and healed enough that I can go out there and be helpful instead of dangerous.

49:26 - Chase (Host)

Amazing. Well, thank you for taking that strategic pause there, that tactical pause, as we say, when writing the book, kind of getting towards the end. Here I'm always curious with authors what was the one thing, if there was a one thing that rose to the top when writing the book, that really surprised you about? Oh, I wasn't expecting to uncover this in my research, in my personal experience or maybe emotion, a memory or something that rose to the top, that kind of surprised you, that made it into the work or influenced your work on this book?

49:59 - Ben (Guest)

Yeah, you know, the biggest thing that comes to mind was a simple question who are you writing this for? Because my first version of the book it was very much a memoir. Here is a medicine that I experienced and here's what I learned. Here's a medicine experience, here's what I learned, and it was kind of this travelogue memoir. And after 320 pages I asked myself this question who did you write this for? And my answer to that in the moment was I wrote this for me.

50:33

I didn't write this for the reader, I wrote this for me, and so I took this book that I'd spent so much time on and I put it aside and I started over with a blank piece of paper. Let me write this for the reader instead. And as I thought about how do I write this for the reader, I looked out at the psychedelic literature that was out there and I noticed something. I noticed there was a lot of great works of journalism and, you know, academic, and there's some memoirs out there and there's some kind of workbooks, but there was a little missing piece that I saw. There was a little missing piece that I saw and it was where is the simple self-help book for somebody who can't even spell psychedelics who can pick it up and learn how to prepare, how to navigate, how to integrate in a really concise, inspirational, simple, like, easy to read way, like where is that self-help book? And so my joke became okay, I'm going to write the seven habits of highly psychedelic people.

51:30

I'm going to write that self-help book and fill what I saw as like a little bit of a hole there.

51:34 - Chase (Host)

Sign me up for that one. I love that one, yeah, yeah.

51:37 - Ben (Guest)

And so I actually put together these like affirmations for lack of a better word these 12 principles that were going to guide me in writing the book. And so, as I'm writing it, I would look back and I'd be like, oh, did I write that paragraph for me, or to be clever, or did I write it for the reader? Okay. And so the more I wrote it, the shorter the book got, because if I want to be really clear and really concise and really cater to the reader, I need to grab their attention and hold on to it, because we live in this time where everybody is competing for our attention. There are all these millions of movies and tv shows that I can go stream, there's all of the podcasts, there's all of the porn, there's all of these algorithms that just want to suck in your attention. So I need to. If I'm going to get the attention of a reader, I need to be worthy of that attention and I need to be as clear and concise and friendly and vulnerable and simple as I can possibly be, so I can take their attention and not hold it for a moment more than I need to, and then, you know, give it back to them. So, yeah, for me, if I'm putting together a message, I really need to focus on who is the recipient of this message.

52:57

The military taught me that too. I remember when I was enlisted we had this PFE they called it at the time the Promotion Fitness Examination. It had all these topics in there and one of them was like how to public speak, and there was these steps to being a good public speaker. And the very first question is, or the very first principle, analyze your audience. That is the essence of communication.

53:19

Who is listening to this? Because if I'm talking to, you know, a phd from harvard, that's not the same as talking to a housewife in Utah. So, okay, who is the recipient of this? And I guess, if I had to like say who is the recipient, who is the reader, I would say there's somebody like me. They've never done psychedelics before, they're a little bit afraid and they actually don't have much of an idea what they're doing. Okay, there's my reader, and not that other people, academics or psychonauts couldn't, you know, enjoy or get something out of the book? But like, no, no, I need to go for the person like me who's struggling, who's curious about psychedelics but doesn't really know how to start speaking of audiences, I want to ask you one more question before my final question.

54:04 - Chase (Host)

Sure, there's a graduating class of new boots, boot camp, air Force, army, marines, whatever. If you could turn and face them on the ceremony floor and prepare them for whether that's two year enlistment or 25 years, like yourself, if you could prepare them through the lens of mental health, what would you tell them and why?

54:39 - Ben (Guest)

I would tell them that asking for help is strength. I was very afraid to ask for help. That felt to me like weakness, but it's actually strength and honesty. And there was a pivotal moment in my journey of healing that changed, and it was a moment of asking for help. When I, five years ago, when I walked into the emergency room of a VA hospital and asked for help, that was the moment that changed my life. That was being honest, and I don't want you out there to wait to get to where I got before you asked for help. Ask early on and save yourself from going through the pain that I went through. Asking for help is honesty, it's integrity and it's strength. This healing journey, it takes courage, it takes guts and it's not weakness. It's actually the manliest thing you can do.

55:58 - Chase (Host)

Could not agree more. Yeah, Could not agree more. My last question ever forward those two words, how do they land on you, what do they mean to you here today? How do you, Benjamin, live a life ever forward?

56:16 - Ben (Guest)

I think living ever forward is knowing where you are going and doing what needs to be done to get there. I am in a really beautiful position in life. I know exactly what I want to be doing in this world and there is nothing that's going to stop me from doing it. I am as odd as this sounds. I am on a mission of healing, loving and living, and that is the rest of my life. That is my ever forward.

56:52 - Chase (Host)

There's never a wrong or right answer. Thank you for your interpretation. Guys listening, watching, check out Benjamin's work. You can get his book now, trip of a Lifetime the Psychedelic Guide to Healing, loving and Living, available anywhere. They get books Amazon, I'm sure, available on just Amazon right now. Okay, great, did you do an audio book by chance?

57:12 - Ben (Guest)

The audio book is Amazon, I'm sure, available on just Amazon right now. Okay, great, did you do an audiobook by chance? The audiobook is coming. I haven't recorded it yet, but I do almost all my reading via audiobook, so it's coming I love when the authors read their book for the audiobook.

57:20 - Chase (Host)

It's just I don't know if you're going to do this, because we're time traveling right now. This is live in November. We're talking now, maybe it's out but I love when authors read their own work and we kind of usually get a little offshoot. Sometimes I found, especially on audible, my favorite audiobook app, they'll do a little sidebar or an extra that you can hear the emphasis, you can hear the emotion and something like this.

57:40 - Ben (Guest)

I think that would go a long way, yeah yeah, it will absolutely be in my own voice, yeah amazing. Well, sir, thank you thank you, it's been a pleasure.