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After leaving the Navy, I was doing cocaine, popping pills, and drinking over a fifth of vodka a day. Then, I had a 'death experience' that changed everything.
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of Business Insider
Posted: July 18th, 2025
https://www.businessinsider.com/after-navy-drinking-and-drug...
I had been a SEAL for five and a half years. After that, I worked as a contractor with the CIA. When that ended, I crashed—hard. I got into sleeping pills. I was using opiates. Eventually, I moved out of the country and started living in Medellín, Colombia. That's where I got really into cocaine. Eventually, I hit a point where I knew I couldn't keep going. A friend told me about psychedelic therapy, and I decided to try it. The first was Ibogaine. It's a 12-hour experience. I basically watched my entire life play out from a different perspective. After the Ibogaine effects wore off, I did another psychedelic called 5-MeO-DMT, sometimes called the "God molecule." The trip is described as an ego death, or death experience. It was the most intense, intuitive thing I've ever felt. I came out of it seeing the world differently. For the first time in my life, I realized everything is connected. That hit me in a way nothing else ever had. When I came back from that psychedelic experience, I didn't need the pills anymore. I didn't need the vodka. I quit everything. And for the first time in a long time, I was fully present with my family. That experience changed everything. It gave me a second chance. That's why I started talking about this publicly. I wanted other veterans ... to know there's a way out. A lot of them have been through the same thing — addiction, trauma, broken families, suicidal thoughts. When they hear that someone else made it through, they start to believe that maybe they can too.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on psychedelic medicine and healing the war machine.
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