Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #367 Beyond The Cage w/ Ian Mccall

Episode Date: August 14, 2024

Ian McCall is a retired American Mixed Martial Arts World Champion, Psychedelic Research Advocate, Decriminalize California Event Director, Performance Coach & Mentor.   From mastering martial arts to becoming an advocate for the healing potential of psychedelics. Ian was marked by personal struggles but overcame addiction and a tumultuous life through the transformative power of self-actualization & plant medicines. He actively supports scientific and spiritual approaches to psychedelics, particularly in aiding athletes and veterans in their healing processes.   Connect with Ian here: Instagram The McCall Method   Our Sponsors: - Pique's Nandaka provides sustainable, all-day energy and makes you feel like you’re doing something good for your body! Try Pique and get up to 20% off plus a FREE rechargeable frother and glass beaker when you purchase exclusively at Piquelife.com - GO to MagicBag.co that is DOT CO, and use code: KKP at checkout! - Monetary Metals is providing a true alternative to saving and earning in dollars by making it possible to save AND EARN in gold and silver. Click link below for a great discount! monetary-metals.com/kkp - If there’s ONE MINERAL you should be worried about not getting enough of... it’s MAGNESIUM.  Go now to magbreakthrough.com/kingsbufree and get your bottle of Magnesium Breakthrough for FREE today!   Connect with Kyle: I'm back on Instagram, come say hey @kylekingsbu Twitter: @kingsbu  Fit For Service Academy App: Fit For Service App  Our Farm Initiative: @gardenersofeden.earth  Odysee: odysee.com/@KyleKingsburypod  Youtube: Kyle Kingbury Podcast  Kyle's Website: www.kingsbu.com - Gardeners of Eden site   If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe & leave a 5-star review with your thoughts!   We always love to hear feedback and are interested in what you want to learn. Reach out to us on social media!

Welcome to the podcast, everybody. We have a fantastic guest today, Ian McCall. Ian was somebody that I knew, not well, but had met a few times back in the fight game. And he was one of the OGs from the pit with Chuck Liddell, John Hackleman, Antonio Benuelos. And much like my buddy, Tim Kennedy, you know, who was a regular there, I just didn't know him that well when I was fighting and when they were fighting. And, you know, I did most of my training up North at AKA, but I followed these guys because I loved them all. And I love their style. These were guys that could bang. Every one of them had a left hook. Every one of them had a head kick and every one of them fought like their life

depended on it. And I just loved the raw fucking aggression that I saw out of that camp really early on before there were super camps and like that these guys were that and it was really cool to see from the outside then now years later you know ian got a hold of me through fit for service and saw what i was doing with aubrey and been following us on the psychedelic front and he himself had been making big waves in the study in the science of psychedelics. Really cool. Plugged in Ian's plugged in with some of the best in the who's who, uh, within that field. And they're doing some really rad research and working with high level operators to different people,

athletes and beyond. And it was just, it's long overdue that I had them on the podcast and, you know, because it's our first, I really wanted to know his story. He breaks that down and it's, it's deep, man. It's a really, really rad story filled with challenge and beauty. And, um, I had no clue the depth of where this guy had been in some bad spots before in my life. Um, suicidal at one point in college, you know, thought I had done all the worst drugs, but Ian takes the cake. He is a true comeback story and a beautiful story and just an amazing human that I'm happy to call my friend. Check out our sponsors. They make the show possible. And if you have any interest in working with me or Aubrey Marcus or Eric Godsey or Caitlin Howe or Violana, fitforservice.com is the place to go. We have

our final event in Sedona. It's coming up at the end of September. You cannot sign up for the classes right now, but you can just come to the event if you want. And I'd love to have you there and then stick around because Malibu is our final event of the year and you can pick the classes. I'm teaching physically fit, which is really a holistic approach to all things health and wellness. We cover everything from fitness to finding out which diet is the best for you to carbohydrate management to everything in between.

And beyond that too, the mentality, what is the mindset necessary to have the body of your dreams and to sustain that goal in a way that works with both your schedule and your demands. Because everyone that I've talked to usually has some excuse. You know, I've got two kids, we've got a farm, I've got the podcast, I've got fit for service coaching, I've got private coaching, and that doesn't leave a whole lot of time to do stuff. And yet I'm still

able to hold on to one of the best bodies that I've ever had, you know, and that's comparing it not lightly to where I was when I fought in the UFC. I don've ever had, you know, and that's comparing it not lightly to where I was when I fought in the UFC. I don't have that kind of cardio, but my body feels and operates at its best. And that's because of the practices that I teach in physically fit, mentally fit Eric Godsey, and so many other awesome classes there. And of course, what we're known for six years of putting the best events together, ones that are transformative that bring people together and build community. And you were sure to absolutely love fit for services event. So please meet us out in Sedona for that. It'll be end of September,

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What's up, brother? Good to have you on the podcast. very good to see you thank you for having me absolutely well long time coming definitely a long time coming you know i when i was at on it um they would still pick some of my guests and i realized very quickly that the fighter who had retired or at least you know been under the bulk of their career was a lot a lot of much better guests because they didn't have the tunnel vision of being in the game, you know, and the fighters that were still in the game, uh, were quite repetitive. You know, it was almost like they were doing a, uh, a UFC, you know, where they make you sit down before the fight and like,

do it a hundred times on how you're going to beat the guy's ass. And it's all on the date that you have coming up. I was like, yeah, I kind of need more than that. If we're going to do this longer format hour, hour and a half. But you've been doing some really cool shit. We've both found ourselves in a very similar space in working with plant medicines. And you've taken that much further than I have. as far as working with Novitsky and really trying to get fighters looked at and getting people down to the Amazon all the way to everything that you're into now with the studies that you're putting together. And I want to dive into all that. I think it's really remarkable, and that's the reason I'm having you here.

But as with all podcasts, I want to know the story of you. I want to know the story of Ian. Talk about growing up. What was life like? When did you first start fighting and all that good stuff and um and what got you to where you are today cool so martial arts is the foundation of my life that there always has been since i was four years old i started kung fu um got a black belt by the time i was 13 um or junior black belt as they say and then i saw obviously the first couple of UFCs came out

when I was a kid, and I wanted to do it right away. I was like, that's it. That's the thing I'm going to do. Granted, I was tiny. I've always been small. I was born premature. The internet says I'm 5'5". It's not really true.

But I was always getting in fights. I got kicked out of, excuse me. I got kicked out of every private school in this area that I can think of, um, fighting, you know, I was just a spark plug and I knew that's what I wanted, you know, to be a fighter, to be a world champion. And I found jujitsu and wrestling when I was 13. Um, you know, when, how old are you? Uh, 40, just turned 40.

Okay. Well, I'm 42. So we're right around the same age. it's interesting no i don't want to derail you but like kids now like my son's in jiu-jitsu he's nine years old and it's like this is available to him since he was born like this shit was brand new when we were coming out you know like brand new okay go ahead go ahead exactly But exactly. And it just gave me the spark. I was a weird kid. And I was sickly growing up. I had a lot of ear infections, a lot of horrible. I still have just some issues.

I live an incredibly healthy life, but it's more allergies, as you can see right now. I don't know why I'm all congested today. But that's even more of a reason why i've taken so much interest in health you know i wanted to be a scientist as a kid and then i found fighting and i was like okay science can take a back seat you know i've always had a higher intellect than most but i wasn't able to perform in school later on in my life i found out i'm on the spectrum which you know when a doctor told me that, I was like, wait, what? And I was like, okay. I mean, yeah, it makes sense.

But can we get back to mom for a second? That's the direction I want to go. I don't give a fuck about being autistic. I'm 36. But that led to my hyper focus of things. That led to my lack of focus on other things. That led to my weird life skills or lack of life skills um and i had an amazing childhood you know granted i was born premature so this

will come in later in the story where my body my mother's body was rejecting me you know and i didn't know how much that was going to affect me in life um childhood was amazing then you know my parents started to split when I was 12. And that really threw me off because I had an incredible family life. I still have an incredible family. It was just, it was splintered by some very fucked up shit that happened to my family, to my mother, to other women in my family, you know, where I'm going with this. And it just caused such a ripple in my life that I turned dark. You know, I was super depressed. And I was super just, I mean, I started smoking weed when I was eight years old. I started taking psychedelics when I was 12. You know, MDMA, LSD was first mdma was shortly after um i've always been exploring my consciousness my brain i love drugs you know as a kid um i'm finally coming out of that like i'm 40 years old you know it's it's been since really my my last ayahuasca trip three and a half years ago but of

course there's been playful lab dabbling since then. And I'm still not a purist, obviously. I'm going to do ayahuasca in a few weeks or in a few days, I should say. And I've been on my dieta and I'll be on a dieta after. We'll see how I feel then. But I'm not opposed to anyone doing anything or myself doing something. It's just not right now. I finally reached that part of my life where I can say that, which is nice because I was constantly chasing something because I was constantly going through something. I was magnetized seeing all the things I didn't really want in my life. But by the time I was 15, I ended up in a gang.

And you think a kid that grew up part of the 1%, what gangs? I'm in Orange County. These are all rich kids. kids well we were a gang we were a bunch of shitty kids and most of them were not partaking in the selling of of drugs like i was i sold tons of pills and coke and weed and my whole life um sold a lot of bad things uh you know i was also robbing drug dealers by the time i was 15 you know because i knew how to fight i could beat up grown men at the beach because there was no amateur circuit like that um i was very misguided you know and confused my dad was always gone and not to blame him but he was out

making all the money and he was running the family empire and i was just alone you know and i made some fucking bad choices as a kid. Because these were, I liked tough people. I liked people that took care of each other. I liked, and that was the friends I found. And yes, we were troublemakers. Yes, we were a gang. We were causing, doing a lot of dumb things.

But whatever. You know, I'm not mad at the young version of myself. It's just things you do as a kid. And yeah, of course, if there was kids like that in my town right now i would go kick the shit out of them uh because i needed someone to kick the shit out of me back then but no one could at 15 no one could beat me up and i'm kind i was beating up dads at parties and i was just doing all kind of going to college towns just to pick fights like it was we were menaces um and that finally stopped when i started going to college in san munoz obispo um i got away from all that stuff i started basically living on chuck liddell's

couch and antonio vanuelos you know two of my best friends in the whole universe chuck was my mentor and you know that's where i met you was with them that was a long time yes um they were such good people but they kept the party going the party was heavy heavy heavy heavy back then mma fighters were looked in the same vein as as as porn stars or strippers and i was hanging out with chuck zito and the hell's angels and these other gangsters and mobsters and we were the fighter we were the the fighters that hung around and we got paid a bunch of money. And we always had beautiful women around that were very promiscuous. And it was a wild time. It was fun. I was 19 flying to Vegas privately with all these people and just living every visceral experience you'd ever want to live

as a man and being brought up as the next one. Because Antonio Manuelos was world champion at my weight when I was 19 in college. And Antonio I've known and Jake Shields, like those guys since I was 15 because they came down to my hometown to wrestle. And I go into the gym and at 19, I put it on Antonio. And everyone was like, who the fuck is this guy? You know, like what where did you come from so they took me out of their way and then I could party just like them people were like oh

they they corrupted you I was like no I was corrupt they gave me an outlet for degeneracy and and life was either training extremely hard like a monk or life was a an orgy of drugs and women and just fun with your friends it wasn't real life obviously um it's not the UFC you see today this is a real sport that we built and of course I miss the old days but that's not appropriate you know those men are are dying in front of us and that's why I do the work I do, because my friends are all dying. But we'll get to that later. I had a very tumultuous time coming up, started some businesses and fell off. My family was very supportive of some great ideas I had that should have made me extremely rich by now, but they all were things that I ruined. I started an automotive transportation company

to move cars for my family dealership. And of course, it wasn't just transporting cars. It was a product. I was a dumb kid. And I liked that lifestyle for some reason. I don't know why. I had a great family. No one ever pushed me in that direction.

I mean, my dad did smuggle cannabis around the world in the 70s, but not because he was a gangster. It was because he wanted to see the world. His brother, his best friend died in a car accident when he was 16. His brother was 18. So he turned 18 and took off. I think he moved out at 17 actually. You know, traveled the world smuggling cannabis and nothing anyone ever would ever die for, he said. But that has really cool stories. But I went kind of dark. But when I finally met into the UFC, the MMA world, I was still hanging out with this crazy element of darkness.

It was the gangster style. Of course, I was out of it now. I just was a fighter. I was a commodity. I was a trophy or a racehorse at this point. But my blunders, my in and out of jail, you know, for dumb things that I did, still in my early 20s, you know, landed me in rehab for the second time. And I'd had fights, obviously.

I started fighting pro when I was 18. They wanted me to fight at 16 on a reservation here in California, and that would have been the year 2000. Not appropriate. But they're like, we'll wait. I'm sure I can beat up a dad at a party, but can I beat up, you know, Cleber or somebody who is actually really good, especially for back then?

I was like, ah, you know, we'll see. So fast forward, I fight, I fly out to Hawaii, I fight a man who's ranked in the world, who's Shuto, which is one of the original MMA organizations in the world. I got ranked in the world my first fight, is one of the original MMA organization world um I got ranked in the world my first fight like top 15 or top 25 and um I was kind of always this weird enigma because I was always in trouble and always in jail or always out just like strung out not strung out

um so when I get out of rehab the second time you know I had amassed a pretty good record I fought in WEC I did okay you know I was like I don't think I lost to Dominic Cruz and Charlie Valencia. The only people to beat. And I fought Dominic with a broken leg and I was sober. And I think I could have beaten him. I just couldn't move that much. I came out of rehab and I was basically living at the gym and I was sober. I was, I hadn't, I was, didn't have my shit together at all.

I was just, at least I was there. It was just a hollow shell of myself, but I could still fight. And coach goes, hey, you need money, right? And I was like, mm-hmm, I do. Yes, I'm trying not to sell drugs anymore. So he goes, fight Jeff. I said, I know I can beat Jeff. Bow, my teammate just beat Jeff in three and a half minutes.

I'm going to beat him in two and a half. And that was the bet. And I had world-class people coming through the gym, or I was going to places constantly to just bar with people. And I remember I went to a seminar with Uriah and Benavides, and I tuned Benavides up in front of everybody. And this was when he was number two in the world behind Deepwood. Or no, he was number, whenever he was in the world, 35.

Then they wanted to build 25. Uriah and you need a fight man like as much as i used to make fun of those guys those guys have always been really good to me um you know they're good dudes and i mean joey wrote me a poem after we fought uh pretty pretty nice um and so i just came out of this this this you know rehab you know, rehab and that shitty life. And the fact that I was looking at like eight years in prison. Um, so I'm like, yes, I'm going to go down this path. I, I, I get that fight. And then I was getting this tattoo on my chest right here. And, um, I saw that as a good excuse to take Oxycontin and some other drugs.

And I died. I was sober for 18 months and I fucked up. And it wasn't like they gave me Narcan and sent me home. I was in the hospital for like 10 days. I aspirated. I was on the operating table for 24 hours. My brother finally told me like a year ago that story. He took some mushrooms and he told me.

It was like, I didn't know that. Um, really intense. But so I come out of it and I'm in the hospital. I didn't tell anybody. I didn't tell my coaches. I didn't tell my agent. I didn't tell anybody. And, uh, agent calls at Jason house goes, what's up, man? Where are you at? I got a new fight for you. Well, uh, I'm in the hospital. I overdosed. And of course he wanted to come see me. I said, no, you know, I'm not, I'm in the hospital. I overdosed. And of course, he wanted to come see me. I said, no, you know, I'm not. I'm not seeing anyone right now. Hold on, buddy.

You're muted. Whatever, buddy. You just. Oh, ponder. I guess I was in the hospital. I was in a dark place, to say the least. I came out and well, while, you know, the fight that I was in a dark place to say the least uh i came out and well while you know the fight that i was in the hospital the fight he had me sign was against uh formiga jucia formiga who is

at the time was the number one ranked 20 pounder in the world i just fought at 135 and i was like yes let's do this you signed for me i was like yeah you, let's do this. You signed for me. I was like, yeah, I'll be there. So I signed to fight the best guy in the world a few days after a massive overdose, and I died. Three months later, whatever it was, I went in there, and I beat the hell out of him, because I knew I was the best in the world.

I had known that since I was a kid. Everyone always saw that in me, but I'm not the only one like this, by the way. I had known that since I was a kid. Everyone always saw that in me. But I'm not the only one like this, by the way. There's more people. Maybe I'm on the higher end of the spectrum, a little more accomplished and more talented than most, just gifted by God. But I knew that. I knew I was just better than everybody at this certain thing. And I took off. And I went out there and I beat him. And then I won a few more fights. And UFC said, hey, Sean Shelby reached out.

And I remember sitting in my kitchen and reading texts. And I was like, oh, my God, babe. Babe, my wife was, you know. I was like, this is fucking incredible. They want to build. He says, you keep fighting the way you're fighting. We're going to build you a division. You know, we're going to make you a star.

And I was like, cool. Conor wasn't around yet. I was marketable i'm a good business person uh again blessed with the intellect so i can talk um and perform and um you know i um it sounds douchey but i was already hanging out with a bunch of celebrity and dating a bunch of model chicks and like it's just they like that sort of thing. They always have. Now it's like mandatory for an influencer, but this is before influencers. They just saw this package that they liked and ran with it. I was the best in the world.

I won that world title. I went on to beat Dustin Ortiz. I went on to beat Darryl Montague for the belt at Tachi Palace. And Tachi Palace is hollow ground for fighting. I became the best in the world, ranked pound for pound above Jon Jones at one point. And I was ranked pound for pound number one on Sherdog, which was kind of wild.

But I won that world title in the parking lot of an Indian casino in Central California. And for me, I love that place. Most people are like, this is a shithole. You know, it's, it's, it's, it's, you're in Lemoore, California, uh, not much around besides meth labs in that place. And, um, you know, I, I won the world title. My, my, you know, girlfriend at the time, her fiance is like, Hey, let's, you know, she's about to burst. She's so pregnant. We got married the next day.

She goes, let's go drive it home. And I was like, fuck yeah, let's go. We got married. She's the daughter of Ron Duguay, a famous hockey player that married supermodel Kim Alexis. Now he's about to marry Sarah Palin. Sarah, daughter-in-law's grandma Sarah. It's a pretty funny interaction.

I get to hang out with her. But so, you know, I finally get to the UFC, and my dreams are there. I'm making a bunch of money from sponsors already. I've got so much shine. You know, the UFC is taking care of me like crazy. Getting paid more than most. And the night of weigh-ins, I weigh in.

I don't mean to throw my ex-wife under the bus on anything because we were both crazy. She caused such a ruckus the night before my fight. She tried to stab my sister-in-law at dinner in front of a bunch of UFC people. Grabbed a knife and swung it at them. She was already using and I wasn't. What was said to get her to take a swing at somebody with a knife?

My PTSD has blocked a lot of this out. Okay. I mean, this was, I wish I knew so I could psychoanalyze it a little better. My ex-wife and I had a very, very dark relationship. Yeah, so that was the night before the biggest fight of my life. And I still won the fight the next day. And sure, I got screwed on the judges' scorecards. Something that will forever change the trajectory of my life

because I went upstairs and started doing Oxycontin again with my ex-wife. Even though they turned it over and they said, I just can't catch a fucking break. You know, I can't. And when I get in pain, that's what I would go do is chase the high. They ruined my moment. And selfishly, like a spoiled brat, I started doing dumb things. And by the time I thought I had my rematch

that I should have won, a few months later, Demetrius had gotten better. I had gotten bigger and fatter and slower and I'm drugs again, so obviously my head wasn't there. More drama happened before the week of, you know, fight week with her.

And again, I'm the magnet that draws these things in. That got even worse, my addictions. Then from there, I think I went five and two in my career filled with the nerdies. Up and down, up and down, up and down. They kept pushing me as a superstar.

I've shown up to three different countries and girls were crying. That's not something I ever wanted to do. It like michael jackson shit yeah bro like weird uh and and tmz's calling were you dating and all this douchey shit um and of course with chuck being my mentor he says you look every every every uh you know fan in the face you shake every hand you hug them you talk to them you sign every autograph you give them the shirt off your back each of those girls that were crying i literally took my shirt off i was like you sign it there you go have a good day gotta go uh you know one girl i took out to conor mcgregor's party after there is where you are and i was like you want to go

to connor's party and she was the mind blown um that's an important point hold on on. I want to jump in and say that's an important point. I only got to spend two camps really living with Chuck because we had the same management with Cook and Zika Entertainment. That was towards the end of Chuck's career at the UFC. And that was something I'll never forget. Every time we'd be out to eat, we ate out pretty much every meal. Anybody that would stop, we would joke, he'd have a fork

in his hand with food on it and it's going to his mouth. And it's like someone sleeks their hand in between his hand before he can get the bite in his mouth and says, Connor, can I get an autograph? Or sorry, Chuck, can I get an autograph? He sets it down, stands up, big ear to ear grin, signs whatever they want, takes photos. He never got got mad he never got frustrated with it and it never got old form and i was like this is one of the most genuine fucking dudes i've ever met because it was him it was through and through who he was to do that and like that still rubs off on me absolutely to this day not that i've ever had a quarter of the star power of chuck liddell but if someone recognizes me from the podcast or something like that, like you have my full fucking intention.

And Chuck taught me that. And it was job to engage with these people on that level, to give them everything. Cause most athletes are not that accessible and they're kind of dicks. It really bothers me. Like football players, basketball players, um,

baseball players are always pretty cool. It seems cause they're rednecks, but, um, you know, I'm just like, why? Like it's someone else's job to pull you. But, you know, I'm just like, why? Like, it's someone else's job to pull you away.

Say, hey, I'm sorry. Ian's busy right now. We got to go. My brother, my agent, whoever I'm with, it's their job. And then my team always knew that because I kept a small circle. And I always did. I have a lot of friends, sure. A ton of friends.

I'm very lucky to have, blessed to have so many people in my life. But've got very small circle of people that i really um so you know the rest of my career was drama i got arrested by the dea while i was in the ufc that wasn't a good look uh i got ratted on by somebody it wasn't even true like it ended up being the guy that was banging my wife. He ratted on me. This is some Maury Bovich shit. What the fuck, dude? This is a guy that I was best friends with in high school that screwed my high school girl.

He's two for two. He's winning. But then I tried to kick his ass and then my ex-wife tried to stab me, so that didn't work. So I ran out of the house and I didn't want to get stabbed. That's Jerry Springer shit now. This keeps getting better. I'm just all for the rumbling.

She doesn't get mad if she sees it. Whatever. We're cordial. We raise our daughters together and she's an amazing person. She's in charge too. I can't be in charge of a 12-year-old little girl. Ha, got it right.

She's an extremely good helicopter mom. I love it. By the way, my 12-year-old has a nose ring, a diamond in her tooth, and a boyfriend. 12 to 21 all of a sudden. Weird. So by the end of my career, I was so broken. You know, I got, I enjoy this fact. On my 34th birthday, I got knocked out in front of 40,000 people in Japan. And Horiguchi sent me out of my shield. That's why. It's because he sent me out of my shield. I'm out that way. Nine seconds.

Never thought I'd get knocked out in nine seconds. My chin was gone. I was snorting Oxycontin in the bathroom, you know, literally before I walked out. Like, you got five minutes. I was like, I'll be right back. So stupid. So obviously those were not good times.

I mean, they were really good times to be in Japan, but it wasn't healthy. I know DMT had already shown me, hey, it's time to grow up, Peter. Like, it's time to retire., Peter. It's time to retire. This is like the last fight. Let's go. And man, I had already been through so much emotionally, physically.

I had a major traumatic brain injury when I was 15, snowboarding up in Tahoe. I hit my head really bad. I was in the hospital for a couple of days. So obviously the shelf life of my career wasn't going to be that long. So let's be honest. I had already fought for 16 years as a professional. You know, I was doing,

getting punched since I was four. But I had stuck a loaded gun in my mouth on multiple occasions. By the time I retired, I was so addicted to fentanyl. When fentanyl was not getting you high enough, I really sat back and I was like, okay, this is killing me. Like, why?

Obviously, there's something else. And I looked at my kid. I looked at my life. I either said, I kill myself, or I, because I had tried so many things, or I get sober for this little girl, and I keep it together. And again, my ex-wife and I were a mess together.

So I was like, she's not, I just said, I don't know what's going to happen. And that's how I have to do my shit. And the UFC was behind my back this whole time. That's why they trust me so much with what I do is because they gave me transcranial magnetic stimulation and all these other modalities to help heal my brain. And TMS made me really, really almost kill myself.

And I've heard amazing stories out of it. But for me, they said, hey, at two weeks, you're going to have a little emotional blip. And I was like, okay. And I was still using pills back then, sort of heroin, probably, I'm sure. The emotional blip was wild. It was so gnarly. I'd be crying in the fetal position for out of nowhere, like multiple times a day. It was really, really, really hard. So, you know, I, I, I looked into how we healed my daughter. She got very sick when she was two, when I was fighting,

that was top, top of my game. We stressed her little body out so much with stress, you know, whether it was myself, her mother, Shane Del Rosario, who was top of my game. We stressed her little body out so much with stress. Whether it was myself, her mother, Shane Del Rosario, who was helping me raise her, he died in our house. He died in my arms. My little girl got stressed out and then she got vaccines and she got juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. And we sealed her through diet exercise first, physical therapy, massage, cryotherapy, and high-dose cannabis oil. And, you know, getting a toddler, a five-year-old, whatever, two to five, getting her high is kind of funny, but kind of not.

You know, if she was in real pain, I would get stoned with her and we'd hang out all day in my cartoon, you know. To see her go through that pain, not be able to walk, not be able to think straight, like all the brain fog and just all that stuff was so heavy. It was dark. It was, again, a really dark time, especially when I was – I would get an injury.

I've had tons of injuries and surgeries in the UFC. Her going through that, like when she had that, I tore my hip. Really bad in my groin. So we were both limping around like a year and a half probably apiece. Well, everything that i had learned with my nutritionist uh you know eric or the doctors and scientists that i knew all the things that i studied because i studied them selfish for my own performance because i wanted i wanted to be the best in the world this is what you do yours this is the most selfish pursuit that you can go on so i had to understand my body you know like i'm not outside of fighting i had to understand the

nutrition and the fuel i had to understand the psychology of this person that i'm trying to torment for eight weeks until i kill them in a cage there's so many things that i studied they're so obsessive well i learned about the inflammatory system and the inflammatory responses to things and chemical interactions within the body when you put certain things in it and so it's not just one mechanism that works it's usually a whole cascade of things that happen well uh back then i was friends with you know joe rogan and and we talked a lot about psychedelics my dad always talked about psychedelics my brother uh was you know in the psychedelics and My brother was into psychedelics and I had already been taken, but I didn't understand the science of it. My dad always said how their medicine for

native peoples, and I am over 10% Native American. So I started studying and I started microdosing. And luckily I have really cool friends. I grew up in the cannabis industry. And one day, one of my best friends in the league goes, hey, try this. Look what we made. I was like, oh, this is what I've been wanting to find. Great. Okay. I started taking them. The change in my brain, the access to information, the absorption of information, healing, and then I just went down this wild rabbit hole of taking way too much microdosing all the time. I mean, I needed to heal. I mean, I was microdosing all week, and I would take 10 grams on a Saturday. And sometimes we would rent a hotel room and party with our friends,

or sometimes I was just in bed with my girlfriend. And I also started to take a lot of peptides. That's another big thing that I've been working with for about seven years is peptides and stem cells. And you want the fountain of youth. You know, peptides are incredible. You were commenting, you're like, oh, you look good, man. I'm a brick shithouse, and I just turned 40.

I'm stronger than I've ever been. I have lost a step speed-wise, but I'm still quick. I'm still, you know, I was just sparring with Chito Vera, getting him ready. He's number four in the world. I'm rolling a step speed-wise, but I'm still quick. I was just sparring with Chito Vera, getting him ready. He's number four in the world. I'm rolling with the Rotolo twins. I swear I almost got tied, but come tell them that. They're two of the best in the world. I've known them since they were little, so I'm so proud of them. And the fact that I just get to do this still. The science that I have learned over the years through my own education,

but also through the community that I have. And that started with one scientist, Irina Modinkovic, a woman I was dating for a few years. And you met her, didn't you? She was from Serbia, one of the smartest humans I've ever met in my life. She educated me on everything. So by the time I met her, I understood the science of psychedelics.

I had physically healed my brain. I was spiritually bankrupt. I was a party boy still, doing way too much drugs, sleeping with way too many women, cheating on my girlfriend constantly, to being a douchebag. And I finally met this woman who was just like six feet tall and beautiful and was just teaching me as a professor in my face the whole time. The first night I met her, I was on the couch like, oh shit, this woman's intense.

And we started a couple year relationship and we lived together during COVID. So during COVID, there was a giant whiteboard on the wall. You know, she was a UCLA professor and just was very good at teaching me about all things science and spirituality. And all walked a life. And we had our first, my first real, real shamanistic experience in, I do believe it was 2018. I can't remember what year it was. we had our first, my first real, real shamanistic experience.

And I do believe it was 2018. I can't remember what year it was. I think 2019. I went deep on the reservation here in San Diego. There's a sticker on my phone, but it's covered up right now. Church of the People for Creator and Mother Earth. And Shane Norte is the, he hates the word shaman because it's so bastardized and manipulated into something it shouldn't.

So he's just a healer. He's a spiritual guide. And it's on the La Jolla reservation. We have the Womkiss, which is like a teepee without a top. We go in there and routinely take very high doses, 10 to 30 gram doses of mushrooms. And you sit in front of the fire. There's no music.

There's no chanting. There's story talk. You have to talk about what you're doing, your intentions and all that, intention setting and a lot of stuff you'll chat and end up talking about. But you learn from the fire. As you know, fire was the start of creation. Our energies also started with that creation at that that moment when fire started that same fire that was then is now in front of you it holds all the

wisdom that it has ever had it's all the wisdom we've ever had you know and sorry i don't know what i drank so started you know going deep that was the first real vision that I had, outside of the manifestations in my head as a kid. My first deep, deep vision. And I mean, I could get into it, but it goes deep into what I'm doing now. Do you remember Gladiator, the movie? Crow, where he's in the tent, the red-lit tent? I was in a red-lit tent just like that.

I always thought I would be the general, the warrior. And I wasn't. I was Marcus Aurelius. I was in a red-lit tent just like that. I always thought I would be the general, the warrior, and I wasn't. I was Marcus Aurelius. I was a scholar. People were scribing down what I was saying. That's kind of what happens now. I'm part Greek, which is cool. I love that movie.

But I'm also – Eleusis has been a big part of my life. You've talked to Robert Forte. Robert Forte has been a friend of mine, my biggest fan, a mentor to me, you know, a man that wrote the book, The Road to Elusis. Being able to have people like him, like Irena, like Matthew Johnson, like Melissa Dawn, like Dr. James Fadiman, the list goes on. Of the amazing people like yourself, Aubrey. I mean, a part of yours, you guys just tinged for a little bit. To have the teachers I've had in my life,

I am so incredibly lucky. And even today, I mean, I've got Lindsay Briner, who's a neuroscientist and works with a bunch of executives in Silicon Valley. She's incredible. She's my Buddhist flow state coach. And then I have Jason Henderson, who ran SEAL Team 6 for 20 years and never lost a SEAL in 20 years of leadership at SEAL Team 6.

The deadliest fighting force ever. So I stopped serving medicine in 2019 because I wasn't doing it the right way. It was more of a party atmosphere, which still was a good safe container for people, but I knew I needed more. And the only time I serve medicine now is for those sort of people. We now have my nonprofit, Athens Journey Home, where we do all the research and have a mentorship group that's kind of a secret that Jason and I run. World champion athletes in all walks of sports, tier one operators, and I'll serve medicine

for those people. But I don't serve medicine anymore for anybody else. It's too much. It's too much for me. It takes a lot. Some people don't fully realize when they go down to the Amazon and they're like, hey, I got the recipe. I'm going to come back and be a shaman now.

And they've got six months of experience or a couple of years of experience. To do it well is exhausting it is it it takes everything out of it you know and it's not something i stopped years ago just for that very reason and that was only you know super close people in an inner circle and even that it's just like i'd rather have somebody else come in here with far more experience that's made it their life's work who can sing and then i don't have to fucking steer the ship i can just lay down and be good or i'm with people like aubrey you know we're like we don't really need

anyone at the helm we're all good we're all of the level you know and then i then i'm cool you know exactly i mean i have had people constantly asking me because i'm part of this bougie gym here lifetime fitness and everyone's like can we have a mushroom trip i'm like no i'll give you homework before and after i'll coach you but i'm'm not here to profit off a ceremony. It's not for me. I'm not poo-pooing it. If that's your thing, go for it. I just don't want to do it. And for me, I also don't feel like most of those people are ready to hear the things that the people I work with have to say when they're coming in. These men have killed thousands of people with their bare hands,

literal thousands of people for patriotism. And they're not there, as Hendo says, he's like, we signed an agreement to never talk about the things we have done. And he can't stand like the, everyone who has all the podcasts and everything. He's like, we were just where this is what we were supposed to do. We're not supposed to talk about it.

And I'm like, relax, old man, these kids these days with their podcast. But he's got a point, you know, they're not, we'll just talk about it.

And I'm happy they are, you know, I'm just talking contractually. And, and that's a big reason why I'm using athletes. Jesse Gould at the Hero Carts Project was like, hey, you need to start a nonprofit years ago. I was like, oh, I'll get there.

I finally have it. Because the veterans are supposed to be nameless and faceless, we now have names and faces with the people that we're giving medicine to to tell their stories. These athletes, when you think of any moment in time, any big sporting moment, okay, there's a 90 something percent chance that that athlete has a ton of brain damage. And I know that because these are all my friends. I mean, from all walks of life, the greatest athletes in the world come and sit on

this couch and my daughter walks out of that corner and looks like, oh shit, wow, who's this today? There's always somebody new here. I get the goats get to come up here. It's cool. It's a blessing. And to help, number one, those people heal because they all have tons of traumatic brain injury, but also to have them tell their stories because I call it the pollination effect. Melissa Dawn taught me that. And as the queen bee researcher I am, I'm giving these worker bees the information to go pollinate all those brains with the right information because, as you know, people cling to us athletes because we give them hope.

We give them hope in their mundane lives that they can never do the things that we've done, do for the further. Each time we go out there, you know, to perform for them. We put our bodies on the line for them. And most athletes are broke. Most athletes have no life skills because if you gave everything you have to that cause, to winning a title, to chasing gold, you lose a lot of stuff.

You never even learn it. Pay taxes, do these normal tasks that normal people do. Living alone and trying to figure this shit out over the last few years has been a lot. And I've got it. I'm good now. I found peace and solitude. My house is spotless. It looks great. But it's been an uphill battle. And I don't want the people, my fellow brethren, male and female, to be broken. And I want to heal them. But I also want to have them have tools, help them have tools and access to more people and coaches and tools to accomplish this stuff way faster. It took me years.

We can have a W-2 workbook. You have a whole workbook. I'm a certified coach through being true to you and to see the depth they put into their program. I'm like, oh, I don't even have to put in all this stuff. Of course, I want my coaches. Once the athletes go through shielding, we have our first retreat in September. And I need to raise the money.

I'm doing a horrible job of raising money right now as CEO. I know people have told me it's not my job, and I'm like, it still falls on me. That's the thing. I'm the CEO. But we're trying to raise enough money to take 10 athletes to the Ayahuasca Foundation in Peru where we have a lab. I work with Onaya Science. I have the best scientific team in the world. We have the first PhD of ayahuasca, Simon. You have Nige, who is a psychopharmacologist.

And you have Dr. Weifeng, who just gave a TED Talk in China. Three really strong UK researchers, young, looking to get after it. And yeah, we have a lab in the jungle. Pretty cool. So if I can take people down there, this first round by the way we're not going to do any science because of the ethics board and all the stuff we're trying to work through um this first run is to tell the stories we're going to shoot a little documentary and we're going to so it's also way cheaper because science is really expensive um but just to get the athletes down there and to have them tell their stories on camera, and obviously not during ceremony, you know, that's inappropriate,

but it's the pre and post. You know, it's catching up with them later on down the line to tell these stories. And then now that pollination effect is fully working. You know, if I can bring down, you know, 10 athletes that are that accomplished, you know, that means they have that many people who look up to them

for so many different reasons that can tell these stories and help change lives. Of course, not everyone is going to do ayahuasca. Not everyone wants to deal with shamanism or witchcraft or whatever they want to call it. I love it. That's my favorite part, but it's not for everybody.

We're looking into studying other things. Have you heard of new nautics? The intravenous DMT that Graham Hancock was just talking about on Rogan's show last time. Cool, I got to listen to that. So it looks like I'll be working with new nautics. Potentially, it looks like I'm working with it. We'll be studying intravenous extended state DMT.

So let's get rid of the shamanistic element and and with with ayahuasca there's so much more to it as you know with the gut bio and all the alkaloids all the things that are magical inside of it um that can help cure cancer that can help you know fix all these issues within the body so with that study that's why I have a scientific team. That's why I have the University of Melbourne, I do believe is the plaque we'll have on the wall for this one. That's why I have them,

because I have to understand that chemical interaction, reaction, all these things that happen throughout the body. And we're testing the human genome, the blood, the fincal matter, for the gut biome, testing everything we can in this body to see how the change. Well, with extended state PMT's we're studying the visionary state. And to have a company come to me for profit and say, hey, we want to work with your nonprofit. We want to do this.

But also, can you help us with coaching? Can you help us build all this out? I'm like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. How would you feel about us studying the visionary state? Because we know you're doing this already. And I was like, oh, the only reason I'm doing that other thing is because I have to. Because that's so in. If I want to sit in front of the UFC again for the third time, I don't want to miss again.

I've sat with them twice already. A study with Johns Hopkins University, which wasn't meant to be. It was for PTSD and addictions. They don't want to study that. And then University of Miami came at me and said, hey, we want to do a TBI study. Well, Cust and Terror still dropped the ball because of funding. Because UFC can't fund it, university won't fund it, and whatever pharmaceutical company that will go unnamed stopped. So I said that I don't want to sound like I'm talking trash. Things happen. If I want to bring this data back to the UFC or to PBR or to football or whoever it is, I have to make this look good. But now the other side, visionary state, that is so exciting because why do I take my athletes to go sit in the Womkish and stare in the fire?

Because that's where the visions come from. I need you to have a vision. If we're trying to accomplish this, there has to be a visionary state. We cannot discount the visionary state. It is the most important part of this. And you know that. And it's made me so depressed. For the last five years, no one wanted to study it.

And the other scientists that I'm friends with are like, I know, I know, I know. I'm like, but you're not doing anything about it. You're not helping me. I'm the one that has to fucking pull this off. And really, God, I'm kind of happy I am now. It's pretty cool. So, you know, to lead athletes there,

I think, say, you want to go to the jungle? No? Okay, well, let's go to a beach. We're on a small island country in the Caribbean. I don't know if I'm allowed to say which one, but we have a government license with no red tape, no university to get in our way to study whatever we want. There was like seven licenses given out four years ago, I do believe,

all throughout the Caribbean. Most people don't even know about this. But yeah, they're like, we need tourism. We want to bring in healing tourism, psychedelic tourism. And now we're going to be able to accomplish a lot of things with this. To have an amazing lab, to have all the different things we need, and to have good coaches around to lead people through the vision that I state, to help them get better because you know sometimes yes the visions are uh let's retire let's quit let's

let's let's change let's change our path and get into something more healing um you know people trip out on deontay wilder how bad he looked in his last fight because when they all bladed on ayahuasca yeah but you have aaron rogers so it happens when you have good coaches when you have a good mindset when you when you are pointed in the right direction you're not confused you know so um just to be able to study this visionary state and and build a team of coaches to lead people through it he's gonna be people will pay a lot for that you People will go and do that. And I think especially the biggest athletes out there. I'm always looking to do charity.

That's how I like to do things. So through the nonprofit, I'll be bringing people and studying the effects, of course, on the brain too. But I think we can drive a lot of for-profit dollars here with the people looking for that visionary state. Maybe without the shamanism. Maybe they just want to go to the Caribbean andbean and do it it's cool you have graham hancock talking about it after he said that on rogan's they had 6 000 applications put in wow yeah so you know maybe if i ever get on joe's again um we can get another six or more you know

like that's crazy to think of that and that's again for profit it's cool we all i mean everyone keeps pushing me in that direction like you should probably start making some money i've been doing this for long enough um but i don't know we'll get there so you know i have my studies i've been pushing i'm doing my own performance studies um you know pushing brands in the space like we've created so much. I've had so much time with this. My friends and I have created a marketplace, not just mushroom bars or not just a gummy, but from LSD products to everything you can think of.

And because humans need an altered state of reality to be happy, it seems, or to be just relief from life you know and to find themselves yeah and yeah whether it's you're trying to numb something or you're trying to get away and escape or you're trying to to elevate these medicines can help do all that you know because sometimes you do need to be numb you just need to fucking curl up in a ball and just just not deal with shit. I get it. But these medicines will inevitably lead you to self-work. Even the people that are doing it wrong or the people that are healing the wrong way,

it's hard to even say that word, the douchebags, you know what I'm saying, people that are annoying, you just don't like your flavor of healing um they're still being being better than they used to be that's the thing they're not getting worse um so we have gone up and out of our way because this is california and there's no laws here for this sort of stuff like there is but no one follows them um we we have labs just like in the cannabis industry it's the the same people. We're just, well, I guess we have legitimate scientists. We're not making it in the bathtub. All the molecules that are sourced, everything that we use is the top tier, highest grade.

Even you've seen the PDFs. Everything looks incredible because we know this is coming. And to understand that local law enforcement, the firemen, nurses, autistic children, young, old, sports, sick people, people in three-letter agencies, people on Capitol Hill, so many people are taking these medicines. I know that because I'm giving it to them and helping them or at least guiding them through it, saying, hey, this is where you should look. This is a safe space to buy this. This is where you're going to get that. Because people need that. The only thing they can take away from me is my freedom. And I've come to terms with that. I have. But I'm doing the Lord's work. I'm helping people. I'm part of churches. I'm part of a political movement.

You want to make a martyr out of me? I'm not making a bunch of money. If you want me to pay taxes, I am paying taxes. But there's no reason for them to come get me. And they've told me that, which is cool. That is cool. You know, because I work, again, you know, with special forces and military and governmental sort of people. I've always been connected, especially recently with them.

I'm like, you're good, man. Don't worry. We're looking for fentanyl. Like, we're trying to get bad people. You're not a bad person. So that's a relief. And now I've been on an exhaustive search for spiritualism for that, for the last, I'd say, years, five years.

I've really been on that search. I grew up Catholic. I'm still a Catholic, practicing catholic i'm now again practicing catholic because do i yes there's pedophilia pedophilia and all these people by the way every single religion has it um you know this is just that holy place that i go to pray and the guy talking i love what he says uh for the most part and i i'm used to the sitting and kneeling and standing and oh i mean that That's just what's programmed in my brain. The Eucharist has changed.

That's the one thing that's changed. Because I understand the Eucharist should be different. It shouldn't be wafer and wine. That wine just isn't it. I was about to serve ayahuasca at a Catholic church in San Francisco. And I don't serve ayahuasca, but a client of mine was dying of cancer. Through the research I've done, we got the okay from the priest.

I called the Ayahuasca Foundation. I was like, hey, am I going to piss anyone off by doing this? Am I going to go down there and they're going to try and... Is it going to go bad? They're like, no. What's your intention? Okay, you're good. Just get out of the way of the medicine just and that that was such a big relief to me because i held on to that for a week or two i was like i don't know if i should tell them um and sadly john passed away um before we could do that uh so you know i've lost two clients now

him and my cousin to als which als i knew was going to kill him you know but i've been feeding him psychedelics for two years before he died. But I saw the changes in these people, how amazing it was to see just their connection with their family and all that sort of stuff. And the spiritual teachings, whether that's through, again, Lindsey Briner, who's the Buddhist, or Jason Henderson, who's the Catholic, or Sotantar Sarai, my guru, my kundalini teacher, who came up with Yogi Bhajan, he's a gong master.

I sit and pray at every altar. I talk to my Muslim friends. I talk to my Jewish friends. I converse on a level that, you know, it's like a hobby to me. I like to travel the world and speak with spiritually, you know, high-level people. It's just, it's a hobby to me. I like to travel the world and speak with spiritually high-level people. It's a passion. And it's got me so far. And somehow it brought me back into Catholicism, which I didn't think would ever happen.

But I'm here, and I'm not complaining about it. Now with a good Catholic woman. It's just all fell into place. And yeah, I keep doing complaining about it. Now with a good Catholic woman. It's just all fell into place. And yeah, I keep doing it every day. I've been watching way too much politics, especially with ayahuasca coming up. I need to go dive back into ayahuasca. Or just the spiritualism in general.

I'm about to read the book, The Fellowship of the River from Dr. Joseph Tarfer. I haven't heard of it he's the one that started the church the first ayahuasca church in the u.s and down in arizona so yeah that's the long and the short of it you know we're um now at a place where i'm just very sober very happy very content with my life it's just good business is booming and it's beautiful you're doing great work in the world brother and yeah i'm so i'm so excited for all this too um been

following you from the early days and obviously you know we made contact because of what we're getting into and blew my mind that you were taking 30 grams on the regular i think i did that once and was like all right i'm good i think i'm good here. At the same time, you know, like you being connected with Forte and so many great teachers, Jim Fadiman was, you know, when he wrote the Psychedelic Explorer's Guide in 2014, Tim Ferris had him on like my whole microdosing regime started at that point due to his lineage and his knowledge and so much there. He was going to come on the podcast years ago but i think his wife was passing from cancer so that i got canceled but he's just a fucking beautiful human graham hancock's

just another i mean he's one of those other guys you know it's like for so many reasons i've been attracted to him and um he was one of the key the keynote speakers for the dmt dialogues which i'm sure you've read fantastic book for people that want to know more on DMT and psychedelics. And there's so much medicine layered into that, but basically they run a conference in the UK, each speaker, which was the who's who, you know, it was like Rupert Sheldrake. It was Graham Hancock. It was Dennis McKenna. It was all the biggest guys in the space. And they each got to really break down what they thought of DMT and the visions there. And a big piece of that book was in asking, you know,

for, cause, uh, who was the doctor that did the DMT? What was his name? From New Mexico? No, University of New Mexico,

Rick Strassman. So Rick Strassman, Strassman's got a piece in that book too. And he said like, this is going to be the next evolution is this slow drip where we put people in. We allow them to stay in this state. So it's not rip cord out of your body, rip cord back. he said like this is going to be the next evolution is this slow drip where we put people in we allow them to stay in this state so it's not rip cord out of your body rip cord back and hopefully we

can report back from these extra dimensional beings like if there's anything worthwhile what can we learn from higher levels of consciousness that actually can we can extract and take to the 3d and i thought that was so fantastic i also thought too after 30 grams like you don't need slow drip dmt you just need 30 grams of mushrooms there's your extended state dmt trip i mean there's no way that that's not an extended dmt trip um but that's really cool and it's really cool too to see the importance of the visionary state you know so much of the medicalization of this stuff has everyone fucking chopping their fingernails, you know, like, is this only going to be available in a fucking doctor's lab, uh, where some guy in a white coat comes and gives you an injection and, and, you know, you're stuck with like one shitty playlist of classical music. Right. And, and it's cool that they're studying

it. We want these studies to get done, but at the same time, you know, I've sat in ayahuasca at a reservation with an ipod on and it was magnificent and i've gone to the jungle and i've sat with people who sang the whole fucking time and it was levels above anything i had experienced from the ipod right like the icaro steered steered my journey and guided me through the roughest hearts and you know there's thousands of years of their oral traditions and they're working with these medicines and constantly refreshing all the dietas that they bring to the table and the plants that they call in through the Icarus and the prayers that can shift your vision that it's, it's really,

you know, it's like, I remember getting my black belt in jujitsu and then I go to train with Robert Drysdale a year later and Drysdale just toyed with me. And, uh, you know, he had been, he had been a black belt longer than I had been training jujitsu. So it's like you beat Mario, the game just starts over and it's way harder. Right. And so like that, that's the thing, like when you think about levels to the game, you know, there's some really good healers and really good practitioners. And then, you know, there's a shaman from the Amazon. That's all he's known for fucking 50 years. And he's that black, but he's the red bell, right? He's the guy that, that, that has it so dialed. And I don't want to lose that. You know, I don't, I don't think that that can be, it's unquantifiable. And at the same time, I think if we can study the visionary state, that's something we might be able to quantify, you know, like if we're looking at visionary states in the fire with no music, and then we check out brain activity with music, and then we check out, check out brain activity with someone there. That's a medicine person who has that lineage and has been singing it through. That'd be very interesting to peek at and see, you know, what is the before, during,

and after look like with somebody who's going through those experiences. There's a lot to, there's so much to uncover with that brother, but it's awesome that you're taking the first steps and that you've been on the front lines of this. It's, but it's awesome that you're taking the first steps and that you've been on the front lines of this. It's really cool. And I just want to study it all. I can't wait. It's been over three years since I've sat with Aya.

And I'll be in Peru at an amazing place called La Medicina. I just need that relief. I feel like that, you know, the vibration that you read after the enlightenment that you feel. All the integration has taken place. I'm good. I'm enlightened, but the vibration is now back, maybe close back to normal. And I'm like, I don't like this. You know, this is not, you know, it's not where I want to be. I'm doing incredible in life, but I can't complain, but there's just something missing. And that's the feeling that I miss. And I've got so much stuff in front of me, as you know. I have so many amazing things that I have to

be the politician for. Now as the CEO, especially just studying all these different things, I have to be able to explain to different people why we're doing the different things, why we're working with not just PTSD or not just TBI anymore. TBI is always tied to PTSD. PTSD is tied to things like eating disorders and everything else that comes with sports. Once we drop the veil of TBI because we couldn't afford the science, we're like, hey, what about this? What about that? We see that Vodafone in Europe is studying TBI-related issues with menstrual cycles for the UK females rugby team. I was like, well, reach out to Vodafone. You're our COO. Call them and see if we can get in there because I would love to study whatever. And now it's broad because my whole life started as a selfish thing, fighting.

So did my scientific career. That's what I want to study. And now I've just kind of gone, oh, there's way more people. And my integration coach asked me the other day, what do you want to be when you grow up? What do you want to do in 10 years, 20 years? What do you want to be known for? Like, is it all this or is it this? And I'm like, it's the nonprofit.

That's my life of service. I mean, sure, my life of service starts with teaching martial arts. It starts with my family. It starts with the people around you. But, you know, the gym, that's where it starts. And it's with the athletes that with my hands physically on you know then i have the athletes that i take to win world titles you know i won a world title last year as a coach um which felt great with bare knuckle boxing which is insane

bare knuckle boxing but it's different um sure mike perry sucks at boxing but i wouldn't want to fight a bare knuckle ever. It's wild to hear a fist bounce off a hollow skull. I'm trying to win a surfing world title with one of my other athletes, Giorgio Gomez. It just pushes on. We have the mentorship group. We have all these things that we're trying to just help, just trying to

live this life because it is a selfish pursuit to be selfless to be the life of service guy you know or girl it's you you you get so much out of it that is becomes just like this very kind of selfish thing it's weird it's a weird weird duality behind it but i'm gonna keep it yeah service service to the all is inclusive of self if it's weird it's a weird weird duality behind it but i'm gonna keep it yeah service service to the all is inclusive of self if it's not it's not sustainable right yeah there we go where can people where can people find you online to stay in touch where can people you know potentially get involved um you know if they want to send some money your way to help these studies

go through i know that you guys are are looking for help from people online. That'd be really cool. I know if you've done plant medicines, if you're into this kind of thing and you want to see these studies go through, they can potentially change the world, right? And they can get more, you know, there's a snowball effect here that takes place where as these things start to go through and we actually get real data back, that will fuel the next studies going forward, right? And we can really start to see this in, in many different people. And, and, you know, it starts with athletes for, for obvious reasons. A lot of people bitch and bellyache, like, Whoa, why are we going to spend money? If I can send these athletes here and shit like that.

And it's like, the athletes are the face and Aaron Rod, you know, it cannot be understated how many people Aaron Rogers has touched and just talking on Robins, Tucker Carlson. You know, I, I had the deep fortune of being able to sit with him in the Amazon last year. Not everyone's going to sit with Aaron Rodgers, but him talking about that makes a fucking huge difference because that's a dude who's in the mainstream media. You know, you're not going to get a guy like me on Fox News. You're just not, right? So understanding that it is a great place to start because now we can reach the masses.

And from there, that trickle down effect can really start to change and open up options for people that not necessarily would have been there prior to that. 100 percent. You know, we're just trying to make the biggest impact we can. And with those blue check marks, that's how we're going to do it. You know, I know people don't trust doctors or scientists anymore, and that's for good reason. You know, doctors and science and medicine have lied to us. And if we can give, when we give, the proper information to these athletes to go out there and preach it, it's all going to change the world. So I'm really excited to be a part of it. Thank you for having me on, man. Oh, fuck yeah. Well, tell people where they can meet you. We'll link to your websites in the

show notes. Drop all that knowledge. Athletesjourneyhome.com. If you want having me on there oh fuck yeah well tell people where they can meet you what i will link to your websites in the show notes drop all that knowledge athletesjourneyhome.com if you want to go on there and check it out want to donate you scroll down two-thirds and there's a donate button uh athletes journey home on social media or ian mccall on on media i-a-n-m-c-c-a-o-l and you can see all the interesting things i'm doing you know working with all the brands we're working with and all the cool people I get to choke every day. So I try and be somewhat entertaining. I do post a lot of funny things about politics because it's silly,

but I'm coming from the perspective of somebody who had a criminal record, so I can't vote. I couldn't vote up until six months ago. So please forgive me for my making fun of both political sides. It's just more entertaining for me. Beautiful.

Well, it's been awesome having you. Well, happy back. Thank you. You got it, brother.