The Team House - Recon Platoon Leader in Afghanistan | Clay Smith | Ep. 359

Episode Date: July 9, 2025

In this episode, former recon platoon leader Clayton Smith shares his raw and compelling journey from combat in Afghanistan, where he earned a Purple Heart, to his personal battle with unaddressed trauma and alcoholism back home. He details his transformative experience with ibogaine therapy and his subsequent mission to co-found Beyond Service, a non-profit dedicated to providing free, comprehensive psychedelic treatment to veterans, first responders, and their families. Smith's story highlights the critical need for alternative healing modalities and destigmatizing mental health support within the veteran community.https://beondibogaine.com/beond-service/https://beondibogaine.com/Today's Sponsors:StopBox USA⬇️Get firearm security redesigned and save with BOGO the StopBox Pro AND 10% off @StopBoxUSA with code HOUSE at https://www.stopboxusa.com/HOUSE GhostBed⬇️https://www.ghostbed.com/houseFOR 10% off! For ad free video and audio and access to live streams and Eyes On Geopolitics...JOIN OUR PATREON! https://www.patreon.com/c/TheTeamHouseTo help support the show and for all bonus content including:-live shows and asking guest questions -ad free audio and video-early access to shows-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseNew merch, patches, and stickers! ⬇️https://theteamhouse-shop.fourthwall.comSupport the show here:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse___________________________________________________Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnGeopoliticsPod/featured__________________________________Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/——————————————————————Or make a one time donation at: ⬇️https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouseSocial Media: ⬇️The Team House Instagram:https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_linkThe Team House Twitter:https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePodJack’s Instagram:https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_linkJack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21Team House Discord: ⬇️https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6SubReddit: ⬇️https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample"Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio"00:00 - Start 00:22 - Guest Introduction07:58 - Recon Platoon Experiences30:28 - Ambushed in Afghanistan 43:40 - TBI Diagnosis & Challenges57:23 - Breaking Point & Seeking Help1:17:39 - Founding Beyond Service1:27:01 - Ibogaine's Efficacy & AccessBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Special operations. Covert Ops. Espionage. The Team House. With your hopes, Jack Murphy and David Park. Hey folks, this is episode 359 of the Team House. I'm Jack here with Dave. And our guest on tonight's show is Clayton Smith.

He served as a recon platoon leader in Afghanistan, recipient of the Purple Heart. a whole bunch of different experiences over in Afghanistan that we'll get into. But he also works with an organization called Beyond EboGain. That is B-E-O-N-D, I-B-O-G-A-I-N-E.com. That's helping veterans and part of this movement of psychedelics being used to treat veterans that are dealing with PTSD and other ailments. And so we got a lot to talk about, Clayton. Thank you for joining us tonight.

Yeah, thank you guys for having me. Really appreciate being here. On behalf of the Beyond team, the Beyond service team and Beyond's team down in Mexico, super appreciate the ability to talk about the program that we're building and what we're doing for veteran mental health, first responders and their family members. It's something I try to lead with is, you know, we hear about 22 a day. And it's time to do something about it rather than just doing push-ups on Facebook. You know, it's time to actually end or make a significant difference in this veteran suicide.

And, you know, we'll talk about the family side of it. But, oh, by the way, everything that the families carry. So, yeah, I'm super grateful to be here. Thank you to your viewers and your audience as well. And I'm really excited to share what we're doing and share a little about this medicine and the process that we do. So, Clayton, I'm going to start off asking you about your personal story and how that leads into all this other work that you're doing. today. Can you tell us a little bit about, you know, your origin story and what took you towards military service as a young man? Yeah, for sure. So I, I didn't really grow up in a military

family. I grew up very rural, small town, Maine, you know, a town of 700 people. I think I had 11 kids in my elementary school class. And, you know, I, blue collar, blue collar entrepreneur were parents and who you know worked real hard gave gave us you know the good life growing up one of one of six brothers and sisters and I was the the the runt of the litter I was the sixth of six and you know I I I ended up going to a military college after after high school found out that ROTC and and you know playing army and doing RTC was something I was pretty good at. I signed a contract my second year. And then in 2009, I commissioned the second lieutenant. And, you know, for me, it was just, it was, for me, it was about getting out of, getting out of

Maine, doing something different. I'm trying to, trying to do something different than the, the folks that I grew up with and didn't have, you know, didn't have the best high school experience and wanted to do something different with my time. And I'm also an idealist. So I thought that, you know, that was, that was a way to make the better, the world a better place. You know, keep, you know, 9-11 generation veteran and and you know i watched 9-11 when when i was in middle school and you know thought that you know doing this and raising my hand was the the way to keep you know america safe and and made me make a positive impact in the world so so that's where that's where that's where we ended up putting gold bars on in 2009 and answered the higher calling of serving

in the airborne infantry yeah yeah so i uh i say this is you know kind of to my mother's chagrin um i graduated with a mechanical engineering degree and decided to go be an army ranger um and she you know really wanted me to be you know in the navy or the airports and you know do something employable after um and you know i thought you know girls might like it if i was an army ranger so that was that was the extent of the decision making uh as pretty much you know 95 percent of the guys that go that route yeah a tail is oldest time. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So you commission as a infantry lieutenant, what's the next phase of your journey? I mean, they send you to Ranger's school right away, right? Yeah. So, you know, I didn't, I wasn't, I wasn't a West Point guy. So all the West Pointer's

get to go first. So I got to hang out in limbo there at Fort Benning. So spent about a year and a half at Fort Benning between, you know, the infantry school and different officer leader courses and then finally going to Ranger. All real Rangers recycle. So I got to take the extended stay. I got to do Darby twice as a result of my own ego and action. So I'll own that. And then eventually I made it through and headed up to Alaska.

So my duty station was at Fort Richardson up in Alaska with 425. And correct, I correct me if I'm wrong, but that unit was like relatively new as an airborne unit, wasn't it? Yeah, I think they stood up in 06 or 07. And it was, they had an 07 deployment to Iraq and a 2010 deployment to Afghanistan. And I got up there fall of 2010 right after they, pretty soon after they got back from their first Afghanistan deployment. You know, just I'm going to probe a little bit more about this. know, do you know what the rationale was of putting, placing an airborne unit in Alaska? Was there like a strategic purpose for that?

Yeah. So, I mean, I certainly wasn't making decisions. My understanding is it was the, you know, we were the only airborne unit in Usur Pack. So in the Pacific Theater, we were the only, you know, because you had 173rd in Centcom and Europe and of course the 82nd. But we were, so there was, like, we were on a two-hour QRF, even for like, human humanitarian missions. So I don't know if you guys remember there was the tsunami and I think it was Fukushima nuclear plant, you know, disaster in Japan. We were on a two-hour recall to go to Japan on humanitarian because we were the closest, you know, we were the closest airborne unit that could

get into the Pacific year. So that's, that's why they had us there. That's interesting. So tell us about kind of getting into your platoon, meeting the guys, what that experience is like being a new PL. Yeah, so I definitely had, you know, so I had two different platoons that I had the privilege to lead. The first one, I went to like a standard line unit and led a, let a platoon. Had a great group of NCOs, you know, and I certainly, you know, tried to do my best to listen to the NCOs in all the officer courses and just shut up, you know, just just shut up and listen. Don't go in there and try to put your stamp on anything. You know, let the, the, the,

The guys are doing, they've been doing it for a reason and had a really just solid, you know, really my group of NCOs that I came to for my first platoon was if you could have, you couldn't have a better group to mentor a lieutenant who is, you know, and after about a month of just showing up and saying teach me, they did and they schooled me up. And, you know, I wouldn't have been as successful in my career if it wasn't for them. And then nine months later, we did our EIBs. I was one of the lieutenants to get their EIB expert infantry badge. And I was moved over to the Scout reconnaissance platoon. So there's one reconnaissance platoon in a, I guess, in an airborne infantry battalion. And I had the privilege to lead that. Whoa, that was a different situation, man.

Like those guys were, those NCOs, they were not, they didn't want to build you up. They wanted to chew you up. And, you know, you had to, it took, it probably took six months of proven myself day in, day out. You know, it was, you know, you go for a ruck march and you got to put a 45 pound plate in your pack because, you know, there is no way that Sergeant Fenton is going to have a lighter ruck than I am. And, oh, man, you know, that was a crucible of those guys. But they, they were fiercely passionate about their soldiers, like incredible NCOs. And once you earn their trust, it was, it was a team that I, I, I can't believe still that I had the privilege to be a part of. We did 18 months of train up together, which is abnormal for a for a lieutenant and, you know, in a, at least a line platoon or conventional military to have 18 months to train up together and then go downrange together.

Like it was, it was a, it was a dream come true. and I was exposed to so much more than I would have normally. I imagine you guys doing a lot of like snowshoe training up there. Yep. Snowshoot, a lot of, you know, when you jump in the winter in Alaska, you know, it's you have, especially a night jump. You have a 50-50 chance. You're either going to hit a snow drift and it's going to be the softest landing of your life

or you're going to hit the sheet of ice that snow blew off of. And it's going to, you know, it's going to hit you like a truck. So a lot of that and then a lot of cold walkbacks from the DZ, you know, the way we trained our platoon and the way we did it was, you know, even if the rest of the Italian was getting picked up on buses, we were walking our happy asses home. And, you know, that paid off downrange. And it did because the guys, we really took the mentality of, you know, practice should be harder than the game.

And it paid off, you know, when we went down range because it was, Honestly, it was nothing. If we had to get out and walk for eight miles, that was, it was, it's what we were used to doing. And, you know, as you're going through this extensive train up, I mean, what is the mission that you're training for? What, what are you guys being briefed at that time that you're going to go into? Yeah, so we were, we were kind of a, our, our platoon was on paper, supposed to we were a reconnaissance element, but we were also supposed to be a bit of a kinetic element at the, commander's discretion. So we were, you know, we knew we were going to be centrally located within the battalion's AO.

And we were, they were kind of two, we had a sister battalion within the brigade and we knew that, you know, our reconnaissance platoon and our sister one and the other battalion were going to be a mix of kinetic and a mix of reconnaissance work, which, I mean, in, in 2012, you know, and even more so now, reconnaissance work is kind of more just like terrain denial using sniper teams to do terrain denial. It wasn't, you know, we had, as you guys know, so much ISR. It wasn't like we were going and just sitting on a ridge line to see if there were trucks. You know, we knew there were trucks.

Right. It's also a very difficult area to do reckey in just because, you know, those little villages, everybody knows the train, they're all out there walking around all the time. and it's very hard to remain, you know, to not get your, not get blown. Yeah, I mean, it's not like they're, you know, as soon as those American trucks leave the gate, or, you know, it's kind of hard to hide a Chinook in a high altitude desert when it, when it's landing on a ridge line. You know, like, there's really no such thing as a infiltration in the, in the classic wrecky sense.

So, but a lot of terrain denial, a little bit of kinetic work. That's what we were training up to do. Hey guys, it's your pal Jack. I just want to take a moment to tell you about the sponsor for this show, which is Stopbox. Stopbox makes this very cool box to secure your items in or your valuables or weapons. Could be a firearm, knife, things that you want to keep away from kids. It opens up like so. And the way it locks is very interesting.

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So I had three sniper teams. I had two recie teams, which were kind of like, six-man strong fire teams light squads that were that were our kinetic element those guys were they were they they did 80% kinetic work 20% reconnaissance work and then we actually we this was this wasn't this wasn't in the mto this is something that we wanted to do and and we brought in was we had a kind of a heavy weapons team and it it wasn't a traditional infantry heavy weapons squad it was five guys so kind of a team leader squad leader and then two 240s and

yeah they carried they were the boys with strong backs and it gave us it gives a lot more tactical flexibility when we could drop in you know whether we had our own mortars with us we had heavy guns you know it just gave us a lot more flexibility we had long guns

we had two 40s we had mortars and then we had two kinetic teams that could go do their thing so it was fun like as a as a platoon leader it was what you dreamed of. Like you had all the resources and you had hard charging NCOs and then a bunch of E1 to E4s that were really strong and followed orders. Like it was the ideal situation as a platoon leader.

And so tell us about getting to Afghanistan and I believe you said earlier the mission changed a little bit. Yeah, so about two months before we hopped on planes, our AO shifted and we covered. and we covered down. There was a, we went, we ended up going to the Pacteia province and there was a National Guard unit that was there before us. And they were having some struggles. There was like two or three years of National Guard, AO management. And they were there having some struggles.

So we were repurposed and Big Army sent us into Pactia. And yeah, so we kind of had to learn the area. We had to learn the hotspots mostly on the fly. And then we also, what we were not prepared for at all, was we were the, because of the, because of the unit getting pulled out was infantry and MP and we were getting like an MP, or excuse me, an infantry, an airborne infantry unit replacing. We actually, I had to, I was the only, or my platoon, our reconnaissance platoon, was the only conventional element in our FOB because everyone else was spread out.

So we had to own a partnership with the Afghan police, the AUFRAP, the AUP and the Afghan army and the Afghan commandos that were across the street with the SF guys. So about six weeks before we went down range, we figured out where we learned we were going to be training police officers. And we had to get, you know, that was not at all in the train-ups. So we had to get smart on ROE and, you know, things that you, when you have to train a foreign national force and also police and army. So. Tell us about your first night in combat and what happened. Yeah, so first night, we truly, truly, first day ended up getting off the helicopters.

Half the platoon is there. We're starting our left seat, right seat with the, so the unit that we're replacing, we're starting the process. So, you know, we're laying out inventory and looking at serial numbers. and then there was a QRF response. So we were the quick reaction force assigned to our FOB for that time. And there was a predator drone, an armed predator had crashed in RAO, and we had to go secure. And so hop in trucks.

And I mean, look, I did a lot of train up, but I was still a chair lieutenant. So like, how do you get your headphone connected to the truck? Where's the combat lock? How do you like, look, I was a soup sandwich leaving the gate. And I was like, holy cow, this is real. This is getting, getting real. Roll out the gate and we, you know, I mean, the first part of the day was very boring. And as you guys know, and probably a lot of your listeners know, it's 90% boredom with 10% moments of chaos.

So we went out, we secured this drone. The Air Force flew in their guys. And also a couple other units came. out to help secure the site. Air Force flew in their people. They cut out all the sensitive equipment. We recovered the missiles, found the missiles. EOD went to go dispose of them.

And right before EOD set off the charge to destroy the missiles that were recovered, there was like a ground-shaking explosion. And as it turns out, of our one of the units that was out there to recover this predator, they left early. And so we had a whole route clearance package. We had EOD. And then you had us as a as the dismounted security. Like, we had a full convoy package that made it out there. I mean, we were all sprinting to get out there. We had, we had our logistics convoy that had to recover the drone. Like we were, we were probably 20, 25 trucks at that point. And we were going to convoy home and do a route clearance.

well, this other unit, for whatever reason, they decided to leave early, and they went home the same way they came in, and there was a 350-pound IED under the road. And it was the same road that we drove in on. Same road we drove in on, but, you know, at least in that time in the area we were in, we could defeat the remote detonated IEDs. we had a way to defeat those. And then pressure plate IEDs, we could defeat those because we had mine rollers on the front of all of our trucks. But there is no way to defeat a command wire.

And so they, as we found out, they ran a command wire 300 yards away. And there was, I'm sure, dude on a motorcycle just waiting for the trucks to come by. And he knew where his culvert was. He knew his aiming points. And the trucks were lit up with their marker lights. and the blast crater was about six feet deep, 10 feet wide.

It flipped a max pro on its roof. It actually flipped it 20 feet in the air. It bounced off a clot wall and then dropped down to the bottom of the clot. And, you know, we instantly responded to that because, I mean, you had the, like, the Blue Force Tracker display, and then all of a sudden the radio blows up and one of the icons goes gray. you kind of know, even without knowing, you kind of know what's going on. And at that point, I ended up being the, de facto ground force commander.

So we had to secure the crash site. Unfortunately, there were three American KIAs. There were two or three wounded that survived. So we were having to secure, you know, secure an LZ, call in Medivax. We were, you know, Afghan police were out there. we could kick doors down and go into buildings and try to find if we could find the trigger man. It was a rough night. It was a rough night and it was definitely a baptism.

I mean, I was 12 hours into, 16 hours into being on the ground at our fob. Wow. And I'm hooking a chain to a bumper of a Ford Ranger and going into a collat, nods down, rifle up with three of my NCOs. So that was a hell of a hell of a start to a deployment. And it really, it was unfortunate that it happened. It was preventable. And it really reinforced to me just how quickly things can go wrong if you're sloppy. And that turned into a pretty busy deployment for you guys after that, didn't it?

Yeah. So we were, we were outside the wire. I didn't, as events happened, I didn't stay as a platoon leader the whole time. But our first 100 days in country, I think we were outside the wire, 90 of those 100 days in some way, whether it was multi-day, single-day, convoys, logistical support. We were outside the wire. Yeah, 90 of 100 days.

And you said that you had to respond to pretty much every Mass Cal situation in your sector that year? Yeah, personally, it just, it just shook out and I don't know for sure, but I'm pretty sure that I ended up being the ground force commander for the three major mass casualties in RC East in 2012. One was that first night with the IED. The other was the day that myself and five others were awarded Purple Hearts. And then the third was there was a suicide vehicle IED in a marketplace that killed two or three Americans, an interpreter, and about 20 local national Afghans in the market.

And I wasn't even supposed to be there. I was on a convoy returning three vehicles. At that point, I was an XO. I wasn't even leaving the wire. I was an XO, and we had to put nine guys together to go return some trucks to a depot on the other side of a pass. And I was going to drive there in a 20 vehicle, 30 vehicle logistics convoy, drop off the trucks, take a helicopter home that next day,

and ended up getting ambushed in the pass and destroying a truck, having to fight our way out of the pass, and then respond to the suicide vehicle. So, yeah, I wasn't even supposed to be like-act-U. So the close ambush and the SVB-I-E-D thing, it's like all connected. Yeah. Yeah. Holy shit.

Yeah. Okay. Can you tell us, if you're okay, tell us a little bit more like deep. about, you know, running into that ambush and the rest of the events that day. Yeah, so, I mean, that's, that day separate from when, when the Purple Heart day. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, those, those were a couple months apart. So after, after I got my Purple Heart and because it was, you know, it was, it was a result of concussion, TBI.

I was moved out of my platoon leader position. Like, I couldn't, I could, I was medically cleared to go on patrol, but it was like a month or two. and I was rotated out. So yeah, those are two separate incidents. Okay. But yeah. Take us, why don't you take us through the SVBID first? Yeah. So that day, that was our, the SVBID was the logistics convoy where we were turning trucks in.

And, you know, we had a route clearance package. We had a, I don't know, fuel had to get moved by local national trucks. So we had a, we had like a 20 truck fuel convoy with extra containers and food was moving. And we just jumped in that with our trucks that had to go get turned in to the supply depot at Salerno. And so I just, I grabbed at this point, I was the company executive officer. So I grabbed a handful of my scouts who were, they were going on mid-tour leave and they were flying out of Salerno. And I went and sold them well, well, boys. sorry you don't get to take a helicopter there you got to take an eight hour convoy glad i did and then a

couple of a couple of the other headquarters guys so we we did minimal manning minimal radios minimal you know load out because everything we took there we had to fly home with and so we took this minimal load out and then going through the the the kg pass the coast guardes pass super windy mountain pass get hit with an RPG ambush uh our trail truck. It's like, why did they have to pick us, man? There is a bunch of other ones. Trail truck RPG straight through the radiator.

Disabled the truck in the pass. The driver, this might have been his first time outside the wire driving. He was a supply clerk and managed to get the truck kind of half into the ditch instead of going off the cliff. So that was helpful. And then, you know, I mean, dude, we were, like, it's not like we weren't prepared, but like we had weapon systems on these trucks that we had, they're the weapon systems that you use day and day out. And then there's the ones that you don't. And we were in the case that you don't.

So, you know, sometimes we had like the remote weapon system where you stay inside the truck and use like the video camera to aim while that went down. So I've got one of my NCOs is on the roof of a truck. I mean, I mean, this is a knockdown, drag out gunfight in the past. And he's on the roof standing on top of the turret trying to manually aim the 240 while the guy inside squeezing the trigger. It was chaos. We could only communicate with air support using BFT because we were in a hole with no radios.

Satellites went down. It was just one of those things where you just get out of there. So we hooked up, you know, another truck came back. We laid down covering fire, hooked up a tow rope and then just dragged everyone out of the pass and regroup a couple miles down the road. And then you had to get to the market, right? Well, that was, so now we're, we're dragging, you know, a destroyed truck into, into town. We've got one destroyed truck. We've got, you know, my truck has got ricochets and holes in it.

And, you know, they, the, like, water jug had a bullet hole. Like, it was just, it was a firefighter, right? Like, so we're just limping our asses into town. And then you know when something's wrong when you get into town and all the doors are shut and there's no one. in the street. Is that eerie? Something's wrong. And a mile later, the route clearance, half mile later, the route clearance stopped and

was like, you know, they called for all medics in the convoy to come up. And it was, it was, it was bad. It was, it was really bad. Again, like the, the, it was a, it was, I think an MP unit that was hit. They were totally combat ineffective. You know, we had to, they, they lost enough. of their leadership that they were completely combat ineffective. So we had to triage and get there.

Fortunately, we were only five miles from the actual fob. So we were able to get the wounded, loaded, and out. It would be quicker. You know, we did a vehicle evak instead of a helicopter. We got the wounded in the trucks and got them out of there. And then we stayed and picked up the pieces. And it was, it was messy, man. It was one of those days that you don't forget.

And, you know, when you're, I'll never forget having to climb in. We were in Matt V's. So they were like souped up Humvees. So two seats in the front, two seats in the back and a gunner in the middle. And, you know, I had to go in and we ran out of room to put the casual, you know, the KIA, the deceased. And so I had to climb in and tell my gunner and is like, hey, man, I'm, I'm, I'm sorry, but you have to, you know, we had to fill these seats and you got to lift them in there. And, yeah, that was a, that was a day you never forget.

Just the complete, the complete indiscriminate loss of life. Yeah. And just to contextualize this a little bit, you're a how old X-O at this point in time? 26, yeah, 26 years old. And your boys are like 18, 9. Yeah, man. I, in the in the, yeah, 18, 19, 20, 21-ish. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. You know, the kid, the guy that, you know, had to lift those two deceased bodies into the back of our truck might have been 21 years old, 22 years old. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Our first night, we had a, that first night, that IED that we were talking about. And this is, this is why I'm so passionate about the work that. that I'm doing as well. That first night, we were pulling wounded and KIA

out of the truck that was hit with the IE. And we got a call that we think we found where the building, the trigger man, we, you know, ISR says we think we've got something. So I had to take my RTO, my radio, my radio guy is kind of supposed to be attached at the hip with me. And this was his first deployment. First 12 hours being downrange.

And I had to live. look him in the eye and say, hey, man, you got to pull these bodies out because I have to go. And, you know, I had to go lead the kinetic part of it. And to leave this guy who, you know, his only crime in life was being really good at running a radio. And now he's, he's exposed to what has to be, an incredibly traumatic event. And unfortunately, you know, that night and I tried to whenever possible, put my NCOs in the shittiest spots. And there was a lot of respect for that, you know, mutual respect.

Like they knew I was going to take the shitty job and I was going to give them the shitty job. And the guys that were, you know, privates and specialists, we're going to pull security instead of pull bodies out of trucks. But there's just sometimes there's no walking back from that, you know, when you're 20 years old. Yeah. Hey, guys. Our show is sponsored by Ghostbag.

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I love Ghostbed. Thanks, guys. Tell us about then the urban ambush. where you were awarded the Purple Heart and so were many of your soldiers. Yeah, that was, it was tax day. I'll never forget it. It was April 15th.

So you always remember it's tax day. And so, you know, we were at a point, at least in 2012 in the AO that we were in, you know, we would say that kind of all the dumb ones were dead. The dumb terrorists were dead. You know, these guys knew that we outgunned them. They knew that we could hear them.

They knew that we could see them. They knew we could reach out and touch them. And so we were mostly fighting, you know, an insurgency, an IED insurgency. And there was kind of a cadence to things. And, you know, we found several IEDs by getting out of the trucks and walking. They were waiting to blow us up. And that was really, if they could blow you up, then they'd engage. but there there were no ambushes in the region that were not just like iED induced and

and then a firefight after so we were again QRF and this a neighboring cop or fob was getting some like harassing fire so there was a PKM so like a light machine gun was shooting at this fob from a building and so we got sped. spun up on on uh... QRF and at that point i was so that the long version of the story uh at that point i was already starting to do my replacement as exo from platoon leader to exo and um the guys were getting called out half the platoon was out on mission and they needed to have 16 bodies in four trucks to be able to roll outside the wire um or 20 i forget what it was but it was something like that and um we had to fill the trucks

and so I was in flip-flops, ranger panties, and a t-shirt, strapping a 50-call onto the roof of the truck because we didn't have enough bodies and I could at least help the boys get outside the wire and get out on time. So I was just on the roof and flip-flops of a max road getting the weapon systems hooked up and running and the guy that was replacing me comes running up and he's like, hey, we need more, go grab your shit. So I ran up to my room, threw my kit on and met the trucks. I was running out the gate basically of the fob while the ramp was down,

and they, you know, hop in the back and off we go. And, like, we didn't have a medic, so we grabbed the medic platoon leader, who was an E8 Ranger or E7 at the time, Ranger Regiment guy who then, you know, went medical. So, like, our, the back of my truck was just a hobbled fire team of our senior sniper team leader, our, the senior battalion FO, Ford Observer. myself and then an E7 Ranger medic. And, you know, we're all just riding the truck like,

shit, man, I was supposed to go to the gym in an hour. Like, you know, because we knew how it worked. They get us to come out. And then we're going to drive to where it's happening. And by the time we get there, everyone's going to be gone. And we're going to get out of the trucks. I'm going to secure it. And we're going to, you know, do bats and hides.

And we're going to look at all the military age males. And then everyone's going to be gone. Because as soon as those trucks leave the gate, they're going to have someone on the phone telling them they're gone. So, you know, it's not like we were complacent. Like, we were all kidded up. We were ready to go. But we had seen this movie before. And so it wasn't like this super adrenaline, like, oh, we're going to go get in a firefight.

It was a, like those sons of bitches. I was supposed to go work out in an hour. And we get to the building. And then all of a sudden, like, you know, the popcorn starts going. off on the sides of the truck. I was like, oh shit. Like, shoot back. So we, you know, we, the convoy goes up, drives by, pulls a U.E, and now we know, okay,

we're, we're in a firefight. We're going to, something's going on. So we're going to, we're going to get out of here dismount and, you know, see what's going on. And so, and it was just a string of really bad luck. When we turned around, our mine roller, hit a speed bump and, like, fell apart. So like our lead truck is just kind of like pushing the metal carcass of a mine roller down the road. And it stopped a little short. So like they had to leave spacing for all four trucks to get past the building.

And it just so happened where the lead truck stopped. The trail truck, the fourth truck, which I was in was in the kill zone. And straight in front of this building. And it was a three story concrete structure, probably three, it was three stories high, probably. 120 150 feet long so a fairly large like kind of what would be an apartment building and we were square in the kill zone like we were dead center in the kill zone um ricochet start popping off the truck and you know we're in the back just like let us out let us out because this goes nowhere good like you know and the the four of us in the back we were you know we're light infantry where um

we wanted to get in the fight like there was no there was the only argument in the back of the truck was who got to be the first one out the door, not who had to be the first one out of the door. And we get out and I just remember, man, like, you know, those trucks are dark. They got little, little porthole windows and it was super bright. And I'm running the ramp so I couldn't be the first one out. I had to be the second one out. My finger's on the little button to drop the ramp down. And the world just goes super bright because the sun.

And then as I'm running down the ramp, I see the asphalt just splintering all around me. and there's like little chunks of asphalt just flying up around my feet and uh i remember like it's like oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck like i got to get behind cover because this is this is way worse than than what we thought um we dove in a ditch there was a little backhoe digging a utility ditch next to the road and it was piling up the dirt so we had a little like three-foot ditch that we could get into and And our, we had a gunner, the gunner on my truck. He was, he was the newest private to the platoon. So this is, you know, something you said before.

Like, you know, these are 18, 19 year old guys. Yeah, this is the 19 year old guy. He was the newest member of the platoon. This was the first time he had been in a firefight. First time he had been in anything like this. And he had the only 50 cal in the fight because all the other trucks were parked outside and they couldn't really engage. One of the trucks could.

And so you had four of us in a ditch. realizing we are way outgunned. Like these guys, you know, as soon as we're in the ditch, like RPGs are flying over our heads. RPG hits the truck and it hit the driver's door, the passenger door, the T.C.'s door. So our T.C. has shrapnel all, he, because he stayed in the truck. T.C.'s got shrapnel all through his kit. You know, under his kid, he's bleeding. So the medic runs out of the ditch. He runs out of the ditch. He runs out of the ditch, goes back to the truck to plug holes and now there's three of us in the ditch thank god we had the foe because now we had apaches

coming on stations and uh you know so he's calling in apaches and there's you know there's two of us trying to get suppressing fire myself and my the stiper team leader we're trying to suppress we've got apaches coming on station and who fortunately were in the ao because of the QRF call and we had you know i just like we're laying in the ditch watching you know so you lay on your back as the Apaches come and you watch these Apaches come over, you know, 20 feet off the ground. They peel off, then you jump up, and then the RPGs just start raining back down on you. You know, at one point, everything went brown. Dirts and rocks and shit went everywhere.

It was the time that our medic was coming back into the ditch, and I watched him fall over. And I remember, like, you stupid bastard, you can't even run. and an RPG hit so close is what happened. I mean, there was an RPG that hit about five feet, and it hit the dirt berm in front of us, where the backhoe is piling the dirt for the utility trench. And, you know, that was the one that got us all pretty good, as far as concussions and shrapnel,

and, you know, whether it's rocks or everyone, everyone left that day with the TVI that was in the ditch at that point. So, you know, and I will, You know, there's so many parts of this. One that needs to be mentioned is that the guy that was in the truck, in the turret. So when that the turret, when the truck got hit with the RPG, the whole smoke fire suppression system goes off. And our turret gunner fell down all the way from the, you know, he was standing up in the

turret. He fell down into the bottom of the truck. And again, this is a 19 year old kid who's in his first firefight. And it was the only, it was a 50 Cal. and it was the only thing that was giving the four of us in the ditch any suppression and any way to engage or maneuver. And, you know, this kid could have laid in the bottom of the truck. He just fell eight feet onto his back and all the fire suppressions going off.

He could have absolutely done that. And the only thing he did was he grabbed his pocket knife and he slashed all the ratchet straps on the ammo cans and threw four ammo cans up on the roof and crawled, you know, climb back up and reengaged. And, you know, that's that's valor. That's bravery. And your rank should have nothing to do with a valorous award. You know, there's four of us that are alive because of Ian McKinty and his actions that day.

And, you know, by the end of it, after maybe, I don't know, 20 minutes, we had two flights of Apaches, went full Winchester. They shot everything they had, rockets and bullets. and then we eventually were able to get out of the ditch. And it was a three-hour firefight. We had, there was a Romanian special forces team with an Afghan attachment that was trying to get at the building. There was, you know, us on our own trying to get at the building from another direction. We had two A-10s come on station and went full Winchester with everything they had. Wow.

And these guys were, like, they were there to die that day. They were in the building to die. and they reinforced both sides of the building so they could engage from either side. They had to have had hundreds of sandbags and stuff in there. So, you know, two Apaches, two or four Apaches, two A10s. We did our best to get in the building. The Romanians tried to get in. And then after a couple hours, the decision was made.

You know, we requested authorization to drop a 500-pound bomb. And it was, it was dangerous. close for sure. That one, the first one that dropped, the detonation, something happened with the detonation and it went through the building and never detonated. And then we dropped another from an F-16, another 500-pound bomb. And the fin broke when it released and it like dolphined on its way in and it missed. You know, we were so close.

It's like the Romanians were here and we were. We were here and it, you know, the bomb hits here. We were so lucky. And then finally, they, the, I think the brigade commander, it might have had to have been like a general authorized me to release a 2,000 pound bomb from a B2. And we were, like, from a concussion risk perspective, we were, we were, danger, danger, danger close. You know, whatever the 1% PI is, like, yeah, we were

way inside of it. So, but it was effective and it certainly ended the firefight and it certainly ended the structural integrity of that building. So yeah, that was, you know, it was it was

one of the fondest days because we won. Like we were infantrymen that were trained to go do that and it wasn't, that was not the traumatic day of, of my deployment and I can speak for most of the guys that were there. Like that was what we trained to do and we got to go do it. You know, the other two events I told you guys about were certainly the much more traumatic

than that day. But the part for me that I didn't, you know, that goes into kind of part two of this story is on the way home. My head hurts so bad that, you know, I took my helmet off. my headphones off. And I just rode in the back of this truck with my hands cradling my ears because I had such bad headache. And I thought it was just adrenaline. Like I justified it to myself. I was like, oh, I mean, you had so much adrenaline. Now it's leaving your body and you just have a headache. And then three days later, I was trying to do, yeah, we took the concussion test. I cheated.

I listened to someone else's answers and gave them as my own. And then three days later, we're doing inventory. I'm back to my job as an XO. And we're doing inventory checks and I can't read. You know, PFC is like, hey, sir, do you want me to read those numbers for you? Because you can't read. And that was like, oh, man, I actually can't read.

Like letters and numbers were confusing. And then I had to go self-report. Wow. I guess this involves, you know, you're coming back home from Afghanistan and, you know, getting out of the military. but I'd also like to ask you about, you know, that you got a purple heart for having a TBI. And I mean, was that kind of like a hard-fought thing for you and the guys?

Because, I mean, like the one soldier you mentioned who had shrapnel wounds, of course, he's going to get a purple heart. But guys who have, you know, this invisible wound, you know, that is not readily apparent. Was that kind of a struggle for you guys? We had a, I don't know how other, like how I would go for other people. we had a a PA who's a captain and he did a concussion analysis like so three of the guys were clearly marked as concussions also a lot of the three of us also had lung damage as well so like we all had lung damage from the overpressure in the chemicals like we had to we had to sit down uh I would bring myself and one other guy like we would bring stools with us for the for the 400 meter walk to

the Chow Hall because we would get winded about halfway there. So like, you know, the battalion star major is walking by and you're sitting in a stool just trying to get to the chow hall. Like there's like something, something's wrong there. And we had the like everything was documented fortunately and everything was documented very clearly. So like the administrative part of the the Purple Heart process was I wouldn't say any more difficult because it was it was combined with you know there were there were two of the guys had

shrapnel five people had tbis like three of us had lung damage like it was it kind of all just got looped into a um well they they dropped a two thousand pound bond that day and watched it so yeah good good was um was it difficult for you to go and self-report because i i know you guys as young army officers are like thoroughly indoctrinated and but it's true of all soldiers i think like no one wants to say like, hey, I have a problem. Yeah, I mean, that's a part of the culture. I wouldn't say it's just the officer core or, you know, and certainly there's a part of it that is encouraged,

exacerbated, whatever you want to call, by the ranger culture. You know, my platoon sergeant, who now is actually coaching with Beyond Service as well, my platoon sergeant, when, with the reconnaissance platoon, he broke his ankle on an insertion. We ran out of the back of the H-47s. He broke his ankle running out of the back.

And I think we had a 12-click, something like that, 12-click X-ville. It was a three-day mission with a 12-click X-ville to get to trucks to drive home. And no one knew that he broke his ankle. He tied his boot tighter. He just, like, cranked his boot down. And spent, he knew that was, you know, he was a senior E-7. He knew it was probably his last patrol.

He knew he broke his ankle. It was his last patrol with the boys. And so he's not coming out of the game. He's not getting a medevac called for him. And he's certainly not going back on that helicopter. And so he tied his boot tight and he walked 12 clicks and full kid on a broken ankle across the desert. Now, like that mindset is how you earn your tab. It's how you lead soldiers.

It's how you, you like, there is no physical movement. That's how you survive in combat. Yeah. Yeah. Like, you can put your body through physically, mentally, anything, right? So, like, you take that mindset and the mission is more important. Like, how, like, you are taught the mission is more important. It's something you believe in.

It's a part of the culture. And, you know, whether my mission at that point was leading soldiers or whether it was doing serial numbers for a change of command inventory, the mission was the mission. and the mission was more important than me. And it has nothing to do with worthiness, has nothing to do with self-esteem. Like there's just a cultural part that the mission is more important than the man, the team is more important than the man,

and you just execute and do your job. So, yeah, it's hard to self-report. And also, you know, I had a path that I was pursuing of, you know, going the Green Paray route. And like you don't, you don't self-report anything. You need to make sure your medical's clear and you're good to go. So, you know, the only reason I self-reported was because I couldn't read. And I knew there was a bigger problem that I had to say something.

Right. And after you did that, you know, how did the command respond and what kind of treatment did you start to get? Yeah, it was, I mean, we were in a very remote part of Afghanistan. him. We didn't have like level one or two medical facilities. But I was put on myself and the other guys as well. We were all put on like a cognitive rest, like a 96 hour hold for cognitive rest to assess. And I, I swear to God, man, I think I slept 20 hours a day. And I would wake up to go to the bathroom and to go to the chow all once or twice a day.

and I thought, you know, because you can't read, you can't be on your computer, you can't, you can't do anything. And I thought, like, what the hell am I going to do with myself? And all I did was sleep. You know, my brain was trying to heal. And then, you know, and then after that, like, I went back to work. I wasn't supposed to go outside the wire except for, you know, taking three trucks to Salerno to turn them in because I was just going to be a day trip. And, and yeah, I mean, it was, yeah, yeah. I would say like command was generally supportive like there was no there is no like good command good command like took care of the guys um yeah yeah it was good that's great and then talk to us about rotating back home um after that deployment and kind of what happened next yeah so i you know i made the decision i was at a timeline in my career that i had to make a decision i had to either um accept my position and to

the Q-Corps SFS and the Green Brewery route, or I had to get out. And I was kind of long in the tooth in the four or five-year officer initial commitment. And so I quickly made the decision that I had done, it was a hard decision. It was a hard decision because earning a green floppy hat was the one thing that I hadn't done yet. And I was, it was, that was the one thing in my military career that I hadn't done. But I had worked with Green Beret teams. I led Afghan commandos on, you know, kinetic patrols in, in coordination with Green Berets. I trained local national soldiers.

I'd been in firefights. I pulled, you know, picked up pieces of people, rode on a lot of helicopters, jumped out of a lot of airplanes. Like I felt like I had I had 98% from my personal journey, 98% of my journey and the things that I wanted to do were complete. I knew I wasn't going to be a lifer and I made the decision to pull my packet and get out and that I that I was married to my wife and not the military. And honestly at that point, so I have a view of leadership where it's a sacred privilege. And, you know, sometimes, sometimes we fail, but leadership is a sacred privilege. And I couldn't, in clear conscience, step in front of 12 other guys on a team and have 100% of my heart

and 100% of my brain there. You know, I felt like I checked the box. And if you're not bringing 100% as a leader, then you shouldn't be there. Not in that way, not in, you know, taking guys down range into harm's way. So, yeah, I got out and my wife and I traveled. We, you know, in this whole process, I'm going to a TVI clinic on Fort Richardson. And, you know, there's a whole TVI component there where I basically had the, what I would say is kind of the vocabulary of a seventh, seventh or eighth grader, seventh or eighth grader. Short term memory of a goldfish.

Iridability, like emotional instability and instability and irritability. My hearing was affected and it wasn't just hearing damage from, you know, from, from like, eardrum damage. It was, it was my ability to decipher noises that were coming in. My brain would get confused with background noises. So, you know, I had a whole collection of TVI related responses. I never self-reported with PTSD. And I never, I never, you know, despite.

having gone through a lot of experiences that one would consider traumatic. I never, I never self-reported or thought that I had PTSD, but I went through a lot of TDI work. And then summer, fall of 2013, I was a civilian, gave my last salute and walked out the door. And what did you do in the civilian world? I worked as much as I had to to travel as much as I could.

So my wife and I, we took an 18 month. We threw hike the Appalachian Trail. lived in New Zealand, we took a long road trip, and then we ran out of money and had to get jobs. So I've spent most of my career in entrepreneurship, startups, went back to grad school, got my MBA, worked a lot of really cool projects, worked in tech, traveled again. In 2018, we quit our job, sold literally everything we owned except for two lamps because we couldn't sell them on Facebook Marketplace and moved into a Toyota Tacoma and drove from Maine to the Arctic Ocean and the Northwest Territories to Peru and a Toyota Tacoma over 18

months. Like, it was cool, man. It was bucketless. But holy cow, did it bring up some unresolved trauma around planning and security and your loved ones being in harm's way in third world countries? Yeah. I mean, I think like something I'd like to ask you about is that, you know, on paper from what you're describing, on paper, you're doing great.

Like you're kicking ass. You're exploring the world. You're getting an advanced degree. You're working these tech jobs. But there's something else going on beneath the surface that is kind of eating away at you, it sounds like. 100%. You couldn't have had a better segue. Everything on LinkedIn and Instagram was dialed.

I was living a life that I should have been fulfilled. I should have been thrilled. I had an incredibly loving wife who told me and showed me that she loved me. I had supportive friends and hobbies and everything. I should have been happy. I should have been fulfilled. I should have been happy, which then starts the cycle of why aren't I happy. How damaged must I be?

how broken must I be? So this inner monologue starts. And I had been searching for purpose since I left the military. I had been searching for healing. Doing therapy and self-help, I mean, I walked six months on the Appalachian Trail thinking I would discover who I am and find myself. And at the end, I just had some blisters and some clothes that smelled awful and a ponytail. So, like, didn't find myself there.

So constantly doing things on paper that are supposed to be fulfilling, things that you should be proud of. And just every time I did something that I was supposed to be proud of, I felt more and more hollow and more empty. And then self-medicated. That was, you know, that was that was where that was a portion of where the alcoholism came in of self-medicating to not feel that way. And when did that sort of like reach a breaking point? for you that you had to go and get some additional help? Breaking point, Memorial Day weekend of 2024. So, you know, it was a situation where it was kind of like a frog and a boiling pot of water.

And, you know, as you guys know, and I'm sure many of your listeners know, alcohol is a celebrated part of military culture. Sure. It's how we celebrate. It's how we grieve. It's how we feel boredom. and it's how we bond. You know, it's pretty much every powerful emotion can be associated with alcohol. And I already had an unhealthy relationship with alcohol.

So whether it was familial or just me in general, I already had an unhealthy relationship with alcohol. And then over the course of about 10 years, it started being used more to, instead of feel good, it started being used as a tool to not feel bad. and then really the last two years of of my addiction really like the the slope started getting steeper and then the last six months was a was a true fall off and so Memorial Day weekend of of 2024 I came clean to my wife about everything everything and there's there's a lot of lying and deceit and betrayal that goes with being married to an alcoholic.

And I came clean about about all of it, all of it that I could, that I knew. And so that was on a Sunday. And on Monday, I moved into an Airbnb as a result of my own actions. You're right? So I was no longer welcome back at the house. So my dog and I went to an Airbnb. I had the pleasure of detoxing from an alcoholism there. scheduled my first call with Beyond on a Tuesday, and I went to my first AA meeting on a Thursday.

Wow. Talk about cold turkey. Jesus. Yep. Yeah, you were messing around. So as far as, you know, beginning the process of your recovery, tell us about, you know, A, A, beyond, anything else that, you know, helped you, you know, start to take those steps forward. Yeah.

So, you know, the first thing that I had to do, was I had to want to change. Like it wasn't because my wife wanted me to change. At that point, you know, I didn't, I didn't know, but I had come to terms that I destroyed a 13-year marriage to the love of my life. My actions were the cause of that. And, you know, but getting sober was for me. It wasn't just for her.

You know, I wanted to show up better. but I was it was finally you know it was time to change and I decided to change it and it was it could have gone the other way I I at that point in my life you know I had daily suicidal ideations and I daily suicidal ideations and I would have gladly have drank myself to death like that was a that was a happy path for me the only thing that that kept me from doing that is I promised my wife Lindsay that I wouldn't kill myself, that I would never kill myself and I promised her. And there were times where I was damn close. There were times where I was on my motorcycle and this was a Memorial Day weekend, which

are typically harder for me. I was on the motorcycle. My helmet was unbuckled. And I premeditated all of this when I stopped to get gas. It was raining. We lived in Oregon and it was rainy. It was a rainy spring. Roads were wet.

and the plan was to lay the bike down in a tight corner with a guardrail, pop my helmet off as I slid, and then the rest would be history, and it would look like I forgot to buckle my helmet. But I knew that Lindsay would know, and I knew that she knew me well enough to, she would know, so I couldn't do it. And I was riding helmet unbuckled into the corner.

Like I identified the corner that I was going to lay it down. So going back to the recovery side of it, I couldn't kill myself, even though if the relationship was over, the relationship was over, but I couldn't kill myself and at least not yet. And I wanted to give her answers. So I went to AA as a triage. My brother, I joke, he taught me how to be an alcoholic and he taught me how to get sober. So he's a couple years ahead of me in his sobriety. And I talked to him in the parking lot of my first meeting. And I just went, I went all in.

And, you know, detox sucks. Detox is not fun. And, you know, owning those truths aren't fun. But that first meeting that I went to, there was an old timer with a lot of sobriety. There were three of us new guys there. And there was an old timer with a lot of sobriety. And he got up for his share and he looked at us and he said, listen, no one comes here on a winning streak.

Like no one comes to AA on a winning streak. You're all here as a result of your own actions. And if you keep making the same choices, you're not going to go anywhere else. And you're going to constantly be showing up for your first meeting. And, you know, I really took that to heart. And honestly, like, that guy doesn't know that he changed my life forever. Because it took the mindset of if you keep doing what you're doing, you're always going to be here. So I was like, I can't keep doing what I was doing.

And then that brings in beyond. So a good friend of mine went to this Ibogaine clinic in Mexico. He's a civilian guy, went for a cocaine addiction, met some veterans, I think some Navy SEAL guys there, and was talking about all the benefits of IvaGain for veterans. He came home and he told me, you need to go, you need to go. And I said, oh, that sounds great, not now. In reality, I was terrified. I was terrified of what I was going to find. I didn't feel worthy.

My problems aren't that bad. I can get on top of this alcohol. I knew I was an alcoholic. I knew I was an alcoholic for the two years before I got sober. I can get on top of it myself. I can control this. Couldn't. Didn't.

And then eventually at rock bottom, I said, well, screw it. I've got nothing else to lose. I've already lost my wife. I've got nothing else to lose. And she told me she would wait to see who came back from Mexico. And so 30 days after coming clean, 30 days after getting sober, I got on an airplane to go to Mexico. And I knew almost nothing about Iva game. I knew almost nothing about psychedelic medicine. I didn't look at any other clinics in the United States or in the world other than this one that came referred to me. And I just said, let's, you know, let's go. And, you know, I'd like to say that I was doing this for healing, that I was doing it to grow and become a better person. In reality, I wanted to come

home with answers to, for my wife, for why things happened. Why did I destroy our marriage? what happened to me. And then, you know, I knew that I was incurable because I had been trying to solve this with VA meds and VA therapies. And I was trying to solve this for 10 years. And I knew I was uncurable, but at least if I could give her the answer

so she could have closure, I could then finally go kill myself. And that was the plan. I was going down there to get her the answers so I could go kill myself. We were okay financially. She'd be fine. Everything would be okay.

And finally, I would stop burdening, being a burden on the people around me that loved me because their life would be better with me gone. 100%. And what was the process when you got down to this clinic? If you can like walk us through what that entails, because I know it's more than just, you know, taking, you know, plant medicine and what that experience was like for you when you got there. Yeah, so thank you. Well, so as a part of that commitment to killing myself, I knew I couldn't do it without,

with it, I had to have a clear conscience, and that clear conscience meant I had to do all of everything in front of me at this clinic, 100%. So like that same, that same willpower and drive that, you know, recycled Ranger School and and painted the curb with a one inch yellow paintbrush, was the same, that's the same person. That same person was in there. So if I was going to kill myself with a clear conscience and know that nothing worked on me,

I had to lean into the process 100%. I had to know that this didn't work for me and I couldn't just finger drill it. So on the flight down, I read, you know, I buttoned up my work because I was still working as a tech executive. So my co-founders and my company gave me the space to go do this and supported me, which was incredibly important and I'm grateful for. You know, it's funny, the only thing that didn't suffer was my work.

I let my family suffer, but I didn't let my work suffer. What the hell is that about? But a lot of alcoholics will do that. And so I read everything that they, gave me. I went no contact with everyone on the outside, basically turned my phone off when I arrived. And beyond, so beyond ibogaine is an ibogaine treatment clinic in Cancun, Mexico. You typically go for seven to 14 days, depending on your treatment protocol. And beyond is a, is a mix of Western clinical medicine and the Eastern, a more Eastern holistic approach.

And it's really like a 50-50 mix. So Ibegain will, Ibegain needs to be monitored. So you do EKGs. There are effects on the heart from Ibogaine. Effects that could happen from Ibigen. So you do EKGs for your heart health. You'll do a lot of like blood urine tests or urine drug tests and blood tests. You do all of these clinical procedures, but at the same time, you're doing daily meditations, and you're doing chakra work, and you're doing sound healings, and you're doing, you know, creative expressions.

And there's, like, every day there's a workshop, just like a group work workshop, and you're given a workbook. And it's basically the way that I went down, it was a, it was a kind of a choose your own adventure and lean into it as hard as you want. Like, if you want to talk to a coach, you can talk to a coach. want to hide in your room and play video games you can hide in your room and play video games and and i now know you know it's for a reason um and you know i i self-selected and i leaned in and i i i went to every therapeutic event um i went to every workshop and you know when i when i went to sit with this medicine the day that i that i went to sit with this medicine i was terrified i was terrified. I wrote a letter to my wife. I have a totally normal heart congenital heart

defect that has nothing to do with Ibegain and nothing to do with how Ibegain would affect a heart. But I, again, ego, I was convinced that I was so special I was going to die. So I wrote a letter, left it on my pillow, and I walked in that room ready to die. Totally ready to die, but I was also going to give it my all. And so there's some things with Ivigene. First of all, Ivegain, it's a psychedelic, psychedelic experience. It is not a recreation drug. So we think of psychedelics and in our common colloquial, am I going on a tangent?

No, no, you're good. Yeah. So in our common, like, colloquial understanding of psychedelics, we think of psilocybin or LSD and typically in a recreational sense. So it's the Grateful Dead concert, Burning Man, whatever, you know, whatever recreational context you want to put to it, shiny colors, unicorns, you know, woo, and it's all happy and good. It's supposed to be all happy and good, right?

So like that's the framing that 99% of the United States has around the word psychedelic. So I will tell you, Ibogaine is not a recreational experience. It is a therapeutic experience. and it was hands down the most profoundly positive experience in my life, but it wasn't recreation. Like you don't, no one is going to leave, I mean, I can't say no one. 99.9% of the people aren't going to leave an Ibegain journey and be like, let's do another one tomorrow.

Like, hell yeah, I'm hooked. Like, let's trade one addiction for another. It's just not how it works. I remember someone saying that I've never tried it, but that when you do, Ibo Gain that, like, you have this journey of, like, confronting every failure in life. And it sounds like maybe not a very fun experience, which maybe that's why you're saying no one would want to do it again. So everyone's journey is different.

And everyone's journey is different. There are some themes. So, and since standing up this program, you know, I've had the enormous privilege to be associated with 50 people that have gone through and done an Ivo game. journey as a veteran first responder or a spouse at no cost to them as a as a nonprofit and we've been able to open these doors for 50 people there to get access to healing. There are some common themes. First of all, the experience, so some people will ask like how long does it last for? My answer to that is 12 hours to 12 years and that depends on you. All right. So there's an acute clinical observation

window that lasts for 12 hours in that 12 hours because it's that's the effect on the heart that needs to be monitored by a clinical team um so you're you're in a bed on this iivagane journey and you you're hooked up to an EKG and a pulse oxymeter and you have an electrolyte uh ivy drip and it's again it's it's it's not what you would think of like doing psilocybin or LSD and so you're you're going through this experience The first four hours are typically maybe the more visual. Some people have visuals. For me, it was.

It was like watching scenes of my life through like a 4K ultra-HD drone footage where I wasn't having flashbacks, but I was reliving impactful moments of my life. And then typically the next eight to 24 hours are like a deep introspective, meditative, you're really malleable and gaining understanding for things. And a lot of times, like, we can process trauma through acceptance and understanding. So it's a really helpful way if you want to dig into those discomforts. So, like, for me, the first hour of my journey, I had to come to terms with a childhood sexual assault that I never told anyone about. and I had to accept that and I had to accept the person that that perpetrated me right

and I had to accept emotional abandonment and emotion unfilled emotional needs from like childhood and family and I had to accept those very painful learnings but the journey was done with love so like this journey and the story you know I expect it to be 12 hours. If you guys have ever seen the Netflix show Stranger Things. I expected to be trapped into the upside down

for 12 hours. And all of the demons, all of the things I hated about myself, all like it was just going to be I had to pay a penance. I had to get nailed to a cross to pay for my sins. Like that's what I was taught. And what happened

was I was hugged and I was loved. And that little. five-year-old boy or nine-year-old boy was hugged and loved and he was told that he's enough and he was told that he's okay and I was able to love myself for the first time in my life I was able to process anxiety for the first time in my life like first time in my adult life I spent my entire life looking at how things were going to hurt me made me a great infantry officer.

Like most dangerous course of action, most likely course of action, contingencies for contingencies, man. Like made me a great infantry officer, always looking at where things can go wrong. Makes me a great corporate leader in the role that I have of contingency planning. Doesn't make you a great partner. Doesn't make you a great spouse. And so this anxiety of where is, where am I going to get hurt? I was able to release that. And it wasn't comfortable.

And that's very like, it's not recreation. Like, this shit is not comfortable. But one of the things that we coach our participants is like, you know, using a physical train. Like you go do a heavy squat day. It's probably going to hurt to go to the bathroom the next day or it's going to hurt to walk up up and down a flight of stairs. But you know that discomfort is gross. So why can't we apply like veterans?

And, you know, I can only speak for veterans. But veterans, first responders, like there's a mindset, elite athletes. Same idea. Like, you can push your mind and your body through any sort of discomfort. Like, I will walk until I pass out. But, like, emotional discomfort? No way. Give me a bottle of bourbon.

Give me a bottle of bourbon before I feel emotional discomfort. So we try to coach, what we try to coach with the Ivy Games, like, you will encounter some discomfort. I hope you do. embrace it, go through it. Because like on the other side of that is where the healing happens. I mean, it's unreal. And so tell us about coming home from the clinic then and being reunited with your wife. And what was like, what was the next steps like in your life?

Because I mean, you don't get cured overnight, right? It's a process, right? No, so, you know, Ibigine is not a magic pill. And I've said it, I'll say that till I'm blue in the face. it's a tool and that tool is incredibly transformative but it's not a magic pill and like you said you don't get cured you don't get cured what I realized is that by using this tool I could become the person I've always wanted to be not go back it wasn't going to help me become the person I was I didn't want to be the person I was I wanted to be and I could use this tool to try to get there so

on my last couple days, I really started thinking, so I was down there for 10 days, my last couple days after you sit with the medicine three times. And after the last time, I really started feeling this call to paying it forward. Because I knew that there were, you know, soldiers of mine. And really, I just wanted to pay it forward to a couple guys who I knew had some troubles from the same deployment I went on. And so I sat down with the CEO and, and, so I sat down with the CEO, and co-founder of Beyond Tom Fiegel. And I said, Tom, you know, if I were to put together, you know, if I were to use some of my network and venture capital and if I could raise some money,

could I bring a group of five guys down here and I have it at a discount? And he like, straight face, just stone faced me. He's like, no. Like, all right, man, like you're running a business. I totally get it. And then he was like, no, I want to treat 200 people a year for free. but I don't know how because I'm not a veteran. And so, you know, and I wasn't the first person to think of doing this.

God, though. I just, fortunately, have an operations project management startup building background professionally and volunteered to do it. So I volunteered to Tom and said, look, can I help? Like, I'll work for free. I just want to build this. And my goal was to treat together. get one person access to Ibegain. If we could get one person access to Ibegain that couldn't

have it, it was called to it and couldn't have it, that was enough. So I returned home with this idea. Now, my wife and I were no contact, no contact. And I texted her that I was, you know, coming home when I was going to land and then I was going to go to the house and I was going to get the RV and I was going to be gone. Like just so you know, like, I'll be home in town the same. She's like, well, I'll pick you up at the airport. That's surprising. And she picks me up at the airport and five minutes into their drive home.

She's like, can you stop? Like, can you just stop talking? I thought I was toning it down. Like, I was toning it down. That was even a bigger problem. Like, I was toning it down. But the person that left was a alcoholic, anxiety filled, depressed, suicidal ideation, asshole.

Heated himself. The most important part was I hated myself. And the person that came home loved myself, loved who I am. And like even told her, I was like, look, if we don't, if we don't end up together, that's totally fine. Can we just be friends? Like, you're my best friend. Can we just be friends?

Like, it's okay if you want to be with someone else. I just want to be your friend. And she's like, who the hell is this? person. And six weeks later, she went to be out for her own. Oh, wow. Treatment and her own dream. And she comes home six weeks later and she knew that I was working on this idea with law, the tree of veterans and first responders. And before we even discussed anything that has to do with our personal relationship, she's like, I'll censor most of it. She's like, screw you guys. This isn't just for veterans. This is for spouses too. We deal with your

bullshit. We deal with your trauma. We deal with hiding the gun. We deal with thinking about are we going to come home and find you dead in a bathtub? Are we going to find you dead in the car? And we deal with this shit day in, day out when you're having a bad time. And this isn't just this healing is not reserved for veterans. The families deserve it to. And that's amazing. Are we still together? Like, are we going to be in a relationship? He's like, yeah, we'll figure that out. So we are. And I'll tell It's been an incredible journey. And if it wasn't for Lindsay, there wouldn't be a spouses program. And she really championed that.

And a big part of Beyond Service is offering equal and equitable care for spouses and family members. And we've had five husband and wife go through on their own time. Like we do cohort genders, gendered cohorts. So like a group of guys goes down, group of women goes down. But we've had five couples now go through this process. process. And man, it's incredible. Like the healing that is needed and the weight that is carried by the family is unimaginable. And I don't know how to explain it because I've never felt it. But you combine that with the complete lack of resources. So like all of these programs are for

veterans. And there's not enough. And how many of them offer agreement for spouses and family in force? Right. And you know, that goes back to, you know, something we've talked about, something that I recognized in my relationships was that what we did in the military, you know, we didn't have a draft. We all volunteered. And, you know, and what we did, it was kind of selfish. It was what we wanted to do. It was a calling that we answered. It was for a life we envisioned and we left our spouses behind. You know, and we were out there going through the stuff, but living every day, you know, it was what we wanted to do.

And meanwhile, they're at home and worrying, you know, not knowing what's happening to us, you know, not knowing what's going on from day to day, dealing with our bullshit when we come back. Like, it's not just the post-service life that they have to wrestle with. But a lot of times it's that continuum. Yeah. No, it started, you know, it started for Lindsay when I went down at range, you know, or even before, you know, pressure from her family to, you know, should you not get married to this guy? Because what happens if he doesn't come home? Like, it's, you know, the families carry so much. And I, like, I don't, I don't want to compare traumas and I don't want to compare. But I think there's a fair argument that could be made that the families, the adult children who, grew up with dad or mom going to war and wondering if dad or mom's ever going to come home. And the spouses who had to hold the fort down at home and then how much worse can it get when we get home,

they might need access to this and to heal more than the veterans. Like there's an argument that could be made. Yeah, it's fascinating. And so the veteran component of Beyond Ibegain that you've helped set up is beyond service. and you said you've sent like 50 people down there so far? Yeah, so we started our first group in January and we'll have actually this week will be our 50th. So our 10th cohort and we go in groups of five.

So by the time your listeners and viewers see this, we'll have put 50 people through the program. Our goal is to do as close to 100 as we can this year. You know, funding is certainly a part of that. to go to beyond and to sit with this treatment as a civilian is about a $15,000 investment. I would say, hands down, the best investment I've ever made, bar none. But it's not cheap. And it's because of the clinical safety.

It's because of all the components that go outside of the capsules and the clinical observation. It's the coaching. It's the mentoring. There's a whole ecosystem that goes with being. successful long-term integration. So like we are probably the most structured program. And our participants go through, so our participants go through a program.

And, you know, I think there's two things that people are often missing most when they get out of the military. And it's teamwork and structure. And we try to offer both of those. So instead of going on this big experience by yourself, You go with a team. You know, it's a lot easier to run out the door of the airplane

when there's someone behind you who's going to push you out. And then also the structure. So you have a peer facilitator who is not a, we're not therapists and we're not social workers and we're not psychologists. It's a peer. It's someone like me who has sat with this medicine who can say, hey, this was my experience to normalize things a little bit. So it's peer guided, but they also give you homework.

You have writing assignments, you have reading assignments, you have video assignments. Like there's, it's not a free ride. You know, just because it doesn't cost you anything financially besides the plane ticket, you do four weeks of pretty intensive preparation to get ready for this experience. You do eight days on site and you do four weeks of guided integration afterwards. And that's the most robust preparation and integration program that I know of in the Iva game space. You already mentioned a handful of takeaways from the Ibo Gain experience. Are there any others that you want to touch upon with this topic?

Yeah, I mean, it's, look, it's everyone's, you know, there's a couple here. Everyone has a unique experience, but it's effective. So we see, you know, let's look at statistics. We see, you know, what's the problem? well, the age-adjusted suicide rate for veterans is over twice the national average for non-veteran adults. We see almost two times the divorce rate in military and veteran couples as we do in the U.S. standard. 2024 Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment says that substance abuse among veterans is 20 to 30% higher than the age-adjusted national average. Like, there is a problem.

And this is, it can work. It does work for those who want to do this. So like there's, there's a couple parts here. It's like, Ibegain is not for everyone, but the fact that one, clinically proven to work. So look up Dr. Nolan Williams, the Stanford University research that shows 80% eliminate, I believe it's elimination of moderate or severe PTSD six months after sitting with divagane, 80% of their participants did not qualify for PTSD on the PSQ9.

We do neurotransmitter testing. It's anecdotal, but it's still data. And so it's not like brain scan. It's qualitative, not anecdotal. It's qualitative research that shows a 70% increase in dopamine and serotonin re-uptake a month after sitting with this medicine. And that is, that's now across an average of about four. 40 people who have gone through and have been a month out of their treatment.

Like, this really works, but it's not a magic pill. And so as we, you know, right now, I estimated of the post-9-11 veteran community, 0.004% have had access to IV. It's never going to be 100, and it doesn't have to be 100. But we need to democratize access to this medicine. we've partnered with a company Born Primitive, which is an apparel company, and we did a fundraiser. And we're trying to change the paradigm and say to companies commercial ventures, for-profit commercial ventures, that instead of be a part of the movement, be a part of the change.

We don't want to rely on philanthropic donations. We want to take companies like Born Primitive who say, hey, we want to end veteran suicide. and do a corporate partnership to sponsor people. And there's a cohort that's going down as a result of their partnership. It's incredibly beneficial work. And yet it doesn't, you know, it's, it doesn't, it doesn't just happen overnight. Like, we have to build to this. But 100 people this year is an incredible start.

And it's a drop in the bucket. And we, you know, what we're trying to do is get to a point where we can, you know, me having this conversation, whoever listens, hopefully destigmatizes it, destigmatizes psychedelics in some way. You know, we didn't talk about my experience

because, like, my visuals were unique to me. My learnings were unique to me. If you come to beyond service, I'll tell you all about it. But like, it's more of the theme of like, this healing does work.

And wanting to get that out there, but also it's not a magic film, right? So when we look at things like the Texas Ibegain Commission, who, you know, thank God, has committed $50 million to a private public partnership to research and hopefully get FDA approval for IBA gain as a therapy. That's amazing. But it doesn't happen in a sterile VA hospital bed. Right.

Again, it's not a magic bill. So we need to change the paradigm of how, and that's what we're trying to do with Beyond Service. We're trying to set the gold standard of how this care is given. And oh, by the way, in five years when the FDA does their clinical study in collaboration with Texas, they'll probably put 20 people through. Well, at the same time, why can't we put 2,000 people through by then? And, you know, if we have a goal and it's a North Star, but we're like, I want to get there is if 22 veterans, a day are dying from suicide, why don't we treat 22 people a day? Why don't we treat 660 people a month?

Yeah. Why not? Yeah. Did you, I know that you, before you didn't do a lot of research and, you know, it was your friend who had done the Ivagaine, but can you at all, can you speak at all to, like, a comparison to, like, people are doing similar things with ayahuasca or psilocybin, you know, like there are clinics popping up everywhere trying to, you know, like, there are clinics popping up everywhere trying to help and tackle this problem.

So there's no wrong way. I mean, they're wrong ways. Sure, sure. They all have their place. So I'm, you know, I'll never say, oh, psilocybin doesn't work. Silicine absolutely works. And ayahuasca can, you know, does too. And five MEODMT.

One of the benefits of IBA game, which, you know, we talked some of the spirituality part of it, but also there's the there's like the neurochemical part of it. So ibogane, ibupine has the longest period of neuroplasticity of any of the plant medicines. Okay. So when we look at, so ibogane,

when you take the capsule, it metabolizes and is stored in the body as nor ibupagene, that's the metabolite. Norivagane is stored in the liver. And it's slowly released over 60 to 90 days. If you take care of yourself and you get some sleep and you, You know, you don't drink. That's a huge part of storing nor ibign in the liver.

And it's slowly released. Noribagane increases the production of BDNF and GDNF in the brain. And it is, that is one of the key parts of neuroplasticity. So people leave Ibegain with about a 60 to 90 day window of being able to learn like you were a seven-year-old again. like your brain becomes a sponge and if you nurture that so like you can whether you want to learn german start a meditative practice um what if we want to rework trauma responses and and go through like your brain can literally learn faster and retain learning more so that is a unique difference of ibegain and other plant medicines and what we try to do is we try to do is we try to

to like we try to do everything we can so we do this preparation work so people can maximize their spiritual healing but then and their trauma healing and like the emotional side of it but then our integration work is is based on the neuroplasticity like how do we change habits and the thought process and we've got this 90 day window and how do we make the most of it so like there are you know, many of these medicines are complimentary and people will be called to different medicines at different time. But, you know, one of the things for me that made Ivy Gain so special is

in a 90-day window to really, like, our military experience has hard-coded so many things in our brain. And then to have a 90-day window to recode our brains is, I think, incredibly important to the lung. because we're trying to build something that doesn't require a re-up. We're trying to build something that doesn't require a prescription. Like one of our coaches sat with this medicine three years ago. He hasn't relapsed.

He hasn't gone back and sat with it again. Like he took those learnings, made changes to his life and is now running with it and doesn't have to have a sustainment. He is his sustaining. That's what we're trying to build. And then how does it work with, you know, so many of the other things, like we had Dr. Chris Free on last week talking about operator syndrome. And it's such a compilation, right? It's not just the post-traumatic stress or the blast injuries, you know, the sleep deprivation or sleep apnea, you know, all these different things that line up. So how do you ensure that like in those post-90 days that there aren't other things, you know,

factors that may not be, you know, the sort of psychological factors or the spiritual factors, but that they don't, you know, sort of put somebody in this neuroplasticity or, you know, this kind of phase where they don't sort of compound and, you know, revert people. Does that make sense? Absolutely. And they may. You know, and that's where, you know, where they're, you know, where, you know, where, you know, we're not your parents right and we're not therapists right so we can you can show you a roadmap and then

it's up to you whether or not you want to you want to stick to that roadmap so those things do come up four days after coming home i was a dumpster fire and i'm like where did all these good things go i'm falling apart and in my coach i want to so we have access to one-on-one coaching and my coach is like dude you're doing exactly what you were doing before you went down there you have to do something different. And that like reset the learnings from my first AA meeting and is like, wait, I can't fall back into old habits if I want to change. So that coaching is now brought into our, into our like the stickiness, the integration, the sticky. Do a lot of work with needs. So, you know, unknown needs or unmet needs. And I can tell you as a 36 year old man or 37 when I went

down there, I didn't know what my needs were. Right. I thought I did. I thought it was shelter, food, security, you know, whatever. But I didn't understand my needs of community and my needs of nature and like for needs. So we try to do a lot of work with our participants if they want to and if they choose to do the work to identify needs. So that like when and it's all and that's a tool, right? So it's a tool to understand yourself a little bit better.

So inevitably, when all of those things you mention that are in the very complex realm of operator syndrome, within the first seven days when you're home and you're by yourself and those things are going to come in, do you have the tools and a community to fall back on to navigate it? If yes, then we might be successful. Yeah, that's fantastic. Interesting. And Clayton, where can people go to find Beyond Ibo Gain and Beyond Service? People who want to get involved or want to get the treatment themselves. Where should they look? Yeah, so BeyondIvigain.com is the website BeyondIvigain, B-E-O-N-D.

Beyond ivagane.com slash beyond service is our portion. Right now we are fully booked for 2026 and we are doing everything. everything we can to grow the program to double our capacity for next year. So there's just a component where you have to do a medical screening within a certain amount of time. So admissions is closed because we have a backlog that extends three months. But if someone goes there, you can put your information in, submit your information. It goes to a real person. It goes to me and other people on our team. And as soon as we can open admissions again, and we're in that window to do the clinical

questionnaires and the clinical screenings. to get people seated with the medicine. We're going to reach out and we're going to do another round of admissions. So look, we're growing this as fast as we can. The need greatly outstrips the demand and the need greatly outstrips the resources. But we've got a team of volunteers and the team of people that are dedicating. It sounds like hyperbole, we're dedicating our lives to doing this to open one more seat. Like that's, it's still the mission.

If we can get one more person in a bed that needs this treatment. we're going to do it. Clayton, thank you for sharing your story with us and informing people about some of these, you know, kind of cutting-edge treatments that are coming about. Thank you. Yeah, there's, you know, one thing that I, I really appreciate it. And I know we went, you know, this is long form. It was fun.

We didn't have to keep everything condensed to 20 minutes of talking points. And I appreciate you guys letting me ramble. You know, there's one thing to kind of leave you on. Sure. And, you know, our generation that we share is a generation at war. And, you know, not everyone went to war, but a lot of us did and for 20 years. And this can't be solved with just VA prescriptions and talk therapy. We've got to do everything.

We've got to do everything for our community. We have an entire generation of men and women who matured their brain fully formed their frontal cortex. We were talking about the 18 to 22 year olds that were in firefights. You know, as men, we fully form our brains between the ages of 18 to 25. Women mature a little sooner. We have an entire generation that fully formed their executive function, their ability to understand emotions at war or preparing to go to war. taking life or fearing that their life would be taken. You think we have a problem of people that don't know how to feel love,

who don't know how to feel forgiveness? It's an epidemic. And this is a tool. It's not for everyone, but it's a tool. And there's an entire generation of men and women who can heal and their kids don't have to take this trauma forward. And that's what we're trying to.

do is like if we can teach these men and women to love and forgive and grow me included like i'm patient zero like i am i am on the same journey as everyone else and i'm certainly not a guru i am just patient zero and i was there a couple months before the rest and if we can continue this work maybe kids won't tell the story that our generation told of our vietnam alcoholic dads i didn't have one of those but certainly there's a lot of those stories of oh my dad didn't talk about it he's just got drunk and yelled at my mom. We can stop that and this is a tool. So thank you guys for having me on to raise awareness and to continue this mission and hopefully share this with a few folks who wouldn't have considered it because it's too fringe, it's too hippie. Look, I'm a tech

executive with a clean haircut. Like this shit's for everyone. It's not just, it's not just hippie stuff. Yeah. Thanks, Clay. We really appreciate it. Yeah, thank you. We appreciate you coming on and sharing your story, your journey, and, you know, and this kind of information. And we'll see all of you guys later in the week. So thank you again, Clayton, and we'll see you then. Hey, guys, it's Jack. I just want to talk to you for a moment about how you can support the show if you've been

watching it, enjoying it, but you'd like to get a little bit more involved and help us continue to do this. You can check out our Patreon. It is patreon.com slash the teamhouse. and for $5 a month, you can get access to all of these episodes of the Team House ad-free. The same goes with our affiliated podcast, Eyes On, with Andy Milburn, Jason Lyons, Mick Mulroy. That one, you will also get all of those episodes ad-free. And you support the channel and the show, and we really appreciate it.

The Patreon members are literally what has helped this company, this small business, survive, especially during our early years, and you are what continues to help this thing going, even as we navigate the turbulent world of YouTube advertising. So we really appreciate all of you guys. There's going to be a link down in the description to that Patreon page, and there is also going to be a link to our new merch shop. So if you guys want to go and get some Team House merchandise,

we got stickers, and we also have patches. And I should mention, if you sign up for Patreon, at $10 a month, we will mail you this patch as well. So we really appreciate that. But they're also for sale on the merch shop. And additionally, they got T-shirts up there, water bottles, a tote bag, coffee mugs, all that good stuff. So please go and check them out and support the show. We really appreciate it, guys.

Thank you.