Broken Brains with Bruce Parkman
Broken Brains with Bruce Parkman is presented by The Mac Parkman Foundation
The mission of this show and the foundation is To serve as a source of information, resources, and communications to the community of parents, coaches/Athletic trainers, medical staff, and athletes that are affected by sports-related concussions and to raise awareness of the long-term implications of concussive and sub-concussive trauma to our children.
Broken Brains will also explore how Concussive Trauma impacts our Service Members and Veterans.
Join us every week as Bruce interviews leaders and experts in various Medical fields, as well as survivors of Concussive trauma.
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Broken Brains with Bruce Parkman
The Healing Potential of Ibogaine: Brain Trauma, PTSD & Recovery with Trevor Millar
In this episode of Broken Brains, Bruce Parkman speaks with Trevor Millar, a leading advocate and expert in ibogaine therapy. They explore the powerful potential of this psychedelic medicine to treat brain trauma, PTSD, and addiction—especially in veterans and athletes. Trevor discusses its origins, research-backed success stories, and the urgent need for awareness and legal reform to make this life-saving treatment accessible to those who need it most.
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Hey folks, Bruce Parkman here, and welcome to another edition of Broken Brain, sponsored by the Mac Parkman Foundation, where we look at the issue of repetitive brain trauma from two perspectives: repetitive head impacts from contact sports, and repetitive blast exposure for our military veterans. And what these conditions are doing to the brains of our kids, our veterans, our athletes, the resulting cause of ep uh mental illness, suicidal ideation, home, and why this is such a big issue. And this is where you come in. Because we reach out to the leading researchers and treatment professionals and authors and players and kids and parents in order to bring you the best perspective on this issue because it's not taught in our medical, nursing, and psychological curricula. You are the front line of defense and you need to know. Today we have another amazing guest, Trevor Millar. Trevor Millar is a social entrepreneur with over a decade of experience providing ibogain therapy. He is responsible for various experts of AMBIO's operations and communications. He previously served as a board member and co-founder of the Canadian Psychedelic Association, and from 2018 to 2021 was on the board of directors for the Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies, or MAPS, in Canada, where he acted as chair of the board for over two years. Trevor was featured in the award-winning documentary about using magic magic mushrooms in Iboga to treat addiction and anxiety and depression called DOST, which was released in 2019. Trevor, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thanks for having me, Bruce. Good to see you again. Good to see you, Bosch, man. It was a great summit, by the way, man. I mean, it was uh an amazing group of speakers that showed up.
SPEAKER_01:It was wild. I learned a lot for sure. You host a good event, man.
SPEAKER_00:Hey, dude, wait till next year, even bigger. Well, we got the Army Navy game talk about the end of this thing. We'll see what we can we can do. But explain to our all right, so you know, first of all, before we even start, Ibogain is one of the most exciting discoveries I feel. Um, and I've seen it personally, what it's done for people that we have sent to it. Will you explain to our audience, most of them who have never heard of this, what is ibogain? What does it do? Where does it come from? Yada yada. Tell, let's give give them the backdrop of what we're gonna do.
SPEAKER_01:Sure. For sure. So ibogaine is one alkaloid in a plant called iboga, tabernanthi iboga. It comes from the jungles of Africa, uh, specifically areas like Cameroon and Gabon. And it is this it has the plant has been used ceremonially for centuries. So it's actually the second layer of root bark of this plant that it was discovered. It has these uh healing capabilities, and a whole tradition grew up around the use of this plant called the Buidi tradition. So they've been using it, like I say, ceremonially for centuries. It's been used for healing, it's been used for initiation, um, all kinds of things to make the life and community better. So you can extract specific alkaloids out of that plant, and ibogaine is one of those. And it was discovered, I believe, in the late 1800s by the French who kind of colonized Gabon. And it was discovered that uh this plant has properties. So it was actually used by the French in small doses, what we call microdoses these days. And it's kind of it helps you with focus, it gives you a bit of energy, but that fell off the market in France as well. But the thing that happened that was really significant for the Western world now is that in the early 1960s, a young man, he was 19 at the time, a gentleman by the name of Howard Lotsoff, he was addicted to heroin, but his chemist buddy knew that he would try anything just for fun. So he said, Here, why don't you try this ibogaine stuff? And he took it, he had no idea what he was getting in for. And it was, it's a super powerful psychedelic. Psychedelic meaning mind manifesting. So it manifested a whole different level of mind for him. Uh, it's very long-lasting as well. He was on his way to his psychologist at the time and ended up staying on this psychologist's couch for longer than expected, and uh kind of came out the other end of this saying, wow, I'm never gonna try that again, but also noticed a sense of peace within him that he hadn't noticed maybe ever before. And then he realized, wait a second, I haven't wanted heroin the whole time I've been on this, nor do I want it now. So that's when its antiaddictive properties were discovered. And Howard became a real champion for the medicine. He um kind of knocked on a lot of doors, tried to get doctors to pay attention to what he'd discovered, and he set up the Global Ibogaine Therapy Alliance, which developed some standards of care. And then in the early 90s, a bunch of ibogaine clinics started popping up in places where ibogaine was legal because ibogaine was made illegal in the early 1970s at the same time that just about every other psychedelics was made illegal in the states. Um, so that's that's how it was used for a long time, and that's how I came upon it is I was looking at how to help my uh city of Vancouver better, and Vancouver's got a high rate of drug use, and ibogaine came on my radar as a way to potentially help. I started my first business, Liberty Root, in Vancouver in 2012. We were able to legally uh give Ibogaine to people from 2012 through until tw about 2017, and then Health Canada changed the regulatory status of it, so haven't been able to work with it there since. But uh through that work, excuse me, through that work, I was introduced to a couple named Amber Marcus Capone. And Marcus Capone is a former Navy SEAL, and I guess upon retirement, he didn't really feel as though he had PTSD. He really loved his career, but something wasn't right. Yeah, so he didn't really feel as though he had PTSD, but something wasn't right. He was drinking too much, he was angry, you know, what he thought was going to be these beautiful retirement years didn't turn into that at all. And as a last ditch kind of thing, somebody said you should go down to Mexico and try this ibogaine stuff. And he did. And when he got home, his wife Amber says that as soon as he walked in the door, she immediately knew she had her husband back. So they started a nonprofit called Vets Incorporated, Vets standing for Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions, and they have now sent more than 1,000 U.S. Special Forces veterans down for this treatment. And for the last four years, Ambio has been the place where they send people. So we I was in touch with this couple. We set up uh Ambio in Tijuana in July of 2021, and we've treated close to 3,000 people now through Ambio as well. A lot of those are U.S. Special Forces veterans. But I said Marcus didn't feel as though he had PTSD. Like I say, he really enjoyed his job. He didn't feel like he had any moral injury from having done wrong throughout the course of that, but something wasn't right. And the intuition was through Amber and Marcus, maybe more Amber, that it was traumatic brain injury. And uh they were kind of Amber, let's say that she was uh diligent enough in reaching out to university researchers to see if somebody might study this. And she happened to stumble upon Dr. Nolan Williams from Stanford and was able to talk him into studying the work that we were doing down here. So 30 U.S. Special Forces vets, they needed a traumatic brain injury in order to get into the study. They went to Stanford prior to coming here. They came here well while at Stanford, they got brain scans, a battery of other tests. Then they came here just for ibogain. They went immediately back to Stanford, more brain scans, more personality tests, and then they had a month follow-up as well. The pre-brain scans were clearly showing traumatic brain injury, which shows up kind of like a dark spot in the brain scan where there's a lack of blood flow. And the post-brain scan showed that that was largely reversed, if not entirely reversed in some of those guys. The first study out of that, well, there's been two papers published out of that now. The first one was published a couple of years ago, and it measured PTSD depression, anxiety, and disability scores, all went from off the charts down to next to nothing after just one dose of ibogaine. Then they did a month follow-up as well, and they were still really low. The really interesting thing out of that first study, which appeared in the journal Nature Medicine, which is a really prestigious medical journal, it measured the disability scores. And the disability score is basically how the TBI shows up in somebody's life. And the the neat thing was after Ibogaine, like they went immediately back to Stanford. Like they went to Stanford the weekend before they came. They came here, they got Ibogaine on a Tuesday night, they left here on a Friday, they went immediately back to Stanford to more studies on that weekend. The disability score immediately following ibogaine didn't change that much, but it didn't change at all, really, in a lot of these guys. But a month later, they had all improved dramatically. So Ibogaine stays in your system. It seems to uh there's neurogrowth factors, GDNF and BDNF, that it seems to kick into action, and it seems that they stay in action and continue doing work long after the treatment has happened as well.
SPEAKER_00:Wow, man. I mean, I'll tell you, you know, being uh Marcus definitely, you know, uh that number one, Vets is an amazing organization. Uh we have, you know, personally paid for men that did not have money to go down to them and to you. Um and they really do uh a great job. But you know, knowing what I know now about brains, yeah, he had a TBI, he had a messed-up brain. You can't be a SEAL and retire and not have a messed up brain, which you know unfortunately doesn't impact us till after we retire. And we are angry. And I went through similar stuff as, you know, just you know, three, four years ago, all related to a brain that was eventually diagnosed and said, Yeah, your brain's messed up. Like, oh great. Well, you could have told me that like 10 years ago. So this, I mean, this is fascinating. So in your mind, how does Ibegain work? Like, what does it do that um basically takes these men from end of life? Like the people that are being sent to you are literally, they've they have exhausted all their options. They have either had multiple suicide attempts or are absolutely on their path off this earth, and you are keeping them here. So, how how does IBegain in your mind, how does it work? How does it impact the brain? Why why is it so effective? I don't know.
SPEAKER_01:That's that's really the million-dollar question, and we need more research, and thankfully it it appears as though more research is going to happen with some initiatives that are happening stateside, but we know that it hits multiple receptor sites, so it affects serotonin, it affects dopamine, it affects GABA. Uh, we know that it does increase BDNF and GDNF, these growth factors. Um, we're seeing that it's good for uh, you know, for example, we're seeing that it's really good for treating multiple sclerosis and treating Parkinson's disease. So the way, you know, somebody much smarter than I had a bright idea that it might help with Parkinson's disease is somebody realized, well, it is at least the dopamine system in these addicts that seems to be seeing improvement when they take ibogaine. And it's the dopamine system that is messed up in people who have Parkinson's disease. So maybe ibogaine would help with Parkinson's disease. And uh, I actually know the first guy that kind of was the guinea pig for that. His name was Dean, patient D, he went by at the time while he was still alive. He's now passed away from cancer, actually, not Parkinson's, but um, he just started taking down here in Mexico microdoses of ibogaine every single day. And that's a low subperceptual amount of medicine. You don't feel as though you've taken anything, it's not psychoactive at that level. And shortly after taking that, he continued taking it. I think within 14 days, he started seeing improvements to his Parkinson's symptoms. And with a month, he saw within a month he saw improvements to all of the dozen or so symptoms that they used to measure Parkinson's disease. With multiple sclerosis, we published a paper that had brain scans of one of the gentlemen we were working with, and it showed the MS lesion reduce in size by 71% after going through an MS, uh, pardon me, uh an Ibogaine protocol. And he, I was talking to him yesterday actually, he still he used to show symptoms of MS. He no longer does. He was having a hard time walking, and he ran an ultra marathon after this went down. He's uh he's a veteran as well. Dang, man. I mean But yeah, how? I don't know. We don't really know. There's a lot going on. Like Dr. Nolan Williams, the guy that was in charge of the Stanford study. I heard him on a podcast saying that it somehow releases a symphony of effects in the system that seems to make a lot of aspects of a person's life better. You know, I said specifically Marcus Capone didn't feel as though he had PTSD, but a lot of the people we treat are people who are coming down for their trauma. And being a psychoactive plant, this doesn't happen for everybody, but with some of these psychedelic therapies, maybe you experienced a trauma when you were young. And then on this medicine, you might be able to get a different perspective on what happened. And you're like, oh man, mum was having a bad day. Oh, really? Mum was having a bad year there. And you see the whole thing in a bigger context, which allows you to forgive the situation maybe a little bit, and then it doesn't have the traumatic sting that it used to. So these substance substances are going in, and uh the word reset comes up a lot, especially with ibogaine, is it does seem to press the reset button on a certain level, which uh, you know, whether it helps people interrupt negative patterns like heroin addiction or negative patterns like negative self-talk or you know, traumatic replay loops, it just seems to be such a grand, powerful event that something changes and you're given an opportunity to implement new, more empower more empowering habits.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and I think what's what's so amazing is that you know I've been around the psychedelic space for a while now. And you know, of all the modalities that I am aware of, um ayahuasca, ketamine, psilocybin, you know, they're they're they're multiple steps. And you know, you don't they don't have the impact um I think on addiction that ibogaine has. I know that they have a very significant impact on spirituality and spiritual growth. But um, you know, but to have one treatment, I mean one treatment and then have a lifetime and a future of pain and suffering go away, that that that says a lot. And I know that you know a lot of people might be saying, well, that sounds kind of you know crazy, but I know that you've seen it thousands of times. I've seen it personally with some very good friends of mine. And um it it it it literally is a I think a gift from God. Where where so how is this administered? How like uh what's the like uh you know, is it a injection? Is it a you know a pill? Do you drink it? I mean, uh how how do you how do you take this stuff? Yeah, it's a powder, it's a powder.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. We feed people really well, but we don't we don't sprinkle ibogaine on it. Um it's in a pill, so we it's dosed based on body weight, milligrams per kilogram of body weight. And uh so every dose is customized to the person's body weight and whatever else is going on with them that we determine through an application process. But we have multiple programs down here. So we have what we call our foundational program, which is a five-day program, which is how it kind of grew out of our working with veterans down here. And we pick people up in San Diego, bring them down. They get coaching ahead of time, so some preparation with at least a couple of hours of coaching even before they arrive, so that they can focus on you know expectations and intents before they arrive. Upon arrival, we'll help everybody unpack. We do a circle to get to know each other a little bit. We have some lunch. Our food's incredible down here. We're kind of known for our food, actually. And uh then we do a traditional Mexican sweat lodge on that first day, which is a great way to kick off the week, followed by some more food and IV to rehydrate people, get some rest. The next day we'll do some breakfast, some breath work, uh, some more preparation circles, some one-on-one preparation, some lunch, some massage therapy, and then we'll start working with Ibogaine that second night. So we'll administer the medicine around a fire. We do a little bit of a fire ceremony, which is basically a circle where we can share gratitude for life and uh take the first dose of medicine. Then people will go up into the treatment room, lay down on a mattress, and basically go deep into themselves for anywhere from six to twelve hours, really, that first section of the medicine. Um Ibogaine has been described as oneric, which means as related to dreams. So it might be kind of like a lucid dream type situation. You may or may not have visions. You don't need to have visions for Ibogaine to work for you. But uh a large percentage of people do see some things. Like I said, it might take you back to traumatic events to help you heal those. It might just be weird, random stuff that goes on for hours. Um, auditory hallucinations are super common. You might hear things, and you're very well supported. It's completely medicalized. You're hooked up to a heart monitor the whole time that you're on the medicine. We have 24-7 medical staff at the house. There's at least a physician or multiple physicians and nurses and paramedics that are on duty during the ibogaine journey. And then that next morning, you the the next day basically is just a day of recovery. The day after ibogaine is notoriously known as the gray day. Everybody feels pretty rough the day after ibogaine. You're about as tired as you've ever been, but you can't fall asleep because the medicine's still in your system. So again, we just really take care of you, bring you food when you need it, bring you a smoothie, some soup, something like that. And then uh the next day we do uh some yoga, some meditation after breakfast, and then a debrief circle, basically. And then we also work with another compound that fourth day afternoon called 5 MeO DMT, which is another powerful psychedelic medicine. It's a very short experience, though, and seems to really help people speed up their recovery from the ibogaine process. And then everybody goes home the day after that. Wow, man. So that's that's the five-day program. We also have a detox program, and the detox program is longer based on the substances that people are using. But we treat people for opioids, we treat people for stimulants like cocaine or crystal methamphetamine. We'll uh treat people for kratom is one, it's a big one now. Um hearing about that. Yeah, it's kind of like a it's related to the coffee plant. It grows in countries like Indonesia, but it's available at just about every gas station now. And it hits the opioid receptors, and people don't realize that it's very addictive, it's highly addictive. Uh, people don't realize it's addictive till they have to stop. And uh then people have a hard time coming off of that. So we're treating more and more of that as well. So those are longer programs, anywhere from 10 to 30 days, even. Ironically, uh Suboxone is the opiate replacement drug that is prescribed so that you don't necessarily have to use street drugs or street fentanyl. You can go to a doctor every day and get your suboxone. And uh that's a hard one. So people need to come off that for at least a few weeks prior to taking ibogaine. So it ends up being a long treatment. So we switch people over to short-acting morphine while they're here so that they don't need to go into withdrawals prior to taking the medicine, and uh we get them comfortable that way and then can eventually give them ibogaine, and then they won't need the suboxone or the morphine afterwards. It's really amazing how this works for opioids. It really does help people end an opioid addiction virtually overnight without those painful withdrawals. With one dose. Yeah, with one dose. Essentially, there might be some booster doses out the back end of an iboga of uh of a detox, so we keep them for a bunch of days afterwards as well, just to make sure that we send them home feeling really good. And then we just have one other program, and that's our neurorregenerative program, and that's the program that we have uh pioneered really for treating Parkinson's and MS and ALS and other neurodegenerative diseases.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I guess some folks are sent to that, man, unfortunately. Yes, dude, this is I mean when I first s heard about this, I was at the American Legion event uh two years ago, I think. And you they present Stanford presented there. And it might have been last year. Yeah, I think it was last year. Yeah, last year, I think. You know, they were just saying, this is uh just amazing, and of course I'm always on the lookout on what was helping vets. I had never heard about it in my life. And we were becoming familiar with ayahuasca here. Um there's quite a few churches in Florida, and it's been very, very effective for veterans that are struggling, and you can get it legally, right? So it's a little bit easier to obtain. But uh, you know, this this this is this you know, uh, you know, I mean, this this experience here is is really is is it's just simply amazing. Is there are there any restrictions? Is there anything that is there anybody that might not qualify for this, or is there any um, you know, you mentioned that they have to be off either opioids or is there any like pharmaceutical drugs that they have to be off? I mean, what's uh any special diets or anything like that?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so on our application form, there's a spot to list just about everything. So we do a full medical background basically. And a few reasons that you couldn't take ibogaine. Uh number one, you need to come off a lot of medications prior to taking ibogaine. Um, if you are, you mentioned opioids. If you're on opioids, we've got a different program for you. We can get you off of the opioids. But to come into the five-day program, you can't be on opioids or stimulants like cocaine. You need to come off ADHD medications for at least five days prior to arrival. Most psych meds, SSRIs and other antipsychotics, a lot of sleeping meds, you need to be able to stop for at least five days prior to arrival. So that can be super challenging in and of itself for people that have been taking those for years and years. So you need to come off of those safely, hopefully with the support of your doctor, although sadly, so many doctors know how to peep put people on these meds, but don't know how to get people off safely. Um we asked for an EKG prior to arrival, and we asked for blood work prior to arrival. If there's anything funky with those, you might not be able to get treated at least right away. Um yeah, but we kind of pride ourselves on uh being quite good at helping most people come in for this treatment. If if they don't immediately qualify, we can generally work with people to get them to the point where they do qualify. Certain uh psychiatric diagnosis, like we wouldn't treat somebody with acute schizophrenia, for example. Um bipolar is an interesting one. I think bipolar is really over-diagnosed for a lot of people. Um so we just take that on a case-by-case basis and really dig into where that diagnosis came from. How does it show up kind of thing? But it's, you know, because this is the the TBI podcast, I should share some stories on what we've seen with regards to TBI. One of the most amazing ones was uh a gentleman that uh he's actually a friend of Sean Ryan, and he is a veteran. He survived an IED explosion while he was serving, and that was a pretty serious explosion, but he survived that and retired and came back to the States and got involved with a road rage incident. He was not the road rager, but he through this incident got shot in the head by the person who was raging, and he survived that, but not without some pretty serious side effects. He had some metal still left in his forehead. Um he since that incident was not really able to go outside without sunglasses on. He became incredibly light sensitive, he had really bad balance issues and walked with a cane. And you know, between us, he hadn't been able to make love to his wife since that incident as well. And uh I I was introduced by Sean Ryan, we brought him down, and he had a remarkable ibogaine journey, and when he left, he didn't need his sunglasses anymore. He left the cane here because he no longer needed his cane, his balance issues were completely gone, and he went home and made love to his wife, and you know, wasn't cash money for that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, no kidding.
SPEAKER_01:That year she was happy. Yeah, but um, yeah, like he had basically been bedridden for the four years or so prior to coming in. And he feels as though he's made, you know, almost a complete recovery after just one dose of Ibogaine.
SPEAKER_00:So when uh are you valid, and uh you said when you do scans, what kind of scans are you doing? Are you like QEGs, functional MRIs, or yeah, that was just for the Stanford study.
SPEAKER_01:It's too expensive to do that all the time, sadly. Um, the Stanford study, they did fMRI, they did EEG. That's actually the second paper that just came out of that study is a paper on the EEG ratings. And that was just a couple of months ago, it came out, and the EEG ratings essentially show. Showed that after Ibogaine, your brain looks as though you have been meditating for at least six months every single day, kind of thing. It just shifted the brain waves so that the theta waves were so pronounced that uh as soon as I read it, I'm I said, it it seems as though this is turning the brain into the brain of a meditator. And then I was able to meet with a woman who is the lead uh uh author on that study, and she confirmed that. She said, Yeah, that's exactly the thoughts I had, is it basically turns the brain into the brain of a meditator. So we uh often uh encourage people as part of their integration and how to make the most out of a treatment like this is maybe develop a meditation practice. So it's neat to see that uh, you know, not only after Ibogaine can you start a meditation practice, but you're gonna get a head start on your meditation practice. So it's a great time to start a meditation practice.
SPEAKER_00:I'll tell you, shutting that mind down for meditation is is the biggest challenge. But yeah, you know, the uh I mean, wow, I mean, there is just there's just so much to dive into here. The um so what what's the holdup? All right now, I mean I know it's a class one, I guess, schedule schedule one. Um, you know, but there are so many, you know, things getting approved, like ketamine, NDMA almost made it, right? Uh psilocybin is getting there. Um, you've got a lot of uh support. The seals are actually all over this thing, absolutely all over this thing. Um spec ops are on it. Um I think the lot the first responders are starting to figure this out. And so you know the word the word's getting out. You get the bill in Texas, right? They're putting a lot of money into psychedelic assisted research. Is is Iowa I mean, is Ibogain for part of that? And uh that Texas.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that is the Texas money is for studying Ibogaine.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, great. So that's gonna be taking place in the states or down in Mexico.
SPEAKER_01:That's the the money is supposed to be used to help Ibogaine through the clinical trial process. So it'll be a public private partnership. The state's gonna put at least$50 million towards it to start, and then whichever company gets through the approval process, they'll have to come up with an additional$50 million to get it started.
SPEAKER_00:Wow. So they got people bidding on it right now. So what's that?
SPEAKER_01:So big picture, like you know, why isn't Ibogaine already uh a prescription medicine?
SPEAKER_00:Because you just told me you saved over uh 3,000 lives, man.
SPEAKER_01:So with that kind of I don't use as I we've helped 3,000 people help themselves. I don't I don't care.
SPEAKER_00:You you helped 3,000 people stay on this earth, okay? That's a pretty remarkable track record that's I think kind of proven because it's still here, right? Yeah. So, so I mean, the you know, and so I'm like, and this is the thing that we keep talking about is action. Yeah. We have something, whether it's HBOT, whether it's psilocybin ayahuasca, uh neurofeedback, photobiomodulation, with you know, 70, 80, 90 percent of people saying, this has helped me. People that are in the worst circumstances of their life, you know, suicidal, traumatized, whatever it is, right, they're done. And this is keeping me here, yet I can't get access to it. It's not FDA approved or whatever. And this is a hurdle that just needs to go away. Because, you know, when you have Stanford studies and you have 3,000 individuals that are still here that haven't gone and relapsed or whatever, or even if they did and they got a little booster in their back on their feet, these people aren't in jail, they're not you know beating their wives, they're not you know committing crimes, they are contributing, they are back. There is value here far amongst, I mean, far beyond the value of a patent, right? Or an FDA trial. And we are in our own way here. So, you know, with the with the Texas study, is that what else is needed to in your mind uh to get this going? I mean, we should have VA ibogaine clinics. I mean, we should have, I mean, what about our incarcerated population? God, I mean, they're all in jail because of their mental illness for the most part, okay? If this was a a protocol for, you know, if you've got you know two offenses or you've got mental illness, whatever, they put you in, I mean, just think of the impact on our incarcerated population for those that can be rehabilitated to get out here, be back to their families, be back to jobs, be back to whatever. And we're talking thousands of dollars, not hundreds of thousands, not a year of, you know, I mean, just of just getting them out of jail for a year pays for this, like, I mean, it keeps like it's like a hundred thousand dollars to keep somebody in jail. This is kind of crazy, if you ask me.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah, there's been great studies on psychedelics and recidivism in uh inmates that people who are exposed to psychedelics once they get out have a far less chance of committing another crime.
SPEAKER_00:Really?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I think you need to watch out. Like, we don't want to get as things do become legal, whether it's for treating addiction or for something like helping inmates, you definitely don't want to get to a point where somebody is forced to take. Like, you don't want uh court mandated ibogaine. So they would need to volunteer for it.
SPEAKER_00:If they're a pedophile, I'd be mandating that stuff, I'll tell you that. I'll be giving them double doses.
SPEAKER_01:Really, I think the system's really been stacked against ibogaine for a long time. For one, it was put on schedule one. I think it's the drug on Schedule One that really most needs to be reclassified because Schedule One means it's got a high rate of abuse and there's no known medical uh use for it. And Ibogaine, out of any drug, it's anti-addictive, there's zero chance of abuse, and good point. Yeah, and you know, it's it's helping people with addiction, it's helping with traumatic brain injury. So I think it should be rescheduled. I've been saying for years that what ibogaine needs is a magic wand, and it seems like there's a few magic wands laying around right now. I think uh the the Health and Human Services Secretary, he is interested in perhaps uh studying ibogaine at least and maybe rescheduling it. So there's rescheduling it would be low-hanging fruit, I think, because it's obviously miscategorized. And then yeah, big pharma generally needs a patentable substance that they can give people every single day. So that's why that's that's why they spend hundreds of millions of dollars on the clinical trial process. And I think Ibogaine has just really been pushed out of that potential because it is a non-patentable plant molecule. However, as we've been talking about, um former Texas governor Rick Perry is really behind this because he's seen what it has done for his veteran friends, like Marcus Latrell, the lone survivor. He's seen it completely change his life. So he's really making it his life's mission now to move Ibogaine forward through a nonprofit that they've set up called Americans for Ibogaine. So part of that is Governor Abbott in Texas has signed a bill to allocate$50 million of state's money towards studying Ibogaine. Arizona is on board with, I believe, about$5 million. That's uh former Senator Kirsten Cinema has been behind that. I was just in Mississippi speaking at the Mississippi state's capital. They're trying to get on board. So the Americans for Ibogaine initiative is really trying to spearhead and organize a whole bunch of states to come together to work together to try and get Ibogaine available. Brian Hubbard is the CEO of that, and uh he calls it a Manhattan Project type event to try and make this medicine available to people.
SPEAKER_00:Well, the new lieutenant governor for Florida is uh Senator Jay Collins. He's a retired Green Beret. Um I will absolutely make sure that him and several other veteran uh congressmen here are aware of those studies. Um and so I'll talk to you after this about getting uh some kind of legislation that maybe can be templated here. Uh actually we have to submit bills this week, so this is timeful. So maybe we can um uh let me see if I can find somebody that's got some bills left to submit and see if we can jump on this. Because, you know, this is you know, I mean, it's uh it's just amazing. It's flat out amazing what these sil psychedelics are doing, but particularly this particular psychedelic, because of the impact. Like you said, what who's gonna who's gonna want to take a drug again that doesn't make them take a drug? And and doesn't make them want to take a drug. And here's what people don't understand psychedelics are not a lot of fun. They're work. I have outside of your plant, I've done them all. Okay? And I because I want to walk the walk. And I'll tell you, you know, when you want to take them is your calling and you want to get to work, you want to fix something, you want to work on something, you're gonna work on it. When you're done with this, you ain't going back. This ain't a six-pack of beer. And so getting it rescheduled for what it's a drug, it's not a drug. It is actually it's a cure. And that is what nobody in the medical field wants to hear right now is a cure, because now you're done spending money. Now you're done charging money, now you're done invoicing health care because you're cured. And unfortunately, when it comes to mental illness, we don't want to cure it. And that's why you know the people that are coming to you have been through the standard, you know, VA insurance treatments of, oh, here's some pharmaceutical drugs and some therapy. When they know when it comes down to TBI, repetitive brain trauma and blast exposure, right? You have a damaged brain. And unless we're touching it, we're treating it, we we're not improving the situation. And we've got an uh, you know, we've got an amazing track record here, and we got to get the word out, man. I mean, so how do so talk about civilians, right? I mean, uh, we talked about veterans, and I'm very familiar with that side. Yeah um I also have sent uh a couple civilians to you too as well. Um, is there a different can they can they can they go? I mean, do you still have a lot of people? Yeah, they can go. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And we've done a lot of um athletes as well. So we've worked with a lot of pro athletes. There was actually just an LA Times article that came out. I just want to find the the headline here, but you should definitely look up this uh LA Times article.
SPEAKER_00:Was that the NFL players?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's gonna use an ab again. It talked about uh yeah, it's called NFL and UFC Athletes Try Game Changing Psychedelic to Treat Brain Injury. So look up that article from the LA Times. But it has uh it features Tate Fletcher from the UFC, Keith Jardine from the UFC. Tate was um, as it says in the article, he the UFC was one thing, but he's also a stunt man. And there was a stunt that went wrong. And he woke up the next day and was scared to death because he couldn't figure out how to pack his luggage to get out of his hotel room. And from that point forward, he basically spent the next year locked up, depressed, suicidal, ready to end it all. A Navy SEAL buddy of his said, You gotta go down to Ambio. And he did. And after the treatment, he was amazing. He ended up sending two other of his friends through here. Um, Robert Gallery is a former NFL football player. He again was suicidal, definitely a candidate for CTE. And uh he's now, I believe he's he's had multiple treatments, but uh yeah, it has started his own nonprofit to try and help athletes through for this treatment. It also spoke of Alish Hemsky. He is uh he was an assistant captain for the Edmonton Oilers hockey team, as well as uh played for Dallas as well. And after or upon retirement, drank way too much, was miserable, couldn't sort his life out, came down to Ambio, doesn't drink anymore, is a wonderful father, feels like a million bucks.
SPEAKER_00:So that that's that's amazing. Yeah, I just uh as a matter of fact, I sent those to an NFL buddy and we're thinking about coming down together. I'm gonna make him come down. And he's massive, dude. This dude is the biggest human being I've ever seen in my life. He's three of me. But uh, you know, he's he's struggled. And uh so you just mentioned several treatments, so there are some times when people need more than one.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, some it is very rare that somebody comes back to Ibogain because they feel as though it didn't work. Most people, it's just one and done. They they've got what they needed, they feel complete, but a lot of people feel as though they've got another layer to peel off. They want to see what else they can do. I always say that Ibogaine is very good at getting getting people from minus 10 to 0. It's also very good at getting people from zero to plus ten. So we just talked about athletes, but you asked about civilians, and yeah, anybody is welcome down here. So it's not only for people who are at minus 10, maybe you're at minus one, maybe you're at minus three, or maybe you're at plus two and you want to see what optimization really means. You know, so we see a lot of high performers as well, CEOs, that type of person that really wants to see if they can take it to the next level. But as long as you qualify medically, we're open for anyone to come down.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, in that case, that's where some of the other psychedelics come in play because you can keep going back when the calling comes to take that deeper plunge or to work on something else. Because sometimes you just can't solve everything in one session, right? You gotta life is, you know, sometimes you got a whole lot of baggage that you can unpack one suitcase at a time, but you're unpacking it, and that's that's what counts, man. So wow.
SPEAKER_01:The uh Yeah, we just had a couple of guys uh down again. One of them is uh a Navy SEAL that we've treated multiple times, and I know he's going to record a podcast, he's probably recording a podcast with Andrew Huberman right now, but his name is DJ Shipley, and uh he's been very public about his his use of Ibogaine. He's been his Sean Ryan podcast episode is profound, it's incredible. And uh he is also featured in a movie that is coming out on Netflix on November 3rd called In Waves and War. And it's a documentary about three former Navy SEALs at various stages of their journeys using Ibogaine. Marcus Capone is featured in that, so is Amber Capone and uh DJ Shipley, as well as another former SEAL called Maddie Roberts. And uh Marcus obviously had done Ibogaine before the movie started, so had DJ, but it really covers his first journey in quite a lot of detail, Marcus as well. And then they brought Maddie down together for him to take Ibogaine for the first time, and uh that's gonna be that's gonna be a big game changer, that movie coming out, like I say, November 3rd on Netflix, In Wavesandwarfilm.com is uh where you can find more information about it right now.
SPEAKER_00:You know, at this point, as a Green Beret, I will usually make a joke about Navy SEALs in movies because they're always making movies, man, make it drive me crazy, writing books, making movies. But this one, I'm all about it, man. I think that's amazing. And and hats off to those guys for getting that.
SPEAKER_01:Well, man, like you know, your your buddy uh Pat Flatley, who has been public with his story as well.
SPEAKER_00:I love that.
SPEAKER_01:You know, if you want to talk about some badass green berets, like he was part of the Stanford study. In fact, he was patient 001. He was the first patient. And uh again, he's spoken publicly about it. I hear heard a podcast where he said the same thing, but he was super messed up before he came in. Um, he even called me from an airport. He's like, I can't make it, I'm not gonna make it. I'm like, dude, just get here. We'll take care of you. He he took my word for it. He got to Stanford, he like blew up at the the hotel front desk or something at Stanford. I get a call from Stanford as well as Amber Capone saying, Are you sure we should give this guy Ibogaine? I'm like, Yes, get him down here. I mean more. I'm sure I'm sure a lot of life was lost in his during his tours of duty, but there was one guy that really stood out for him that uh had been attacking his people. I guess it went on for multiple days, and then he was the guy who got the kill shot, and for some reason that one stood out and he couldn't get over this guy. But that guy came to him in his ibogaine journey and said, Hey, I was trying to kill you too. It's okay, you can let this go. So that's the kind of profound stuff that can happen to guys on this medicine to people.
SPEAKER_00:He came up to me. We got a cruise where and they'll never do this again, 800 green berets on a boat, right? Kind of nuts. But he came up to me, he goes, Pac-Man, Pac-Man, is my nickname, I called it Pac-Man. He goes, Hey, come over talk to me. So, what's up, man? He goes, dude, do you know about Ivy gain? I go, Well, yeah, I saw it last year. He says, No, dude, dude, here come talk to my wife. And so, man, we got with his wife, because he knows that I we help vets, right? He goes, Man, and then um the next day he came to me, he says, dude, I need some help. I got a guy, he's just he's he's he's gonna end it, man. Can you help us? We need to raise some money, whatever. And, you know, and it was all about, dude, uh, and of course we had him on the podcast, but Pat was so emphatic. And his wife's in, he's sitting there drinking Cokes, right? Where he used to be, you know, with Pat, beer after beer after beer, right? And he's there drinking Cokes. I'm like, dude, you look so great, you know. And he was like, dude, and he couldn't stop talking enough about it. So, you know, but I think that uh, you know, what you're doing right now, Trevor, is absolutely amazing, and we've got to get the word out. So, you know, I want to see about, you know, we got the Army Navy game coming up. It's all about mental illness on December 13th. We'll talk about that as I close. Um, you know, if you want to come up, you know, throw up a booth, we'll talk about this. We're gonna have a fuel concert. We got 3,000 people coming. You know, always looking, you know, we're we're gonna be sponsored by some big companies, and and uh, but every money, every dime we raise is gonna go to veteran mental illness. And this is uh this is an amazing therapy that just needs to be um it needs to be broadcasted, it needs to be expanded, and it needs to come here to America. So I I will work with um the people I know here in Florida to see if I can get some attention on this now, and um and then um I'll I'll reach out to you after this.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, let me put you in touch with the Americans for Ibogaine group.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, absolutely, dude. They've got they've got the blueprint. All right. Well, cool beans, man. So look, tell uh tell the audience like how to find you. Okay, what's going on? So what's up next, right? You got other movies, other studies going on, and then how do people find you? Or how can they refer somebody even more important that might be struggling at that could that is like that with addiction, suicidal ideation, MS Parkinson's? I mean, dude, you're covering a lot of territory here. How can uh people uh reach out and find you?
SPEAKER_01:For sure. So our website is ambio.life, a mbio.life. There's an application button there. There's lots of information there. Um the movie, as I've said, in Waves and War, Netflix on November 3rd. The nonprofits that we're associated with, there's a handful of them, but uh some of the primary ones are Vetsolutions.org. They are actually having a fundraising gala coming up November 15th. I'm not sure if that's sold out yet, but that's a lot of fun. There's some really cool people that show up for that. That'll be in San Diego at the Hotel Dell. And we work with another nonprofit called the 343 Fund, 343fund.org. And these folks have been putting uh first responders through for this treatment. And that's that's an important demographic as well. Like, you know, veterans are retired. First responders see it day after day after day after day, but it just doesn't stop. And um yeah, we have uh we haven't put an episode up in a while, but we've got the Ambio podcast. If you search us out on YouTube and Spotify, if you just search my name, Trevor Miller, M-I-L-L-A-R, on YouTube. There is uh a lot of podcasts that I've done as well. I'd really recommend the one that I did with Sean Ryan. Sean Ryan's episode number 30 is a good one for sure. And Sean Ryan's episode where he talks about his time down here. So if you just search Sean Ryan's psychedelic, you'll see the one where he's interviewed by his wife about his time down here. And that's a pretty profound story as well.
SPEAKER_00:Well, Trevor, I cannot thank you enough and for Ambio for making the time available for you to come on the show. Uh what you're doing is amazing. Uh, we look forward to your journey sharing this with you, getting the word out. Uh may God bless you. And uh we'll go ahead and we'll we'll uh we'll definitely see you soon, and uh we'll stay in touch. And thank you so much for what you're doing for so many people. It is truly astounding, and it's definitely a blessing.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you so much, Bruce. Really great being connected with you, and hopefully we see you down here soon.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got my appointment, man. We'll get it to all that. But uh all right, folks, another great part. I mean, you gotta check this stuff out. I mean, we can't make this up, man. This is saving lives, and we're sitting around wanting to research things, and we have things that are keeping people on this earth, people that are loved, loved, that need love, and we gotta do a better job. This is absolutely nuts. All right, another great episode. Remember, subscribe, like, recommend the podcast, press around, go to the website, outload the book. I am almost done with the read write. Okay, it's for free. Get it, be informed what's going on. Uh, the app that we have, Head Smart on the Apple Google store, the only app with RHI repetitive ed impacts, information on it for you parents. And don't forget our Army Navy game, December 13th. We have a fuel concert. 3,000 people, all you can eat, all you can drink, tickets of 250 bucks, uh,$400 if you want to come to the VIP section. We got heated tents, we're gonna have NFL players, we're gonna have sports stars, we're gonna have all kinds of legislators and VIPs and military leaders there. Come on, we're gonna have all kinds of VSOs there to talk about mental illness and what we're gonna do to stop it using treatments like Ibogaine and stop the suicidal epidemic that's crushing our veterans. And we're not gonna stop until it's done. Until I see you next time, remember your children and you veterans only got one melon. Take care of it and be informed. God bless you. All we'll talk to you later. Take care of the