The Profile:
Name: Zach
Nationality: American
Lives in: Denver, Colorado
Age when taken psychedelics: 33
Job: Military Veteran – Navy / Photography & Video Director
Psychedelic of choice: Ayahuasca
Place of ceremony: Orlando, Florida
What was your intention?
To heal military and non-military related trauma.
I have experienced many stressful situations while in the military, e.g. in 2006 I was a part of the “Joint Task Force – Lebanon” evacuating people out of Beirut, including Anthony Bourdain. A month after we left Lebanon, I was on a classified operation in the Gulf of Aden. The ship I was on caught on fire at 1am and I was the first on the scene. I just happened to be awake on that side of the ship and smelled something burning. It turned out I was less than 5 feet away on the other side of the wall from the fire that took over 6 hours to put out and left over 20 marines suffer from intense smoke inhalation and a lot of the navy guys with severe burns on their arms and me with an injured back from falling 15 ft down a ladder well.
From that moment, I noticed it really affected my sleep. Since it happened in the middle of the night, when I smell something carboxylated or burning even when I’m at home, it might trigger me and wake me up, get my heart rate up and I get me to go around the house to make sure everything is OK. After that, I can’t get back to sleep.
I’ve had nightmares where I re-lived that situation but with my injuries, I’m stuck in the fire and I can’t get out. That’s probably one of the worst types of nightmares I’ve had, as if I’m helpless and can’t escape.
When I was in the Middle East, I also had a situation where a man threatened that he was going to kill me and my friend. Things like that put me on a high alert mode even after I got back to the US. Every time a car would pull up, I would be worried it might be someone trying to hurt me. I was always hyper vigilant and in a survival mode. I wanted to take Ayahuasca knowing I didn’t want to continue living that way.
Why did you take it?
Bottom line is I was fed up with not being able to live a normal, healthy life in America after what I have been through.
The system here makes it really difficult to get what you need to heal. They put so many barriers and blockades and would rather give you pills that numb your thinking and make you easier to control. It’s all about money, including the politics.
When I was trying to heal after the physical injuries and the things I was exposed to in the navy, what I experienced from the U.S. institutions was that the only answer they try to give you is just putting you on a bunch of pharmaceuticals. Those pharmaceuticals were causing me more problems than good because of their side effects. I would be on 15 different medications at any one time. There were times I almost stopped breathing or blacked out and dropped to the floor because I couldn’t sleep for 3-4 days. I would have 3 different pills one to go to sleep, one to be comfortable during sleep, another one not to have any pain in my sleep - that was so many pills they were happily giving out.
When you seek medical treatment while you are still in the service though, there is something called “going against medical advice” – if you refuse to take the pills they prescribe you, you can be disciplined negatively. That confuses a lot of young veterans who try to get out of the military injuries and PTSD.
This happened to me. At the same time, my wife was dying of brain cancer. So, I didn’t have any time to focus on healing myself. We had a son and after my wife passed away, I had to try to do the best I could for him too. At the same time, it was so confusing as I was on so many pills and didn’t know left from right. I would forget things that happened 5 minutes ago or I would just pass out. My life was in chaos and the pills made it worse.
Nobody can comprehend what I was going through because how many people do you know who survive what I did from the military and on top have your wife dying of brain cancer. She acted like Jekyll and Hyde every other day for 2 years and nobody knew why until the last minute. She died within 6 months of the diagnosis. She was only 26 years’ old.
There was mass confusion with all that plus people in Texas are very conservative. They don’t comprehend the magnitude of what a veteran like me might be going through. My own family didn’t really know what I had been through and they were not really there for me how I wish they had been. They tried in their own way but the sense of confusion and knowing what to do was too difficult.
I originally started my healing path with cannabis in Texas. I watched some documentaries on YouTube and some of them involved Dr. Sue Sisley – she is known around the world for her research with cannabis. That inspired me to move my whole life to Colorado.
So, when I saw this YouTube documentary about the psychiatrist advocating for cannabis, I started to get interested. She was doing research in Arizona working with military veterans. 6 months after I moved to Colorado, I was lucky to meet her face to face. We’ve stayed in touch ever since.
I just had a gut feeling that a better life was waiting for me in Colorado and something told me to just eat cannabis instead of smoking it. That made me feel as if I was turning into Albert Einstein with all the knowledge running to my head telling me “OK, stop what you are doing in Texas and pursue life with plant medicine”. Cannabis started it. Something told me that this was the path I should pursue because I had nothing but problems with pharmaceuticals.
After that, one of my good friends Matt Kahl was involved in a lot of the plant medicine advocacy areas helping try to spread the word. He went and did Ayahuasca for the 1st time, 2 weeks before I went for mine in 2016. After he took it, I could see the difference on his face – there was a glow about it, not like before. I could tell it changed his life and I thought damn, I need to go and do that! His eyes and his whole face lit up, as if he came back to life.
A lot of veterans have this low energy look about themselves because they have been so drained and worn out from the stress, anxiety and depression. It affects them physically: the posture, they don’t look at your face as much – they look down instead. After Ayahuasca, it’s chest out, shoulders up, looking up with a smile on their face – big difference.
I also didn’t like how the pharmaceuticals clouded my thinking, they made me feel dumb. I consider myself an intellectual person but when I was on these pills, I never felt I was there. I prefer to be sharp and intelligent and feel I am able to take in information. When I ingested cannabis, I felt like I was having more brain connectivity and clarity. I felt like I was getting back the intellectual part of myself that was numbed by the pharmaceuticals.
I call it the “primitive thrive concept” – our most primitive instincts as human beings. Nature and animals know how to thrive. Since the industrial age especially, we have broken away from that part of where we come from. That’s what I like about Ayahuasca in particular as it brings you back to you senses and reminds you of where you come from. It stops you and makes you look at things from another perspective.
What were you most afraid of?
Going to drink Ayahuasca was interesting because I never touched it before but something told me it was going to be similar to what it was like when I was consuming mushrooms. I just knew it was not going to be very different physiologically. And sure enough, the molecular structure of DMT and psilocybin are very closely related (off by 1 molecular structure).
In fact, I was a bit scared I was being drugged when I first took it. I basically have some psychic abilities I don’t know how to control and 2 years before, something was telling me I was going to be drugged by somebody. So, I was worried it was happening at the Ayahuasca ceremony but actually, I was being warned about my 2nd wife. She was involved in me being drugged on my birthday 2 years ago.
At that Ayahuasca ceremony I was actually thinking about her, trying to figure out how to make things better for our relationship and help her get through her trauma and addiction she has been through but something was trying to tell me it was not going to work and that I needed to be careful and cautious. 2 years later, she plotted me being drugged on my birthday. Being married to a medically retired veteran, she could have collected a check for the rest of her life if I had died… All the truth came out at that point. We divorced a year ago on my birthday.
During that first Ayahuasca experience, I saw animal spirits trying to communicate with me – they reassured me everything was going to be OK.
What did you most look forward to?
I was looking forward to being a better person for myself and for my son after losing his mother and to being my better self for a new relationship.
Also, to coming to peace with the bad things some people have done to me in my life. Ayahuasca showed me those people were dead to me in some sense and that helped me move past the pain.
What was the hardest bit about the experience?
The grand finale ceremony – each ceremony got more and more powerful.
I got paranoid because I did not have control over what was going on around me. It was so intense with a lot of visuals. I experienced myself lying there, feeling helpless, as if I was going to die. I saw blood coming out of my abdomen and I started to wonder what was happening to me. The next thing I know, I’m time lapse decomposing right before my eyes. All that was left was my face and at that point I thought “F*ck it, if that’s how I’m going to die, I guess this is my destiny”.
The other thing is, I was doing it in Florida where you have alligators. That made me very vigilant about my surroundings. I kept thinking that I was stupid and came to some cult that’s making me drink the wrong Kool-Aid and they are going to cut me up and feed me to the alligators instead. I had all these crazy thoughts in my head because I’d never been to something like that before.
Funnily enough, I was then visited by an alligator spirit who told me “It’s OK, don’t be afraid” and I was like “Wow, where did YOU come from?!” – that was a trip on its own.
I also saw the spirit of a bear (as there are bears in Florida too) and he also said everything was going to be OK. So, I just had to go with it.
What was the best bit about the experience?
The morning ceremony was my favourite because in the daylight in a tropical setting you see different frequencies of vibration. You could tap a stick on a tree and see fractal vibrations in the sunlight.
You could also see the concept of death giving back to life, e.g. dead leaves from a palm tree time lapse decomposing and then the green palm tree leaves coming out and getting brighter and bigger, growing. It’s as if all the nature and animals (the lizards, the flies and the bugs) all stopped and moved in slow motion.
I felt more in tune and grounded with everything that was going on with nature and the earth and the earth’s vibrational frequency. It made me feel like I was a jedi from Star Wars because it makes you feel and see energy.
Also, right after the experience in which I was decomposing, a bright light came from the stars and hit me in the face and I woke up and felt free and rejuvenated. Next thing you know, I’m running naked through the jungle with the Avatar people, like in the movie (which James Cameron based on the Ayahuasca experience). That was pretty intense too.
In another Ayahuasca ceremony, I felt Ayahuasca vine embracing me and comforting me, saying everything was going to be OK. I was also swallowed by an anaconda, bones crushing and when it spat me out, I felt like I was a new person.
What did you get from it?
I regained clarity as well as my artistic and creative side.
When I came back home and I came across a pharmaceutical, something inside me just jumped “That’s dangerous” – it guided me without me even thinking about it. I was making vegan sandwiches for weeks. Eventually, I incorporated poultry and fish but I ate a lot more vegetables. Fake foods and McDonald’s – that’s the worst. My body just knew what it needed.
It felt like my most primitive instincts were working again – I felt clear and grounded enough to go about my day-today.
How did it impact your life?
It gave me a positive outlook.
I also started having all these creative ideas flowing, like they used to before all the craziness happened. I could do poetry, draw – it all came back to me. All the stresses dampened all these skills that I have.
Also, physically with my back injury, I felt like I was 15 years’ old again and could do a back flip. Same with my eyes. I went to an optometrist and they said my eye vision improved.
They used sananga at the ceremony – it’s another plant medicine in the form of eye drops used in South American healing ceremonies. They put a drop into your eyes with your eyes closed and then ask you to open them. Then you lay on your back and they usually massage the top of your head because at first it will burn in your eyes and after a minute, you feel relaxed and grounded. They say that if you use a drop everyday for 30 days, it can drastically improve your vision. So, I don’t know if it was from that but the vision improved.
What did you struggle with after?
My ex-wife (the one involved in me being drugged) was making my integration difficult. She was a toxic, negative and narcissistic person, so she didn’t know how to be the right person for me coming back home. When I did kambo, she drugged me and ran off with a guy who was supposed to be my best friend. I was freaked out, my heart was racing – it was scary and I felt like I couldn’t trust anyone. I had to see a therapist for a year after that and that was after all the progress I made after Ayahuasca.
I noticed a pattern with a lot of us veterans, when we would come back from an Ayahuasca ceremony for re-integration, our spouses would almost break down in tears within the first one or two days. They all said almost the same thing: “How is it that you are better all of a sudden?” They were not ready for such a big change. It freaked them out. It would take time for them to be understanding and that’s crucial because it takes two to put in that work and effort.
I witnessed it with my ex too: within the 1st day I was back, she broke down and cried. It made her realise I was not like her with all of her dysfunction and trauma. We were not on the same wavelength anymore. She hated how likeable I was by other people. She had her own insecurities that she was always projecting on me, trying to bring me down. She was always sabotaging all the good stuff. Every time I was getting her close to taking Ayahuasca, she would start drinking alcohol or popping pills. So, yes, she made it very difficult.
What improved?
I have a lot more sense of peace and I’m feeling more grounded. I am now able to catch myself and put myself back on the tracks. I can look at a situation from another perspective and either ignore it or put it behind me with much more ease and awareness than beforehand.
Especially with this pandemic, a lot of people get very paranoid, they are scared we are heading for some kind of an apocalypse, saying we should be stocking up on food and I’m not that person. I don’t want to live my life in fear. I’m someone who dove into Ayahuasca as their first psychedelic, I’ve jumped out of planes at 10,000 ft, I’ve walked across fire for ten feet barefoot with a straight face. So, projecting their fear onto me just pisses me off. At the same time, I just try to turn it around and laugh at it.
I used to be a lost and confused veteran and didn’t know how to get out of the situation. It’s been rewarding to be sharing my plant medicine journey with other people whose lives get impacted by this too.
What do you need to work on?
I am now trying to work with other plant medicines like San Pedro and Peyote.
My main focus is trying to put the past behind me. It tends to try and come back into my life and drag me down. However, the tools you can gain from these plant medicines help the process greatly.
I am also working on helping to decriminalize cannabis and sharing my journey with others, especially military veterans who are lost and looking for solutions and healing.
Chances are that I will pursue learning more techniques of how to heal myself and others. Until then, I will at least spread the word as often as opportunity allows by word of mouth or through my film and photography work.
Ideally, I would like to open a retreat centre to help veterans heal or reintegrate back to their better lives.
What would be your advice if you were to do it again?
Always be aware of your current state of being mentally, emotionally, and physically. The set and setting really has a major part in your healing experience.
Stick to a fresh diet that consist of mostly vegetables, fruits, and grains. Avoid red meats, pork, processed foods, high amounts of sugars, and anything man made like pharmaceuticals. Don’t forget to stay hydrated.
How bad do things need to get before they get better? Very bad, apparently. As if post military trauma was not enough, Zach had to deal with his 26 y.o. wife dying of brain cancer, him trying to look after their son while being on 15 different medications and to top it all off, then having to protect himself from his 2nd wife and her and her boyfriend's attempt to drug Zach. Wow, that's one mille-feuille made of shit and I chose that cake for a reason - it has so many layers of it!
What Zach's story emphasises to me though are two things: the need to take ownership for your own healing and the importance of having a support network while re-integrating plant medicine.
Clearly, that support network is not going to come from any of the institutions allegedly set up to help the tax-paying citizens - they are way behind the actual needs of those citizens and even if they are aware of them, their methods are too tainted by the drive for corporate profits where the benefit of the patient is not a priority.
It seems to me what these pharmaceutical conglomerates and the system supporting their functioning is more preoccupied with is how to convince the paying public that their drugs work and that they should be consumed. And just like in Zach's case, sometimes they go even further and push the patient against the wall forcing them to take them at the risk of serious consequences if going against the official medical advice.
Take statins for instance, years ago, they were prescribed to people who suffered a heart attack to help them minimise the risk of having another one. Once that "customer segment" was penetrated, the company had to come up with a new one in order to continue growing its profits. So, what have they done? They started giving it to people who have not yet had a heart attack but who might be at risk of having one in the future... And if you want to understand the drug's efficacy vs. side effects, just ask any doctor if they would prescribe statins to their spouse or parents and see what they say. It makes for interesting food for thought, that's for sure!
Zach had the right instinct to listen to his gut and turn to plant medicine to try to get himself out of the black-out ditch he was in. It wasn't an easy journey for him and life is still complicated but it's much better than what it used to be trying to survive.
Take ownership for yourself and listen to your gut - that approach has never led anyone astray...
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