Here is a sample of content

I remember my first time…

Ibogaine/ 5-MeO-DMT

Ambio Life

Written By Operator

So, once upon a time, I was a super cool Operator. Then, I was medically retired because I started to suck. One day, I woke up and realized I was no longer a Big Tough Operator. I was a Sissy Ass Has-been War Fighter. Well, shit…

I was angry, 24/7, and oblivious to it. One day, my wife was brave enough to tell me that she and the kids were walking on eggshells around me. I was diagnosed with anxiety because I was struggling to write 300-word posts on the discussion board while working on my bachelor’s degree online. I would get hit with waves of depression, and every time I got hit with a wave of depression, I got suicidal. No amount of mental fortitude mattered. The .45 came out multiple times.

I finally learned about this thing called Operator Syndrome and the symptoms associated with it:

Cognitive decline

-Attention

-Concentration

-Memory

-Executive function

Sleep disturbances

-Insomnia

-Parasomnia

Endocrine dysfunction

Chronic pain

-Headaches

-Joint

-Spine

Anger

-Rage

-Short temper

Depression

Suicidal thoughts or actions

Worry / Anxiety

Disinhibition

-Inability to control one’s behavior or emotions

Hypervigilance

-Stuck in a sympathetic state/Deployment mode

-What I have seen and experienced is that when you’re stuck in a sympathetic state, you can only feel emotions that support fight/flight/freeze.

-Fight/Anger

-Flight/Anxiety

-Freeze/Depression

-Humans are not supposed to exist in a sympathetic state. As an Operator, we have trained ourselves to flip that switch. It is not autonomous for us. Mental/Emotional/Physical, something happened, and now we are stuck in that sympathetic state and unable to relate to humans with human emotions.

Substance abuse

-Self-medicating

Sexual dysfunction

-ED

-Anorgasmia

Intimacy issues

-Trouble feeling parasympathetic emotions

-Human emotions elude an Operator, such as joy and happiness, because you are only capable of feeling emotions that support that sympathetic state.

A mindset that discounts the future

-What does 80 look like?

Loss of purpose/identity

-What do you do after you’ve climbed Mount Everest?

-Operator is just something that you put on your résumé. It’s not who you are.

My brain was injured, not broken. So, what’s next? Well, apparently, the drugs in Mexico help with neuroplasticity, which is good for your brain. Ibogaine apparently resets your dopamine receptors, which helps with addiction and generally feeling happy. I had a conversation with an Operator who told me that if I ever do the Mexico trip, when I get home and see my children, I will be “filled with joy.” Out of everything I had heard about drugs in Mexico, those words are what resonated with me. I wanted to feel and understand what joy was, and I wanted to show up for my family again.

While I was embarking on my healing journey, I finally decided to go to the drugs in Mexico thing. I was one of those weird Operators who didn’t drink or smoke. Advil was the hardest drug that I had ever taken, and I had only done that a handful of times throughout my life. Drugs in Mexico were on the other side of the moral line that I had drawn in the sand, which made no sense because I had a .45 out to my head multiple times. So, this invisible line in the sand did not make sense anymore. I finally pulled the trigger to get my name on the list for the Mexico thing.

This was my first realization of the WooWoo and Universe stuff. I talked to Trevor on a Friday afternoon. He said it would be two months before I could get out there. I told him, “I’m not trying to be dramatic, but I’m not sure if I’ll still be alive in two months. If you have a cancellation list, can I please get on it?” He said, “No problem, I’ll put you on the list.” Ten minutes later, he called me back and asked if I could be in San Diego on Monday morning. A guy called to cancel within a minute of me getting off the phone with him. I flew out that Sunday and was picked up Monday morning at a hotel to head down to Mexico with a group of random fucked up dudes.

Ibogaine

Heading to Mexico, I had an overwhelming feeling that the Titanic was sinking, and I was grasping at anything to keep my head above water. We started with a WooWoo sweat lodge. The lady hosting us told me there was a lot of darkness and evil in my core, specifically right beneath my belly button. The following day was prepping for the ibogaine journey that evening. We went out to a bonfire and received our first synthetic ibogaine pill. We did a little ‘cheers’ thing and tapped our pills together in preparation to start the party. We walked upstairs and got situated on our mattresses on the floor in front of a mirror. They turned the lights off, and there was a candle in front of each of us, between us and the mirror. We popped a few more pills during that time, making sure to ingest our proper dosage. Now, I was sitting in darkness, looking at myself in a mirror, illuminated in a candlelight, waiting to hear the distinct buzzing in my ears, signaling that it was time to get it on. Teams and shit…

I was sitting on my knees, wearing a pair of combat pants and a shirt that said “Dada saurus” from my son’s third birthday party. The symbolism, the warrior I was, and the father I wanted to be. The buzzing started, and Ibogaine began to take hold of me. I stared into the mirror, only seeing myself in the dancing candlelight. I heard a voice telling me, “That’s not you.” It seemed like my voice, but it was not me saying it. The voice repeating, “That’s not you,” became eerie and painful. I finally took my shirt off, and the voice said, "That’s you.” I realized I had been staring at the words “Dada saurus,” terrified of what would happen, clinging to the thought of being a good father.

I now looked at my shirtless body covered in tattoos, kneeling there in combat pants, being told, “This is you.” I wasn’t a “Dada saurus”; I’d become a piece of shit that no longer took ownership of my actions. Father was this emotionless title that I hid behind to shape everyone’s perception of me, desperately trying to control the narrative of reality. I had no human emotions or purpose; I was checking boxes and meticulously crafting the façade you saw.

I felt a heaviness that finally pulled me onto the mattress. I slipped into the lucid dream-like state that ibogaine crafts. I had created a list of questions I used as my intentions before the journey. I asked my first question, and then chaos ensued. I did my best to ride the roller coaster and not resist. The chaos was painful and, honestly, very terrifying. I eventually yelled, “I quit!” The voice I had been hearing yelled back, “You can’t quit!” Just to be clear, this is all in my head. So, I quit from Ibogaine. I resisted the medicine. The crazy thing is that the chaos stopped. I was alone inside of my head, and it was quiet. I immediately started thinking to myself that you can’t do this. You’re not supposed to resist the medicine. There is no way off the roller coaster once it starts. I am not supposed to stop the chaos. I asked the question, and the chaos was the answer. Ibogaine was generous enough to let me revoke my moment of weakness, and then the chaos picked up right where it left off. I have no idea how long I was in this chaos; it seemed like hours. And then, finally, it stopped. After it stopped, I was able to start asking my questions and get answers in a more orderly way. I had to pay the man before I could earn the opportunity to ask any other questions.

Sometimes, during all this, I would periodically purge, which means throwing up into a bucket. When I had to throw up, I would open my eyes and realize that I was in the room with the others because you are in a lucid dream state the entire time. I knew I was grabbing the bucket; I knew I was throwing up and dry heaving. What was interesting was what I was throwing up. There wasn’t anything in my stomach to throw up, so nothing was there, but I was seeing demons coming out of my mouth and landing in the bucket. One of them had claws and dug them into my throat, fighting to stay inside of me. That little fucker sucked throwing up.

It's impossible to give you a chronological description of what happened that night, but I’ll share three specific things with you, along with the lesson I learned from the chaos.

Number one of three is the snake. I stood before a massive snake head 5 to 6 feet tall. The snake was starting to shed and was having a bad shed. When you see a bad shed, you feel compelled to help them start it. It was a rattlesnake head. The eyes were cloudy with dry skin that would not begin to peel. I reached out to help the snake start the shedding process. That same voice from earlier yelled at me, “No!” I wasn’t allowed to help the snake. The snake had to do it himself. The next day, we watched a documentary, and I heard a quote, “The snake that cannot shed its skin perishes.” That’s when I realized the rattlesnake was me. I had to shed to grow, or I could choose to die. I was looking at myself from a different perspective as an onlooker, wishing to help but being helpless.

Number two of three is the light. I had asked all my questions, seen and felt things beyond the imagination, and realized there was one final question I had planned to ask. The question I had written down was, “Help me let in the light.” The question I asked was, “Show me the light.” At that exact moment, when I asked that question, an all-consuming light blocked out everything else as I lay there with my eyes closed. I opened my eyes and realized it was the sun. There was a small gap between the wall and the curtain on the window. The sun was rising, and the sunlight was directly in my eyes as I asked the question. The light was always there. I was choosing to live in the darkness.

Number three of three is the ship analogy. After I woke up and saw the sun rising, I knew my journey was over. I was the first one to sit up and come back to reality. I sat there in a stupor as if I had just woken up early from a nap during a selection phase. The whole night, I had been seeing red and blue. Now, I saw a purple as if the two colors had merged. As I began to reflect on this journey, I felt as if my ego was red, my soul was blue, and I had been existing in this separation. They were supposed to be a team, but there was no team. I understand things in analogies, and guess what? An analogy came to me.

The soul is the ship's captain, giving the orders and making the decisions. The ego is the first mate. The fearless sailor that you want at the helm to weather any storm. The captain trusts the first mate with the safety of the ship and the crew. The mind is the navigation system. It constantly learns and flashes warnings of hazards beneath the surface and off in the distance. The body is the ship. The ship can never leave the harbor if the body is not well-kept. This existence is about the experience. You must hit the open water to have the experience. You need a crew that works together to enjoy and survive the experience.

It was time to let my soul drive and give the ego some rack time. Ibogaine had just put the team back together, but now it was on me. True strength comes within choice; show me how strong you are by choosing how to show up. Ever since that morning, I think it’s humorous when somebody talks about killing the ego. That morning, I hugged my ego and thanked it. Everything I had accomplished was because of my ego. I was still alive because of my ego. Now, it was time to experience this life with my soul driving and my ego standing by, waiting to hear, “Breacher up!”

The final thing I will share with you from my ibogaine journey is the lesson learned from the chaos in the beginning.

Embrace the Chaos.

You need chaos for growth. If you are stagnant, you will rot and die. If there is no chaos, you’ll always be soft and fragile. Control of our environment is just an illusion. It’s a narrative that we tell ourselves. The only thing you control is how you show up. Things happen, and we make the best decision with the information that we have. I do my best to choose how I show up in every moment. I strive to be the teammate I wish I had and do my best to embrace the chaos. My wife hates it, but I can now sit calm, cool, and collected as the kids scream and run around the house. The TV is on, the dogs are barking, and my wife is yelling at me to yell at everybody else. I don’t go to a happy place. I sit right there in the present moment, enjoying all the chaos.

5-MeO

As I was saying, I have never smoked, and I have never drank alcohol. After the ibogaine journey, we started prepping for the toad. That’s when I learned that you smoke the 5 out of a crack pipe… that was a hard pass for me. I had never smoked, and I felt that I had gotten everything I needed from the ibogaine journey.

On the day of the 5-MeO, I was feeling off. I had a very profound day after the ibogaine journey. On this day, though, I was feeling angry and agitated. I did not want to sit with the group and felt like I did before coming to Mexico. Apparently, I did not get what I needed from the ibogaine journey. I had to get brave and smoke some toad venom to make sure I tried everything. Teams and shit.

There were five of us, and we went one at a time. They asked who wanted to go first, and I shot my hand up, but not fast enough. I wanted to go first and get it over with because I did not want to be a sissy and quit while I was on deck. So, I got to go second. Waiting for the first guy to finish felt like sitting on the pool deck during the 50 m underwater swim. Patiently waiting for your turn. Listening to the instructors slap dudes in the face and yell, “Redline!”

My number was finally called, and I went outside to sit on a Mexican blanket in the grass on a sunny 75 day in Tijuana, Mexico, overlooking the ocean. I started with a “handshake hit.” I saw a hole in the ground open at my feet. What looked like hands reaching out, trying to grab me and pull me into the hole. Then, I woke up. The crack pipe was in my face, ready to go for the big boy hit. They were not going to give me a chance to quit.

I took the big boy hit (thank you, Mom and Dad, I am a natural-born smoker), and Trevor counted down from 10. He laid me down and, at 1, told me to breathe out. In the real world, I didn’t breathe out. I held my breath with lungs full of 5-MeO-DMT. No one had a timer on me, but it sounds like I did at least a 60-second breath hold, if not more. From what everyone told me, my body started convulsing, and the medic was grabbing his gear, ready to work. Trevor waved him off and gently opened my mouth, and I started breathing.

That was much more pleasant than what was happening in my reality. Those hands were still coming out of the hole, grabbing me and trying to pull me in. I was doing everything I could to fight them off and doing a pretty good job of resisting them. Then, it was as if God opened my mouth (Trevor), and those things reaching up to grab me saw their door and dove straight to the core of me. Ripping me helplessly into that hole. I was in Hell, spinning out of control as if I had just been rolled up in a 10-foot-plus wave. I was in Hell being dismantled. Dismembered and ripped apart, every fiber of my being, and I felt everything. I was there for eternity.

And then, I woke up. I took the blindfold off my face and looked up at my hands in disbelief. I was back in this body and was given a second chance at this life. The sun was shining. I was back in the grass on the blanket. I sat up to see smiling faces staring at me. I smiled back and only said, “I get it.” Nodding my head up and down, repeating, “I get it.”

To this day, that was the scariest thing that’s ever happened to me. Immediately after the journey, I sat in the grass, looking at the ocean. I thought I was given a glimpse of Hell so I could know where I was going if I didn’t get my shit together. Then, I thought maybe God was punishing me to earn the second chance I was given. It took me nine months before I was able to extrapolate meaning from the information that I received on that journey. I finally understood the lesson that I was being taught.

I wasn’t in Hell. I was in the presence of God. God did not punish me. God gave me a safe place to punish myself the way that I felt that I needed to be punished to begin the process of forgiveness and acceptance. God loves me. God was waiting for me to be ready.

I had no spiritual pillar before going to Mexico. I had no purpose. Over the years, I’ve realized that purpose and faith are interchangeable. They are both an invisible reason to get out of bed every day and live life. I had a purpose in the Teams: the boys on the rooftop. Everything I did was to make myself better for the team, not for me. If you have faith, there is no fear (Mathew 8:26). There’s nothing to fear when you understand that you are in a miracle. You are the miracle, and you deserve to be here. It took smoking some toad venom in Mexico for me to find faith.

There is no good or bad trip. It’s all just information. You assign meaning to the information. If you are on patrol and there is a contact left, is that good or bad? It doesn’t matter. It’s contact left. You must make the best decision with the information that you have at hand. Be in the present moment, shoot, move, communicate. Stop being so quick to assign meaning to everything that happens. Things happen. That’s war, and that’s life. I didn’t have a bad trip. I gained valuable information and used it to start making better decisions on how I show up.

Going home

The next day, after smoking the 5, they drove us stateside to drop us off at the hotel where we started on Monday morning a week ago. On the drive, I kept thinking how excited I was to get home to my family and turn the lights on. My family had been stuck in this cloud of darkness because of me, and I wanted nothing more than to turn the lights on so they wouldn’t have to live in that darkness any longer. We got to the hotel, and everybody started saying their goodbyes and parting ways. I said one last goodbye, looked around, and realized that my brothers were all gone. I was alone, back in this dark, scary world. I had just found this light, and it felt fragile. I didn’t feel prepared. But there I was, alone, in front of a hotel, waiting for an Uber.

The driver picked me up. I jumped in the backseat, still feeling very terrified. The driver was a 19-year-old girl who struck up a small talk conversation on the 10-minute drive. My kids came up in the conversation. I told her I was excited to go home and that I was doing my best to be a good father. Without hesitation, she told me that she was sure that I was a great father. The conversation shifted, and I started learning about her life story and speaking freely. We arrived at our destination, and she turned to face me, her expression filled with gratitude. She thanked me, saying it felt like she had just received years’ worth of advice in a single conversation. Then, after a brief pause, she looked at me and asked, “Would it be okay if I hugged you?” Not standard Uber protocol, but she had a tear in her eye and wanted to thank me for the conversation. We both got out and hugged for a minute. I told her to keep grinding and that she’s got this. Watching her drive off, I realized the world wasn’t all darkness. That was just my perspective before the plant medicine.

When I arrived at the airport, my wife was hesitant and standoffish. Rightfully so, because when I left, we were in the middle of a firefight, and she had her guard up still. That’s when I realized the integration was not going to be easy. I had just embarked on this incredible Journey. I chose to grow and transition, but just because I chose to change didn’t mean that she decided to change with me. I had to learn to respect her journey and the pace at which she decided to move. When I got home, I saw my kids, and let me tell you, brother, he wasn’t wrong.