The Mission After

Mike Bledsoe (00:01)
Welcome to the mission after podcast where we help veterans discover and execute on the most important mission of their lives. I'm your host Mike Bledsoe and our guest today is Dr. Lance Cuttsforth, a disruptor of the status quo using the almost forgotten tools of empathy, critical thinking, common sense, and objective observation. Dr. Cuttsforth served in the U S army from 1986 to 1999 as a special forces communications expert and infantry officer.

He's a double board certified doctor of functional medicine and a practitioner of the healing arts, focusing on mind, body and spirit. As a teacher, trainer, coach and guide, he integrates his personal, educational and professional experience to support his co -collaborators and their journey of healing transition and ultimate optimization through a wide array of tailored modalities. By the end of this episode, you'll discover three major takeaways. One.

the importance of addressing the emotional, mental, and spiritual aspects of health alongside the physical. Two, the impact of military conditioning on veterans' experience and the need to navigate through the conditioning to find balance and healing. Three, the significance of peer support and lived experience in the veteran community, emphasizing the value of connecting with others who understand the journey. But before we dive in, I want to tell you about our new resource available at themissionafter .org.

It's called the 10 surprising military habits that are sabotaging your career and your life. This guide will help you identify and overcome those habits. So be sure to download it at the mission after .org. Now let's get into the conversation with Dr. Lance cuts for.

Mike Bledsoe (01:43)
Tell me about this papyrus. Yeah, so I thought I heard papaya, but that might be because I'm hungry. Papyrus. So so back when, you know, when when we moved on from scratching on rocks and actually had things to write on, papyrus was used, but papyrus has holes in it. So what they would do is they would lay two pieces of papyrus over each other to cover the holes. So when you wrote, you didn't have holes in the things that you were writing.

So in the same way, when you've got people that have strengths in certain areas and holes in others, when two of you work together, then you can tend to cover up all of the holes so that what gets written now has continuity. Beautiful. So we're like two pieces of papyrus. Two pieces of papyrus, not papyra, although I do like papyra as well, and mango.

I'm going to use that. And then see, this is why I like hanging out with you is because I learn all these new things and then I get to bring them out and people think I'm smart. And yeah, not that I'm smart either. I'm just one of my thick layers of my papyrus is I'm able to retain all of this seemingly useless knowledge and then somehow stitch it all together. And there we are. You know?

Yeah, well, my experience of you is the the the knowledge that you've accumulated that may have seemed pointless or whatever, you somehow bring it in into something that makes a lot of sense for somebody at some point. So we met in January at a sacred hunting trip and I was lead. Well, it was before the trip and.

you stopped over by my house. And so I'm leading a sacred hunting trip for, for veterans and you come in a couple of days early and you wanted to bring some things over to the house and you drop by and we, I thought you were going to drop by for about 10 minutes. We ended up hanging out for an hour or two. I don't, I don't, I lot, it's one of those hangouts where you lose track of time. It's like, shit, I got somewhere to be. and it was obvious to me within.

the first 20 minutes of we'll do something together. So with that, I would because well, one thing I'll note for everybody is is Lance is part of the team at the mission after and he's also got some really cool things he's doing on his own. And I know on your own is the right language because you're collaborating with so many different people. Can you tell everybody just real quick?

what it is that you're doing right now, what it is you're involved in, what your personal mission is. Sure. So right now we're getting ready to pull up 10 stakes here in New Jersey and move to the Denver area just to be a little more in one of the main hubs of treatment of veterans and first responders that are struggling with.

PTSD, TBIs, suicidal ideation, depression, anxiety, addictions, stuff. So we're in that transition now. As far as what I'm involved with, working in that space is the calling that I've finally answered. So working with quite a few nonprofits and...

organizations just trying to optimize and put together a comprehensive plan. I don't have to have my finger in every part of it, obviously. Figuring out what it is we do well and then collaborating with others that do other aspects well, those pieces of papyrus, so that we can create a safe place for our brothers and sisters to come and find healing. And...

you had to kind of retool how they do the rest of their life. That was kind of an ambiguous answer. More specifically, I've got some protocols that I put together that fall under my organization called Nova Pax Wellness, but I'm working with others like the Wounded Healer Project, working, you know, started to collaborate with Project Rebirth. I've worked with what was Heroic Path to Light, which is now illuminated.

Hearts and Illuminating Heroes, Sacred Hunting, that was a beautiful experience and really excited to continue collaborating there. And some other organizations as well. When you put it out there, then the relationships just come. And listening to you talk, us meeting in January.

brother, it feels like a lot more than just a couple of months. It just feels like you and I have always kind of been doing stuff together. So that's, I appreciate the journey. Yeah, absolutely. What inspired you to go all in, like jump in on this? So it sounds like there was a shift where, yeah, you mentioned something where you're like, okay, I'm answering the calling now.

Yeah, there was. I think it's been there really since I was a kid in some form. But about a year ago, I was in partnership with a physician doing some allergy testing and immunotherapy work. And there was a falling out. And we'll call that a very...

a very profound significant emotional event. And, you know, it's been my experience when there are significant emotional events, then there's opportunities for choosing new directions, dropping old tools, picking up new tools. And in that moment, I looked at what was going on and said, you know what, I've been kind of dancing around this for a while.

Now it's time to go all in. This is the universe telling me that you're either in or out and I decided to go all in. So that was a year ago. That was a year ago. So what year did you get out of the military? 1999. 1999. It's only been 25 years. So...

This is one thing I love though. This is these are good conversations because we need people like yourself. I mean, you've been out since 99. I've been out since five. So I've been out for a while too. I think you served longer than I did. I only did four and a half years and there's something about having been out of the military for that long that makes you useful to people who are getting out of the military.

Right. There's a lot. I think it's great when somebody's been out for two, three, four, five years and they want to turn around and help other veterans out. But when you've been out for a decade or longer, there's there's some things that no matter what you did in that first 10 years, you just didn't. It's like just there's nothing that beats experience. What was it like from over the last, I guess I want to talk about the last 25 years. I think a lot of times.

when we talk to veterans, we're like, what did you do when you were in the military? Tell me some like cool guy story or something like that. And if it's relevant, I would love to talk about, but I'm way more interested in what happened when you got out and what's the last 25 years been like? And that's a big question, but I'll interject as we go so you don't have to tell a 25 year story. Sure. You know, I think to summarize the 25 years was,

unwinding, you know, the first half of my life to be able to figure out what I was going to do for the next half. And, you know, I think, you know, at around age 40 something, I started to figure it out. I think it's still a journey. So that, you know, that when I first got out, I was still

kind of on that charge of, I'm gonna save the world, but what does that look like? Because that's how we were conditioned to believe, you're gonna go out and you're gonna save the world. At least that's the expectation that I took going into the military. And then I got out, okay, well, I'm gonna save the world, but I'm gonna do it in a different way. And I got into real estate and entrepreneurship and some successes and some abysmal failures.

and some stubbornness and letting go of old tools. No, no, all right, it didn't work that time, but it's gonna work this time. And so kind of bumping through things and yeah, it took a long time to get to the point of where I could turn back in and face my own demons. And I think some of that,

conditioning from the military had to wear off. So, you know, being a couple of years out, at least from my experience, I still had a lot of that mindset and conditioning that was influencing how I did things. And it took a lot of crash and burns and a lot of, okay, maybe now it's, you know, now I need to settle down and figure out why do I keep crashing and burning?

And okay, so I succeed, but then, you know, so maybe let's get off the roller coaster here and figure out why am I on the roller coaster to begin with? And why am I even in this amusement park? And what else is there outside of this? And that just took time. What was some of the conditioning that had to wear off? You know, I...

And for me, and for a lot of the folks that I've worked with, I think we went into the military seeking the validation that maybe we didn't get growing up. My father, in retrospect, did the best he could, but coming up, mine wasn't the leave -it -to -beaver childhood by any stretch. And so I...

I went into the military seeking that place where I could be validated by a senior role model and leader. And I found a couple of those for sure. But I also found a lot of other broken kids that were just older than me went looking for the same thing. And for the couple of really great leaders that I had a chance to work with, for every one of those, there were 20

Lord of the Flies soaked in alcohol, guys that were the, well, I had to go through this suck, so I'm gonna make it suck even worse for you. There's a lot about the military, which is like, why are we doing this? Well, because I had to do it. And well, why did you have to do it? Well, because that's how it's always been done. Right.

Yeah, yeah. It's the whole, you know, so here's one of those abstract stories that I'll bring forward that's relevant. Did you know that the US space program is directly proportional to the width of a horse's ass? What? All right. So here we go. Run down this with me. So our space program uses booster rockets for the shuttle, right?

But booster rockets are manufactured in one place have to be transported to another. And so that transportation has to go by rail because that's the most effective way to move it from point A to point B. So, so, so the booster rockets had to be sized to be able to go through railroad tunnels. So railroad tunnels are sized based on the width of trains. Trains are sized based on the width of the rails. The rails,

you know, who came up with the gauge of the rails? Well, it goes back to the old Roman roads and the ruts that were in the roads based on the chariots. Chariots were, the wheels on chariots were sized based on how wide the two horses were that were pulling the chariots. So chariot wheel width was based on how wide.

to warhorse asses were, because then the wheels were on the outside of that. So our space program can trace its roots back to the width of a horse's ass. So there you go.

Well, I love that. That makes me think about there's a concept that's widely adopted in the tech entrepreneurship space where they talk about first principles and it's there's so much conditioning in our own minds about how problems need to be solved. And there's all these assumptions about where the starting point is.

And most of these assumptions about where we're starting from is unconscious. It's an unconscious belief, right? It's like we, what you're talking about is people forget why something is the way it is. And then they can't seem to,

to even fathom how it could be any different. And so the mind gets this tunnel vision, going back to tunnels. And when Elon Musk talks about this and a lot of other people in the tech space, I've been in so many rooms where there's a lot of high -level tech entrepreneurs and they talk about this. And it's like, what's the problem we're trying to solve? And then open your mind from there.

versus a lot of times when you're working inside of a system, you're looking at all of the barriers first or the way it has to be done. Or if the first question is how are we going to accomplish this, you've already failed. We gotta start looking at the end result reverse engineering based off of what.

everything that's available and possible or maybe even creating new things in order to make it possible. And so, yeah, hearing you talk about that with like the NASA is based off of that, but the military is largely based off of that. And the period of time that you spent in the military is going to dictate likely how much there is to unwind in that regard.

And you and I have had these conversations before, you know, where we go in and we're conditioned to be externally motivated, externally focused, right? So you go in because the as much in our military, thankfully, you know, part of why we succeeded during World War Two and even some of our other conflicts is there is a level of

ingenuity that's in permission, at least that used to be pushed down to lower level leaders. During World War II, the thing that frustrated the Germans the most about going up against us is we would improvise, adapt and overcome. And a squad leader had a decision -making ability to be able to accomplish the mission.

I think some of that's gotten lost. And even when I was in Bosnia, we first went in after the Dayton Peace Accord was signed. And when we first got there and things were kind of chaotic as a first lieutenant, I was able to make decisions on the ground to make things happen and work. But then as things started to stabilize and people started to have less to do,

more and more of that decision making authority was sucked up. David Hackworth in his book about face talked about the micromanagement when things started to get slower. I mean, you had the White House planning bombing targets. And so you had the president inviting his buddies over, let's pick out the bombing targets for tonight. And then,

You know, you had helicopters and so you'd have a squad leader. When things were slow, you'd have a squad leader that was engaging. His battalion commander was flying over and a helicopter getting down onto his radio net telling him how to fight the battle. And then the brigade commander was flying over the top of that in some cases. And I saw that in my own experience in Bosnia, you know, decisions that I was making as a First Lieutenant.

had to be up to the com arc or three star general level by the time I left a year later. So I think, you know, and so what happens instead of being able to say, hey, no, that was my decision cycle because we're conditioned to be externally motivated, you know, well.

I'm only a First Lieutenant. This is a three -star telling me what to do. So I've got to lock heels and do exactly what I'm told. And so we're conditioned to automatically just fall in place with the orders that were given because we're conditioned to be that way. And instead of, boy, hey, wait a minute. Let me be a little more internally motivated and navigate through. So yeah, it took a while for that to wear off. It took a while to...

to stop looking for that external validation and finding somebody to validate because then there's really nobody that can validate your, your story, your journey, but you, but it takes a while to figure that out. Yeah. The, I mean, I've thought about the, the day, as I, as I was gearing up to,

launched the mission after I was thinking about the day I got out of the military, reflecting back on that and how there was this, before that day, I had this fantasy that it was gonna be the best day of my life and it was gonna be so awesome. And I woke up and everything felt, I felt so lost and so confused and just got to drinking and smoking and that didn't stop for a while.

And it was, it was not exactly what I thought it was going to be. And I sat with it. I thought about it. I was like, I had four years of always knowing exactly what I was going to do. I may not know how we were going to do it. You know, that, that made it fun. You know, that whole adapting thing, but no matter how

innovative your team was in the military, you're still inside of a box. And it's your box may be bigger, you might be outside of the box that a lot of other people are in, but you're still inside of a box. I think that that can almost be more dangerous for the individual because like if I talk to guys who are green berets, for instance, some of the most out of the box guys.

They think that they've they may believe that they're they're out of the box and they can adapt and they have all the tools, but they didn't. But because they believe that they're not looking to get out of the box, whereas if somebody was general infantry or something like that, they go, well, I know, I know I was in a box. It was pretty clear. And now I might want to get out of that box and look at things differently. So.

That's just something that I've noticed and something I noticed for myself is like, okay, that you were talking about external versus internal motivation. The way I've been thinking about is the internal commander versus the external commander. You know, I have the commander's intent is always operating for you when you're in the military and hiding in the back of the mind and chirping up no matter whether you're on liberty or not.

And the, and then when you get out that, that voice goes away and, and I think a lot of times people try to find that commander at their job. And I just hear so many guys like, I got a job and then I changed jobs and I'm on my fifth job in two years. And I, I believe it's because they're looking for the job to replace.

the military, they're looking for that commander. And because there's no commander, there's no command and there's no, you know, there's not this tight knit community that comes along with that.

And, and, you know, we, we talked before and really resonated with me, the, you know, the conflation of service and sacrifice, right. It'd be because it's so drilled into our heads during our military service, then it's, yeah, you, you serve, but you didn't really serve if the sacrifice didn't somehow mildly cripple you. Yeah.

Is it so? So yeah, you all right. So cool. You went in, you took out that machine gun nest. You did these brave things. Did you get a Purple Heart to go along with that? well, then, you know, you didn't sacrifice as much as you could have, you know, and you step back and you look at that. It's like. That makes no sense. Why? You know, why? Why do I have to cut?

off my arm to use it as a club to beat somebody when I could reach down and pick up a stick and do the same thing, you know, that that's cool. And you picked up that stick. But did you really sacrifice? Right. Yeah, there's that. And the result of that is like that survivor's guilt, which.

which a lot of people, I mean, I think that impacts everybody that came out clean. You go in and come out and I go, I got all my fingers and toes.

I think everyone lost a little bit of hearing. But aside from that. Wait, what's that? You know what? There should be like a support group just for the spouses. There should be like a meeting about not being us just saying, huh? What are you saying? Yeah, we can name it, huh? What did you say? Yeah, so yeah, I think that's...

I think everybody suffers a bit of that survivor's guilt because of that. I know guys who... I got one friend who lost his leg all the way up to his hip. His whole body is scarred. He has an IED in Afghanistan. He lost some guys in that.

And he's got survivor's guilt, even though, you know, like he barely he was as he did die, by the way, he he died and then he was brought, you know, he came back to life. So and I think more than once. So he had some really interesting experiences there and still survivor's guilt with that. So yeah, that that service and sacrifice that exercise. Yeah, we kick we kick that off. That starts the conversation when.

when someone gets into the mission after one of the first exercises is to create a distinction there. And what Lance is talking about is like, I call it, I've heard it, you know, conflation or collapse distinction. I'd like the language of collapse distinction is like, okay, these are two distinct things, service and sacrifice. You know, if I have you, if I have you write down the definition of set service, you're going to write down or look it up and.

the dictionary, it's going to say one thing sacrifice. It's going to say another. And yet in our minds they get collapsed. And the result of that is that when somebody, while they're in the military and then when they get out is even when you get out into the world, you're, you have the greatest opportunity to continue to be of service to your fellow human beings and to yourself and.

so many people, I was this way. And one of the reasons I put it in the program is because I had to deal with this and it's, am I first seeking out ways of sacrifice in order to be of service or am I actually looking for ways of being of service? And then possibly there's the necessity for some type of sacrifice inside of that service because service is so much bigger than sacrifice. And so I ended up with the

you know, going through this intellectual understanding of, of, actually, if I, if I'm very strategic about my sacrifices, I can be of way more service. In fact, I need to be of service way more frequently without sacrifice so that I can continue to be of even more service. And it's like, you know, who can make the biggest

impact on a community is usually somebody who's accumulated some wealth. You know, a lot of times people are like, I can't how much can you give? You know, if you don't have much, there's not much you can give. And so really getting that an intellectual level, but then also needing to deal with that at an emotional level, because there's one thing to get it in your head. And it's another thing to embody it and for your subconscious, which includes your feelings.

to go along with that reality instead of being stuck in some illusion. You touched on something there. Accumulating wealth to be able to be of greater impact. So there is financial wealth, but then there's also emotional wealth too. If you have emotional wealth, then you've got more to be able to give.

And, you know, the more we heal, then the more we can give and the less of it really a sacrifice it is. You know, it's kind of like the difference between feed corn or, you know, seed corn. If you eat your seed corn, then there's only so many crops you can plant. But if you hold on to that seed and you plant those crops, then there's that much more.

later on down the road. And we all talk, work smarter, not harder, and all of that. And they're fun little catchphrases, but we really need to do so. There was a pastor friend of mine, he had all of these great little one -liners. And one of them that he used to say is, well, what's down in the well comes up in the bucket. Meaning, if we...

if we find love for ourselves and we take care of ourselves, then there's that much more that can come up to be able to help water feed others. And the other thing is we struggle with giving less when we find that place of balance and that emotional internal wealth. Because then it doesn't suck. And we don't feel like somehow,

It's that stressed overachiever, I did this, but we were conditioned to be in that place of imbalance. But if we can get to the point of where it's like, no, it's okay. And depending on the theology or philosophy that you pull from, there's truth everywhere. And...

You know, one of the things that when I'm working with people that have a Christian grounding,

You know, I asked them, okay, what did Christ say was the greatest commandment? And they'll say, well, love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength and love your fellow man. I said, no, no, no, let's go back and reread that. It's love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. Love each other as you love yourself. Okay, that last part gets clipped off, but that, in my assessment, is the most important part. We have to...

have to love ourselves, look out for ourselves, not in a narcissistic way or selfish way, but a self preservation way so that we can truly reflect that to others. Right. Yeah. The, I think we had our, we had a mentorship call with some of our vets last night and, you know, the, one of the guys in the program was able to help out.

somebody who was in a really rough spot. There was. And the only reason that he would he was really in a position to be helpful is because he had done some work for himself. You know, if. We've probably. Seen or heard stories, you know, someone's having suicidal ideation, they reach out to somebody.

who may be in a similar position. So like one veteran calling another veteran, which I don't think happens enough. I think veterans tend to isolate when they're feeling bad and don't wanna become a burden on somebody else. But sometimes it's like, hey man, I'm here for you. You can do it. It's a very...

that person is doing the best they can to help that person out and giving them some encouragement to keep going. But if somebody has done that deep work on themselves, they've actually put themselves first for a moment and gone through some of their own healing. They're going to be able to connect with them on a much deeper level and make that impact. And that's that's what I'm really looking at with veterans as a whole right now is everyone who's having a problem is not going to be helped. There's not enough.

therapists working out at the VA that you're going to be able to like make a phone call and immediately see somebody who's going to be able to help you. Like that's not how that works. And it's usually not how people actually get help right now. It needs to be a network of veterans helping each other and civilians being involved too. But it's not, it's not a, it requires the veterans who are feeling that that pool to do something more, to actually step in and.

do their own work so that they can turn around and be of service as well. Yeah, I think what's really critical in the space and I think we're starting to see it and we understand it intrinsically with the mission actor is, you know, the lived experience is very important for folks in our community. You know, you were Navy, I was Army, but we served. And

And we have that immediate connection that, you know, some PhD in a white coat that didn't have that lived experience isn't going to be able to relate to and connect with. And they might've studied it academically, but for those of us that lived in that world, there's always a level of skepticism.

You know, it's like, you don't get me, you don't understand me. And so at a minimum, there need to be veterans that can connect and say, now you can trust this guy. Because that referral network is important to build the BLT, the believe, like, and trust, right? And so you need somebody to...

Say, no, that's a good guy or stay away from them or whatever the case is. And that was the case for me, kind of going through looking for my healing path. We tend to put up those limiting beliefs and it's like, all right, so what does this guy or this lady understand about me? So they read it in a book, but.

they don't have the lived experience. I really think having peers with whom to connect is paramount to meet people where they are in this space and then bring them into rooms with other people that have additional skill sets to help them in their journey. I went to the MAPS conference in Denver last year and that in...

Prior to going, I still had all of my conditioning from my military time. And I had done a lot of work to say, okay, maybe the things that we were told weren't necessarily the truth. I'd worked for, since 2010, using cannabis as a healing medicine with myself and others. But...

You know, then it's like, psychedelics, that's a whole, that's a whole different thing, you know, and, and I assumed that I was going to be showing up to, you know, fricking Woodstock meets a Grateful Dead concert. And it was going to be a conference hall full of drum circles and tie dye and hairy armpits, you know, and, and well, sure there there's that in the community and, and, you know, in

Everybody that I met in those communities are beautiful, wonderful people, but my own precondition, you know, if I'd walked in and that's all it was, I would have turned around and walked back. Versus I went there and I met military people who, it's like, yeah, no, this is it. There's so much that can be done here. Yeah, I found, and so that endorsement, that validation was like a...

and now it's time to do the plunge. So all of that to say we need people with lived experience to mean us where we are, to take us where we need to be.

Absolutely.

So being somebody of those lived experiences, you have acquired yourself over the last 25 years, some special skills that can actually, that can help people. What are the ways, what have you studied, what have you picked up, and what are you bringing to veterans specifically right now? Sure, so, you know, in that experience, when I got out,

It was like a...

I think I understood a lot of the pain that I was in and still in that, we'll call it selfless sacrifice, put yourself last, servant leadership. And again, servant leadership, that can happen without setting yourself on fire to keep other people warm. Didn't understand that at the time. So it's like, well, all right, I'm wounded, but I'm gonna circle back and help other people. I did a lot of...

veteran advocacy work became very disillusioned with people that were working in that space because what was represented, how the veterans are important, really in most cases, the veterans were props, veterans were window dressing for them to go get grant monies to make sure that they maintain their salaries and all of that. And then also just seeing at the time,

you know, mental wellness was almost exclusively pharmacologically based. You know, here's a pill to fix it. And, and seeing just how devastating that was, and it's only gotten worse. So I, you know, I said, okay, I want to be a part of this space, but there, there needs to be something other than a pill.

So what other modalities are there out there? And I decided, okay, I want to start pursuing the path to be able to help, but I don't necessarily want to, and I say this frequently, I don't want to sacrifice my soul on the altar of big pharma to get my MD or my DO, because I feel like if by the time I get to the place where I can make a difference, I will have sacrificed so much of...

that truest intent that I would become a part of the problem and not necessarily be part of the solution. So I started on the path to educate myself, ended up getting a degree in functional medicine, which takes a very different approach to health, much more of a holistic approach. And through my...

my work, my experience, it's not a new concept by any stretch, but realize that health is like a three -legged stool. There's the physical, physiological, there's the mental, one leg of the stool, the mental, emotional, which is another leg, and then the spiritual, and not any particular religion, but just being connected to something bigger than yourself.

It is important whenever that might look like for the individual. And those three things just, you know, you can balance yourself on a three legged stool if you're just standing on two legs, like leaning back on it, but it's hard to maintain your balance for long. Or if one leg is too short, then you're going to sit crooked. So really it's about working on all three. So I got my degree in functional medicine.

And functional medicine is about getting to the root cause of things. Functional medicine is also very focused on gut health. 85 to 90 % of the serotonin in your body is produced in the gut. 50 % of the dopamine in your body is produced in the gut. 7 of 15 serotonin receptor types reside in the gut.

that in functional medicine, we refer to the gut as the second brain. And so it makes sense that the things that you take in to your body are going to impact your mental wellness as well as your physical wellbeing. And so, if you remember being in sixth grade and walking into school and realizing you forgot to study for the math test and...

You get that sinking feeling, that burning, sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach. You know, well, that's your second brain telling you, you screwed up, you know, and you know, you've got that reaction. Well, the other way is true. So, you know, a fair amount of our mental wellness, a fair amount of our body aches and pains have to do with the food and the supplements and the nutrients that we take into our body.

You know, even your histamine reaction in your body and your histamine receptors are interlaced with your serotonin, GABA, NMDA, and dopamine receptors. You know, they all interplay with each other. And you think about it, so if you have inflammation, so inflammation is a swelling.

And so if you've got these little, very delicate little neuro receptors, these little electrical tendrils, and you're crowding them with a balloon that's pushing this little wire that should be sitting here, but now you've got balloons that are pushing around it and they're squeezing it, it's not gonna perform optimally, right? So...

There are things that we can do that start with gut health that are then going to affect other things in what we think and how we do life. So inflammation is a big issue. But then swimming upstream, let's look at root causes. A lot of medicine nowadays is let's treat the symptom. Let's mask the symptom. Let's deal with it. Even antihistamine is benadryl. While it's just telling your body to stop.

producing histamine. It's doing nothing to address the issue, the fact that the body has misidentified things as threats when they're not. So rather than just mask things, let's get to the root cause. One of the metaphors I use is if there's an oil leak upriver,

You know, we definitely need to wash off the ducks and dig up the fouled soil. But if we don't go cap the oil leak upstream, we're going to be doing that for the rest of our life. You know, we're just going to be washing ducks with DONE dish soap and digging up contaminated soil. But we've got to go up and cap the problem. So we've got to swim upstream. And so...

Part of the challenge of helping people adopt new behavior patterns when it comes to nutrition is swimming upstream to figure out why it is that they're resistant to that to begin with. And so mental wellness and the physiological wellness all come together. And what I've come to put together is what I call the available tool concept, which...

We pick up tools to navigate through significant emotional events and you know, those significant emotional events create pliability in our psyche. We're willing to take a, you know, consider something to help us navigate. And in the military, we pick up nicotine, we pick up alcohol, we, you know, we pick up these tools, behavior patterns. Lots of caffeine. Lots of caffeine. Yeah, dude. I lived on caffeine.

I think we all did. Did you guys have MREs in the Navy? Did you have to deal with those things? We didn't survive on them, but on occasion when we weren't close to the mess hall or the galley, we would use, you know, if we were going to go do something, we're going to be gone for a day or two. I don't think I ate MREs more than like one week in a row at a time, whereas I know guys in the Army lived off those things.

Yeah. And caffeine to that point, we would make something called ranger pudding, which was you take the cocoa powder and the coffee and the cream and the sugar and a little bit of water and you'd make a paste out of it, mainly because you were looking for the caffeine out of the coffee and out of the cocoa. So the caffeine and the sugar, right? Just to be able to survive because again, it was a tool. Yeah. We ran out of coffee. There was a problem.

you know, somebody was in trouble.

So we pick up these tools to help us navigate. But then after we get past that significant emotional event, that tool that's locked in our hands, we're going to keep using it until we get to the next significant emotional event. And if you look at that, so let's say you pick up alcohol as your tool, you're going to keep drinking and drinking even though it's downward spiral, even though it's not good for your body, you're going to drink until...

there's a significant emotional event, whether it's a DUI, whether it's a divorce, whether it's a diagnosis, then suddenly there's going to be a radical change. We find exercise, we find Jesus, we find CrossFit, we find something to replace that old tool with a more productive tool. So people that have problems, it's like, well, you know what, well,

Why can't they see that that's bad for them? Well, I mean, because there hasn't necessarily been that catalyst event to be able to drop, to have enough pliability to drop that tool. So it's not a moral failure. It's not a lack of motivation. It's not a lack of determination. It's just, you're not at that point of pliability to where you can drop the tool and pick up a...

One of the ways I think about it is...

I'll use like skin rashes as an example. Someone has a skin rash and I'll talk from like the I've experienced this recently with somebody. I've got this skin rash. I want this. I want this thing to go away. I want this. You know, there's resistance to it. There's there's a judging of it. I want it to go away. I don't like this. I'm over it. I'm done with it, you know? And so it's like, where's the cream?

I can put on this, I need to go, I need to go to the doctor and I need to put something on the rash. And you know, I'm talking to them and I go, well, you know,

The rash is just a message. You're receiving a message. And especially the skin. The skin is just sending you messages. There's something on the inside of you that's irritated. And that's a message telling you to change some type of behavior. Change what you're eating, change how you're sleeping. And...

maybe it's an emotional thing, you know, emotions are impacting what's happening in the gut and the gut is impacting the skin and all these things. You know, there's something going on inside. Maybe there's a fungus. Why is the fungus? Why, why is it able to proliferate in the body? What's the, why is the ecosystem of the body producing this? And, and I think I I've had this conversation, you know, not just about rashes on the skin, but

different thing people are experiencing with their body. Maybe they're carrying some fat where they don't want to carry it or whatever. And they just want to get rid of it. And I need to cut my calories or stop eating sugar or whatever it is, which, you know, may, you know, those can be like, kind of a solution. But it's not getting the deep down thing. I think a lot of times, going back to your your three legged stool is

If you're not in a place where you're in a loving relationship with your body, when the body doesn't do something you like, you just want it to stop giving you the symptom. So when the commercial comes on the television and says this pharmaceutical drug will stop this symptom, because that's how they advertise, it solves this symptom, this symptom, this symptom, this symptom. And you go, well, shit, that's the solution.

The solution is the drug. And so I see how that makes it even harder to get to that place you're talking about where you go, maybe I need to change this because there's all these external solutions. It's like the problem isn't that you didn't have enough of this drug in your body. So now we got to introduce it. You know, when I say it like that, people are listening, go, well, obviously, but.

That's a lot of how we behave. And so this is where the emotional aspect comes in place. Like, are you in a great relationship with your body? Do you love your body? And I think a lot of times the, was it the positive, what's it called? The positive body movement where, you know, which is signified a lot by women who are overweight and wearing lingerie and posting pictures.

online and it's like that's not what that is. That's not loving your body. That's something else. I don't even know what that is. But like when you love your body, you're going to listen to the messages of, I am really, I'm carrying a lot of extra fat. That means that there's something going on, something's off and I get to change it. That's self -love. That's being in a good relationship with your body and loving your body and going, okay. I'm hearing the message.

and now I get to change something for me. So I think that, you know, talking about the three -legged stools, let's think about that. It's not about, I think that's one step towards not just trying to get rid of symptoms with drugs. Sure. Well, like you look at Ozempic, right? yeah. here's something I'm doing. It's going to make me lose all of this weight. Well, the weight is a symptom.

you know, there, there, it was, so food became a, a self -soothing tool, to, you know, to either create a barrier, to, you know, from, from, from trauma or things that we've gone through, or it was a place to find comfort or a place to find control.

you know, I, I struggled with my weight in the past as well. And, you know, and when people get hyper sensitive around topics, that's usually because that that's where the most healing needs to take place. And so it's very sore, you know, and, and, and so if, if, if somebody struggles with.

Talking about the way you usually there there's some trauma wrapped around it and You know beating them over the head or or fat shaming isn't the answer But but finding out what why it is that they're there So I think first step is you know, like we were talking on the last call a UA you accept what is You understand You know you you seek to understand why not not?

to judge it, but just to understand it and then appreciate. So if, you know, for anybody that's listening, if you're struggling with weight, okay, just accept what is. And you can love yourself right now. It doesn't mean that, you know, that you stagnate in that place. So love your body. Your body is beautiful. You know, it's this beautiful vehicle that your eternal soul gets to drive around in this human experience. Okay, so.

Do you change the oil in your car? Okay, then do maintenance on this body, you know, and appreciate it for what it is, all that it's done for you. And then, you know, okay, what can I do to optimize its performance? And, you know, and well, if there's a reason that you won't wash your car, okay, let's figure out why that is, you know, because ultimately your car is...

you know, the paint's gonna last longer if you wash off all of the salt and the grime. Or you're reluctant to change the oil, but we know that if we change the oil, that engine's gonna last longer and perform better. So let's kind of explore why we have an aversion to changing the oil or whatever the case is. So again, it's maybe a little bit of a shift. So our identity is not our body, our body is a vehicle.

So let's just take better care of it. And that's where we go back to the three -legged stool thing and leaning more into the spiritual and the mental aspects of who we are. Yeah. Yeah. The, the, the rash or the additional weight is the messenger and it's not something to be, it's something to have gratitude for. It's like, there you are. I've got a rash. Thank you for the message.

I appreciate that. Now I get to look under the hood and see what's going on. And, and, but it's, but I don't think it's, I've got this, this message coming through, screw it. I'm just going to like love the message and not do anything about it at all. which I think is what's happening in society a little bit right now. Yeah. You know, it's like, if you, if you step on the brakes and, and you get this terrible metal on metal squeal,

You don't go in and install better speakers for your stereo and crank it up louder. Right. Well, let's turn up the volume on this, you know, or you start going out and you create a whole promotional campaign on why squeaky brakes are good. Right. It's actually good for your car. I remember I was years ago, I was talking to somebody and they were they were overweight and they were.

They're a friend and they were like, wow, you just you look so good and lean and da da da. And I without even thinking the words popped out of my my mouth is like health has a look like health health looks a certain way. Like a healthy body does look like something. That's that's that's what you're seeing is I I really taken care of the vehicle and and.

You know, I don't know if that offended them or, you know, it did. I definitely took him off guard because I don't think they ever heard anyone say that before. And I think a lot of people would be offended or insulted if someone were to say that to them. But there's a friend and, you know, that I was kind of sometimes you just need someone to tell you, hey, snap out of it. I had a I had a buddy who is we're at a baseball game and he.

was he was 510, 360 pounds. He was a big guy. And the stranger passes him by, puts his hand on his shoulder and he goes, Hey, buddy, you should lose some weight. And just kept on walking. And that floored him. He's like, what? Who the hell is this guy that thinks he can just tell me that? And you know what he did?

He went and lost some weight. He started eating healthier. He stopped eating the desserts before bed. He actually started getting his life together in a lot of different ways. And so I know that's not what everyone, not everyone's gonna respond to that, but sometimes it is something like that.

And you were saying something about Ozempic. I don't know if we covered that completely, but maybe you were just saying that was like a fast fix. Yeah, that's the go buy bigger speakers for your stereo. That instead of getting down to the root cause, ultimately weight retention has very little to do with metabolism. I mean, not that...

that there are metabolic factors to it. But in everybody that I've worked with, to include myself, the weight is a symptom of a deeper issue. And in most times, it's a physiological manifestation of a mental or emotional wound.

or trauma that needs to be addressed and healed. And sometimes spiritual and sometimes then, you know, there are mental and emotional wounds that come from spiritual pursuits. But if we're just looking at that one leg of the stool, you know, well, here's a pillar, here's a shot to fix that issue. Well, what you're finding, one is there are lots of

other side effects that come from, so we're addressing that one issue, but now there are three to five other issues that crop up that now need additional medications. And so now we're going down that slippery slope of we fix one thing and three more things crop up. So now we need more, more synthetic pharmaceuticals to fix those things. And we've seen that in the mental wellness space as well.

I think you've probably had the same thing happen for you is, you know, we've both been working with veterans and just general population people as well. I come from a health and wellness background. And I've had and since working with the veterans, a lot of times, you know, we're working through, we're coming at it from a holistic perspective. We're looking at I got to find out what pharmaceuticals you're on. And.

I go, okay, can you send me the pharmaceuticals you're on? I'm going to have to go look and I'll text them to you. And next thing you know, I got a text with seven to 10 different pharmaceutical drugs and I've got a little spreadsheet and I pop it in and I go, your system is totally overloaded in these three areas. Like your, your, your system's getting ganged up on and you're just going to keep diminishing if you stay on these things.

And half of the drugs are things that you can't just stop taking. You have to wean yourself off of. It's not a it's not just like a stop doing it. It could be very harmful to do that. And yeah, it just blows me away how how quickly all doctors are not all doctors, but that how many people, not just veterans, but in the general population are being prescribed things so quickly. And it seems to be in the veteran population to be even more prolific. And.

the I had someone tell me recently, they go, it's very interesting how none of these drugs, they would have never prescribed any of these drugs to us while we were in the military. But the moment you're out, you get all of them all at once. What does that tell you? It's like there's a reason they don't want you on those drugs when you're in, because they need you to be functional. But once you're out, there's you know, it's about.

you know, creating relief for the individual. Yeah, yeah. What you're referencing is what I call the polypharma lobotomy, right? When you're in, you're serving a particular role. And once you're out, OK, let's go ahead and lobotomize you so that you now fall in line and don't question, just move along and...

You know, there's a cynical part of me that says, well, they, you know, they're where we're being turned into financial batteries to feed big pharma, right? Yeah. Please just don't cause any problems. Yeah. Like, what do we do? How are we can do to make it where you're not going to cause too many problems and make the stats worse? There's another thing you said, which is you use the language of side effects. And I've been working.

to stop using the word side effects altogether. And side effects is a marketing term. There's only effects of a drug, right? There's only effects of anything. These are the effects. And in marketing, it's great to call something a side effect because you can kind of put it to the side. We're going to focus on the effects we desire, but we're going to put these effects we don't desire in this category of side effects.

And then we're going to talk about them really fast. So you may not pay attention. It's not that big of a deal, even though you might get diarrhea and die. And it's it's I think that that's another thing that would be helpful for people as we're navigating the world is. Not putting side effects in another category and just saying these are the total effects of this treatment.

Are you do you still want this instead of saying, well, this treats this and the side effects of this thing over here. And in my mind, when I hear side effects, I hear you may or may not experience these side effects or maybe not all of them or this or that, which may be true, but it's it's almost surprising if the side effect comes up.

I like that and that's now become a part of my vernacular. The cumulative effect or the expansive effect, there is no longer side effect. So thank you for that and give you a perfect example of that. SSRIs, 15 % likelihood that they will have a positive effect.

takes three to 12 weeks to figure out if there is that positive effect, six to 12 months to determine proper titration, and it is a lifelong utilization after that. So 15%, one 5 % chance of positive effect, 50 % chance of adverse effect to include weight gain, suicidal ideation,

sexual dysfunction, you know, the list goes, those are the major ones. I don't know of any other product in the world where you have a 15 % chance of benefit, 50 % chance of detriment, and we're like, yes, that is our first go -to. But in the current,

healthcare model, you need to utilize two different SSRIs before and go through that full cycle before you can be considered for other methodologies to help with with mental well -being. Isn't that crazy? Yeah. And I found this out the other day is a primary care physician can prescribe SSRIs.

SNRIs. Wellbutrin is one of the most popular ones out there. It's an SNRI. And I was talking to a client about, why did, why were you prescribed the, the Wellbutrin SNRI? You know, what was the, because the doctor has to write something down. You have to say you have something. And he was like, well, I was just unhappy.

I was like, do you know the diagnosis the doctor gave you? He's like, no, no, I was just, I was like, well, what did you tell the doctor that made them do that? And well, I went to a primary care physician and they, they just, you know, I just told them I was unhappy. So they gave it to me and then it didn't work. So they gave me, they upped the prescription and, and, and I go, how much are you on now? And they go 300 milligrams a day of wellbutrin and I go, okay.

And they go, well, is that a lot? I go, well, that's about the most amount they're allowed to prescribe you. If they're prescribing you any more than that, then I've actually never heard of anyone being prescribed more than that. I think that's, and you deal with this more than I do. But yeah, is 300 the most that people are being prescribed? Because I think that's the top that I've heard. Yeah, that's definitely on the upper limits.

Are there people out there on more? Sure, because there are plenty of prescribers out there that are listening to their farmer reps instead of doing their own research. Did you watch the movie Dope Sick? I've watched clips of it. I haven't sat and watched the whole thing. It makes my skin come off. Dude, it's on Hulu. I only watch these types of shows when I'm traveling because I got to be in an Airbnb or something that has...

Hulu, because I don't I can't put up with commercials, but the that movie was insane. I was I was on a I was on a vacation for three weeks and we were able to smash it out in like a week or two. And the the way you know, it's all about the opioid crisis and the Sackler family and how they brought opiates to the market. And this.

The solution was always to create a higher dose, higher dose, higher dose. And then the people that were understanding what was happening physiologically were like, he can't do that. And they were able to pull it off. They were able to get FDA approval. They were able, through all of these different techniques that these pharmaceutical companies were able to convince doctors to do that. And the movie is based on a true story and it covers a doctor.

in a small town who had a problem with it, but ended up on it himself because he got in a car accident. And even though he knew there was a problem, he ended up maxing out on it anyway and had to end up checking into a, I think it was like a methadone clinic or something like that to get off of it. And so it's, it's crazy. Even the methadone clinics, you look at those, you,

You look at how many people taper their way out of a methadone or a suboxone clinic. How many people actually leave that place? It's like Hotel California, right? You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave, right? Because it is not in their financial best interest to see people leave. If you come in and, well, let's put it this way. If you're a compliant patient,

They don't want you to leave because you are a consistent revenue stream for them. Yeah. If you're a troublesome patient, yeah, they're going to figure out a way to boot you. But if you're a compliant patient, they want you coming back every week or however frequently you're coming in for your fix. It's just converting you from getting your drugs on the street to getting your drugs from them because there's a financial incentive for them. But there is no...

I've worked with more than a couple of patients where they were very...

challenging interactions with their methadone clinic to taper them down and off because that clinic didn't want to lose them as a patient. Well, they're probably working at the clinic. The people working in the clinic are being told that that can't be done.

You know, the head honchos know, but the people who are working at the lower levels, I don't think most of them know they're just doing what they're told. Yeah, it's like, well, we're helping people. Well, it depends on what your definition of help is. Yeah. Yeah. So what are some, you know, if anyone's been paying attention to what's happening in the news, I go again.

has made a lot of headlines in the last few years. I've been I've been aware of ibogaine for for quite a while as a solution to someone who is on opiates who has addiction to opiates and ibogaine is this very effective. I don't know if there's anything more effective than that getting someone off of it. And it's a very rigorous experience.

It's not something that you're just like, I'm going to go take a pill and I'll be better tomorrow. You know, it's it's a rigorous experience. Yeah. Curious. What what do you know about weaning people off of SSRIs? Like what do people need to know about coming off of a lot of these psychiatric drugs and opiates and things like that? Well, I think the first thing is. And.

Be cautious of those that got you on them to begin with as far as their recommendations for how you step off. That being said, don't resort to what you saw in a TikTok video or your buddy that talked about a friend's cousin, whatever. Verify your sources, but understand that there are...

resources out there, but find a resource and find a trusted resource. And that's where this lived experience connecting with people that you can believe like and trust is imperative. So do your research. There are off ramps to get out of it. There are resources, plant medicines. The beauty of plant medicines is they've been around for millennia.

And we as humans have used them for millennia. It's only been within the past 200 years that synthetic pharmacology has come around. Before that, it was all plant -based medicines. And we as a species survived, and we sure as hell didn't have the suicide rates 300 years ago that we have now. So you have to kind of open the aperture and step back and look. So as far as...

weaning off, there are ways and means to wean off. Not everybody is going to want to go through an iboga experience. Not everybody's heart is going to be able to deal with that because it is very stressful on the heart. There are other plant medicines, there are other means of being able to taper. But the end goal needs to be

you know, whomever you're dealing with, the end state needs to be when we're done, you will be off of these meds. Not, well, yeah, let's, you know, let's, let's, let's taper you from opiates to methadone and see how that goes. That doesn't end well. Or let's, let's get you on Suboxone. That doesn't end well. Because again, those folks have a vested interest in you staying on. So then the question is, well, how long do you typically work with a patient?

You know, what's the longest that you've had a patient on? Is there integration therapy? Is there mental wellness with it? Because again, the three legged stool, if we're just looking at reducing the body's dependency on the chemical, we got on the chemical for a reason other than just physical pain. So, so there's, there's gotta be that, that holistic approach. Are there other plant medicines? Sure.

yeah, I'm an enomaskaria is a great plant medicine, but I don't recommend people go to the Pacific Northwest and go foraging for it themselves. You know, you've got to find people that have been in this space for generations that know it and understand it, you know, at least the harvesting of that medicine. that was kind of the day it was, everybody had the wisdom and it was passed around. And now there's a few people that the wisdom has been.

maintained and passed down. So you do have to find, you know, I wish it was one of those things where like, well, everyone should just know, well, hundreds of years ago, everyone was hip to this and it, and it just got lost. and it may not have been that particular plant or fungus because you know, it was all these plants are, from different regions. So every region has its medicine.

I spend a lot of time hanging out with people from the Lakota tradition, the Native Americans here. And there's some of them here in Texas. And there's a lot of conversation around the plants of the region is what we know. We bring Amneta muscaria into Texas and the people that are indigenous to this area, they don't know anything about it, but they have another plant that's also helpful for this or that.

Right, right. And, you know, like up here in the, you know, in the Northeast, you know, there's Devil's trumpet, you know, that's, you know, that's used by Lenny and Lenape. And, you know, in the Southwest, there's Peyote or there's San Pedro. And so definitely. But the point there being there were communities.

And in the community, you had medicine workers and wisdom keepers and there was interaction with those folks. And when you were sick, you went or if you were going through transitions in life, you went and spent time with that wisdom keeper or that medicine person. And we as a society, unfortunately, have become so isolationist.

individually, you know, we're all living in our little missile silos and instead of being in community. So, so that, you know, that, that, you know, we we've talked to before, you know, the, you know, recovery happens in community. And that's part of the mission after we're creating that community because that that's been lost. And, you know, since the Industrial Revolution, I feel like that's

You know, it's eroded, eroded, eroded. And so now here we are. We all feel like we are alone. And. But you know, that's. One of the things I talk about is that's the nature of science. Science is very isolating and science is a very necessary step. It's a very necessary thing to be paying attention to. It's something we need to continue to foster and.

I look for, you know, watching the science right now. There's a lot of scientific research happening with the plants and all that. That is basically demonstrating something that's been held by the spiritual community for a long time. And then science is coming along like, there might be something to this. And then everyone's like, OK. But I, I.

always tell people to be a little wary because science is there to isolate as many variables as possible and tell us if something's effective. But it's not something to rely solely on. It's a very important piece, but it's not this. It can't be the sole thing that we rely on because if we only rely on it, we're just going to end up with a bunch of isolated pieces. And science, the scientific method is not designed in a way.

for integration, where we integrate everything together or look at the entire plant. There's the combo frog from down in the Amazon that, you know, you got plant medicine, but there's also animal medicines. You have the combo frog, which I'm a big fan of. It's not, again, it's one of those that's not for everybody. And the pharmaceutical companies have been looking at the venom from the combo frog.

for I think two or three decades, isolating peptides. There's peptides inside of this venom. And they're isolating these different peptides and making pharmaceutical drugs out of them. And I look at it and the same thing's happening with psilocybin right now too. It's like, okay, if we just had psilocin, I'm like, yeah, but what are the other magical compounds and how are they working together in concert? You know, there's an orchestra of chemistry.

that's that's working with your body. And when you consume the entire thing, there's there's something special that happens. And when we start isolating, we remove some of the things and may not understand, well, why didn't it work the same way it did when we did it like this? It's like you may never understand that. And it's OK to not understand it. It's OK. It's OK to go. It just works. Pharmaceutical companies just trying to like.

tweet the psilocybin molecule or psilocin molecule just enough so they can patent it. And I go, what the fuck are we doing? It works. It's been working for thousands of years. Well, even, you know, even going back in and bifurcating or sub isolating and more, you look at racine ketamine, right? You know, so that that's derivative of, of PCP, you know, and racine ketamine.

highly effective as a disassociative, as a, you know, it was used in Vietnam alongside morphine and you actually had higher survival rates using ketamine because you were able to, you know, you could numb a, you know, you could numb something, you know, you had a limb blown off, you could numb it, you could turn it, and there was, because of the disassociation, there was...

there was a higher survivability rate. And we found in the early 90s with some of the Yale studies that, okay, in low doses, it actually really helps with mental wellness because we can create some disassociation so that we're slowing either slowing or neutralizing vagus nerve response in some of the visceral fight or flight reaction so that we can get in and do some cognitive therapy. And it's...

great, it's beautiful, but then the patent expired on it and so nobody wants to use it. But suddenly now we're just going to take the esketamine, that one helix out of the racing and we're going to flip it. And now we're going to patent that as Spravato and now we're going to charge people crazy amounts of money to use it. And so in

But then we go back and we look at these isolates coming out of the plant medicine. In cannabis, you have 90 plus different cannabinoids and terpenes in cannabis that work together in what's called the entourage effect that I know you're familiar with. In, I think, the 70s, the pharmaceutical companies said, well, let's take the THC on. They created a drug called Marinol, which was synthetic THC. Now, cannabis, it is impossible.

to overdose on cannabis. You have C1 and C2 receptors, your body has an endocannabinoid system in it. And when those receptors get full, the rest of it just bypasses, you know? And so your body doesn't continue to uptake, uptake, uptake. There are the checks and balances that grew in the plant. Now, Marinol, which is now spice, that shit can kill you, you know?

Because we took out the ice, you know, we created this isolate and so now we've got something that was absolutely safe and beautiful and wonderful and healing and does all of these good things, but we take out the isolate and now that shall kill you. You know, I liken it to if you've ever seen a circular saw, you know, then, you know, like a beautiful Milwaukee or a DeWalt circular saw, right? And.

and it's got these guards on it. So there's a guard around the blade and there's the guard that flips open as you're cutting and you can set it exactly how deep you want it to cut so you don't hurt anything. All of these beautiful things around it, right? To make sure that your operation of that blade is as safe and as metered and as controlled as it can be. That's like plant medicine. And these isolates are like, let's strip all of that shit off.

and let's have the cord, the motor, and this whirling blade, and now we're gonna take this thing and try to cut with it. Yeah, you can, but all of the safety measures that were in place with how it was originally manufactured no longer exist. And so in my experience, dealing with these isolates or these synthetic Frankensteins tends to be like that. It's stripping everything off.

that it took millions and millions and millions of years to come together to be this beautiful medicine. And now, no, we know better. So we're going to peel all of that off and somehow try to use it and think that we're going to do better than the millions upon millions of years of trial and error that already happened before we came along. Yeah. Yeah. I had a flashback to my childhood.

I grew up in a construction family and my dad would take the Milwaukee circular saw and like pin the safety back on it because it was getting in the way of his speed. But he was a highly skilled craftsman, right? Highly skilled craftsman. Not just I would not recommend doing that if you're just like, you know, I want to build a doghouse over the weekend. You know, that's two different people.

Two different people and into that point even you know dealing with some of these either plant medicines or synthetic medicines, you know in Like the mental wellness space that we've discussed You definitely want that skilled craftsman there For the journey, you know, otherwise you're gonna end up cutting some fingers off or worse Absolutely. Absolutely. That was one of the one of my

One of the things that inspired the mission after is just witnessing being, you know, I've been involved in the psychedelic space for a decade as well. And just noticing that the integration, the prep and integration is still I believe there's really good programs out there, but some of the ones I've been introduced to seem like they're not not quite holistic in the way that I would do it. And so.

the program that we have is a lot of it was inspired from that place. Not that you need to be interested or preparing for psychedelics or plant medicine to be in the program, but it definitely is good as a standalone if you're not doing that. But it's also if you have done or are thinking about doing those things, it's a perfect program to be a part of because you're going to automatically get long term prep and integration.

work there. Yeah, you know, it's, it's, you know, up, up until fairly recently in history, we learned things by apprenticing, you know, apprentice journeyman master, right? And, you know, if you want to learn a skill, you go apprentice with somebody that, that has been down that path before. And so in the same way, there's, you know, the mission after allows,

not only community, but folks that are masters of the various aspects of life that can come alongside you and kind of teach. A lot of us never got to go through the apprenticing or journeyman and master of manhood or womanhood or life experience. And so it's a good place to find those that resonate with you.

You know, to do life together and not have to try to figure it out on our own. You know, the whole Marlboro man concept is bullshit, you know? Mm hmm. Well, yeah, we'll wrap it up here. Anything else that you want to leave everyone with? No, just check out the mission after. Yeah, it's in.

It's not just bros on the couch. You know, there's great stuff that that's happening that everybody can benefit from. Excellent. Anywhere that people can find you got a LinkedIn profile, any websites or anything like that you want to promote? Yeah. Yeah. Link coming out in the next couple of months. So yeah, well, we'll be relaunching our website in a couple of months. So that that's down just while we're in transition to get out to Denver. But in the in -between time,

We're on Instagram at Novopax Wellness and my LinkedIn is on LinkedIn, Lance Cuttsforth, C -U -T -S -F -O -R -T -H. Cool. And we'll put links to that in the show notes. Thanks for sharing your wisdom today and I look forward to much more work we have together. Appreciate it, brother. Love you. Yes, sir. Love you too, bro.

Mike Bledsoe (1:33:44)
Thank you for tuning into this episode of the Mission After. Before we wrap up, I want to remind you about our free resource, the 10 surprising military habits that are sabotaging your career and your life. This guide is packed with valuable insights to help you overcome common challenges faced by veterans transitioning to civilian life. Don't miss out on this opportunity to take control of your career and life. Head over to the missionafter .org to download your copy now. It's completely free and could be the game changer you're looking for.

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