The Mission After

Mike Bledsoe (00:00)
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. Our guest today is Jesse Gould, a founder and president of the Heroic Hearts Project, a nonprofit pioneering psychedelic therapies for military veterans. After being deployed as an army ranger in Afghanistan three times, Jesse founded the Heroic Hearts Project in 2017 to spearhead the acceptance and use of ayahuasca therapy.

as a means of addressing the current mental health crisis among veterans. His organization has raised over $350 ,000 in scholarships from donors, including Dr. Bronner's. Partnered with world's leading ayahuasca treatment centers and sponsored psychiatric applications with the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Georgia. Jesse helps shape treatment programs and spreads awareness of plant medicine as a therapeutic method.

He has spoken globally about psychedelics and mental health and was recognized as one of the social entrepreneurs to watch for in 2020 by Cause Artist. Today, he will share insights on the importance of providing access to psychedelic medicines for veterans, the limitations of traditional treatment methods, and the need for a new approach to mental health care that prioritizes healing and community support. By the end of this episode, you'll discover three major takeaways. One.

Access to psychedelic medicines can be critical for veterans struggling with mental health issues such as PTSD, depression, and anxiety. Two, traditional treatment methods have often focused on symptom management rather than addressing the root causes of mental health disorders. And three, the importance of community support and the role of psychedelics in addressing ancestral trauma and building emotional resilience. But before we go any further, I want to tell you about our new free resource available at themissionafter .org.

It's called 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 at themissionafter .org. Now let's get into the conversation with Jesse Gould.

Mike Bledsoe (02:02)
Jesse, it's great having you here. I've been following your work for a while. I remember when I first heard about heroic hearts project and just looked amazing. And then I got to participate in a in a collaborative effort between y 'all and project that our friend Kyle burqas put together. And we were able to

go down with 10 combat vets to Costa Rica and give those guys access to ayahuasca while also conducting some research. And so if I just go to your website, heroic hearts project, there's advocacy around making sure that veterans get access to these medicines and also research and other things. So I really appreciate the efforts you're putting forth.

I think we both found that the use of ayahuasca and some other psychedelic medicines have been really critical for a lot of veterans. So, curious what got you into becoming an advocate for these things and running this nonprofit.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (03:21)
I appreciate you having me on Mike. And, you know, I think we've both been in this like veteran space, veteran voice, veteran advocacy space. I think you've been in longer than I have. And so we know that it's the case. Unfortunately, veterans, their life and their health and their many other things, unfortunately, has to come from the community because it's not coming from the outside. And,

There's so many different dynamics that we're just left to figure it out for ourselves. And so, voices like you are super important to push the conversation forward. And right now, psychedelics is sort of a hot topic. And I'm glad it is because it is showing to be effective. It is showing to be a resource for people who have been struggling with PTSD, depression, anxiety for quite a while.

with kind of limited resources. There's not that much out there that's shown to be super effective. The current treatment protocols are helping some, but not a huge portion. And that's kind of leads into my story where, so I was an Army Ranger. I was in Ranger Regiment, 1st Battalion in Savannah, Georgia. Did three combat tours in Afghanistan.

as a section leader, as a mortar section leader for mortar platoon there. And then when I got out, went into finance, tried to find the civilian job, all this kind of stuff. And it was doing well on the outside, but kind of trying to outrun the issues that were boiling up internally, right? And was successful at that for quite a while, but eventually you can't outrun yourself.

Mike Bledsoe (05:08)
Mm -hmm

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (05:15)
And I was fortunate that I saw the red flags. I saw the bad behaviors, the, the, the anxiety, the depression that was hitting me, the abuse of alcohol to suppress it, the risky behavior that just kind of put my life secondary to a lot of this kind of stuff. And I saw myself in the mirror one day. I was like, this is, this is not living up to your best potential. Like something's going on.

And so I did try to seek help, but I was also not in a economically flourishing state at that point to where I could just pay for my own therapist. So I went to the VA and was just wanting to talk to somebody wanting to like get a professional's opinion on like what was going on with me. And so I went there and did the whole intake with a social worker.

And it just became clear very quickly that the pressure would be to get on medication, right? And I was diagnosed with PTSD and I think with a lot of veterans going through the VA and this is not to knock the professionals in there, like there's great services and all this kind of stuff. But the way the protocol is right now is for many people with PTSD or people that are diagnosed with PTSD,

Mike Bledsoe (06:20)
Mm -hmm.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (06:40)
It's kind of more of a maintenance of like, okay, well, you have this, let's make, let's figure out a way to make your life manageable. maybe not overcome it. And that generally involves or more often than not involves medications that suppress a big part of yourself. And so that was sort of the decision put in front of me of like, okay, you have this, we've seen this before.

Mike Bledsoe (06:59)
Mm -hmm.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (07:07)
more than likely will get you to a therapist. They're going to recommend prescription medication, SSRIs. But there wasn't an alternative. I couldn't just go see a therapist without that extra thing. And that didn't seem like the next step. And I've seen people that were helped by SSRIs, but I've seen people that were definitely not doing better being on medication. And so I kind of walked away from there. And it was also just this very superficial, like PTSD, rubber stamp.

Okay, veteran with trauma, this is our course of action. And so I was just like, okay, well, I'm spiraling downhill. Like what? The professionals don't seem to know what to do. And that's when I was listening to like a Joe Rogan podcast or something like that. Somebody brought up their experience with Ayahuasca. It was this crazy, you know, psychedelic journey. I had never done psychedelics, had no interest in psychedelics. I was...

kind of in that dare mentality of like, fine if other people did it, but it's just escapism, it's a drug, it's another substance of abuse. And so at first kind of rejected it, but with nothing else. And with this ayahuasca thing and the cultural dynamic of it, being from these Peruvian tribes, these Amazonian tribes dates back thousands of years.

Mike Bledsoe (08:17)
Mm -hmm.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (08:33)
For some reason that allowed me that entryway of like, okay, this is not just drugs. There might be something else here. and so I took that leap of faith and went to Peru. went through a week long, retreat that had multiple sessions of ayahuasca all the time thinking like, what are you doing? This is crazy. and when I went through as super challenging, it was probably one of the more difficult things that I've done. You can attest to this cause it.

puts you up against yourself in a lot of ways. There's no room to hide. But coming out from the end of it, it was just like, shit, this is not what people told me this was. This was not enjoyable. But also it reset me in not only the psychological way, but I had traumatic brain injuries from just being exposed to all the concussive blasts during my time in.

Mike Bledsoe (09:19)
Yeah.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (09:33)
to reset my brain as well. I was like, this is what a functioning brain feels like. And that's what led to Heroic Hearts project of I felt lucky that I stumbled into this. I didn't see a prominent veteran voice in the psychedelic space. There really was no nonprofit organization at that time. And the dynamic of also if I'm going to advocate for this, I don't want people just to go overseas and figure it out for themselves.

there's a lot more support that I felt like I could have benefited from. So that's what we created of talking about this in a straightforward way that is approachable to veterans, as well as if they feel like this is a good step for them to take, we provide that support of preparation, getting them to centers that we trust that are safe, and then the aftercare, the integration where...

This is that new dynamic of psychedelic therapy versus other therapy is psychedelics unlock a lot of stuff. They bring up stuff. And so you need to figure out how to process that. You need to figure out how to connect to these emotions that you might not be comfortable with and integrate that into your life, which a lot of us are not comfortable with, but that's how you become healthy.

Mike Bledsoe (10:53)
Yeah, I think that's a truly powerful talking about the the integration of those experiences. Because I've made several trips down to South America. And when you're sitting with the healers down there, the solution is sometimes like more medicine or, you know, they've always been living down in the jungle and the

the medicine and the ceremony is incredibly powerful. But for for them to be able to say, well, this is how you integrate back into the Western world. I'm an American, the art, our minds are built differently, our culture is different. And so I, I think it's important to have somebody who has had a lot of experience as a as a westerner as a with an American mind to be able to bridge that gap between okay, you went down with these.

indigenous people who've been holding this medicine for thousands of years. And you may not need the type of integration if you're going to remain down there and live that lifestyle, but you come back and live this lifestyle and there's, there can be a gap, a chasm that, that gets to be crossed and it takes a really great, coach or therapist that's able to, help us bridge that. I got a question. So.

When I see a lot of veterans that get out of the military and they're able to achieve something career wise or throw themselves into a job for a period of time and they experience some success there, even though internally they may not feel amazing or their family life or their home life is suffering or relationships or they're missing the camaraderie they had military in that sense of purpose.

What was it like when you were sounds like you, you had a good job when you got out, you were making money. What was going on in your life that were sending those signals that said, Hey, I this isn't where I should be. There's something more for me.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (12:56)
Thank you.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think a lot of us kind of get caught up in that of like, this is where I should be. This is what I should be doing. So I don't deserve to complain. And I think especially from that veteran standpoint, we're used to like carrying the load of others, right? Like we're people of service. And so we're the last ones to seek help. And we see that even now with heroic hearts where oftentimes people come to us and they're like, Hey man, somebody else needs a spot. I'm good right now. Or.

Mike Bledsoe (13:17)
Mm.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (13:35)
Like, I don't think I need some, those are often the people that need the most because they will run themselves to the ground before they will like admit that they also need that help. Right. And that's, that's the, the power of this community, but also our own detriment or own, curses that we'll, you know, put ourselves last in a lot of cases. And it's, it's okay to be.

selfish and these sort of dynamics. And we're also high performers too, which is what got me in trouble. You go into the other world and on the outside, like if you just took the snapshot of my life, like I was doing everything right, you know, had the good job, green check mark, was out there, was being social, had friend relationship. But what I was supposed to do and what I actually needed were two separate things. And so that's where...

that friction started coming where I'd get home at the end of the day or I'd be Friday night and I'd just be, you know, it was just bland. It was like nothing. and I didn't know what to do about it. So it's like, okay, let me go out and distract myself from the lack of feeling or the lack of.

Mike Bledsoe (14:42)
Mm -hmm.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (14:52)
motivation, purpose, whatever the word was. And so for me, and I see this with a lot of veterans, that transition is very tricky because we come from the spot where we're surrounded by people that care about us, that we're super close to, sometimes even more than family, right? Like this camaraderie of that, and you form these strong relationships. And there's always somebody to check your back. There's always somebody to check in.

There's always somebody to ask you like to hang out, have dinner, go out, what have you. And there's also being in you're kind of at the front and center of geopolitical events on a global scale. There's like this purpose there that you are in a lot of cases and you know, you can, we can debate the whole dynamics of the GWOT and stuff like that. But at the end of the day, when you're there, you are fighting bad guys very simply, right? Like you're.

Mike Bledsoe (15:50)
Mm -hmm.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (15:51)
You're fighting people that are not doing great things. And that gives you the sense of purpose of like every day that you go to work, there is a purpose behind it. and you need to show up to your best self because that could affect yourself, your life, somebody else's life. There's a strong importance of that. And then you go to the civilian world or you go to university, go to corporate America.

One, it's very hard to get that same sort of group camaraderie, that same sort of people that you trust to that same extent. And there's all this sort of like political vying. There's some stuff in that in the military, but there's like, you know, going up the corporate ladder. But there's also this dynamic of, and this is what I got into, of like, okay, I worked my ass off. I was here till 2 a doing an Excel spreadsheet and I saved this big multinational company.

a few cents this year. Good for me. And I'm stressed out. Cool. Let me go home. There's just like that lack of like purpose or that lack of connectivity of what you're doing and stressing yourself out of like a broader context. And then you're just kind of also like isolated too. Like I already, I had a civilian life before the military so.

Mike Bledsoe (16:59)
Yeah.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (17:15)
I was able to mitigate that before, but you know, a lot of people going in, they go in at 18, they go in, that's what they know about the rest of the world. And so then when you have, you're trying to form relationships with people that have a very different perspective of the world or have different challenges in their life, it can be very hard to connect. And so a big thing that we're experiencing, and they definitely experienced a degree of that of, is isolation. And our modern veteran.

generation doesn't really have the same sort of media infrastructure that previous generations go to. A lot of us don't go to VFWs or American Legions. We don't want to go to an old smoky bar and just one up each other on war stories and all this kind of stuff. We need, I think, a new structure of community that's just not present and there's not the infrastructure there. So, long answer to your question, but that's what I was experiencing, this sort of isolation.

and I would just get home or before showing up to work, I just have like extreme anxiety where sometimes it was like near panic attacks to where sometimes I'd have to like call out of work or work at home because of that, or I'd get to Friday night and it'd just be gray and I'd just be like staring at walls. Couldn't even turn on like TV or any, there's no degree of distraction that could get me past. I was just like bland.

or then my medication was alcohol. So just going is either that or just go to the bar where I knew some people and had a good time and all that, but to an abusive degree where then you rely on that more days than not. Right. and I just know that there's a few points in my life where I just put myself in very risky situations needlessly of like, why would you do that? Like your life has value, but.

Mike Bledsoe (18:43)
Mm -hmm.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (19:11)
I wasn't suicidal personally, but I was also kind of indifferent of what happened to me in certain cases. And on the outside, just not healthy relationships, the whole veteran checklist I was kind of going through. And I think what made me look at it was just like getting like overweight post -military coming home, like waking up like hungover and

Mike Bledsoe (19:18)
Mm -hmm.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (19:40)
I remember I had like a busted up hand one time because I like tripped and fell. I was just like, what are you doing dude? Like this is not living up to the key performer that you were.

Mike Bledsoe (19:52)
Yeah. Yeah. I man, there's a lot I want to talk to talk to about that. First off, one of the things you mentioned was almost not what a lot of times veterans don't want to get help for themselves because they're there's this impression that I'm going to take somebody else's place. I've seen it with I've got one guy in my program right now who.

He was applying for a program for psychedelics and he goes, well, you know, someone else it's, it's competitive to get these spots and is the way he described it. And he goes, I, you know, I think I'm okay. So I'm just going to let, I'm afraid I'm going to take someone else's spot. And then we ended up going deeper with them. And sure enough, like,

he's gotten to the point now, he's like, I actually get to do this for myself. But also the one thing I've realized and going back to the beginning of our conversation is veterans helping veterans. And so the...

Having, getting your own help first allows you to come back and help your fellow veterans. Like if you never get that help for yourself, then that's one less veteran that can help another veteran. So this, to me, it's a multiplier. It's like, let's get everybody we possibly can to, into a program, get everyone into something that's actually gonna help them have the experience of healing and personal and spiritual development.

that gives them a really solid ground to stand on. Because the model of go to the DA, get psychiatric drugs, get on a waiting list for therapy is just not effective for 200 ,000 new veterans every year. We have 200 ,000 new people getting out of the military every year. Are there enough therapists at the VA and, and

solid psychiatrists that are able to fulfill on that. And the answer is, is obviously no. Because we have, I have guys that I'm working with now that they were told by the VA that they have to wait a year before the therapist can see them. What happens in that year? And sounds like you were not in that crisis place. Like, you know, if you, if you're not,

thinking if you're not having suicidal ideation right now, it's sometimes hard to get help or it's like, well, I don't have suicidal ideation. I know that other veterans are having it worse. I'll let them go. and I, I think that there's this really big gap, of people who may not be in crisis right now. They're not homeless or they're not, they're not, hooked on heroin or whatever drugs are out there right now.

They're not hooked on those things, but they are in a survival. They're still suffering. And I think that there's that's, that's the best time to get help is, okay, I'm not in this crisis. And so that actually, if you're just have a, if you're a little more resourced, it's like, okay, I'm, I'm resourced enough to survive. Well, that's a, that's a better place to stand in order to go to the next level.

Whereas if you wait until you're in crisis and you're sitting there with a gun in your hand, that's going to require a little more work. But if we can get people to say before they get to that point, you know what, I'm going to engage in a community and I'm going to engage in a program that is beneficial to me, then we never get to that place and that veteran gets to turn around and help other vets out as well.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (23:51)
Yeah, I absolutely agree. I mean, like even where we're at, like once somebody's in crisis, say it's much harder to deal or to work with them because you're just trying to get it to like a baseline stability. And especially with psychedelics, like I always say this, I'll say it again, psychedelics are not for everybody. And you do need to be conscientious of how you do them and when you do them and all the container support. It's not just.

Go out there, take a handful of mushrooms, everything's gonna be great. We do not recommend that, and especially people coming to us, if they are in crisis state or if they're actively in severe suicidal ideation, it's very tricky to work with them because psychedelics are destabilizers in a certain degree. And that destabilization can be healthy, it's almost like a, like,

when you fast, it kind of shocks your system, but that's good because then it sort of allows itself space to revamp it. It's similar to psychedelics. It causes some degree of chaos or instability in your brain, which allows it to flush out bad patterns or sort of smooth the ground for that allows you to form new patterns or it also resets certain hormone.

interactions. But if your brain's already in this like super unstable state and you're barely holding on, then psychedelics are definitely not advisable. And so that's sort of the tragedy of where we're at is that we're having generations of veterans, like you said, 200 ,000 each year, where they're just kind of in this waiting game and just allowing and even on medication, like for a lot of people, it's not.

addressing the issue. It's just suppressing it, which is not going to get better with age. In fact, it's going to get worse because then your brain starts becoming more susceptible with the changes of hormones.

And then you're just getting to this point where then you have 10 years of built up trauma, your interactions with that, and it's a self feeding loop because oftentimes in trauma, we create infrastructure that reinforces that, right? You see this all the time with relationships where you find the person that tends to enhance your issues versus...

Mike Bledsoe (26:19)
Mm -hmm.

Thank you.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (26:28)
or like as a reaction to your issues versus a person that's actually healthy for you. You know, it's the story as old as time that unhealthy relationships get unhealthy relationships, you know? And so that's sort of the thing. We're almost like fighting against the tide of this huge need for this and...

Mike Bledsoe (26:35)
Mm -hmm.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (26:55)
Generate or years and years of just trauma being piled on and then just added to it And then by the time you get to the person they're already deep in this hole and it becomes much difficult much more difficult to to get them out of it versus if you If we had better systems that actually addressed it At the start of it then You're just saving lives you're saving time energy money all this kind of stuff like this is a generational sort of

benefit and the same sort of thing of with heroic hearts, we merged with the organization called the hope project that did like spouse support, family support. And the reason we merged is because it just makes sense is you have to heal the whole family. So there's a lot of spouses that have secondary PTSD from dealing with that, holding them in the house while the veteran was overseas or, you know, obviously dealing with their own trauma or.

interacting with somebody with trauma. And if you just heal one side of that, then there's still going to be the other thing and you're just going to cause conflict there. And we've seen that, you see this all the time in modern society of this trauma being passed down generation to generation. Like it's a, I'm sure you've met a lot of kids of Vietnam vets that are struggling with their own alcoholism addiction.

issues because their parent was in that conflict, never got treatment, and then didn't show up in the mother -father support role that they needed to. And then that influences the kids. And so we're just passing the trauma down generations to generations. So it's not just about the veteran right now.

Mike Bledsoe (28:50)
Yeah. I mean that, that a lot of times, if you get into the psychedelic community, they start talking about ancestral trauma and stuff like that. And the, the, it can sound really weird to somebody who's uninitiated. They're like, okay, that sound, but that sounds really strange, but you can really simplify it. And what you're saying is, you know, I had a parent or a grandparent who,

experienced this hardship, they suppressed, they distracted, and they taught their children through how they behave. This is how you do things or that child may have experienced neglect or whatever it may be. And then that's that's the ancestral trauma. It's not this. It's not always this weird, ethereal thing like, you know, I've got my parents and

heaven or whatever that like, like I've got to heal that. I think if you get into the, if anyone gets into the Ayahuasca space, they'll, I think they'll have a much deeper and experiential, knowing of what that is and how that works. But for the people who are uninitiated, it's, it's really simple. It's we learn how to be from our parents and, which is also another motivation to, if there's something that we,

get to heal in ourselves, then we also get to be better parents ourselves to our own children so that we ensure that we break that chain of behavior. And yeah, I want to go to one of the things you were talking about is almost the symptom management versus healing. I think we have a...

a system of, you know, we talked about SSRIs and which I, if I, if we look at the research, I'm just going to go by the numbers. This is, this is not in my opinion, but the research shows it's, it's effective for about 15 % of the people who go on it. and, the potential negative effects of that, of those medications are, are greater than,

fact, greater than 15%. It's a very interesting thing. So it's not, it's not that SSRIs aren't helpful at all. They are helpful, but I think we need to be aware of exactly what's happening there. And that it's a symptom management tool. And I, I, I've experienced therapy where it appeared to be symptom management versus actual healing. And I know that in, in America with the way that

the way that the rules around how you can talk about healing in regard to medicine or specific modalities is really limited. It's very interesting in that you can't necessarily make particularly particular claims that something completely heals something. But also, and at the same time, we have

this really great marketing machine that's able to say everything but that on television about how these things will make your life perfect. And there's rainbows and butterflies and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, can you speak to the difference between symptom management and what...

can be experienced and say with ayahuasca or other psychedelic medicines.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (32:44)
Yeah. And this is, this is actually the area we're at right now because how you have to deal with somebody with psychedelics or how, in my opinion, is actually effective mental health care is different from how we've approached it for quite a while. And the viewpoint from a psychiatric sort of lens,

for quite a while has almost been like mental health disorders, you know, depression, PTSD. They're almost like ailments. They're almost like the cold, the flu, a broken bone. And in traditional medicine, like those are physical medicine, you have this, there's a standard protocol of somebody comes in your office and they have a broken limb. This is the procedure that you go through. You know, you, you.

do the test, you do the x -rays, and then to fix that broken bone, this is what you do, this is the medication you give them. Some leeway left and right, but it's pretty straightforward, right? Like it's helping somebody one -on -one. And psychiatry has always, I think, tried to do that with mental health disorders of, there's something called a DSM -5, and that's like the list of all the potential mental health disorders, and this is how you deal with that.

of like, okay, you come in, you have commonality of symptoms with other people that have been depressed. So this is our procedure, of course, and this is absolutely how the VA works. You can read in their things of somebody comes in PTSD, okay, talk therapy, medication, reassessment, all this kind of stuff. Sometimes different degrees of talk therapy, depending on the hospital. And so again, it's treating it like it's a singularity of like,

Everybody that is depressed is depressed for the same reason and depressed in the same manner, right? But we know as veterans that even the label PTSD is so widespread that you could interact with something that happens overseas in vastly different ways from other people in your unit. You probably came in with your own baggage, possibly childhood stuff, possibly other kind of stuff.

We all as veterans have different experiences coming from the military. Even just being over there can be traumatic or change the way your brain chemistry works, bringing in head trauma, bringing in all this kind of stuff. It's a very complex thing. So if you just say, hey, Mike, you have PTSD, so top therapy and medication, it really just discounts the complexity of it, right? Because it's not a one size fits all.

Mike Bledsoe (35:31)
Mm -hmm.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (35:35)
And even if you look at the history of SSRIs and these medications, they were never meant to be things that you're supposed to be on for decades. They were that management of symptoms like you mentioned where, and they can be quite effective. Like if you're spiraling out, if you're in this sort of manic state, then yeah, certain medication that can really be helped to get you to that level to get this reclaimed stability.

Mike Bledsoe (35:46)
Right.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (36:03)
get you on that, get you to see a therapist. But the fact that people are on these medications for multiple decades and then how much that affects the brain chemistry and we all know the commercials of this may cause this, this, this, this, and there's a lot of those psychiatric medications. The number one issue that they cause is increased suicidal ideation, right? So people are going there for suicidal ideation and increase the suicidal ideation.

Mike Bledsoe (36:27)
Mm -hmm.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (36:32)
And then what you do is you prescribe them another medication or you up the dose, right? And so then you start getting into this laundry list of issues that come from it. So that's kind of how psychiatry has always been of like, okay, let's give them a medication and then they're going to be good to go. And that just hasn't worked out. And you look at the numbers of like what you mentioned, but also.

Mike Bledsoe (36:37)
Right.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (36:56)
just the veteran suicide rate, the rates of PTSD, the rate of depression. So it's clear if you look at the broader picture that what we're doing is not working because we're also addressing it wrong. How psychedelics work, and this is why it does need more support systems, but it's also more effective if you do them the right way, is it's not suppressing it. And a lot of times it actually enhances the emotions or the issues or the trauma.

because that forces you to deal with it. And so that can be very challenging, but if you're in the proper container, if you have that support, that's kind of what you need to do to actually address it, bring it out, have these emotions, have these feelings. And then that's where the integration comes in, where you have a supportive community that...

Mike Bledsoe (37:28)
Mm -hmm.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (37:46)
you know, it's going to be take some time to level out. And so you might have these songs where it's like, man, I'm super depressed. All this stuff is coming up. All this stuff from my childhood. I can't believe that happened. How do I process this? But if you're there with support, then it allows you that time, space and comfort to process that as opposed to just keeping it down. Because if you keep it suppressed in your system, and this is shown that it actually has health issues or it causes health issues, it can cause.

affect your immune system, it can cause chronic pain, it can cause all sorts of complex things with your general health and just also how you interact with society, with relationships, with family, all this kind of stuff. So psychedelics are not this thing, it's not like a Tylenol where I have a headache and I take this and no longer have a headache. It's a thing that brings this stuff up so you're actually able to navigate it and express it.

And the analogy I often use for people to understand this, where how modern medicine works, modern mental health medicine works, is if you go to your therapist, okay, Monday morning, you're like, hey, I feel like shit, I don't have motivation, I have a headache or whatever. And they're like, okay, that's horrible. These are the symptoms. Let me give you an Advil and this and you'll feel better.

And every Monday you have to go back and they're just addressing the symptoms. What they should be doing is like, okay, well, Mike, why do you have those symptoms? And it turns out that you're just hung over that you're drinking your life away the night before. Right. And if you ignore that part and you're just like, okay, well, you have a headache. Here's the ad wall. You got to address like, well, Mike, why are you getting drunk on a Sunday night and having this thing over?

Mike Bledsoe (39:21)
Mm -hmm.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (39:44)
Sorry for the siren if you can hear that. That's how you get to the root cause of the issue, right? Let's address why you're doing this action that gets you to these symptoms as opposed to just addressing the symptoms. And that's kind of what modern mental health is missing. Okay, well...

Mike Bledsoe (39:50)
That's right.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (40:10)
you're reacting this way, you're hypervigilant, all this kind of stuff, let's suppress that emotion. Let's go back to it. And they're trying with talk therapy, but talk therapy is a limited tool because you oftentimes don't know exactly why you're reacting in this way. And so if you just, if I keep asking you, or I keep having you talk about an incident that happened in Afghanistan, you're gonna be like, okay, I've talked to you about this 10 times. It doesn't seem to be helping. Whereas with psychedelics, it brings this stuff up and like, actually,

A lot of this happened from my childhood, which then led to these other decisions, which then also made me super susceptible to this. And so that's the sort of new dynamic that we're coming into. And it's uncomfortable, especially from a mental health landscape, because it's new, it's changing, and there's going to be people that are going to grab onto what they know super strong. And that's the confrontation. But.

Mike Bledsoe (40:52)
Right.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (41:08)
We have to move to something that works because what we're doing right now absolutely does not work for the vast majority of people.

Mike Bledsoe (41:16)
Right. Yeah. And sometimes I, I'll make comments like that. It's like, it's not working. And they go, well, how do you know it's not working? It's by the numbers. It's, it's, if you just look at the numbers, it's not, this is not an opinion. You know, I think a lot of times people, they go, it's, that's an opinion. I go, no, no, no. The re all you have to do is look at the results and the results are in the stats.

And so I'm not saying I know exactly how to make it perfect, but I can tell you it's not working and we need to explore other things. We we create really sophisticated strategies for distraction or suppression of emotion that is usually we figure these strategies out in our childhood.

and they become really effective in helping us survive. And so the, the talk to your point with the talk therapy is if we have really sophisticated subconscious strategies for surviving these emotions that we may judge, and then we get into a psychedelic experience. And as you were talking about, it amplifies those the way I, the way I see it is,

those strategies get dissolved in the strategy and then you're exposed to the reality of whatever's going on for you emotionally. So yeah, you're forced to deal with this. And I've had men and women come to me who I get talking to them and...

They want to build more emotional resilience, they want to build more emotional intelligence. And then my next question is, is, well, what pharmaceutical drugs are you on? And then they've got something, an ambient that helps them go to sleep, they've got something that helps them wake up, they have anti depression, anti anxiety to help them get through the day. And they're every single day, they're

dumping chemicals in their body to, to avoid that, that feeling. And I have to tell them, I go, well, as long as you're on this cocktail of medications, your ability to increase your emotional intelligence and emotional resilience is just, I'm not sure it's possible because you have to actually experience your emotions in order to build resilience. You have to experience them to build intelligence.

your ability to connect with others on a deep level is going to be really mitigated if your, your access to your own emotional state is, is hindered. and so that's a, that's a really tough, I've had people, and on top of that, the most of those medications are contraindicated to, psychedelic medicines as well. You can't be taking SSRIs and go do ayahuasca, but it can cause a really major.

physiological, which will turn into a psychological problem. And so, it's, they are, they are basically opposite in nature. You have what's going on for most people and what they're being prescribed. And then the psychedelics is, is very much so, the opposite. So, and, you know, I don't want to make this like, like sound like we're bashing these things because everything does have a place.

But I think where we both can agree is there's just an over the, the use of SSRIs and the use of some of these medications and the type of therapy is overburdened and overused for a very specific, we see this symptom, we're just gonna, this is where we're going to throw out. And it's so much more nuanced than that. So much more nuanced.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (45:20)
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I agree. I don't want anybody coming from this to feel shame or to come off SSRIs or anything like that. That's not what we're saying. Like those are the tools we have and they can be quite effective. And it's just not where we're at right now. It's not the question of just like come off of them and everything's going to be great and just take psychedelics. That's not the case. And there are practices.

Mike Bledsoe (45:45)
And don't do that. Don't do that cold turkey. If you, if you hear this and you go, you know what? I think I want to investigate this for myself, find a good practitioner and then who, and you'll, one of the things that'll be a sign of a good practitioner is they'll want to know what medications you're on and will advise you to work with your prescribing provider to come off of these things.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (45:50)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Bledsoe (46:12)
In which case they should be weaning you off of these things and have a plan for coming off. and if you are a prescribing provider refuses to do so, then I recommend finding another prescribing provider who will, and there are organizations that are specifically set up for this. so I just want to throw that in there as we're talking about this. If someone goes, shit, I I'm on.

I'm sure you've seen it too. Like someone comes in with an intake and there's seven different or more. I've seen up to 11 different medications. I'm like, like this one does this and this one does this. They seem opposite. I'm not a doctor. Doesn't I, I've been studying physiology for the majority of my life. So I go, well, this doesn't make sense. And let's go talk to a doctor about this and see what they say. Cause you can end up with.

on a laundry list of drugs and without, if you're not paying attention, you can be prescribed a lot of different things.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (47:21)
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, like you said, there's great prescribing therapists and these are the only tools they have. It's not like they can go prescribe psychedelics right now. That's what we're trying to fight for, that they have that option. And I talked to a lot of therapists and it hurts their heart that they have so limited tools to do this and they're just working with what they got, right? But like you said, I do, and there are certain cases of like...

You want to be an informed advocate, but you also want to have a doctor that you trust because at the end of the day, they are the subject matter experts. It's not like burn down the whole system and, you know, go to WebMD and figure out how to, how to treat it. Like you have to find that good relationship. Cause there are certain cases where if you have a doctor you trust and they're said like, Hey, this is not the time to get off your medications. And, that might be the case, but there's also other ones that will work with you of like, I agree. Let's let's try to tight trade off of this kind of stuff. And.

They're open and that's kind of been the beauty of what we've seen from the start of the organization 70 years ago, where more and more this literacy in psychedelics and the potential benefits has permeated through the therapy world. So we get a lot of therapists that are more than willing and excited to work with their patients of like, okay, let's form a schedule so that this is actually possible. And then like what let's work on your timeline. And like you said, do not.

cold turkey, these are some of the hardest substances to come off of and they just can cause like an avalanche of emotions coming through which is can be a big danger but there are ways of coming off of it for different people so it's like a patience kind of thing and again it's not necessarily for everybody but there are amazing people that are working within a system that they have and that's all we can do.

Mike Bledsoe (49:08)
Yeah. my, my fiance, she's a, she's a psychotherapist, by, by trade. She runs, the psychedelic guide network. And one of the things that motivated her to build that, that network, was the fact that a lot of the, she saw that a lot of the psychedelics were becoming what she would call over medicalized. and where you have these clinicians.

therapists and other clinicians who are academically trained. They've they're licensed. So they've got a lot of experience working with people, but their experience with psychedelic medicines themselves is pretty minimal. You know, they may have only or not at all. And now they're interested in serving ketamine or serving MDMA. But you start talking about to them about their own experiences with the medicines and they're like,

I think they they're viewing it as like, well, I don't take SSRIs, but my clients are on them. And so there's this, there's this thing that that gets to happen with all of our therapists who, so Ashley is my fiance's name. She wants to, she's bridging the gap between the clinicians and the people who are traditionally trained, you know, trained by people who maybe went and spent some time in the jungle or, went to Mexico and, sat with the mushrooms.

And, really, I guess the point I want to get across here is, you know, if you're a therapist or you are working with a therapist who's interested in these things, the best thing they can do, cause they already have the training of sitting with people in conversation. They get to go experience in medicines for themselves. I think the, if, if these therapists who want to have access to these things, go and sit with ayahuasca for a couple of weeks.

then they'll come back and be able to look at MDMA or ketamine and go, okay, I've actually got a much better handle on how these medicines work. Because ayahuasca being the great teacher, she'll teach you how to work with the other ones as well. Because you've had to work with yourself. I think that's something to note as well. If you're if you're getting into if you're seeking out help.

with these things sit with people who've got their own experience with the medicines as well.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (51:41)
Yeah, I absolutely agree. I think a lot of this kind of comes into almost like a trade school mentality more so than anything else, you know. And I think any therapist would, I hope they would agree that education is important, you learn a lot of different things, but at the end of the day, time with patience is going to teach you the best how to do your job, right?

the more experience and more different personalities, there's no way any sort of formal education can compare, can, prepare you for the wide variety of people and how they interact or how they react to what you're saying. Same thing with psychedelics. It really is a trade where there is good education on how to handle it, but the best practitioners are the ones that have the most time in ceremony, you know, and this is the Alaska tradition where.

Mike Bledsoe (52:37)
Mm -hmm.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (52:39)
There's not a formal teaching. It's a master apprentice relationship where you have the master that's been doing this for 30 years. They do these things called diet does in their tradition where they, cause in the, in the, especially the Amazonian tradition, they are surrounded by nature plants and their whole medicine cabinet is the plants. And actually a lot of modern, pharmacopoeia comes from.

Amazonian other plants, you know, even like Advil and all this kind of stuff and it came from a lot of this knowledge of this tree helps in this way this this this plant disinfects and with the psychedelics, this is kind of more of the spiritual physical and psychological healing that a lot of tribes have used for thousands of years, but the way you become an elder healer in those traditions is by

learning under a master who has gone through all this and these traditions that are passed on from generation to generation. and so that is how this works of like with, and me being in the space for relatively short period of time, especially in comparison, it really is, you, you, you get all sorts of different reactions to people under the psychedelics. And so it takes time to know.

When somebody's just going through a rough journey, what you should do when maybe it's elevated and something that might need more attention. When somebody is stuck, generally speaking, it's more that you take the stand off because they have to go through it themselves. But you also need to know if there is something that's like a negative interaction with it, which is not common, but you still need to know when to elevate the situation or.

Mike Bledsoe (54:20)
Mm -hmm.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (54:31)
how to be there in the presence of somebody that's having a really hard time, right? And there's a whole, even in my time in it, there's a whole spectrum of interactions with it that I've seen. And it's just that experience that you have to get used to. And I think, again, it's the same as therapy. Like everybody is gonna present themselves in a different way, or if you speak to them in a certain way, they're gonna have that reaction. And the only way you get used to that and become a good therapist is,

Mike Bledsoe (54:36)
Mm -hmm.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (55:01)
time in session or time in medicine. And I think that's sort of, again, this different dynamic where we view doctors of, okay, you go through undergrad, med school, residency, and you're a doctor and that's all you need. Versus of like, well, how long have you been doing this? How much time have you been interacting with people in this sort of space? And I think that's.

Mike Bledsoe (55:06)
Mm -hmm.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (55:29)
another big transition in terms of how we approach this.

Mike Bledsoe (55:33)
Mm hmm. Yeah. Can you speak to because I imagine when people hear about psychedelics and ayahuasca, they think mostly about it improving.

improving us psychologically. You know, we've talked a lot about PTSD, which is, you know, a, a psycho, a psychological, symptom and the DSM five that we can, you know, put a, put that rubber stamp on somebody. So they, you know, the insurance knows what to do. I mean, I think, I think people have gotten the idea in this conversation, at least by this point that it's much more nuanced than that rubber stamp, but.

let's get into the physical aspects of it, because I think that's something that's commonly overlooked in TBI and what's happening with the brain. I've also had experience, with ayahuasca and healing with the gut. So, curious, your experience with that.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (56:36)
A book that commonly recommends to a lot of people is The Body Keeps the Score. And it's one of those...

scientific sort of book and it just shows how much trauma we can store, especially certain people in the body. And that's also why trauma can have such negative health effects on it because it's your body's a full system, right? It's not just, you can only address one, like you can only address your physical health or only address your mental health or, and eat like shit or whatever. Like all of it interacts with these, with each other and they're all sending feedback to each other.

So you do need to focus on everything. And you see that a lot with, especially ayahuasca tends to be pretty physical where people will like sometimes flail around or have a lot of movement. And for some people, that's how they like purge, that's how they get out it because they're storing it in their body. And just that movement is sort of the release of some of this stuff. But yeah, on the veteran side too, again, this is sort of the deficiency of how we treat it is.

Okay, you came from this, you're a veteran and you had a hard experience or you had a really bad experience in combat. So PTSD, go see a therapist, right? This doesn't factor in the, okay, were you around explosions? Was there brain damage? Were you exposed, you know, now the burn pit kind of stuff? Like what did that do to your health?

Mike Bledsoe (57:59)
Mm -hmm.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (58:12)
because it's the whole system and a lot of this kind of stuff can cascade and have multi -level effects. And this kind of brings up another book called The Operator Syndrome by Chris Free, Dr. Chris Free. And he came up with this term operator syndrome because it's commonality of special operations people where he saw a lot of special ops guys were experiencing similar sort of symptomology.

And it wasn't just PTSD, it was the combination where a lot of them are doing explosive breaches, dealing with a lot of explosives in these high intensity situations for a short period of time, blah, blah, blah, all this kind of stuff that was unique to them that had the very specific symptomology. That was kind of this combination. It wasn't just like, this is a war torn veteran that we can just throw on SSRIs. And that's generally not the case with anybody.

So what we're seeing now, and there's a New York Times article, I think last year, which has been known in the veteran space for a while, but it's good that it's finally like elevating, is that a lot of us that are exposed to shooting mortar, shooting rockets, door breaches, even high caliber rifle fire, it causes these micro abrasions in the brain, similar to almost a physical percussion. And if that's not.

dealt with or you have repeated exposure to that, it causes damage to the brain, which then affects how your brain creates and processes hormones. And then there's all these other secondary effects and tertiary effects that just happen. And so similar to what we're seeing with the NFL where there's a physical concussion dynamic and getting people that are in their 40s from the NFL that have...

similar symptoms of PTSD, suicidal ideation, or manias, or erratic behavior, you're seeing that with veterans where it's a compounding effect, where maybe you have that experience, but then also your brain is damaged. And so then that just augments what you're going through. And then you add on the gut microbiome of us eating MREs for a while, or inhaling beauty.

beautiful Afghani burn pit sort of fumes and having this all go through your system, all of it is very connected. And so there's a high instance of leaky gut in veterans. There's a high instance of chronic pain. There's all sorts of different dynamics that people are not able to just treat because they're dealing with it in a very isolated effect. There was this one study where, and you have to take this with a grain of salt because anytime there's like rat studies,

It only translates to humans so often, but it's some direction to look in where they had rats, they essentially hit them on the head enough to give them like a concussive blow and a super high frequency when that happened of the rats forming leaky gut. So that brain damage caused issues with their digestive tract. And...

Mike Bledsoe (1:01:29)
Hmm

Mm -hmm.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (1:01:35)
you're seeing similar symptoms in veterans and all sorts of different things that are, again, all this kind of stuff because we don't know, we just throw medication at it. And then you're next to know, you're just on a handful of pills, you're still feeling like shit, and there's not really a way out.

Mike Bledsoe (1:01:55)
Yeah. I, do you know Dr. Dan angle?

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (1:02:00)
Yeah, Dan's a great guy.

Mike Bledsoe (1:02:03)
Yeah, he, he did a series of MRIs on himself. So he was a soccer player and was experiencing, realized that he experienced some trauma to the brain and followed his own journey while doing I think 400 ayahuasca ceremonies over, I don't know how much time and was able to see

new growth in the brain, gray and white matter density increasing. And the guy is really sharp. So I think that with a lot of these psychedelics where it's actually increasing, you know, when you when you have a concussive scenario, and that means you're taking damage to the head to the brain and your reduction in grade might matter in the brain.

And that for the longest time, I think up until around 2010, it was commonly believed in the medical community that you just, once you've got brain damage, you know, your brain doesn't grow back. Nervous system doesn't repair. And over the last 15 years or so, it's become widely apparent that the nervous system and the brain repairs quite well.

under the right conditions. And so I don't know if I've seen any widely spread research on this yet, but I know a handful of people who've conducted their own research through brain mapping pre and post ayahuasca also with 5MEO DMT and seeing a lot of great...

success with TBI because you have that TBI plus PTSD combo. I mean, if you just had TBI and no, you know, PTSD and all you had was brain injuries, these, these medicines still help with that tremendously.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (1:04:07)
Yeah, there actually is growing research. You know, it's all pretty new within the last five years or so. We actually have a study ourselves, both ayahuasca and psilocybin and different ones where we're doing EEGs, which just kind of show electrical activity within the brain. So the recent one, this not published study yet, but what we're seeing is that...

It does seem to increase brain expression, brain activity, before and after psychedelic experience. So it seems like with people with TBI or PTSD, they're almost like their brain's stuck in this sort of rut. And then the psychedelic almost breaks the dam and allows the brain to reset and express itself in a more healthy way.

a more normal way for people to interact. So we are seeing that in the EEG studies. And there's been other ones that you can look up online where you can actually see the connectivity in the brain increase around psychedelic experience. And that's also a reason they work because they connect different parts of the brain that may not normally actively speak to each other. And that causes new neural connections, which is called increased plasticity.

Mike Bledsoe (1:05:30)
Mm -hmm.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (1:05:35)
which is one of the unique things of the brain is that if there is damage, there are segments of the brain that tend to control certain things, but they can also rewire around certain parts to get back to a functional level. And so stimulating that and plasticity can also help people who have that damage of almost like a workaround. And then like you mentioned, there's also evidence of

actual neurogenesis that's creating new neurons. One of the big studies that came out recently out of Stanford was with a substance called Ibogaine, which is another psychedelic that stems from an African tree bark. And these were special ops veterans going through Ibogaine. And it actually showed a very impressive amount of new neural activity in people with TBI and veterans with TBI.

that even like astounded the researchers of how much was happening there that they didn't even think, like you said, they previously didn't think was possible. And, you know, as you kind of mentioned too, nothing is really set in stone because before it was like, neurons can't regenerate. That was the dogma. It was also the dogma that psychedelics harm your brain. You know, it was like, this is your brain on drugs, the old like egg commercial that it just,

Mike Bledsoe (1:06:38)
Mm -hmm.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (1:07:03)
fried your brain if you were on these sort of things. And we're learning all of that is not only untrue, but opposite of what's actually happening. And we're seeing with these psychedelics that they have restorative properties. And that's not to say just take psychedelics every day and you're going to be better. Like there's a moderation, like there's definitely an over amount that you can do it. But we are seeing actual evidence that the psychedelic themselves are

can be restorative. And you're seeing this especially, there's a lot of movement in like mushrooms. So psilocybin mushrooms, but as well as like other non -psychoactive mushrooms, that's kind of a big trend right now. Not a lot of research out of it, but there is a lot of anecdotal experience of certain mushrooms like cordyceps and riky and lion's mane. And then also people add in sometimes psilocybin. People are actually having, reporting.

that really helps their brain stimulation or how they're able to process and function.

Mike Bledsoe (1:08:08)
Yeah, and there's specific protocols out there. So as Jesse was saying, you know, just don't go out there, start taking psychedelics every day. There's there's micro dosing protocols. There's ceremonial protocols. There's and everything in between there. I I talk to a lot of guides very frequently and I am blown away at how many different protocols there are for.

all the different situations. There's some amazing people doing some great work out there. And I'm going to be putting together like a microdosing protocol resource on our site. Do you have anything like that or?

Are you a proponent of the micro dosing or is that kind of in your lane?

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (1:08:54)
Now we -

Yeah, micro, I'm personally in favor of microdosing and I think people have had benefits from it. and I think there's, there's already like good established like protocols out there and I do think it can be beneficial. the science is still not out there yet, but I've just with a lot of this kind of stuff is like at some point the anecdotal stuff is so, and.

Mike Bledsoe (1:09:08)
Mm -hmm.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (1:09:28)
immense that you have to kind of at least pay attention to it and a lot of this stuff is very hard to actually Isolate down in terms of how research works. So yeah, I am a believer from the heroic heart standpoint We've kind of stayed away just because at the end of the day it's still You know Controlled substances and

Mike Bledsoe (1:09:32)
Right.

Mm -hmm.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (1:09:55)
we just don't have the infrastructure to recommend that people do this on their own without, you know, some sort of degree of like risk or like recommending people do, take this sort of stuff. So we've on the, the, the nonprofit side, we're supportive, but we just can't really recommend people doing it. but to your point, I mean, there's a lot of great protocols out there and, if people are interested in doing it, just.

Mike Bledsoe (1:10:15)
Mm -hmm.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (1:10:23)
you know, be cautious and do your, like as with all this, do your research. And the big thing about microdosing too is like actually it's not again, a medication. It's, it's a checking in sort of thing. So if you want to start it, just, you know, either take notes or have a protocol that you go through because you want to take breaks from it. You want to see if it's actually changing your behavior and personality, like any sort of other self optimization. If you're just doing it and you're not paying attention, then what's the point.

Mike Bledsoe (1:10:54)
Right. Right. I want to, I want to move into the MDMA conversation because this week we just had the news come out, about the FDA voted nine to two that basically, was shooting down MDMA as a, as a viable treatment. I also, from what I understand, I was, I heard Rick Doblin talking about that, like there's some, something else in August that's happening. So I don't.

I think it's the final nail in the coffin, but it sounds like there was a blow to the movement of getting MDMA legalized for medical use.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (1:11:37)
Yeah, so I guess a quick history of that. So Rick Doblin, he's the head of an organization called MAPS, the Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies. He was a therapist back in the 80s and this was when you actually could use MDMA. And MDMA is a chemical component in ecstasy, but it does have therapeutic uses. So it's not just like party drug, all this kind of stuff. And ecstasy tends to have some other stuff as well. But.

The reason why it's believed to be therapeutically beneficial when done, again, proper container with the therapist is because one, it opens up your ability to talk about your emotions, and then it also increases your trust with the people you're talking to. So the normal walls that are there with traditional tough therapy, it helps overcome that and allow people to really dive deep into some of the stuff they're struggling in. And it actually had a lot of success back in the 80s.

But it was during administrations where the war on drugs was, you know, the key to get votes. And so it just got lumped in with the cannabis, the psychedelics, all the evil drugs that are out there that are causing destruction and mayhem in the world. And so all of a sudden from one day to the next, you couldn't use this for therapeutic purposes. So Rick dedicated his life. He got like a master's, I believe, at Harvard of how do you change.

drug policy and he went step by step, raised money all the way to getting MDMA through FDA trials. And for people who don't understand that, that is an extremely challenging sort of thing because FDA trials cost hundreds of millions of dollars. And that's also one of those things we're challenging is because if you have a cure or you have something that is not a moneymaker, even despite how effective it is.

It's so hard to get it through the FDA process. The FDA process is made for drugs that can make companies hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, because otherwise they wouldn't invest in it. There's a reason, whatever people's belief in cannabis, but the reason there's so little research on it is because it's not economically viable for anybody to study it because you can't patent it.

You can make money off of it in shops, but it doesn't make sense for anybody to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in getting it approved for any sort of ailment because they're not going to get their money back. And so it's the system that is geared towards, you know, the Viagras that just become blockbuster drugs. It's not geared towards something that is a plant is not patentable. And so the same thing with MDMA because it's a known compound. So there's not a patent behind it. And so.

If it did, then I guarantee you Pfizer, whatever would have been all over it. So Rick has gone through that. He's raised all the money to get it through FDA trials all the way up to two separate, third stage trials with the FDA. And all of them have shown spectacular results. The last one was 67 % efficacy of curing PTSD. And this was with treatment resistant PTSD.

So what that means is the hardest of the hardest cases. So people who've tried other medications to no avail, they went through this trial and 67 % of them didn't report PTSD symptoms afterwards. And the rest of the, so that still leads a big percentage, but that doesn't, a lot of them also had benefits where they scored less. But the biggest number is the ones that no longer have PTSD.

And again, for normal PTSD, the VA success rate is like less than one in three. So like less than a 33 % success rate. So this is more than double for general PTSD and let alone these are treatment resistant. So this is also saying like, our current treatments just don't work for them, right? So huge numbers and the fact that I was able to get there and this is consistent throughout it. And really,

Mike Bledsoe (1:15:48)
Right.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (1:15:56)
there has not been a breakthrough in PTSD treatment in like 50 years. So there's really nothing else out there. And so it's finally, and so what this was, was not necessarily the VA. It's an independent advisory committee. And this is normal with drugs where the FDA, they have the results, they have the study and the advisory committee gives them a recommendation of whether they think it should be accepted or there should be limitations or it should not be accepted.

And so this week, overwhelmingly, they said with two votes or two separate things to vote on, and this is a panel of 10 or 11, I think 11 actually, that one, the evidence that MAPS presented or Lycos, which is the public benefit company now, did not show that it had sufficient evidence to show that it treated PTSD effectively.

The other is that the benefits did not outweigh the risks. So both of them overwhelmingly negative. So the FDA, independent of that, will still meet in August and the FDA is still free to make their own decision. And they do deviate from this advice occasionally. So if it's a no from that panel, somebody said it was like 67 % of the time, they agree with them, but there's a...

the rest of the time they can diverge. But still kind of a blow to the system because with this it's just more headwinds and it also is likely that they're going to put limitations if they do say yes that it's going to be restricted in certain ways which is just going to slow down the ability for the VA to take it in or who can access it. And the problem is

from my opinion and there's a lot of opinions out there. A lot of this and people's advice was taking out of context. So there were issues with the trial but a lot of these were already known and they're already agreed upon by the FDA. And that's why I was saying before the FDA is not necessarily built for certain substances. There's something called double blind where you're supposed to give patients like essentially a sugar pill.

and others the actual medication and see what works. But substances like MDMA, psychedelics, cannabis, it's almost impossible to double -blind because if you're giving somebody something else, they know they're not under the influence of these substances, right? But there's not an alternative way for these substances to prove themselves. But that's the only system we have. And so they're like really highlighting that flaw. But again, the FDA already said like, this is okay.

Mike Bledsoe (1:18:41)
Mm -hmm.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (1:18:51)
We'll work around it in this way and that's fine for our studies, but they've like highlighted this thing as a fault of the study They also highlighted there's other stuff that that happened that was like highlighted and again, this was outside of the context of

Mike Bledsoe (1:19:00)
Right.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (1:19:09)
If this does, even if the results are not as high as they were, we have pretty good evidence that it is an improvement of what we have. And there's been so few advances in PTSD treatments. And we see the veteran suicide rate, we see other suicide rates that if you don't take all of that, if you don't take the broader patient context,

Mike Bledsoe (1:19:20)
Mm -hmm.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (1:19:39)
and you're just doing it in this small trial, then how can you assess whether the benefits do or don't outweigh the risks, right? Like if this has a chance of actually saving millions of lives, but there is some degree that we have to put more thresholds on therapists or whatever, is that worth it? In my opinion, yes, but they're not taking that context. And that's sort of the case that veteran things have to...

Anything that relates to veterans, it's always this, we have to prove it first, even though we don't have the resources before the government or anybody listens, which is the most frustrating thing of with the PACT Act, with the burn pits, it took people who were dying to march on Washington before they even got benefits. And it should not be the case that people that are the victims of all these kinds of things have to beg politicians that are so disconnected from these actual engagements.

Mike Bledsoe (1:20:27)
Hmm.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (1:20:37)
and to just give them a little bit of grace in terms of like having healing. And that's the frustrating thing that just keeps happening to veterans from this context.

Mike Bledsoe (1:20:50)
Yeah, I mean, and in the case of MDMA, the government would save so much money and resources. But, you know, when does it ever make sense? It hardly does if you if you sit down long enough and you get some quiet time and you think and you think about it long enough. Yeah, a lot of things don't make too much sense. That's that's OK, though. That's that's society.

Yeah, I want to dig in. Tell us about her heart's project. You know, we got into a little bit about why you're doing it. We talked about the what a bit of, you know, the psychedelic medicines. Can you tell us exactly what her heart's projects up to and what people should know about it?

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (1:21:44)
Absolutely. So yeah, Heroic Hearts Project started in 2017. So we've been in operation for about 70 years and really to educate people about these alternative medicines, psychedelics in particular, and connect veterans and their families, spouses to these treatments, especially those that have tried everything else and are just looking for something. We're never, again,

I don't think psychedelics for everybody. I'm not here to convince anybody to take psychedelics, but we also clearly know that we need more tools and we have a high degree of competence that these are quite effective when done in the right set setting. And so that's essentially what we provide. People come to us, veterans come to us, spouses come to us, and we provide them the full support of going through these sort of treatments. So sort of a psychedelic.

treatment system outside of the system of people who have kind of been chewed up and spit out from unfortunately the system we have to deal with. So we do four to six weeks of preparation before you even go to the psychedelic experience. We have relationships with retreat centers all over the world and they're the top tier of it and they're subject matter experts of what are the psychedelic. Go there, you're fully supported and then when you come out,

you also have this integration. So more often than not, people have these big realizations. They have a better understanding of themselves or the reactions or some degree of healing or some big ideas. Then the question is, how do you incorporate that into your life? How do you actually make positive habits, remove bad habits to keep you on that healing journey? And it's definitely not easy. You know, it's ups and downs.

But more, way, way more often than not, people that come from this are finally understand that they're on a healing path. They're on a healing journey and different days are going to vary and it's going to be challenging, but they're better off than they were before. Hopefully they're better off than the day before and they understand that the challenges are just something that they have to overcome. And that's why we also have that family support too, so that both sides of the equation can.

be healing together if they so choose. So beyond that, we also do research into it. We have a few studies coming out soon. We've done policy and advocacy, statewide stuff, federal stuff, and really just trying to get the word out that, hey, this is a viable option. It is safe when you do it correctly. And we do think that it's going to be the future of mental health in a lot of ways. And

The way we've been able to operate, so a lot of these substances are federally illegal. They're schedule one substances. So you can just go to your local corner store and buy them. And so there are countries where this is legal because they have long traditions, indigenous traditions of doing it like ayahuasca or mushrooms or what have you. So we've been facilitating veterans getting to these countries to do it. And oftentimes in very natural historical settings.

so that they can do it without being underground or risk of doing something illegal. But now, finally, the tide is changing that last year we did the first ever in the US legal psychedelic retreat for veterans in Oregon. Oregon and Colorado passed laws that allow people to do psilocybin journeys in a somewhat medicalized dynamic, but still.

add that community and ceremonial aspect to it too. So you have the safety of Western medicine, but you can also engage in these psychotic practices that are shown to be quite effective. And for us, that's super exciting because we need this in the U S it's a shame that veterans have to go overseas to other countries to get life -saving care. And we're so far behind. And as we've mentioned multiple times, what we're doing is not working and.

This is proving to be quite effective for a lot of people. And so that's what we're trying to build the infrastructure. There's a lot of roadblocks because federally it's still illegal. There's still limitations in terms of like what sort of funding or government support, but forward thinking states like Oregon and Colorado are allowing it. And so that's really what we're driving for. And what we want to create too, and what we are creating is a reestablishment of veteran communities that...

that we've kind of lost where people have the ability to access this type of treatment, have the ability to access it with supportive community with other veterans. They can coach by other people in their community that have gone through this before. And then they can also get back to the system so they can support future veterans. And that is the key in my opinion to all of this is not only having this tool that is a psychedelic to help you overcome that, but then also having a supportive community that not only like,

guide you in how to integrate all this, but hold you accountable because accountability is the biggest thing of a community that when the times when you don't want to show up for other people or the times when you're like at your worst moments is the time that you need community the most when somebody is going to call you on your shit or somebody is going to like, Hey, what's up? What's going on with you? That's the time when you're like hitting rock bottom.

Mike Bledsoe (1:27:04)
Mm -hmm.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (1:27:24)
that you need that support of people even though that's the time you probably at least want it. And that's what we're missing right now. And I think the psychedelic dynamic is really going to bring that back. And so we're really excited about what's going on in certain states. And hopefully that will expand to the rest of the country.

Mike Bledsoe (1:27:43)
Excellent. What if there's a veteran that's looking seeking for help? What do they do? And if somebody wants to give you some money to help fund this? What do they do?

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (1:27:54)
Yeah, so we are a nonprofit. All of this work, we've served a thousand veteran families plus in our seven years, and we're here to do a lot more. But all of that has come from community support donations. And it generally costs about 6 ,000 per veteran. We're trying to reduce that price. But in the grand scheme of things, 6 ,000 to save somebody's life and to get them on a path is pretty cheap. So anything people can do if they want to donate, they can go to our website.

heroicheartsproject .org and easy to donate. We're also on all the social media is mostly Instagram, so you can follow us there. For veterans that are in need, go to our website. A lot of great information there. You can learn more about it. Again, we're not going to push you to this, but it's good to be informed. Like even if it's not the time right now, who knows in the future, plant the seed, see if it's viable for you. We have an application on our website.

If you are interested, fill out the application and we do rolling admissions. So, I mean, there is a lot of demand, but we do our best to make sure that it's equal and fair for everybody, that you're not just, hey, we can get to you down the line. So there is a lot of opportunity for people to go. And we have both the domestic retreats in Oregon and next year in Colorado. And we also have the international ones. So sign up and we do a whole intake to make sure it's safe for you. If that's what you're looking for spouses as well.

If you're a military spouse, even if your spouse is not going, you have all the support, coaching, all that kind of stuff that we can provide.

Mike Bledsoe (1:29:32)
Excellent, excellent. Anything else you want to leave the audience with before we go?

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (1:29:36)
No, if people are, I guess if they made it this far, they're probably open -minded. But I'll just say, you know, it's not as scary as you might think and it's not as wild as you might think. There's a method to the madness. So, you know, especially if you're struggling or even if you don't think you are, this is not just a trauma thing. We've seen people that it really can impact their life in a lot of different ways. It's not just, I'm burdened by this trauma.

So just keep an open mind as with anything that comes across your set. We're here to help and we appreciate any support that people can give us.

Mike Bledsoe (1:30:13)
Excellent. Thanks for joining us today, Jesse. Appreciate you, brother.

Jesse Gould - Heroic Hearts (1:30:16)
Thanks, Mike. Appreciate the platform.

Mike Bledsoe (1:30:18)
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.

If you enjoyed today's episode, make sure to subscribe, leave a review and share it with your fellow veterans and friends. Your support helps us reach more people and make a bigger impact. Until next time, stay curious, stay intentional and remember your mission after service is just beginning.