You thought about the team and training and wow, hard part.

That- that's what got me excited about the SEAL teams initially in college, was because I have been part of a team my whole life.

And the thought of stepping off into the private sector with a suit and tie at 22 years old really scared me, because as I never did that before.

Um, not that I wasn't, um, good in school, but I wouldn't consider myself an academic.

And I was always part of the team, and I wanted to continue doing that.

I wanted to continue working out and running and competing.

And, you know, the SEAL teams was that answer.

Yeah.

Like what? What were you...

I, I think it was, uh, I started isolating a lot towards the tail end of my career, like you said.

It wasn't like I was locking myself in my room, but I was staying at home, I wasn't answering text messages.

I didn't really wanna see the guys.

I wasn't into my work anymore.

I really wasn't into anything anymore.

You know, uh, workouts started to become a burden.

One treatment

And I'm wondering if, if you recall, like, one aspect of what you saw or what you were able to engage with.

Yeah.

I, you know, I engaged in experiences with my, my family, my dad.

You know, I had struggles with my dad growing up.

He was very abusive physically, mentally, to me, to my mom, so I witnessed a lot of like, you know, gnarly stuff growing up.

And then, you know, I saw that from different perspectives.

Like, y- as a child you see that stuff, you think a lot of it's your fault, and then you realize, like, it's not your fault, right? And so it, it allows you to kinda heal from the things that you may have been holding for so many years.

[laughs]

Mm-hmm

... and you're not, you're not making it," right? And so at least that gave us some relief to go, "Okay, I, I'm not crazy.

There is something wrong here.

How do we fix it?" And at the same time, how do we fix it? I'm still really struggling, right? I'm, still have thoughts of suicide.

I thought many times, I'm like, "Well, if I, if I take myself out, you know, Amber..." I mean, I thought through this a million times.

"Amber and the kids will go to the funeral, and it'll be sad, and it'll have a lot of people there, and then that'll go away, and there'll be some sadness, and then eventually they'll be great," right? Because Dad won't be here constantly causing the problems.

And I just thought it'd be some initial pain for future success for them.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Um, but so then I started doing my own research, and the more you start going down the rabbit hole with the research, these things have been around for thousands of years.

And in the last hundred years, they've actually have some research around it, and individuals were getting better.

We're not talking about small percentages.

Like, large percentages of individuals who utilize these in the proper way get better.

And so the more I researched, the more I felt comfortable knowing, "Oh, wait a minute.

This is not a drug.

Mm-hmm.

Yep.

And in 2010, I started seeing some, some doctors, and I got prescribed my first antidepressant, and from there I was on them for seven years.

And as we know now, antidepressants fail about fifty percent of the people who are prescribed them, and I was one of them.

And so I wish that someone gave me a lifeline earlier, but for me, it was seven years of failed treatments.

Yeah, yeah.

And most of us, especially in the special operations community, we kind of go out and we try to do it on our own.

You know, we were-- We did it on our own with teammates while we're in, and we try to do the same thing when we're out.

It's very difficult transitioning, running around the mountains of Afghanistan, and next thing you know, you're in a shirt and tie working in downtown Beverly Hills, you know, on a private bank team.

Tell me about that.

You know, I think from the film and the themes that come out of the film, that, I think a lot of this started potentially when we were, you know, at young ages, child, you know, four or five years old, 10 years old.

It's something I think we never talked about, and I think having traumatic experiences at a young age is potentially what forces us to go into certain careers as a special operator or other high-risk, or I would say protector-type fields.

And for us, it was special operations, and it's something that, uh, if you ask any one of us, we would never look back.

We would never do something different.

We would do the exact same way.

But you take childhood trauma, you mix it with some wartime trauma, transition trauma, maybe some traumatic brain injuries, and you have a very difficult, uh, mental health issue that's, um, very difficult to treat through traditional-

What is ibogaine? And tell us about your experience with it.

Marcus, was your reluctance that it was going out of the country, or what slowed you down?

What really slowed me down was I didn't understand...

Initially, this was presented to me as a psychedelic, right? I grew up in Long Island playing ball.

I went to an all boys Catholic high school in Queens, Holy Cross High School, like so for me, this was so far outside my comfort zone.

I just didn't experience anything like this and all I grew up understanding was, you know, the war on drugs, psychedelics or recreational drugs.

And that's all I knew.

And when I started diving into ibogaine, I realized that it wasn't traditional psychedelic.

(laughs)