Latest / She’s Smart / Allison Wilson of The Hope Project - Healing military families

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Allison Wilson of The Hope Project - Healing military families · She’s Smart

• 0:00
  Hi. Can you hear me okay? I can totally hear you. You're a professional mic. I do.
• 0:06
  I love it. Oh, it's nice to see your face in person. You too.
• 0:11
  Yeah, things are good. So, the Hope Project.
• 0:15
  You started this in 2020? Yeah. I was like, wait, what are we in?
• 0:20
  2025? Oh my gosh. Yeah, 2020.
• 0:22
  Tell us how you came to this project and how you came to use these tools to
• 0:29
  help you and your family heal?
• 0:31
  I think stepping back, my husband was in the SEAL teams for,
• 0:35
  he was in the military for 16 years.
• 0:37
  So probably the SEAL teams for about 12, I believe.
• 0:41
  In the middle of that, probably at about six, seven-ish years,
• 0:46
  he ended up getting out and working at Goldman.
• 0:48
  And I was like, you know, we had five kids. I was just like,
• 0:52
  yes, it's my turn. Like we finally get to settle down.
• 0:55
  I get to have friends. The kids can settle and make friends.
• 0:59
  Like you get to be home. When he was in the teams, it was 20 missions a week.
• 1:04
  It was six month deployments.
• 1:06
  It was being on a pager the other six months, not knowing if he was going to
• 1:10
  come home. And this is awful to say.
• 1:12
  Other spouses understand this too, but almost to the point where you're like,
• 1:16
  sometimes I wish I would get that knock at the door because then I didn't have
• 1:19
  to constantly live like this.
• 1:21
  I would rather know that he was gone than every night wondering if he's gone.
• 1:28
  And then it just puts you in this state just like, what the hell? I am not a good person.
• 1:33
  You turn to alcohol. I was on bendos for 16 years.
• 1:38
  Everything piled up. And when he said he was going to get out and work at Goldman
• 1:42
  of all places, I was just like, oh my gosh, this is amazing.
• 1:45
  We got out. We moved to New Jersey. We moved to Princeton, New Jersey,
• 1:48
  actually, where my dad is. He was commuting to and from the city, which he hated.
• 1:52
  He became extremely depressed, lost his purpose, lost his passion,
• 1:57
  lost himself really in the process.
• 2:00
  I was fine. I was just like, oh my gosh, you're out. That's fine.
• 2:03
  We can deal with whatever this is.
• 2:05
  You are not in Afghanistan. You are not in Iraq. You are home.
• 2:08
  And we can deal with this.
• 2:10
  It kind of started the trend of we started losing friends.
• 2:14
  And not friends to war, friends to suicide.
• 2:18
  And he was, I can remember the day he was at Goldman.
• 2:21
  He was a trader. He was at his desk and he hears, you know, he sees this stuff
• 2:25
  on like flashing on the news, basically.
• 2:27
  And he's just like, what's going on? And his phone's blowing up.
• 2:31
  There was a helicopter crash with a team of guys that were his new guys previously.
• 2:36
  So he lost a ton of friends. He left the desk, came home right away,
• 2:41
  walks in the door, and he's just like, I have to go to Virginia Beach.
• 2:45
  So he went back to the funerals.
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  It was far too often that, you know, this was happening.
• 2:50
  But went to Virginia Beach, came home like a week later.
• 2:54
  I didn't go with him. I stayed home with the kids. Came home like a week later,
• 2:56
  walks in the door and says to me, I'm getting back in.
• 3:00
  I said, what do you mean? We had been out for about six months.
• 3:02
  He said, I can't do this. I need to go back there.
• 3:05
  He wanted revenge, basically. He wasn't done. He didn't know what to do with
• 3:09
  himself. He was like, I'm getting back in.
• 3:11
  I was like, oh, Lord. Mind you, in the middle of this, when he was working as
• 3:17
  a trader, he also started Seal Future Foundation, a nonprofit that raises millions
• 3:21
  of dollars and has helped thousands of SEALs. He's since turned it over to another SEAL.
• 3:25
  He hasn't been involved with them for about the last three to four years.
• 3:28
  He saw the impact that the transition had on the guys and on their family,
• 3:34
  but it was such a strong pull to get back in.
• 3:38
  And it was so quick because I was like, do you have to go try out again?
• 3:41
  What happens? Do you just get to go back?
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  Do we have to do like butts again? What do we have to do? And he was just like,
• 3:48
  no, they're just letting me go back. We're moving back to Virginia Beach.
• 3:51
  We've got to stay at a house in Sandbridge because we're not going to be able
• 3:54
  to find something fast enough. And I'm getting deployed. Do you want to leave them?
• 3:59
  Or stay and deal with what he has to do to live his life because he is not in
• 4:07
  a place to leave the brothers that he had.
• 4:11
  On the other hand, I was like, you have a family right in front of you. We are right here.
• 4:18
  And he just couldn't see it. He got back in. We moved to Virginia Beach.
• 4:22
  We had lived in like 12 houses by this point, I think.
• 4:26
  We were in for probably another four or five years, I might be messing up the
• 4:29
  numbers here, but it's all blurred now. We were in for quite some time afterwards.
• 4:34
  Finally, we were in California at the time that he got out again,
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  and he got an offer from Capital Group, who he's with right now.
• 4:43
  He started their Veterans Connect program, which turned into a full-time offer for him.
• 4:48
  That's when we moved to Connecticut. Okay.
• 4:51
  When we moved to Connecticut, same type of thing.
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  Going from military communities, to Westing, Connecticut was completely different.
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  You have your friends in the military, you have people knocking with your good
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  friends, you have people coming in your house, you don't knock on the door,
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  you have people taking your kids and you're like, where's my child?
• 5:11
  And they're like, oh, I took them. Those were your people, like that's your community.
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  And they all went through the same thing. And you were able to have those conversations
• 5:19
  on the same level. He was able to have his friends when he came home,
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  and I was able to have my friends, you know, the women.
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  And it was so exciting to get out of that and be in a place for a good length of time.
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  But you also were really missing the community piece, too, that you had with
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  those wives and all the kids and the family members. When we went to Connecticut,
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  he started to kind of fall off the wagon again.
• 5:45
  Yeah. You know, working in New York around Fairfield County,
• 5:50
  just doing things that he didn't feel were purposeful.
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  You know, he was a Navy SEAL. That was his job. Like, he always had a purpose.
• 6:01
  And now selling retirement funds, that did not fulfill this,
• 6:06
  like, purpose that was inside of him. You know, Capital's an amazing company.
• 6:11
  He's still with them. He absolutely loves them, but just not purposeful like the team's was.
• 6:19
  So when he found out actually about Ibogaine, which is a psychedelic,
• 6:25
  I don't know if you want me to stop there and go into more or.
• 6:28
  I want to know the whole process of the psychedelics because I am fascinated.
• 6:33
  Let's go from there. So he, because that's like the crux of all of this,
• 6:37
  right? Yes. Yeah. Pretty much started everything.
• 6:39
  Right. I am really curious about, and I listened to your talk.
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  You were on a panel, you and Jonathan, and there was an older woman on the panel
• 6:51
  and And she's an atheist and she did this program with psychedelics and then she's like, I saw God.
• 6:59
  I don't even believe in God, but I saw him. I saw God and I might not still
• 7:03
  believe, but he's definitely out there.
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  I was fascinated by that. The other thing too, there were statistics in it.
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  I think Jonathan mentioned something
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  about how many veterans and military people commit suicide a day.
• 7:18
  We're at 44 a day. Now I think it's even higher.
• 7:21
  Just to put it into perspective, there has been more suicides.
• 7:27
  Jonathan has lost more friends to suicide than he lost at war, basically.
• 7:33
  And that's all the mental state and not being taken care of once they're done. Yes. Emotionally.
• 7:41
  And all of the things they see and have to do and...
• 7:45
  And then they're just go be a person out in the universe and good luck.
• 7:50
  Yes. A lot of it stems from childhood, which we can get into.
• 7:53
  And I think that just goes to show like who stands up to go into the military
• 7:57
  because they're really good at packing things on top of things.
• 8:00
  And then it just blows up.
• 8:01
  Oh, fascinating. Yeah. Okay.
• 8:04
  So you're in Connecticut.
• 8:07
  Yep. And he discovers that I don't, what is it called again?
• 8:10
  Ibogaine. So it's from, yeah, it's from a plant called iboga.
• 8:14
  He discovers Ibogaine, which he went to Mexico to do with a doctor there that
• 8:20
  we're still very close with.
• 8:22
  This was seven, eight years ago, I believe.
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  It is not something like doing drugs for fun or a party.
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  This is not something you would ever want to do. They're hooked up to EKGs.
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  They're hooked up to a heart rate monitor.
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  They're, you know, it's a whole thing for 12 to 18 hours.
• 8:40
  Oh, wow. You're in a psych, you're in that state for 12 to 18. hours.
• 8:45
  Yeah. So I've never done that. That scares the crap out of me.
• 8:49
  So Ibogaine was a drug that was used to help opioid addicts.
• 8:55
  And they saw such a positive reaction afterwards with the patients.
• 9:00
  They were like off of drugs, off of opioids, off of everything and not having
• 9:07
  any relapses, which was fascinating.
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  So they started using it for special forces operators. They were like,
• 9:14
  wow, they need something.
• 9:16
  They've seen a lot. Let's start to use it for special forces operators.
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  Jonathan saw a buddy that he pretty
• 9:21
  much thought was going to be in that category of committing suicide.
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  He ended up seeing him at a party and he was like, who are you?
• 9:29
  And he ended up being his friend. And he's like, I can't even recognize you.
• 9:33
  What happened? Like in a positive way.
• 9:35
  He's like, oh, I went to Mexico to do Ibogaine. And he's like, what?
• 9:40
  So he tells him about Ibogaine. Jonathan tells me, I want to go do this.
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  He goes to do Ibogaine. He's gone for about a week.
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  They do a full medical screening and they do it. It's like 18 hours of being in it.
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  It was not a fun experience for him. He's like, I felt like I was literally
• 9:55
  throwing up demons the whole time.
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  He's like, I just saw black stuff coming out.
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  And I woke up and they're like, no, you didn't throw up anything.
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  But he's like, all of this stuff came out of me. This trauma just kept coming out of him.
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  And, you know, he's like, I could flip back. And I hear this quite a bit with Ibogaine.
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  It's kind of like a book in front of you. and you can literally flip through
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  the pages and go back to your childhood.
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  And he's like, I was able to go back to when I was little and work on the trauma
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  that I had had with my parents, with my dad, and I was able to see myself as
• 10:25
  a child and then kind of flip the page, go to the next year,
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  flip the page, go to the next year.
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  When he came out of that, he was very sick for a while, but he came home with
• 10:35
  this different outlook, this positive outlook on life.
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  He was a different person, but you could see he had this lightness about him.
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  Everything that was heavy he was holding on to was gone.
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  If we were to get in an argument, he would almost step back and be like,
• 10:50
  I understand what you're saying. Like a different perspective on things.
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  They say a lot of people, let's just say there was military sexual trauma,
• 10:58
  start to forgive their offenders just because they look at it differently.
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  They start to look at things like, oh, that was purposeful for me to get to
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  this point. When he came home, I was pissed. I was so mad.
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  He started talking about everything was beautiful.
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  The trees were beautiful. Nature was beautiful. Everything was wonderful.
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  And I was like, are you kidding me right now? I am at home with five kids.
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  I went through this too. The spouses were literally the boots on the ground
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  at home and had to tiptoe around everything you did.
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  And you're coming home now and telling me that you're healed. I was so mad.
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  And we went through a really hard time in our marriage, like a really tough
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  time. I started drinking more.
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  I went to a psychologist there that was just, or psychiatrist there that was
• 11:41
  like, oh, you just need more benzos.
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  And, you know, because she was just like, well, if you get off them now,
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  you've been on them for this long. So if you get off them now,
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  it's already changed the chemistry in your brain.
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  And you'd probably die if you try to get off of them now.
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  I was like, okay, I'll take more, more benzos, more alcohol.
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  It got to the point where I was like, I can't go on. You know, like, I don't want to.
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  If it wasn't for my kids, I don't know where I would be.
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  It started getting scary. And that's when I called Jonathan and I said,
• 12:10
  okay, this was about two years after he went.
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  I was just like, listen, I don't want to do Ibogaine, but I need some help. Like, what do I do?
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  And I went to Costa Rica in 2020 and did a journey with psilocybin and MDMA.
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  I did it together. MDMA is ecstasy. The legalities around that are a little
• 12:30
  iffy right now. So we really don't use that. We use psilocybin for our retreats.
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  I did that. And then the next day, 5-MeO-DMT, which is actually toad venom.
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  You do like a 30-minute journey that you do on your own, basically,
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  and it gets you to like a state of, there's a documentary on it,
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  and I need to send that to you, too, because I'm blanking on the name right now.
• 12:51
  Yeah, I'd love to put that in here. But yeah, you know, you have this in your body.
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  You produce this when you're born and when you die.
• 12:57
  That's it. A lot of people have a very scary experience. A lot of people,
• 13:02
  myself included, it was very euphoric. I saw a white light.
• 13:06
  Everything was just beautiful. It almost felt like you went to heaven and they
• 13:10
  then came back into your body.
• 13:13
  So it was pretty fast. Can we go back to the actual psilocybin and how that worked?
• 13:19
  So you're with doctors and people who know what they're doing.
• 13:23
  What is the environment like? And how long does that part last?
• 13:27
  No, for sure. You're working on it. So I will totally like preface this by,
• 13:31
  first of all, psychedelics are not for everyone.
• 13:34
  We have, and I'll tell you how I did it. I was having suicidal ideations,
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  and I was like, I need to get there.
• 13:40
  You need to get help now, yeah. But I have learned with Hope Project how to
• 13:45
  create this lengthy program that's like months of a program that women have
• 13:54
  to go through to be able to go to our retreat.
• 13:58
  Prefacing it with this was done in a way I probably would have done in completely
• 14:02
  different if I were to do it today. Okay. I went to Costa Rica.
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  We do our retreats in Mexico now, but I went to Costa Rica.
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  And it was just myself and two other
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  women that went. One was a Gold Star spouse, so she lost her husband.
• 14:16
  And one was another veteran Special Forces spouse, like myself.
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  She was also a veteran. We were in the jungle, basically. I mean, this happens...
• 14:26
  Now in Oregon, it's legal. So it happens Mexico, Peru.
• 14:30
  We were in Costa Rica. I was in the jungle, like very, very,
• 14:32
  very roughing it. Like everything was done outside.
• 14:36
  You do the preparation for it. And then what happened with us at that retreat
• 14:40
  was everyone kind of took the medicine together.
• 14:43
  You're put down on your mat with the other ladies. And it takes about 45 minutes to kick in.
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  And that's kind of when it, and I don't know if you want me to go.
• 14:53
  People might think I'm crazy if I actually want you to share as much as I'm
• 14:57
  so curious about this entire experience however much you want to share I'm happy
• 15:03
  to share it but I mean to just know that,
• 15:06
  everyone's journey is so different like I've done three journeys in the last
• 15:10
  four or five years and I'm hopefully
• 15:13
  going to go in February too because I haven't gone in about two years.
• 15:17
  But everyone's even my own journeys everyone was
• 15:20
  different so really anybody that's out there and
• 15:23
  wanting to do a psychedelic journey just really try
• 15:27
  to take all this with a grain of salt when people tell you about their journeys
• 15:30
  it's hard not to have expectations but you really want to have intentions going
• 15:33
  in not expectations mine was pretty profound once i went in my ego kind of just
• 15:39
  kept trying to take over trying to take over say it's not working it's not working
• 15:42
  it's not working And I was like crossing my legs because I thought I was peeing myself.
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  And I just like kept telling them like, no, I'm good. I'm not. I'm fine.
• 15:51
  And they're like, you know, just like ease into it. And I kept hearing my husband
• 15:54
  like tell me like, just breathe.
• 15:55
  Just like let go. Like you're safe. You're fine.
• 15:58
  And then I heard a little girl saying, mommy, mommy, I'm okay.
• 16:03
  And I was completely out of it at that time. But I saw her. She was this cute
• 16:07
  little blonde, blue eyes.
• 16:09
  And she's like, I'm fine. You need to let me go. I'm okay.
• 16:13
  I had lost a little girl before Madison, and it was her. Oh, my God. I know. I know.
• 16:20
  And her name was Hope. No. She was like, yes. Yeah, I know.
• 16:25
  So she's like, you, so I sit, or they said, I sit up, and I asked for a permanent
• 16:30
  marker, and they're like, we don't have a permanent marker, but we can get you a marker.
• 16:33
  And I wrote her name on, like, I still have it, I have it tattooed now.
• 16:37
  I wrote her name, which is now our logo, on my arm in the middle of my journey.
• 16:43
  I put hope and I kept holding it through the entire thing.
• 16:47
  Out of all of it, that was the very beginning, just six to eight hours afterwards.
• 16:51
  But I think I was so caught inside of me and like losing this little girl.
• 16:57
  I was like, this was my fault.
• 16:58
  This was my fault. Like I lost her.
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  Once she kind of told me, you have to let go of this, what I did was kept piling things on top of it.
• 17:08
  And once we were able to peel back the layers and get to that,
• 17:12
  and she said, I'm okay, you have to let go.
• 17:15
  I was able to go through so many parts of my life and forgive people,
• 17:20
  forgive myself, love myself. I came out being like, holy crap, I love myself.
• 17:25
  It was crazy. You know, like finding the love for me, which I know it's cliche,
• 17:30
  but now I can allow my husband to love me.
• 17:32
  I can allow my kids to love me. I can allow my friends to love me,
• 17:34
  my family to love me. Like now this just opens up so much more.
• 17:39
  And she told me, you went through all of these things in your life to be able
• 17:44
  to support other spouses and they need you. So you need to go home and start the Hope Project.
• 17:49
  And that's how this started yes and
• 17:54
  that's why it's called the hope project this is
• 17:57
  unbelievable it's crazy right the women
• 18:00
  next to you you're not aware of anyone next to you you're in your own obviously
• 18:05
  because you're so apt but but i will tell you she's still like my best friend
• 18:09
  to this day she her and i have this thing going on because she just sits up
• 18:15
  when i wrote her name too and And she's like, Alison, did you lose a little girl?
• 18:20
  And I was like, did I tell you that? And she's like, no.
• 18:23
  And I said, how do you know that? She goes, oh, I saw her.
• 18:26
  And I was like, oh my gosh.
• 18:29
  So you become this family like for life.
• 18:33
  You know, these women that have gone on the whole project retreats from two
• 18:37
  years ago when we merged with Heroic Hearts and we were able to do our own retreats.
• 18:41
  Like these women still talk to each other. They go visit each other.
• 18:44
  They live in different states.
• 18:45
  They visit each other, visit their
• 18:46
  families. So you become this amazing community like sisters for life.
• 18:51
  But yeah, that's kind of how it all started.
• 18:54
  I got off that plane from Costa Rica.
• 18:58
  My husband met me inside the airport. And that is the first time that I can
• 19:02
  say I ever felt in love with my husband in 16 years, which is just like.
• 19:09
  Holy crap. I was so scared to do this.
• 19:11
  I was like, I am not doing this. This is crazy.
• 19:14
  These are drugs. This is crazy. When I don't look at it like that anymore, I see it as medicine.
• 19:19
  I see it as not everybody needs it, but it has been such a phenomenal way to
• 19:24
  peel back the layers of trauma that we all pile up.
• 19:28
  It doesn't matter if you're a veteran or spouse or I, like it doesn't matter.
• 19:32
  Everyone has trauma. This is what I've seen before.
• 19:35
  To be able to support people in getting to the core root of that trauma.
• 19:40
  So basically, that's how it all started. We started very small.
• 19:43
  It grew extremely fast. Starting a nonprofit right when COVID started that had
• 19:49
  the word psychedelics in it was extremely tough.
• 19:51
  We had to figure out our wording, but it was just me and I worked with organizations that we vetted.
• 19:57
  And we started, you know, like one of the women that I went with, she's now a coach for me.
• 20:02
  And she did her own work. And I've sat with her on other journeys before.
• 20:06
  She's phenomenal. Both of them are.
• 20:08
  Now we've created this program for these women. I think we have,
• 20:13
  I was just looking, we've sent 64 women to retreats so far, to actual retreats,
• 20:18
  but have about 400 women on our list that we've supported in one way or the other. Yeah.
• 20:23
  Wow. I was reading through the website and the statistics you give,
• 20:26
  many veterans come out with PTSD from whatever they've experienced.
• 20:30
  And the spouses and the families get secondary PTSD from that.
• 20:37
  Your statistics were mind-boggling. 39% of the spouses of veterans with PTSD
• 20:43
  experience secondary trauma.
• 20:46
  Two-thirds of these spouses admit they need psychological help,
• 20:49
  but most don't receive it.
• 20:51
  55% of military couples affected by PTSD experience a physical altercation of sometimes.
• 20:57
  37% of military couples reported anger outbreaks or violence two to six times per six-month period.
• 21:08
  So you're supporting everyone at home. You're taking care of kids.
• 21:11
  You're taking care of family members.
• 21:13
  You're taking care of the spouses who are with you.
• 21:16
  They come home from wherever they're deployed, and you're then taking care of
• 21:20
  them. They are not equipped with any tools to help themselves get through anything
• 21:26
  emotionally that they just went through.
• 21:28
  No. And then you're expected to just make sure everyone's good and make sure
• 21:34
  that the kids are good and that you're good and none of you are okay.
• 21:38
  Like none of you are okay. So in this whole process, you start the whole project.
• 21:45
  How many people reached out to you when you first started it and said,
• 21:50
  this is what I've done is who else is interested? How did that go about? Yeah.
• 21:54
  So many people. I mean, so the doctor who was supporting me at my retreat was
• 21:59
  the same doctor who supported Jonathan.
• 22:01
  He's a dear friend of ours. And he helped me navigate who to be introduced to, how to do this.
• 22:10
  Another gentleman, Jesse Gould, a former Army Ranger, who's dear friends with my husband.
• 22:15
  He founded Hero Carts Project, who we have now since merged with the last two
• 22:19
  years ago. He also helped me navigate, okay, this is what I did to start a nonprofit.
• 22:23
  Here's the legal Zoom paperwork. This is what you do. It took quite a while
• 22:27
  to do that, you know, kind of getting funding for the legal paperwork,
• 22:31
  becoming a nonprofit, you know, just kind of getting the marketing out there, the website. Right.
• 22:36
  But people came out of the woodwork because the spouses, the thing that I heard
• 22:43
  the most was I had no idea there was something just for me. Like,
• 22:49
  it's always for the veteran.
• 22:51
  You know, in the VA, you're tied to the veteran. In the VA, I will never knock the VA.
• 22:56
  They are trying their hardest, but they don't have enough manpower to be able
• 23:00
  to support what we have gone through.
• 23:03
  They just don't have enough manpower. Jonathan went to try to go to a VA appointment.
• 23:07
  He couldn't find a parking spot.
• 23:08
  It was so pissed off. He went in with like 20 minutes late. It was like,
• 23:12
  I'm so sorry. I couldn't find a parking spot. And they're like,
• 23:13
  you're going to have to get another appointment.
• 23:15
  You know, it's just that the resources there are lacking. They're starting to do better.
• 23:20
  They're starting to, you know, be able to give funding towards psychedelic research
• 23:24
  because they've seen such positive impacts.
• 23:26
  We are doing research with big colleges now. We have the Imperial College in
• 23:30
  London that we're working with doing secondary PTSD research,
• 23:33
  possibly doing one at Boulder.
• 23:35
  So we have the research and the numbers, but the VA just doesn't have the manpower to do it.
• 23:40
  So people started coming. They're like, what is this alternative of modality
• 23:44
  that you're talking about.
• 23:45
  You know, I started using my voice to tell them my story.
• 23:49
  Jonathan and I were in such a good place at that point that we were doing our
• 23:54
  own talks together using our voice.
• 23:57
  Like you saw at, I think it was, was that UPenn or Penn State?
• 23:59
  I think it was, yeah, UPenn, right? Yeah. Yeah.
• 24:02
  So, you know, and to have a psychedelic program at Penn, that's amazing.
• 24:06
  And to be able to have us on there. So people started talking about it.
• 24:10
  The SEAL community is very small.
• 24:12
  So it was a lot of spouses from the SEAL community that would come to me.
• 24:16
  Then I started thinking, I feel like this shouldn't just be for the SEALs.
• 24:21
  We have so many resources in the special operations community.
• 24:24
  It needs to be for others as well.
• 24:26
  So I opened it up to everybody in the military, which then was even more of
• 24:30
  an influx of people coming to me.
• 24:32
  It was very like, oh, she told her friend and I know that you gave her a scholarship
• 24:36
  to send on this retreat and you helped this one. I told Jonathan,
• 24:39
  this is beyond my wildest dreams, how crazy this has gone.
• 24:43
  That's when I spoke to Jesse and said, you've got heroic hearts.
• 24:46
  We're already working closely with you.
• 24:48
  Another big piece of the puzzle that we did was, let's say the veteran wanted
• 24:52
  to go on a retreat and do psychedelics.
• 24:55
  The spouse was at home. I knew exactly how that felt. So I wanted to offer them coaching.
• 25:00
  Like your veterans getting coaching for the prep and integration for their retreat.
• 25:04
  You're going to be on your own retreat while they're on theirs.
• 25:07
  Like whatever that looks like.
• 25:08
  I know it's going to be at home, but we're going to talk about your feelings.
• 25:12
  You're going to talk about how you're not crazy, thinking that you're jealous
• 25:15
  or upset with him doing that.
• 25:16
  We're going to talk about the process if you're involved and it's not like a deployment again.
• 25:20
  And we're going to talk about the.
• 25:23
  Integration when he comes home. Like, what are things that you could do to support
• 25:27
  him coming home and support your own feelings? Like, what space could you hold?
• 25:31
  And then we're going to put you into a community that every week you have this
• 25:35
  integration call that you can go on with other spouses and voice your feelings
• 25:39
  and realize that there's still that community even outside of the military.
• 25:43
  And now it includes this holistic modality that we have seen help this percentage of people.
• 25:50
  But, you know, because our statistics in the SEAL teams are about,
• 25:54
  we have a 95% divorce rate in the teams.
• 25:57
  So, yeah. So, we, you know, Jonathan and I coming out of that and having that
• 26:04
  positive ending, things aren't perfect.
• 26:06
  But to this day, I love my husband more than anything in the world.
• 26:09
  These are the best years.
• 26:11
  Yeah. You know, wanting to give that to other family members,
• 26:16
  and then also seeing the generational healing with the kids.
• 26:20
  And it just blew up. So that's when the merge happened.
• 26:24
  And now we can house the entire family under one roof.
• 26:30
  The whole project still has its name. I'm still the founder,
• 26:33
  executive director of that.
• 26:35
  And we're just kind of under the umbrella of heroic hearts who are able to utilize
• 26:41
  their resources and our funding all goes into one.
• 26:45
  And now we're able to create our own spouse retreats. It's exceptional how many
• 26:49
  people you are going to be able to help with this who need it.
• 26:53
  Yes. So you go to Mexico for the retreats.
• 26:57
  Will you be able to be in the U.S. for retreats or you think you'll have to
• 27:00
  stay in Mexico for a while? Because you mentioned Oregon.
• 27:02
  What's legal in Oregon now? We actually had the very first legal veteran spouse
• 27:06
  retreats in Oregon in October.
• 27:08
  We had eight spouses in Oregon at a center.
• 27:12
  They had their own therapist and brought their own medicine.
• 27:15
  We had to sit outside of the room and hold space because I don't have my license
• 27:19
  in Oregon, but we worked very closely with the therapist there. They were.
• 27:27
  Fantastic for these spouses. And we rented an Airbnb.
• 27:31
  So the women were able to have that community piece and they stayed a day before
• 27:35
  and a couple of days after as well.
• 27:37
  Well, and I think too, coming off of that, what you've just went through,
• 27:43
  it's nice to have a place to just relax and be for a little bit.
• 27:49
  I couldn't imagine doing that and then flying home the next day.
• 27:53
  No. And I would never suggest that. No.
• 27:56
  That element of giving them a couple of days to just sit with it and then breathe
• 28:03
  and then go home to their families and their life is a gift.
• 28:07
  It's a real gift to be able to do that after going through something like that.
• 28:10
  Yeah. So our process now to tell you real quickly is we have an application
• 28:14
  and then you go to our medical screener and you're screened to make sure,
• 28:19
  you know, if they're on any medication, which a lot of women are.
• 28:22
  How can you safely taper off of it with your doctor? How long do you need to taper?
• 28:26
  What modalities could we help you with? We use trauma release energy work,
• 28:30
  TRE, that they can do on Zoom.
• 28:32
  There's been women that we've sent to ketamine services just to kind of help
• 28:36
  them get off that medication. We give them three one-to-one personal preparation
• 28:41
  calls with a coach or therapist.
• 28:43
  We have a tiered system, depending on where they are. We also have three Zoom
• 28:47
  calls with your cohort. You go with about eight women total.
• 28:51
  Then you have a five- to seven-day retreat. the way we've structured our spouse
• 28:56
  retreats, which I absolutely love, is you'll do the medicine that one day,
• 29:01
  but that's not the core part of your program.
• 29:03
  It's more like the integration afterwards, like learning how to go home and
• 29:08
  things that, like your kids are going to be the same, like they're not going to change.
• 29:12
  The world's going to be the same, but now how do you integrate into that?
• 29:15
  Perceive things differently, react to things differently, control your reactions.
• 29:19
  We'll do yoga, mindfulness, meditation, breath work, all things that people
• 29:23
  are really into now and do all of that at home.
• 29:26
  We'll show them how to do that so they can take attainable tools home to work
• 29:31
  with. We want you to know that this is inside you.
• 29:33
  We want you to know that you can get to that point.
• 29:36
  We just helped you a little bit. We want you to realize that this is you and
• 29:40
  you can take these attainable tools and go home and do it.
• 29:43
  The program lasts for about six to eight weeks afterwards with the integration calls, the group calls.
• 29:49
  We have nutritionists come on and talk about diet, you know,
• 29:52
  because you have to do a diet before you go to the retreats.
• 29:55
  There's so much that we put into it. Plus, I think it's just growing more.
• 29:59
  We've had six retreats since we merged with Heroic Hearts and just like learning.
• 30:04
  I think we should have an extra day on the front because the women really want
• 30:07
  an extra prep day. So we add that in. We think we should add this. So we'll add that in.
• 30:12
  It is pretty extensive. It costs us about $6,000 per spouse to put them through a retreat.
• 30:19
  But so worth it. So you said in the four weeks after the retreat are crucial.
• 30:25
  What is it about those four weeks after you come home that are so important?
• 30:30
  I think you're in almost like a honeymoon period when you first come home. I hear a lot.
• 30:35
  We do tell women, and it's hard, especially gold star spouses or women coming
• 30:39
  home and they're having to go back to work or they're taking care of the kids.
• 30:41
  It's hard enough to get away for seven days to come home and say,
• 30:45
  you need an extra day to yourself. That's a tough thing to ask a lot of women.
• 30:50
  So just making sure that you're easy on yourself. Take things with a grain of salt.
• 30:55
  Make sure that we also give their husbands support with a coach too.
• 31:00
  So they know how to support them when they come home.
• 31:05
  What's crucial is because basically psilocybin almost ignites neurons in your brain. Okay.
• 31:11
  So it's like clearing a pathway for these new neurons to happen.
• 31:16
  It's almost like when you're getting called a language when you're a child,
• 31:20
  like you're like a sponge, right?
• 31:22
  When you come home from psilocybin, you're literally like a sponge,
• 31:25
  which creating new habits.
• 31:27
  That's the best time to create new healthy eating habits, new exercise habits,
• 31:31
  to take a walk in nature and enjoy that.
• 31:33
  To create new habits in communication with your spouse.
• 31:36
  We'll even do workshops with couples to learn how to use emotionally focused
• 31:41
  therapy to speak to your spouse.
• 31:43
  The more you do that right after your journey, it's going to stick.
• 31:48
  It's really fascinating. If you look up, there's a picture online. mine.
• 31:52
  It's like your brain without psilocybin, then your brain with psilocybin,
• 31:56
  and the brain with psilocybin.
• 31:58
  It's like all these beautiful bright lights. Wow, I have to look that up. It's really cool.
• 32:02
  Have you ever seen like How to Change Your Mind is a really great book? Yes.
• 32:07
  Or you can watch it now too. It's a documentary.
• 32:10
  So if you want to get into the scientific piece of it, not the woo-woo piece
• 32:14
  of it, like there are so many resources out there that you could look at.
• 32:19
  Oh my God. I'm shocked that we haven't been using this for a longer period of time.
• 32:23
  Oh, it's crazy. Women will continue a month afterwards.
• 32:27
  So you do have that honeymoon period, that period that you want to create all
• 32:30
  those new habits, but there's no harm in falling backwards, right?
• 32:35
  And someone like, oh my gosh, I lost it. Even the guys like,
• 32:38
  I'm losing what I learned. I'm like, you're not ever going to lose it.
• 32:41
  I promise you don't ever fall backwards.
• 32:43
  You're never going to realize that you could pick yourself back up.
• 32:45
  So it's okay to fall backwards, But now you're recognizing that you're falling
• 32:50
  backwards and you're not on this deep dive into, you know, piling things up
• 32:55
  because you just keep going.
• 32:57
  So but microdosing is something, you know, that they will continue to do sometimes.
• 33:03
  The whole thing is extremely fascinating. I think I was reading an article the
• 33:06
  other day about them using psilocybin for autism.
• 33:10
  Really? Yeah. Or just scratching the surface of what this can do to help people. Yeah.
• 33:17
  Yeah. I need to do more research on it because I'm just fascinated.
• 33:21
  I'm fascinated by it. I really am. I'm fascinated by it.
• 33:24
  Okay. So for anyone that's listening and is a veteran or a spouse of a veteran
• 33:31
  or is just curious about this in general, how does that journey start?
• 33:36
  Where can they start looking into this to find out more? Like go to the website.
• 33:40
  Where can they start diving into it? My website for sure. We have a resource page on my website.
• 33:45
  And I will say, because I know a lot of your listeners might not be veterans
• 33:49
  or spouses of veterans, we do partner with organizations that help civilians too.
• 33:55
  I don't want anybody to think this is just for veterans or their family members.
• 33:58
  I truly believe everyone has trauma. A lot of the trauma that we uncover that
• 34:03
  these veterans and their family members uncover is from childhood,
• 34:06
  just because they're so good at packing things up and putting that armor on and moving forward.
• 34:11
  My website's the best thing to go to.
• 34:14
  MAPS, M-A-P-S, is another very large organization.
• 34:18
  We've had a hard time this year because of funding and since MDMA was not recognized
• 34:24
  by the FDA. It has been a tough year, but we're still moving forward with the
• 34:30
  research. The numbers are there. We're still moving forward.
• 34:32
  But luckily, Oregon, you can do psilocybin there legally, and also Colorado probably by the spring.
• 34:39
  Oh, great. So MAPS is another great organization to look at.
• 34:42
  And, you know, on the resource tab at the Hope Project, you'll see a ton of
• 34:47
  resources on there, too.
• 34:50
  Brilliant. I'm going to send everybody there. Perfect. Just go look at it.
• 34:54
  It's unreal. I'm so glad that you came on to talk about this.
• 34:57
  I'm so glad that you're doing this.
• 34:59
  We need more people like you helping others because it's so important.
• 35:03
  Thank you. What the veterans are, what our service people are doing and then
• 35:07
  their families at the same time.
• 35:09
  And just to throw out for law enforcement and firefighters and even nurses and
• 35:14
  doctors, Jonathan recently started an organization.
• 35:17
  We will help them at Hope and Heroic Hearts as well. We have veterans and family
• 35:21
  members, firefighters and police force need help too.
• 35:23
  Jonathan started an organization called Invisible Wounds Foundation.
• 35:26
  They help with, and I can send that to you as well, but they will help,
• 35:30
  you know, firefighters,
• 35:32
  law enforcement, veterans, and not just with psychedelic modalities,
• 35:36
  but things like they'll have a fly fishing retreat, you know,
• 35:39
  just to get kind of the community or, you know, you can get these,
• 35:43
  the scholarship to talk to a therapist that the VA won't cover or something.
• 35:47
  Oh, that's great. Yeah. I love that we've moved into this way of life. Me too.
• 35:53
  Where it's okay. You need someone to talk to and help and that's okay.
• 35:57
  There's something wrong with it. In fact, that's best for all of us that if
• 36:01
  you need help, there are resources now for you to get it. Yeah.
• 36:05
  That's brilliant. I love it. Oh, Allison, thank you so much for chatting. Thank you.
• 36:09
  Oh, thank you for having me. I know it was fun catching up. I'm going to include
• 36:13
  all the links so everyone knows where they can look and reach out if they need to.
• 36:16
  Perfect. Thank you. Thank you. Bye.