Yale Psychedelic Science Group Presents – Military Veterans’ Perspectives on Psychedelic-Assisted Treatments

The panel features three US military veterans, each of whom has worked for organizations that promote awareness and treatment of mental health issues among veterans, with particular emphasis on the use of psychedelic-assisted treatments. Following introductory remarks from each of the panelists, the meeting was devoted to Q&A.

Ian Benouis is a West Point graduate, former US Army officer and Blackhawk helicopter pilot who participated in Operation Just Cause in the Republic of Panama. He is the General Counsel for the Mission Within. He has been working with veterans and earth medicines over seven years and has taken veterans to Peru and Mexico for healing.

Jesse Gould is a former Army Ranger and founder of Heroic Hearts Project which connects military veterans to psychedelic treatment options. Jesse has been working in this space for nearly five years and has led numerous veterans to life-saving healing all over the world. Heroic Hearts Project has worked with numerous universities to forward our understanding of psychedelics and has been involved with policy change on state and federal levels.

Mike O’Dowd spent over nine years in Naval Special Warfare with extensive combat operations experience in Iraq and Afghanistan. He served as a JTAC, Intelligence Analyst, Lead Breacher, Communications Specialist and various other qualifications for his team. He spent his last three years in the Navy teaching combat shooting and helping to develop the modern-day Combatives program at the Basic Underwater Demolition School (BUDS). He has an MBA from University of California, San Diego and a Bachelors from Boston University. Mike now consults with Field Trip Health on their Basecamp Veteran initiative, which brings ketamine-assisted therapy to veterans and first responders.

2 thoughts on “Yale Psychedelic Science Group Presents – Military Veterans’ Perspectives on Psychedelic-Assisted Treatments”

  1. Thanks, Ian.

    You are a Godsend to these guys.

    RonY

    Get Outlook for iOS ________________________________

    Reply

Leave a reply to Ian Benouis Cancel reply

About Ian Benouis

Ian is a West Point graduate, former US Army officer, Blackhawk helicopter pilot and combat veteran. He is Patient Number One at the Mission Within which treats special operators with PTSD, TBI and addiction using iboga and toad (5-meo-dmt) in Mexico.  He is an advisor there, after being the General Counsel and spearheading the veteran healing program.  Ian has been helping wounded veterans for over 9 years. Ian has moderated numerous veteran’s panels including the MAPS Psychedelic Science conference in 2018 in Austin and the World Bufo Alvarius Congress in 2019 in Mexico City. He founded an ONAC church chapter which was later returned to the parent church.  He is a founder of a Santo Daime church which is the US chapter of a Brazilian government approved church and between himself and his law partner Greg Lake, have created over sixty entheogenic churches in the US. Ian participated in Operation Just Cause in the Republic of Panama.  This operation was the largest combat operation in US history focused directly on the War on Drugs and was the largest special operations deployment ever conducted. He was a pilot-in-command and his aviation brigade flew more night vision goggle hours than any unit in the military except for the Task Force 160 Special Operations which his unit was ultimately rolled up into when the 7th Infantry Division at Fort Ord, California military base was shut down. Ian grew up in Hawaii in the 1970’s where cannabis and mushrooms were decriminalized and integrated into the culture.  He has been healing himself for over 30 years with sacred medicines, a spiritual practice, and being a student and practitioner of ethnobotany. Ian was a pharmaceutical representative for Pfizer after he got out of the Army witnessing firsthand the rise of the SSRI’s and synthetic opioids in the early 1990’s. He is a casualty of the drug war having been arrested for cannabis while in law school.  Ian is an intellectual property attorney who worked in the corporate world for over 20 years in the primary roles of VP of Sales and Marketing and General Counsel. He is a political activist in the cannabis and entheogenic medicine space nationally and locally in Texas.  Ian was previously the Chairman of the Board for a public policy foundation in Texas for over 7 years. Ian was featured in the Spike Jonze produced episode Stoned Vets on Weediquette the cannabis focused series on Viceland on HBO with a number of other veterans protesting the VA’s policy on medical cannabis and working to end the veteran suicide epidemic. In 2016 Ian organized a trip for six veterans with PTSD to Peru in May for a 10-day plant diet including ayahuasca and other plant medicines with three Shipibo trained shaman brothers.  Ian also took some of the same veterans to Mexico for treatment with iboga and 5-Meo-DMT.  This experience was captured on video and was released as a documentary in March 2017 entitled Soldiers of the Vine. He is member of the team that created the movie From Shock to Awe a feature-length documentary that chronicled the journeys of military veterans as they sought relief from PTSD with the help of ayahuasca and MDMA. Ian is a Co-Founder of the Church of the Sacred Synthesis which offers the sacrament psilomethoxin and he is the first human being to ingest it through bioassay.