More Veterans are Dying at HOME than at WAR!! Is IBOGAINE the answer we're ignoring? Scott Roesler
Most people think healing gives you your life back.
But what if it costs you the life you knew?
In this episode of the Crackin’ Backs Podcast, we sit down with Scott Roessler, an 11-tour Special Operations veteran who stepped into one of the most controversial and rapidly emerging treatments in mental health—ibogaine therapy.
After years of invisible battles with PTSD, trauma, and nervous system overload, Scott became part of a Stanford-led ibogaine study exploring whether this powerful psychedelic compound could help reset the brain.
But this is not a highlight reel.
This is the part no one talks about:
👉 What happens after the breakthrough
👉 The identity shifts that follow deep healing
👉 The work required to make it last
In This Episode, We Explore:
What ibogaine therapy is and how it may impact the brain and PTSD
Why preparation, coaching, and integration are critical for success
The truth about psychedelic therapy for veterans and first responders
Why healing can disrupt identity, relationships, and purpose
The risks, misconceptions, and real-world outcomes of ibogaine
Why more veterans are dying from suicide than combat—and what we may be missing
Whether ibogaine should become FDA-approved or remain outside traditional medicine
If you’ve ever searched:
“Ibogaine therapy for PTSD”
“Can psychedelics heal trauma?”
“Veteran mental health solutions”
This episode offers a raw, firsthand perspective from someone who lived it.
About Scott Roessler
Scott Roessler is a retired U.S. Special Operations veteran who served 11 combat tours and has become a powerful voice in the conversation around veteran mental health, PTSD recovery, and psychedelic-assisted therapy.
After struggling with the long-term effects of combat stress, Scott participated in a Stanford research study on ibogaine therapy, helping bring awareness to alternative approaches to healing trauma.
Today, he speaks openly about:
Life after combat
The hidden cost of survival
The importance of integration and purpose after healing
His story is not about escaping pain—
It’s about confronting it, and rebuilding from the inside out.
Learn More About Scott Roessler & Ibogaine Therapy
Connect with Scott via Linkedin
Connect with Scott via Instagram
Look for his book, “The operators guide to the universe” Coming out in JUNE!
We are two sports chiropractors, seeking knowledge from some of the best resources in the world of health. From our perspective, health is more than just “Crackin Backs” but a deep dive into physical, mental, and nutritional well-being philosophies.
Join us as we talk to some of the greatest minds and discover some of the most incredible gems you can use to maintain a higher level of health. Crackin Backs Podcast
Dr. Spencer Baron (00:01.426)
Most people think healing gives you your life back, but what if it cost you the life you knew? What if it cost you the life you knew? But today's guest stepped into one of the most controversial treatments in the world, Ibogaine therapy. As part of the first Stanford Ibogaine study, his story's been told everywhere, but today we're not retelling it, we're asking what happens after you heal? Scott Russell, welcome to the show.
Scott Roessler (00:30.798)
Mr. Terry, Dr. Spencer, I appreciate you guys. Thanks for inviting me on your platform to share my healing journey. I look forward to talking about integration and a little bit about who I was prior to being offered and accepting the participation in the Stanford SOCF trifecta Ibogaine observational study. It's long list of participants. Yeah.
Dr. Spencer Baron (00:59.965)
I can imagine. It's certainly in need, but... What is Ibogaine first? Tell us what Ibogaine is.
Scott Roessler (01:01.876)
It was a little... Yes. Good question. Ibogaine is an alkaloid derived out of the bark from the root section of this little shrub out in the Gabon region of Africa. It's called the Tabernanth Iboga shrub. And the Witte tribe, spelled B-W-I-T-I, discovered it.
centuries ago and have used it in spiritual ceremonial practices for pretty much ever since they discovered what it could do with their warrior class. So when the tribe would send off their their males to go fight the warring tribes next door they would come back with PTSD of course a lot worse I would assume back then because they didn't have machine guns and standoff weapons they were up close and personal with everything they were doing.
and their shaman or you know I don't want to say witch doctor but the man with the medicine would take those guys back into the jungla or the jungle and would treat them with the root that they discovered and had been doing that for centuries and that would allow their males to get back into dirt farming.
and not have any issues with what had happened a week or two prior. Amazing stuff. It's been around a long time. It was discovered in the 60s by developed countries and they've been trying to replicate it for a long time in the lab. They haven't been able to figure it out, which I personally think is a good thing at this point. Now that I've been through a flood dose of this stuff, I don't think the healing effects of it have waned off at all.
because I've not, I have not stopped integrating all that new space, that fresh clean palette of what used to be occupied by old habits and bad decisions became a completely clean slate. So you have a window of time that you can fill that void with better habits.
Scott Roessler (03:14.91)
no more drinking let's say you know pretend you're an alcoholic and you go do this you have a good window of time to quit drinking you can go back to it you're not going to want to for the first few months because of the effects that it has on you you make better decisions because you're not distracted by your ego and your shadow and all those those triggers that were met with survival instincts and
led to you forming bad habits to protect yourself, like drinking, self-medicating with other types of stuff, with pills and other drugs. It becomes a coping mechanism that you rely on to calm down at some point. It becomes your go-to, which leads to addiction, which leads to more bad decisions, which leads to divorce, kids growing up without their parents. A lot of stuff that I just named off, was
a recipient of or living through because of my bad decisions. the trajectory of my life thanks to Ibogaine and 5MAO DMT, words can't put into the effects it's on myself. The enlightenment from within my core has spread throughout my entire family. My kids' grades have improved over the past several years. I'm coming up on four years since the study.
And I have stayed married. I have done some deep integration with my wife in regards to our marriage, creating better boundaries and healthier environments for us and our children. My kids' grades, like I said earlier, have gone up. Their attitudes have improved with this. I say their attitudes have improved. They'll hang out with dad now.
Dr. Spencer Baron (05:06.413)
Hahaha
Scott Roessler (05:06.432)
and ask me questions and seek some advice, you know, as before they were just too scared or timid or didn't want to talk to me because I was in a, you know, having a bad day and giving off a bad attitude. Those days are behind me and I, and I stay integrated with better habits because I'm constantly thinking about them. I'm always reminding myself of what I, where would I be right now had I not said yes to the Ibogaine study with Stanford.
Where would I be right now had I not had a friend of mine on a board of a nonprofit that was thinking about doing a study on these three treatment modalities that we're helping our guys out? I wouldn't be here if SOCF, Vets, Inc, Warrior Health Foundation, and the Cardiff, California Brain Performance Center put their heads together and decided, let's see what we can do if we put all these treatment modalities in a row, one after the next.
And that's how that study changed my life.
And I can go on if you want me to keep talking. I just want to get some back and forth going.
Dr. Spencer Baron (06:12.039)
Yeah, well I want to ask you that how you decided to do that and there's all these other treatments and medications and everything. What made you go yes to this Ibogaine?
Scott Roessler (06:26.274)
The short answer, a guy by the name of Mike Cassidy, who I served with in Ranger Regiment for quite a long time, went to war with. was a great buddy of mine during those days and we stayed in touch. I didn't know what he was doing with SOCF, but he was on their board and helping them steer their benevolence in different directions and whatnot. If it had not been him and my wife standing in my kitchen saying, go do it, predominantly my wife.
then I wouldn't be sitting here. I'd probably be divorced and overseas contracted somewhere.
Dr. Spencer Baron (07:01.747)
where you also handed that list of medications that the military constantly sends to them in an effort to try to help. It's like an endless prescription.
Scott Roessler (07:10.38)
So, yes it is. I have retired October 2018 and before that I had 11 combat deployments. And after I got back from my last one, I had been shot in the hand and got a purple heart and my retirement was getting submitted and there was just a lot of things moving and I wasn't doing much healing. And you know, internally I was still wired for war. So they sent me down to the Tampa VA.
I'm on active duty still, you, but I'm assigned to the Tampa VA. had a new program that they just stood up back then from General Votel, and it was called the Post Deployment Rehabilitation Program. It stood for PREP. And it was to get us back down on planet Earth after a real kinetic deployment.
So I would see eight experts in their field of study every day. On Thursdays, I would sit with them in a board room and they'd go around the horn on what they discovered and how they're going to treat me and this, that and the other. I left there four months later with 37 diagnosis. Yeah. PTSD and TBI was in there along with a whole shitload of other things. And...
Dr Terry (08:12.21)
Shit.
Scott Roessler (08:23.49)
That was my first take on healing, so to speak, right? Because I had eight experts in their field of study. That's when I started doing my exposure therapy with the shrink, Dr. Thor's amazing woman. That's where I discovered I had a bunch of discs that were messed up throughout my back and my spine, my neck had just been sucking up the pain like everybody else. No one wants to not get deployed because you're going to sick call looking for a...
you know, reason not to go for a run the next morning or whatever. You just wanted to stay deployable. So you just sucked it up. We were also hooked up with good trainers and so on and so forth to keep our strength and kind of work through the pain. But I didn't realize I would have 37 diagnosis. When I got back to work, I had about a year and a half left. I stayed with the combatants program and then.
got my marching papers and retired. At that point, I had done five still-eight ganglion SGBs in the neck, and those were helping a little bit. And then I did about 98 HBOT dives, and that helped for a little bit. But the unfortunate thing about all of these treatment modalities, they didn't last. They didn't help forever. And I was wound so tight that my ego and
My old way of doing things would surface pretty quick, you know, within a few months. And I'd just suck it up, no sleep, drink to go to sleep, fill in the pain and, and from 11 tours, excuse me, used to drink or I used to, to suck down a flexor all about once a day. and I somehow did not stick to those methods. My, my, my internal
Clock was telling me, hey, that's just going to kill you quicker. You got kids that need you. You got to, you got to get off all this crap. So I started weaning myself off the Zoloft that I was getting for my PTSD and depressive disorder. And I got myself off the, the Zoloft that took a little while. then, and then Gabapentin, I didn't even understand why I was prescribed it to begin with because it's for seizures and I don't have them. And,
Scott Roessler (10:40.844)
the blood pressure medication they were putting me on because one of those increased my blood pressure. I ended up getting off of everything except Adderall and steroids basically. but even the HRT back then was just giving me steroids. I didn't get estrogen blockers or anything else. Here's your steroid. I was doing my injections like I was supposed to and my testosterone was staying relatively up around 800.
but my attitude probably could have been better if had I gotten some Anastrozole or some kind of Clomid estrogen blocker through those years. Nowadays I'm running on all cylinders thanks to Warrior Health Foundation. But the longer version of the story is I had done all these other treatment modalities, nothing stuck. I figured that this is who I was gonna be at the time when my buddy showed up. It was the spring break of 2022 and then he came back.
And in the summer of 2022, after sort of opening the door about the study, they weren't sure if they're going to do it. And then when he got back in the summer, he's like, Hey, we're doing it and I want you in it. We, we volunteered to be a part of the first team that goes down there. Or that starts this, this protocol. I said, well, what do you think, honey? Cause I told her to do some digging and tell me if it's worth it or not.
Cause it takes a lot of courage from a wife like mine to go through and say, okay, you can go to Mexico and do some psychedelics. See it a week. Hopefully. But she said definitely it could help and to give it a shot. So that's how it all started. And within about a month I was getting phone calls from a benevolent coach.
Dr. Spencer Baron (12:11.708)
Yeah.
Scott Roessler (12:26.914)
who had done a lot of ayahuasca journeys to heal up through her trauma. Her whole life's journey was to try to get me to understand what intentions were, what real deep intentions, why I was doing Ibogaine. Why did I volunteer to do this? Why am I so eager to get in there and check out Ibogaine? And she got me to dig deep from just want to be a better husband, a better dad, quit cussing, quit dreaming about killing bad guys.
Two, I want to know why my dad left my mom at the agency. I want to know why my gut tells me that he loved me, but he could never say it. Like I went super deep and I found a lot of answers by doing that. Had I not had the study and just got the opportunity to go do it again, I don't think I would have had as an effective journey. Had I not had coaches and a therapist. The therapist was from Colorado. He'd call once a week as well, usually on Zoom.
And his whole mission was to try to get me to understand how powerful Ibogaine is. And no matter what you do while it's on its mission, doing its magic, you've got to stay calm. No matter what you see or how you feel or what you're listening to, you've got to breathe and stay calm while you're doing your journey so that you don't purge. Cause you're going to purge one. If you try to fight, you like bear down like, like you're on a roller coaster, you know that feeling you get.
When things are new and taking control, you try to bear down and fight it. If you do that, you're going to regret it because you're going to be thrown up and this, that, and the other. the coaching really helped. The other three gentlemen that were in the study with my group, we did okay. One of them had a hard time, but he was a raging alcoholic when he showed up and his purging lasted almost the entire time.
He was puking and dry heaving for hours on end. And I thought this dude's not gonna be happy tomorrow. Meanwhile, I'm in a very spiritual laden journey and I go through these waves of hearing the bitwitty tribal music that was playing in our room to him puking to...
Scott Roessler (14:40.502)
The hum of Ibogaine, the frequency that it gives off when it starts doing its magic. But the next day, just to fast forward, he was completely happy. One big giant smile. His eyes were a little red, but he was swearing up and down. He'll never touch alcohol ever again. And I know that I've kept in touch with him and his, his businesses are all kicking ass. He's still sober. Him and his wife and kids are still getting along and everything's great. So it goes to show you just do the work.
Dr. Spencer Baron (15:06.865)
Nice.
Scott Roessler (15:10.112)
leading into it. But the most important aspect of it all is what you do when you get back. Because you're going to face a lot of different things. Your friends are going to think you're kooky. Your friends are going to want to get you to go out and drink with them as soon as you get back. Because they're jealous. Because they're curious. Because they're wanting to know if this is real, you know? And my phone was blowing up.
Dr. Spencer Baron (15:21.968)
Hahaha.
Scott Roessler (15:36.623)
for probably six months after I got back, because I used to go out every single night. I live down here in Destin, know, the northwest Florida, and it's a big tourist trap. A lot of bars and the beaches are amazing. But you can fall into that trap pretty easily because it's sunny here about 10 months out of the year. Next year, now you're drinking all the time, you're getting mad shape, you got the same stupid stories coming out of your mouth every other night, and you don't realize it because you're now an alcoholic.
Dr. Spencer Baron (15:46.241)
yeah.
Scott Roessler (16:05.626)
And I was in that boat about the time that the study and my buddy coming down and my wife saying, let's go do this. That's where I was at in life, right? Wasn't happy with who I was and where I was at. there's more to me. I got to do more. The top of my game wasn't going to war all those years. I want to be a better, I really wanted to get closer to my family, you know, my wife and kids.
because I couldn't find peace unless I was with a guy I went to war with and there was a bar. Or I'm on the beach with an endless amount of beer and I got guys I went to war with saying the same stuff every single day, not realizing it. And I couldn't understand how the wife was still sitting here when I got sober because it all came back to me. I started realizing the guy that I was, the guy I was being before I will gain went and did his magic. Now,
The way that I would gain worked within myself, I would go flipping back between spirituality type latent lessons learned to points in my life and in my past, my childhood was real heavy in my journey.
I didn't know a lot of the stuff that was shown to me was so deep in the core of who I was at this particular time. And it was, it was, you know, I felt alone and abandoned by my dad and so on and so forth. Even though my mom busted her butt and I love her more than anything else on this planet. And my sister, my younger sister, my younger brother, they're all top of the charts for my heart.
But growing up without a dad just affects you. If you're a boy, you need that male figure to teach you some manhood things and how to read a room and how to keep your mouth shut and how to not give up and pick up the load when the load needs help. I was learning all that from buddies of mine, their older brothers and their fathers. I was just kind of putting my thing together, but I didn't understand three quarters of what was affecting me at the age of 48.
Scott Roessler (18:21.182)
or 47 was a lot of it was my childhood and there was 11 combat deployments to fuck. I thought I was going to see nothing but death and war and all the crap that I got handed me on those deployments. the majority of it was childhood, which I'm sure like my wife, everybody thought it was going to be all reliving war, but it wasn't. It was reliving my inner.
the traumatic events as a child and the sadness that I kind of compartmentalized throughout life without discussing it. I didn't have any way to integrate that into my life. didn't know what integration was, let alone how to manage it on my own.
Dr Terry (19:05.128)
Hey Scott, I want to ask you a question. I've heard from some people that said when they take a psychedelic with Ibogaine or Ayahuasca, it's like they still have the trauma, they still see the trauma, but they have no emotional attachment to it anymore. It's like watching, it's like from being in the movie to watching the movie. Is that kind of an accurate statement? And if so, what was the transition like coming home from being in the movie to watching the movie?
Scott Roessler (19:31.215)
It's a great question. When I got home, I was not prepared for the immediate backlash that I was receiving from old buddies, friends, my spouse, resentment was kicking in. I was walking around all fruity and tooty, unbeknownst to myself because I just felt better. But I was talking different. I still can't hear the difference in myself, but.
My sister, you know, my entire family's told me I sound like the original version of Scott before I went to war, before I joined the military at the age of 18 or 17. And I know my habits are all back to the beginning before I started drinking and chasing the adrenaline rush. But.
Scott Roessler (20:22.764)
The biggest thing I took away coming home was quiet. I was okay with being in silence. As before, I had to have something going on. I had to be actively doing something. There had to be some noise. And I didn't realize a lot of that noise was in my own head. But it quieted everything. And...
I was hearing my children differently. I was hearing my wife differently. I could go outside barefoot and actually feel the energy on earth. I took down all my blinders. It's the most amazing feeling on earth. And things that used to piss me off did not piss me off. The triggers I used to have did not. Like my kids just playing used to trigger me. You're being too loud. Calm down. I just lose my shit. Now I love it.
There's sometimes where they take that to the next level and they're doing flips and I can see the chandeliers about to fall off and then I'll scream. But the things that used to upset me were gone immediately. When I got off the plane after I flew back from San Diego, I was so emotionally connected. I couldn't believe I cried my eyes out. I picked up my wife and she was standing there waiting for me with a little sigh.
Scott Roessler (21:51.759)
So the empathy comes back and my empathy had been shut off for a very long time. I served 20 years and the last 15 were getting ready to go to war or going to war or getting ready to go to war or going to war. So I was constantly surrounded by the same system, the same gears where it didn't pay to have big heavy feelings.
those feelings were back and I had to relearn what it was like to have feelings, sort of. I used to just break down, I still kind of do, but I've got better control of it now. I used to preface before I would talk about this journey, I'm like, okay, I'm gonna cry, it's gonna come any minute now and I start crying. Because it was so raw, you know? The moment that I used to think about how lucky I am and how grateful I am, I would just lose it. But I've learned how to...
Embrace it. I love it. It's part of who I am and there's no reason to cry unless I just feel like letting it fly. the hardest, the hardest thing to pick up and put down after I got back the first, five or six months was trying to prove to my wife that I'm done drinking because she didn't know any other version of myself other than he gets up, we'll do something to justify being able to go drink, like knock out some measly tasks, mow the yard.
Dr. Spencer Baron (22:57.969)
That's great.
Scott Roessler (23:19.758)
Because I was retired, I just thought this is my life now. I'm going to go to the beach and screw off with some old buddies. And I was doing it like a rock star for too many years. So she was, she was, you know, just waiting for me to throw it all away and go back to being the old Scott. And it just took time. kept trying to tell her, because I wasn't perfect. I was still drinking. As soon as I got home, I had a couple of beers. I would have one beer with a dinner.
And then, you know, I went and drank for a couple of days and then I'd have another beer while we're sitting somewhere listening to music. I wasn't having six or eight, but I would still throw one back just to try to feel comfortable. Cause I felt like I was, you know, a sore thumb in the middle of all this fun. And I just wanted to blend in kind of, but it got to the point at a, for about, I'd say six months of getting back, it was starting to pick up more like, okay, I'd have three beers over the course of the night or whatever. And Jen's like, look, what are you doing? Are you just, are we done? Is this it?
Dr. Spencer Baron (24:01.903)
I'm
Scott Roessler (24:16.546)
I'm not gonna live with a drunk and I was like no you're right and I said that's it and I grabbed what beer I had left I dumped them all and I never touched another beer it was August 1st of 23. No alcohol at all period yeah it's amazing and
Dr Terry (24:30.28)
That's fucking awesome. Sorry, I got another question. because your spirit, you're making me want to try this shit. So, so, so.
Dr. Spencer Baron (24:38.926)
Yeah.
Scott Roessler (24:39.382)
I'm telling you, I've sat here to tell you what greatness it provides. It clears the deck and it brings you an ability like you never thought you'd have.
Dr Terry (24:47.526)
Well.
Well, I didn't do tours. I just have watched Private Ryan 10 times. you know, so, so there's no, there's no thing. But for the people there, they're listening and they're going, my God, that's me. That's got, that's me. But they're hesitant, right? Like you were with your friends. I want to know the things that I've heard a lot of your interviews. I've heard a lot of other people's interviews. I've seen stuff on TV. I've watched a Netflix show. I want to know what nobody else is talking about. What are the hesitance? What are these? What are some of the
Scott Roessler (24:53.582)
It's a great movie.
Dr Terry (25:18.314)
things that people need to go into this aware of that people aren't talking about.
Scott Roessler (25:24.91)
I sort of started mentioning at the beginning of the conversation, but it was the pre-work. Finding out what your intentions are. Why do you want to go sit with Ibogaine? Because it's not some type of painkiller. It's not something you're to take and then go hit the rave club. This is a legit... You're going into another dimension or several, so to speak, within yourself, right? It is so powerful.
Scott Roessler (25:56.887)
It's the only thing on the planet that does what it does. It floods, it enters your bloodstream and it floods the brain. And it puts your damaged neurotransmitters back in fresh, uninjured, unhampered by drug addiction or sex addiction or alcohol addiction, whatever your addictions are, are erased.
And when you come back to us, I was completely, I was in my Ibegan experience for 37 hours.
Throughout those 37 hours, I was awake. I could hear what was going on around me from time to time. I could hear the EKG beep every blue moon. I could hear my buddy throw up every now and then to my left. And then I'm back in another world. And I'm flying around over a green grid. mean, there's such a wild array of...
visuals that were taking place. I couldn't make sense of anything for like eight months. So had I just shown up and done it on a whim because I heard one of my buddies that went to war a lot got better by going down there and doing this stuff. I don't think it would have had as a lasting effect without that coach that was giving me a call, which is just, you know, I call it tribe like most folks.
And most of the organizations out there now that are providing the grants and whatnot, they have that in there because it is that important to prepare your mind and body and soul for what you're going to go do. I don't think you need to go back and do it seven, 10, 11 times. I think if you go there in the right head space and timing to begin with, and then you continue to integrate your new slate, that new
Scott Roessler (27:54.261)
Uncharted terabyte of data that has just been wiped from your body waiting for you to fill it with something new If you go straight into integration with an open head with an open mindset Then I'm not going back to the old bad habits that I came here to begin with that got me here to begin with and I'm replacing it with meditation nature Giving back to my community doing homework every day with my kids Telling my wife I love her
Scott Roessler (28:27.214)
And just being a better person is in a nutshell in one phrase, just being a better provider, a better shield, a better sword for my family, but doing it without all the armor and just dad, you know, that's powerful. And I couldn't have done it with anything else. The 5MEO is something I don't want to leave behind either.
just as powerful in a shorter amount of time and it floods you with love. So you start with Ivo game, you start with your pre Ibogaine work, digging into your deep personal reasons why you're going to go do this. It's something in that bag of shit that you still have over your back that you're gonna handle one day, but you haven't handled it yet. That something or three or four or five, there's things in that bag real deep that got in there before all this other shit.
that you haven't handled yet, that you need to bring up and reignite into your thought process and just start meditating on it and telling yourself you're going to ask Ibogaine to pull that from you. You want to give away all this stuff, whatever it could be to Ibogaine because you can literally have a conversation with Ibogaine. While you're in it, you can talk to it and it will talk back.
You can ask it questions and it will answer your questions. That's why they're big on journaling as soon as you get done, which is what led to my book.
So, I mean, I could go on for days and I've only known about Ibogaine for three and a half years, but the biggest top three prep, controlling yourself during, and I did that with breathing meditation. And if you look up my notes that the docs wrote during my journey with the Ibogaine, she wrote in my notes, stayed with the medicine, very calm, breath.
Scott Roessler (30:31.512)
Those are the notes. They're in Spanish, but when I finally got my act together, because you can't get up and move around on this stuff. Once it kicks in, you're immobilized from the chest down. It's like having an epidural.
Dr. Spencer Baron (30:45.648)
So let me ask you Scott, I've just recently heard of the Ibogaine, but I I've even read articles on psilocybin, ketamine for some time now, ayahuasca for years now that can change people that have PTSD and other emotional issues. Why did you pick Ibogaine and why didn't you bother with the other ones or maybe you did?
decided otherwise.
Scott Roessler (31:17.526)
I never was offered the opportunity to have a flood dose of psilocybin. None of that stuff was even spoken about during my time. I would say 2017 when I was off double-dipping, I had a year out before my retirement. You still were not allowed to go do anything outside of what the VA or any general hospital could provide. And if they found out about it, you'd be done.
Pull your clearance, you can't deploy without your clearance, you can't do anything without your clearance, so your job is done, you're gonna get pushed out, you're gonna be retiring sooner than you thought. And that's just the way it is, because it's illegal. It's a different story now. it's such a nice thing to see, but the only reason why I chose Ibogaine is because I was offered Ibogaine. And I said yes to that study. I didn't realize how...
It would explode to where it is today, but I'm so glad it did. Cause when I got home and the seven buddies of mine that I've recommended go do it, that listened and went and did it have all had the exact same outcomes as me. They're sober. They're still married. They're better dads. Most of them went back to college and got another degree in something like engineering, a difficult, more difficult degree than your average basket weaving.
sports. Not to take away from sports or basket weaving because everyone likes a good basket. But anyways, they've all had the same exact outcomes. So I'm telling you that my advocating in Florida has been basically I tell my story to the audience. I tailor it to who I'm speaking with.
Dr. Spencer Baron (32:50.809)
Gotcha.
Love it. Love it.
Scott Roessler (33:08.16)
and then I followed it up with, and here's my results, one month after the study. I had 11 combat deployments, I was a drunk, I hated everything, I couldn't find peace and shit. The only thing that brought me a little bit of, I feel good right now, is having a ranger buddy with me getting drunk at the same time. And visual on my wife and kids. But not there with my wife and kids, you know what mean? I'm over here in the shadows doing my operator thing, but I can see my family, I know they're safe, and that's okay.
Now, I want to be in the same room with everybody, in the conversation, not running the conversation, just listening and throwing a couple sentences in there or now and then, being a part of the team, not the master of this house and, you know, my way or the highway. None of that shit exists anymore. So that's another thing you can look forward to because you realize what's most important and that's just being around them.
and giving them the proper tutelage. I don't need to yell and scream. can just watch them mess up. then you guys want to know how I would recommend you do that? And now when I say it calmer, they listen and I think they adopt it much quicker than the old ways. sorry, I drifted off on that one.
Dr. Spencer Baron (34:17.337)
Yeah.
Dr. Spencer Baron (34:26.019)
Very good, very good. No, no, excellent. I'm curious because we all talk about these breakthroughs and.
Scott Roessler (34:35.148)
Yes.
Dr. Spencer Baron (34:35.245)
you know, what are the risks? know, what are the real deal risks? Because I actually know a couple of patients of mine that probably, that I will on Monday mention this to them. You know, is there something that we're overlooking and how real is it? You know, is there these hallucinogenic persisting perception disorders that continue on for those? And like in some situations like psilocybin.
Scott Roessler (35:00.514)
So just to circle back real quick, I've had like my physician's assistant, Doc, I'll leave his name out of it for right now. He's a great guy. He was in Ranger Regiment for a long time and a Green Beret physician's assistant through my retirement. He retired as well, stayed nearby and he did a flood dose of...
of MDMA if I'm not mistaken. psilocybin. He did a flood dose treatment with psilocybin completely reset him as well. So a lot of the similar outcomes versus Ibogaine and psilocybin. I don't know the different spans you know over studies or anything like that. would say 50 % of the psilocybin guys or gals need to do another dose five years down the road. None of that stuff's been established.
All I know is he's smiling like I've never seen the guy smile before. He's happy. He's always with his family. He's, he's eager to help. He wants to jump in on advocating for Florida for Ibogaine and anything else that will spread the word to get the message out because there's no better way to stop someone from killing themselves than getting them on a trip down to Mexico to go do Ibogaine. So if that's the case, we should be having studies ran in every one of our division one colleges that push doctors.
Dr. Spencer Baron (35:56.42)
Hahaha.
Scott Roessler (36:24.128)
and nurses out and all of our VA hospitals that are set up as role threes like the VA hospital in Orlando, the VA hospital down there in San Diego and Los Angeles and through the bay. All the large VA locations should have their own studies kicking off because if the real goal is to stop
all these commercials from sending the message out that we're losing 22 a day, which it's a lot longer. The number's way bigger than that. We've lost more people to suicide than the entire global war in terror.
Scott Roessler (37:02.158)
Yeah, we're like 180,000 deaths, supposedly, on whatever study research. It's like 150 to 180,000. I'm not going to quote me. Please don't quote me on this, it's less than 200,000, more than 150, I think, that have taken this route to suicide versus eating the pills for the rest of their lives or whatever type of treatment modality they were on for their ailments.
One month after I got back from my Ibogaine journey, I was still on the study for another like eight months. So I would still get calls and do documents for Dr. Nolan Williams team, suicide ideations and stuff like that. Our cumulative suicide ideation went from very high to a reduction of 88%. Like everyone would pick nine out of 10, but I'm not gonna go kill myself.
But I've thought about it a lot. Maybe if I didn't have a wife and kids, I wouldn't still be here. I don't know. But the point is, I'm still here. And we were very honest and open with the questionnaires so that they could get the data for the study. One month after the Iowa game, 30 operators with tons of tours and a whole nine yards went from almost there to 88 % now. It's still there a little, but I don't know.
not nearly as much as I used to think about it. And so on and so forth. Anxiety down 89%. Depression reversed like 87%. So if 80 is our goal, let's just say 80 percentile will successfully quit thinking about killing themselves.
with one flood dose of Ibogaine, why aren't we doing studies across the United States right now? Why is there only 11 states that are almost there working through the legislation as we speak? And then, who's, you know, we already know based on the study that I was a part of, okay, the Stanford Observational Ibogaine Mystic Protocol Study. That means they're putting Ibogaine,
Scott Roessler (39:21.358)
or they're putting magnesium through an IV into you while you're going through your journey to help the heart. Because Ibogaine will slow down your heart rate a little bit. And you gotta be able to pass an EKG to be in the study. So I'm figuring you gotta pass an EKG to go down there and do it based on how it slows the heart rate down. And I don't wanna act like I know all the science behind it. But...
Where was I going before I lost my mind there? Yeah.
Dr Terry (39:52.093)
Ha ha ha ha!
Dr. Spencer Baron (39:53.199)
No, any other possible risks.
Scott Roessler (39:57.087)
no, just, we had to be, we were all sober through this process, but you cannot be drinking like 10 days prior to going down there. I was issued or prescribed Adderall and along with this other stuff, but I was still on Adderall and I was still on testosterone. Still am. None of those were affecting the Iowa game journey in any way, shape or form. I did stop taking Adderall five days prior.
just so that I wouldn't have any sway in my journey. And know, finding me out was very, very powerful. I couldn't imagine being on stimulants and then go there. Might not make it back, but the preparation mentally, physically, emotionally was big for me. It paid off. And the only reason why I got all of it was because I was in the study.
The guys that I know that went down and did this stuff before the study was a study and they weren't getting any prep and they were just going to San Diego, getting in a van and driving down the river to go to Ibogaine and then drive back or fly back and go to work. They had relapses. They didn't have this deep connection with it. They would hear my journey and go, where'd you go? Same place you went. Man, I didn't have all that. And I said, what'd you do with the homework?
Everybody that came up to me to talk about it and that's in that tone were like, no, I didn't have access to any of that stuff. That must've been beneficial. Maybe I need to go do it again and do the right lead up before I get down there. I'm like, man, if, you're telling me it wasn't as great as what you're saying, what you're saying is true. Then I would definitely do the, do the, the work up prior to going down there, getting all your things in order. Why are you going down there to do it just on a whim or.
Do you have certain traits about yourself? What is your ego convincing you to go do on a daily basis when things are in a, like when you have to make a decision? What direction do you tend to go on your decision making?
Dr Terry (41:56.957)
Hey, hey.
Dr Terry (42:01.532)
Hey Scott, you, did they ever talk to you about, since Ibogaine and some of these are fat soluble drugs, have you ever, like Spencer was asking earlier about the, whether HPPD, have you ever heard of anybody, you know, just going through and all of a it releases in and they have hallucinogens and it keeps persisting and they don't know, have you ever heard of people doing that and if so, were you counseled about that?
Scott Roessler (42:30.338)
So you're talking like residual.
Dr Terry (42:32.359)
Yeah, like later on down the road you just have trips, you know, for a better for the for a better return.
Scott Roessler (42:36.596)
No. Excuse me. I've never heard of anybody having an ibogaine resurgence. I have heard of stories of people like used to do a lot of acid that had a, you know, some kind of connection to their spinal fluid or whatever and they had a flashback of an acid driven
relapse or not relapse but like a trip like coming out of the blue. They're not taking acid at that moment but something like an athlete, somebody that's in a aggressive high-end sport for whatever reason, it's triggered in athletes and I don't wanna quote this because I don't know all the details so I better not even bring it up but I remember reading about it. It would trigger like a little trippy moment.
Dr. Spencer Baron (43:09.326)
trip.
Scott Roessler (43:34.543)
from a previous exploration with said substance. I've never heard of that happening with Ibogaine and I didn't get briefed to be prepared to have to deal with that. I did get briefed that the day after, because you can't sleep on Ibogaine, it's impossible. And the journey that like the main core of my journey was about 18 to 18, 20 hours, something like that.
but you just keep going, right? So as you're coming out of it, you slowly regain your cognitive skills and you can slowly start to carry weight in those legs. So it takes time. You're not, know, balls to the wall, tripping your ass off for 37 hours, but you're definitely not yourself for the next day. And they call that moment when you come out of the clinic and you go to your room per se, you're in a gray day where you're in and out of
the space that Ibogaine takes you and you're back in this reality and then you doze off or you feel like you've dozed off and you're back in learning mode, being taught something. And I remember going through my grade A, I would grab my phone or I would be thinking about grabbing my phone. They take your phone and all that so you don't any distractions. You're not checking out your Facebook likes all the way up to the moment you go in.
But I remember sitting there thinking, dreaming, like manifesting, I wanted my phone, I wanted to contact the wife because I wanted to know what she knew about this Reiki. Because I came out of my grade day at one moment and like, for example, the awesome paleo chefs that they have at the facility down there, they call the beach house, brought me a smoothie. They're like, hey, take a little bit.
Cause you're still feeling pretty nauseous when you coming out of it. And I'd take a couple sips, put it down and go back onto the spirit world. And I remember coming out of that spirit world and looking up and I had somebody, a woman holding my hand like up in the air. didn't even realize it. So the effects after the you're in it, start to, when you're in it fades away, you're able to carry your own weight. You're still in it. The journey is still going on. Like the point I'm trying to make is,
Scott Roessler (45:50.391)
You don't just wake up and come out of it and start getting back at it again. You're still in and out of that space for the whole next day. And it wasn't until the next period of darkness when I woke up that morning, took a shower, got dressed, went upstairs to link up with the rest of the guys. And we all started talking about what we just went through. And then we went into meditation mode and then we did some five MEO journeys and tell you what, that is something you cannot.
forget to talk about. The 5 Meo DMT was just as important as the IBO game.
Dr Terry (46:25.172)
Did you ever, I'm gonna ask you one second, did you ever think when you were in Ranger School and on your first deployment, you're this badass dude, that you'd be five years down the road talking about meditation in the spirit world?
Dr. Spencer Baron (46:35.896)
Ha
Scott Roessler (46:36.774)
Not a thought. I thought for sure I would be contracting until I died somewhere in some far off land that no one knew about. And I would consider that glory, know, into Valhalla. But how amazing how things change when something as beautiful as the bark on the root of a little shrub in this tiny little region of Africa
Dr. Spencer Baron (46:51.222)
Ha!
Scott Roessler (47:04.332)
goes inside of my body and starts making me understand from like a third degree turn. I'm looking at memories from my past from a little bit different angle and I'm understanding for some reason why it had to happen that way and it ain't my fault and this is cleared from you now and like yes to go back to something you said earlier Dr. Terry.
Gosh, now I just lost my mind again. Forgive.
Dr. Spencer Baron (47:39.374)
Well, I do want to ask you while you're thinking of it, you mentioned something about the research and it's not quite there yet. And it would be nice to have that kind of research to quantify and qualify all that you've been all that I will gain can do for somebody. And yet I wonder if the research and the money isn't quite there yet because
It's not considered a pharmaceutical or a drug or something that can be invested in and something that what you typically see with these pharmaceutical industries. mean, do you want that to happen or what would happen if it did happen that way and went down that path that it became something much more available in a clinical model?
Scott Roessler (48:34.35)
Clearly, speaking from my lived experience, I would, I would.
I that it stays in its traditional route at the level it is right now for the audience that we are.
pushing this advocacy for, for firefighters, for law enforcement, for veterans that are overseas dealing with trauma from war. The audience that we're dealing with doesn't have time for more deliberating. We have a study under our belt that I was a part of, the Stanford University Observational Ibogaine Mystic Protocol Study.
that was released January of 2024. The results were released January of 2024. And they just recently came out with some more steady results this past, toward the end of 2025. I can't remember the exact month. The treatment protocol, the preparation before, during, and after has all been tested on 30 elite special operators.
that had zero fear and love our country and just wanted to protect everybody and be the tip of the spear.
Scott Roessler (50:07.202)
We were all dealing with pretty much the same stuff, insomnia, PTSD with chronic depressive disorder, anxiety, and whatever other mental keynotes you can come up with. We probably all were dealing with all of it. To go from that, to go from...
Divorce after divorce, you lose everything, you're trying to rebuild yourself but you can't kick the alcohol, you're living in a trailer down by the river and I'm not making this shit up. I got friends that ended up going down that horrible route. Just horrible luck, bad decisions that led to that.
Nine good buddies of mine have killed themselves after serving in some form or fashion and nine of these guys are just like me. Some of them were married with kids, some of them were not, but they were all go-getters. They were all fearless people that you would want representing you in a combat environment that got handed a bunch of pills and kicked off to the races to go retire and do whatever, but you're not going to do anything for us anymore, right?
To me, that's not a good way to send off those who volunteered to sacrifice everything for our country. Knowing what we know now, thanks to the Stanford Ibogaine Mystic Protocol Observational Study and all of Dr. Nolan Williams' work, and those who are continuing the work, we don't need to waste any more time. We don't need to talk about it anymore. We know that it has completely changed the lives and trajectory
of 30 elite special operators that completely changed their lives for the most part.
Scott Roessler (52:02.222)
Why don't we operate like Americans do and start, you know, we can leave the panhandle and we can hit all the Division I college campuses and all your VA, Roll 3 hospitals, and I'll give everybody a pamphlet that I got when I did the study and they can follow that and start doing the study.
I mentioned this in one of my podcasts a long time ago. I was on my way to Washington DC to speak with Trump's, with president Trump's first appointed VA advisor to talk about HBOT. I got there, I got to the meeting room and I was the only guy in there wearing uniform. Everybody else owned an HBOT facility somewhere in America and they were all sitting there talking to the VA secretary and his right hand, his assistant.
Dr. Spencer Baron (52:49.962)
Scott, tell the audience what HBOT is.
Scott Roessler (52:53.102)
I'm sorry HBOT stands for hyperbaric oxygen treatment and they put you in a tube they seal it they drop it down two atmospheres theoretically they crank it down on us on this knob and it creates the fat it puts you down two atmospheres like it's like 60 or 70 feet and you hang out there for 72 minutes breathe sleep watch TV on the wall whatever the case is and
It's flooding your body with 100 % oxygen at that depth and it heals a lot of stuff. And it was, it was provided to me for TBI and then I had countless concussion TBI over blasts. was a master breacher, always blowing stuff up, getting dentury points. So I was dealing with it a lot and the HBOT was helping, but it wasn't for
It wasn't a one and done thing. I would need to do it, I think, a few times a month. Once you reach a magic number, whether it's some of those folks in that room thought it was 43, some of the folks in that room thought it was more, they were kind of battling back and forth. And I was like, okay, I'm not going to talk. This is going to go on and on and on because we only have one hour with this gentleman.
But he kept looking at me and I was trying to skate to the back. He's like, okay, everybody, I want to, blah, blah, blah, please stop. I want to talk to Master Sergeant Scotty before he gets out of here. And we have to move on to our next meeting. And I was like, oh, appreciate you inviting me to talk about it. I we've heard everything I think you can discuss about hyperbaric oxygen treatment. And I've heard a lot of questions about money.
Where are we going to get the money? I said, just flying over here today, this morning, I'm reading through my popular mechanics mag, and there was an article in there. In 2012, the VA spent half a billion, $500 million on one pill to hand out to the vets at the VA. Anybody in this room know what it is? Oxycontin. And Oxycontin is a horrible drug. And I got buddies that got addicted to that and turned to heroin and are dead.
Scott Roessler (55:04.686)
So there's a pot of money right there that we can take and incorporate it into the VA to do HBOT. And I bet you if we do that, we'll have less of our brothers and sisters buried wherever that their final location is. And I was like, that's it. That's all I got. Thank you. And then his assistant got my attention and pulled me off to the side, got my information, and we talked.
Dr. Spencer Baron (55:08.492)
Peace.
Scott Roessler (55:28.938)
about how we can go into this deeper. I was like, well, I'm still active duty. I was sent up here to talk about this and I got to go, but I can refer you to the public affairs officer. And eventually they did reach back and I think they did a Q and A and it helped them steer some agenda later on down the road to help the guys. But that's kind of where that discussion was at with HBOT at that time.
Everyone was fighting to try to get funding so they could run studies from their own locations. And it was all about the individual. The difference that I see now with the Ibogaine Advocation is that the people who have received the benefit from it just want to, they just want people to open their minds to it.
So what better way than talk about your lived experience, who you were before. I was 11, combat deployments deep in PTSD. I lost a lot of friends. I was given a lot of pats on the back. I got all the awards. I got my retirement and disability and I'm a drunk.
and my kids hate me and my wife doesn't want to live with me anymore. And I don't think I can keep a friend longer than a week because I can't trust anybody because my paranoia is out of control. My HRT, my hormone is, you know, if you weren't on steroids back, if you didn't get on the system before you got out, good luck ever getting on the system for your hormone replacement therapy. So guys were walking around like their testosterone was around 200 to 300.
when it should be floating around seven or 800, they've got every kind of mental problem that you can think of with untreated trauma. Not to mention whatever happened to them growing up, because we're all similar. Single parents and some kind of childhood trauma tends to float within the ranks of your special operators, because we get herocomplex and want to go save the world so that they don't have to go through what we went through.
Scott Roessler (57:26.946)
But you do all that, hand them a bag of pills and ship them out, or we can stop doing that, take all the money we can save from that old method and incorporate it into Ibogaine, MDMA, psilocybin, ketamine. There's probably six or seven different modalities that have been accepted across America in some form or fashion with the Northwest region leading the way. We'll have plenty of money to set up studies, get the right people.
to interview and help determine which modality will probably suit the individual best. It's not just everyone does IWGN. We need to open the door to all of the modalities out there. You got Ayahuasca, you got IWGN, you got 5Meo DMT, you have other different DMTs that are as powerful as 5Meo that people have had success with.
Reversing trauma reversing. I mean My wife thinks I've reversed an age like six years from the guy she looks at pictures She's like look at you before you went look at you now. It's like you're going back in age. This is not fair like That's ankle send you honey. Let's do this. Let's get out of here but Yeah
Dr. Spencer Baron (58:36.32)
Ha ha ha ha.
Dr. Spencer Baron (58:44.062)
Hey Scott, we're nearing the end of the show, I just want to ask you one question if you don't mind that we can really finish up with a win here. With all the interviews and podcasts that you've done and the different discussions you had, is there any one question that you wished that someone would have asked you but hasn't yet?
Scott Roessler (59:09.846)
in the very beginning of it.
Scott Roessler (59:15.63)
I wished that I knew how spiritually connected I was going to be after I recovered from my oh wow experience. Once the dust settled and you know honestly I'll say after a year and a half I realized I'm not listening to the same music anymore. I used to listen to all the heavy stuff you know you can imagine the heaviest of the heavy.
I don't listen to it at all. I listen to chill music. I listen to, I like to eat a lot less. But the connection from my center, I call it my Christ consciousness. I discovered through my journey and being surrounded by great people that the key to my connection to God is through myself. There's no book that's going to teach
what I now can talk to myself about. When I read scripture now, and I'm trying to push Christianity or anything, but going from warlord Scotty to loving the scripture and feeling the goosebumps all over my body is telling me that's better than listening to Heavy Metal with Copenhagen and a six pack.
And if I if I could go back, just wish that I could have been better prepared with my spiritual questions before I went into this journey, because what I was shown was out of this world. And I wrote about it in my book and it all details. They it showed me in a mystic, not a mystic. It showed me in a spiritual way.
what I was doing to myself and how it was harming me. And it's unbelievable.
Dr. Spencer Baron (01:01:13.676)
Scott, I gotta tell you, man, for someone who's been bred to be a badass, emotionless, killing machine, you are like the most, you're like the biggest teddy bear emotional guy you've transitioned to. We wanna really, look, I even got goosebumps. My eyes got all watery, man. Thank you for, right?
Scott Roessler (01:01:23.153)
Hahaha
Scott Roessler (01:01:35.008)
Yeah, mine too. It's manifested.
Dr. Spencer Baron (01:01:37.376)
That's right, man. Thanks so much for sharing, like not just sharing, but just opening up and telling it like it is, man. This is gonna help a lot of people. Thank you.
Dr Terry (01:01:37.547)
you
Scott Roessler (01:01:47.98)
The very first thing that guys gotta do, guys and gals gotta do before this kicks off, before their journey of healing is look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself you're not perfect, you're fucked up, you have issues and let's start fixing those issues.
Dr. Spencer Baron (01:02:00.268)
You
Dr. Spencer Baron (01:02:04.086)
So great, man. Thanks for being on the show, buddy. Appreciate you.
Scott Roessler (01:02:07.193)
Thank you guys, I appreciate it. I hope to talk to you again soon.
Dr. Spencer Baron (01:02:10.113)
You bet.
Most people think healing gives you your life back, but what if it cost you the life you knew? What if it cost you the life you knew? But today's guest stepped into one of the most controversial treatments in the world, Ibogaine therapy. As part of the first Stanford Ibogaine study, his story's been told everywhere, but today we're not retelling it, we're asking what happens after you heal? Scott Russell, welcome to the show.
Scott Roessler (00:30.798)
Mr. Terry, Dr. Spencer, I appreciate you guys. Thanks for inviting me on your platform to share my healing journey. I look forward to talking about integration and a little bit about who I was prior to being offered and accepting the participation in the Stanford SOCF trifecta Ibogaine observational study. It's long list of participants. Yeah.
Dr. Spencer Baron (00:59.965)
I can imagine. It's certainly in need, but... What is Ibogaine first? Tell us what Ibogaine is.
Scott Roessler (01:01.876)
It was a little... Yes. Good question. Ibogaine is an alkaloid derived out of the bark from the root section of this little shrub out in the Gabon region of Africa. It's called the Tabernanth Iboga shrub. And the Witte tribe, spelled B-W-I-T-I, discovered it.
centuries ago and have used it in spiritual ceremonial practices for pretty much ever since they discovered what it could do with their warrior class. So when the tribe would send off their their males to go fight the warring tribes next door they would come back with PTSD of course a lot worse I would assume back then because they didn't have machine guns and standoff weapons they were up close and personal with everything they were doing.
and their shaman or you know I don't want to say witch doctor but the man with the medicine would take those guys back into the jungla or the jungle and would treat them with the root that they discovered and had been doing that for centuries and that would allow their males to get back into dirt farming.
and not have any issues with what had happened a week or two prior. Amazing stuff. It's been around a long time. It was discovered in the 60s by developed countries and they've been trying to replicate it for a long time in the lab. They haven't been able to figure it out, which I personally think is a good thing at this point. Now that I've been through a flood dose of this stuff, I don't think the healing effects of it have waned off at all.
because I've not, I have not stopped integrating all that new space, that fresh clean palette of what used to be occupied by old habits and bad decisions became a completely clean slate. So you have a window of time that you can fill that void with better habits.
Scott Roessler (03:14.91)
no more drinking let's say you know pretend you're an alcoholic and you go do this you have a good window of time to quit drinking you can go back to it you're not going to want to for the first few months because of the effects that it has on you you make better decisions because you're not distracted by your ego and your shadow and all those those triggers that were met with survival instincts and
led to you forming bad habits to protect yourself, like drinking, self-medicating with other types of stuff, with pills and other drugs. It becomes a coping mechanism that you rely on to calm down at some point. It becomes your go-to, which leads to addiction, which leads to more bad decisions, which leads to divorce, kids growing up without their parents. A lot of stuff that I just named off, was
a recipient of or living through because of my bad decisions. the trajectory of my life thanks to Ibogaine and 5MAO DMT, words can't put into the effects it's on myself. The enlightenment from within my core has spread throughout my entire family. My kids' grades have improved over the past several years. I'm coming up on four years since the study.
And I have stayed married. I have done some deep integration with my wife in regards to our marriage, creating better boundaries and healthier environments for us and our children. My kids' grades, like I said earlier, have gone up. Their attitudes have improved with this. I say their attitudes have improved. They'll hang out with dad now.
Dr. Spencer Baron (05:06.413)
Hahaha
Scott Roessler (05:06.432)
and ask me questions and seek some advice, you know, as before they were just too scared or timid or didn't want to talk to me because I was in a, you know, having a bad day and giving off a bad attitude. Those days are behind me and I, and I stay integrated with better habits because I'm constantly thinking about them. I'm always reminding myself of what I, where would I be right now had I not said yes to the Ibogaine study with Stanford.
Where would I be right now had I not had a friend of mine on a board of a nonprofit that was thinking about doing a study on these three treatment modalities that we're helping our guys out? I wouldn't be here if SOCF, Vets, Inc, Warrior Health Foundation, and the Cardiff, California Brain Performance Center put their heads together and decided, let's see what we can do if we put all these treatment modalities in a row, one after the next.
And that's how that study changed my life.
And I can go on if you want me to keep talking. I just want to get some back and forth going.
Dr. Spencer Baron (06:12.039)
Yeah, well I want to ask you that how you decided to do that and there's all these other treatments and medications and everything. What made you go yes to this Ibogaine?
Scott Roessler (06:26.274)
The short answer, a guy by the name of Mike Cassidy, who I served with in Ranger Regiment for quite a long time, went to war with. was a great buddy of mine during those days and we stayed in touch. I didn't know what he was doing with SOCF, but he was on their board and helping them steer their benevolence in different directions and whatnot. If it had not been him and my wife standing in my kitchen saying, go do it, predominantly my wife.
then I wouldn't be sitting here. I'd probably be divorced and overseas contracted somewhere.
Dr. Spencer Baron (07:01.747)
where you also handed that list of medications that the military constantly sends to them in an effort to try to help. It's like an endless prescription.
Scott Roessler (07:10.38)
So, yes it is. I have retired October 2018 and before that I had 11 combat deployments. And after I got back from my last one, I had been shot in the hand and got a purple heart and my retirement was getting submitted and there was just a lot of things moving and I wasn't doing much healing. And you know, internally I was still wired for war. So they sent me down to the Tampa VA.
I'm on active duty still, you, but I'm assigned to the Tampa VA. had a new program that they just stood up back then from General Votel, and it was called the Post Deployment Rehabilitation Program. It stood for PREP. And it was to get us back down on planet Earth after a real kinetic deployment.
So I would see eight experts in their field of study every day. On Thursdays, I would sit with them in a board room and they'd go around the horn on what they discovered and how they're going to treat me and this, that and the other. I left there four months later with 37 diagnosis. Yeah. PTSD and TBI was in there along with a whole shitload of other things. And...
Dr Terry (08:12.21)
Shit.
Scott Roessler (08:23.49)
That was my first take on healing, so to speak, right? Because I had eight experts in their field of study. That's when I started doing my exposure therapy with the shrink, Dr. Thor's amazing woman. That's where I discovered I had a bunch of discs that were messed up throughout my back and my spine, my neck had just been sucking up the pain like everybody else. No one wants to not get deployed because you're going to sick call looking for a...
you know, reason not to go for a run the next morning or whatever. You just wanted to stay deployable. So you just sucked it up. We were also hooked up with good trainers and so on and so forth to keep our strength and kind of work through the pain. But I didn't realize I would have 37 diagnosis. When I got back to work, I had about a year and a half left. I stayed with the combatants program and then.
got my marching papers and retired. At that point, I had done five still-eight ganglion SGBs in the neck, and those were helping a little bit. And then I did about 98 HBOT dives, and that helped for a little bit. But the unfortunate thing about all of these treatment modalities, they didn't last. They didn't help forever. And I was wound so tight that my ego and
My old way of doing things would surface pretty quick, you know, within a few months. And I'd just suck it up, no sleep, drink to go to sleep, fill in the pain and, and from 11 tours, excuse me, used to drink or I used to, to suck down a flexor all about once a day. and I somehow did not stick to those methods. My, my, my internal
Clock was telling me, hey, that's just going to kill you quicker. You got kids that need you. You got to, you got to get off all this crap. So I started weaning myself off the Zoloft that I was getting for my PTSD and depressive disorder. And I got myself off the, the Zoloft that took a little while. then, and then Gabapentin, I didn't even understand why I was prescribed it to begin with because it's for seizures and I don't have them. And,
Scott Roessler (10:40.844)
the blood pressure medication they were putting me on because one of those increased my blood pressure. I ended up getting off of everything except Adderall and steroids basically. but even the HRT back then was just giving me steroids. I didn't get estrogen blockers or anything else. Here's your steroid. I was doing my injections like I was supposed to and my testosterone was staying relatively up around 800.
but my attitude probably could have been better if had I gotten some Anastrozole or some kind of Clomid estrogen blocker through those years. Nowadays I'm running on all cylinders thanks to Warrior Health Foundation. But the longer version of the story is I had done all these other treatment modalities, nothing stuck. I figured that this is who I was gonna be at the time when my buddy showed up. It was the spring break of 2022 and then he came back.
And in the summer of 2022, after sort of opening the door about the study, they weren't sure if they're going to do it. And then when he got back in the summer, he's like, Hey, we're doing it and I want you in it. We, we volunteered to be a part of the first team that goes down there. Or that starts this, this protocol. I said, well, what do you think, honey? Cause I told her to do some digging and tell me if it's worth it or not.
Cause it takes a lot of courage from a wife like mine to go through and say, okay, you can go to Mexico and do some psychedelics. See it a week. Hopefully. But she said definitely it could help and to give it a shot. So that's how it all started. And within about a month I was getting phone calls from a benevolent coach.
Dr. Spencer Baron (12:11.708)
Yeah.
Scott Roessler (12:26.914)
who had done a lot of ayahuasca journeys to heal up through her trauma. Her whole life's journey was to try to get me to understand what intentions were, what real deep intentions, why I was doing Ibogaine. Why did I volunteer to do this? Why am I so eager to get in there and check out Ibogaine? And she got me to dig deep from just want to be a better husband, a better dad, quit cussing, quit dreaming about killing bad guys.
Two, I want to know why my dad left my mom at the agency. I want to know why my gut tells me that he loved me, but he could never say it. Like I went super deep and I found a lot of answers by doing that. Had I not had the study and just got the opportunity to go do it again, I don't think I would have had as an effective journey. Had I not had coaches and a therapist. The therapist was from Colorado. He'd call once a week as well, usually on Zoom.
And his whole mission was to try to get me to understand how powerful Ibogaine is. And no matter what you do while it's on its mission, doing its magic, you've got to stay calm. No matter what you see or how you feel or what you're listening to, you've got to breathe and stay calm while you're doing your journey so that you don't purge. Cause you're going to purge one. If you try to fight, you like bear down like, like you're on a roller coaster, you know that feeling you get.
When things are new and taking control, you try to bear down and fight it. If you do that, you're going to regret it because you're going to be thrown up and this, that, and the other. the coaching really helped. The other three gentlemen that were in the study with my group, we did okay. One of them had a hard time, but he was a raging alcoholic when he showed up and his purging lasted almost the entire time.
He was puking and dry heaving for hours on end. And I thought this dude's not gonna be happy tomorrow. Meanwhile, I'm in a very spiritual laden journey and I go through these waves of hearing the bitwitty tribal music that was playing in our room to him puking to...
Scott Roessler (14:40.502)
The hum of Ibogaine, the frequency that it gives off when it starts doing its magic. But the next day, just to fast forward, he was completely happy. One big giant smile. His eyes were a little red, but he was swearing up and down. He'll never touch alcohol ever again. And I know that I've kept in touch with him and his, his businesses are all kicking ass. He's still sober. Him and his wife and kids are still getting along and everything's great. So it goes to show you just do the work.
Dr. Spencer Baron (15:06.865)
Nice.
Scott Roessler (15:10.112)
leading into it. But the most important aspect of it all is what you do when you get back. Because you're going to face a lot of different things. Your friends are going to think you're kooky. Your friends are going to want to get you to go out and drink with them as soon as you get back. Because they're jealous. Because they're curious. Because they're wanting to know if this is real, you know? And my phone was blowing up.
Dr. Spencer Baron (15:21.968)
Hahaha.
Scott Roessler (15:36.623)
for probably six months after I got back, because I used to go out every single night. I live down here in Destin, know, the northwest Florida, and it's a big tourist trap. A lot of bars and the beaches are amazing. But you can fall into that trap pretty easily because it's sunny here about 10 months out of the year. Next year, now you're drinking all the time, you're getting mad shape, you got the same stupid stories coming out of your mouth every other night, and you don't realize it because you're now an alcoholic.
Dr. Spencer Baron (15:46.241)
yeah.
Scott Roessler (16:05.626)
And I was in that boat about the time that the study and my buddy coming down and my wife saying, let's go do this. That's where I was at in life, right? Wasn't happy with who I was and where I was at. there's more to me. I got to do more. The top of my game wasn't going to war all those years. I want to be a better, I really wanted to get closer to my family, you know, my wife and kids.
because I couldn't find peace unless I was with a guy I went to war with and there was a bar. Or I'm on the beach with an endless amount of beer and I got guys I went to war with saying the same stuff every single day, not realizing it. And I couldn't understand how the wife was still sitting here when I got sober because it all came back to me. I started realizing the guy that I was, the guy I was being before I will gain went and did his magic. Now,
The way that I would gain worked within myself, I would go flipping back between spirituality type latent lessons learned to points in my life and in my past, my childhood was real heavy in my journey.
I didn't know a lot of the stuff that was shown to me was so deep in the core of who I was at this particular time. And it was, it was, you know, I felt alone and abandoned by my dad and so on and so forth. Even though my mom busted her butt and I love her more than anything else on this planet. And my sister, my younger sister, my younger brother, they're all top of the charts for my heart.
But growing up without a dad just affects you. If you're a boy, you need that male figure to teach you some manhood things and how to read a room and how to keep your mouth shut and how to not give up and pick up the load when the load needs help. I was learning all that from buddies of mine, their older brothers and their fathers. I was just kind of putting my thing together, but I didn't understand three quarters of what was affecting me at the age of 48.
Scott Roessler (18:21.182)
or 47 was a lot of it was my childhood and there was 11 combat deployments to fuck. I thought I was going to see nothing but death and war and all the crap that I got handed me on those deployments. the majority of it was childhood, which I'm sure like my wife, everybody thought it was going to be all reliving war, but it wasn't. It was reliving my inner.
the traumatic events as a child and the sadness that I kind of compartmentalized throughout life without discussing it. I didn't have any way to integrate that into my life. didn't know what integration was, let alone how to manage it on my own.
Dr Terry (19:05.128)
Hey Scott, I want to ask you a question. I've heard from some people that said when they take a psychedelic with Ibogaine or Ayahuasca, it's like they still have the trauma, they still see the trauma, but they have no emotional attachment to it anymore. It's like watching, it's like from being in the movie to watching the movie. Is that kind of an accurate statement? And if so, what was the transition like coming home from being in the movie to watching the movie?
Scott Roessler (19:31.215)
It's a great question. When I got home, I was not prepared for the immediate backlash that I was receiving from old buddies, friends, my spouse, resentment was kicking in. I was walking around all fruity and tooty, unbeknownst to myself because I just felt better. But I was talking different. I still can't hear the difference in myself, but.
My sister, you know, my entire family's told me I sound like the original version of Scott before I went to war, before I joined the military at the age of 18 or 17. And I know my habits are all back to the beginning before I started drinking and chasing the adrenaline rush. But.
Scott Roessler (20:22.764)
The biggest thing I took away coming home was quiet. I was okay with being in silence. As before, I had to have something going on. I had to be actively doing something. There had to be some noise. And I didn't realize a lot of that noise was in my own head. But it quieted everything. And...
I was hearing my children differently. I was hearing my wife differently. I could go outside barefoot and actually feel the energy on earth. I took down all my blinders. It's the most amazing feeling on earth. And things that used to piss me off did not piss me off. The triggers I used to have did not. Like my kids just playing used to trigger me. You're being too loud. Calm down. I just lose my shit. Now I love it.
There's sometimes where they take that to the next level and they're doing flips and I can see the chandeliers about to fall off and then I'll scream. But the things that used to upset me were gone immediately. When I got off the plane after I flew back from San Diego, I was so emotionally connected. I couldn't believe I cried my eyes out. I picked up my wife and she was standing there waiting for me with a little sigh.
Scott Roessler (21:51.759)
So the empathy comes back and my empathy had been shut off for a very long time. I served 20 years and the last 15 were getting ready to go to war or going to war or getting ready to go to war or going to war. So I was constantly surrounded by the same system, the same gears where it didn't pay to have big heavy feelings.
those feelings were back and I had to relearn what it was like to have feelings, sort of. I used to just break down, I still kind of do, but I've got better control of it now. I used to preface before I would talk about this journey, I'm like, okay, I'm gonna cry, it's gonna come any minute now and I start crying. Because it was so raw, you know? The moment that I used to think about how lucky I am and how grateful I am, I would just lose it. But I've learned how to...
Embrace it. I love it. It's part of who I am and there's no reason to cry unless I just feel like letting it fly. the hardest, the hardest thing to pick up and put down after I got back the first, five or six months was trying to prove to my wife that I'm done drinking because she didn't know any other version of myself other than he gets up, we'll do something to justify being able to go drink, like knock out some measly tasks, mow the yard.
Dr. Spencer Baron (22:57.969)
That's great.
Scott Roessler (23:19.758)
Because I was retired, I just thought this is my life now. I'm going to go to the beach and screw off with some old buddies. And I was doing it like a rock star for too many years. So she was, she was, you know, just waiting for me to throw it all away and go back to being the old Scott. And it just took time. kept trying to tell her, because I wasn't perfect. I was still drinking. As soon as I got home, I had a couple of beers. I would have one beer with a dinner.
And then, you know, I went and drank for a couple of days and then I'd have another beer while we're sitting somewhere listening to music. I wasn't having six or eight, but I would still throw one back just to try to feel comfortable. Cause I felt like I was, you know, a sore thumb in the middle of all this fun. And I just wanted to blend in kind of, but it got to the point at a, for about, I'd say six months of getting back, it was starting to pick up more like, okay, I'd have three beers over the course of the night or whatever. And Jen's like, look, what are you doing? Are you just, are we done? Is this it?
Dr. Spencer Baron (24:01.903)
I'm
Scott Roessler (24:16.546)
I'm not gonna live with a drunk and I was like no you're right and I said that's it and I grabbed what beer I had left I dumped them all and I never touched another beer it was August 1st of 23. No alcohol at all period yeah it's amazing and
Dr Terry (24:30.28)
That's fucking awesome. Sorry, I got another question. because your spirit, you're making me want to try this shit. So, so, so.
Dr. Spencer Baron (24:38.926)
Yeah.
Scott Roessler (24:39.382)
I'm telling you, I've sat here to tell you what greatness it provides. It clears the deck and it brings you an ability like you never thought you'd have.
Dr Terry (24:47.526)
Well.
Well, I didn't do tours. I just have watched Private Ryan 10 times. you know, so, so there's no, there's no thing. But for the people there, they're listening and they're going, my God, that's me. That's got, that's me. But they're hesitant, right? Like you were with your friends. I want to know the things that I've heard a lot of your interviews. I've heard a lot of other people's interviews. I've seen stuff on TV. I've watched a Netflix show. I want to know what nobody else is talking about. What are the hesitance? What are these? What are some of the
Scott Roessler (24:53.582)
It's a great movie.
Dr Terry (25:18.314)
things that people need to go into this aware of that people aren't talking about.
Scott Roessler (25:24.91)
I sort of started mentioning at the beginning of the conversation, but it was the pre-work. Finding out what your intentions are. Why do you want to go sit with Ibogaine? Because it's not some type of painkiller. It's not something you're to take and then go hit the rave club. This is a legit... You're going into another dimension or several, so to speak, within yourself, right? It is so powerful.
Scott Roessler (25:56.887)
It's the only thing on the planet that does what it does. It floods, it enters your bloodstream and it floods the brain. And it puts your damaged neurotransmitters back in fresh, uninjured, unhampered by drug addiction or sex addiction or alcohol addiction, whatever your addictions are, are erased.
And when you come back to us, I was completely, I was in my Ibegan experience for 37 hours.
Throughout those 37 hours, I was awake. I could hear what was going on around me from time to time. I could hear the EKG beep every blue moon. I could hear my buddy throw up every now and then to my left. And then I'm back in another world. And I'm flying around over a green grid. mean, there's such a wild array of...
visuals that were taking place. I couldn't make sense of anything for like eight months. So had I just shown up and done it on a whim because I heard one of my buddies that went to war a lot got better by going down there and doing this stuff. I don't think it would have had as a lasting effect without that coach that was giving me a call, which is just, you know, I call it tribe like most folks.
And most of the organizations out there now that are providing the grants and whatnot, they have that in there because it is that important to prepare your mind and body and soul for what you're going to go do. I don't think you need to go back and do it seven, 10, 11 times. I think if you go there in the right head space and timing to begin with, and then you continue to integrate your new slate, that new
Scott Roessler (27:54.261)
Uncharted terabyte of data that has just been wiped from your body waiting for you to fill it with something new If you go straight into integration with an open head with an open mindset Then I'm not going back to the old bad habits that I came here to begin with that got me here to begin with and I'm replacing it with meditation nature Giving back to my community doing homework every day with my kids Telling my wife I love her
Scott Roessler (28:27.214)
And just being a better person is in a nutshell in one phrase, just being a better provider, a better shield, a better sword for my family, but doing it without all the armor and just dad, you know, that's powerful. And I couldn't have done it with anything else. The 5MEO is something I don't want to leave behind either.
just as powerful in a shorter amount of time and it floods you with love. So you start with Ivo game, you start with your pre Ibogaine work, digging into your deep personal reasons why you're going to go do this. It's something in that bag of shit that you still have over your back that you're gonna handle one day, but you haven't handled it yet. That something or three or four or five, there's things in that bag real deep that got in there before all this other shit.
that you haven't handled yet, that you need to bring up and reignite into your thought process and just start meditating on it and telling yourself you're going to ask Ibogaine to pull that from you. You want to give away all this stuff, whatever it could be to Ibogaine because you can literally have a conversation with Ibogaine. While you're in it, you can talk to it and it will talk back.
You can ask it questions and it will answer your questions. That's why they're big on journaling as soon as you get done, which is what led to my book.
So, I mean, I could go on for days and I've only known about Ibogaine for three and a half years, but the biggest top three prep, controlling yourself during, and I did that with breathing meditation. And if you look up my notes that the docs wrote during my journey with the Ibogaine, she wrote in my notes, stayed with the medicine, very calm, breath.
Scott Roessler (30:31.512)
Those are the notes. They're in Spanish, but when I finally got my act together, because you can't get up and move around on this stuff. Once it kicks in, you're immobilized from the chest down. It's like having an epidural.
Dr. Spencer Baron (30:45.648)
So let me ask you Scott, I've just recently heard of the Ibogaine, but I I've even read articles on psilocybin, ketamine for some time now, ayahuasca for years now that can change people that have PTSD and other emotional issues. Why did you pick Ibogaine and why didn't you bother with the other ones or maybe you did?
decided otherwise.
Scott Roessler (31:17.526)
I never was offered the opportunity to have a flood dose of psilocybin. None of that stuff was even spoken about during my time. I would say 2017 when I was off double-dipping, I had a year out before my retirement. You still were not allowed to go do anything outside of what the VA or any general hospital could provide. And if they found out about it, you'd be done.
Pull your clearance, you can't deploy without your clearance, you can't do anything without your clearance, so your job is done, you're gonna get pushed out, you're gonna be retiring sooner than you thought. And that's just the way it is, because it's illegal. It's a different story now. it's such a nice thing to see, but the only reason why I chose Ibogaine is because I was offered Ibogaine. And I said yes to that study. I didn't realize how...
It would explode to where it is today, but I'm so glad it did. Cause when I got home and the seven buddies of mine that I've recommended go do it, that listened and went and did it have all had the exact same outcomes as me. They're sober. They're still married. They're better dads. Most of them went back to college and got another degree in something like engineering, a difficult, more difficult degree than your average basket weaving.
sports. Not to take away from sports or basket weaving because everyone likes a good basket. But anyways, they've all had the same exact outcomes. So I'm telling you that my advocating in Florida has been basically I tell my story to the audience. I tailor it to who I'm speaking with.
Dr. Spencer Baron (32:50.809)
Gotcha.
Love it. Love it.
Scott Roessler (33:08.16)
and then I followed it up with, and here's my results, one month after the study. I had 11 combat deployments, I was a drunk, I hated everything, I couldn't find peace and shit. The only thing that brought me a little bit of, I feel good right now, is having a ranger buddy with me getting drunk at the same time. And visual on my wife and kids. But not there with my wife and kids, you know what mean? I'm over here in the shadows doing my operator thing, but I can see my family, I know they're safe, and that's okay.
Now, I want to be in the same room with everybody, in the conversation, not running the conversation, just listening and throwing a couple sentences in there or now and then, being a part of the team, not the master of this house and, you know, my way or the highway. None of that shit exists anymore. So that's another thing you can look forward to because you realize what's most important and that's just being around them.
and giving them the proper tutelage. I don't need to yell and scream. can just watch them mess up. then you guys want to know how I would recommend you do that? And now when I say it calmer, they listen and I think they adopt it much quicker than the old ways. sorry, I drifted off on that one.
Dr. Spencer Baron (34:17.337)
Yeah.
Dr. Spencer Baron (34:26.019)
Very good, very good. No, no, excellent. I'm curious because we all talk about these breakthroughs and.
Scott Roessler (34:35.148)
Yes.
Dr. Spencer Baron (34:35.245)
you know, what are the risks? know, what are the real deal risks? Because I actually know a couple of patients of mine that probably, that I will on Monday mention this to them. You know, is there something that we're overlooking and how real is it? You know, is there these hallucinogenic persisting perception disorders that continue on for those? And like in some situations like psilocybin.
Scott Roessler (35:00.514)
So just to circle back real quick, I've had like my physician's assistant, Doc, I'll leave his name out of it for right now. He's a great guy. He was in Ranger Regiment for a long time and a Green Beret physician's assistant through my retirement. He retired as well, stayed nearby and he did a flood dose of...
of MDMA if I'm not mistaken. psilocybin. He did a flood dose treatment with psilocybin completely reset him as well. So a lot of the similar outcomes versus Ibogaine and psilocybin. I don't know the different spans you know over studies or anything like that. would say 50 % of the psilocybin guys or gals need to do another dose five years down the road. None of that stuff's been established.
All I know is he's smiling like I've never seen the guy smile before. He's happy. He's always with his family. He's, he's eager to help. He wants to jump in on advocating for Florida for Ibogaine and anything else that will spread the word to get the message out because there's no better way to stop someone from killing themselves than getting them on a trip down to Mexico to go do Ibogaine. So if that's the case, we should be having studies ran in every one of our division one colleges that push doctors.
Dr. Spencer Baron (35:56.42)
Hahaha.
Scott Roessler (36:24.128)
and nurses out and all of our VA hospitals that are set up as role threes like the VA hospital in Orlando, the VA hospital down there in San Diego and Los Angeles and through the bay. All the large VA locations should have their own studies kicking off because if the real goal is to stop
all these commercials from sending the message out that we're losing 22 a day, which it's a lot longer. The number's way bigger than that. We've lost more people to suicide than the entire global war in terror.
Scott Roessler (37:02.158)
Yeah, we're like 180,000 deaths, supposedly, on whatever study research. It's like 150 to 180,000. I'm not going to quote me. Please don't quote me on this, it's less than 200,000, more than 150, I think, that have taken this route to suicide versus eating the pills for the rest of their lives or whatever type of treatment modality they were on for their ailments.
One month after I got back from my Ibogaine journey, I was still on the study for another like eight months. So I would still get calls and do documents for Dr. Nolan Williams team, suicide ideations and stuff like that. Our cumulative suicide ideation went from very high to a reduction of 88%. Like everyone would pick nine out of 10, but I'm not gonna go kill myself.
But I've thought about it a lot. Maybe if I didn't have a wife and kids, I wouldn't still be here. I don't know. But the point is, I'm still here. And we were very honest and open with the questionnaires so that they could get the data for the study. One month after the Iowa game, 30 operators with tons of tours and a whole nine yards went from almost there to 88 % now. It's still there a little, but I don't know.
not nearly as much as I used to think about it. And so on and so forth. Anxiety down 89%. Depression reversed like 87%. So if 80 is our goal, let's just say 80 percentile will successfully quit thinking about killing themselves.
with one flood dose of Ibogaine, why aren't we doing studies across the United States right now? Why is there only 11 states that are almost there working through the legislation as we speak? And then, who's, you know, we already know based on the study that I was a part of, okay, the Stanford Observational Ibogaine Mystic Protocol Study. That means they're putting Ibogaine,
Scott Roessler (39:21.358)
or they're putting magnesium through an IV into you while you're going through your journey to help the heart. Because Ibogaine will slow down your heart rate a little bit. And you gotta be able to pass an EKG to be in the study. So I'm figuring you gotta pass an EKG to go down there and do it based on how it slows the heart rate down. And I don't wanna act like I know all the science behind it. But...
Where was I going before I lost my mind there? Yeah.
Dr Terry (39:52.093)
Ha ha ha ha!
Dr. Spencer Baron (39:53.199)
No, any other possible risks.
Scott Roessler (39:57.087)
no, just, we had to be, we were all sober through this process, but you cannot be drinking like 10 days prior to going down there. I was issued or prescribed Adderall and along with this other stuff, but I was still on Adderall and I was still on testosterone. Still am. None of those were affecting the Iowa game journey in any way, shape or form. I did stop taking Adderall five days prior.
just so that I wouldn't have any sway in my journey. And know, finding me out was very, very powerful. I couldn't imagine being on stimulants and then go there. Might not make it back, but the preparation mentally, physically, emotionally was big for me. It paid off. And the only reason why I got all of it was because I was in the study.
The guys that I know that went down and did this stuff before the study was a study and they weren't getting any prep and they were just going to San Diego, getting in a van and driving down the river to go to Ibogaine and then drive back or fly back and go to work. They had relapses. They didn't have this deep connection with it. They would hear my journey and go, where'd you go? Same place you went. Man, I didn't have all that. And I said, what'd you do with the homework?
Everybody that came up to me to talk about it and that's in that tone were like, no, I didn't have access to any of that stuff. That must've been beneficial. Maybe I need to go do it again and do the right lead up before I get down there. I'm like, man, if, you're telling me it wasn't as great as what you're saying, what you're saying is true. Then I would definitely do the, do the, the work up prior to going down there, getting all your things in order. Why are you going down there to do it just on a whim or.
Do you have certain traits about yourself? What is your ego convincing you to go do on a daily basis when things are in a, like when you have to make a decision? What direction do you tend to go on your decision making?
Dr Terry (41:56.957)
Hey, hey.
Dr Terry (42:01.532)
Hey Scott, you, did they ever talk to you about, since Ibogaine and some of these are fat soluble drugs, have you ever, like Spencer was asking earlier about the, whether HPPD, have you ever heard of anybody, you know, just going through and all of a it releases in and they have hallucinogens and it keeps persisting and they don't know, have you ever heard of people doing that and if so, were you counseled about that?
Scott Roessler (42:30.338)
So you're talking like residual.
Dr Terry (42:32.359)
Yeah, like later on down the road you just have trips, you know, for a better for the for a better return.
Scott Roessler (42:36.596)
No. Excuse me. I've never heard of anybody having an ibogaine resurgence. I have heard of stories of people like used to do a lot of acid that had a, you know, some kind of connection to their spinal fluid or whatever and they had a flashback of an acid driven
relapse or not relapse but like a trip like coming out of the blue. They're not taking acid at that moment but something like an athlete, somebody that's in a aggressive high-end sport for whatever reason, it's triggered in athletes and I don't wanna quote this because I don't know all the details so I better not even bring it up but I remember reading about it. It would trigger like a little trippy moment.
Dr. Spencer Baron (43:09.326)
trip.
Scott Roessler (43:34.543)
from a previous exploration with said substance. I've never heard of that happening with Ibogaine and I didn't get briefed to be prepared to have to deal with that. I did get briefed that the day after, because you can't sleep on Ibogaine, it's impossible. And the journey that like the main core of my journey was about 18 to 18, 20 hours, something like that.
but you just keep going, right? So as you're coming out of it, you slowly regain your cognitive skills and you can slowly start to carry weight in those legs. So it takes time. You're not, know, balls to the wall, tripping your ass off for 37 hours, but you're definitely not yourself for the next day. And they call that moment when you come out of the clinic and you go to your room per se, you're in a gray day where you're in and out of
the space that Ibogaine takes you and you're back in this reality and then you doze off or you feel like you've dozed off and you're back in learning mode, being taught something. And I remember going through my grade A, I would grab my phone or I would be thinking about grabbing my phone. They take your phone and all that so you don't any distractions. You're not checking out your Facebook likes all the way up to the moment you go in.
But I remember sitting there thinking, dreaming, like manifesting, I wanted my phone, I wanted to contact the wife because I wanted to know what she knew about this Reiki. Because I came out of my grade day at one moment and like, for example, the awesome paleo chefs that they have at the facility down there, they call the beach house, brought me a smoothie. They're like, hey, take a little bit.
Cause you're still feeling pretty nauseous when you coming out of it. And I'd take a couple sips, put it down and go back onto the spirit world. And I remember coming out of that spirit world and looking up and I had somebody, a woman holding my hand like up in the air. didn't even realize it. So the effects after the you're in it, start to, when you're in it fades away, you're able to carry your own weight. You're still in it. The journey is still going on. Like the point I'm trying to make is,
Scott Roessler (45:50.391)
You don't just wake up and come out of it and start getting back at it again. You're still in and out of that space for the whole next day. And it wasn't until the next period of darkness when I woke up that morning, took a shower, got dressed, went upstairs to link up with the rest of the guys. And we all started talking about what we just went through. And then we went into meditation mode and then we did some five MEO journeys and tell you what, that is something you cannot.
forget to talk about. The 5 Meo DMT was just as important as the IBO game.
Dr Terry (46:25.172)
Did you ever, I'm gonna ask you one second, did you ever think when you were in Ranger School and on your first deployment, you're this badass dude, that you'd be five years down the road talking about meditation in the spirit world?
Dr. Spencer Baron (46:35.896)
Ha
Scott Roessler (46:36.774)
Not a thought. I thought for sure I would be contracting until I died somewhere in some far off land that no one knew about. And I would consider that glory, know, into Valhalla. But how amazing how things change when something as beautiful as the bark on the root of a little shrub in this tiny little region of Africa
Dr. Spencer Baron (46:51.222)
Ha!
Scott Roessler (47:04.332)
goes inside of my body and starts making me understand from like a third degree turn. I'm looking at memories from my past from a little bit different angle and I'm understanding for some reason why it had to happen that way and it ain't my fault and this is cleared from you now and like yes to go back to something you said earlier Dr. Terry.
Gosh, now I just lost my mind again. Forgive.
Dr. Spencer Baron (47:39.374)
Well, I do want to ask you while you're thinking of it, you mentioned something about the research and it's not quite there yet. And it would be nice to have that kind of research to quantify and qualify all that you've been all that I will gain can do for somebody. And yet I wonder if the research and the money isn't quite there yet because
It's not considered a pharmaceutical or a drug or something that can be invested in and something that what you typically see with these pharmaceutical industries. mean, do you want that to happen or what would happen if it did happen that way and went down that path that it became something much more available in a clinical model?
Scott Roessler (48:34.35)
Clearly, speaking from my lived experience, I would, I would.
I that it stays in its traditional route at the level it is right now for the audience that we are.
pushing this advocacy for, for firefighters, for law enforcement, for veterans that are overseas dealing with trauma from war. The audience that we're dealing with doesn't have time for more deliberating. We have a study under our belt that I was a part of, the Stanford University Observational Ibogaine Mystic Protocol Study.
that was released January of 2024. The results were released January of 2024. And they just recently came out with some more steady results this past, toward the end of 2025. I can't remember the exact month. The treatment protocol, the preparation before, during, and after has all been tested on 30 elite special operators.
that had zero fear and love our country and just wanted to protect everybody and be the tip of the spear.
Scott Roessler (50:07.202)
We were all dealing with pretty much the same stuff, insomnia, PTSD with chronic depressive disorder, anxiety, and whatever other mental keynotes you can come up with. We probably all were dealing with all of it. To go from that, to go from...
Divorce after divorce, you lose everything, you're trying to rebuild yourself but you can't kick the alcohol, you're living in a trailer down by the river and I'm not making this shit up. I got friends that ended up going down that horrible route. Just horrible luck, bad decisions that led to that.
Nine good buddies of mine have killed themselves after serving in some form or fashion and nine of these guys are just like me. Some of them were married with kids, some of them were not, but they were all go-getters. They were all fearless people that you would want representing you in a combat environment that got handed a bunch of pills and kicked off to the races to go retire and do whatever, but you're not going to do anything for us anymore, right?
To me, that's not a good way to send off those who volunteered to sacrifice everything for our country. Knowing what we know now, thanks to the Stanford Ibogaine Mystic Protocol Observational Study and all of Dr. Nolan Williams' work, and those who are continuing the work, we don't need to waste any more time. We don't need to talk about it anymore. We know that it has completely changed the lives and trajectory
of 30 elite special operators that completely changed their lives for the most part.
Scott Roessler (52:02.222)
Why don't we operate like Americans do and start, you know, we can leave the panhandle and we can hit all the Division I college campuses and all your VA, Roll 3 hospitals, and I'll give everybody a pamphlet that I got when I did the study and they can follow that and start doing the study.
I mentioned this in one of my podcasts a long time ago. I was on my way to Washington DC to speak with Trump's, with president Trump's first appointed VA advisor to talk about HBOT. I got there, I got to the meeting room and I was the only guy in there wearing uniform. Everybody else owned an HBOT facility somewhere in America and they were all sitting there talking to the VA secretary and his right hand, his assistant.
Dr. Spencer Baron (52:49.962)
Scott, tell the audience what HBOT is.
Scott Roessler (52:53.102)
I'm sorry HBOT stands for hyperbaric oxygen treatment and they put you in a tube they seal it they drop it down two atmospheres theoretically they crank it down on us on this knob and it creates the fat it puts you down two atmospheres like it's like 60 or 70 feet and you hang out there for 72 minutes breathe sleep watch TV on the wall whatever the case is and
It's flooding your body with 100 % oxygen at that depth and it heals a lot of stuff. And it was, it was provided to me for TBI and then I had countless concussion TBI over blasts. was a master breacher, always blowing stuff up, getting dentury points. So I was dealing with it a lot and the HBOT was helping, but it wasn't for
It wasn't a one and done thing. I would need to do it, I think, a few times a month. Once you reach a magic number, whether it's some of those folks in that room thought it was 43, some of the folks in that room thought it was more, they were kind of battling back and forth. And I was like, okay, I'm not going to talk. This is going to go on and on and on because we only have one hour with this gentleman.
But he kept looking at me and I was trying to skate to the back. He's like, okay, everybody, I want to, blah, blah, blah, please stop. I want to talk to Master Sergeant Scotty before he gets out of here. And we have to move on to our next meeting. And I was like, oh, appreciate you inviting me to talk about it. I we've heard everything I think you can discuss about hyperbaric oxygen treatment. And I've heard a lot of questions about money.
Where are we going to get the money? I said, just flying over here today, this morning, I'm reading through my popular mechanics mag, and there was an article in there. In 2012, the VA spent half a billion, $500 million on one pill to hand out to the vets at the VA. Anybody in this room know what it is? Oxycontin. And Oxycontin is a horrible drug. And I got buddies that got addicted to that and turned to heroin and are dead.
Scott Roessler (55:04.686)
So there's a pot of money right there that we can take and incorporate it into the VA to do HBOT. And I bet you if we do that, we'll have less of our brothers and sisters buried wherever that their final location is. And I was like, that's it. That's all I got. Thank you. And then his assistant got my attention and pulled me off to the side, got my information, and we talked.
Dr. Spencer Baron (55:08.492)
Peace.
Scott Roessler (55:28.938)
about how we can go into this deeper. I was like, well, I'm still active duty. I was sent up here to talk about this and I got to go, but I can refer you to the public affairs officer. And eventually they did reach back and I think they did a Q and A and it helped them steer some agenda later on down the road to help the guys. But that's kind of where that discussion was at with HBOT at that time.
Everyone was fighting to try to get funding so they could run studies from their own locations. And it was all about the individual. The difference that I see now with the Ibogaine Advocation is that the people who have received the benefit from it just want to, they just want people to open their minds to it.
So what better way than talk about your lived experience, who you were before. I was 11, combat deployments deep in PTSD. I lost a lot of friends. I was given a lot of pats on the back. I got all the awards. I got my retirement and disability and I'm a drunk.
and my kids hate me and my wife doesn't want to live with me anymore. And I don't think I can keep a friend longer than a week because I can't trust anybody because my paranoia is out of control. My HRT, my hormone is, you know, if you weren't on steroids back, if you didn't get on the system before you got out, good luck ever getting on the system for your hormone replacement therapy. So guys were walking around like their testosterone was around 200 to 300.
when it should be floating around seven or 800, they've got every kind of mental problem that you can think of with untreated trauma. Not to mention whatever happened to them growing up, because we're all similar. Single parents and some kind of childhood trauma tends to float within the ranks of your special operators, because we get herocomplex and want to go save the world so that they don't have to go through what we went through.
Scott Roessler (57:26.946)
But you do all that, hand them a bag of pills and ship them out, or we can stop doing that, take all the money we can save from that old method and incorporate it into Ibogaine, MDMA, psilocybin, ketamine. There's probably six or seven different modalities that have been accepted across America in some form or fashion with the Northwest region leading the way. We'll have plenty of money to set up studies, get the right people.
to interview and help determine which modality will probably suit the individual best. It's not just everyone does IWGN. We need to open the door to all of the modalities out there. You got Ayahuasca, you got IWGN, you got 5Meo DMT, you have other different DMTs that are as powerful as 5Meo that people have had success with.
Reversing trauma reversing. I mean My wife thinks I've reversed an age like six years from the guy she looks at pictures She's like look at you before you went look at you now. It's like you're going back in age. This is not fair like That's ankle send you honey. Let's do this. Let's get out of here but Yeah
Dr. Spencer Baron (58:36.32)
Ha ha ha ha.
Dr. Spencer Baron (58:44.062)
Hey Scott, we're nearing the end of the show, I just want to ask you one question if you don't mind that we can really finish up with a win here. With all the interviews and podcasts that you've done and the different discussions you had, is there any one question that you wished that someone would have asked you but hasn't yet?
Scott Roessler (59:09.846)
in the very beginning of it.
Scott Roessler (59:15.63)
I wished that I knew how spiritually connected I was going to be after I recovered from my oh wow experience. Once the dust settled and you know honestly I'll say after a year and a half I realized I'm not listening to the same music anymore. I used to listen to all the heavy stuff you know you can imagine the heaviest of the heavy.
I don't listen to it at all. I listen to chill music. I listen to, I like to eat a lot less. But the connection from my center, I call it my Christ consciousness. I discovered through my journey and being surrounded by great people that the key to my connection to God is through myself. There's no book that's going to teach
what I now can talk to myself about. When I read scripture now, and I'm trying to push Christianity or anything, but going from warlord Scotty to loving the scripture and feeling the goosebumps all over my body is telling me that's better than listening to Heavy Metal with Copenhagen and a six pack.
And if I if I could go back, just wish that I could have been better prepared with my spiritual questions before I went into this journey, because what I was shown was out of this world. And I wrote about it in my book and it all details. They it showed me in a mystic, not a mystic. It showed me in a spiritual way.
what I was doing to myself and how it was harming me. And it's unbelievable.
Dr. Spencer Baron (01:01:13.676)
Scott, I gotta tell you, man, for someone who's been bred to be a badass, emotionless, killing machine, you are like the most, you're like the biggest teddy bear emotional guy you've transitioned to. We wanna really, look, I even got goosebumps. My eyes got all watery, man. Thank you for, right?
Scott Roessler (01:01:23.153)
Hahaha
Scott Roessler (01:01:35.008)
Yeah, mine too. It's manifested.
Dr. Spencer Baron (01:01:37.376)
That's right, man. Thanks so much for sharing, like not just sharing, but just opening up and telling it like it is, man. This is gonna help a lot of people. Thank you.
Dr Terry (01:01:37.547)
you
Scott Roessler (01:01:47.98)
The very first thing that guys gotta do, guys and gals gotta do before this kicks off, before their journey of healing is look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself you're not perfect, you're fucked up, you have issues and let's start fixing those issues.
Dr. Spencer Baron (01:02:00.268)
You
Dr. Spencer Baron (01:02:04.086)
So great, man. Thanks for being on the show, buddy. Appreciate you.
Scott Roessler (01:02:07.193)
Thank you guys, I appreciate it. I hope to talk to you again soon.
Dr. Spencer Baron (01:02:10.113)
You bet.