Jay Kopelman is a retired Marine lieutenant colonel and aviator. Years of TBI, PTSD and anger had wrecked his home life and left him numb. Therapy, SSRIs, sleep medication and drinking every night had never reached the root of it.
A scholarship took Jay to a clinically monitored retreat in Mexico with The Mission Within. He describes the ibogaine journey and a vision of his son always wearing a clown mask. Jay saw it as a picture of how he had pushed his son to be a copy of himself, and he came home ready to meet the real person in front of him. He describes 5-MeO as cleansing and sacred, the moment a lifetime of guilt finally drained away.
Safety and integration
We get specific about safety: screening, EKGs, diet and the protocols the clinic follows. Jay explains why integration matters more than any single peak experience. Sobriety followed. So did a hundred small choices where calm replaced rage, like staying steady in a DMV line with his kid watching.
Policy and access
Jay is now CEO of the Mission Within Foundation. He is working with the Psychedelic Medicine Coalition on a bipartisan bill that would have VA centers, paired with universities, research and deliver psychedelic-assisted treatments. We talk about stigma in the veteran and aviation communities, the guardrails that safety needs, and how a sick-care model resists treatments that people need only once. We also look at early brain imaging research from Stanford and UT Austin.
As I hear Jay’s story, the change shows up in his orientation first, and his actions follow from it. Orientation sits at the center of John Boyd’s real OODA loop.
This episode is not medical advice. Ibogaine is a Schedule I substance in the United States and is dangerous without cardiac screening and medical supervision. If you are a veteran in crisis, call 988 and press 1, or text 838255. Anyone else can call or text 988.
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Written by Ponch Rivera with AI assistance in production. The full conversation is in the player below.