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but a special guest who's here to talk about a very interesting topic that really um touches on a number of points of interest here, especially to the veteran community that we have in Hampton Roads. This is Matthew Whiz Buckley who is joining us. He's the founder of the No Fallen Heroes Foundation. It's a nonprofit dedicated to helping veterans heal through psychedelic therapies. He's also a decorated uh Navy fighter pilot. So, uh we want to welcome Matthew Whiz Buckley to the show. You know, first of all, Mr. Buckley, my name is Connor. Thank you for joining us. We really appreciate it. And then do I call you can I call you Whiz?
Absolutely. I'm I'm Matthew to my mom and my wife when I'm in trouble. I'm Whiz to everybody else. And you're certainly not in trouble on the program here. So, we'll we'll go with Whiz and we appreciate you joining us. Now, I'm going to give some uh background on what we're going to be discussing today and then we'll kind of jump into the interview. This is um you know kind of the impetus for this interview is the fact that President Donald Trump has directed his administration to speed up reviews of certain psychedelic drugs including Iboga which recently has been embraced by combat veterans and lawmakers despite having serious safety risks. Now Iboga and other psychedelics remain banned under the federal government's most restrictive category for illegal
high-risisk drugs. But the administration is taking steps to ease restrictions and spur research on using the drugs for medical purposes including conditions like severe depression. So we want to make sure that we do include that disclaimer at the top of this interview is that what we are talking about does in the current time right now remain an illegal drug in the uh federal government's most restrictive category. It's just out of responsibility to our viewers. We want to make sure that we include that. But we also want to jump into some of the research that you and your foundation have been doing Whiz and um you know let's start here I guess is
first and foremost can we start with you? How did you become invested in the topic that we're talking about today in psychedelic therapies? Uh well Connor thanks for having me. Uh sadly it started in pain and trauma and addiction and loss. It started in childhood for me. Uh I was sexually abused as a child. Uh, I lost my sister Monica when she was 19 years old to a drunk driver. Uh, which just I I had a pretty tough childhood. And what do a lot of folks do when they have a tough childhood? They go in the military. Uh, I flew the uh the F-18 Hornet for 15 years. And in 15 years of flying fighters, I lost 16 buddies. And
along the way, I've lost four F-18 brothers to suicide. Uh, and flying fighter jets is extremely physically demanding. pulling G's, uh, fighting the jet on the edge of consciousness, and then as a naval aviator, I've had hundreds of car crashes. Imagine sitting in your driveway and a crane lifting you up to the second story and then dropping you. That's the equivalent force of carrier landing. So, uh, beat up my body, beat up my mind, uh, beat up my soul. Uh, I had a very short airline career. The morning of September 11th was my first and last day at work at American Airlines. Uh, and I went to Wall Street and going from a fighter squadron where you trust the young men
and women in that organization with your life or they're not part of it for too long to a Wall Street firm where I couldn't trust somebody to watch my wallet for five minutes when I you know I went to the restroom. It was pretty tough drugs, alcohol, and uh being separate from my bride, my kids, and my God and my mission. So about five years ago uh I said I have to do something about veteran suicide. After my fourth F-18 brotherh checked out, he had a beautiful bride and five kids. I was just I was at a loss. I was blown away that 22 veterans were checking out every day by their own hand. That's a mass shooting. That is a mass shooting every day. Not once a year. Could you imagine, God forbid, if
22 kids were being shot every day, not once a year in schools, this country would flip out. So, I started uh a nonprofit. But how do you keep a veteran from killing themselves? I stood in front of a whiteboard and just threw ideas up there, help them write a resume, pay the rent, buy a suit. I was clueless. Uh and then a buddy of mine said, "Hey, there's a group of Navy Seal veterans and special forces veterans that go down to Mexico, and they do psychedelic assisted therapy, and there's a really cool group going in a couple weeks. Would you want to go?" And I said, "Man, go to Mexico and do drugs with Navy Seals. It sounds like a great weekend." Uh, Connor, I had no idea what I was getting into. And I
I'll give you the cliff notes. It saved and changed my life. It wasn't fun. It wasn't recreational. I've done some challenging things in my life. This was one of the most challenging. I was down for 14 hours. Uh, I couldn't move. Uh, if you've ever seen the movie Lone Survivor or read the book with Marcus Latrell and ABC, I went with Marcus. Uh, I went with JT Jared Taylor from Black Rifle Coffee, another Navy Seal veteran, and an NFL veteran uh, player who was suffering from horrific head trauma. Uh, and Connor, these this was a life-changing experience. So, I got home and I said, "This is how we're going to end veteran suicide." It destroyed alcohol in my life. I appreciate the disclaimer uh, you gave, Connor, but
uh, you know, the 60s called and they want most of that back. The definition of a schedule one drug in this country is no therapeutic use and a high risk of addiction. I just defined alcohol and cigarettes and they're 100% legal. The Ibo gain that I sat with is anti-addictive. If I smelled alcohol up to a year after this treatment, it made me dry heave. I got physically sick when I smelled alcohol. And it was the most therapeutic thing I've ever done in my life. I reconnected uh with my sister who had passed away, with my God who I had lost contact with. Um so it was the most therapeutic thing in my life and it was anti-addictive. So uh our government likes to label things
sometimes the exact opposite of what they are. And I was in the Oval Office with the president last month and he recognizes that like man it's absolutely ridiculous that some of these compounds that are saving and changing lives are still schedule one. Um and you alluded to some of the potential issues. IBO gain can uh cause some sort of arhythmia, you know, lengthen the beat between uh your heartbeat, len lengthen, but we pre-screen for that. Uh you can give a magnesium drip. Stanford did a study with a bunch of Navy Seals on ibo gain. Uh and they mitigated all those potential heart issues. So I think Connor in the history of ibo gain being used in the west I think there's approximately 30 deaths but just about
every one of those deaths was due to underlying conditions heroin addict or heart issues that weren't uh uncovered uh there 3,000 people die every year from aspirin. So a lot more people die every year in this country from aspirin than they do I gain in 30 years. So, I appreciate the disclaimer, but we can mitigate a lot of those things. Yeah. First of all, you know, your personal journey, your personal story is unbelievable. Of course, you know, we want to say we're so sorry for your own struggle and those that you've lost along the way and we really appreciate the fact that you are turning all of that into a fight for something good. You know, I want to start with the prevalence of PTSD in the veteran community as well as depression and
addiction. Why is PTSD something that is so difficult to diagnose, difficult to treat, difficult to get our arms around as a society to the point where you had to go on this very long journey just to try and find solutions? What is it about this problem that has made it so confounding to try and solve? Uh, it's a great question, Conor, and a couple things. Uh, we in the veteran community are asking all our fellow Americans to drop the D. Uh it's not a disorder, it's an injury. We actually say PTSI. Um so there's a couple things wrapped in that Connor. One is that we there's different types of that PTS, right? You can have a traumatic brain injury. You can have moral injury. I
have a couple fellow aviator uh brothers and sisters who have a lot of trauma uh from moral injury. What you know, dropping some bombs on some people or having to do some things. So we have determined and studied and stuff like that a lot of that PTS or that trauma uh can be treated and it's not with to actually use the word drugs. I gain 5 MOD DMTs psilocybin I do not use the word drugs when it comes to them. These are medicines. Marcus Latrell uh he'll tell you he was on 15 drugs from the VA. Five for breakfast, five for lunch, five for dinner. He hasn't taken a single drug since that treatment five years ago. This was our 5year anniversary. Uh May 20th, uh five years ago to this day, as a matter of fact, Connor, uh we sat in ceremony.
So we the these compounds that God put on this planet for us to heal. They're not made in a lab with a guy in a lab coat and a beaker focused on profit. These come, you know, from earth, from mother earth, and they can get to the root of the issue. Trauma is usually uh an eventdriven something, right? We've helped many veterans, female and male, who have experienced MST, military sexual trauma. These are men and women who never got shot at in anger by the enemy, but you expect your enemy to shoot at you and try and hurt you. You don't expect a squadron mate. So, we've helped folks with trauma who have never even seen combat, but they
they've suffered other things. So, these compounds, these medicines, as I call them, go in and they do some heavy deep cleaning. As the president said in the Oval Office, I think he looked at RFK uh or the FDA commissioner and said, "Hey, h how effective are SSRIs, the stuff we're kind of using?" And they shrugged and said single digits. The Stanford Iboain study, you can Google it. I think it was 80 to 85 of the Navy Seals that had this treatment were clinically cured, healed. I mean, almost never do you hear the word healed or cured whenever we're talking about drugs, big pharma drugs. But when it comes to some of these compounds uh that we get from mother earth, we're using
the h word, which is healed. And Connor, it's interesting because these compounds have been used for millennia. And we in the west like to act like, you know, with our ego that we just discovered these. Hey, we just discovered I gain. We're late to this party. Uh cultures around this planet have used them successfully for a long time. So, and the president said that. Uh he said, "Hey, I get we got to, you know, test and look into this stuff, but he looked over his shoulder at Marcus Latrell." We got back from Mexico, Connor, and his brother, Morgan Latrell, also a Navy Seal, combat veteran, looked at him and said, "Man, you look different. you look, you know, 100 pounds lighter.
What you do? So Morgan Latrell went and did the same thing and his exact quote is, "I got hit by a bus driven by God." And after that, he ran for Congress and he's currently Congressman Latrell. He's one of our biggest supporters. But President Trump looked over his shoulder and said, "Fellas, this worked for you, right?" And they're like, "Yeah." Uh the guy who shot Bin Laden, Rob O'Neal was in the Oval Office with us as well. all of those guys over the president's left shoulder said this saved and changed their life. And then he looked back at the folks in the lab coats and the FDA and said what are we doing here? You know, if the SSRIs are only working singledigit percentages and you know 80
80 plus percent with these Navy Seals or special forces veterans, what are we doing? So it was pretty incredible. It was a surreal moment. Uh I was a part of history. Brian Hubard, the one of the Ibane heavies behind the president right next to Joe Rogan said, "Mr. President, thank you for ending the war on psychedelics in this country. And it was awful. Richard Nixon started the war on drugs because the counterculture was using these compounds to love and be anti-war and they said, "Oh, okay. Well, now that's a felony and here's your rifle. Go kill people on the other side of the planet." So, it's interesting that uh you know, the hippies and all those folks in the 60s, the anti-war folks got destroyed uh in this, you know, war on drugs against
these compounds. And this time around, Connor, it's the veterans, the first responders and their families who are leading the fight here. Yeah, very much so. I, you know, listening to the passion that you have for this topic really is incredible. You know, something I want to make a distinction about is when you lead a conversation as we have today with sort of that label of psychedelic, I think a lot of people their minds are immediately going to go to sort of that pop culture representation of psychedelics when it comes to recreational drug use. Now you've already you know made a distinction in describing your experience but is there
anything else you'd like to say around why this is not necessarily for you the same as that the same as what we typically would consider to be psychedelic drug use. So the so Connor a couple things when we talk about using these compounds you have to be very intentional set and setting right what's your mindset and then where are you doing this so we treat these a as a combat mission you have several briefs before you go sit in ceremony you get a 50page manual to read to get up to speed you come armed with five intentions for the medicine five questions uh 5% is the actual retreat 95% Connor is what you do with it when you get home. You're going to get a clean piece of paper, but if you go home to the people and the
things, the activities that made you sick, you're going to be in a dog fight. So, we have follow-up calls. We have integration. So, this is we take this deadly seriously. This is not, you know, these aren't your parent psychedelics, so to speak. These are intentional use in a clinical setting, half clinical and half spiritual. And Connor, I've been in this space for over five years. It still makes my skin crawl to hear the word psychedelics. So, they're actually changing some of the language around it. Neuroplasten. I know that's a mouthful, but psychedelics is kind of a mouthful, too. Mark, uh, there was a Navy Seal we helped years ago, and he was a breacher, you know, at the door, just concussive
explosions, setting the charges, and he showed us his brain scans from the VA, and they were dark and gray and, you know, awful brain scans. 3 months after sitting with ibo gain once his brain scans were completely clear. So the neuroplasticity of these compounds the folks in the lab coats are still scratching their head going we don't get how this works but that's pretty incredible. Let me give you an example. They discovered penicellin in the 20s I believe uh and it saved the lives of millions of GIS potentially and people around the world in World War II. They didn't find out how penicellin did that until the 60s. So I think we're here with these compounds as well. I know you know Dr. Deborah Mash I know a
lot of folks at in Stanford and who are doing this work and they do they kind of scratch their head. You're like whiz man we're we're still trying to figure out the exact how but it is doing this. So, I'm with you. The word psychedelics, you know, gives me a little pause, too. And I've seen the results of this. But the times they are a changing. It's funny because I'll talk to, you know, when I walk the halls of Capitol Hill talking to these people, um, even the most law and order anti-drug Republican, if I get them for five to 10 minutes and I give them the executive summary, they're in. They completely change their minds.
Uh, so this is, you know, whether it's, uh, I saw a headline like a year or two ago. It said like AOC and Dan Krenshaw, and I didn't want to read the rest of the headline. I was like, what? Got into a fist fight. AOC and Dan Krenshaw agree on psychedelic assisted therapy for veterans. So, it's extremely rare to see D both sides of an aisle say, "Yes, we need this and we need to move forward with it." But, I'm going to be honest with you, man. Uh, and I'll keep the name out of it, but I was talking to a congressman behind closed doors and he said, "Wh I love what you're doing and I was like,"Awesome." He said, 'Well, you're gonna have a problem with the big pharma and the alcohol and tobacco
folks. And I was a little stunned. I was like, ain't that your job? What do you mean I'm I'm going to have a problem? So, um, the swamp is thick. I know we've at No Fallen Heroes Foundation to date, we saved hundreds. I think we might be even close to 300 at this point. Not a single suicide, not a single adverse event, not a single I can't even I search for the bad in the hundreds that we've helped and I can't find uh anything. We have had people go home and go home to people or things that made them sick and be in a little bit of a dog fight, but they pulled out of it. So, uh Connor, there's something here. uh and uh the president firing that executive order is the first step. That's the end of the beginning. We need we there
is so much work to do being finally recognized. It's it's been a tough five years, man. I'll be honest with you. Walk in the halls of Congress, you know, and uh but people are starting to realize that as you led with a schedule one drug is technically alcohol and tobacco and it's not these things. These things are not recreational. And let me be clear. These are not for everybody at all. There are so many different healing modalities. Yoga, breath work, meditation, walking on the beach, climbing a mountain in Tibet. There are so many potential ways for people to heal. Um I like to say or I don't like to say, but I will say radical trauma might need radical
healing. And these compounds, these sacred medicines to many cultures are definitely uh radical healing. Yeah. And you know, you talk about AOC and Dan Krenshaw, some of the legislation that has been introduced over the course of the last half decade and even you know, 2021 when some of this was kind of coming about. It was not looked at with much seriousness and it has only grown since then in terms of its viability as like you said for its genuine healing uh you know capabilities here. I well so let's let's continue to interrogate this a little bit. You talk about um it's not for everyone and you also mentioned how going into these um you know going into these processes you a combat mission and that you come armed
and that you are very intentional. Do you have any concerns as this becomes more normalized and more maybe perhaps more readily available as some of these things sometimes do that it could become a problem for people who are not prepared for that not either not prepared or not in need of that intense of an experience and how this could impact them? Is that a concern and how do you kind of tackle that? Uh great question. Let me split this up. Uh like I said this is not recreational. This is not fun. You're not taking IBL gain and going out to a club. If you're you're taking IBL gain and you're not going anywhere for a weekend. So,
there's about a 0% chance uh of anybody wanting to do what I did uh for fun or not needed. It is incredibly uh it is an incredibly challenging uh process. you know, the NFL player, Robert Gallery, he was down, he was down for a day and a half. Uh, and I remember the doctors and our guides, you know, we would kind of be looking upstairs like they could tell we were worried. Uh, and they were like, "He's getting exactly what he needed." And he they don't know you have CTE until you die and they cut your grape open. And he's like, "Wiz I know I had CTE." and he is a different human being. So there is a near zero chance that ibo gain specifically you're going to do
recreationally and it's near impossible to get. Uh so ibogane is a alkyoid that comes from the ibogga uh shrub. It's root bark from central west Africa gabone. Uh so it's got about 10 11 alkyoids in it and then the west we isolate one of those alkaloids called ibogane and you take that directly that gives you the potential heart ariththmia because taking the ibo gain out of ibogga it's it's it's a nuke and that's why you can have the heart issues. Uh you can actually sit with ebogga the actual root bark in ceremony and it doesn't give you those heart issues. I went to Costa Rica and did a an ebogga ceremony. very long answer to your short question. Near zero chance that any of this stuff is going to be one. You can't do it recreationally. Um
so that's that's the high hurdle when it comes to ibo gain. Now psilocybin and I hate using this term magic mushrooms, but that what that's what the public you know uh identifies those as. Same thing. A heroic dose of psilocybin is a four to six hour extremely challenging experience. So, you know, I've had people say, "Oh, I tried mushrooms once and it was awful." I'm like, "Let me guess. You went to a bar concert and it was a nightmare." "Oh, yeah. How'd you know?" Well, it's almost like these compounds are telling you not to use them in certain ways. So, it actually I like the fact that there is a little bit of a barrier or a hurdle. Most people who try uh these
things recreationally, it doesn't turn out well for them. And that's the warning. That's not the medicine's fault. That's the person's fault. So, uh in the veteran space, in the first responder and the families we help, we go out of our way to stress all of these things. I don't know too many people uh you know maybe in the in this space in the veteran and first responder space there's no potential threats to that to the regular Americans uh my fellow Americans who are listening to this type of brief I hope I've made that point. These are not recreational. This is not fun. Uh and Connor the you know you can be one and done. Most of the folks we've helped with Ibel gain one and done and they're like man I never want to do that again.
I think Rob O'Neal uh you know the uh Osama bin Laden alleged uh shooter who was in the Oval Office he went he's done I gain three times. It took him three rounds um cuz he kept relapsing a little bit with the alcohol I believe but he's like I need it three times and I think that was spread out over about three years. So, this isn't something you do every weekend or once a month or man, it's it's not even once every couple years. Uh it's you can be one and done. And I'd say anecdotally about 90% of the vets, first responders, and family members we've helped uh have been one and done. And the only folks who have gone back for maybe uh is to do a little bit more
digging. there was a little bit more trauma because once you do it, Connor, once you uh once you kind of see past the wall and you get on the other side, you're like, "Okay, I get it. Now I'm not that scared or now I know how to navigate this a little bit." To use a Top Gun analogy, I it's Maverick and Goose. The first time you sit uh with the medicine, you're kind of sitting in the back seat. Uh and then the next time you go, you can do a little bit more flying if you even need uh to go again. So I there's not too much risk on the recreational side of ibo gain or ibogga particularly. Little bit of potential, you know, recreational risk with mushrooms, but most of the people I've talked to that have done that have
regretted it. And that's the medicine say don't do this recreationally. Yeah, you certainly caught me off guard when you mentioned Robert Gallery there. I want to say former number two overall pick in the NFL draft. One of the more promising offensive line prospects, you know, of the 21st century here. So that definitely He's all American. Yeah. All American at Iowa. He was a Hawkeye and he just got inducted, I think, a year or two ago into the College Football Hall of Fame. Played for the Raiders. And it's interesting, Conor, because I uh I you know, I sat in the car with him. We flew into San Diego. Why? Because if you
do this in San Diego, you're a felon. if you do it an hour south at a clinic in Mexico, it'll save and change your life. So, in a little convoy, I sat next to Robert. I didn't know who he was at all. I just met these guys, you know, earlier that morning. And Connor, I was sitting next to a 6'7, 350 lb dead iceberg. He was. And he told me, you know, 6 months, a year later, he's like, "Wiz, if that didn't work, I was going back to Lake Tahoe and that was it. I was done." He is a completely different human being. He started his own nonprofit to get eyeball gain to his NFL brothers who are suffering from head trauma. He is a it's insane. I saw him a year later at a
fundraiser. I didn't even recognize him. I was walking right past him. This big guy threw me an elbow. I'm like, "Oh my god, I'm who's you know what's going on here?" And it was him. I didn't even see him recognize him because it was that much uh of a difference. So the fact that I went with Marcus and JT and a civilian, an NFL player with head trauma should tell you know that God made all of we call instead of the Incredibles, you know, the Disney movie, we called ourselves the Unusuals. Our little group we called the Unusuals. It was a perfect group because we all went out and kind of spread the word in different paths.
It was pretty incredible. Yeah, it's an amazing story. I could I feel like I could talk to you about this for, you know, as forever here, but I want to uh make sure, you know, maybe we'll have you back on down the road as this continues to progress. Let's let's end it there with the one final question of what's next. What should everyone be looking out for next as we've had this huge step from the federal government here? What's to come here in the short-term future? So, so a couple things. Let me give a shameless plug, not so shameless to a year ago, Connor that I had lost my faith for decades. And it hit me last year kind of sitting here meditating and it came to me as a little Irish Catholic
kid from South Jersey and the body and blood of Christ type of thing. I'm like, these were sacraments. So a year ago, I started sacred warrior fellowship. Uh I protected the First Amendment and religious freedom for 15 years. Now I'm going to exercise it. So we started our own enthogenic church and we use these compounds in sacred ceremony down here in South Florida. So you don't have to go to Mexico. We do use psilocybin as our sacrament not I gain because of all the issues we talked about the hard issues and stuff like that. So that's what was next for me is trust me I never 5 years ago me if you told me hey man you start a church I would have laughed at me and taken my lunch money. Um, but I'm a little I'm a
little concerned, Connor, that we jumped into the psychedelic deep end with the president, you know, targeting ibo gain and we did fly over ibo or I'm sorry, a psilocybin or 5memt and other compounds that don't have the heart issues or the medical stuff. So, I'm I'm happy that I was in the Oval Office behind a president who said the word I gain and ended the war on psychedelics, but I'm a little leery that we went full ibo gain and didn't stop at uh at some psilocybin. There were publicly traded companies that are making these compounds. The stocks are doing incredibly well. Not that's, you know, what I'm focused on, but uh it we're maturing and it's happening quickly. I just want to make sure it's done with intention. And we also uh put
the ladder down and pay it back to the uh bwitti in Gabon and these other cultures that have been using these compounds. Uh you know, I not going to use the word cultural appropriation, but we you know the these compounds came they didn't come from America and we probably need to thank the folks and we do that when we do an ibo gain retreat or silocybin. We send money back to Gabone to nonprofits who are making the Eboga plants and stuff like that to kind of, you know, to be good shepherds of these compounds. But, uh, I'm extremely happy, man. There's no way I just realized it's May 20th and I have a calendar reminder that says rebirth. So, as soon as I get done talking to you, I'm
texting Marcus and all those guys and saying happy re birthday. And that's exactly what we call it. I was born again, Connor. Uh, and I thank God every day. Uh, I've reached the point in my life where I can tell you this. I'm grateful for my suffering because it brought me talking to you today and this uh this incredible mission. So, I appreciate it, man. We appreciate it as well. It's been great to have you on and it's something that you are obviously very passionate about and the help that it could provide for others, the help that it's provided for you. So, we look forward to
seeing how this new investment goes in research. And again, hopefully we'll get to talk to you once more on the show here as things progress with um with this new initiative from the federal government. So, thank you very much, Whiz Buckley. We greatly appreciate all of your time and we'll see you down the road. Thanks, Connor. God bless. We'll see you. All right. So, a really a unique opportunity for us here on Live Impact News to have Whiz on again. A decorated Navy fighter pilot and uh the founder of the No Fallen Heroes Foundation, a nonprofit. Now, we want to make sure once again that we do state, you know, as we have these discussions and as there has been a renewed investment of both uh resources and attention on uh certain psychedelic drugs, including
Ibogane uh which has been embraced by some of in the combat veteran community. We want to make sure that we continue to state that number one, as of the current time frame, Ibogane and other psychedelics do remain banned under the federal government's most restrictive category for illegal high-risisk drugs. We want to make sure that we include that even as we explore these new initiatives. Um, and we also want to make sure that we state here for any of our viewers, if you are thinking about taking any steps with your health, make sure that you consult your doctor or a medical professional if there is anything that you are considering doing.
Once again, for your own health, make sure that you consult with a doctor or medical professional. We are exploring major stories and breaking news and various headlines and new initiatives. But before you do anything, again, speak to a doctor, speak to a medical professional who you trust um before you take any steps to do things involving your own health. And uh that does it for again a very unique opportunity to talk to someone who is clearly very passionate about a topic that is gaining more notoriety here as we go forward in the United States. Okay, as we go forward here on Live Impact News, we're going to take a commercial break. When we get back, there's a live event
getting ready to start up in Washington DC, a press conference from lawmakers, but we've had quite a bit going on today. We'll review some of that as well. We'll be right back.
