Veteran Healing With Seri Comcaac Nation in Mexico || Michael Manion

Summary of Experience

Michael Manion, a retired first sergeant and founder of Healing Frontline Heroes Mexico, shares his transformative experiences with psychedelics, particularly mushrooms and bufo which helped him overcome post-military trauma and suicidal tendencies.

Inspired by his profound healing, Michael relocated to Arizona, connected with the Seri Comcaac Nation in Mexico and delved deeper into psychedelic therapies. Michael advocates for indigenous knowledge and highlights the importance of thorough medical screening and integration support for participants. Finally, his organization plans to expand into 30-day residential programs to offer a comprehensive healing process tailored to individual needs.

Michael leaves the military

I am a 22 year army veteran, retired first sergeant and founder and director of Healing Frontline Heroes Mexico. Five years after the military, I was damn near 300 pounds and drinking and emotionally disconnected from myself, from my family and everything around me, just lacking purpose and suicidal.

Five years after the military, I was damn near 300 pounds and drinking and emotionally disconnected from myself, from my family and everything around me, just lacking purpose and suicidal.

My military service I ended up doing a total of 22 years. I retired in 2013. I was a combination of active duty and reserve deployment time that I spent in the military. When I left the military, it was a few years later that all of those things, just started really crashing down on me.

And I eventually found my way to plant medicine. I relocated from Atlanta, Georgia out to Arizona and I met some people that the Rollin Locos Motorcycle Club and the guys in that club are all the majority of them are combat vets and they’ve all found the the road to healing through the psychedelics.

At that point in my life, I would have tried anything to make me just feel better, just feel connected to something or back to myself. And these guys started talking about psychedelics and things like that. And I had no point of reference for it. I felt that was just stuff that a bunch of crazy people did, a bunch of hippies and whatever else.

Michael’s first psychedelic experience

The very first ceremony that I ever did was mushrooms. And that mushroom journey led into a bufo journey the next morning facilitated by a guy up in Phoenix, good guys can doing great work up there.

And that was my point of introduction to the medicine. That very first ceremony. It was just every emotional aspect of my life and it brought it all to a place where I could understand it. I could see it and I could feel it. It wasn’t easy. I cried all night, and plenty more nights after that one.

But it was the ability to feel those emotions and process them in a way that I never had that allowed me to know that it showed me that, Hey man, everything’s going to be okay. You just have to lean into some of that pain because right on the other side of it is the true joy that you’re here to experience.

You just have to lean into some of that pain because right on the other side of it is the true joy that you’re here to experience.

That deep, dark place is absolutely where you find your answers. You have to lean into that darkness to be able to find the abundance and the joy and the happiness and everything that’s right on the other side of it.

On the Veteran Suicide Crisis

If we’re being honest about it, the majority of the people who joined the military are fighting forces made up of a lot of people who, when they leave home, they’re running away from something.I was a recruiter at one time too. So I understand exactly why people do these things.

But again sometimes we leave home with a bag full of stuff over this shoulder that’s unaddressed and never touched. And then you run off, you think you’re going to run away from something, but what you’re running to is going to give you a bag full of shit that’s 20 times worse than what’s already in this one.

And then when you’re done with it all, there’s nobody there to help you unpack either one of those bags. And when you decide you want some help, if you can make that decision because That’s driven into us the whole time that you’re there. You can’t lead troops from sick call, Sarge, right?

And when you do finally get to the point where you feel like you can ask for some help and you run down to your local VA, the help they’re going to give you is going to be a death pill cocktail that’s going to make you want to kill yourself 10 times more than you did when you started and that’s the norm.

the help the VA is going to give you is going to be a death pill cocktail that’s going to make you want to kill yourself 10 times more than you did when you started

Our veterans are out there killing themselves at a rate of 22 to 50 a day.

And we know they lie about numbers. And that’s just the veterans. The total number of people killing themselves in the United States is 500- 600 more a day