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How Ibogaine Is Helping Veterans Rewire Trauma and Redefine Strength
Men are taught that strength means control, that silence is survival and that to be a man is to swallow the fear and walk it off.
But as author and researcher on plant medicines and consciousness Giovanni Lantanzi puts it: “Every one of us is living inside a story that didn’t begin with us. It’s the story of culture, of what we’ve been told it means to be strong, to succeed, to survive. For men, those stories often demand silence. Don’t cry. Don’t feel. Don’t break. Iboga (ibogaine) doesn’t care about those narratives. It takes you beneath them. It shows you who you were before the world told you who to be.”
States of Mind also spoke to Felipe, a former U.S. Army veteran, who recently experienced the descent beneath these stories through ibogaine as he recently returned from The Mission Within, an ibogaine-assisted therapy program for veterans in Mexico.
“I’d been diagnosed with PTSD and depression and had a couple TBIs in the military in Afghanistan. Back in 2018 was the lowest point of my life where I was coming off my very last deployment to the Middle East and I was in very bad place, you know, suicidal thoughts, heavy drinking, taking it at all, I mean, you name it. My marriage was basically over. I wasn’t able to be present for my kids. My mind was somewhere else. It’s almost like part of me died over there, and then a shell of me came back.”
He went on to explain how he’d been through years of therapy, pharmaceutical medication, and government support but that it always felt like rearranging furniture in a burning house.
“Iboga didn’t just treat the fire, it took me straight into the flames.”
Military Veterans & The War Within
Every single day, around 17 veterans commit suicide in the U.S. The numbers don’t lie, but they do hide a world of silence behind them. Men who fought overseas and had to continue fighting all over again back home — this time alone and within the confines of their mind.
Felipe said he’d been living in a “hyper-vigilant mode” since returning home. “The war never really stopped. It just moved inside,” he said.
Author of Kambo, Iboga and Ayahuasca: A Synergy of Entheogens Giovanni Lantanzi, who has worked extensively with these plants, sees this pattern frequently:
“When a man has no safe place to feel, his nervous system becomes a battlefield,” he said. “Iboga gives him a respite… not by numbing pain, but by bringing awareness to it and allowing him to finally face it.”
Enter the Root of Remembering
Ibogaine, sometimes referred to as iboga, has been called “the Everest of psychedelics.” Derived from the root bark of Tabernanthe iboga, a shrub native to Central Africa, it’s been used for centuries in Bwiti initiation rites. Today, ibogaine is being used in modern therapeutic settings and retreat clinics, where veterans now come to face the wars that never ended.
It’s not jungle “woo-woo” ceremonies anymore. It’s plant technology, administered over an eight-day program which includes medical screening, EKGs, and heart monitoring. All guided by doctors, facilitators, and peers who have all walked the same path themselves.
Speaking about the journey, Felipe says “There was this metallic buzzing, like someone flipping through old floppy disks in my head. Then I started seeing scenes I’d forgotten — me as a baby, the desert, fights, my mom, everything I buried. But it wasn’t punishment. It was like being allowed to finally understand.”
Tears flowed. Laughter rippled out. Shaking. Silence. In the room, five men who had been trained to kill now learned how to soften.
Lantanzi explains it this way:
“Ibogaine doesn’t erase trauma, it restores continuity. It begins where suppression ends.”
In the right setting, meaning a safe container, integration support, and community, the medicine allows what few therapies can: to witness your past without being consumed by it.
Neuroscientists describe ibogaine as a “reset molecule.” It acts on serotonin transporters, NMDA receptors, and the brain’s default mode network, where we find the loops that replay trauma and keep us trapped in old stories and limiting beliefs.
Giovanni puts it in simpler terms:
“Neurobiologically, it’s a reset. Psychologically, it’s a reckoning.”
A New Brotherhood, Built on Vulnerability
Through groups like the Heroic Hearts Project, Beond Ibogaine, and The Mission Within, Felipe experienced the healing power of brotherhood without the armor. Unlike traditional war or military struggle, this is a journey that requires more surrender than courage.
In a preparation session before the ibogaine ceremony, they were all asked to share why they were there.
Felipe went first. He spoke openly about his mother’s suicide, his absent father, the guilt, grief and wounds he still carried from combat, all of it. No filters, no shame, no performance.
“I just laid it all out,” he recounted. “Everything I’d been holding since I was a kid. And it’s funny because after I went, everyone else did too. They told me later, ‘Man, the way you opened up, that gave us permission to be honest.’”
Tears flowed. Laughter rippled out. Shaking. Silence. In the room, five men who had been trained to kill now learned how to soften.
“By the end of the ceremony weekend,” Felipe said, “five of us veterans left as brothers. We share messages, check in. It’s not about being ‘healed.’ It’s about staying connected.”
Maybe the future of masculinity isn’t about power at all. Maybe it’s about presence — being fully here, with what hurts, and still choosing softness.
Lantanzi calls this “the medicine after the medicine.”
“Integration circles teach men a new form of strength,” he says. “One built on connection. The warrior learns to protect life again — starting with his own.”
Without even knowing it, in sharing his deepest darkest wounds, Felipe showed how to lead with vulnerability. He showed how leadership could be born of courage instead of command, and this planted a quiet seed of healing for them all.
The Stories We Inherit
Lantanzi believes the real illness isn’t only trauma, it’s our cultural conditioning. He says the healing of the plant extends beyond the individual and reaches into the story of the world.
“We inherit stories,” he told me. “And for men the story is that they must not need, must not weep, must not fail. These stories run the nervous system like malware.”
He says ibogaine acts like a deep software cleanse and system reboot. It doesn’t erase anything, but is a gentle reminder of the power of instinct, softness and connection in a society that teaches otherwise.
Every one of us is living inside a story that didn’t begin with us. Iboga doesn’t care about those narratives. It takes you beneath them. It shows you who you were before the world told you who to be.
He calls this process psychospiritual archaeology — digging through layers of identity built for protection until you find the self that existed before trauma, before expectation.
“It dissolves those scripts, the myths we were raised on. It lets a man remember who he was before he learned to hide.”
“When a man remembers that self,” he adds, “he doesn’t just heal personally. He becomes a catalyst for collective healing. Because when one nervous system unlearns fear, the world becomes a little less afraid.”
After the Ceremony, A New Kind of Warrior
Like any psychedelic, Ibogaine isn’t a panacea. The real work starts after the ceremony.
Felipe recounts the one-to-one integration calls, weekly integration group calls, community support, free meditation classes, gratitude journal, breathwork etc.
Felipe began journaling every morning, joined a meditation course, and started breathwork sessions. “The visions fade,” he said, “but the responsibility remains. You can’t un-know what you’ve been shown.”
He still has off days, but the difference is that he’s no longer fighting himself.
“Iboga didn’t save me,” he said. “It just showed me how to stop running.”
In a world that still worships the idea of the tough man and struggles with vulnerability, these men are quietly rewriting the script to the warrior story.
The old warrior conquered. The new one feels. He softens, he remembers.
Before we hung up our call, Lantanzi said: “Maybe the future of masculinity isn’t about power at all. Maybe it’s about presence — being fully here, with what hurts, and still choosing softness.”
Felipe says that’s his mission now. Not survival. Not control. But surrender: the most radical act a man can commit.
Expert Board Member
Ibogaine appears to be unique among psychedelic medicines in its impact on cognitive functioning. While all psychedelics influence brain chemistry and neural processing, ibogaine shows particularly notable effects in populations with traumatic brain injury, especially those with repeated blast or shock exposures. This makes it a uniquely promising medicine for veterans and others with cumulative trauma to the brain. Sustainable healing emerges through integration, where insights are translated into behavior, regulation, and lived practice over time.
