by alex seymour
For my wife, Julia, and for JJ Chalmers
PSYCHEDELIC
— MARINE —
“Little by little, one step at a time, one person at a time, but very effectively, the Amazonian visionary brew ayahuasca is changing human consciousness precisely where such changes are most urgently needed—in the very heartland of Western technological, industrial, and military power. Psychedelic Marine is a truly original and authentic account of the transformations that this ancient and sacred medicine can set in process.”
GRAHAM HANCOCK, AUTHOR OF FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS
“Hands down the most accurate depiction of what it’s like both as a combat veteran and a psychedelic warrior. The worlds appear to be vastly different, but Alex was able to bridge the connection. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in either world.”
CPL RYAN LECOMPTE, FORMER USMC 0311 INFANTRYMAN, FOUNDER OF VETERANS FOR ENTHEOGENIC THERAPY
“. . . a rare book that both acknowledges the transformative power of war with its confrontation with death and the transformative power of psychedelics, with the confrontation with ego death. Sometimes it takes more courage to face one’s inner world than to face enemies in the outer world. I read this book cover to cover and recommend others do so as well.”
RICK DOBLIN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF MAPS
“A raw, honest, and powerful account of a marine and a profound healing, this book stands out for its account of personal transformation of a military man into a self-governing individuator, surrendering to nothing but the sacred source within his own heart. Highly recommended reading!”
C. MICHAEL SMITH, PH.D, CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST, MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGIST, AUTHOR OF JUNG AND SHAMANISM IN DIALOGUE, AND DIRECTOR OF CROWS NEST CENTER FOR SHAMANIC STUDIES INTERNATIONAL
“Alex Seymour deployed to Afghanistan to test himself and rediscover his full potential through warfare. Little did he know it was a stepping stone to his hardest test as a warrior—taking ayahuasca in the jungle in Peru where he would surrender to his greatest fears and find that the ultimate answers had been inside himself all along.”
IAN BENOUIS, WEST POINT GRADUATE, FORMER BLACK HAWK HELICOPTER PILOT AND COMBAT VETERAN, AND CANNABIS ACTIVIST
“A revealing juxtaposition of two life experiences most can only begin to imagine, bringing to life the stress and fatigue of a marine’s lot in Afghanistan and his subsequent metaphysical quest for enlightenment.”
JAKE WOOD, AUTHOR OF AMONG YOU: THE EXTRAORDINARY TRUE STORY OF A SOLDIER BROKEN BY WAR
“More than a report of one marine’s experience, this book is a call to the armed forces medical corps, the Veterans Administration, and veterans’ groups . . . to fund research to support treating PTSD with ayahuasca and other psychedelics.”
THOMAS B. ROBERTS, PH.D., AUTHOR OF THE PSYCHEDELIC FUTURE OF THE MIND
“A true story of a man who pushed the boundaries way beyond any semblance of comfort zone through the devastation and horror of war and who went on to find healing, transformation, and salvation by dissolving the boundaries of ordinary consciousness into the vast spaces of the transpersonal realm.”
TOM SOLOWAY PINKSON, PH.D., VISION QUEST LEADER, PSYCHOLOGIST, AND AUTHOR OF THE SHAMANIC WISDOM OF THE HUICHOL
“ Psychedelic Marine is a unique, mind-stretching, powerful story that captivates you from page one to the end. If you want your spirit to be lifted and inspired and to know what is possible beyond the boundaries of convention, this is a must-read.”
CHRIS WALTON, MSC, BEST-SELLING AUTHOR OF THE GAMMA MINDSET
Acknowledgments
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the very special men and women who served in 3 Commando Brigade during Operation Herrick 14 in Afghanistan. Their kindness, sacrifice, outstanding professionalism, and dedication is still humbling. A special mention must go to all of the Royal Marines I had the privilege to serve with in 43 Bravo, M Company, 42 Commando.
I would also like to thank the following authors and publishing professionals for their support and guidance: Chris Walton, Piers Blofeld, Joan Parisi Wilcox, Jamaica Burns Griffin, Charlotte Cole, and Graham Hancock.
Contents
Cover Image
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Part 1: The Secret That Can’t Be Told Chapter 1: 99.99% Need Not Apply
Chapter 2: The Helmand Candidate
Chapter 3: Infinite Insight
Chapter 4: Rule Number 1: Don’t Shoot Your Mates
Chapter 5: Peace Be upon You
Chapter 6: Opium Blues
Chapter 7: Best Man’s Grief
Chapter 8: Don’t Think
Chapter 9: Back in the Game
Chapter 10: Rule Number 2: Don’t Shoot Civilians
Chapter 11: Farewell to Zamrod
Part 2: The Mythic Voyage Chapter 12: Power in the Jungle
Chapter 13: Jungle Wonder
Chapter 14: Journey to the Middle of Nowhere
Chapter 15: The Gift of Ego Death
Chapter 16: How to Get Lost
Chapter 17: Never Get Out of the Boat
Chapter 18: Question Authority, Trust Yourself
Chapter 19: Evil Exists, Confront It
Chapter 20: What Is God?
Chapter 21: The Most Amazing Night
Chapter 22: The Power of Choice
Epilogue
Appendix: Using the Shamanic Experience for Healing Trauma An Idea Begins to Form
The Next Step
Some Practical Advice
Footnote
About the Author
About Inner Traditions • Bear & Company
Books of Related Interest
Copyright & Permissions
Prologue
I t was masochism. Why else would anyone put himself through those extremities again? I was twenty years older, supposedly wiser. Back at HQ in the UK nine months earlier, the marine company commander had ventured: “If you want to get back in the field so badly, be careful what you wish for. You might find yourself in Helmand as point man, point section. You know our blokes are getting blown to bits out there, right?”
Roger that. I was now, literally, back in the field in a godforsaken corner of Helmand, Afghanistan. Men from my commando unit had already been killed, and here I was, the wretched point man at the head of an advancing arrowhead patrol formation, an offensive tactical formation that had remained unchanged in hundreds of years. I watched every step through the field, as we had no cover for three hundred meters in every direction. Gunshots from firefights rang out to the left and right of us. As dusk transitioned to night, illumination mortar shells burst like fireworks in the sky, lighting up the marines on either side of me in a flickering, eerie glow. We had broken cover from a tree line, and the only way to our objective was to patrol through this wide open field. Dead ahead was another tree line, behind which were several Afghan mud compounds. It was only a matter of time before the enemy opened fire from their perfect vantage point, aiming to commit murder. All nine of the men in my section were in an optimal kill zone. I had never felt more exposed, despite the protection, and crushing weight, of my body armor and kit. I knew that for the enemy, now was the time. For the hundredth time I wondered if my body armor chest plate would stop a bullet from entering my torso. I hoped the photo taped inside my helmet of my kids sitting in a wood full of bluebells would prove to be an effective talisman. Time would tell . . .
Be careful what you wish for . . . I had volunteered for this, and the fact that my wish had come true was either some kind of cosmic joke or proof that my strong intentions really had manifested into reality. We had been patrolling for s
ix brutal, hot hours. The sweat running into my eyes had stopped stinging, as my eyes had grown used to it. The green bandanna beneath my helmet was saturated and useless at absorbing sweat.
Instinct urged us to break and run for the cover of the tree line ahead, but that kind of lapse in discipline would put us in more danger because there would be no chance to scan the ground for buried IEDs (improvised explosive devices). We crept forward slowly as trained. I wanted a second set of eyes—one to scan the ground constantly for IEDs and another to peer into the black “murder holes” punched into crumbling compound walls—those perfect lairs for enemy snipers. We trudged forward, now only forty meters from the safety of the tree line. The distance dwindled to twenty meters, then ten. Finally, we sank gasping for breath into an irrigation ditch, which afforded us some cover. One hundred patrols nailed, I thought, and another hundred to go. Just as crawling forward on your guts when checking out a suspected IED is a nerve shredder, so is the role of point man.
When I wasn’t totally focused on staying alive in that field and now in the ditch, random thoughts slipped through my mind. Were my twenty years of corporate life after my first stint in the marines really so vacuous that I had been driven out here to feel something intense, to derive some higher value and meaning from life? Or was I a masochist? Ultimately, I would end those pointless thoughts with a resounding, Who cares? I was here now—deal with it. With half a tour left to crack, the only way to squeeze any vestige of morale out of myself was to conjure up a new mission, something to sustain me when, or if, I lived through this and exited this hellhole. I had no idea at that time, while taking cover in that ditch, that an undertaking equally as extreme as the Helmand front line loomed. I didn’t know that a wild and enlightening adventure awaited me in the darkest parts of the Amazon jungle, hundreds of miles from civilization with a shaman and his troupe of loyal Natives and that my war-addled mind would be purified by powerful hallucinogenic potions. I didn’t know that I would find myself adrift downriver on a mythic voyage of discovery led by a colossus of a man who appeared to be going insane . . .
But right then, in that muddy ditch, surrounded by exhausted marines, with the crackle of radio chatter in one ear and the staccato of gunfire in the other, I vowed that if I made it out of here in one piece, I was going in deep—deep into mystery and headlong into regenesis.
PART 1
THE SECRET THAT CAN'T BE TOLD
1
99.99% Need Not Apply
I n 2009 I was in my early forties, married with two children, and with a successful career in the IT industry. I abandoned it all to become a Taliban hunter.
If forced to identify a single motivation for reentering the marines after a twenty-year absence and seeking a one-year tour in Afghanistan, I would have to admit it was the desire to escape metropolitan life and all its constraints. But it was more complex than that. I also felt the need to be tested and to do some good rather than to be merely transacting deals and striving for some measure of corporate “success.” Instead of contributing I just consumed. With mounting introspection I realized success felt increasingly hollow, devoid of any true value. I worked in business development for a global multibillion dollar technology firm headquartered in Silicon Valley, California. I was on the cusp of ten years of employment and dumb enough to be proud of it. I knew that all businesses and governments wanted the same thing—information superiority, agility, speed, security, mobility—and we delivered it all: power and competitive advantage . . . for a price. My standard of living was good. But while my career could be satisfying, the working conditions had become intolerable thanks to a toxic, sociopathic boss—otherwise known as a prick. A walking buzz kill. My colleagues thought it inevitable that he would be let go soon enough. I considered how I could bide my time until that happened. It crossed my mind that a trip to Afghanistan in a commando unit could be the golden ticket out of that life.
My greatest fear had always been a lifetime of stupefying mediocrity. Compared to corporate life Afghanistan represented adventure. Life had become a homogenized celebration of mildness, all hint of wild ventures shooed away like moths in a wardrobe. Irrespective of the political intent of the war, history was being made, excitement guaranteed, and I had had it once—twenty years before when I had joined the marines as an innocent straight from school. Now, once again, for some twisted reason, I craved physical hardship, pushing limits, being tested until something broke.
Maybe my childhood was to blame. Isn’t that what is supposed to be at the root of all complexes? By the time I was twelve, my mother was twice divorced and father number three was in the hot seat. My biological father had left when I was two. My first stepfather had been violent, inflicting beatings on my brothers and me on an almost daily basis. He wasn’t evil, just damaged by the echo of his own father’s horrors during the Second World War. Bedtime until the age of twelve was 6 p.m. on the nose, which happened to be when he arrived home. The verbal and physical abuse had an adverse effect on my self-esteem, and my little brothers’ confidence fared no better. It was many years before I realized that he had inadvertently given me the ability to channel aggression—a trait that would have value in my future career. My mother left him when I was twelve.
From the ages of six to eleven, despite a less than rosy home life, life outside the house was good. Home was in a village on the outskirts of Bristol. Half a mile from our house was a huge hill called Dundry. As children we would walk a mile or so to the top, where there was an Iron Age fort, and be mesmerized by the view. The hill was a thousand feet high, and you could see for fifteen miles in every direction. The north afforded a view of Bristol—magnificent—and even at nine years old it was easy to admire the creativity and industrious effort it took to build such a modern city. In contrast, facing south, there was nothing but open, rolling English countryside where the counties of Avon and Somerset panned out in all their rustic glory. Meadows, lakes, and woods provided a beautiful vista out to the horizon. My friends and I would also ride our bikes for miles and miles into what we considered to be the wilderness for the exhilaration of exploration, but Dundry Hill granted us a special perspective. It helped me cultivate an appreciation for nature and a longing for a career in the great outdoors.
My first stepfather was offered an opportunity to work in Bermuda, and the idea of that relocation had excited us all. Instead, he moved us to a characterless urban sprawl of three-bedroom semidetached houses in suburban West London. I was crushed. He chose this over Bermuda? Beyond that disappointment, the brutal treatment did not stop, so when he and my mother divorced, I was secretly pleased—and relieved. I loved my mother, but this man was a dark force in our lives. Either we—or he—had to go. She made the right decision. It was not too long before she met another man, and we moved to his London home. The violence stopped. Life improved.
When I first arrived in London, I would cycle for miles in every direction searching for the countryside, but of course, it didn’t exist. There were city parks, but in comparison to Dundry Hill, they were dispiritingly unremarkable. The manicured playgrounds and greens were weak imitations of the real deal. As a twelve-year-old, here I was in this ocean of conformity, thinking I’m going in the wrong direction. The school I attended was not known for its academic excellence. Amazing to me now, not a single adult at that time or a single teacher during my entire time at school ever thought to mention that there was a national program available offering free tuition to any university. Lack of opportunity was coupled with an anxiety about the future. In the mid-1980s, at the height of the Cold War, our school forced us to watch the post-apocalyptic BBC movie Threads. Wikipedia describes it as “[a] film which comes closest to representing the full horror of nuclear war and its aftermath, as well as the catastrophic impact that the event would have on human culture.” Looking at it now as a parent, that kind of behavior from a school is insane. The film did little but scare us about what might come.
As I got older anxiety about t
he future took on a new tone. There were three million unemployed people in the UK. Margaret Thatcher ruled, and people were rioting in the streets. As with my school, it appeared that the government’s primary objective was to quash all hope and depress us all to death. The worry was contagious, I was not immune to it, although I also was determined to survive; my teenage optimism was irrepressible. I speculated that the best way out was to join one of the biggest gangs in town—the marines. At age fifteen, in the school career room, rummaging in the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet, I found a crumpled pamphlet. I read the three words that made up the heading—representing the precise inverse of my current situation— Royal Marines Commandos. My adolescent mind sparked. From that moment on it was simple, the future set.
The worst-case scenario was nuclear war. I naïvely imagined a post-apocalyptic scenario where, at the very least, as a marine I would be issued a gun, nuclear warfare suit, and a gas mask and have assurances of regular food and consistent logistical and team backup. A dumb kid’s lamentable attempt at doomsday prep. A better scenario: there would still be war, but it would not be nuclear. I would get to defend those in need, travel the world, and get paid for it. From the age of eight I knew that the ancient meaning of the name Alex is “defender,” and my name became a self-fulfilling prophecy.
There was no other choice for me but the marines. When I was sixteen, the marines display team came to the county show. Some of them parachuted in, others fast-roped down from a chopper dressed in combat jackets and green berets. They appeared to kick the shit out of each other in a ferocious, elegant display of unarmed combat, then jumped back in the chopper, and flew back from whence they came—vanishing to a dot in the sky in less than a minute. I allowed myself to blink before I lifted my jaw off the deck. I had never seen men this fit or carry themselves this way. No more comic books—these were real-world commandos, and a wake-up call to adulthood. I fell in love with the corps that day. Joining their team someday became a laser focus of ambition, sharp as a dart in the heart. These men were the clash between good and evil, and any other career seemed hopelessly pedestrian.