From F-14 Tomcats to Toad Medicine: 1 Year Inside Ambio w/ Mark "Slider" Keller

Conor McGregor just put ibogaine and Ambio on the map with 5M+ views in 24 hours. Former Navy "TOPGUN" Mark “Slider” Keller (now an Ambio host who has guided 250+ veterans and first responders through treatment) joins his old OCS roommate Ponch to pull back the curtain on what really happens during the 5-day ibogaine + 5-MeO-DMT program. No hype, no flowing robes—just raw stories of broken men walking in suicidal and leaving reborn. From sweat lodges to ego-death “toad” experiences, neurological resets, and why big tough dudes cry every single week. If you’ve ever wondered what actually happens inside the world’s leading ibogaine clinic, this is the closest you’ll get without buying a plane ticket to Mexico.

If you or someone you love is struggling with PTSD, TBI, depression, addiction, or just feeling stuck—this episode is the most detailed, real-world look at what modern psychedelic-assisted therapy actually looks like from the people living it every day.

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Learn more about Ambio: https://www.ambio.life/

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The No Bell Podcast Episode 24
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Chapters

• 0:00 Conor McGregor’s tweet blows up
• 3:16 Early Patient Stories And Clinic Evolution
• 5:36 Hosting Veterans Through The Program
• 8:36 Who Comes And Why They’re Desperate
• 11:16 Medical Screening And Ibogaine Safety
• 15:16 Sweat Lodge And Setting Intentions
• 18:56 Breathwork, Prep, And Fasting
• 23:16 Ibogaine Night And The “Gray Day”
• 28:36 What Ibogaine Feels Like And Outcomes
• 34:56 Identity, Trauma, And Spiritual Insight
• 40:16 Thursday Energy And Yoga Reset
• 44:36 5-MeO-DMT Explained And Compared
• 49:56 Ego Death, Release, And Gratitude
• 55:16 Friday Departures And Visible Change
• 59:16 Hype, Expectations, And Real Healing
• 1:03:16 McGregor, Netflix, And Surging Demand
• 1:07:56 Access, Insurance, And Incentives
• 1:11:56 New Clinics, Legal Pathways, And Neuro Program
• 1:15:56 Speaking, Advocacy, And Closing

Transcript

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 0:56

Mark Keller. Uh thanks for being here, man.

Speaker 1: 0:59

Uh big news this morning, Connor McGregor. Is that today? Oh it's yesterday, yeah. What what was it about, man?

Mark "Slider" Keller: 1:05

Can you tell me Yeah, I mean I don't know a ton about it, but um you know Connor McGregor came through Ambio a few weeks back. Uh had a very good experience.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:18

And that's our podcast for today. That's awesome. Uh let's talk about this. So you actually worked out at Ambio. That's uh can you talk a little bit about that?

Mark "Slider" Keller: 1:27

Um Yeah, so I you know I uh was well, along with you, one of the first patients at Ambio. That's right. You know, we were in group number two, so that was patient four, five, and six. No shit. Yeah, we didn't even know at the time. I had no idea, dude. Yeah, we were so clueless. We still are. Yeah, we showed up. It was kind of a dorm room operation at that point. Oh man. Um, it's fine. I mean, it was great. I mean, these you know, these guys understood the ibane very well. Yeah. Um, but they weren't sure like what to do in the five-day program for veterans, you know, so they were trying to trying to, you know, they were doing the best they could as it, you know, when we were down there, it was pretty funny, but it's um evolved a lot. Um, yeah, and I've been working there as a host for about a year now. So I've you know, I'm the guy who greets a group at the door, um, you know, get them to their rooms, get them checked in, and I spend the week with them, I lead them through the project.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 2:23

But you get to see firsthand what actually happens, not once, but how many groups have you brought through? And how many, how many people have? I've probably led about 250 guys. So you've seen 250 folks come through, and plus you've gone through. What's it like, man? What's what's that week like for you? We we hear about the McGregor side, we hear about uh who else has been down? Brett Favre's been down there. Brett Favre.

Mark "Slider" Keller: 2:46

Anybody else we can talk about? Yeah, Clay Walker was down there. Yeah. Um you know, Alish Hemsky.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 2:52

And of course the movie In Waves and War just came out, and you know DJ Shipley and you know Marcus Capone.

Mark "Slider" Keller: 2:57

Yeah, obviously those guys have been through there. Yeah, there's there's a bunch of A-listers that have been through there, and you know, MBO is very discreet about that. Yeah. Um, you know, nobody knew, even people at MBO didn't know Connor McGregor was down there because you know that's what he wanted. Yeah. Um but obviously now he's been very public about it. So yeah, uh, what's the week like?

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 3:18

Uh yeah, from your perspective, you get to see this every week. You get to live something that most people don't.

Mark "Slider" Keller: 3:22

So yeah, it's spectacular, man. I mean, uh you know, I'm I mostly work with uh combat veterans uh and first responders, um, you know, guys sponsored by Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions or by the Casey Scudden 343 Fund. I tend to get those guys just because I'm the host there who is a veteran, um, which I you know I'm very grateful for that. That that's a great cohort to work with. Uh, you know, obviously my story has me set up very well to understand those guys. But, you know, I meet them at the curb uh on Monday morning, they come in and they're nervous. Yeah. You know, most of these guys uh have no experience with psychedelia. You know, most of them haven't even smoked weed or anything like that. I mean, they just they're just desperate. You know, we get a lot of guys who are, you know, depression, suicidality, substance abuse problems, uh, you know, anxiety, um, you know, all the usual stuff. Um, and so those guys come in, you know, not sure what's about to happen.

Speaker: 4:31

Yeah.

Mark "Slider" Keller: 4:31

Uh, you know, we've had a little over 3,000 people through there now. So the words out on the street, people know that it works, particularly in the special ops community, uh, and increasingly in the first responder community. So they know it works, but they also know that it's hard. So they show up there, they haven't been in a drastically altered state of consciousness. So of course it's scary for those guys. And you know, they're coming in, uh, there's a lot of preparatory work before they show up, coaching sessions, kind of getting them ready for understanding what's uh the best we can, what's coming, and and making sure that their mindset and their intentions are correct for that. So, you know, they've had some prep, but it's it's like game day when they show up. So they're very, very nervous. Um, you know, in the welcome circles, there's a lot of crying, you know, big jacked tattooed dudes crying, you know, I see it all the time. Uh, because they're just they're at the end, you know, and they're just ready to they're ready to blow the doors off. So, you know, the beginning of the week can be difficult. Um, but this is the amazing thing about about uh you know being where I am, is I can't think of any place in the world why where you know at the end of every work week you're gonna have a deep sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. Um you know that going in on a Monday.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 5:57

You know it on a Monday. Most Americans don't know that. They just look into the next weekend, right?

Mark "Slider" Keller: 6:00

Right. Just trying to make it to Friday so I can crush some Miller lights and watch football, right? So no, man, I go in there and I'm I'm dealing with a lot of humanity. Um it's it's a spectacular thing. It's a beautiful thing. Uh it's also a difficult thing. You know, I get to know these guys during the week and it it's pretty personal. Um, you know, I get to hear their stories, uh, I get to hear about their childhood stuff. I get to, you know, hear about what they're what they're struggling with at home. And um, you know, it's amazing to me how open these guys are when they come in there. You know, when you've when you've taken a beat down for, you know, sometimes decades, yeah, when you when you know your life's fallen apart, when you've had so much loss and and suffering that you just don't give a crap anymore, it is amazing what comes out of that. Yeah. You know, these guys come in and they're serious about their humanity, they're serious about letting go of the stories they've told themselves. Um, you know, they they just want to embrace some peace. Yeah, you know.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 7:06

Hey, before we continue, let's let's talk about us for a little bit because the the fact that you you and I are having this conversation, uh, who we are, where we came from. I mean, you and I were roommates in Officer Candidate School. Uh, you know, uh I was basically your brother growing up in the Navy. We both crawled in bottles in the middle of wow, you were in a bottle before I got there, but we started drinking a little bit. We were drinkers who did a little flight training. Look out, Metro. Yeah, yeah. Uh so we got to live that lifestyle and and uh could you know if you went back 20 plus years to meet us then and you told us, you know, our our former selves, hey, in 25 years or 20 years from now, this is what you guys are gonna be talking about. I wouldn't have believed you. I'd be like, no fucking way, man. I wouldn't have believed you. Nope. Nope, nope, no. So totally anti I was, you know, uh CU grad, University of Colorado grad. Um I saw the freaks out there, you know, in Colorado going, I want nothing to do with that. So um I chose alcohol. That was a path I went on, and then stayed away from everything. And uh boy, we were wrong.

Mark "Slider" Keller: 8:19

We were wrong. Turns out uh alcohol is probably the most or arguably the most damaging, intoxicant that you know is is out there. Uh if you look at the cost to you know to the individual and to society. Yeah, it's terrible stuff.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 8:34

So the guys that are less likely, least likely to be doing something like this, if you go back and you know, hey, you're not a flowing robe guy, you're a fighter pilot, fighter aviator, top gun guy, you know, all these cool things. And then you go transition and here you are helping veterans um mitigate TBI and PTSD through psychedelic assistant therapies, things like Ibogaine and Five MERDMT. Uh that's just that's a story that doesn't make any sense to a lot of folks, right?

Mark "Slider" Keller: 9:04

Yeah, it takes there's a lot of road to get there. Yeah.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 9:07

But here's the thing you and I know a lot of guys, uh both special ops and and some from our community that are uh their orientation's changing. They're they're looking at this. And you know, you and when you and I got back, uh we talked to a lot of folks and they just shook their heads and kind of like, you guys are fucking weird. You need to go away, you know. A couple of years later. Hey, did you hear on uh Joe Rogan they're talking about Ibigayane? It's just exactly what they were talking, you guys are talking about. We're like, yeah, we know, man. We've been trying to tell you this. So uh it's just a it's a crazy story to think that guys like us would be involved with anything like this, right? Um and I think that's very important. Maybe we can come to that a little bit later. But I just wanted to start, you know, you're you're telling about talking talking about the story about how these veterans come in, uh, how you're a veteran, but we got to go back and say, hey, we're not normal or we're not what you what they're showing in movies, right? Uh like maybe in documentaries now. But anyway, no, thanks for doing all that. Uh it's an amazing story. And I know you've been on a lot of podcasts, including Marcus Lutrell's uh podcast. Uh Team Never Quit. Uh go go listen to that episode. It's a good one. That's a really good one. It's long. Yeah, yeah, it's great. Uh so continue with the story. So you're on Mondays, you you know, you're bringing these guys in, and and I imagine women are coming in too. Yeah. Okay. So Monday, uh what's after that? What does the week look like? Yeah, I know Tuesday comes after Monday.

Mark "Slider" Keller: 10:31

Yeah, that's right. Tuesday usually does, uh, assuming time continues in the direction we're used to. Um yeah, you know, they show up Monday. You know, we got to get them situated in the rooms and all that stuff. And there's a bunch of medical check-in. They've got some screening. You know, they have to submit EKGs to even be accepted into this program.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 10:48

Talk about that real fast because it's important. You have to get an EKG and send it out to Ampio before you can get accepted, right?

Mark "Slider" Keller: 10:56

Yeah, so this is an important point. You know, as Ibogaine's getting some traction, of course, the detractors and the people who don't know what they're talking about, uh, a lot of overlap there. Um, you know, are like, oh, Ibogaine's dangerous, it's you know, it's deadly, you know, so is turpentine, you know. Um and they're not wrong. I mean, there have been some deaths um, you know, in the world. Uh last time I looked, I think 19 people we knew of had had died during ibogaine dream, but but in every single case, you know, there was uh a lot of Swiss cheese. You know, the you know, the big one is you have to do medical screening. Ibogaine uh increases your QT interval. Okay, so basically think of it as slowing down your heart as in a simple way. So, you know, QT elongation is a big thing there. It is very easy to pre-screen for if that is going to be a problem for an individual. There's some things you can spot in the EKG that are very easy to recognize that are disqualifying. There's some things in your metabolics, primarily uh kidney and liver enzymes that are you know required for the to to process the ibogaine. If you pre-screen those things, and you know, if you've uh magnesium loaded them up front, magnesium modulations is a big thing for safety, uh and and you put in a line and you have qualified medical personnel with you know who have uh you know emergency procedures that they're trained in. It's very safe. You know, it is so so to put that a short way, if you do your pre-screening and you're properly supervised medically during the treatment, I mean Ibogaine's very safe.

Speaker: 12:44

Yeah.

unknown: 12:44

Yeah.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 12:45

Um it c it kind of reminds you of uh, you know, going to the flight training, uh you have to pass you know, physicals. Your your body, you you have to go through the same thing, right? You can't have any, I think murmurs, uh I think there's one thing we you can't have. Uh, but it's just very similar. You there's folks that are physically qualified to go through flight training, there's folks that are not, right? Correct. So this is a very similar thing. You got to be qualified to go through this um this care. Continue.

Mark "Slider" Keller: 13:14

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, they submit all that stuff up front. Um, you know, there's a story about a guy, it wasn't not an ambio, but there's a story from, I guess, way back about uh, of course it was a marine, submitted somebody else's EKG. Oh man. Uh yeah it's gotta be a marine. Yeah, yeah, it was a marine crayons on it and everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. He showed up with crayons in his in his nose. Um, you know, this marine he just really wanted the treatment and he submitted somebody else's EKG, and the place he went didn't do a follow-up EKG, uh, and the guy ended up in a coma. Um you know, luckily he came back out of it and was fine. There was no lingering damage. But uh, you know, this is an example of like we got a screen. You know, he was one of those guys who had an obvious indication of his EKG, he bypassed that system. So, you know, at Ambio, you've you've got to submit all that testing ahead of time. And then when you get there, we do it again. So, you know, those guys show up on day one. Uh you know, an EKG happens in the first hour you're there. Yeah. Yeah. First two hours you're there, probably. So, you know, we follow up on that.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 14:21

So this is important. This is medically supervised. This isn't like just a let's go down to Tijuana and do two drugs, right? This is You know what?

Mark "Slider" Keller: 14:28

It's a beautiful resort vacation that is very medically supervised. I mean, safety is absolutely fundamental in the culture um that we've built there. Uh and it, you know, everyone is very, very serious about this. I mean, we send people home. You know, there's lots of guys who you know don't want to tell you about one of the meds they're on or something like that. And we test for all that stuff when they get there. So, you know, guys, guys trying to end around the system because they're desperate. I I understand, but uh bad calculus, my friend. You know, don't do that. Those things are there to protect you. And we're just very serious about that. Um, you know, so we haven't any problems. Yeah. Um, yeah, but so there's some of that intake, and then you know, the first part of the week that nobody talks about is the Tennis Cal. So we go into a traditional Mexican sweat lodge on the first day of the week. This is new. We didn't do this. We did not do this. Okay. No, it's really awesome too. It's you know, the sweat lodge, um uh some good things happen in the sweat lodge. The group's bond. Uh, you know, it's a difficult experience. I mean, you basically go into a pizza oven uh, you know, for an hour. Um, you know, there's a lot of chanting and and drumming and rattling, and uh, you know, there's a lot of participation. Um, you know, there's some inner child work and all this stuff you do. You get in there, you get really hot, it's really dark, it's really loud, and it kind of breaks you open a little bit. It softens you up. It's like like meat tenderizer almost for the Ibagain. Um, it's not unusual to have uh, you know, some kind of release in there. Um, you know, guys are showing up having made a serious commitment to their personal growth. It's not a small deal. I mean, you and I did it. You know, it's not a small deal to make the commitment to go there. Yeah. And, you know, once you show up, um, you know, most people are just they're just ready to bust open. They're just tired of lugging around all their stuff and they just want to let it out. So you get them in there, get them all sweaty and hot and talking about their childhood and chanting, and you know, next thing you know, big jacked tattooed dudes are crying. Um you know, it happens so that it's a there's some therapeutic value in there. It the team bonds a little bit. You know, these groups of guys who come through here that you know generally end up being very good friends afterwards. Yeah, you know, they all continue to talk, just like you know, you and I do with our guys we went through with. Um yeah, and that's a big experience. So, you know, they come back and uh they're a little different. You know, they've only been there a few hours, and you can already see they're like, okay, we're doing this. Um, you know, and the other thing we'd like to say there is it's kind of warm-up for being uncomfortable. So, you know, we want to get you comfortable being uncomfortable because the next night is the ibogaine treatment, and you know, there's lots of spectacular stories about these profound mystical experiences and and hallucinations and visions and all that stuff. Which people are way too attached to. I think we should talk about that, but you know, those things aren't that necessary to gain the benefit of ibogaine, but um, you know, there's a background discomfort that goes with uh an ibogaine treatment. Yeah. You know, when that medicine comes on, I mean, you you feel very, very heavy, you don't want to move, you're a toxic, uh you know, if you try to move, you're you're dizzy, uh, you're off balance. I mean, there's just this dis discomfort. It's very unique uh to ibogaine. It's not a party drug. No, it's not fun. This is a very heavy, I mean, very I mean, it takes over. The ibogaine is definitely in charge. Like this idea that you can I mean, you could fight ibogaine all night, I suppose, if you were some kind of he-man, but all you're gonna do is make yourself miserable. So, you know, there's this discomfort that comes with it. And you know, I think going to the sweat lodge kind of helps you get get used to being uncomfortable and doing some work.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 18:22

Is that protocol the same for everybody now that goes down through Ambio? Are they going through the five-day program?

Mark "Slider" Keller: 18:26

Okay, yeah. Okay. Um for sure. So yeah, we do all that. Um, and then the next day is just a lot of ibogaine prep. So we uh, you know, we do a blood draw again to test metabolics, make sure that's not going to be a problem. Um we do some breath work. Um, you know, for most of these guys, it's it's introductory.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 18:49

Um basic box breathing, vagus nerve, Wim Hof. What does it do there?

Mark "Slider" Keller: 18:54

Very, very simple techniques. Yeah, like box breathing. Yeah. Just the just introductory stuff, just because uh, you know, you need to give guys a tool to manage uh the I mean, there can be some fear and anxiety, particularly as this stuff comes on. You know, it's completely unfamiliar, it's very big, and it's just taken over your entire entire nervous system. You know, it can be scary, there can be some anxiety, and so we give these guys some tools to self-regulate, um, which of course are useful afterwards too. But you know, for a lot of guys, this is introductory. By the way, I love that you said flowing robes earlier. Uh just quick jump back to that. You said flowing robes, and and one thing that's very clear to me, and you know, I say to people all the time, I'm not the woo guy.

Speaker 1: 19:38

Yeah, yeah.

Mark "Slider" Keller: 19:38

You know, never go full woo, right? You can't go into that. We're not we're not making flowing robes here, you know. We're not trying to bring guys in and turn them into ascended masters. Uh you know, uh we're taking guys who are whose lives are falling apart and and often are suicidal and and looking at losing families and you know, all kinds of I mean, big, big existential stuff is going on with these guys. We're we're trying to give them a chance to survive and you know, maybe work towards some peace and happiness in their lives and you know, putting away all the all the traumas of the past and stuff. So um, you know, do you need to have an understanding of of of the woo? Yeah, absolutely. Um but we're just you know, just like me when I went down, I've said this many times on these things. I just wanted to feel better. Yeah. You know, you know, that's what these guys want. So um, yeah. So we give them the breath work, uh and some meditation, you know, just some simple guided meditation. We do a lunch. Um the food there is freaking awesome. It was great. It's just ridiculously good food. Every meal is a work of art. Um we do that, um, and then we have one-on-one sessions. So as a host, I'll uh I'll spend about 30 minutes with each client. And um Are you tired by this time? Uh just day two, right? You it pursues a long day. Yeah. I mean, uh, you know, hours-wise, uh uh depending on when I leave at night, it's you know, 12 to 15 hour day. Um and it's going deep with these guys on their personal stuff and making sure that they understand uh you know what the experience is going to be like, give them some tools for navigating it. Um you know, just making sure they're well prepared, their intentions are clear, and you know, they understand. Um so that's you know, with a group of six, which is typical, um, you know, that's at least three hours of going deep into a lot of painful stuff. Um, and then they uh they also have massages. So comes in, gives a very technical massage. You know, we're trying to get these guys loosened up. We're trying to get them open, we're trying to get them relaxed so that they can accept what's coming when the Ibogaine hits them. Um, you know, and then we give them another IV, we we preload them with magnesium and electrolytes and all that stuff. Of course, they're fasting. Yeah, yeah. Um, you know, because nausea is a big thing and you don't want anything in the stomach. So um yeah, we load them up with some electrolytes, make sure they're they're optimized uh with blood chemistry and you know, fire ceremony, and off we go. So that that is a long, long night. So I get them through the fire ceremony we where we begin administering the ibogaine and you know, typically you don't stay overnight with them or or no, I'm not staying overnight.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 22:30

Okay, so you just get them through that and then you hand them off to the medical teams?

Mark "Slider" Keller: 22:33

Yeah, yeah. We get them, yep. So the medical team shows up, uh, you know, we do the IVs and all that stuff, and yeah, there's a handoff during the ceremony. Okay, I thought I thought you stayed with them. Uh besides like you do all the prep work to get them to the I get them there. We we get the medicine in them, but there's really not much to do. Oh yeah. You know, for me. I mean you know, watching a bunch of guys on iVogang treatment is one of the most boring things in the world. You know, it's the it's the wildest thing that ever happened to each of those guys or or girls, but you know, from the outside it's just a bunch of people laying there. Yeah. Yeah. Um, which is hard to peep for people to get their head around. Like, really? Like it's boring. You're just um but that's okay. So uh yeah, we do all that, and then the next day, uh, you know, we call it gray day because we're military guys. There are a lot of people in that world who are like, no, it's Discovery Day or you know, Unicorn Day or Rainbow Day or Glitter Day or you know, like I understand where they're coming from because the idea is still, I mean, you're still tripping for 24 or sometimes even 36 hours. You know, it's a very, very slow come down. So, you know, I understand that, but you know, for the military guys, it's you know, we had a big exercise yesterday and today we're just recovering, you know. And so that basically that's what it is a great day. Um but there's a lot of insights.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 23:55

Yeah. So when what time do you come in on uh is it we're on what Wednesday now?

Mark "Slider" Keller: 23:59

Yeah, so on Wednesday, um, and by the way, I'm talking about the clinic where I primarily, you know, there's ones coming in every day. It's all it's all stacked.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 24:08

Yeah, so this is your experience, yeah.

Mark "Slider" Keller: 24:10

Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is just me. But um Yeah, on Wednesday, you know, they get against some more IVs in the morning. They have to be on the EKGs for for 12 hours. Um you know, that's part of our protocol. And um, you know, by the way, one cool thing about Ambio is as far as we know, it's the only Ibigain clinic that's fully insured. Uh full libraria coverage. Lloyd's a London, you know, very unique uh insurance policy, but uh our track record of safety and stuff is you know, we're earning you know, we're figuring that out. So I, you know, Ambio is definitely breaking the trail for you know future uh future people getting into this. But um, you know, we gotta we've we stick to those protocols. We do not deviate from those protocols. So that you know they're in there at least 12 hours and they gotta take those IVs. So more magnesium, uh, vitamins, electrolytes, some glucose, all that stuff. Uh you know, a lot of times guys can't eat the next day. So yeah. Um, you know, we try to try to get them replenished a little bit. And you know, sometimes guys will lay in their treatment room all day long. I mean, they've you know, they've been in that for 12 hours, and sometimes they stay there for 24. Well um, you know, people are just drained at a cellular level. It's it's a unique kind of tiredness. Um you know, and for some guys, they're still very much in their experience.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 25:33

Uh can we talk about why they're tired? I mean, if they're you said they're laying on the ground. I mean, my experience is uh your body kind of kind of shuts down and all your energy goes to your brain. It's it's just your brain's just on fire. We know that you know your your gray matter between your ears, uh the brain housing unit, what's in there burns what, 20% of our calories? Um this little gray matter thing does it. Yeah, yeah, when it's in efficiency mode. When day to day, but here you are, it's it's just getting kicked up. So you took the governor off.

Mark "Slider" Keller: 26:03

Yeah, yeah. So you are on full neurological you know, afterburner at that point. Um, yeah, so you're burning a lot of calories. I I don't even know how you would estimate that, but yeah, your brain is it's burning a lot of energy. You know, people don't move during this. Motion tends to make you uh, you know, nauseous. Yeah. Um so uh and you feel very heavy, you know, you just don't want to move. So yeah, guys lay there. Um and I will say that we don't completely understand all the things that Ibegain's doing. It's it has multiple paths through which it accomplishes the things we want it to do, um, but they're not all understood. Uh there seems to be something about mitochondrial health, though. Uh you know, huge ATP dumps, some kind of refreshing of your mitochondria. Um, you also dump you know every neurotransmitter you've got. Like you are just in a massive explosion of of all those things. And recovering from that just it just takes a while. So you know, you're rec you're tired on a cellular level. You also got to remember, you know, you fasted for eight hours before you started the experience. So then you went 12 more hours with eating. So you're now you know at twenty plus hours before you would even have an opportunity to ingest a calorie. Yeah. And guess what? You know, most guys can't. Uh your stomach's very delicate at that point. Um, and you know, maybe a little bone broth is where you start and see how you do. And sometimes that just comes right back up. What's interesting is for some people, you know, I'm certainly one of them. I jump up, I want an omelette and home fries. You know, so it's very, very individual. And you know, that's something that needs to be looked at too. What is it about someone's physiology that causes them to have one kind of experience versus another? The other thing that's really interesting is you know, I've done four flood dose treatments over the last five years. Um each one's completely different. Um, I believe that has to do with your psychological uh state, your neurological health. Yeah. Um, we we say that you get what you need. Uh, you know, a lot of people like to ascribe some kind of intelligence to the ibogaine. You've certainly heard Brian Hubbard talk about that. You know, he's not wrong if you're just trying to get someone to understand, you know, this is a very sophisticated thing in the way it interacts with your body, but it's just a molecule. Yeah. You know, so there's something about that you're really just working on yourself when you get there. You know, this uh for the psycho-spiritual stuff, I mean this isn't magic. You know, it it just puts you in a neurological state where you have access to your subconscious, yeah, you know, what's going on in there, which is you know, much more responsible for the way you experience your life than you know your conscious mind is. I call it the elephant. You know, everybody's riding this elephant. A lot of people don't even know they're on an elephant, you know, uh well, that elephant's your subconscious. And it's interesting because you know, everyone comes in there because there's you know, a military guy and they've been in combat and all this stuff, yada yada. I I used to tell my story, you know, in 2005 I killed a dozen innocent people in a preventable accident that I'd learned about, you know, and that that was very traumatic for me. It is very clear to me now that uh you know, that trouble started my childhood. You know, some guys go through those combat experiences and they're fine. Yeah. You know, and some guys aren't. And some guys seem fine. They get in their mid-40s and they fall off a cliff. We've seen lots of that. Yeah, we've seen in our community. Yeah. Yeah, certainly with the brain injuries. You know, this thing that we see aviators, particularly carrier aviators going through, it's operator syndrome, same thing. It's just a slightly different variant of it, you know. So um, you know, everyone's coming in in a different state with different needs. Uh and the Ibegaine just it just seems to get you what you need. It's a custom experience. And, you know, guys come in there and they have all these expectations and desires about what they want their experience to be like. And, you know, sometimes a guy will get that, but often they're disappointed, particularly if they're very attached to this idea that they're gonna have some kind of profound mystical experience. You know, that happens on the 5MEO, you know, quite regularly. But you know, with the Ibegain, you know, sometimes people come in and they just feel like a TV that got unplugged all night. Um, you know, sometimes here's an interesting uh phenomenon I've observed. I think sometimes guys actually are having profound experiences and just can't remember. Yeah. There was this guy, Omar. I love this guy. He was a he's a great dude. Um, this guy Omar came in. And I remember I walked in while he was on his IV in the morning, and I, you know, I always go and check in with the guys and just see how they're doing. And Omar was like, Omar's a very reserved, very reserved guy. And uh this morning he was not so reserved. He's like, Slider, you wouldn't believe what happened last night, man. He's like, I was in this hallway with a boge man and I had to catch a bogaman. If I wanted the healing, I had to catch a bogaman. And so I start moving towards a bogeyman, he runs away from me. So I'm chasing a bogeyman down the hallway, and I can't catch him for two years. I'm chasing him down the hallway for two. I'm like, two years? He's like, two years I ran. And finally a boger man emerges into this big round room, and there's this array of television sets at the far end of the room, and a boge man's got his back to me, and he's standing there and he's looking at all these scenes from my life. And so I crossed the room to get to a bogaman, and a bogeyman evaporates. And now I'm standing there looking at these scenes from my life. And then I look around and notice there's no way out of the room. I spent five years in the room looking at scenes of my life. Wow. And you know, and there was some more to his story and stuff, right? But he's still tripping when he's telling me this. So the next day, uh, that would be Wednesday now. Um, no, Thursday now. You know, in the morning, the first thing we do is we have a circle and we talk about our Ivy again experiences. So Omar's turn comes up, and I'm like, so Omar, uh, you know, let's walk through your Ivy again experience, you know, how it came on, you know, what you experienced while you were there, your gray day, all this stuff. He's like, oh man, I didn't see shit. So you know, some of these guys who say, yeah, it was just a TV that was unplugged, or I think I just slept all night. They don't remember. I think they just don't remember. Oh, okay.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 33:29

Uh that's my theory. Well, I think the downloads are just fun. I mean, there's so much going on in those, I think it's 12, almost 14 hours for me.

Mark "Slider" Keller: 33:38

Yeah, well, there's an you know, there's an important thing there. You know, we go in there with intentions. We we put a lot of energy, we coach, you know, they have coaching sessions for a couple of weeks before they come down, and we talk about it a lot while we're there, making sure they have intentions. And you know, intentions are what do I what am I trying to get out of this experience? What am I trying to change in my life? And, you know, guys get real attached to those as they as they should. And we spend a lot of time grooming them and you know how they're worded, and we make guys write them down because you know, writing it down reinforces the neural pathways associated with that, you know, thought and all that stuff. And it kind of gives them some handholds that we've we kind of develop in their conscious mind going in there. And I think what happens with the Ibegain, if I can, uh I'll come up with a pretty simple metaphor, but it seems to open the door between your conscious and your subconscious mind. So having groomed yourself to you know, want to address these issues in your conscious mind, once you have access to your subconscious mind and in a very chaotic neurological state, those things seem to resolve. It's almost as if you're going in there and doing surgery on your subconscious and rearranging and repacking things. Um, you know, and if this is my theory, okay, uh, but you know, if you do that, you don't need to remember the process. Right. You you just need to have you know, a good example of the kind of rearranging that you do is take a past trauma and detach yourself from it. You know, you've got to extract a lesson from it, or you're you know likely to repeat the same things. But take the lesson and detach yourself from the story. You know, that's a very important part of getting through all this difficult stuff. You know, I I became very attached to the story about I killed a bunch of people. You know, I was f I couldn't convince everyone anyone that this was going to happen, and I was very frustrated by that. And uh, you know, it was a it was a moral shortcoming on my part. You know, and that's how I ended up in a in a very bad place. Um, you know, and this happens with a lot of guys. They you know it's very hard to be in the military, especially as a combatant in an elite unit, uh, you know, an elite capacity, like, you know, like a SEAL or a uh you know a Green Beret or a fighter pilot or you know, any of that stuff. I mean, you become very attached to that identity. Um, you you know, I am a fighter pilot, I am a Navy SEAL, I am a you know uh a raider or whatever. Um we just don't know any better. And and being attached to that serves us extremely well while we're in uniform. Um But it's a lie. You know, it's it's that's just a role you play for a while. Uh you know, I've become very fond of saying, you know, I used to walk up and tell people, I'm a fighter pilot. I'm Judy Keller's son. That that's what I am. Uh you know, and I got to do some very cool stuff for a while, and and that was awesome. And you know, with the benefit of hindsight, I realized it wasn't what I believed it was at the time. Right. Same. That that's okay. I mean, that's life, you know. Um but if you don't want the the those traumas to be something you have to lug around for the rest of your life, then you've got to get rid of that identity. You know, you've got to understand the idea that I am a thing, and it's not that role that I played. You know. What am I, though? That's something that people discover at Amio all the time. Uh you know, and I I certainly did. Uh and of course what I'm talking about is you know the spiritual nature of you know, I am a spiritual being having a human experience. Right. Um that's quite clear to me. And and it is to most people who go through this this program. Uh and you know, I will state that I was not looking for that. Nope. Nor did I really have that concept in my head when I went down there. I was just a banged-up guy looking for some relief. But you know, lo and behold, there's tremendous relief and understanding that this life is not everything. Right, right. You know, God, I I feel for people who can't get there.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 38:00

They just don't know.

Mark "Slider" Keller: 38:01

I mean, well, they don't know. I I mean, look at the hell I had to go through to get there. Yeah. What a gift. I'm glad I got to go through that hell because it got me there.

Speaker 1: 38:09

Yeah.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 38:09

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, some people can do it without but clearly they can do it without any type of Ibogaine or DMT.

Mark "Slider" Keller: 38:16

I mean, it's yeah, some people just get it. No, no, no. There are plenty of people who just get it. Um, you know, I know people like that. And what's funny is, you know, ten years ago even a lot of Ned Flanders out there that get this. Right. I would have looked at a lot of those people as soft, you know, uh not serious, you know, fruit cakes. You know what I mean? I probably would have not been very fair to the folks. And now I realize that you know the hardest thing to obtain in this world is inner peace. The hardest thing to hang on to in this world is inner peace. I mean, if you get a nugget of peace for yourself, uh you walk out the door at Ambio, go back to the world, and everyone's gonna try to smack it out of your hands. Yep. Absolutely. You know, that is the challenge. And man, if you have some inner peace, or if you're just a person who just kind of gets it and you've always been tuned in, man, that must be nice. Yeah. Um but for the rest of us, it's it's a fight. It's a fight to come to understand that that should be the goal. Um, it's a fight to understand how to get it, you know. Um for guys who are used to solving problems with explosives, you know, learning how to flow is you know, maybe not the most natural uh next move, but but that's what we got to do. And you know, uh this is hyperbolic, but I think it's funny because there's a little bit of truth to it. Is you know, we have these we're turning stone cold killers into hippies. Yeah. Yeah. You know.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 39:48

What kind of so what you know on our after our gray day when we did our circle, uh, it was probably the most uh entertaining conversation I ever had in my life hearing what you were going through that day. So you you get to hear these conversations every Thursday. All the time. Yeah. Yeah. What's that like on Thursday?

Speaker 1: 40:03

Oh, dude.

Mark "Slider" Keller: 40:07

You know, humanity is a spectacular show. I mean, what a big, wonderful mess it is. You know, it's just just so much color. And Ambio, or at least my position at Ambio to me, it's like I have this giant pipe that humanity flows to. And I get this like big sight glass. And I just I get to see the the the color and the complexity and the you know the joy and the pain and all this stuff. I mean, what a what a show. You know, and pe and the people who are coming through there, I mean, these are first of all, these are great people coming through here. I mean, you know the kinds of guys and you know, I'm talking about my cohort. Most of Ambio's business is not military and first responders at this point. But you know, these are the guys I work with. So, you know, these are guys who've made a serious commitment by putting on that uniform. You know, um I hate when people say, I'm willing, these guys are willing to give their life. No, they're not. They're willing to put their life at risk because it's that important. Yeah. You know, uh these are great human beings. Um they're broken. But if they're showing up there, they are serious about looking inside, understanding themselves, and making some changes. And I mean, those are just the best kind of people. Yeah. You know, people who are serious about personal growth and development.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 41:48

I mean, what a- This is what leadership looks like, by the way. Yeah, what a joy. I mean, it's it's you know, getting back to being human. It's uh being humble enough to say, I need help, right?

Mark "Slider" Keller: 41:57

Yeah, that's the hardest thing to do. You know, that that's why uh I mean, you know, you saw me go through it. Uh you know, I was terribly ashamed of of all the stuff I was going through. Um, and I hid. And I hear this all the time. I mean, guys hide. Why? Well, we'll think about it. You know, in aviation, you know, if you say I have, you know, uh I have a runny nose, well, you're benched. Yeah, yeah. You know, so nobody's ever gonna say something's wrong, you know, unless you're dying, you know, you're not gonna say anything's wrong. And you you know, look at these units, you know, you you're in your platoon, you're in your squad. I mean, you're not gonna you don't want the guys next to you to believe that you are other than you know, 100% there and you got their back like they got yours. You know, this is very important culturally, uh, and it becomes it becomes who these guys are. So guys don't want to ask for help. Um But that's the first step. It it is you know, knowing that it's okay to be broken, um, knowing that it's okay to ask for help, knowing that asking for help can lead to healing and and and you know success. Um you gotta show that to guys. Yeah. You know, and uh again, they're used to solving problems with explosives. This is this is I would say Ibegain is an explosive, but it is you know, it's a very different kind of explosive. And you know, that's the other thing I say is you come down there to to get the breaching charge. Yeah, the fragment the frag pattern doesn't go this way, it comes this way. Right, it goes inward. Yeah, very, very much you're blowing yourself up on the inside. But that you know, to you know, the analogy uh is we're blowing the door off. The ibigaine helps you place the breaching charge and detonate it. Yeah. You've got to walk down, you've got to walk through the door. Yeah. You know, and most of the work happens afterwards. But you know, for guys who have just recently discovered uh, you know, that they are fundamentally spiritual beings, guys who have recently discovered what lies they told themselves or what misconceptions that they they held deeply about who they are and stuff. Like once they get that and they've got a little bit of velocity, yeah, going down the hall hallway, I mean you just you just gotta decide to do it. Yeah. Um it's interesting. We do see some guys, you know, pretty much everybody walks out the door, you know, going, Holy crap, that's amazing. My life is better. Yeah.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 44:35

But that's on Friday when they walk out, right?

Mark "Slider" Keller: 44:36

That's on Friday when they walk out.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 44:37

So you're still on Thursday. We're still on yeah, we're still on Thursday. So what's what's going on in Thursday afternoon?

Mark "Slider" Keller: 44:42

Yeah, Thursday. So okay, so we you know, we debrief um the I Begin journeys. Uh let me back up.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 44:48

Because we've got to talk about what happens Thursday night. That's right.

Mark "Slider" Keller: 44:51

But we got to get to that. But what's going on Thursday? Thursday's my favorite day, by the way.

unknown: 44:55

I love Thursday.

Mark "Slider" Keller: 44:56

I love Thursday. Happy Thursday. Two Thursdays. Wednesday, these guys are all banged up, you know, and uh I mean a lot of days, a lot of times you don't even see much of them on Wednesday either. They're just mostly horizontal, and you know, you bring them a smoothie once in a while and you know, maybe talk them out of a uh anxiety loop they're stuck in or something like that. But um yeah, totally different. So when when you walk in the house Thursday morning, um typically everybody's up, they're sitting in the living room, they're happy, they're chatting, there's like lots of energy. Hey, slaughter! And like it's it's it's getting positive. Yeah, yeah. Um you know, for some guys, sometimes guys have underwhelming or even very difficult ibegain experiences. And maybe they're not sure on Thursday. There is some of that too. What's cool about Thursday is you know, we're gonna serve the five MU DMT in the afternoon. And for guys who have underwhelming I began experiences, that stuff seems to just bring it all together for them. Yeah. Um, which is a really cool thing to watch. But yeah, we walk in the morning, super happy guys. Uh, we have have you know a gorgeous breakfast, and you know, sometimes that's the first meal they've had since uh you know midday on Tuesday. So uh you know that could be very uh that could that that revitalizes guys a lot. Um but then we do some intro to yoga, you know, and uh very, very introductory stuff. You know, it's not they're not standing on one foot and twisting themselves into pretzels or anything like that. It's um yeah, but just some mindful movement we call it. It's the yoga-based, but we're calling it mindful movement. So it's just some really simple stuff to demonstrate to guys that they can self-regulate by just, you know, I mean, even arm circles. Just standing there doing some arm circles for for a minute. You know, it just kind of makes you be present and and and just kind of settles you down. And you know, all these guys need, you know, me included, need need to self-regulate. So, you know, some more instruction there, and we kind of kind of get them back in a nice place, uh, and then we debrief all the iBegain journeys, which is awesome. That's one of my favorite things. Um you know, after after hearing a few hundred, uh, you know, a couple hundred debriefs on these things. There's there's kind of like these modules, you know, there's this this the different kind of elements of IBGane journeys. Yeah. And it's almost like you can just, oh, that guy had a 7, 14, a 2, and a 9, you know, and that was his night. You know, you could almost actually we probably ought to map that out. It'd be really cool. Yeah, that uh by the way, the data collection opportunities are insane. But um yeah, so we debrief all those things. Um, you know, I help them a little bit, maybe get started on how to interpret that stuff. Uh a lot of times you see things that you you can't understand uh in those journeys, and sometimes they come out within a day or two, sometimes it's weeks or even months later. Just all of a sudden there'll be an aha. You go, oh, that's what that meant when I saw the you know, the pig running on a soccer ball, you know, whatever random trippy thing you had. But I mean, they tend to come together, you know? Um so we do all that, uh, and then I get to brief them on the 5MEO DMT. Um the 5MO DMT is a uh uh what a what a profound.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 48:23

Well let's let's talk about that real fast. So we have right there right next to you, you have Iboga, the root of all healing. Um, and then you have above that uh Andrew Gallimore's book, Death by Astonishment, which is about DMT. It's not necessarily about 5MU DMT. But can you just talk about the uh what is what is DMT?

Mark "Slider" Keller: 48:38

Yeah, DMT. So DMT is dimethyltryptamine. Um you're right, it's very important to point out the difference between NN DMT and 5MO DMT. So Gallimore in Death by Astonishment is talking about NN DMT. So NN DMT occur is you know produced in every plant. Um in some plants it has a much higher concentration. And so that's what for example, ayahuasca is is made um from the shakruna leaf, um which contains DMT. So that's the psychedelic DMT. The effect of that, the experience, is completely different than 5 MeO DMT. Um, you know, if you vape NN DMT, you know, there's a very abrupt onset or a launch, people call it. It's similar in that way, but where you end up is completely different. So different molecule, different effects, uh different, different use. Um, you know, if you're interested in NN DMT, because it is a fascinating thing, uh check out Tales from the Trip on Comedy Central. Yeah, go to YouTube and find find Tales from the Trip. It's a bunch of stand-up comedians who vaped DMT and they tell stories about what happened. It's nuts, man. But that's not what we're doing in Android. What we're doing is five what we're using is five MEO DMT. So five MEO DMT is endogenous. Um it's produced in your body your whole life, it's always there. Um It can induce the an experience that feels like dying. Or and when I say dying, I mean the soul leaving the body or the physical world ceasing to exist while your consciousness continues on. Um it's very hard to describe that what the experience is, but um yeah, it seems to be associated with that. The 5MEO DMT experience is very different from the DMT experience in that the DMT experience is completely visual. I mean it's very, very visual. The 5MEO DMT experience is not typically terribly visual. Some people do see sacred geometry and stuff like that. I've heard some reports of seeing some more sophisticated stuff. Generally, what happens is you inhale this stuff and you get a burst of color, or people talk about being in an exploding kaleidoscope.

Speaker: 51:05

Yeah.

Mark "Slider" Keller: 51:06

It's very brief, and then you transition into typically either a milky white construct, uh a black nothingness, or sometimes uh a starfield. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Black nothingness with a starfield. Those seem to be the places people go visually. But what's more important is the feeling. So with 5MEO DMT, you experience ego death. Yeah. Okay, you do not experience ego death with ibogaine. Ibogaine is a dualistic experience, meaning that your sense of yourself as separate from the environment remains intact. So it's you, Brian took some ibogaine, Brian's on a bed at Ambio, Brian's in Mexico, Brian, you know, these things are happening. You're very aware of who you are. There's no chance of floating off in the cosmos with IPogaine. It's it's in some ways that makes it easier than other psychedelics. You know, uh ayahuasca or mushrooms or LSD. I mean, you can, you know, you can launch into the ether, and that can be distressing for people. See, Ibegain is actually easier in that way. Five MEO DMT is the opposite. Five MEO DMT is an outward experience. You experience ego death, meaning your sense of yourself as separate from your environment is destroyed. Yeah. That's what we mean by ego death. Not taking you down a notch because you're not right. Right, right. So it's ego death. So you to experience yourself as part of everything has a tremendous healing effect. Um you know, and the great thing about Five MEO is I don't care what your intentions are. You know, this stuff is so powerful that boom, you're gonna, you know, for most people, boom, you're just there and you get it. You know, as soon as you experience that, it it's so profound that you you know you have to think about what it means and why is it profound?

Speaker 1: 53:05

Words are inadequate, but you feel infinity.

Mark "Slider" Keller: 53:13

You feel the how large the world of conscious or the domain of consciousness is, and it's uh it's it's indescribable, so you know I'll stop trying. But you feel that you also tend to feel um God's love, uh unconditional love available in an endless quantity. I've heard that from you before. Yeah. Yeah. Unconditional love. Uh, you know, if you're wondering if if God forgives you for your trespasses, becomes very obvious that you were always forgiving. You just have to forgive yourself. You know, just real fundamental stuff like that. But it's so big that you can't look away from it. You know, it forces guys to ask the question, what am I? You know, and when you again I'll say it, this is so fundamental to this. When you understand that you are fundamentally spiritual in nature and that you know the death of this body is not the end of everything. Well, now you have a whole domain of ways of looking at things that can help you uh have context for the bad, the difficult things that have happened in your life. Yeah. Right? It's a lesson. Everything's just a lesson. Once you understand that, really difficult things you get through are awesome lessons. Man, I just got a PhD in loss or whatever it is. And when you when you when you figure out to look at things like that, well, all of a sudden your personal, your healing and your personal development just accelerate.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 54:57

Yeah. So tell me about the third it's Thursday evening when you do this, right? With everybody? Yeah, so Thursday afternoon, uh, yeah, we serve the five MODMs. But it's individual. Uh it's not a group thing. It's one at a time. Right. So that yeah, the Ibegains in a group. You pick randomly, or how do you do it? Or what would you have a do you do you have a way to fill out who you should go first?

Mark "Slider" Keller: 55:15

I don't know if I want to spill my formula. Okay, but you have a way, don't you? You you know. I I do have uh uh yes, and this is a reason you do this, right? There's a method to the the batting order on the five M O DMT, and I don't always get it right.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 55:31

Um let's well, our experience is I went before you, which I'm very thankful. Because I'd gone after you, I would have gone.

Mark "Slider" Keller: 55:40

I gotta give Trevor a lot of credit, man. Because you remember we came up with our own batting order. Yeah, and he's like and Trevor just just you know, he saw it. Yeah, yeah. But you see it now, right? He rightly saw it. Yeah, yeah. I now see what he saw. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, which is I mean, let's just say it. For the majority of people, when they go into that 5MEO experience, it is a blissful, beautiful, peaceful thing. And they lay there and they smile, and it's like and they come out of it and they're like, oh my God, I didn't know. You know, that's the typical response. But um the more traumatized people are, the more dysregulated, the heavier the stuff they're carrying around, the more likelihood is that you're gonna see some kind of release out of them. And you know, almost everybody cries at the end of it. I don't care how big and tough you are. Um typically they're tears of gratitude. Don't know why, but when you come out of this, I certainly have this every time. It I'm reminded of how amazing it is to be alive.

Speaker: 56:56

Yeah.

Mark "Slider" Keller: 56:56

You know, just the fact that I'm alive and I'm thinking and I have a jaw and bones and sinew, and I can run around and breathe and do things, like holy crap, we're on a spinning rock hurtling through space at 200,000 miles an hour, and I can do all the like what a miracle, right? When you realize that it to the depth that FiveMeO presents it to you, it makes you cry.

Speaker: 57:19

Yeah.

Mark "Slider" Keller: 57:20

I mean, you really like what a joy to be alive. And for somebody who was just suicidal a minute ago, right? I mean, this is a that's a big freaking deal. Um and for me and and for a lot of other people, I just laugh afterwards. Yeah. Because I'm reminded of the absurdity of the things we put ourselves through. Because you know, another lesson that comes out of this work is our suffering is all self-induced. Yeah. You know, and and it's not like, oh, I'm just gonna decide to be happy tomorrow. No, I'm not saying it's that simple. But when you come to understand that it's your attachment to these things that causes you to suffer, not the things. It's not the thing that happened, it's your attachment to the thing that happened that causes the suffering. Well, you have a choice in your attachment. You can't change the thing, the thing happened. But you do have a choice about the attachment, and that becomes apparent to you, you know, in these things. But let's go back to the releases. So, you know, some gentle weeping, yeah. You know, that's that's a lovely thing. And sometimes there's, you know, oh my god, I didn't know. It's so beautiful. You know, you get stuff like that. Yeah. But sometimes you get stuff like I had. Yeah. Um, I've seen many guys have stuff like I had, which is, you know, I spent my entire life packing all my pain away, and it, you know, and I ended up right here, you know, in this anxiety knot. I call it the cannonball now. You know, a lot of guys come in there, they got a cannonball stuck in their chest right here. Okay, you know. Um, that's neurological, right? The body keeps the score. Right. So these guys have accumulated all these traumas and stuff, and they've just soldered on and they've never dealt with it, and it accumulates neurologically. And there's something about the five Me O DMT that kind of gets your brain out of the way for a minute. Yeah. Once you get your proud brain out of the way, your body goes, Oh my god, I can finally get this shit out. And you know, for me, it was screaming like somebody was hacking me up with a machete, right? I remember. I see a lot of that. I mean, the guys are screaming bloody murder. Uh you know, guys are flopping around and moaning. Sometimes they say some crazy stuff. Um, sometimes it they babble gibberish. Once in a while, a guy'll jump up and you know try to run around and stuff. It can get a little athletic there sometimes. Good news is a guy who's deep in a five MEO DMT, though he may be energetic, isn't real tactical or yeah. So it's pretty fun to have, you know, I'm taking it all pro linebacker down like, come on, bro, we got to get down, you know. But it's good, that's what you want. That neurological reset is necessary. Um and it and it's amazing because it's a short acting medicine. You know, you have five to seven minutes on the first one, maybe seven to twelve on the second, and you know, that's half an hour per patient, maybe. Yeah. And you get a new man. Yeah.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:00:13

It's incredible. Yeah. What are the conversations like after uh when the group gets together after that?

Mark "Slider" Keller: 1:00:19

Well, that's where the woo starts coming in. Okay. You know, because then guys start recognizing, you know, that their fundamental nature is is consciousness or or love or some kind of energetic vibrations or something. You know, maybe you're not woo, but you you now understand, like, I'm not me. That's not me. And the way I like to say it to people is you know that voice in your head that never shuts up. That's not you. That that's a product of a big blob of neurons inside your gourd there. You are the listener. The real you is listening to that voice, and that's you're experiencing this life through this thing in your skull, you know? That gives you the opportunity to detach from it.

unknown: 1:01:04

Right.

Mark "Slider" Keller: 1:01:05

When you realize, and you know, obviously we're pretty far down looking at the neuroscience and all that stuff. Yeah. Your brain's just a pattern recognition engine. It's it's actually it's funny, I want to call it dumb. I almost said your brain is dumb. It it it it's I mean, it's fantastically complex and we don't understand it. It's miraculous what it does. So I don't want to say dumb, but there's more information in our environment than we are able to perceive because it's not necessary for propagation of the species. Right. Right? Evolution has has pushed us to develop brains that allow us to continue on. They are not optimized for us to understand the nature of this construct. Twee operated, right? And that's once you come to understand that, then well, you know, how many years have we spent now digging into this stuff? It's been phenomenal. Yeah, probably the rest of your life you're gonna be trying to figure this out. Yeah. Yeah.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:02:02

So okay. Uh Thursday night, they stay the night, and then uh Friday they depart. Is it written?

Mark "Slider" Keller: 1:02:07

Yeah, Friday morning. Um yeah, we get packed up, we debrief the five MEO. Uh you know, maybe throw them a little wisdom.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:02:15

How do they look, man? What's the what do you I mean you get to watch snapshots throughout the week, but what's it what do they look like on Friday?

Mark "Slider" Keller: 1:02:22

So, you know, there was a time there where we would take a before and after photo. So they would come in, we'd stand them against a spot on the wall. You know, we wanted to be consistent with lighting, the same background and stuff, and we would do before and after. Oh my god. Um we stopped doing it because it's just one more thing we're trying to cram into the week. It's a busy week. Um, you know, we just stopped doing that. But you know, I can tell you anecdotally lines on faces smooth out, color returns to people's skin. Uh the whites of eyes clear up. For people with light colored eyes, they they seem to brighten. Blue-eyed guys have very bright blue eyes when they leave there. They're smiling, they're laughing, they're happy, they're energetic. You know, there's always a guy who comes in as the quiet one. That guy's cutting up Friday morning when I walk in. I mean, they just are rejuvenated. Now, there are some people who don't recover right away. Um, you know, on my last one, my my energy was way down for a good solid week. I was happy, but I was dragging pretty bad. Um, you know, that happens sometimes. Sometimes there are guys who are still kind of in it a little bit even on Friday, and you know, we generally offer them an extra night. You know, we'll put them up and feed them and all that stuff. You know, if if they're not if they're still feeling a little wobbly, that happens. Um it's not abnormal. It's some people recover that way. Um but yeah, they're completely different. And that's and that's where the joy of this I mean the satisfaction from that. Yeah. You see these broken dudes coming in, they often cry in the welcome circle, and then they're walking about talking about how much they can't wait to see their wife, and they love their kids, and I'm getting rid of that stupid job, and I'm not drinking anymore, and holy crap, I don't want my cigarettes and you know, whatever.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:04:23

I mean there's a lot of enthusiasm. I tell you, it's amazing. I stopped drinking for two years afterwards. I stopped drinking sodas amazing. It it's I it's not why I went in there, right?

Mark "Slider" Keller: 1:04:34

I mean, you never know. You don't want to do things that are unhealthy for yourself. Yeah, yeah. And you don't realize, maybe walking in the door, how much how many things you do are unhealthy. Like all of a sudden you're interested in food. I I want to, you know, it's kind of funny.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:04:46

We're doing a podcast now, but thinking about it, the guys have been down there that have podcasts. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Just about everybody who's gone down to Ambio has a podcast. Right. Marcus, uh, Sean Ryan.

unknown: 1:04:58

Right?

Mark "Slider" Keller: 1:04:59

It's so this is the thing. You know, the you take someone who's been in the abyss, and all of a sudden they're back in the sunshine. Yeah. There is a tremendous sense of accomplishment and a discovery. You know, it's a big eureka when you come out of that back into the sunshine, and people want to evangelize. People walk out of there and they want to scream it from the rooftops. I certainly did that. Yeah. I do have some regrets about that.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:05:30

Yeah, you need to temper yourself a little bit. I know you talk about this and why. So can you bring that up?

Mark "Slider" Keller: 1:05:38

Yeah, the main reason why I say I have I do not have regrets about forgiving myself for not being ashamed of what I've been through or anything like that. And you know, it was very therapeutic for me to uh, you know, just tell my story and all the crap I'd been through, you know, going back to giving permission to be broken and ask for help and all that stuff. But um, there's a couple elements here. One is when you come out and went, I did this exotic drug from Africa and I met God and you know what now I'm happy. You went to Tijuana to do that. Well, people yeah, I went to Tijuana, did a bunch of drugs, and now I'm happy. Like a lot of people just they're not ready to hear that. Yeah. They don't understand it and and that's okay. They just don't have the experience to understand or even really want to understand that, you know. So that's one thing. And I certainly had some people step away from me going, Oh, yeah. Some crazy shit. Like, okay. I w I I wish I hadn't done that. But you're so excited about it, you're so happy. You know, for me, I mean, I had a good decade of just being in a really dark place, you know, and and so the happiness is new and exciting, and you want to share it, and that's uh you mean well. But there's there can be a problem with that. And you know, people walking away isn't the problem. The problem is uh this profound mystical experience, you know, these visions. I met my ancestors, I toured the universe, I walked with Jesus, you know, what whatever, I re-experienced my birth, all these crazy things that happened. Those are fun to talk about. That's why people talk about those things. They go on podcasts and they say all this stuff, but the reality is that visual experience doesn't have anything to do with whether the IBA game worked or not. There are plenty of people who go in there, don't see shit or do and can't remember it, I think. And a couple weeks later, you know, their life is a lot better. And there is a some percentage of guys who go home and or women who go home convinced that it didn't work, and their spouse is like, dude, yeah, like thank God you went. Like sometimes we just don't can't see ourselves. Yeah, you know, for some guys the healing is more subtle. But you know, guys don't tell you, yeah, I went there, I saw some random shit, it didn't make any sense, but a couple weeks later my life got better. That's just not interesting. But that's more typical. Yeah. It's much more typical. I mean, you know, so it's it's kind of a shame that people come in with these expectations of being in a Star Wars movie, and but instead they just felt like shit, puked, slept all day, and they feel a little better.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:08:22

So I'm I'm looking at my phone right now just to look at the Connor McGregor tweet. 5.1 million views in the last less than 24 hours, right? So that's a lot of press for Ambio because he mentions Ambio right here. I traveled to Tijuana, Mexico and underwent IBEGAN treatment at Ambio. We also know we had Norman Uler on their podcast uh you know twice. Um Norman went down there. Uh we'll have him back on soon to talk about that experience, what what he's writing about with the uh Stone Sapiens. Uh but I do want to get back to this. What does this mean to Ambio? And let me add something else in here. Uh about two weeks ago or three weeks ago now, in Waves and War, uh the movie documentary that uh came out on documentary, or excuse me, on Netflix, uh it got airborne. Uh what has it done for demand? What are you seeing right now?

Mark "Slider" Keller: 1:09:08

Yeah, so it's you know, awareness. You know, you and I have been close to this, and a lot, you know, a lot of our friends and and and colleagues have been very close to this for some years now. And so, you know, it's easy for it to seem like, oh, the world knows about Ivy game now. Well, no, they don't. Nobody knows about Ivy. I mean, even people who are, you know, in my second circle of friends, you know, I put this stuff out on social media, I talk about it all the time, and they still don't know. Yeah. You know, people are just they're busy with their lives, and if they're not close to someone who's been through that big thing. But everybody knows what 6'7 is right now. 6'7. But anyway, we're pointing out the absurdity of of uh of our civilization. Yeah. Uh no, so people don't know. Yeah. Awareness. I mean, people just don't know about IBGane. So yeah, when a Rick Perry comes out and advocates for it, when a Marcus Luttrell, a Marcus Capone, uh, a Leshemski, uh, you know, all these guys, uh, certainly Conham or McGregor comes through there. I mean, um yeah, it means a lot because he's legitimate. Yeah. You know, that's you know, I'll give credit where credit's too. Uh, you know, a friend of ours went through an Ibogaine treatment very, very early, you know, in 2021. I mean, hardly anyone knew about it at this point. That's what just getting started. And it was because he came back and you know talked about how positive that experience was that we were willing to go. You know, because up to that point I would have said that's some long hair, hippie bullshit. You know. Uh turns out it's not. Um but you know, that trust, uh that trust, someone who's credible, you know, telling you yes, this actually works has a lot of value. And you know, obviously he has a huge platform. Um Netflix is a huge platform. Joe Rogan's a huge platform. You know, Sean Ryan's a huge platform, right? So Trevor did that. Uh Trevor Miller, one of the founders at Ambio, did that Sean Ryan podcast. It was an early one, like to get the episode number, maybe like 36 or something like that. Um, Ambio really started blowing up because of that podcast. Um, you know, and it's that growth that led to me going out there to do the do this work. I mean, you know, they just couldn't do it themselves. They had to start hiring and training people. So, you know, I'm in that first wave of of hosts who aren't Trevor and Jonathan and Deanna.

Speaker 1: 1:11:40

Yeah.

Mark "Slider" Keller: 1:11:40

Um I think we were getting I don't know how many applications we were getting at that point, but when Brian Hubbard and Rick Perry went on Rogan, that episode was about opioid addiction. It was not about And we didn't even talk about that today. That's right. No, we haven't even touched that. But that episode was about the opioid problem and it was not about ambio. Um you know, and Brian mentioned Ambio one time in that podcast. We in we got, I think, 450 applications within 48 hours of him saying the word ambio on Rogan. We sustained, I think, 40 applications a day ever since then. Okay. In Waves and War came out, what, two weeks ago? It was released on Netflix. Um, for those of you who don't know, in Waves of War is a documentary that was shot at Ambio back in 2023 with uh Matt Marcus Capone, Maddie Roberts, D DJ Shipley, all the SEALs who went through the program. And it's you know mostly about Maddie, but you know, it just follows a guy guy through there. A very well-done movie. It's it's really good. Uh I encourage everybody to watch it, particularly if you don't know anything about IPGA. I mean, I think anyone it should be interesting to anyone. That movie came out. We're we're over a hundred applications a day now. But these are not veterans, these are everybody, right?

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:13:12

This is just applications. Okay. I actually don't know the breakdown on that. Okay. Um, let's talk about that because this is not I mean I imagine there are people that want to go down there for the novelty. And there are some people who do that.

Mark "Slider" Keller: 1:13:26

We're starting to see more I don't want to say tourists, but you know, people who aren't uh suicidal or you know, fun functional people who just want to improve their lives or they have an injury, they're you know, brain injury they want to fix. But it's not it's not impacting the veterans that can get down there, right? No, you know, most of the veterans who come through are sponsored by uh you know some kind of charitable organization. Most of them by Vets, Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions. Um First Responders are coming through the Casey Scudden 343 Fund, which is a similar organization just with a different population. Um I'm not aware of any charitable organizations that's you know just gonna send Joe, the civilian, down there. So these people tend to be self-pay. Um but I mean everybody's got trauma. You don't need to be a seal to be traumatized. You know, you don't uh we focus on those populations because they're the most desperate. But I mean look at how the world is. Oh yeah. You know, there's a lot of people suffering. Uh we we don't have a healthy society, you know, and uh mental health is just a massive problem. And uh, you know, people are starting to realize that these modalities work. Um you know, there's other modalities too. You know, uh you know, mushrooms are very safe, you can do them at home without you know you don't even really need a lot of supervision. But we're not saying you should go do that right now, by the way. Well, I'm not telling you to do something that's gonna be illegal and possibly uh end up you know leave you incarcerated, but um, you know, there's there's a bunch of psychedelic modalities, and each one has its purpose and we're kind of works on different things and is you know different levels of intensity and commitment and time and cost and all those things. So, you know, picking uh the right modality is you know, some people are working on that. I've seen a couple of things, but we've been saying this for years. Uh me in particular, because I have all this stuff out on you know Instagram and Spotify and all that stuff. I have random people coming to me all the time saying, uh, I heard your story and oh my God, this is what I'm dealing with. The answer isn't always I have a game. Right. Right, right. You know, um and figuring out go working out, man. Go, go, go walk, go do something. Fresh air, sunshine, clean food, and exercise. Yeah. I mean, if you don't have lots of those three things in your life, go fix yourself. Yeah, you know, yeah. Um because that that gets a lot done. But we're so you know, I think the consumerism drives us to work. They want a magic pill, yeah. But then this is not a magic pill. This is not no, it's not. Yeah.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:16:10

Let's talk about uh so it's you have to go out of the country to do this at the moment. We're hoping that will change. Texas is kind of taking the lead on this, Colorado is right behind them. Yeah, um Arizona. Yeah, um and our federal government's still be still behind. The federal government's still behind on this, but the states are coming around to it. Uh what's it look like uh for Ambio coming out of Mexico? What's what's happening, if anything?

Mark "Slider" Keller: 1:16:37

Yeah, I mean the world needs ibogaine. Uh you know, I can say with some confidence that Ambio has established themselves as the you know the leading uh uh expert and certainly as a business is way ahead. Um so yeah, I mean we want to make this available to as many people on this planet as we can. There are plenty of places uh where ibogaine is legal outside the United States, uh obviously Mexico. But uh and I think Ambio is always gonna have a a robust operation there. Um but we just opened a clinic in Malta. Um it's it's legal there, and we found some physicians who are I mean, they actually came to us and they, you know, they were interested in this, and um, you know, we've trained them. Uh they came through our program, and uh, you know, Trevor is uh I think Jose are going over there. They're gonna train those guys. We're taking patients in January in Malta. Okay. Um, is there a c we think there's probably a Colorado clinic coming. That one's not locked in, and there's you know, still some legislative stuff around that. But um yeah, the intent Ambio's intent is to is to make an ibogaine prevail available anywhere we can do so legally. Um the U.S. federal government is standing in the way and you know, getting Well it's it may not be the government, it may be something else, right?

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:18:00

It may be those that are pumping money into our politicians'.

Mark "Slider" Keller: 1:18:04

Well, there are financial interests that don't want that. This is the one that they influence our politicians. Right. So this is a horrible business model to make people healthy. It's a terrible business model because you know one of the things I see all the time is guys walk in on three, six, ten psychotropic meds. I mean, uh to have a gallon freezer bag full of pills when a guy walks in the door is not unusual. By the way, I have not met a single guy or or woman coming through there with those pills that said that anyone made their lives better. Yeah. Nobody says that. As a matter of fact, in most cases, it makes things worse. I see guys walk out the door and throw those pills away all the time. Yeah. Okay, so these are people who have been told, you know, usually by the VA or some other physician, but you know, that they're gonna be on all these meds for the rest of their lives to manage their symptoms, but they're never going after the root causes and they don't make things better. So, you know, if I'm a pharmaceutical manufacturer and I'm concerned with my bottom line, I don't want ibogaine. It's bad for business. Yeah. Like really bad for business. Um, and so there's uh a problem with incentives there. Yeah. Um, the other thing is uh, you know, we bring this to the United States, for example, it's gonna cost 10 times as much. Right? We you know medical personnel, I mean, that's the biggest expense, honestly. Uh you know, and then additional licensing and compliance costs and all this stuff. In the United States, it's gonna cost almost 10 times as much. Well, how do you make it accessible to you know an E4 who's living under a bridge of button? You know, it's not the charitable organizations would need to raise ten times as much money. What I think it is is we've got to get insurance companies to pay for this. Yeah, it's it's safe, effective, inexpensive, durable, you know, the outcomes are great. Oh, insurance companies should be really happy about that because it you know it saves them money. No, it doesn't. It reduces the volume of business. So insurance companies have no incentive for you to get well either. Yeah. And you know, people talk about this all the time. You know, it's not like there's some dude with horns and an evil lair, you know, who happens to be CEO of the company.

unknown: 1:20:22

Right.

Mark "Slider" Keller: 1:20:23

You know, that's not what's going on. It's just the incentives don't drive us to to the best outcomes. Right. It's just a screwed up system of incentives. We we've got to fix the system of incentives, is the problem.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:20:36

Yeah. No. Well, hey, Mark, this has been a lot of fun. Uh I know we just kind of did this impromptu today. Uh you're in town uh for Thanksgiving, which is really cool.

Mark "Slider" Keller: 1:20:45

Happy Thanksgiving.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:20:46

We've had a lot yeah, yeah. No, this has been awesome. Um huge opportunity to sit down and shoot the shit with you on this because of you know the the ex post or formerly known as tweet by uh Connor McGregor. I was like, hey, and you posted that on your Facebook last night. I'm like, let's let's talk about this. I think this is a great way to understand a different perspective as a host. You get to see this every single week, you know?

Mark "Slider" Keller: 1:21:07

Yeah. And we didn't even talk about the neuro program. The what program? The neuro program. What's that? Yeah. So I you know, I work in the five-day program, we used to call the psychospiritual programs, the foundational program. You also have the neuro program. Um, you know, and we get tons of TBIs. Like we treat TBIs in the five-day program for sure. But the neuro program is more tailored towards MS Parkinson's, uh ALS, Alzheimer's. As a matter of fact, it's it's looking like pretty much any neurological disorder. So this is a Brett Favre thing, right? Yeah, Brett Favre has Parkinson's. Okay. Um, you know, we had Clay Walker, country music legend. Clay Walker came through um uh with MS. Um you know, Lindsay, who runs uh our neuro program, has M to MS herself. Um you know, she's been almost two years mostly symptom-free by you know, she did some upfront stuff. There's some bigger doses up front and some mini doses, and but ongoing. It's microdosing ibogaine, and she's doing extremely well. So she's running that program with deep, yeah, personal understanding of that.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:22:16

Man, I have to say this. I remember years ago when you did a podcast, you're a little uncomfortable. And then today, man, you're you're you're ready for prime time, like keynotes and all that. Is there any uh talk about putting you out in front of people? More? I mean, what what you're speaking at a lot of conferences now, right?

Mark "Slider" Keller: 1:22:33

Yeah, I've yeah, th through various pathways. Uh yeah, I've I've been in front of some people. Um you know, I want my my story, the things I've been through and what I've learned through that to be available to people so hopefully they can get through it quicker if they you know if they're on that road. Yeah. Um or maybe avoid it even. Um you know, I just need I need all my all my suffering to mean something. Um so yeah, I'm very happy to go out there and tell my story. And um, you know, I am not an official Ambios spokesperson um at this moment. So anything I've said here is Mark Keller, not Ambios by the way. But um I I think that's about to change.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:23:15

Well, that's great. Well, hey, appreciate it. I'm gonna uh wrap this up here. We went for like an hour and fifteen minutes, which is pretty good. Um and and it's not even what we wanted to talk about today, but there's a lot to talk about. A lot of interesting things are happening around us. But anyway, uh thanks again, Mark. We'll uh see you ever soon. Yeah, brother.