EFR 907: Why Men Are (Quietly) Giving Up - Modern Masculinity in the US and Promising Mental Health Therapies with Benjamin Forest
Ever Forward Radio with Chase Chewning
Chase Chewning
5 • 927 Ratings
🗓️ 11 November 2025
⏱️ 58 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this moving Veterans Day episode of Ever Forward Radio, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Benjamin Forest opens up about his personal battle with depression, grief, and identity loss after 25 years of service — and how psychedelics became a catalyst for healing, love, and authentic living. He and Chase explore the mental-health crisis among veterans, the epidemic of loneliness and suppressed emotion in men, and how plant medicine, breathwork, and community can help reconnect us to meaning and purpose. Forest shares insights from his book Trip of a Lifetime: The Psychedelic Guide to Healing, Loving & Living, explaining that true recovery requires vulnerability, relational healing, and learning to open the heart — whether through psychedelics or other integrative practices.
Follow Ben @benjamin.forest.bliss
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00:00 – Introduction & U.S. mental-health statistics
02:22 – A cultural depression: loneliness, disconnection & anxiety
04:29 – Playing a role vs. discovering the authentic self
07:07 – The military, identity, and emotional suppression
10:30 – Masculinity, vulnerability, and the loneliness epidemic
13:00 – Grief, alcohol, and the cost of unprocessed emotion
15:30 – Healthy masculinity and belonging after service
18:00 – The biology of belonging & the need for community
20:10 – Losing identity and brotherhood after leaving the military
23:10 – Lessons learned from 25 years in uniform
24:30 – Healing, loving, and living: wounds and relational repair
27:30 – Learning to love well and open the heart
28:45 – Doing life "right" and rediscovering joy
31:00 – Psychedelics as heart-openers & catalysts for healing
34:30 – Veterans leading the way for psychedelic legalization
38:40 – Alternatives to psychedelics: breathwork & somatic therapy
44:00 – Integration: applying lessons after the trip
46:50 – The danger of ego, money, and misuse in plant-medicine circles
49:50 – Writing Trip of a Lifetime and lessons learned
54:30 – Advice to young service members: asking for help is strength
56:16 – What "Ever Forward" means to Benjamin Forest
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Episode resources:
- Watch and subscribe on YouTube
- Learn more about Benjamin
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following is an Operation Podcast production. Just this year, almost 20% of U.S. adults reported |
| 0:07.8 | currently having or being treated for depression. That projects to almost 48 million Americans. |
| 0:15.9 | And symptoms of depression among these adults have increased from about this 18 to 20% in 2019 to now 22%. |
| 0:23.6 | When I look around at this society, I see a very disconnected, lonely, and angry population in general. |
| 0:33.6 | I think we have a society that encourages anxiety. I think we have a society that encourages depression. |
| 0:41.3 | I am a true believer in plant medicine. |
| 0:43.1 | You cannot argue with the data. |
| 0:45.2 | And I think that's really important. |
| 0:46.7 | The data is so compelling that even the skeptics need to pay attention to it. |
| 0:52.0 | Five years ago, when I walked into the emergency room of a VA hospital |
| 0:57.4 | and asked for help, that was the moment that changed my life. That was being honest. Ask early on |
| 1:05.4 | and save yourself from going through the pain that I went through. Hi, I'm Benjamin Forrest, retired military officer and author of Trip of a Lifetime, |
| 1:14.2 | the psychedelic Guide to Healing, Loving and Living, and This is Ever Forward. |
| 1:25.7 | Lieutenant Colonel in the house. |
| 1:30.2 | The salute, indoor salute. |
| 1:32.2 | Oh, man, I haven't done that in a minute. |
| 1:34.9 | Well, you know, as we're going live here, Veterans Day, 2025, happy Veterans Day to you, Benjamin. |
| 1:39.2 | Yeah, happy Veterans Day to you as well. |
| 1:40.7 | I found some pretty wild stats when researching kind of just, you know, |
| 1:45.8 | in America last few years, key mental health statistics, looking at depression, anxiety, |
| 1:51.3 | mental illness and treatment rates, even mental health crisis events. In 2025, just this year, |
| 1:57.9 | almost 20% of U.S. adults reported currently having or being treated for |
... |
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