PT508 – The Veteran Community and Operator Syndrome: Psychedelics and Redefining Pain Management, with Tommy Aceto
Psychedelics Today
Psychedelics Today, LLC
4.6 • 598 Ratings
🗓️ 30 April 2024
⏱️ 74 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode, Joe and special guest, Court Wing, interview Tommy Aceto: former Navy Seal and trauma medic, NCAA athlete, Michigan State Champion Wrestler, and now, psychedelic advocate and ambassador for the Veteran Mental Health Leadership Coalition.
He discusses his journey from childhood to wanting to become a SEAL, and the toll that military life and its programming can take on a person: how a life built on high levels of endurance, deprivation, and constantly surviving in a fight-or-flight mindset often manifests in Operator Syndrome, chronic pain, depression, and addiction. Veterans are seeing the potential of psychedelics to rewire their brains and allow them to process pain differently, by allowing them to feel emotions they were trained to turn off: "You've got to feel to heal."
Aceto discusses:
- The affirmation and approval many who join the military seek, and how that often translates into needing to stay at certain levels of risk to truly feel alive
- The similarities between soldiers and professional athletes and high performers
- Dealing with chronic pain, and how forcing movement is often the best tactic
- The Controlled Substances Act and how opioids became a business
- Why the most important thing vets can do today is to tell their healing stories
and more!
For links, head to the show notes page.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, everybody and welcome back to psychedelics today. This is Joe Moore coming at you from |
| 0:16.7 | Breckenrich, Colorado today on the show. We have Tommy Acido, who is a retired Navy SEAL and a major |
| 0:24.1 | contributor to the psychedelic space. He's got some very interesting lived experience. He's got some |
| 0:29.7 | amazing stuff to share here in this episode. We also have court wing joining us to talk a little bit about |
| 0:35.8 | the chronic pain that can come from people who push themselves so hard in the psychedelic movement. So very, not necessarily in the psychedelic movement, people who push themselves really hard. And as a result, their nervous system and bodies can be in a really rough situation before they get to a treatable situation. So we talk a lot about that, talk about |
| 0:55.5 | performance, and yeah, the veteran situation in America. So I hope you all enjoy this one. I sure |
| 1:01.8 | did. Thank you, Tommy, for making it. And I hope we can do a bunch more together. All right, |
| 1:06.0 | everybody, enjoy this episode. And we will see on the other side. |
| 1:12.5 | Hey, this is David Drabkin, Director of Education at Psychedelics today. |
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