TESTIMONIALS

The Mission Within is what it is today because of veterans and their families whose lives were transformed by this program.

Having access and connecting with others who are dealing with similar experiences to me helped normalize the experience for me. It made me realize that what I was going through wasn’t only mine.

– Navy SEAL Participant

Having access and connecting with others who are dealing with similar experiences to me helped normalize the experience for me. It made me realize that what I was going through wasn’t only mine.

– Navy SEAL Participant

The staff at The Mission Within have an ability to listen and understand that most people… don’t. Most people listen as a courtesy. All the staff at The Mission Within they truly listen and they understand the pains that you’re in, and they are just really good at facilitating everything that happened down there.
— 4 year Army Special Ops
The Mission Within are the right people. They have the love and compassion and the right reasons. They’ve created a safe container and they are healing people.
- 26 Year Navy SEAL, Retired
When you are in the throws of suicidal thoughts and depression you feel you’re all alone - that no one is going through what you’re going through. Then you come to The Mission Within and realize that you are there with brothers and sisters who have the same problems, despite very different experiences than you. The more the weekend went along the easier it was to open up. Hearing the other guys’ stories before and after treatment was an awakening.
— 4 year Army Special Ops
They just create a really safe space and pristine environment to take it all in and be present.
- Emily - 8 Year Air Force Explosive Ordinance Tech
When I first heard of The Mission Within I didn’t trust it. But I knew guys that I walked through literally fire with. I knew them at their worst, but now they were different human beings. They are connected to themselves, they can love the people around them. And these were some angry mother fuckers, just like me - at war with the world. But talking with them and seeing them just be at peace, I saw alright, there’s something to this.
- 26 Year Navy SEAL, Retired
The Mission Within has that. Guys are showing up on the same damn page, whether they are a 26 year Command Master Chief or a 3-4 year veteran SEAL. It doesn’t matter. They all go to The Mission Within to arrive at the same space. They have arrived at the conclusion that they don’t have the answers, and they are reaching for help. They are ready for it. That makes all the difference.
- 17 year Navy SEAL medic
When I discovered The Mission Within it was either this or death for me. And I thought I was dying under the medicine, but it was the death of my ego. It let me let go of everything, and when I did that, when I fully surrendered, that’s when I saw the light, so to speak. Everything clicked for me then and since.
- 26 year Navy SEAL, retired
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How VETERANS feel about their experience and healing:

The process gave me the insights I needed and was the catalyst for change that helped me get over my addictions, find peace with my trauma and now have the tools and capacity to work through and thrive.

– 17 year Navy SEAL medic

The process gave me the insights I needed and was the catalyst for change that helped me get over my addictions, find peace with my trauma and now have the tools and capacity to work through and thrive.

– 17 year Navy SEAL medic

I ran through the usual treatment gamut: therapy and scripts, which were bandaids on top of bandaids. All they did was keep me numb and comfortable, but all of it was masking everything.
- 20 year Navy SEAL
Trust comes from word of mouth from brothers and sisters in the community. When you hear that it has more value than it does if you don’t know the person or the people.
- 17 Year Navy SEAL, medic
Integration is just as important as the journey, if not more so. On the retreat you go through something that is truly life changing, but you must have the tools and support that allows you to channel it while you continue to do the work.
- Psychedelic RN for the Mission Within
For everything I went through, from childhood and sexual trauma, and my work in the military, I was not occupying my body in a really, really long time. I just had this great space to come back into my body and stretch, it was such a healing experience. I could feel the medicine working its way through my body, but my body was doing it. It was like my own body giving itself a deep tissue massage. I felt like I was called back into my body for the first time in a really long time. I was able to cut old energy chords that were no longer serving me. I didn’t know all of this at the time, but it was the start and it’s been amazing since.
Emily - 8 Year Air Force Explosive Ordinance Tech
The whole experience definitely help me see things, and look at myself, more subjectively. It’s such a hard thing to find words to explain, but I know that the experience - the whole thing - literally saved me life. I just can’t find the words to explain it. The specific experience will be different for everyone, but the healing it allows will be the same. It will not show you what you want, it’ll show you what you need.
4 Year Army Special Ops
In all medicine the 2 essential elements you need in a viable healer and patient relationship are trust and safety. If you can create safety and trust you have something to work with. When you lose those two things, I don’t care who are you, you are not going to help that person. It’s a very spiritual, deep connection between the healer, the establishment, the environment and the person going in there.
- 17 year Navy SEAL medic
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WHAT VETERANS SAY about The Mission Within’s Process:

The Ibogaine opened my eyes to my inward self and showed me what brought me to this moment in time. The 5-MeO-DMT connected me back to who I used to be before the trauma and who I wanted to be.

– 20 year Army, 13 year Delta Force Veteran

The Ibogain opened my eyes to my inward self and showed me what brought me to this moment in time. The 5-MeO-DMT connected me back to who I used to be before the trauma and who I wanted to be.

– 20 year Army, 13 year Delta Force Veteran

We work really hard on deprogramming. So many of us walk through life with a perceived sense of stability or control. We have to be able to drop that, because we’re wrong so often. Very rarely are we actually right about what’s going to happen. Our process is not a cure all, but a catalyst for change that creates the necessary conditions for change at a subconscious level.
- Katie LaRoe - Therapist
Preparation is important because, one, we don’t want participants to be caught off guard by what comes up, but instead be able to navigate what the medicine is showing. We want them to be able to come into a place of being the observer, and being able to surrender and be able to accept the messages that are coming or, worse, suppress it. Suppression is already happening, it’s what brought them into the state they are in to begin with. They just need the ability and skills they need to move through what is presenting as emotionally, psychologically and physically within the journey itself. The preparation gives them the skills they need to move through this journey.
Healing begins in the process, but truly happens in the community you connect to as a part of it.
- Emily - 8 Year Air Force Explosive Ordinance Tech
I love The Mission Within’s intake process. They have amazing logistics team and make you feel really safe and looked after.
- 20 year Army, 13 year Delta Force Veteran
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TESTIMONIALS ABOUT THE DIFFERENCE FROM TRADITIONAL TREATMENTS:

Traditional medicine just puts you on a bunch of drugs. And these are at best, a temporary fix. But without any follow up or integration - then throw in opiates for chronic pain, its a perfect recipe for failure.

– 26 Year Navy SEAL, Retired

Traditional medicine just puts you on a bunch of drugs. And these are at best, a temporary fix. But without any follow up or integration - then throw in opiates for chronic pain, its a perfect recipe for failure.

– 26 Year Navy SEAL, Retired

Traditional treatments for PTSD, in my own and many other veteran experiences, only numb you out and soon you are a shell of a human being. This isn’t treatment at all but a drug-heavy bandaid just trying, at best, to keep you breathing but not healing. Working with The Mission Within, the Ibogain gave me enough space outside of myself to understand what I needed to do, while the 5meO-DMT gave me the power to commit to and do it.
- 7 year Navy SEAL, E6 Special Operator First Class. 140 Combat Missions
These are not drugs, they are medicines. 
Medicines heal. 
Drugs numb.
- 30 Year Navy SEAL, Command Action Chief
The VA doesn’t have a healing process. They give you a bunch of different shit and to come back in couple of months.
- 7 year Navy SEAL Veteran, E6 Special Operator First Class. 140 Combat Missions
We have very strict preparation, screening, on site and follow up safeguards in place. People should know that these are not addictive drugs, They aren’t party drugs. They aren’t even something you take continuously like a prescription, but once or maybe twice, to create the space you need to start your healing.
- Dr. Martín Polanco - Founder, The Mission Within
Most meds, whether you are self-medicating or professionally managed, are designed to only give temporary relief. Plant medicine empowers you to go in and see and feel and heal the trauma. It allows you to let go of the burdens, so that you can actually start to heal, without ongoing medicine.
- 20 year Navy SEAL
The medicine helped me break through - it was tough - it was a struggle. Now I realize that it was God calling me to this line of work because it’s the best option we have for veterans who need to deprogram. Right now, without these medicines, too many are only finding a solution through suicide. That’s why I believe in this work so much.
- 17 year Navy SEAL medic
My first experience with the medicine was like a giant God hug. It was incredible.
- 26 Year Navy SEAL, Retired
I was so ready for letting go and accepting what was coming was easy for me, as I had already given up. The medicine allowed me to see all these scenes in my mind over my life that had affected me permanently somehow, further down the road. Seeing that allowed me to forgive myself, it allowed me to tell myself “It’s ok, you can let that go now.”
- 4 Year Army Special Ops
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INTEGRATION IS KEY:

If you don’t put in the work the medicine will fade and you can just fall back into the ruts you were in before.

– 26 year Navy SEAL, retired

If you don’t put in the work the medicine will fade and you can just fall back into the ruts you were in before.

– 26 year Navy SEAL, retired

Expectations are really just a narrative that we create in our minds. Participants should be ready to drop expectations as much as possible and just allow what needs to unfold, to unfold. We unpack that later to create meaning and help the participants understand it on a deeper lever.
- Psychedelic RN for the Mission Within
Integration is just as important as the journey, if not more so. On the retreat you go through something that is truly life changing, but you must have the tools and support that allows you to channel it while you continue to do the work.
- Psychedelic RN for the Mission Within
These medicines are not a panacea that will fix everything automatically or instantly, but are a vital and incredible tool in which participants can come face to face with their true trauma, so that healing can then being. It will show you what you what your patterns are and help to reduce and relieve some of the semantic presentation of how trauma is held in the body. From there, because it clears that space, it allows an opening to be able to create new patterns and establish better habits going forward. But it just opens the door.
- Katie LaRoe, Therapist
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