PTSD, Pills, & Ibogaine - The Drug That Can Cure Heroin Addiction In a Weekend? | Ep 219

Get a Grip Podcast

PJ Wright shares his journey from a traumatic childhood marked by parental alcoholism to a decorated career as an Air Force special operations aerial gunner.

Key takeaways

• PJ Wright served as an Air Force Master Sergeant and aerial gunner on MH-53 Pave Low helicopters, deploying to Desert Storm, South Korea, and Afghanistan where his crew earned a Distinguished Flying Cross.
• After retiring at 42, he struggled with severe PTSD, depression, and anxiety, leading to heavy use of Xanax, Ambien, Celexa, and up to 3,600 mg/day of gabapentin.

Main topics

• Childhood trauma and family dysfunction
• Military service and special operations deployment

Notable quotes

Ibogaine's works on a bunch of different levels. So mentally, psychologically.

Conclusion

PJ Wright's journey underscores the potential of psychedelic-assisted therapy

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) Ibogaine's works on a bunch of different levels. So mentally, psychologically. Speaker 3 (0:10) It's likened to defragging a hard drive. Speaker 2 (0:14) Okay. Speaker 3 (0:15) So it's going in, it's finding those broken synapse connections, all this kind of stuff, and it's either shit canning them or fixing them. And then on a physical site, it resets all the receptors in your body. Speaker 2 (0:29) Hmm. Speaker 3 (0:30) Which... Speaker 3 (0:32) Opiate addicts. Yep. Speaker 3 (0:35) This stuff will cure an opiate addiction in a weekend. Speaker 1 (0:52) Hey, Lou, I've got a story I want to share on the podcast. How do I do that? Speaker 2 (0:55) Well, you can email us at getagrippodcast614 at gmail.com or fill out the form, fill in our link tree. Speaker 1 (1:00) What about if I just want to show our boys some love and support the podcast? You can Speaker 2 (1:03) follow us at official getagrippodcast on TikTok, Instagram, or Facebook to follow our short clips or YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts for our long forms. Speaker 1 (1:12) We're also on Speaker 2 (1:12) iHeartRadio. We're everywhere. What Speaker 1 (1:14) about a behind the scenes look at getagrippodcast? Speaker 2 (1:16) Snapchat's the place Speaker 1 (1:17) for that. I heard all the kids are doing it. Speaker 2 (1:19) Smash that like button and subscribe. Boop. All right, we are back with another episode of Get a Grip Podcast. And today we have PJ Wright, who flew in from Mesa, Arizona. Is that correct? Yes, sir. Thank you so much for coming, man. We're happy to have you. We were just talking before the show, before we went live here, and I'm excited to hear this. Yeah, it's Speaker 3 (1:40) got some twists and turns to it. Speaker 2 (1:41) Yeah, I'm excited. We always start at childhood. to give people an idea of what that looked like and how that affected your life. So let's go back to childhood and start there. Speaker 3 (1:51) All right. Well, yeah, I definitely started there. So I'm an older dude. I was born in 65. Okay. Out in Portland, Oregon. I was a one night stand. Speaker 2 (1:59) Really? Speaker 3 (1:59) Yeah. So I never knew my, I knew who my biological father was, but never interacted, interacted, never talked to him, nothing. And so that was kind of. Speaker 3 (2:12) You know, it left that mark in there, like where, you know, why kind of Speaker 2 (2:17) thing. Sure. Speaker 3 (2:19) Lived there Speaker 2 (2:19) until, well, when I turned five, my mom Speaker 3 (2:22) got married to a physicist. She actually was, she worked at the morgue and then worked at a university, and she met this cat, and his name's Don Wright, and they got married when I was five. Speaker 2 (2:35) Okay. Speaker 3 (2:36) We lived in a little two-bedroom house, and... Directly across the street was my little elementary school. It had baseball fields, and I would have to walk through those baseball fields. I went to kindergarten and first grade out there. Speaker 3 (2:55) I'd have my Hong Kong phooey or Partridge family lunchbox and I'd walk through there. But my folks were alcoholics. Speaker 2 (3:06) Okay. Speaker 3 (3:07) And a lot of domestic violence. Speaker 2 (3:11) You witnessed? Speaker 3 (3:12) Yeah, man. I would hide out in my room or in the closet. And these bleachers for that baseball field, I'm talking this like 30 feet out the front door. Right. So it was five years old and up to seven. I'd, when they'd start, I'd just go outside and sit on those bleachers, man. Yeah. Fell in love with baseball. That's how cool. But in 72, I was seven. Don got a job in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where they built the bomb and all that Manhattan project business. He's Speaker 2 (3:42) a Speaker 3 (3:42) physicist. And so we moved out to Los Alamos. Kind of a crazy little town. in the uh in the foothills of the hamas mountains it's beautiful it's gorgeous but sure but a really weird vibe you know it's like 20 000 people there but everybody pretty much works at the lab and nobody talks about their work interesting that's just makes for uh craziness actually um the drinking the domestic violence it it it amped up when we got out there especially um with the not talking about about their work at the laboratory my mom got a job as a secretary at the lab and then uh when i was 10 uh don adopted me so i took the last name right so it used to be my name used to be patrick john furby okay and so now it's patrick john right i'm 10 and uh really had some uh problems at that young age with identity. Like, who am I? What's going on? These kinds of things. And that shit's going on at home. And, uh, Third grade, I started playing baseball. So I was looking for any kind of team sport. An outlet. An outlet, some structure to it. Speaker 3 (4:59) And I carried on all the way until I graduated from high school in 1983. But along the way, you know, smoked some weed along the way, drinking. Never really did anything other than that. I was... Two things that were kind of my outlet at the house was playing guitar and art. And so, like I said, I graduated in 83. I had applied to go to an art school up in Denver, Colorado Institute of Art. And I got accepted. Speaker 3 (5:32) You know, all I wanted was out of that house, away from them. Yeah. Wanted to do my own thing. And, you know, we weren't poor by any stretch. You know, we were up in the middle class, but I had this thing in my head that I can't let them have that over me kind of deal, right? Speaker 2 (5:47) Yeah. So I joined the Speaker 3 (5:49) Army Reserves. Wow. And... What Speaker 2 (5:53) made you do that? Speaker 3 (5:54) You know, the recruiters came the senior year, and I kind of liked their pitch, and, you know, I didn't have to go off active duty anywhere except. And then it was you'd go to basic training one summer, and then the next summer you would go to your individual training. And it seemed like a perfect gig. The unit was in Santa Fe. Okay. And then, but, yeah, in June of 83, I shipped off to basic training. to uh south carolina fort jackson okay and man i've never been to the south Speaker 3 (6:31) humidity and bugs. Oh yeah. And the heat. Super humid. I had no idea, you know, coming from the desert. Where it's dry. Yeah. And, and Los Alamos being up kind of in the mountains, it was always, you know, the temperature wasn't too bad there, but. You know, I got there, I did the basic training thing. Speaker 2 (6:49) How was that for you? Speaker 3 (6:51) I liked it actually. Um, you know, basic sucks, but man, I was meeting people from all over the world. You lived there, you know, I lived a pretty sheltered life up there in Los Alamos. And so you're meeting all these kids from, from every state really. And it was like, wow, there's a world out here. Yeah. Yeah. Um, Speaker 3 (7:13) Did the whole basic training. We went out to, of course, my folks didn't come down for my graduation since I was in South Carolina. We did the big field graduation. Everybody's, you know, lined up out there and all that. We get back to the basic training barracks, and I have a message from the Red Cross. Speaker 3 (7:33) So I called home and I find out that my cousin had murdered my uncle. Whoa. Shot him in the head when he was high. Jesus. So I was scheduled to leave to fly back to New Mexico the next day anyway. So I flew to Albuquerque and I met my parents at the airport and we flew out to Southern Oregon for that funeral and everything. And yeah, that was, that was no bueno by any stretch. Yeah. Speaker 3 (8:02) And I didn't have any room to decompress from the basic training or any of that. Just straight into it. Speaker 2 (8:06) Just Speaker 3 (8:06) straight into it, yeah. So we get back a couple weeks. I load up my little Ford Pinto, and I drive up to Denver and start art school up there. So Speaker 2 (8:18) you did do the art school. Yeah, Speaker 3 (8:19) for sure. And a really great school it was. And I was kicking ass in it is what I was doing the first couple months. Speaker 3 (8:27) I had taken a job at a Tenneco gas station just to, you know, still thinking that little bit of money, right? Speaker 2 (8:33) Yeah, sure. Speaker 3 (8:34) I'm out working at the gas island one night, and that's when they would fill up the tank. It was kind of like full service. They put, you know, you fill up the tank, they got the old credit card reader that they have slide by thing. And so I'm filling up this Cadillac. I got the license plate pulled down in the back. That's where they used to fuel them. And this dude grabbed me by my left arm, spun me around, put a 45 in my ribs, said, give me all the money and don't make a sound. And I had like this little smock on kind of thing. And you're Speaker 2 (9:08) outside. Speaker 3 (9:09) Yeah. Right. And it's, I don't know, maybe nine o'clock at night. Right. And so I'm just like, take Speaker 2 (9:15) it, dude. Yeah. I mean, what's to you? Speaker 3 (9:19) 150 bucks. They don't dine or what? I don't even know if it was that much. Right. But it fucked me up pretty good. It freaked me out. Yeah. So I went back begrudgingly. I pulled out of school. I went back down to Los Alamos, and I was just working odd jobs, still trying to stay out of the house because their shenanigans were going on. I had a lot of friends that were down at New Mexico State University, down in Las Cruces, New Mexico. And every now and then, I'd drive down there, and we'd hang out, drink beer, and all that kind of stuff, right? I saw it down there one weekend, and my mom calls my buddy's dorm room. She had gotten the number from this guy's parents, because everybody knew everybody in Los Alamos. And when my mom had married Don, he brought three kids to the family, two brothers and a Speaker 2 (10:10) sister. Speaker 3 (10:11) And so my mom calls me, and my sister Dana had been killed out in a freak accident out on the coast of Oregon. And a big log had washed in on like a rogue wave, and it just crushed her. Speaker 2 (10:27) Whoa. Speaker 3 (10:28) Yeah. She was 19. This happened just... Beginning of 1984. Speaker 3 (10:35) um so yeah so i got these in a very short period of time i've got this murder this hold up and now my sister yeah so um and they would uh dana my older brother greg and my younger brother don would come out every summer so you know we were tight um So that really kicked me in the junk on that one, right? So I still had to go back to Georgia that next summer for that Army Tech School, which I was like, all right, Speaker 2 (11:10) get me out of here, man, Speaker 3 (11:11) right? So I went, and everything was cool down there that whole summer, except that school went a couple weeks longer than it was suspected or was supposed to. And I had registered to go to New Mexico State University. So I get back two weeks. I'm two weeks late to sign in down there. I go down there, I sign in, and there was no catching up. Speaker 3 (11:37) You know, and and I wasn't in the right mind to go to school anyway. Right. Speaker 2 (11:42) I'm Speaker 3 (11:43) like, fuck this, you know, drinking, smoking weed, whatever. Right. So I pulled out of school there, drove up to Albuquerque, moved in with some friends and just hung out working. I was working at a car lot doing stuff. And then I said, you know what? I know how this military thing works since I'd been to that, you know, army basic in that school. I don't want to go in the army full time because that would, you know, not my cup of tea really. They're doing that. But I went and talked to an Air Force recruiter. Okay. And so I was able to transfer straight from the army reserves into the active duty Air Force. Okay. This was 1985. Speaker 3 (12:26) The cool thing is I only had to go to like three weeks of basic training for the Air Force. Speaker 2 (12:31) So you did have to do basic again, though. But Speaker 3 (12:33) yeah, but it was like Speaker 2 (12:34) 15 work days. OK. Speaker 3 (12:37) And that was great, you know? And so I had my, my job in the air force, what I'd signed up to do was an armament system specialist on fighters and I got F-15s. And so I worked on that whole armament system and the school for that was at Lowry Air Force Base in Denver, which you'll hear in my, I seem to circle the Southwest quite a bit in my story. So I went there. And I think my tech school was like four months long and I really liked it. It was, it was way more than I thought it, you know, it was cool. Um, of course you couldn't smoke weed or any of that anymore, but the drinking age was 18 in Colorado because of the, the three, two beer. Speaker 2 (13:22) Yep. So it was a pretty damn good Speaker 3 (13:24) time. And Speaker 2 (13:25) my dad talking about three, two beer. Yeah. It's funny. Speaker 3 (13:28) Um, Speaker 3 (13:30) So I do this, I'm in this tech school and F-15s and 85, 86, they're the premier fighter jets. And, you know, and we had really cool bases all over, all over Europe, Germany, the Netherlands, all these places I put in to go to, you Speaker 2 (13:46) know, Speaker 3 (13:46) I'm like, take me away, man. Right. Yeah. They sent me to Southern New Mexico. Speaker 3 (13:52) Yeah. Holloman Air Force Base. Speaker 2 (13:55) Perfect. Speaker 3 (13:55) Day I signed in down at Holloman, I turned 21. So it's not too far, about 30, 40 miles from Las Cruces where New York State is. So I could go see my friends and everything that I grew up with. So I'm working on the flight line. We loaded missiles, loaded the missiles on the F-15s. And it was a pretty good time. We lived in the dormitory. Plenty of people my age hanging out. You go do your work and you drink beer kind of thing. That was the atmosphere. I did that. My parents were still... They're shenanigans. Just out of control. And I had a landline phone in my dorm room. That's like back then. That's what we all had. Speaker 2 (14:44) And Speaker 3 (14:45) my mom would call me all the time. Hammered. Like every day. Really? I was just like, fuck. And then one day I'm out working on the flight line and our flight chief, a master sergeant, I was just an airman, he comes out and he goes, hey, you need to come in and call the chaplain. Speaker 2 (15:08) I'm like, well, Speaker 3 (15:09) that doesn't sound good. Yeah, Speaker 2 (15:10) that's Speaker 3 (15:10) never a good thing. That's not a good thing. No. So I go in there, I call this chaplain up, and it turns out my grandmother had called. She didn't have my phone number, and my parents couldn't get it from them because they were, I don't know what their deal was. So my grandmother called the chaplain's office, and I had to call them, and they said, call your grandmother, this and that. I was like, this is really weird. So I call them, and it turns out my mom's up at a rehab in Albuquerque. It's about a three-hour drive up to Albuquerque. So this was a Friday afternoon, so I took leave since I was going up to Albuquerque and drove up there. I was staying with a buddy of mine and his wife, and they knew where this rehab was, and it was starting to get dark, so they drove over. And as we pull in the parking lot of this place, Speaker 3 (16:01) There goes my mom. She's running across the front lawn of this place in a gown, making a run for it. Speaker 2 (16:09) I know. Speaker 3 (16:11) You can't make that shit up. As you're pulling up. As we're pulling in. And Speaker 2 (16:15) I just looked at my friends and I was like, well, this ought to be interesting, right? Yeah. Speaker 3 (16:20) So I went in there and, uh... You know, I'm 22 years old, maybe then 21, 22. And now I'm the responsible adult. Speaker 2 (16:29) Right. This whole situation. Right. Speaker 3 (16:32) So get her back in there. I don't think she did the full time. No, she didn't. But I went back, Sunday went back down to the Harlem Air Force Base, and I said, man, I got to get out of here. I'm trying to start a new life. I'm trying to put all that shit behind me. That's their deal. And so I put in for any base I could get. Speaker 2 (16:54) That wasn't that one. Speaker 3 (16:55) That wasn't that one. Yeah. And so I got an assignment to Iceland. Wow. For a year. We had a small contingent of F-15s up there, and so I went up to Iceland for a year. Nowadays, Iceland looks like a really cool place to go visit and everything. Yeah, not so much back in 1989. No? No. The wind blows about 40 miles an hour every day, and it's cold, and we had a curfew, and there was big restrictions on everything. Yeah, just one. Anyway, I did that year, got me out of there. And then from there, I got sent down to northwest Florida. in the Panhandle, Speaker 2 (17:31) Fort Speaker 3 (17:32) Walton Beach area, Destin area. Oh, nice. Yeah, Eglin Air Force Base. And I worked there for like four years. I went to Desert Storm while I was there. So I was over at Desert Storm in Saudi Arabia for eight and a half months, I think it was. Yeah. Which was cool because now I had an assignment that a short tour, remote tour from Iceland, and I got one from Desert Storm as well. Okay. All right. So I put in for order. I liked it overseas better, it seemed like, from what I had experienced. So I got put in for another set of orders, and I got stationed in South Korea, Osan Air Base. Speaker 2 (18:10) Damn. Speaker 3 (18:11) Which was really, it was actually pretty cool. So I worked there, and when I got there, it was when Kim Il-sung had died, the grandfather of the guy now. He had died, then Kim Jong-il took over, and the Korean peninsula was just... A rye, if you will. And I was there. Speaker 3 (18:32) I thought it was pretty exciting. Yeah. You know, um, now I got three remote tours, right? I can pretty much write my ticket where I want to go. So that was another year long deal that year went by real quick. I liked it. I had put in for number one was Anchorage, Alaska. And number two was Aviano air base into Italy. And I got the Anchorage, Alaska one. Okay. So cool thing about Elmendorf air force base in Anchorage, Alaska is it's considered. an overseas long tour three or two or overseas but you're in the united states so it's kind of like you got everything and you're getting this other deal right and it's gorgeous all that um And as much as that could have been the ultimate assignment, it wasn't. There was dudes that had been stationed there for years that just kept doing concert, consecutive overseas tours. Speaker 3 (19:29) And they were all clicked up. So, you know, I'm an E5 staff sergeant rolling in, but I might as well have been from the moon. You know, fishing was cool and everything, but it... I couldn't break that code they had going on. Right. So towards the end of the third year, I had gone to another job up there off the flight line, the maintenance operations center. So I was like, I directed maintenance crews, talked on the radio and all this. It was inside. It was pretty cool. Kind of had your finger on the pulse of everything and maintenance going on. Speaker 3 (20:04) But now I'm coming up on 12 years in the Air Force, right? What am I going to do? Because I know leaving Alaska, I wasn't going to stay in Alaska. I thought about maybe going active duty in the Army. That was for about two seconds. And then I thought, well, I looked at what assignments were coming up, and they weren't going to be good. Back in the South, and I just don't like that humidity and bugs. Sure. So when I was down at Eglin, down at Fort Long Beach, I worked with a couple guys. I worked in the in-shop, like intermediate repair stuff there. And they had put in a special duty. to go be aerial gunners on helicopters in the Air Force. Speaker 3 (20:48) So I talked to these guys and, uh, There wasn't much information on it. And so they helped me and I put this package together and I mailed it off to them. And I put in to specifically, it's the helicopter called the MH 53 Pave Loan. It's special ops helicopter. And I thought, man, these guys probably ain't going to call me, whatever, right? Shit. Two weeks later, they called me. But they had to try out a selection thing. And it's not like. the seals or the green berets, you know, big selections they go through. Yeah. But Speaker 2 (21:24) still, it was Air Force, and it wasn't that Speaker 3 (21:27) easy. It was, you know, a little rough. We had to swim. We had to, everything, do all the physical fitness above and beyond the, what Air Force standards were. We had to take that 800-question MMI Minnesota test thing, right? Jesus Speaker 2 (21:45) Christ. 800 questions. And Speaker 3 (21:45) then you go see a fucking psychiatrist after that. Speaker 3 (21:50) And because they're looking for specific people. Yeah. You know, I take this test and I go in and meet this guy and he's like, well, Sergeant Wright. You seem to have an addictive personality. And I'm like, you think? Speaker 3 (22:07) And he goes, but you're the kind of dude we're looking for. I was like, well, all right then. So at the end of that whole deal, and they took us on a flight and did some other stuff too. By the end of that whole deal, they had this board. You had to go in and meet this board. There's like 15 people, colonels and senior enlisted guys and everything. Walk in, salute, and sit down. And they start asking all these questions and shit you couldn't study for. Right. You know. They asked me what my biggest pet peeve with the Air Force was. And I said, without even thinking, I just came out. I said, I can't stand indecision. Just somebody make a decision. Speaker 3 (22:50) And then right as it came out of my mouth, I thought to myself, I've got a decision coming here pretty quick in the next few minutes. I wonder Speaker 2 (22:57) if I should have said that. Speaker 3 (23:00) But, you know, it lasts about 15, 20 minutes. They sent me out in the hallway. And then they told me, come back in. I went back in. They went through the usual, thank you for coming all the way down here from Alaska. Thanks for your leadership. I was like, who was I leading? Nobody. And so I figured right then, okay, this is, yeah, they're going to tell me now. Right. Speaker 3 (23:23) They said, hey, we'd like to offer you a position. Now, there's a lot of schools you've got to go through, but you've got your foot in the door. And then, so I was leaving that evening and I was going, my parents, believe it or not, now lived in Las Vegas, Nevada, and they had both gotten sober. Wow. My dad had had a seizure at work. Speaker 2 (23:45) When he tried to quit? Speaker 3 (23:47) Well, I don't know if he was trying to quit, but that seizure came in. Well, if he was boozing and then stopped. That's what it's got to be. Yeah. But however it panned out, they were sober now. And it was kind of like when I went and I was going to Vegas to hang out with them for about a week, and it was really weird going back with both of them. It's really the first time I'd seen them that they were sober and everything. Speaker 3 (24:14) But anyway, the base I was at is Herbert Field in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. It's right next to the big base, Edwin. But it's all the special operations aircraft and special ops guys there. And they had told me after they said that, yeah, I got my foot in the door or whatever. Then they said, we want you to call us on Monday. Speaker 3 (24:38) And we want you this weekend to think about if this is really what you want to do. Speaker 3 (24:44) And I was like, I've never heard that in the Air Force, right? Speaker 2 (24:47) Yeah, I wouldn't be here if that. Right. Wouldn't have gone through all of this shit. Speaker 3 (24:52) Right. Speaker 2 (24:52) Yeah. You Speaker 3 (24:53) know. Speaker 3 (24:55) Shit, so I go to Vegas, I call them up and said, yeah, hey, I'm in, you know. And so they said, okay, I had a couple months left up in Alaska, but they started sending me to the schools that I had to go to for this Ariel Gunner gig. Speaker 3 (25:10) I had to go do the dunker where it's this big cylinder. I went to a Navy base and it hangs above the pool. It's hanging above the pool. It's about the size of a minivan. And you got us lined up in the back of this thing. And then it drops down into the water and flips upside down. Speaker 2 (25:27) And you Speaker 3 (25:28) got to like undo your restraints and get out of it in a good way. Right. They make you do that twice and then they blindfold you. Oh. Yeah. And you got to do it two more times blindfolded. Holy shit. We called this thing fucking panic in a can. Yeah. Because that's what Speaker 2 (25:42) it was. God damn. And Speaker 3 (25:43) I wasn't a very good swimmer either. So I'm hanging on by my white knuckle and do that thing. But I made it. Right. And then I had to go to the Air Force Survival School out in Washington State where it starts out, you know, you do some academics, then it starts out as like a camping trip. Then it turns into you're evading from. forces behind enemy lines kind of stuff and you're hungry and then you get into a pow camp and they they do this whole pow situation for about three days uh they put when i did it they put us in for like we went to this camp for like 14 hours and they did all kinds of crazy shit to us and um interrogations and