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I've been public about a lot of my transformation. What I haven't talked about are the patterns that survived all of it.
The recursive patterns no one else can see. The resentments that outlast every therapy modality, every men's group, every intellectual understanding of what's wrong and how to fix it. I've known about my particular malfunction for a long time. Gabor Maté identified it over a decade ago. Arthur Brooks has named it three times. And I kept running into the same wall.
Which is what led me to iboga, a Bwiti root bark medicine from Gabon, thousands of years old.
Had I done more research before I boarded the plane, I probably wouldn't have gone. What followed was relentless confrontation — complete derangement, the inability to stand without assistance, and no sleep. No ego dissolution. No sense of oneness. Just iboga rooting out my defenses and refusing to let me intellectualize my way out of the room.
And then, on the second night, something shifted.
This conversation was recorded five weeks out from the experience. My wife Julie Piatt sits with me as I try to put words to what happened, and what hasn't been the same since.
I won't claim to be a different person. But I've set the backpack down. And I'm getting a little better at noticing when I've picked it back up again.
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