Eric Lionheart, Founder of First There Foundation, breaks down the taboos surrounding plant medicine and shares how his work continues to be transformative for soldiers, first responders, and their families.
Since 2001, suicide has been the second-leading cause of death among veterans under 45. Reports show they face a 60% higher risk than the general population. Servicemen come home from service feeling trapped, isolated, unheard, and unsure of where to go.
Eric Lionheart knows this pain firsthand. Eric Lionheart is an Air Force veteran, elite Combat Controller, and the founder of First There Foundation. He lost friends to suicide. He’s seen others on the brink, unsure if they’d make it through the night.
His organization’s mission is to help veterans and first responders heal from the invisible wounds of service: trauma, depression, and the often-overlooked mental health crises that, until relatively recently, were not often discussed. To do this, he employs the use of plant medicine—ayahuasca, psilocybin, and other holistic remedies—as a tool for healing.
It’s controversial, and many still see it as taboo, especially outside alternative wellness circles. The stigma is real, but for Lionheart and the veterans he works with, so is the relief it can bring.
Lionheart’s Operation Soul Rescue offers immersive retreats where veterans can explore plant-based therapies, in a controlled and supportive environment. In our interview with Lionheart, he spoke about how these ceremonies cultivate a sense of peace and self-awareness in participants who felt they had exhausted all other options. He also spoke extensively about the challenges he faces—from overcoming stigmas to the logistics of the retreats themselves—and how this work is, and will continues to be, transformative for soldiers, first responders, and their families.
MEW: Plant medicine is often viewed as taboo and it can carry a stigma, particularly within more conservative circles. Some people perceive it as ineffective or outright dangerous. How do you address the skepticism?
LIONHEART: I think a lot of people find it in that negative light because that’s where we’ve been told growing up. I think the reason why it’s scheduled as a drug is because it does help and it’s so cheap. Pharmaceutical companies can’t make money off it. So the government and a lot of these companies push that agenda saying “hey, if you do this, you’re going to jump out of a window or if you do mushrooms, you might trip for the rest of your life.”
But this is a natural plant. It’s a vine that they mix, and it’s good for your soul. It’s been done for centuries. It doesn’t have any side effects. Meanwhile, if you start taking SSRI’s for a long time, your body builds a tolerance; then you start to have side effects; and then you’ve got to keep going back to the doctor to increase that dosage because it just continues to numb you out. With [plant medicine], you take it once if you want or, depending on how much trauma a person is carrying, and they can just do it a couple more times to where they feel that they’re good.
You can do this and possibly be way better where you can let go of your SSRI’s. But if not, you can always revert back to it. It’s not a cure that’s going to all of a sudden cure you for the rest of your life. It’s just like anything—you’ve got to put in the work. It’s just like if you were going to get some procedure done at a doctor or dermatologist or plastic surgeon—you’re going to do research and find reviews and speak with a professional. It’s kind of the same thing.
Aaron Rogers—quarterback for the Pittsburgh Steelers—when he came out and said it, people laughed at it. Like “oh, you’re crazy and you’re eating tree bark.” The same people making fun of him are folks like Terry Bradshaw, who said himself he’s heavily depressed and taking anti-depressants and he’s miserable. But he’s going to make fun of a guy that did something natural? And now Aaron Rodgers is now like “I love my teammates; I love what I do; I’m in a good place.” How can I be bad for someone?
It’s just ignorance—the way we were raised to fear.
MEW: The side effects of SSRI’s have been extensively documented, and yet they remain the default for mental health treatment. Meanwhile, plant medicines are still generally disregarded.
LIONHEART: Yeah, you’re getting a pill made in a lab from a guy in a white lab coat saying “this is good for you, take it.” And you say “okay,” but it’s destroying your organs—then you need another pill for those side effects.
I have no problem with people taking anti-depression medicine or whatever is going to make them feel better. That’s great. But if you’ve never tried [plant medicine], what are you scared of? You could always try this plant medicine—which is good for you; it won’t give you any type of side effects; you’re not going to die from it.
MEW: It seems to be a similar case with alcohol. Even though it can have deadly effects, most people are okay with it in a way they aren’t with something like psilocybin. What’s your take?
LIONHEART: I’m not against alcohol—like, I get it—but booze is pushed all the time. It’s everywhere we look. And it’s poison for you.
If you do psilocybin—a magic mushroom—and you do too much of it, yeah, you might do some wild stuff. But same thing with alcohol. With alcohol, you can kill someone. With mushrooms, if you have the right environment and if you do a little bit, you’ll probably just giggle and have a good time. Obviously, if you do a ton of it—a hero’s dose as they call it—then you’re probably going to be talking to God, right? But usually, if you’re going to do that, you’re in a safe environment where someone’s looking after. And once those effects are gone, you’re not hungover; your liver’s not hurting; you haven’t destroyed anything. You’re healing yourself, but we’ve been taught that that was bad. And that’s bullshit. And I used to be one of those guys.
I’m not a hippie. But I used to make fun of them, you know? I was an operator; I was going to Afghanistan; I was fighting. If you had said “hey man, I think all you need is love and to have a little patience,” I would laugh at you. But now I get it. There’s something more to life if you’re open to it.
MEW: There has been something of a resurgence of interest in ayahuasca, though in certain circles it is perhaps used more recreationally than as a tool for healing. What would you say to those who think this is just a fad?
LIONHEART: There are people now [for whom] it’s become a fad. Some people get ahold of ayahuasca and they’re just giving it to people while playing some music in the background and letting them do whatever. So they have a really bad experience.
The way we do it, there’s a protocol. There’s a facilitator and a very sacred ceremony that goes along with this and it should be respected. It’s not a thing that you just do want on a whim. It’s not a party. It’s the most scary and the most beautiful thing I’ve ever done in my life.
MEW: You grew up in a Catholic household and didn’t experiment with drugs growing up. Describe your first experience and how your family reacted.
LIONHEART: I never did drugs growing up because I grew up Catholic. The first time I did it, my mom saw me, and she was like “you’re so different. What have you been doing?” And I was scared to tell her. I think I was 40. I did a second time and she’s like, “okay, what have you been doing? You’re just so at peace. You just look so different. What are you up to?” I finally told her, and she’s like “whatever you’re doing, keep doing it.”
I once met a lady who said “oh no, that’s a sin if you do anything like that.” And I asked “do you believe that God works in mysterious ways?” And she said “of course,” so I said, “can it be possible that he led me to this? All my life I’ve been depressed, and I was drinking a ton, and I couldn’t figure out what was going on with me. I just felt miserable. And taking SSRI’s, I felt like a zombie. I would go to my church and sit in the first pew and just pray for death. I would look at Jesus on the crucifix that they had there and think ‘you should just killed me in Afghanistan.’ Suicide was it on my mind all the time.”
“That’s how it was for my buddy Chris Rush. Those thoughts got the better of him. One day, he put a gun to his chest and pulled the trigger. And I’ve had those thoughts, too.”
“Luckily, a buddy of mine introduced me to this, and I was so miserable that I said ‘I will do anything—I just need to feel happy again.’ And I did it. And in one weekend [I] unloaded that heavy weight that [I had been] carrying. It’s made me a more complete human being—a better man. It’s gotten me closer to God. When I pray, I pray with conviction and courage. I’m more empathetic—I have more love for my fellow man. How can that be bad?”
So after I told her all that, you could tell it was kind of opening up that window. And at the end I said, “it doesn’t take you away from God. It brings you closer.”
After a while, even my own mother said “I need to try this.” She was on anti-depressants for 20 years. She did [plant medicine] and after a week, she’s like, “I don’t need the stuff anymore.” She did one more time after that and now she’s a different woman. It’s like the woman that I remember when I was a kid. So it’s given my mom back to me. Again, how’s that bad?
MEW: For someone who has never tried it before, what’s the experience like? If they’re nervous about the process, how might that manifest?
LIONHEART: When you’re in it, you might feel afraid at first because it’s like this very crystal-clear mirror of the trauma that you’ve had. Some people really panic about that. And some people are so scared going into these ceremonies because deep down inside they know they’re about to be exposed. People are just so scared of who they are and what they’ve done.
The trauma that I had from the war wasn’t what I did. It was just that the survivors’ guilt was eating at me—that I was alive and my buddies were dead. And it was crushing me.
Because [the experience] is truly you. And every person that’s in that room with you is experiencing their own sacred journey. What you experience will be completely different from mine. And every time you do it, it shows you something different about yourself. It’s never the same. And it’s showing you stuff that you’ve forgotten about, like childhood trauma.
I often think about Apollo’s Temple in Delphi. Out of all the things they could have etched in stone, the one maxim they have is “know thyself.” People nowadays are so petrified of themselves. Plant medicine scares the shit out of them. If they truly knew who they were, they’d be way better off.
MEW: Can you walk us through what an Operation Soul Rescue plant medicine retreat looks like? The website states that donations help veterans attend these transformative retreats, so it would be great to give people a sense of the experience. Can you talk a bit about what to do in preparation and what they might expect once they get there?
LIONHEART: The retreat is five days—we’re actually now at six. We keep the groups from six to eight people because we found that that’s the best way for people to feel comfortable. Once people are there, it’s all inclusive. We take care of everything. You just basically show up and be ready to heal.
A month prior to the date that you’re going, a soul doctor will call you and say “tell me about what kind of SSRI’s we’re on—if any—or what kind of meds, because we want to make sure that you’re okay to take ayahuasca. If you’re doing any drugs, you want to start cleaning out your body the best you can so you can absorb the medicine. So after that’s happened, two weeks prior, they check in on you again and say “hey, how are you doing? Any changes to your health?” If you say no, then you fly from the U.S. to Costa Rica and they’ll pick you up and bring you to the retreat center. And on that first day, you just climatize—check out the ocean, you just chill and get to know each other.
The next day, in the evening, you’ll take ayahuasca. The amount that people consume is about a shot’s worth. It’s not a whole lot. Then, you lay down on your mat and the facilitators will start singing icaros—which is a song they sing throughout the ceremony—in Shipibo. Believe it or not, the way they sing, with their different notes and the inflections of their song, it takes you on this journey. People go for four to six, maybe 7 hours—depending on if they feel the effects of it right away. You might take a little bit more and it carries you through the night.
I don’t know if you remember this but when you were a kid, did you ever cry yourself to sleep? It’s almost like that. When you wake up and the effects are gone, you feel like that. It feels like you have this tremendous exhale and you feel totally smoked. You’ll feel a little dehydrated, so you’ll drink some water and you go back to your mat.
The next morning, you’ll all have breakfast and then come together in a share circle to talk about your experiences. Some people won’t say anything right away. Some people cry; some people laugh; some people have said that they’ve seen their dead relatives; or they’ll say sorry to someone they’ve hurt; or they’ve forgiven someone. They talk about their experience and then the second night is a night of rest.
The third night, you do it again. You rest on the fourth night. On the fifth night, you do it again. So you do it three times with a day of rest in between. And then on your last day, you have dinner and in the morning, everybody packs up and flies back out. Then they’ll check in with you one month out to make sure you’re doing okay with de-integration and returning right back to your normal life.
Teachers will be there to talk to you when you have questions. The first time that you do it, you’re going to have so many questions. So many things make sense to you, but it’s almost like you get to see behind the curtain and then it’s closed again. It’s like a download of information that you get and you’ll be intrigued by it and want to know more.
That group of people that you go through the ceremony with will become so much tighter because you went through this beautiful and scary thing together. It’s an amazing process.
MEW: Have any of your former teammates gotten involved with Operation Soul Rescue since you started it?
LIONHEART: Definitely. A buddy of mine—a Combat Controller—was on SSRI’s. He told me “I’m tired, I’m hurting, and I just can’t do it anymore. I’m doing this because you reached out to me and you’re my teammate. But—between you and I—if this doesn’t work, I’m going back home and I’m blowing my brains out. And I’m happy with that.”
Talk about pressure! But after a week, he was like a kid again. I had never seen him laugh. The wrinkles in his face were just kind of gone—it wasn’t as scrunched up. And he’s still with us today. And he’s happy. Every once in a while, he’s like, “hey man, are you doing it? I’m so thankful.”
But he asks me “why don’t [soldiers] do this all the time, especially after deployments? Or after some things we’ve gone through? Why didn’t they just give this to us? It would help their mental health.” And I agree.
I’ve said this to the Air Force. I met with leadership and I said “if you guys are really so worried about the suicide rates in the military, why don’t you try plant medicine? Some of these guys that are hurting just keep getting sent to a psychiatrist, but it isn’t working. Then you continue to just put up a poster every year which says something like ‘suicide is unacceptable, and we’ve got to do more.’ But it’s not working. We’ve been doing it for 20+ years. Why don’t you just give this to these guys on a weekend or treat them for a month and then see where they’re at. If they get better, great. If not, you can continue with your Western medicine and protocols and acupuncture and float tanks and all that other stuff.” But plant medicine—which is cheap and could be used to treat these people—they’re still hesitant to.
Which is ironic, because—in a lot of ways—we in the military are the guinea pigs for pharmaceuticals. I remember when Ambien first came out. We were the first ones to get it. Adderall, same thing. For long missions, we were on it. Anthrax and all that stuff. They’re so worried about the suicide rate but they don’t want to do anything about it.
MEW: I looked it up while we were talking, and you’re absolutely right—it’s not just been 20 years, it’s been even more than that. Since 2001, suicide has remained the second leading cause of death among veterans under 45. That’s a staggering statistic. And I’m not sure if this is even a conservative estimate, but reports show that veterans face a 60% higher risk of suicide compared to the general population. That’s alarming.
LIONHEART: Yeah, well, I knew it because of 9/11. We were fighting for, what, 22 years? We were deploying people at that time prior to really knowing as much as we now do about mental health. When you’re a team guy, you don’t talk about your mental health. The mission comes first. Your team comes first. If you were to go to your higher-ups and say “I’m just not feeling really good. I’m just sad. I’m going through a divorce or I have money problems or I lost my dog—whatever the case might be,” they would pull you from the line. And then your teammates are like “oh man, what’s wrong with him? Can I trust them to go to war with me? Is he going to be able to cover his sectors? Is he going to be able to do his job and not get me killed?” So now that guy feels even worse for talking about his feelings. It’s just this snowball. Then, eventually, they just boot him out, and now he’s all alone and drinking his ass off feeling like a failure because he left the team, he’s no longer in the military, and he doesn’t know what to do. Many turn to high-risk activities—like alcohol or drugs—and for some it ends in suicide. It’s terrible.
We operators never talked about our feelings. Now, I just think “screw that.” If I can share my story and tell another guy “I almost pulled the trigger. And maybe you’re in that same spot and now you’re hearing this from me and thinking ‘well, if Eric almost did it, maybe I could try this plant medicine stuff and maybe I will be able to get back this relationship with my wife or my kids.’” They hear a story like mine and think “wow, maybe this is the way.”
MEW: You’re often working with veterans who are right on the brink. Has there been one experience or conversation in particular that really stuck with you—whether that’s a moment or testimonial or something someone said—that made you realize just how impactful this work has been?
LIONHEART: I’ve had a couple. One would be Randy, our Vice President at First There Foundation. I don’t know why, but I just had this feeling and decided to call him to say “hey, we just launched Operation Soul Rescue and I think you should come. I think you should come do this.”
Later, when we were having our first one in Mexico, he pulled aside and said “Eric, you called me at the best time you could have called me, because I was just done. My marriage was falling apart, we were going to get divorced, we’ve got four kids, I was drinking a lot, and I was figuring out how we were going to split up this family.” So he did [Operation Soul Rescue] and then his wife did it. And they’re back together. He was just like “you don’t understand the work you’re doing here. You’re keeping families together. I’m a better father; I’m a better husband; my wife understands me a lot more; we’re now a team; we’re taking care of our kids. And if you wouldn’t have called me, this would have been all over. You don’t understand what you’re doing for our community. You’ve got to stick with it.”
And that’s when I thought “I want to make sure that I provide meaningful and lasting help to whatever we treat.” Buying someone a dog or giving them a car or taking them to ski at Aspen—yeah, it’s cool—but at the end of the day, it doesn’t do anything for them. It makes them worse. I want to give them something that’s going to last them a lifetime. Or at least give them the tools that will give them a fighting chance.
I’ll share another. About four months after Chris killed himself, another buddy called me. And over the phone he was screaming. Hearing your teammate—someone that you love—calling you when they’re feeling helpless and desperate and saying “I am done, I’m checking out,” was so heartbreaking.
I think he was driving around looking for a spot to pull over and blow his brains out. I kept pleading with him “I promise you’ll get better. Please just don’t do it. I’ll help you. Come to Texas. Just get some time.” And he had already thought it all out. “If I do this, my wife will find somebody else,” he says. “My kids will get over it. They’ll get my insurance money from the military. They’ll be fine.” And I literally said, “do you think $400,000 is going to help your family? You’re going to destroy them, dude! You’re taking your dad away from these two little girls—plus your wife.” So we finally talked him off it and he’s done two ceremonies. And now he’s great—he’s on a different path.
The proof’s in the pudding. He’s going to get to watch his daughters graduate from college. So, to me, if we can help one guy or one woman or one family, it’s worth it.
MEW: Some people might look at the cost of these retreats and wonder why it’s so high—but when you’re flying veterans to Costa Rica, housing them for nearly a week in an all-inclusive facility, providing meals, and covering the cost of the plant medicine itself, it must add up. It’s not that the program is expensive for the sake of being expensive, right? Can you speak to this?
LIONHEART: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And once you’re there, you’re the priority, right? You’re the priority of the center and everybody that’s working there. It’s not just about all the food; it’s also the people’s time; the pre-op a month prior then; the follow-up; there’s a lot of time and man-hours that go into this.
So to the people who think it’s expensive: it might seem expensive for that one time, but it also has the power to change the rest of your life. How much money do you spend on pharmaceuticals? How much time and money do you spend going to a doctor to get more Zoloft or Xanax or whatever?
We used to reimburse people for their flights. On top of people canceling at the last second and effectively taking a seat from someone at the last second, more than that, I’ve also found that people need to have some stake in their healing. We’ll take care of everything once you arrive, but a flight is something they’ll have to take care of. This way, they’re taking an active role in their healing.
Now, don’t get me wrong, if someone says “hey, I really want to go, but I just can’t [secure the flight],” we’re not going to say “no, sorry, you’re S.O.L.,” right?
MEW: If someone reading this is a veteran—or knows a veteran—who could benefit from what you’re doing, what’s the best way for them to get involved or reach out to First There Foundation or Operation Soul Rescue?
LIONHEART: Yeah, it’s on our website. So if you look up First There Foundation or Operation Soul Rescue, there’s a tab with info and an online form they can use to get in touch. They could also email info@firstthere.org. We’re on social media and there’s a couple of testimonials on our YouTube page.
MEW: What’s next for First There Foundation? Do you see the mission expanding beyond veterans at some point, or are there plans to open your programs to a wider audience in the future?
LIONHEART: My goal eventually is to treat anyone that needs help, right? Why make it only available to veterans or first responders? There are people out there who are hurting. I think we should help everyone we can, and that’s what I’m working towards.
