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August 4, 2024 • 15 mins
Original Air Date: August 4, 2024

Whiz Buckley is a retired Navy fighter pilot and creator of the No Fallen Heroes Foundation, with the goal of ending the suicides of veterans and first responders using alternative plant-based medicines, like mushrooms.
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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Sunstein Sessions on iHeartRadio, Conversations about issues that matter.
Here's your host, three time Graasie Award winner, Shelley Sunstein.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
I want to introduce you to someone I discovered through
a listener of Q one oh four point three, And
actually John Caustick is more than a listener. For those
of you familiar with my nine to eleven stories, he
told me his nine to eleven story, which was more

(00:33):
unusual than well, every single story from start to finish
is unusual, but I never heard of what happened to him.
So he was an engineer at the World Trade Center
and fortunately he survived that day. Unfortunately for him, he

(00:53):
developed a really really rare problem. And actually it's shared
by a former reporter at news Radio eight eighty. Those
of you who remember Peter Haskell who had to retire
because he was losing his voice. He was losing the
ability to speak, and John Coustick has the same problem.

(01:18):
He actually lost his voice. He cannot speak, and no
treatment was helping me. And out of the clear blue
he reaches out to me and he said, Shelley, you
have to talk to wiz Buckley. I just went to
see him and I was able to talk, and why

(01:40):
was he able to talk? Because Wiz Buckley, who by
the way, was a Navy fighter pilot and a fighter
pilot in the reserves. He formed the organization No Fallen
Hero and he treats PTSD and more with psych akadelic medicine,

(02:03):
and this gave John Caustick for a time his voice,
which to me was an absolute miracle. Okay, Wiz, tell me,
how did you discover this treatment? And is it legal?

Speaker 3 (02:19):
Shelly?

Speaker 4 (02:19):
Thanks for having me. Let me be perfectly clear. I
didn't discover anything. These medicines have been used for thousands
and thousands of years to treat all sorts of maladies
or even his right of passages of children to become adults.
So I didn't discover anything. I just kind of stumbled

(02:40):
my way into it. About three years ago, the government
statistic was anywhere from twenty two seventeen to twenty two
veterans take their own lives every day. That is a
mass shooting. God I hate even talking like this, but
God forbid, two children are being slaughtered every day in

(03:03):
a school. This you know this country would go eight.
But since it's veterans, we kind of we shrug a
little bit. So three years ago, i'd kind of just
reached the end of my rope. I had lost three
f eighteen hornet brothers to suicide, including one of my
best friends of groomsman in my wedding. And I said, yeah,
beautiful bride, five kids, put a bullet in his head.

(03:25):
And I said, you know what, I got to do something.
I got to stop veteran suicide. I had no idea
what I was going to do. I mean, what do
you do? Buy suits, help them write resume? You know,
I'm grasping straws. And around that time, a very close
friend said, hey, man, there's a group of Navy seals.
They go down to Mexico and they do psychedelic assistant

(03:47):
therapy for their pts, you know, and we have a
really cool group going in a couple of weeks. Would
you like to join them? And I said, go to
Mexico next weekend and do drugs with Navy seals. That
sounds like a great weekends signe of me I had.
I had no clue, zero clue what I was in for.

(04:08):
I don't know if you or any of your listeners
has seen the movie Loan Survivor with Mark Wahlberg, you
know he plays Navy seal Marcus Latrell. So I went
down to Flu into San Diego and drove an hour south.
Why because if you do what I tell you in
San Diego it's a felony. If you drive an hour
south in Mexico, it'll save your life. So I hopped
in a couple of cars with Marcus Latrell, Jared Taylor,

(04:31):
JT one of the founders of Black Rifle Coffee, another
Navy seal, and then an NFL veteran Robert Gallery, all
American from Iowa, played for the Raiders for like six
to eight years and just had horrific CTE. You know,
in the military we call it TBI draumatic brain injury,
and you know the sports folks called CTE. So we

(04:51):
went down to a retreat center called the Mission Within,
and I sat with a medicine called Ibogame. Now et
Boga is a room from Gabon, Africa. They think it's
potentially the tree of knowledge, and a derivative of that
in the West we take and it's called ibogain. And
Shelley was, without a doubt it was the toughest best

(05:16):
spiritual experience of my life twelve to fourteen hours. I
grew up in southcher My family's from South Philadelphia, and
then my parents moved to South Jersey, where my little
sister and I were born. I bring that up because
we were a stereotypical Irish Catholic family. I was an
altar boy, three services on Sunday Catholic schools and my

(05:40):
middle sister, Monica, was killed by a drunk driver at
the age of nineteen at Villanova. Yeah, she went to
Villanova with my older brother and one of my other sisters.
So it was just a hand grenade in the middle
of you know, I was going into high school. Tough
time for a young man anyway, let alone to lose
your sister and my parents they were done. I was

(06:00):
also sexually abused as a child, And I bring this
up because most people when they joined the military, they
have childhood baggage or trauma. When you go in the military,
you don't shed that stuff. And as a matter of fact,
military can make it can kind of add to that stuff.
In fifteen years of flying fighter jets, I lost sixteen buddies,

(06:23):
not one combat loss, stupidity, weather, mechanical issues, and more
of those issues in different order, but very traumatic, right,
So childhood trauma, that trauma, and then when I got out,
I should tell you my nine to eleven story if
we have time. It'll blow you away. But you know,

(06:45):
I left and went to a Wall Street firm. I
left a fighter squadron where you trust the women and
men with your life or they're.

Speaker 3 (06:51):
Not in that organization.

Speaker 4 (06:53):
I went to Wall Street where I couldn't trust somebody
to watch my wallet to go to the bathroom. So
I lost my mission. I lost my sense of purpose.
So I was kind of spiraling the drain too. I'd
be lying to you to tell you if I didn't
consider checking out a couple times booze, drugs and everything.
I bring all of this up because on the medicine,

(07:18):
whatever word you want to, I choose to use the
word God, and I lost my faith. What kind of
God kills your sister, destroys your family, and allows you
to be sexually abused, and then to lose all your
buddies in the navy. So there was no God to me, period, Jelly.
I got to tell you I rechained my faith because

(07:40):
I spent half a night under her God's arm. Whatever
word you want to choose. We have atheists and agnostic
people do the medicine. They come out and they're like, wow,
I'm not going to use the word God. I'm like, okay,
don't use whatever. They're like something massive, the universe, truth,
divine Creator. I'm like, okay, whatever words, I choose to

(08:03):
use word God. But Shelley, God had me under his
arm for twelve to fourteen hours going through my life
all these traumas.

Speaker 3 (08:11):
Not in the trauma, I was.

Speaker 4 (08:12):
Getting to look at it from his point of view
and from a different point of view. And at one
point my sister Monica came to me and she was beautiful,
she was perfect. And then my dad had died years
after her. He died of a broken heart. He was
never the same, he was never the same. I remember

(08:35):
my dad and I were sitting there one time watching
my two kids playing, and I remember looking at him.
He obviously knew what I was talking about, because I
looked at him and I said, Dad, how did you
do it? And he looked at me and he said,
I had you. He said, Matthew. When they lowered Monica
into the ground, I wanted to jump.

Speaker 3 (08:50):
In there with her, but I had you.

Speaker 4 (08:54):
So my sister appeared, and then my dad appeared with
my sister. I hadn't seen my dad smile. I can't
remember last time I saw my father smile. And they
were perfect, and I was at peace. It was a
peace I hadn't felt in decades. And then they started

(09:14):
to go away, like pixel it's a bad word, but
they started to drift away, and it was a horror.
I was calling out to them. I'm like, don't leave me, Please,
don't go again. And they came back, and this time
they kind of looked at me and smiled. But I
followed them this time, and when they kind of went away,
they went into my daughter, They went into my children,

(09:36):
they went into the trees, they went into everything, and
I was healed. They never left. They were talking to
you and me right now. They are here, and it
healed me. I'll say to you some of the other details.
But I was a drinker. I don't know if you
can be a good drinker, but I was a bad drinker, Shelley.

(09:59):
I couldn't look at alcohol for up to eight months
after this treatment. If I smelled it or I looked
at a bottle, it made me dry heat. Now I
can have a glass of wine with my steak type
of thing. But old Whiz a glass of wine was
a couple bottles, so it destroyed alcohol in my life.

(10:21):
And there's just so much more I can share about that.
But the cliff notes of this is I got back
from that retreat and I said, this, this is how
I'm going to end veteran suicide. So I started the
No Fallen Heroes Foundation to provide healing grants two veterans,
first responders in their families.

Speaker 3 (10:41):
Why those two other groups?

Speaker 4 (10:42):
Most veterans, they get off active duty in the military,
they take off that uniform, but they don't take off
that trauma and they go put on a local uniform
or you know, state or first responder, and they essentially
double their trauma. I have a buddy who's a twenty
year Marine who went to be fire rescue DAN in Miami,
and he's like, dude, my marine service is a joke

(11:04):
compared to what I see as a first responder. What
people can do to children, to other humans is horrible.
So we provide grants to veterans, first responders, and family members.

Speaker 3 (11:15):
Because they serve too, especially gold.

Speaker 4 (11:17):
Star moms or parents or brothers or sisters, they served
and they suffered trauma and then want.

Speaker 2 (11:24):
More to stop you here because we're we have like
four more minutes. How we'll get in touch with you.
To get these grants.

Speaker 4 (11:33):
Go to Nofallenheroes dot com and on the top right
under contact us, it says grant request form.

Speaker 3 (11:39):
You just click on that and we'll hook you up.

Speaker 2 (11:42):
But can they can anyone pay and do this as
a treatment with your absolute Absolutely?

Speaker 1 (11:50):
We have.

Speaker 4 (11:50):
Actually we have what's called a wingman program, meaning if
you're a civilian and you want to heal yourself, just
put the ladder down and help sponsor a hero to
come with you or to go on a different retreat.
They don't even have to know you sponsored them, but
we do. We have a wingman program.

Speaker 3 (12:06):
But yeah, so.

Speaker 4 (12:07):
Real quick, I know you much does? It depends on
the retreat location and the medicine. If you go down
to Mexico, it can be anywhere from five to six
thousand dollars. But thank you Oregon, thank you Colorado. They
are leading the way. We can knock those costs in
half and heal. One of my mission objectives has been
to heal our heroes at home. So thank you to

(12:29):
those states, so you can probably knock half the price
off of that if we go into Oregon or Colorado.

Speaker 2 (12:36):
Did so this one time cured to one.

Speaker 3 (12:41):
Time, one and done.

Speaker 4 (12:45):
Now people might not believe that, but the one is
pretty It ain't fun, this ain't recreation.

Speaker 3 (12:52):
All this was.

Speaker 4 (12:53):
It was a challenging process, but most veterans or grant
recipients we work with are one and done. I go
back with my original guy sometimes to knock the rust off.
Maybe an annual you know, go, I'm an aviator, right,
you can get some ice build up on the wings.
I'll go for a d icing. And that's the gift
of the medicine is old me. If I was starting

(13:15):
a spiral down, i'd spiral down. Now I know I
can go go, maybe hit the reset button.

Speaker 2 (13:22):
Absolutely, are you doing anything to make this legal a
legal treatment in this country overall, Shelley.

Speaker 4 (13:31):
I've been to DC a bunch of times, and behind
closed doors are I won't even use the word leaders,
I'll call them politicians politicians and be like, whiz love,
what you're doing. You're going to have a problem with
the big pharma and tobacco and alcohol lobbies. And I'm
like what do you mean I'm going to have a problem, dude,

(13:52):
isn't that your job? So Shelley, these if you look
at the harm scale alcohol and tobaccos all the way
out here, psilocybin is the least harmful to yourself or
others substance and it's a felony. So follow the money, folks.
Big Pharma does not want you healed. Marcus was on

(14:13):
fifteen medications with the VA five to wake up, five
for lunch, five to go to bed.

Speaker 3 (14:18):
He hasn't taken a medication in three years. Again, how
do people reach out to you? Yeah?

Speaker 4 (14:24):
Nofallenheroes dot com is our website, or on Instagram you
can follow No Fallen Heroes or my unofficial underscore wiz
Buckley just my call sign with the last name.

Speaker 3 (14:36):
But we definitely if you can have me back or whatever.
We got to talk about.

Speaker 4 (14:40):
John and what happened at two o'clock in the morning
at the Do Good Ranch in Colorado.

Speaker 3 (14:46):
It will make you cry, and it.

Speaker 4 (14:48):
Will it will blow you away what happened to John,
and John is now taking the lessons learned as a healed,
healing human being and he's going to bring it to
other nine to eleven surviv He was blown away. He's like, Whiz,
I'm in all these nine to eleven survivor groups. Not
one person has ever told us about the healing powers

(15:08):
of these medicines.

Speaker 2 (15:09):
Okay, we're making a take yog to tell John's story,
John Caustics story. Absolutely, and thank you so much, Whiz Buckley.
This is amazing, just absolutely amazing.

Speaker 1 (15:22):
You've been listening to sunseteen sessions on iHeartRadio. The production
of New York's classic rock Q one O four point
three
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