Excerpt from Psychedelicspotlight.com, August 12th, 2020
Psychedelic advocacy is filled with all sorts of healers: therapists, PHDs, psychiatrists, shamans and scientists. Also this one guy who can easily choke you unconscious.
Ian McCall is a mixed martial artist, a former professional fighter, now retired, who fought at the highest level of his sport. And he’s a passionate booster of psychedelic therapy.
How did McCall go from hurting people to helping people? First he had to get well himself.
“I was on suicide watch when I retired,” McCall says. “I was a mess. I was broken.”
It will surprise no one to hear the sport of mixed martial arts is brutally difficult. Competitors attack one another in a cage until their opponent submits or is unable to defend themselves, saved by a referee.
What’s less understood is how truly elite these athletes are.
Carlon Colker, a Connecticut physician who has trained or advised sports champions like Shaquille O’Neal and Andre Agassi told Sports Illustrated, “If you’re going to measure every parameter [endurance, flexibility, coordination, strength], without a doubt, MMA fighters are the most accomplished athletes out there. It’s not even close.”
At the height of his career Ian McCall competed in the premier mixed martial arts promotion, the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), a multi-billion dollar enterprise that holds events all over the world.
Many believe MMA formally completed its march to the sports mainstream in May of 2018 when the UFC signed a five-year contract with ESPN valued at 300 million dollars a year.
Today McCall has found success as a coach and a teacher — a self-described “alchemist” and “biohacker” — who has found his calling in micro-dosing psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms.
McCall credits psychedelics with helping him to overcome addiction. Before he ever fought anyone in a cage, McCall was battling opioid addiction. I ask him if he started taking Oxycontin to treat injuries from mixed martial arts.
“I got addicted at fourteen.”
I’m surprised. To confirm, I ask, “So you discovered Oxycontin before you were treating fight injuries?”
“Yeah. It was just the epidemic that happened with my generation.”
On the one hand, McCall had every advantage. He grew up with two great parents, affluent in Orange County, California. “I come from good stock. I had parents who could afford to put me in jujitsu. Most of the kids who grew up in this area were rich kids.”
But even as he was developing and succeeding as a professional athlete, he was battling an affliction that grinds many down to the point where they can no longer function. And McCall nearly became a champion in the UFC.
“I was a complete head-case back then. I was on drugs, on pills. I was high the whole time. People don’t understand, I was on Oxycontin the whole time.”
The end of his addiction to opiates roughly coincided with the end of his career, after a chance encounter with DMT — N-dimethyltryptamine if you want to get scientific about it — a hallucinogenic drug that is the main active ingredient in ayahuasca. Psychedelic enthusiasts will know ayahuasca is the brew ancient Amazonian tribes used for spiritual and religious purposes.
“I smoked DMT and it really opened my eyes to what I needed to do.”
The experience sent McCall on a whirlwind of learning and obsessive research into psychedelics and magic mushrooms. “Talking, reading, podcasts, podcasts, podcasts!” McCall recounts, enthusiasm mounting. “This is how I got off pills! I started biohacking myself. Micro-dosing.”