Guest Review by Martin

In Their Own Words

From skeptic to believer, hear how Martin went from a place of profound darkness to rediscovering the joyful, carefree version of himself he thought was gone forever.

If you could have seen me before and how miserable I was and how happy I am now, it's just such an amazing thing. I love it. My daughter actually came here and she came a year before I did. And when I asked her about it, of course the way I grew up and everything, I was like, you're going to the jungle to do hallucinogenic medicine? What? I taught you better than that. But so when I ask her she goes, dad, I can't tell you anything about it. You have to experience your own journey. So a year later when things were really building up in me and I knew that I had to have help, all the doctors that I was going to and all the pills that I was taking to fix my depression, none of it helped. It all made it worse and I kept getting deeper and deeper in depression to where I got suicidal. And it got really scary and I was actually very concerned about my life and unfortunately, I actually attempted suicide and I'm very glad that I failed. It was, I want to live now life. I want to live life to the fullest. I feel this love and gratitude in my heart and I just want to share it with the world now. Because I didn't think I could ever be that happy little boy that I was when little five-year-old out playing in the sandbox, you know. I never thought I would be that again and I think right now I'm happy again that little five-year-old boy was playing with these little tongue controllers in the sandbox. I learned to love myself and that was probably the greatest thing the love and the gratitude that I have now. I didn't have that before. I didn't have love for myself and I through this process I actually learned that I despised myself. I hated myself. I was mean to myself all the time. I would tell myself things like your dumb, your loser, you're not good enough. And coming here and learning these tools and taking this medicine I realized that I am good enough. I have the tools that when I have hard times now no problem. I'm not even worried about it. I know that I have the tools that I can deal with life in some parts of this ugly world where there's so much trauma and so much heaviness. I've been given a gift to be able to deal with that now and smile through it. I get to go home with this. I love this place. I just love it. It saved my life.