446. War, PTSD, & Psychedelics

Jordan Peterson
Hello, everybody. I'm speaking today with Kelsey Sharon. She's CEO of brass and unity and author of brass and one woman's journey through the hell of Afghanistan and back. She's a distinguished canadian veteran. We walked through her story.

She was a martial arts champion as a child. She joined the canadian military when she was very young. She served in Afghanistan and had a series of, well, what you might describe as extraordinarily rough adventures there. We talk about that. We talk about the state of the canadian military.

We talk about the state of Canada, for that matter, talk about her pathway back to something approximating happiness as a consequence of her experimentation with psychedelics, for example. We cover a lot of territory. So welcome aboard for the ride. Let's start. When you're a kid, what do you like as a kid?

Kelsi Sheren
Tomboy. Aggressive. I started fighting at four years old. Fighting taekwondo. You start?

Jordan Peterson
Oh, yes. And why did you do that? My mom saw a demonstration at the Coburg Mall in Ontario, and it was kind of what you see in all these crazy YouTube where it's like people jumping around kicking boards and breaking boards and doing all this big kind of demonstration to bring people into their club. My mom called me on a pay phone and my dad was like, oh, talk to her about it. So he told me and she said, look, if we sign you up, you got to stay for the time we signed you up.

Kelsi Sheren
That's just how it works. So do you want to try it? I said, sure, let's try it. So I did, and that was the rest of my existence. So it was wonderful.

Jordan Peterson
Were you a little four year old? Yes. So I am only five foot and about 110 pounds on a good day, so I've always been really small. But what we did find out later on is that because of how aggressive I was in Taekwondo and how I was fighting and how often I was fighting, I actually stunted my own growth. I was doing two a days by the time I was twelve.

What does that mean? So I was training in the morning and I was training at night and I was training during the day if I was not at school and I was a second degree black belt by the time I was twelve and a national champion. So I took it really seriously. And that meant weight classes as soon as you hit a certain age and by, you know, working in the sauna and skipping and doing those types of things, constantly having such a low body fat. My puberty didn't come on till later, so they think that my height didn't quite go with it either.

I see yes. I see. Yeah. So, what did taekwondo do for you? Discipline, drive, belief in myself, the ability for self reliance.

Kelsi Sheren
You know, it's an individual sport. For the most of it, taekwondo is something that's really fascinating to me. Martial arts in general, I think, are, by and large, one of the most underutilized activities for kids, for discipline and for ownership and for responsibility. I think a lot of people are afraid of the violence tendencies with it. And, like, I get it.

It's a striking sport. You don't want to kick somebody in the head too many times. We understand head injury now much better than we did before. But what it gave me was this idea that if I showed up each and every day and I did the work and I put in the time and I trained and trained and trained, I could be the best at something. And because of that, it was.

Was really the self reliance. This piece of it doesn't matter what's going on around me. If I'm solid and I go into this fight, then I'm gonna be just fine. And so that's kind of how my life went. And turns out I got pretty good at it pretty quick, so I became highly addicted to it.

And it not only gave me the self reliance piece, it also gave me that identity within myself very young. So when I started to go through the bullying phase where I cut my hair about this short and I wore tearaway pants and I wore, you know, a wife beater tank top. Cause I was always training when the teasing came along and all that traditional stuff that happens to kids, it helped me handle it better. I got bullied a ton. Like, lots of girls would pick fights with me and whatever.

That's fine. But I never fought back unless I was hit first. I was always taught that you never hit first, but if you are hit, you make sure they don't get back up. And so I do remember the one time I did get in a fight at school, and I was not afraid of my parents or the school, terrified my master. Cause he was coming in from Toronto that weekend, and he doesn't like when you fight in school.

And I found out what happens when you fight in school. He puts you in the ring and puts you through a wall. So, yeah, taekwondo was fun. So why were you bullied, and when did that start? That started really early.

I was always more of a tomboy. I didn't really fit, and I always did a lot of activities with the boys, and I didn't really want to be around the girls. It didn't make sense to me, because I trained with boys, my coaches were men. I was just always in that environment where you had to be a little harsh, a little harder. I also grew up in the middle of nowhere in Campbellford, Ontario.

So I grew up in the woods. I come from my mother's side, came over from Hungary, right when the Soviets came in, they made it. And then my dad's side of the family had no running water till he was twelve. And he was like this baby of seven kids. So I come from this really two hardened parents environment.

And so going into that sport made sense, but that also created the identity of who I was, which was a little harsher, maybe. And in case you haven't noticed, I don't have a problem using my voice, so I would use it. And that's irritating for a lot of people. So how old were you when the bullying started? I would probably say like six.

Jordan Peterson
It was mostly girls? Yes. And what did it consist of? At first it was just vocal, and they would tease me for my hair because I used to wear. You're gonna love this.

Kelsi Sheren
I'm sure there's. My psychiatrist is gonna watch this and laugh. So I used to wear. My hair used to be really, really short because it was easier with a helmet all the time. Right.

Just constantly sweaty. You just always have a helmet on. And so I used to wear bandanas when I was going through the grow out phase. But I also only used to listen to Eminem. And so really young was exposed to this.

I don't say angry music, but Eminem back then was not sober Eminem. And so I went through this phase where it's like I was training around a lot of music like this. I was around really hard people. I went into school, and so I just kind of went into myself because I didn't relate with anyone in school. And I was at a catholic school, and I didn't understand.

And they do their best to kind of teach you what God is and all of these texts, but they weren't really making it applicable to life. It was, this is what God says, this is what you do, this is what you don't do, this is why you do it. And there was no room for discussion. There was no room for explanation or asking the question why? So that's something that I didn't.

I didn't work well with me. I wanted to know why. I had more questions and I just wasn't getting answers. So I just kind of went into what worked for me. And once I did that, that's when the pattern of behavior started, and then, you know, then it got to a little bit of violence when I got a little older, probably 910, because then once I got my black belt, people were like, oh, you think you're.

And I was like, no, I really don't. In this weight class, around somebody, around this height, for sure. But outside of that, you know, Taekwondo's not really jiu jitsu. It's not really applicable in real life. I feel like, unless you're really good.

Jordan Peterson
And was the bullying almost all from girls? I had a. For a little bit there. There was boys, and I remember a distinct incident where I was on the soccer field, and I was wearing tearaways, and they ripped my pants off. I just thought they were not being nice.

Kelsi Sheren
I didn't think anything of it. And at that point, I was used to it a little bit. I mean, I had little clicks of friends. But again, I was at the club. My elementary school was here, and my club is right here.

So I would walk it. So I was always there. I was there in the mornings. I was there after school, I'd be there late. I used to teach once I hit a certain belt level.

Jordan Peterson
Did you have friends at the club? Oh, yeah. Oh, my gosh. That was my. That was my everything.

Kelsi Sheren
I didn't. That's the problem. I didn't care about anything outside of it. Right. Nothing mattered.

Jordan Peterson
Right, right. With that masculine attitude of yours that young, what do you think would have happened to you in a school now? Oh, I would have been transitioned. It's funny that you say that. I had Natalie, Eva Marie on the show.

Kelsi Sheren
She's a WWE superstar with pink hair, and she's very girly now, but we're having this exact conversation because she was the same. Tearaway pants, you know, slides, the whole thing. She grew up around boys, and I said, my God, thank God we don't live right now, because we would have been put on puberty blockers. I would have my breasts cut off. I would have been told I was in the wrong body.

I would have told that I wasn't who I thought I was. I knew I was a girl. I was good at being a girl. I grew up cutting and splitting wood. That's, to me, what it meant to just be a girl.

I could clean the house, I could cook, and I could cut and split wood. So why can't I do all of that? Why do I have to be the opposite sex to do those things? And so, yeah, I would be transitioned, and it's really tragic. What was it like for you?

Jordan Peterson
When you hit puberty. Strange. I went from flat as a board, both sides, no body fat at all, to just, like, disproportionate chest. It was a very strange, uncomfortable feeling, but it somehow, at the same time, I was going through a whole other level of what I would consider trauma. Now, looking back, doing a decade and a half of therapy, I've realized where a lot of that anger had come kind of stem from in high school, and it came because my coach, who was my guy since I've been four, started sexually assaulting people.

Kelsi Sheren
Say sexual assault, raping my teammate, and she was 14. And my entire world exploded when that all got exposed. And I stopped training, and I stopped having an outlet, and I stopped having a community, and I stopped doing the thing that made me who I was. And because of that, I became radically angry, but with no place to put it, no understanding why and how to even fix it. And my parents didn't know how to fix it.

They just were grateful it wasn't me. What came of that with him? He went to prison. He was at a minimum security prison. It was statutory rape is what he got.

I think he did two years. He has since been remarried to another one of the girls we trained with and has twin daughters, which makes me real uncomfortable, because that behavior isn't by accident, and that behavior doesn't go away. Right, right. Yeah. So I can imagine that was extremely hard on you, because you said you lost your community at that point as well.

Yeah, we couldn't. We tried to take me to a new club to train, because my goal was the Olympics from, like, I can remember it from, like, the moment I saw somebody come in with Olympic rings on them at the gym. I was like, what's that? They're like, that's the Olympics. I went to the Olympics.

I was like, hold up. You can go to the Olympics for Taekwondo? And they're like, yeah. And it was over after that. That's it.

That was the only path I could see from my life. I didn't see anything else ever, not once. And so once that was ripped out, I couldn't train with anyone. I couldn't trust anyone. I couldn't trust men, couldn't trust anyone around me, because what if.

What if it's gonna happen again? And then that became. That also then became a part of my identity. This is very angry child, and no fault of my parents, but my dad's a long haul truck driver. My mom is now, too.

And my dad was gone a lot, and my mom had my brother and I. But she did the best she could. But sometimes comments would come out like, there's something wrong with your head. Those types of things, those borderline gaslighting conversations that happen. There's something wrong with you.

It's like, no, I know there's something wrong with me, but I don't know what it is, and I don't know how to fix it. So at that point, you know, I had gone through an interesting childhood. The school had called. Had called child services on my mom because one time they were passing out timbits, and I said I couldn't have it because I had to lose weight. Right, yes, I saw that in your book.

So that followed me till I was 18. I had to see a pediatrician to make sure that my mom wasn't abusing me, which was ridiculous. Right, but understand. I understand it. But do you think that that event, that betrayal when you were a teenager tilted you towards post traumatic stress disorder later?

I've thought. I've really thought on. I've really meditated on that a lot. The reason I would say more likely no. Is because I think that when you watch someone die the way I've watched people die, you're gonna have a mark anyway.

So whether or not it was more severe because of it. So maybe, yes, it tilted, but I don't. Yeah, well, it was a pretty fundamental betrayal. No, for sure. It is.

100%. I don't disagree with you on that at all. But you don't see an obvious connection. I think, where the connection lied, for me, more than that obvious connection would be. So that happened.

Then I went on deployment, and a major authority figure, after my injury, threw all my chip paper in Afghanistan at me and told me it would have been easier if I died. So it's like, the authority figure here, that was a male. The authority figure here, that was a male. Compounding on the injury that already happened and telling me I was worthless. Because when you look at this situation, and this is where this is a little convoluted and it can seem really weird for some people to hear, so just bear with me.

The person that was assaulted was my training partner. Her and I were hyper competitive, though. Don't get that twisted even for a second. This is an individual sport, and I wanted to be like her. When she cut her hair, I cut my hair.

Right. So when it happened. Two older than you. Yes, by two years. So when it happened to her, there was almost this, like, weird thought of, like, was I not good enough to even try?

Like, you know, it's really, really messed up to even think that. But you get the connection. And where I'm saying, it's like, I was never good enough there. I was never good enough here, and then I was never good enough in the service. So there's that kind of identity that runs through it.

And it's unfortunate, but I think that was a big part of my life for a long time. It's not anymore. I know I'm very good. I'm very. I know my worth now.

But looking backwards, you know, that's been the beauty of the psychiatrist I got in 2011. He's probably about your age, very similar to you, dresses very similar, same attitude. In Canada, he was one of the first to do post traumatic stress research on post Rwanda veterans. He served in Rwanda and Bosnia as a medic. And this.

I call him my old man, this guy, he has put up with everything, but he's been the only person outside of my father who has never told me that I'm not good enough. Even when I went through all of the things with him since 2011, the amount of times I call him, telling him, I'm gonna kill myself, I can't do this anymore. And the response would always be, I have treated you veterans for 40 years. You're not doing this to me. I've never lost one.

I'm not losing one today. And that was always the conversation, and he was always telling me the truth. So I think a lot of the healing came in a lot of different ways when I. After the deployment, I think it was a blessing in disguise. That's why when Constantine asked if I regret it, I said, no, I don't regret any of it.

I needed to go through those things to come out the other side and be who I am today. And I like who I am today. I love who I am today. I couldn't say that before. I couldn't say that five years ago.

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Jordan Peterson
So you've pushed yourself, really, ever since you were a little kid. Ruthlessly. Yeah. And I got the sense when I was reading your book, too, that I don't want to say that you were trying to prove something, but because that's a cliche, but you're obviously pushing yourself up against your physical limits in your martial arts and then you decide to enter the service. And so let's talk about that.

So why did you decide? Why did, and you, and you picked a hard route, too. You went into the infantry, which was. Probably the most infantry by accident, artillery by trade. So it's very strange.

Kelsi Sheren
So in about 2000, I think it was 15, the United States started to integrate women into combat armed. So I was canadian and when I deployed, my unit went to an american fob. So we were working for the 101st. We were working for Americans. We were the only Canadians that were with an american set of human beings.

We were firing for them. And that was in Afghanistan and that. Was in Afghanistan, so that was different. And then I ended up doing infantry because the British called and they didn't have a woman to do the job, so they pulled me. Right.

So I worked with all of them. But before that I joined the army because I went to college in Ottawa. I went to Algonquin for about a month. I tried to get out of the town as quick as I could. And out of the town you grew up in?

Yeah. Well, I grew up in Coburg and then we moved to Campbellford and I went there at grade eleven. So up until that point, I'd gone to catholic school my entire life. And then I went into a public school for the first time. So that's fun.

Transition point. And I went to like, this farm town of this really, like, you know, really small town vibe hockey team kind of. How big was Campbellford? I don't even know this. I don't know the number, but it was tiny.

We had one at the time. We had one bridge, and we had a Tim Hortons, and we invented the toonie. That's our claim to fame. There you go. It's massive toonie.

Not relevant at all, but ridiculous nonetheless. And so, yeah, we went there and then I left and I went down to the Remembrance Day ceremonies. I always go for veterans day in America, and that was one thing my mom always taught me, is we always go on remembrance day. And so we went, I went and I took the bus back to Algonquin, and there was a lady on the bus that was in an air force uniform with but like, a plethora of medals. You don't really see that in Canada too much.

You see it a lot in the states. They're everywhere. They're hanging off of them, but in Canada, not so much. So when you see that, it kind of sparks a little. So I went over and had a conversation and just kind of, like, asked her about what she did, and she was, I think she was a pilot or she had flown, one of the first females to fly a whole kind of thing in Canada.

So after that, I got off the bus and I just said, I think I'm going to join the army. So I went to the recruitment office and right outside the Rideau mall. How old were you? I was, I just turned 18. I left at 17.

Yeah. And had you graduated from high school? I had, yeah, I had. I went early to Algonquin to try out for the soccer team first, and then I went. So I started school in September, and then I went there right around, like, November 15.

And then I got paperwork that I was accepted in December, and I got sworn in in December, and I was in basic training on January 3. This was a quick. Yeah, right. Was it a shock? I don't think I even had time to be shocked.

I just made the decision and we were going, and that was how it was going to go. We signed on the dotted line, so we went. Right. And so tell me about your basic training. What was that like?

I loved basic training. Basic training sucked, but I loved it. At the same time. There's something about collective sucking together. There's call it trauma bond or whatever you want to put on it, but I liked the competition because within your group, you have men and you have women, and everyone's in a different trade.

And Air force, Army, Navy, and then who's going where? And I, again, loved the idea of being underestimated. It worked for me. It's something that just drives me because normally I'm the smallest or I'm the woman, or I'm the whatever kind of, like, title you want to put it on. None of it matters to me at all.

And so we had a couple women, so immediately there was a clash with that, because what happened was we would go down and do the ten k run in the morning, and then I would, because we weren't allowed the elevators, and then I would sprint up the stairs. But I was first, so I got to the shower first. It's like, okay, you want to be first? Be faster. So they didn't like that I was just standing out.

I started to stand out a little bit. And, I mean, it was good for the most part. It was a little rough. I had a little bit of the same sort of stuff from elementary school kind of happened there. And it's like, okay, if it's happening everywhere, you're the problem.

But I didn't know at the time that it was a thing that I was doing. Turns out I'm just way too masculine, and I'm way too aggressive for a lot of women, and that rubs some women the wrong way. And so now, knowing that, I understand that then I didn't. And so we went through basic training, and it went well. Graduated on time.

Nothing went crazy. How many women in basic training compared to, like, what was the mix? We had, like, five women in our group, and the rest were men. How many men? 30.

Jordan Peterson
Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. So we had. What did the men think of the women?

Kelsi Sheren
Depended on the woman. Okay, explain that. Some were sleeping with the women. Some were competitive with the women. Some other women were a lot smarter than all of these guys put together.

They were like doctors that came in and were like, I'm gonna join the navy, you know? So there was some. We had some switched on women, but then there was. There was a different level of physicality. And because we all have the same pt tests, because this is when we didn't lower standards, we were all one standard, which we should always be.

Some women. Some women didn't pass the push up test the first time. It was. I think the push up test was five or ten push ups. Some.

You couldn't pass the beep test. You couldn't. So, you know, in a gymnasium, they put, like, one of the lines over here, one of the lines over here, and it would beep, and you would go, beep, and you have to run the other side before the next beep, and then go beep, and then you have to run, and it would get faster and faster, and it was a long, drawn out activity. And you had to hit a certain amount of beeps to be able to qualify for the physical. And a lot of people didn't.

Couldn't hit it. People were just overweight. And so if you failed a certain amount of times, you went up to the 13th floor, which I believe is the 13th. It's called fat camp, and you go up there until you can do it, and then you get put back into a new group. So that was always a fear for some people.

I didn't struggle with that because I came right from sports into that, so I was in great shape. Right, so you didn't have any trouble with the physical element? No, no, no. Because basic training isn't the heavy stuff. It's the cardiovascular work.

It's the ability to be yelled at and not break. It's the ability to learn tasks on sleep deprivation. Can you function with little sleep? And so for me, that was not too bad, because my dad would wake us up at some ungodly hour to go cut wood. I was pretty used to it, so it worked out.

And then after basic, we graduated, and then we all got posted to our trade specific training. I was an artillery gunner, so I went to Gage town, and Gage town is where you do your SQ and your DP one grenades, machine guns, all the major weapon systems that you get the opportunity to shoot, you learn them there. Once you're done that, then you go to your hyper, like, trade trade. So artillery. So then I went to the 105 guns and the mortars.

Jordan Peterson
Did you have any familiarity with weapons before? Oh, God, no. I'd never been exposed to guns. My dad had a 22 for raccoons. You know, I never hunted, I never shot anything.

Kelsi Sheren
Nothing at all. So it wasn't like a draw to the rah rah of the weaponry or the violence of it. It was more of a, this looks cool. I think I could do this, but I think everyone knew I was either gonna be a cop or I was gonna go do something else. I just didn't know at the time.

And so we went through training there, and that was fantastic. And how did the women do when the standards were equivalent? Like I said, some women failed. Yeah, yeah, for sure. 100%.

Jordan Peterson
I presume some men failed as well. Oh, there was definitely a few. We had a couple individuals, you'll find this comical, who joined because they said they were good at. What's that like? Not halo, but it's a video game.

Kelsi Sheren
It's like a war video game. And I couldn't help but kind of do one of these and yeah, they failed out. They were just overweight. Because again, if depending on the floor you live on, that's how you get up and down. Well, if you think about how many sets of stairs you had to do in a day.

We're on the 9th floor. We have to go down for breakfast. Cause you have to swipe that card. If you don't, you get in trouble. Then you have to go back up.

So there's two. Then you have to go back down for PT. There's three. You gotta go back up. There's four.

Now you're going on a ten k run. You're doing log stuff and you're doing all this stuff. Now you gotta go back up. And then they would just run you just cause they felt like it. And then you would do the same thing at night.

And then if they decide to toss bunks, you do the same thing again. So that if you're not in shape, like that's hard for anyone to do all the time. And so when we got to Gage town, they kicked it up a notch, right? Because now you're dealing with real guns, real weapons, and how do you handle them? How do you carry them?

And I remember the first time I shot Carl Gustav, which is just the massive big guy here that goes on your shoulder, and it feels like you're just getting sucker punched by Mike Tyson in the face when it goes off. So it's run by two people. So one person holds it, one person loads it. And so we went to shoot my girlfriend and I, who was one of the tiny ones as well, and my sergeant looked at me and went, no. And he just went over and wrapped both of us together and did one of these.

And I remember shooting that for the first time, and it was like, oh, okay, okay, I get it now. This is not pretend. These things are for real. And then we switched to artillery. And once we went to artillery, that was a whole new animal.

We were on 105, so they only have a 40 pound round. Explain the difference between weapons. Yep. So Carl Gustav is a shoulder propelled rocket launcher. It has an explosive head.

It does have an explosive head. I didn't shoot any of those overseas, so I'm not hyper familiar with them. We just did those in training. Then we have for me, the things that I shot the most of was my c seven, which was a long barrel, shoots a 5.56 or 7.62 round. And then we had hand grenades.

They don't look like the pineapples. They're round like a baseball, the modern ones. And then we had mortar rounds that shoot pretty somewhat accurately, 5 km within. So we had those, and then we had the 105s, which, how does a mortar work? So to the best of my recollection.

So it's run by two people. It's a. It's got a round plate in the ground that sits there, that can hold it down. And it's a long tube, and at the bottom is a firing pin. And then you've got a sight on it.

It just kind of looks like a metal off piece here. And then what you do is somebody lines up the site with the grids they're given. And then the other individual comes with the round, and they hold it on top of the tube. And then they say fire. And you just drop it, and you duck your head to the side of it.

And then it shoots, it goes down, hits the firing pin and then propels out. And so we did a lot of those, cause that's our job. Artillery is also mortimen. And then when we went to the 105s, those are what I kind of described to people. Like, if you've seen any war movie with like the horses, or you've seen them with a boom, that's what that is.

And the 105 is a 40 pound round, goes about 20 km. I'm probably give or take on that. And it's got the big brass casing that you kind of see those big round guys. That's what that one kicks out at the back end. Um, that's what you train on.

But I then deployed on the triple seven s, which is a 155 mm howitzer. Same sort of deal. Modern sight GPS. You can use GPS guided rounds on it. It shoots around around 100 pounds.

It can go up to max 40 believe. And so that thing is a different level of hurt. I mean, it's 100 pounds of he or loom or white phosphorus or whatever you're going to shoot. And it's, you know, the saying is, it's like the hand of God. It'll reach out and touch you wherever you are.

And so that's what I deployed on. And when I got posted from Gage Town, I went to a french unit. And that only happened because another individual was struggling with some kidney problems from heat exposure. He was taking too much creatine, and had really been one of those guys in the gym that was not looking after himself appropriately with all of the supplements. And so his kidneys crashed out in the heat.

And so at that point they said, okay, he can't go to valcarche. And you're going to Pettawa, and his dad's at Pettawawa. And I was like, well, I'll trade. Like, it's French. And I'm like, yeah, we'll learn.

It's our second language, isn't it? And so I went to Quebec, and then I got there, and no one spoke English, and I had a female officer, and that was about it. And so I deployed with those guys. I got there in September of 2008. Did you learn to speak French just by being around?

I don't speak it anymore because BC doesn't speak French. Right. Yeah, it's every other language, so I don't practice, but I learned kind of as I went. My first interaction with my sergeant was, I don't want you. And I went, nice to meet you.

And so it was a good start. Yeah. So you deployed to Afghanistan with a french speaking group. Yes. And you couldn't speak French.

Jordan Peterson
Speak of. Yeah, yeah, it was. Yes. Nos toaster kind of stuff. So I would be.

Kelsi Sheren
I would ask him, like, use him as a human translator. I would be like, et cetera, glass anglais en face. And then he would just translate words, and eventually I would start to pick up little sentences here and there. And then it was fringlish. Then it got to a point where I could understand, and I was the remote weapon system gunner for the T Lav, which was a turret tank.

Like a tank that we have that has a turret that shoots. Shoots a. I believe it's a c six. Puts a machine gun, and it's a computer system. So I learned that in French, and then I went and learned all the 777s in French and the commands in French and the radio commands in French and the mortar systems in French.

Jordan Peterson
How did your fellow soldiers react to you on the french side? You've been to Quebec, right? Yes, I lived in Montreal for a good. That's right. So, you know, when you hit, like, Quebec City and you go north, they don't really like english people as much.

Kelsi Sheren
Yeah. So it was about that. And then when you look at the gun troop, and then you get one of your gun troop members is five foot and 100 pounds at the time, you go, oh, great, now I'm gonna have to do twice as much work. Right. And so it just.

Again, it's that. Prove yourself. Here we go again. And so I was fine with it, and we did it, and it was all good. And once they got a little confident, once they could see I could load around, once I could load around, it's like, okay, she'll lift things at least.

It was strange there had to have some conversations. My sergeant, now we're friends now, and we've spoken since, and he goes, yeah, we had to have constant conversations about them leaving you alone, just like sexually. Because that stuff was just rampant. It's still rampant. It's just not ever prosecuted.

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Kelsi Sheren
Yeah. Yeah. So, okay, let's. I want to wander into that Afghanistan territory and your experience there. But I'm also curious about your feelings about women and men in the military.

Yeah. So you were. You were in early, obviously, and you were in before. There were differential standards. Yeah.

Jordan Peterson
And you made reference earlier to the fact that you think that the same standard is appropriate. 100%. Okay, so tell me why you think that. Perfect example. You and I go outside the wire.

Kelsi Sheren
Okay? You get shot, I'm beside you, who's picking you up, right? It's that simple. Okay, so what do you think that implies for women in the military? Like, I mean, the idea is that women can do anything men can do.

That's not true. Yeah, I know. I know it's not true. It doesn't even seem to me that it's particularly appropriate. But it isn't like I exactly know how to deal with that.

Jordan Peterson
I mean, you obviously worked yourself half to death in order to be able to manage this. And you did manage it. And so it's hard to say. Well, it's hard not to say. Well, good for you.

But by the same token, it seems to me odd that we're insisting as a society that especially in, I would say, especially in direct combat, that men and women can play the same role. And so what do you think about all that? I think it's really complicated, and I'll tell you why. If we were fighting, on average, an enemy that played by the same rules or had similar respect for women. Yeah.

Well, that's also a big problem. But that's the problem. That's the main problem. Right. Well, okay, so we could talk about that a little bit, too.

Well, it seems to me that women are at risk if they're serving in the military in a way that men aren't. Not true. Okay. I can count on all my fingers and toes right now the amount of men who have been assaulted by other men in their units by, like, special operators, too. I'm not just talking about, like, say, like, grunt people.

Kelsi Sheren
You know what? If you're captured.

You take the risk. Yeah, but, God, that's. Oh, yeah, it's hell. We've seen it. We've known women who have.

There's videos of israeli women who were captured who were tortured to death and raped to death. And we have that on every platform. So I get it. But at some point, it's. You have to make the decision.

I was willing to risk it because I genuinely, the people that I was with. Did you know what you were risking when you were willing to risk it? No, I don't. That was the thing. You know what?

That's funny that you said Constantine said the same thing. He's like, do you really know what you got into? No. And anybody. I mean, you can say that about life in general, but this is a very extreme situation, and I can't imagine what would have happened to you if you would have fallen into the hands of the wrong people in Afghanistan, let's.

Say, you know, I've never thought about that, but I don't know. I don't think they would have been able to keep me very long. I would have been a problem. Problems get eliminated fast.

Like, honestly, I'm that person in that time in my life. If you said, I need you to go run and jump over that wall, and you're probably for sure gonna die, if I knew someone was on the other side of that wall that needed to get pulled over, that wall. I'm risking it. I'm risking it every time. I hate that about myself sometimes because it's like the sacrificial, like, I will.

I'll risk it. If it means getting somebody who needs something or somebody needs help. I'll risk a lot. It's probably not a great trait on some levels, but I will and I have and I do it again. What about the standards now?

Jordan Peterson
The standards are in place. Okay. And what's changed? Okay, so standards were in place, you know, push ups, sit ups, yada yada. The reason you need the same standards is because if we go outside the wire and I expect you to do something for me, you expect me to do the same damn thing.

Kelsi Sheren
And if a guy comes out of that building and he's coming at me and I'm compromised, you better pull the trigger or you better jump on him or you better do whatever it takes. Now women become a distraction. I don't. They become a distraction because two reasons men act different when women are around. We know that.

We know that. They just respond differently. If a woman's getting hurt, it doesn't matter if he likes me or not, he's going to respond differently. He could put himself in danger now. He's going to react differently.

And secondly, because we have lowered the standards, we are putting people in places that are going to get others killed full stop. We are actually making it more dangerous for people in service, on planes, in other areas by lowering the standards in society together. And we're doing it and we're seeing the repercussions and we're not stopping it. So where's the line, I've been asked, do you think women need to serve if you want to respect the rights of the people we are fighting? Unfortunately, I need to be there.

Women have to be there because the Taliban and ISIS and God knows how many other enemies we've continued to make. There are women on the battlefield and they will use them if they are covered head to toe, and they will put men in those burqas with ak forty seven s and suicide vests and they will think a woman is walking up to them, whos not a threat, and they will detonate. And theyve done that. And they did it time and time again. The Taliban got smart and realized that we as westerners to a fault will follow the rule, but they don't have to.

And when that started to happen, people started getting killed more because they would hide themselves in women's positions. So they're like, okay, they're not gonna bring women on the front lines with them. So the women and children would flee, and that's how it would be. And then we started going, well, we have to do something about this, because they were hiding weapons, money, jewelry, indicators that they were working with the Taliban in, like, women's hair and, like, under their burkas and under their breasts and, like, things like that. So when I finally started going out there, you're finding all kinds of things because all of a sudden there was a woman there to actually search people, and we had never done that before because a man cannot touch a woman.

And so as long as we want to fight fair, as long as we want to fight up against the, you know, the current individuals we're fighting, whether that's Hamas or ISIS or the Taliban, you name it. Speaking of the Taliban side tangent here. 2 seconds. Have you seen the new article that came out? And they were like, oh, my God, did you know the taliban have started stoning women again?

Jordan Peterson
That doesn't really shock me. When did it stop? Jordan? I'm sorry. And also all of these people who have something to say about it.

Kelsi Sheren
Where were you for 20 years when we could have done something about it? When we were standing there watching it and you said, we can't do anything about it, so why do you care now? You don't care? Selective outrage. I'm over it.

Sorry, Jasmine, what are you speaking about. Particularly with the selective outrage? Oh, you name it. Anybody on social media with a face, anybody who's an influencer or a political commentator or these people who have made their careers off of just adding more negativity to the world, this constant nihilism for young people to click on and become obsessed with the next new rage event. It's really hard to watch.

Jordan Peterson
Now, you had a particular role in Afghanistan. You said, for example, that you were searching women. I was searching women. Right. So.

And that's a specific role for women. And you believe that that's a useful role. What now? What do you think? What do you think has been the consequence in general of introducing women into the armed forces?

I mean, there's. There's obviously continual sexual scandals in the armed forces in Canada. It's always been there. We just haven't reported it. Okay.

Meaning? Meaning it's always been there. In what way? Because there has been women in the army, right. Just not in combat arms roles in other countries.

Kelsi Sheren
For us, there has. So those assaults have been going on for the. The individual, for example. I won't say his name. He's got a world to hurt.

Anyway, who told me that it would have been easier if I died? He's been charged with seven sexual assaults, but he made it to major, and he's not being arrested or put in jail, and he's getting to leave with a pension. So what does that say to everyone else below him? Do it. Just make sure they're quiet about it.

And that's why it keeps happening. We don't actually take accountability for our actions. We never have. Because if we did, it would stop. Okay, so I read an article in the canadian military journal.

Jordan Peterson
I don't remember the name of the journal, but it was their DEi issue. Right. And their, what would you say? Recommendation for decreasing the frequency of the sorts of things that you're talking about was a retooling of the entire culture of the canadian military. Well, I don't exactly understand what that means, because the culture is going to be a war culture, and I presume that there are downsides to that as well as upsides.

I don't know how to understand the downsides in terms of the relationship between men and women, but if you have a lot of young men together who are single and a lot of young women together who are single, then there's obviously going to be sexual interactions on a nonstop basis. And I have no idea how that can be, like, reasonably regulated. I suspect that the DEI approach is not going to work very effectively. No. Yeah.

Kelsi Sheren
So Dei, that's a trip. Canada's lost its mind. Okay, so I spoke to Buck angel recently, and I was asking him his opinion on how the canadian military has just put tampons in the bathrooms. Yeah, yeah. And then made it, what a particularly punishable offense for the young men to take the tampon dispensers out of the bathrooms, which is obviously exactly what they should do.

They should never have been in there in the first place. Well, yes, that's for sure. Yeah. So bad leadership, right? You might say that already.

We can go with bad leadership. That rolls downhill. We have a saying in the military, shit rolls downhill. And so that's obvious. So Dei is rolling downhill, and it's rolling down to a already crippling military.

Our military complex in Canada is shrinking astronomically. And not only that, it's shrinking because veterans aren't being looked after. People at Gage Town are having to rely on food banks to eat because they're not being paid enough. No weapons systems are coming in. People are having to pay for their own flights to come back from.

Where did they go? Was it Lithuania? They were over there. Excuse me. They're playing war games.

That is. They were just trying to be a show of force or putin. Anyway, so. And then we bring in Dei. So here's what's happened since I got out.

This was a trip. I got to go back in 2021, 22 to New Brunswick to go shoot my last round as a gunner. I didn't know this was a thing, but when you're, like, super old or something really bad happens, they bring you back to shoot your last round. Are you super old or something bad happened? Gonna be 35 this year, Jordan.

So we're gonna go with something bad happened. And they really messed up, and they know it, and there was a book written about it. They didn't like it. So what happened was I went and I shot my last round, and it was this. You know, all the big wigs came out and all of this, and it was amazing because there was actually a female there that was a colonel that I actually respected.

And so it was a really big honor to get to shoot with her. And so I'm there. But what I saw was really troubling to me. Disheveled beards, long nails, piercings, jewelry, weird colored hair and beards. We had lost the standard.

We stopped doing the standards of what it meant to be in the service. Men have to be clean shaven. Women have to have short nails. You have to have one earring. You can only wear a wedding band.

Like, you don't do these things. Their hair was a mess. They just looked a mess. And I said, what am I looking at here? So this is the new standard.

So if you start to lower the standards, people who have served, like my friend Dallas Alexander, who got slapped by the government for going on Sean Ryan, people like that leave. The experienced people who you need to. Teach these Dei people standards. The best people leave, oh, 100%. And so this is what's happening.

So now you've got Dei. So what happens with Dei? Well, basics that we know. Men now are in women's spaces, vulnerable spaces. Men now are allowed around women in environments that they just shouldn't be in service in general, meaning we normally get our own shower time.

Right. And where we get our. If we have enough women, we get our own tent. If you didn't, you just. You're with the guys, and you're used to it.

It's fine. And so what was happening is people say that it's an assault issue, it's a control issue. It's a leadership who has been told time and time and time again, you can get away with it. It doesn't matter. You're gonna get away with it.

If you're high enough rank, you got the right people around you, you're going to get away with it. So what does that say to women? It says, well, I don't really want to be in the service. So now you're losing women, or you're having women transition to men so they're accepted in men's spaces and they're accepted as a male. So maybe they won't get raped because you've got, you had a Navy ship.

Just have to come back recently in the United States because there was, like, 30 assaults in 30 days, and women were just pimping themselves out early so they didn't get raped. They said, well, I'll just do it now. Cause then that way I won't get assaulted. So it won't be, like, traumatic. It'll be my choice.

And so people are saying, well, why are we. Why are we allowing women? How about you just stop raping people, guys? Where is the accountability on the man? Where's the accountability on the staff?

Where is the accountability on the leadership to go, hey, if I catch you doing an assault, this is what's happening to you. You're out, you're gone. Your job is over, and you're gonna have a dishonorable discharge for sexually assaulting someone. Then you're gonna get a criminal charge. Why aren't we doing that?

Jordan Peterson
Well, why do you think? Because we already have no one. And also there's a lot of people that are old school that are still in, that are gonna cover. Because what if a guy's, like, one year away from his pension, Kelsey, let's just let this one slide. You don't want his family to not have any money, right?

Kelsi Sheren
You don't want his family to lose his pension. You don't want them to have that name in the school, do you? Like, it's a hypocrisy. The service is filled with some of the best people that we have to offer, and then it's filled also with some of the worst we have to offer because it attracts a type personality. There's bad eggs and everything with the police.

Yeah, there's some bad eggs, but they're not all bad. And that's kind of what's happening with the service. Bad eggs, not all bad. Removing funds, what happens? Shittier people.

So it's happening in the police now. It's happening in the service. And we already have one of the smallest armies, so we're being bought and paid for by the CCP, left, right, and center, provable by csis on paper. And then now we have weak borders, no military, no weapons, running out of artillery rounds and giving how many billions of dollars somewhere else? Why would you want to join the service?

You can be patriotic, and I applaud that. I have people come to me all the time. My daughter's gonna join. Can you talk to her? So I'm not gonna talk anybody out of anything.

It's their path. If they believe they need to go do it, they will go do it. But at the same time, I'm sorry, this is not the country I fought for. Starting a business can be tough. But thanks to Shopify, running your online storefront is easier than ever.

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Jordan Peterson
So why do you think this is happening to the military in Canada? So it's really easy to control people when they don't have somebody to stand up for them. Look at the protest. Okay, so when our own police turned on people at the protest. You mean the truckers protest?

Kelsi Sheren
Yes. So I was involved with that in BC, and my parents are truck drivers. Who do you think I'm gonna support? And also, my business was crashing because of them, and I was losing everything that I had just built post army because of them. You actually think that I'm gonna stand for this?

And watching what I was witnessing, anybody in their right mind was not okay with this. So I came out and I did a sign, and I said, I stand with the protest. And everything just went. And I started talking to some friends, and then next thing you know, we got, like, a leaked WhatsApp chat from the RCMP, and it was like, saying some really nasty stuff about how they were gonna, like, take their jackboots to the protesters face. They were using nazi comments.

They were doing some really nasty things. And what I realized right there is who is going to stop us when the police turn on us? It's like, at least we have the service. At least we have the veterans. Like, it's not the military that's going to stop it because they're weak minded at this point.

If you're a Dei believer in that service, I'm sorry, you're not. If you believe in Dei for the army or the navy or maybe the navy, but the air force, I'm sorry, you've lost the plot. You forgot why you joined. You forgot what real war looks like. You're delusional and you're going to cause harm.

People are not going to like that comment. I'm going to get all the hate. I don't care, because that's the truth. You're not a free thinker. Your job, I get you've been told that you were supposed to follow in suit, but there's also a point in your life when you come to a fork in a road and you go, do I believe this?

If you go, no, it's gonna suck. But you have to stick to what your truth is, and mine is that behavior is not acceptable. So who is gonna stop us? Well, it looks like the veterans, because it's not the military, because the veterans are the ones that know what war is. Cause we've all been there for the past 20 plus years, and now we're all rocking into it again.

The military doesn't look after its people, doesn't equip them properly, doesn't feed them properly, doesn't look after the families, and puts you on a increasingly dangerous amount of pharmaceutical intervention instead of actually solving the problem. So why would you serve? I'm sorry? Never again. Not for Canada.

Jordan Peterson
So what happened in Afghanistan? You went to Afghanistan? You were with the french unit? I was with the French. We went to Fabrizio.

This was when. So I went. So I got to Valkarch in September. We deployed in April of 2009. 2009?

Kelsi Sheren
Yes, 2009. How old were you? I was just turned 19. And so we went my battery R troop Alpha, we went to fob Ramrod. So they go two guns at a time.

So two gun troops. So we had two triple sevens and then two people, two, sorry, troops filled with enough people to run both those guns, the comms and the officers. So we got dropped off there in the middle of the main one district. It's just, like, a three kilometer fob, really small, in the middle of nowhere. And that was the first time I had been outside the wire and went, oh, there's people out here that want to kill me.

It was very shocking, and immediately, we transitioned with the other Canadians, and we started right away. And so we got to know some of the Americans. The French didn't want the Americans on our side, and the French wouldn't speak English to the Americans, but I did. So I wasn't chummy with everyone here because I couldn't really talk enough to have, like, full conversations, so I started talking to the Americans, and there's a lot of guys from Texas and from all over the place, and it's wild because everyone thinks the military is racist, but it's, like, the most welcoming group of people I've ever met. There's people from everywhere, all walks.

It was crazy. And so that was great. Love the fob. When we were shooting, it's boring otherwise, you're just working out, or you're. You know, you said, love the fob.

Jordan Peterson
Tell me. Fob. Forward observation base. And so that's just where our little home was. We had our tent.

Kelsi Sheren
That's where we slept. That's where we shot guns. How did you understand your mission? Like, what was it that you. I wasn't given a mission set.

I wasn't given a mission set. I was a gunner. It was. You go here. You shoot the guns.

When you hear the fire mission, run to the gun, follow orders, right? Yeah. Right. And the only other time is we would go up onto the op tower, and that we had a bunch of op towers, and Canada's tower was this one. So it was.

Oh, my gosh. It was the something post. Observation post. Holy brain. Get it together.

We're gonna get there. And you would do four hour shifts with the machine guns, and you would just watch. That's what you did. And then you do radio calls. So I like to mess around with the Americans and do them in French.

This was just fun for me. And then anytime there's a fire mission, you ran to the gun. So that was, like, my life for a long time. How long? I think for that was, like, the first couple months.

And then after that, I got a call. A call came down to the tower and said, kelsey, you need to come into the tent. And I went into the tent, and Sergeant Leblanc was there, and he said, hey, so there's about to be a big operation, and the British need you to go with them. I've told them no. And I was like, hey, man, I wanted to be infantry.

Dont take my dream. Let me go do this, dad. I want to go do this. Let me go live my life. And he goes, I dont want you going.

I said, why? And he goes, because you dont understand. He had deployed to Bosnia, and he had deployed before, and he had used his weapon in combat, and that wasnt artillery, right? So it was small arms. And hes like, I dont want you going.

And I said, okay. And he said, but theyre not going to say no. Theyre not letting you stay. So what he did is he said, come with me. And we went and got my rifle kind of sorted out.

He stripped his rifle down because he had deployed before. He had all the Gucci kit. And I just had this like old sight that doesn't work unless it's at like 400 km. It's not gonna work for close combat at all. Like, it's terrible.

And he got me the tac light and all the cool things and gave me all of his. This is when it scared me a bit. He emptied his vest and took all his extra mags and went, you're gonna need these. And he laid it out in front of me and it was a lot of magazines. And I was like, you really think I'm gonna need that?

He goes, mm hmm. I said, okay. And then he took me to the little range we had there, and I zeroed my weapon. And then he said, they're gonna come get you tomorrow. So they were taking small arms fire on the way and they couldn't come get me.

So they said, if they don't come tomorrow, you're not going. So he was all happy they came. They picked me up, there was a bunch of terps on there and a bunch of other individuals. Interpreters, sorry. Yep.

And within that there was just a bunch of random people on the Chinook, you know, bits and pieces from all over different places of Afghanistan, people going to the hospital, some interpreters, some of the military. And they dropped me back off a caf, which is the, it is essentially the massive base within Kandahar where everyone flies in and out of. If you hear about the Tim Hortons or the pizza hut, it's there. And so that's where the British were. And they dropped me off, and then they dropped me at the british gate and they said, here you go.

And I walked into the British and I introduced myself. I don't know how to read the ranks, so I don't know who I'm talking to. They just have all different little, you know, we had chevrons at the time. They had different stuff. And so I must have been talking to someone high up, and I think it was a commander Calhoun.

Commander. No idea. Didn't. Just terrible. And I said, hi, I'm going to work with you.

And they said, okay, you're going to be our female attache. So just. Female searcher, you're going to come with us. You're going to go see the RCMP here real quick. They're going to tell you what you can and cannot do.

They're going to give you some zip ties and some gloves, and we'll come get you. So I went to the RCMP. They gave me a quick overview of what I could and could not do. What could you and could you not do? I couldn't.

So I could not put duct tape on them, but I could zip tie their hands. I couldn't put them in certain positions. I couldn't put a bag over, but I could tie their eyes. If I was removing things from the women, they had to be set down in front of them so they could see that we weren't stealing it, that we were just removing it from them. And then, you know, just pressure points I wasn't allowed to push.

I said, okay. And then I got gloves and a bunch of zip ties. And then I went back to the British, and they said, okay, we're going out tonight at 01:00 in the morning, and this is what we're gonna do. You're gonna go from house to house to house to house. And anytime there's women, we're gonna call you, and you're gonna follow that guy right there with the bomb dog.

He's got a black lab named Benji, and you're gonna follow him everywhere he goes. Don't lose him. He's with you the whole time. I said, okay. And then they said, you can go sleep.

And I said, I don't think I can. And then we set off in a little school bus over to the airfield and then hopped on a chinook, and I sat on the floor, which was a bad idea. And then people stacked around me, and then we took off and we went out. It was the first time I used, like, nvgs, so nods to see at night and all of that. So that was interesting.

And that was about it, to be honest. That's all I got told. And then we went out on foot, and we had a hot LZ, and we landed. Yep. So we.

I'm gonna get I'm so sorry. No problem. We were taking some small arms fire when we came in and they dropped us off really quick. Problem was, people were sitting on my legs, so I couldn't feel them. So when they.

I stood up my legs, I went to run. They gave out. And so a scottish guy just grabbed the back of my vest like this and did one of these and just kicked me in the butt. And it was like, aye, off you go. And I was like, here we go.

And so we went out, and then we waited until morning prayer because of the respect we have. We wait till they're done their morning prayers, then we kick their door in, and then I was told they're not going to use me. Oh, you know, Barnes, we haven't had people, women and kids around a lot. They've been leaving. I said, okay.

They told me we're going to be out there a week. I was like, okay, first house, we need her. And I go, that was my first experience of what, twelve women and kids screaming and crying in a room by myself looks like. And that was a being a mom now. I really wrestle with some of that stuff.

I didn't then, I had no reference point, but being a mom now, I really wrestle with it. Wrestle with what? Kicking people's door in the middle of the night with your baby screaming and terrified. The level of trauma I've left in that country and the women and kids I encountered.

Jordan Peterson
What were you looking for? All we were told is we were looking for caches, you know, weapons, a lot of money, anything that would indicate people were working with the Taliban or anywhere near sort of IED, which are improvised explosive devices, any of those farms. And that's all I was told. And so if I were to find big wads of money, or I would have find cell phones and. And any of those things, I was like, bring them to them, like, okay, this is what I found, who I found it on, and so did you?

Kelsi Sheren
Yeah, yeah, we found a lot. They hid stuff in women. Cause they didn't think I'd be there to search them. And so we. So does that help you reconcile yourself to what you did?

No. Why not? Cause I still did the thing. I still inflicted the trauma. It was still a part of the pain, doesn't erase it.

It's there, though. So it's an uncomfortable feeling, something I've definitely worked on a lot, but it's definitely there. Like kick my door in the middle of the night. Yeah. Yeah.

You know what I mean? It's very immediate, what you're involved in is very immediate, and it's like, bang. It's just like screaming and, like, madness and chaos and, you know, it's right after they're praying, it's just dirty. Feels dirty. Like, I get why.

Like, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying, like, we shouldn't have done it that way, but, like, shock and awe is how you don't get killed, right? It's like my buddy used to say to me, I'd be like, how did you guys, like, how did we lose so many more people than the SF? He's like, we move at night, we're quiet, we get the job done and we leave. Conventional forces, we roll out at the same time every day. We go down the same route every day.

You know, we're sitting ducks. It's different. So anyway, so you gotta be quick and you gotta be shocking awe a bit. Right? So that's the tactic.

And so we started doing that for a while, and that was going okay. I had a couple scuffles with men in the family, thinking I was a boy going into a room. So we dealt with that a little bit, which is always fun. The interpreters didn't like that I was there. There's not a lot of respect for women, especially a female soldier.

So that was an interesting relationship to kind of work around, if you will. And. And then we had a couple of situations, so. Situations, wow. I would have done that.

Jordan Peterson
So that's an additional difficulty of being female in the armed forces in those countries. Yeah, absolutely. Because if you're fighting a country that has little to no respect for women, by and large, across the board, depending on your level of extremism. Yeah. You know you're going to be dealing with a different trust issue.

Kelsi Sheren
Right. Yes. Well, I would imagine that you're particularly hated, too. Oh, yeah. You could feel it, like, burns through.

Jordan Peterson
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can feel that. But that's okay. I equally hated them just as much, and I made sure they knew it. So again, this is where that masculine side switched on and there was no feminine left.

Kelsi Sheren
And so within a couple days of being out on our on foot operation, I was with. Except you said that it bothers you now that you're a mother. It does bother me that I'm a. I mean, I think it should bother anyone. I'm not disputing that.

Oh, no, for sure. I just think that feels natural to me. I feel like if I were to say, oh, I had no problem with what I did to those women and kids, I think that would be slightly sociopathic. Yeah, right. And I'm in.

I consider myself a painful empathy, like, for a lot of people, especially, you know, post psychedelics and really opening and doing work on myself, that kind of shell and heaviness isn't there anymore. That, like, need to protect my heart is not there anymore. Now it's like, ugh, painful all the time. Like, right before we came here, there was a woman at lunch just yelling at her child. And I could see that she was stressed, but it was like watching the child take it.

Oh, I just stopped eating. I felt nauseous, like, I'm painfully empathetic now. And it's almost a. I almost wish it was a bit the other way. How much of that do you think is a consequence of becoming a mother?

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Go to jeremysraisers.com and order yours today. And that's a big change. Oh, yeah. I don't think it's as much as I thought it would be, because when I had my son, I wasn't well yet. So there was still that hardened part there.

Kelsi Sheren
And thank God it happened so early where he couldn't remember what I was like. He gets to see happy mommy now. He doesn't see mommy crying on the stairs like he did when he was two and three. Right? So how long did you search?

We only did a week. We did a full week of just non stop. And because it was nonstop, I went from Alpha, bravo, Charlie, and I was shifted between every single unit. So if they were kicking a door, there was a women, then I would go over there, and then if they. They would kick and wait, and then they would go, okay, wait.

We got women and kids. They put them in a room and then they would wait for me to come over here, and then I would search over here, and there'd be the same sort of thing over here. There's not many of us, so you're used a lot, and so how'd you. Get along with the Brits? I love them.

How come they didn't question me? They didn't make me feel like I needed to prove myself. I was handed to them, and they said, do you know what you're doing? And I said, probably better than some of you. And because I immediately fired back and didn't just cower into my shell, they're like, oh, she's lippy.

Is she? And then they started calling me the c word in a good way. And I was excited about that because I was like, oh, I'm starting to be one of these people. Okay, okay, I can do this. And then you're still only about 19 at this time.

Yeah, I was 19 the whole time. Yeah, yeah. And it was just. They respected me. If I said, stop, everyone stopped.

They weren't like, huh, why should we stop? They were like, stop. Byrne said, stop. Something felt wrong, and so they respected me, and so I got on with them just fine, and it was really lovely. I had South Africans, English, Irish.

Who else is it? Fijians. And they were just this amazing, eclectic group of people, and they all just were good with me there. There was no questioning it at all. No one was weird.

No one pulled any sexual stuff. No one said anything offside that I considered offside. It was a really respectful relationship, and I liked it. So when they respected me, I was happy to be there. And so we're out, and we were all on hold.

There was a road to clear, and I was. Had my back up against a wall, and on the right hand side, there was a road, and then there was another compound, and then they had a second story on that. So we put a sniper up on the roof and a spotter over there, and we had some guys over here waiting. Then we had all of us up against the wall, and we had an interpreter beside me. And then just down the road, there was a road, and it kind of went from a big open field on the right hand side, and then off the road was, like, a deep ditch, but it was, like, super green in that ditch.

Like, they, like, really tall trees. People don't think Afghan is, like, really green, but it shockingly is. And then at the end of it, there was this massive grape hut, and they're like, okay, we want to clear that before we go. Down this road, what did you call it? The grape hut.

So essentially it's like a mud hut with a bunch of holes in it. So if you hang things through it, it aerates so it'll dry things in there. I see. And so we sent two guys out, and one had a metal detector, and one was a machine gunner, and he was just going to watch his back. And so everyone's kind of watching this massive open area, and it got weirdly quiet, and that's never a comfortable feeling.

And so we're just sitting there hanging out. I actually have a photo right before it, somebody took a photo of me and I'm smiling like this. It's like one of my only photos from outside the wire. And next thing you know, you just heard this, like, boom. And the whole ground just, like, moved.

And I whipped my head to the left. And you saw one of our guys, what was left of him, just boom. And my eyes. This was the guy with the metal detector and the machine gunner. Yeah, the machine gunner was sitting at the door.

So the blast hit him to the left side, and it ripped his kid off, shredded his arm down his body, took his whole helmet. Like, I didn't understand how that happened, but, like, everything was off of his body. Like, that's velcroed on and, like, clicked in. I didn't understand, like, what I just witnessed, I couldn't understand. I can't stress to you how foreign.

I didn't, there was no, like, I didn't get it. I didn't realize what I was seeing. And to the left of me, all you heard was the ICOM radio, which is this radio that the interpreters have. When it's really clear, we can hear the Taliban, right? That's how we kind of, like, wiretapped the Taliban.

And so when it got really clear, they were close, the signal was good, and it was crystal clear because they like to watch, right? They like to watch you blow up videotape and use it for propaganda. And they're always watching, and we know that. And so they did it. And all you hear is, and I, like, I'll remember that to the day I die.

And, like, the level of rage that I did not know that could exist in a human being just overtook my entire body. And I looked over at Buchanan and I said, we need to run. And he goes, wait. And they all had radios. I didn't have radios, so I could just hear people screaming over radios.

And then next thing you know, it just got chaotic quick. They're like, okay, go, go. Go. Go. Like, I'm not supposed to be in this position.

This is not my job. I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I'm just being. Doing what I'm told. Run.

Run. Got it. Autopilot on. So we jump down, and we start running. And I'm over with the medic, and one of the guys comes.

He comes. The machine gunner comes running down, and he's like, I got him. Like, he's taping him up, and he's just saying, where's so and so? Where's so and so? And he's kind of, like, right out of it, and he just, like, hits him with morphine, and they get him off, and they're like, go.

And so we start jumping into that ditch that hadn't been cleared, and we just start running. And the only way I can describe it is if you listen to a movie and it's like a slow motion, and you're in that black tunnel, and it's just like, all you can hear is, like. And you're running and running, and you can't go, like, fast. And I'm running with. I had, like, 60 pounds of kid on me at the time, like a gazelle.

Like, I'm just sprinting as fast as I can. We get to the road, and they're like, on three, run. We're like, one, two, three. And we run across the road, and we walk in, and there's some other guys that are in there, and they look around, and I look around, and this. It's like, I hate that I said it, but I was just kind of like, where is he?

Because I literally had no idea what just happened. And they're like, what's left is left. Start grabbing things. And I didn't have gloves on at the time, so we started with evidence bags, just putting body pieces into bags over and over, and I'm just grabbing. This was the man with the metal.

Detector, what was left of him. And so we're doing that. And then there was a boot. He must have, like, hit it with his foot or the metal detector, but there was a big improvised explosive device at the back end of that grape hut, and he must have hit it, and it set it off. And so his boot was still in there with part of his leg, but it was laced up and dark humor boots, okay?

And one of my buddies just tapped me on the shoulder, and he's like, I burned good. And that was, like, the moment I felt, like, a dissociation happen. I call it the light switch. But just, like, we're done now. Bye.

And I became the version of myself I was for a decade after that. They call that moral injury. Yeah, that was a good time. And so we're collecting everything, and next thing you know, all hell breaks loose. So if you know anything about the Taliban or terrorists, they love a good secondary device.

And so they wait till everyone rushes in, and then they hit you again, and they did that. So next thing you know, mortars are. I know how inaccurate those things can be. So when I hear them coming down, I'm like, oh, we got problems. And so they start just sending mortars, and our guys are, like, sending mortars to try to deter the Taliban that are on the line coming in.

And we're getting. Taking small arms fire, and they call in the pedro flights, which are the two blackhawks. One's gonna come in, and it's going to pick up the dead and the hurt, and the other is going to lay down hell. And so they come in, and I don't. This is just chaos.

They go, okay, you need to. Whatever you have in your pocket's good. Take your weapon, sling it, grab his weapon, put it on, and then take both helmets. So I do that, and we start running, and we're just running down this road that hadn't been cleared, just going through open fire. And it was the first time I'd experienced, like, the.

The whiz and the pop really close. And then we tripped, and we dropped him. What was left? And then we had to put him all back in while this is going on. And the next thing, the blackhawks show up, and it was.

It was. It was. I just didn't want to die. And they came through, and one landed, and the one guy was just like, where is he? Where is he?

And everyone's like, oh, we got him, mate. We got him. We got him. It's all good. It's all good.

Hit him with morphine. And meanwhile, he's covered up right beside him. What's left with a tarp? And they're just like, oh, he's on the next flight. Like, he's good.

Like, just don't. Don't get him any more stress. And so this other one comes through. And this was the machine gunner. Yeah, the machine gunner.

And the other Blackhawk takes off, and just, we get back, and I'm covered in blood, and I'm taking off all the kit and putting it on there. And the guy on the blackout comes through, and just, like, just, like, lays down like living hell. And I can't tell you how good that felt. Like, I felt that in my bones. I was, like, more harder.

Do it again. After that, I just lost all sense of empathy, and I just wanted to kill them all. And I hate that I say that, but I did, and I don't apologize for it, either. And then I started to. The medic caught on.

I'm still good friends with him. The trauma that you experienced, to what degree do you think that was a consequence of the mayhem that you saw, and to what degree do you think it was a consequence of that hatred? I think it was. I think. Cause there was a lot of other things that happened on that one that really compounded it aggressively, but I think it was more the shock to the system of watching someone die the way I did.

And then the hatred came in secondary to really compound, like, just the pain of it all. Yeah, well, that's a real transformation of personality. Yeah. Yeah, it was not. I got quiet.

That's how everyone caught on. I just stopped talking. I stopped eating. I stopped sleeping. But when we came back to the.

When we were getting everyone out, right before we kicked off again, I started obsessively rubbing my hands like. Like this and, like, trying to get the blood off. And till this day, it's 2024. I still don't touch raw meat with bare hands. I eat meat.

I eat predominantly only meat, but I don't touch it. I can't touch it. I haven't gone hunting yet because of it. I'm really bummed about it. Yeah, we're working on that one.

That's my last bugaboo. Yeah. Yeah. Cause I didn't have gloves when I was grabbing him, so that was uncomfortable. Yeah, I think that's fair to say.

Yeah. Yeah. So I make jokes about it now. Cause it's how I cope.

Jordan Peterson
So what happened to you after that? So we pushed off and we just kept going. And then I don't know if it was the next day or that same day. Cause everything started to become a blur after that. We just started getting hit every time we walked somewhere, every time we moved, we were just taking it.

Kelsi Sheren
Small arms fire, mortar fire. We were just getting clapped, like, constantly. They were everywhere. And so I got put in a weird situation again. I was with one of the troops.

I was with Steven Noble's guys. And we were walking into a smaller village, and there was screaming up ahead in a compound. It was, like, women. And whether it was, like a target or whether it was a setup or whatever, that pulled us there. He says, we pushed into this compound, like, get on the roof.

And I was like, let's fucking go. Now it's my turn, right? So they lift me up because I can't get on that roof. They lift me up onto the roof, and there's another guy to the right of me, and then there's me. And then there's a sharpshooter right beside me to the left hand side, which is like a sniper, but the Brits call them sharpshooters.

Not quite snipers. And another guy there, and we are just laying down hell. Like, I'm feeling nothing. We're just laying down hell. And the sharpshooter goes, I'm out of ammo.

I got to jump down his rifle, and I'll show you a picture of it is the length of my body when I stand up from butt stock to end of barrel. So I'm laying down rounds. He jumps down. As he jumps down on the left hand side, we get flanked, and three rounds go do do do. Hit his buttstock.

Protects my hip and just misses me. So after we're done, the firefight, we jumped down, and he pulls out the rifle, and he pulls out the casing, and I was like, tell me that's mine. He's like, no chance, because you have a picture of it, though. And I was like, that was my hip. And he's like, yep, it was.

So if he was there, it would have went through him, would have hit the buttstock, and hopefully would have stopped. But because he wasn't there, it hit the buttstock, and it took enough of it that it stopped it. So I was very fortunate in that situation. And then after that, I started having. We started just the next compound we went to.

I was searching a group of women, and there was a particularly combative set of women here. We had known at the point that this was home of the Taliban. Like, we had. We knew somebody there. We knew that they were.

We knew that. And so when I was searching, some of the women, they chew. There's a drug. They chew there, right? And it makes them really disoriented, and it's really hard to search them while I'm searching one of them.

One of them comes at me with those, like, shears. Yeah, just one of these. I just. I don't. I wasn't issued a small arms, like a handgun at all, which makes no sense.

And my barrel is this long, so I'm not getting that in between us. So I just kind of do this and just kind of knock her down so she's down. So at least then she's diffused. And it was fine. But then after that, what happened was I got really just angry with all of them.

So I started instead of taking something from them and setting it down, it just was out the window, out the door. There was no respect anymore. There was like, I don't care if they're in prayer, kick the door and let's go. I'm not waiting for this. We got places be and you could just see it just get worse and worse and worse.

And we were just in firefight after firefight after firefight. Then our other guys got hit. Then we lost two interpreters. Then we had one of the other females there. She was a mess because she was in right behind.

So now we had to get them out. And it was just this. It was this really, really, really terrible operation that just didn't go well. The living room is where you make life's most beautiful memories. But your sofa shouldn't be the one remembering them.

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We finished the operation. They picked us up. We got back to caf, and they said, see you later. And I went back to the Canadians, and I was told by a captain that. How long was that period of time?

About a week, I think it was. I have the exact time stamp. It was, I believe it was the 9th at 0100. And then we got pulled out at 215 am on the 15th. And I went back to the Canadians, and I was told right away to just not talk about anything that happened because no one's going to believe me anyway.

And then I went back out to the fob, and I almost pulled the trigger on a kid because when I was doing the tower, the little girl that came outside the fob all the time, she'd wave. But this time I didn't see a wave. I saw a gun. And I racked around, and the guy beside me was like, yes, girl, like, what are we doing? And I just looked at him and I was like, what?

And he was like, no. And I ran off the tower and I went into, and I told my sergeant, I said, something's wrong, something's wrong. And they said, okay. And then they sent me back to Cath and then they sent me to the doctor and they said, we're seeing signs of acute post traumatic stress disorder. We're going to put you on these pills because I stopped sleeping, I stopped eating.

I did that. What did they put you on? I have a list, but this eleven. Okay. I have a list though.

So it was eleven s uppers, you know, sleep meds, antidepressants, any anxiety, you name it, it's just those types of medication. Got it? Yep. And then they said, okay, go on your HLTA, which is your holiday. So I went to Dominican Republic with my mom for three weeks.

And in that timeframe we lost more Canadians that I was with and I was angry and I drank and I was not fun to be around and I just wanted to go back. And I went back, I went back out to the fob, told an officer off and they sent me back to caf again and they're like, oh, don't worry, don't worry about your stuff. You're coming back, don't worry about it. So I left all my stuff at the Fob and they brought me back to the doctor and they're like, this is getting worse. And then they sent me to the QM, which is quartermasters, where you get like your inventory stuff.

And they made me start counting pension. And then my brain wasn't good enough, so an officer, a warrant officer yelled at me and then I unleashed living hell and I was told I had to go back to the doctors and I did and they said, you're going home in three weeks. So I went home three weeks earlier before the rest of my gun troop, and I never saw the British again and I never saw my unit again. And then I got back to my unit in Quebec before everyone else and they told me I was going to the hospital and see you later. And then I went to the hospital in Ottawa and then I was there until they deemed me acceptable to try to retrain at the Connaught range.

And it didn't go well because I was working on a range. And then they decided they were going to med board me out in 2011. So I got med boarded out with severe post traumatic stress disorder and an undiagnosed traumatic brain injury. What was the traumatic brain injury from? How was that acquired?

So what we understand now about machine guns, Carl Gustav's artillery rounds, the concussive blast off of one round will give brain damage. And I did a lot of that. Right? Yeah. So.

Right, because we have the eleven out of the same 13 symptoms. Right. So my TBI was actually a big contributing factor to why I wasn't healing, but we weren't treating it because we didn't pay attention to it. Right. Because it wasn't written down.

Jordan Peterson
Right. And what kind of care did you receive when you got back to Canada? A social worker. I found out recently I had a social worker at Ottawa who was trying to work with me. They tried to do hypnosis, they did EMDR, they did medication, they did exposure therapy.

Kelsi Sheren
We did all those things, and it just got worse. And then the medication increased. And then I moved to British Columbia with my now husband, and I was given to the operational stress injury clinic in Vancouver, which is an okay place, but luckily, doctor passy was there, and he was given. I was given to him. And he was the gentleman that you mentioned earlier.

Psychiatrist. Yeah. And he was helpful. I still work with him weekly. Why was he helpful?

Jordan Peterson
What did he do? Right.

Kelsi Sheren
He had walked the walk, so I know he understood, so I didn't have to explain myself to him. And he gave me the space and didn't tell me I was broken. He said, I see this all the time. You're going to be fine, kid. Just give me time.

And I said, okay. And the idea of being the only suicide he ever had, like, would haunt. I couldn't do that. I didn't live because of me or wanting to be here. I lived because I had an obligation to others.

And so who. My now husband I've been with for 14 years, I met him right before deployment, and I moved up to. You write about that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I just can't.

I can't let people down. It's like the best. It's like the worst. So I stuck around. How are you doing?

Fantastic. How come? Psychedelics, community, purpose, love. All of it in combination. Mainly the catalyst point, though, with my husband, did the best he could for as long as he could.

My psychiatrist has never failed me, but what I had lost. And people don't really talk about this when you transition out of anything. Professional sports, military, police, going into the civilian world is not the same. And if you lose that community. Right.

Jordan Peterson
So you're hurt and you don't have an identity. Yeah. And I was told at 21 I'd never work again, so that's a great label. So you have post traumatic stress disorder, you're never gonna work again, and you're broken. And we become the stories we tell ourselves.

Kelsi Sheren
We know that. So I told myself, I'm the injured veteran who's never going to work or get better because that's what I was told. So why wouldn't I believe that? By the people who are trained experts in their fields. And it was only when my doctor said to me one day, like, we know you want to get pregnant, but you can't be on some of these pharmaceutical meds.

So what about cannabis? And I was like, I grew up. Like, that's a no no. Like, no no, just give it a try. I was like, okay.

So I slowly started to integrate cannabis and remove sleep medication, and that worked. Then we got down to the last. What did cannabis do for you? It allowed me to get to sleep and stay asleep. Oh, yeah, okay.

Yeah. Because my problem was waking up from nightmares and then night sweats. I was really violent at night when I'd sleep, and so I was never sleeping, so I was never resting. And we know that was. It takes 72 hours of break.

Someone without sleep, it's not much. And so from there on, I said, okay, I'm going to go down this more holistic route. And I started my art therapy. My doctor suggested art therapy. I started on the kitchen table.

In 2015, I started building bracelets out of old spent casings that my friends would send me from the range, which I found out really quickly was illegal. When the RCMP cornered off my cul de sac and showed up at my door with guns, they were like, so do you have rounds in there? And I was like, nope. I'm like, do you have a warrant? They're like, nope.

I'm like, 7050 cal rounds on the other side of that door. They just. They weren't actual. They were just casings, but you can't take those. So I was building jewelry out of them, and I slowly started to develop this purpose.

And I never wanted to run a non profit, but I wanted to impact our community, and I didn't know how. So I was like, well, if I can make something, then that can be the vehicle that puts that money with those charities that's going to do the boots on the ground work. So then I'm impacting change and I'm funding something. So that was my mentality going into the business. What did that grow into?

Brass and unity now is, oh, my gosh. So brass and unity, I mean, it took off. In 2016. I met with Kevin Hart, and he gave me the best piece of advice I've ever been given, which was at the time, it was called her wearables. He goes, you need to make it a unisex name.

And I was like, you're right. So we did. He tweeted it out, and a year later, I was on Ellen, and it, you know, Julian Hough and Michael Buble, and all these people started wearing it for suicide prevention. And I was like, okay, we're cooking with something. The next thing you know, we were nominated for.

Jordan Peterson
What were you making that they were wearing? Just these. These just bullet jewelry. Like, with actual casings? That's it.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Just pull. Use your muscles. I believe in you.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. Sorry. I'm a positive affirmation individual. Yeah, well, those are very nicely made. Thank you.

Kelsi Sheren
Yeah. So I started making these, and then we started selling them in the fashion world. Now, let me tell you about the fashion world and bullet casings. It doesn't mix. I don't know if you know that.

Jordan Peterson
It seems logical. Yeah, right? So long and short. It ended up kind of skyrocketing. And we.

Kelsi Sheren
By 2019, we were in Elle, fashion magazine, all of these things, all these stories, all these celebrities, 200 retailers. I had hand signed myself just hustling my way through North America and COVID hit, and I lost my entire business overnight. Talk about a lack of purpose. Having your whole identity wrapped around a jewelry company. That was a bad idea.

Isn't it? Well, it worked. It did its job. It did what I needed to do. It got me up.

It got me moving. It got me. Don't want to kill myself every day. So all in that timeframe, I got married, I had a baby, ran this business, and then 2021 kicks over, and I get this phone call again from the same guy who introduced me to ayahuasca. So, in that timeframe, I started getting really suicidal again.

By 2019, I was drowning. I couldn't figure out why I'm doing all the things. I'm doing what I'm told. I'm trying all the exposure therapies, and why isn't it working? And my buddy calls, and he said, hey, what about ayahuasca?

Griff's like, you know, do you know of heroic hearts? I said, no. They said they take veterans to do ayahuasca. I was like, what's ayahuasca? They're like, this tea.

And I'm like, all right, let's do it. Last kick at the can. Give it an honest try. 30 days later, I went and did it with a group of operators and blackwater dudes, and army rangers. And I realized in that moment, it was less about the ayahuasca and more about the community.

I was welcome. I was brought in again. I was seen.

So we did ayahuasca for three days in the woods. Three days, yeah. And my life changed. What did you learn? That the way that I was taught that God exists isn't true, that God is everything.

And that I wasn't going to go to hell because I wanted tattoos and that there was nothing wrong with my head, and that I was going to be okay if I just had faith in something bigger than myself. That was when. What year was that? 2020. 2020.

So after that, I've never been on a pharmaceutical drug again. Is that right? Yeah. From that point? From that point.

Jordan Peterson
Wow. Yeah. We're going into 2025 soon here. How's your sleeping? Fantastic.

Well, that's a good deal. Well, it's a combination of that and brain treatment I did in 2022. What did you do? So I went down to this place called resiliency Brain Health center in Dallas, Texas. They treat army Rangers, Delta operators, you know, NFL dudes.

Kelsi Sheren
And what had happened was, in 2021, from starting my podcast, I met Griff within the first four episodes. So I did psychedelics, and that carried me through, and I integrated that. I did psychedelics like, I did Ayahuasca again that October. And then after that, I had some really popular people on the podcast, and this organization was like, something's wrong with her eyes. And the only reason that happened is because my husband started dying.

So all while this is happening in COVID, my husband and I were in the garage, and we're watching a Joe Rogan podcast, literally the same pattern of behavior we have every day. And I was smoking a joint before bed. He'd sit in the garage with me while I. We just have this routine, and he looks at me, and he goes, kelsey, something's wrong. And he grabbed his right side.

And I did pick my paramedics after I got home from the army, and I was like, wrong side, Brad. He goes, no, something's wrong. And he stood up, and he goes, I think I'm dying. And he dropped to the ground, and he just was gone. And so talk about move slow again.

I started screaming. We called 911. They put us on hold. I said, I just got a new Tesla. Let's test this thing out.

So my neighbor came and put him in the car for me, and we drove him to the hospital in less than five minutes. And the ambulance called and said, pull over. Beat it. I'm gonna get there faster than you. Canada didn't help.

Canada kept telling us it was mental health. It was not mental health. My husband was a professional supercross racer. He's hit his head more times than he can count. But what we're starting to understand about tbis is they can be delayed.

He was fine until he wasn't. Everything started to spiral after that. He couldn't get out of bed. His depression. He started getting suicidal.

He was losing weight. He wasn't functioning. He just didn't want to live anymore, and he couldn't figure out what was wrong. We went to every hospital. We did.

Private doctors, mris, you name it. It's mental health. It's mental health. It's not mental health. A friend of mine was on instagram and was like, I'm at this brain clinic.

I have too many head injuries. So I voice messaged him. It was a ranger, and I was just bawling. I said, will you help me? I don't know what to do.

Can you get them to see my husband? This was Wednesday. We called them. They said, this is no problem. We know what it is.

He was on a flight, and he was there on Sunday. Canada. Two years. Nothing. Nowhere.

Nothing. One week, Texas. Yeah. So we went down there, and he was there. And they also treat civilians, and this was who treats the veterans.

The resiliency clinic. And so this lovely lady named Donna Cranston, who runs defenders of freedom, sat down, and she goes, is your wife Kelsey Sharon? And he goes, yes, ma'am. Goes, we think she has a TBI. Her eyes are all messed up on her podcast.

We'd like to treat her. And I was like, okay. And like, you know, she's canadian. Like, we're gonna get special permission. Don't worry.

And they funded the whole thing. So they flew me down to Texas for two weeks after I did the four by four by 48 with another charity. Cause Goggins likes to make the rest of us suffer. And I went right there right after. And I was there for a two week intensive program, and I found out that I not only had a TBI, I had dysautonomia in pots.

And that's one of the reasons I wasn't getting better. My vestibular system was completely AWAC. My hormones were a complete nightmare. You name it. I couldn't tilt my head backwards throughout my whole body, thinking I was upside down.

I was cautious. I couldn't drive a car. I was getting nauseous all the time. Couldn't be in a, you know, passenger seat. So I did treatment with them, and then I continued to use things like microdosing to help.

Not all the time. I do regimens eight weeks at a time, and then I go off and I integrate. But I still definitely have a tendency when I get depression. I don't go as low as I did, but I go a little. But enough to go, okay, we need to.

Are we sleeping? Are we eating right? Are we moving enough? Are we having enough water? What was I watching?

Was it triggering? Was it Tucker Carlson all week? Maybe. Let's take a break. Let's go into something a little lighter.

And so I start looking at all those things before I go to the next solution. And all in that timeframe, I, you know, wanted to help veterans differently. So we donate 20% of our proceeds from brass and unity. I started journaling and writing a book. I started this podcast that was kind of taking off, and then I was like, might as well become a psychedelic integration coach so then I can help these same people that helped me, and that's what I did.

And then now cut to where we are in 2024, where the book came out last year. And I'm healthy and I'm happy, and I love myself, and I know my worth, and I know where I'm going, and I have a direction. And I am so goddamn grateful for the people I have around me because without them, I wouldn't have been here. And they didn't give up on me. Our government gives up on everyone else, but no one gave up on me.

And it's only because they didn't get ahold of me in time, because if they did, I wouldn't be here.

Jordan Peterson
All right, ma'am, thank you very much for walking us through that. So for everybody watching and listening, I'm going to continue to talk to Kelsey for another half an hour on the daily wire side. I'm not exactly sure what we'll talk about. Maybe more about the state of the military in Canada and maybe more about psychedelic treatment as well. So if you'd like to join us on that side, you'd be more than welcome to do that.

Thank you very much for agreeing to talk to me today. Thank you for having me. Yeah, it's a pleasure. It's a pleasure. Thank you, everyone.

Thank you to the film crew here in Austin, Texas, today. Yeah, yeah. Thanks a lot, guys, for making this possible. And to the daily wire, plus people, for making this podcast what it is. Much appreciated.

Kelsi Sheren
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446. War, PTSD, & Psychedelics | Kelsi Sheren

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1: Introduction to Kelsi Sheren

2: Experiences in Afghanistan

3: Dealing with PTSD

4: Reflections on Military Culture

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