I spent my entire youth dreaming about going to war as many young boys do. At eight years old, I decided I would become a Navy SEAL, one of the "baddest, toughest men on the planet." I experienced a childhood most people couldn't imagine. Physical abuse. Psychological torture. The kind of trauma that either breaks you completely or turns your will into something harder than steel. I chose the latter. I made it through the Naval Academy. Survived BUD/S training where 195 men quit and only 17 of us graduated. Deployed to Iraq with SEAL Team 3. I had achieved my childhood dream.
But I was dying inside.
The anger that had kept me alive as a child that had pushed me through Hell Week, through combat, through everything was consuming me. I was abusive. Fearful. Unable to trust. Unable to love. I would abandon people the moment I felt vulnerable, sabotaging every relationship that mattered. I hurt the people who loved me most. After leaving the military, I tried to bury it all. Corporate job. Partying. Drugs. Alcohol. Anything to numb the rage and fear that had been my constant companions since childhood. I convinced myself I was fine. That this was just who I was. Then something happened that forced me to confront a shocking truth I'd been running from my entire life:
I didn't love myself. I didn't even know who I was beneath all the armor.
The breaking point came after a series of experiences that shattered my entire worldview... psychedelics showed me that something was fundamentally broken inside me, but also that healing was possible. Sitting under a thatched hut during a raging thunderstorm, a Balinese priest looked me in the eye and offered me a choice: go back to sleep and continue suffering, or wake up and see where the path leads. I chose the path.
That's when ibogaine appeared in my life.
It healed something in me overnight that I had never been able to heal in 40 years. The anger that had defined my entire existence, that had protected me as a child, pushed me through SEAL training, and destroyed my relationships, was gone. Not suppressed. Not managed. Gone.
For the first time in my life, I could breathe.
I could feel love without fear. I could be vulnerable without running. I could look at my past without rage. The hypervigilance that was equally a power and a prison finally released its grip. But here's what nobody tells you about profound healing: The medicine gives you awareness. It gives you this incredible gift of seeing yourself and your life clearly. But then you have to learn how to live with that awareness.
I spent years trying to figure this out on my own.
I sought help. I studied. I experimented. And everywhere I went, I saw the same gap: people would have these life-changing experiences, but no one was teaching them how to integrate that change into their actual lives. How to navigate relationships when you've grown but everyone still expects the old version of you. How to rebuild your identity when the person you thought you were no longer exists. How to use your newfound awareness without going crazy in a world that still operates on the old rules.
That's why I created Nomena.
Not just to serve others medicine. Not just to facilitate a trip. But to guide people through the complete journey from the darkness of who they had become, through the healing, and into the light of who they truly are. I've been through hell. Childhood trauma that would debilitate most people for life. Literal combat zones. The darkest corners of my own psyche. And I've come out the other side not just surviving, but truly alive for the first time.
Now I dedicate my life to helping others make that same journey.
Because I know what it's like to be trapped inside your own pain, convinced that this is just who you are. I know what it's like to hurt the people you love and hate yourself for it. I know what it's like to achieve everything you thought you wanted and still feel empty inside. And I know what it feels like to see no way out. But I also know from direct experience, that overnight healing is not just possible. It's real.
This isn't theory.
This isn't something I read in a book or learned in a seminar. This is what happened to me. This is what I've watched happen to countless others who've had the courage to take this journey. If you're reading this and something inside you is screaming "yes," if you're tired of managing your pain instead of healing it, if you're done with Band-Aid solutions and superficial masks, if you're ready to become who you were always meant to be before the world changed you, then maybe it's time we talked. Because the Ben who went into that first ibogaine journey and the Ben who came out the other side are two completely different people.
And the person you are right now? They're not who you have to be tomorrow.
About Nomena and Ben’s work as a facilitator
Ben founded Nomena, an ibogaine retreat in Southeast Asia. He describes his own psychedelic experiences and the years he spent making sense of them as the reason he wanted to build integration into the retreat. In practice, that means helping participants reflect on their experiences and consider how those insights might apply to their routines and relationships.
According to the material supplied by Nomena, the retreat offers guided ibogaine sessions, medical supervision by licensed doctors and integration coaching. Ben is described as certified in psychedelic-assisted therapy and as having been formally initiated into the Bwiti Missoko Miobé lineage by a Nima na Kombo of the Babongo people of Gabon.
