Sitting at the base of a tree in Costa Rica, Dave L. cradled the trunk and wept.
After decades in the Army, Dave had learned to bury his emotions and push through pain — a habit reinforced by the rigid ideas about masculinity he grew up with.
Now, at the end of his fourth ayahuasca ceremony, the 44-year-old firefighter and former Ranger felt ready to let go of the emotional weight he had carried for years.
“I had trauma trapped in various places of my body, and I could just feel it releasing,” Dave told The Post. “Like, for days, I feel like I was just releasing stuff that was holding me back in life.”
Dave had traveled to Costa Rica with 45 other American veterans and first responders to explore a controversial approach to healing the psychological and emotional wounds they carried home from war and emergency response.
There at Rythmia Life Advancement Center, the men spent a week immersed in ayahuasca ceremonies, counseling and meditation, confronting painful memories alongside others who understood the ghosts of their former lives.
The retreat, co-organized with Coming Home, a nonprofit dedicated to ending veteran suicide through access to psychedelic-assisted healing, coincided with the 25th anniversary of 9/11. The need for new approaches remains critical, as a 2026 Department of Veterans Affairs report recorded 6,488 veteran suicide deaths in 2024, at an average of 17.7 per day.
Once a hidden Amazonian secret, ayahuasca has sparked a major scientific movement for its potential to treat PTSD, depression and addiction. Yet the plant brew remains highly controversial, carrying steep physical and psychological risks that range from severe nausea to rare but dangerous psychiatric and medication complications.
For some seekers, the grueling journey pays off as clinical data increasingly links guided ayahuasca use to lasting relief, with participants reporting a profound spiritual lift and life-altering emotional growth.
Because its active psychedelic ingredient, DMT, remains illegal under federal law, thousands of Americans now travel to specialized wellness retreats abroad to experience the medicine under structured medical supervision at centers like Rythmia, where organizers combine the traditional practice with counseling and medical oversight.
“I wanted to gain the tools of how to be a balanced man in life,” said Dave about his interest in ayahuasca therapy. He admitted feeling as if his life was “falling apart without those tools.”
“I was taught a bunch of survival tools, but I wasn’t taught how to be gentle with myself, how to be emotionally available to those who are closest around me, which I feel like at this stage in the game — in my 40s — is like really important,” he added.
For seven days, Dave and his peers would have the space to slow down, reconnect with their emotions and explore a radically different kind of strength — one rooted in vulnerability, self-compassion and connection.
When the toughest men let their guard down
Nestled in Guanacaste, a sun-drenched coastal province, the retreat brought together Navy SEALs, Army Rangers, Green Berets, combat controllers, pararescuemen and other military personnel and first responders — men Dave described as “the toughest of tough men that you’ll ever run into in our culture.”
Each morning began with an hour of yoga, followed by individual and group counseling, educational classes and meditation and relaxation sessions, with stretches of unstructured time to visit the on-site mud spa or simply decompress.
After dark, the men gathered in tents with the center’s guides and staff to embark on a psychedelic healing journey. Each received a serving of the thick, bitter, dark-colored tea brewed from the ayahuasca plant’s leaves, the psychedelic effects of which could bring emotional revelations and sometimes dramatic reactions.
For Nate Brown, a Navy SEAL veteran and Coming Home’s founder, the opportunity to slow down marked a sharp departure from the pace that had defined these men’s careers.
“If you can imagine the way these gentlemen have been working their entire adult lives, everything’s about compression timelines under stress and everything,” he explained to The Post. “So to be able to take them somewhere and allow them to just unravel slowly over the course of a week and watch them rest in mind, body and spirit is just something beautiful to witness.”
He said the men looked “10 years younger” by the end of the retreat, referring to selfies participants took at the beginning and end of the week.
“They can’t feel anything but rage and anger, completely out of touch with, you know, the sweetness, the softness and the beauty that they all deserve,” Brown said. “And over the course of that week, watching that shift, watching the medicine start opening up these parts of their soul, is something beautiful and amazing.
“To watch these men come out of ceremony and to hug one another and to cry, you can’t put a price on that.”
Those embraces and tears offered a glimpse of the bond forming among the men. Dave said that watching other participants break down helped everyone access feelings they might ordinarily suppress. Rather than retreating from the motion, the men leaned in together.
“You’ve got a room full of killers, people who will run into burning buildings, people that run to gunfire instead of away from it,” he said. “And when you’re in that room, and one man weeps because he’s feeling lost or feeling grief, that is contagious.”
Photojournalist John Moore, a Pulitzer Prize winner known for documenting conflict in Afghanistan, Iraq and other war zones, witnessed the change while photographing the weeklong experience, including portions of the ceremonies — a first-time exception to the strict privacy rules that typically govern Rythmia.
“People think of special forces veterans as being hard characters, but everyone is human,” he told The Post. “I thought it was touching and really impressive that these former warriors were accessing their human side and trying to become better people, better spouses, better parents and better neighbors.”
Moore said he noticed participants growing more comfortable expressing emotions over the course of the week, with a shared “culture of respect” helping them feel safe enough to let their guard down.
Purge buckets and the science behind the brew
Tears weren’t the only thing flowing during the ceremonies.
Ayahuasca can trigger a decidedly physical experience, from bouts of vomiting and diarrhea to sweating, yawning and repeated trips to the bathroom — reactions traditionally known as purging, which some interpret as a form of emotional or spiritual release.
Rythmia’s chief medical officer, Dr. Jeff McNairy, told The Post that roughly half of the participants vomited during a given night’s ceremony. Staff members were close at hand, promptly cleaning and returning buckets as needed.
“When people ask me, ‘What’s ayahuasca best for?’ my No. 1 answer is trauma,” McNairy, a psychiatrist, said.
During a traumatic event, he explained, fear, doubt and other feelings can interfere with survival. A soldier in combat, for instance, may need to push those emotions aside to act quickly under threat. When people cannot later process those experiences, the associated emotions can continue to affect their lives, sometimes contributing to anger, disassociation or substance abuse.
The purging is “a psychosomatic response” of the trauma being released, said McNairy.
While the journey is notoriously taxing — with about 70% of users experiencing acute nausea and more than half reporting unsettling psychological side effects like deep disconnection — severe medical risks also loom large. If combined with standard SSRI antidepressants, the brew can trigger fatal serotonin syndrome or even prolonged psychotic episodes in individuals with pre-existing psychiatric vulnerabilities.
Before the retreat, Rythmia and Coming Home screened the men’s medical histories, medications and mental health before confirming their stays.
The organizations also assisted the participants with a 30-day preparation period that recommends mostly vegetarian or vegan-style meals, fewer strongly spiced foods and reduced exposure to distressing news stories and horror movies.
“We have all these medical people and, you know, sort of Western stuff, but then we also have 45 shamans who work there, so it’s this cool blend of both indigenous and Western together,” said McNairy, noting the center’s 24-hour medical staff of five doctors, 12 registered nurses and additional paramedics available.
A complex homecoming
For Dave, the most meaningful changes emerged after he returned to everyday life, where the relationships, responsibilities and pressures that shaped his experience of trauma remained.
The first sign that something had shifted was a welcome absence.
“The war that I usually wage in between my own ear at any given moment is way quieter, way softer,” he said.
Dave doesn’t consider ayahuasca a universal solution, nor does he claim that one retreat can completely erase trauma. Still, the experience offered a new way to approach feelings he had spent years pushing aside and the chance to do that alongside men who understood the weight of what he carried.
“When you walk away from the ceremony back into life, you can just be met head on with those challenges, with that pain, those dark emotions, those things of daily life that we all push away,” he said.
“Now we face it with a new courage and without fear and realize that it doesn’t kill us and that it’s OK, that actually makes us feel more alive.”
