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At his peak, Ian McCall weighed in at just 125 pounds. But make no mistake. This ex-UFC phenom has always packed the punch of a heavyweight, in and out of the Octagon. These days, his fight is advocacy, pioneering the first clinical studies of psychedelics for traumatic brain injury in elite athletes.

We asked Ian how his relationship with psychedelics evolved from reckless teenage experimentation to serious medicine, what happened when he tried to bring psychedelics to major sports organizations, and what early results show from his research with Olympic and pro athletes.

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How has your relationship to psychedelics changed over the years?

I was 12 years old when I first tried acid. I come from Orange County, which, if you know much about the history of psychedelics in America, has always been a hotbed for psychedelics. We had access to everything when I was a kid—MDMA, mushrooms, mescaline, you name it. But it was always incredibly reckless. We’d take too much. We didn't even know how much we were taking.

My relationship with psychedelics started to change during and especially after my fighting career. Winning the flyweight title was one of the best days of my life. My ex-wife was pregnant, and we got married the next day. We were both sober. The UFC said if I kept putting on the shows I was putting on, they'd build me a whole new division. I was ranked pound-for-pound the best fighter on the planet. But after that, we both got back on drugs, and it ruined my career and our relationship. I used getting screwed in my first UFC fight as an excuse to start using opiates again. The rest of my career was a perpetual cycle of drugs, sobriety, drugs, sobriety, and surgery.

By the time I retired, I was very suicidal and very addicted, to opiates and pretty much anything I could get my hands on. I was highly impaired, forgetful, and depressed with anxiety and anger issues. One day, I was on my couch and my brother gave me some DMT. The message was, "it's time to retire. The only way you're gonna get off these pills or this heroin or this fentanyl is if you retire." DMT showed me the path, as psychedelics do. That's when I started purposefully taking psychedelics—not recreationally, but as medicine to fix myself.

Why did you start Athletes Journey Home?

I had been trying to work with other research organizations for years, but I kept hitting walls. In 2019, I brought Johns Hopkins to the table with the UFC for a potential psilocybin study. I pointed out to the UFC that they didn’t test for psilocybin or LSD and broke down all the reasons why that was a good thing—the protective benefit, the healing benefit, the performative benefit. But Johns Hopkins is pretty uncompromising about their research protocols, and the UFC was concerned about liability. That fell through.

Then the University of Miami said they'd custom tailor a study for athletes. Jeff Novitzky, the head of athlete health and performance at the UFC, called me after that meeting and said, "this is the greatest thing you've ever done, Ian. This is game changing." But that fell through because the funding wasn’t there. The world wasn't ready for it yet. Then, two years ago at the MAPS conference, the Onaya team approached me about working together on an ayahuasca study. I contacted the UFC again, and this time they said, "we can't work with you because we’ve taken the company public."

At that point, I realized I had to get my ducks in a row before I could bring these opportunities to professional sports organizations. I had to slap down a bunch of data and have a team of scientists behind me, which I do now. I go on Zoom calls where I'll have like 20 PhDs. The eventual realization was that I had to organize the effort myself. Athletes are my people. I understand what fixes their brains, whether it's physical tools like hyperbaric chambers or supplements like psilocybin. So I applied the nonprofit model that’s worked for veterans and created Athletes Journey Home.

You're currently running the first studies of psychedelics for TBI in elite athletes. What early results are you seeing?

First, we had to raise the money. Mark Irwin, the bare-knuckle boxing world champion that I coach, used his last title fight as a soapbox to raise money for the nonprofit. Mike Vasquez, the owner of the league, was so moved he gave us $50,000 with no strings attached. With that runway, we were able to shoot a mini-documentary and bring eight professional and Olympic athletes to Experience Onward in Oregon to collect data on their brains.

We ran them through a program with about five grams of mushrooms each, and the data looks great. It's no longer theoretical; this works. Obviously we still need a much larger data set. We’re aiming for 200-500 people to go through our testing protocol, but we'll get there. The results were very consistent across all eight people. We also learned what we've done right and where we can improve within the retreats themselves.

Mark is my walking, talking traumatic brain injury study. He had three major TBIs within 18 months. He also won a world title on seven and a half grams of mushrooms, which was highly irresponsible but still fascinating science. We're getting real data on how these medicines work for brain injuries.

What's next for Athletes Journey Home? How do you see the mission or execution evolving from here?

We have our first ayahuasca study coming up in Peru this September, which we’ve been planning for two years. We're also looking at different studies of iboga and Amanita muscaria for specific issues athletes face. Then, we have another ayahuasca study in Colombia where I’ll be bringing down 20 UFC fighters. There's a class action lawsuit in the UFC paying out $375 million, and within that group there's a WhatsApp chat with 600-something people who are all interested in this work.

Apart from the research, we're trying to create a longevity company alongside the nonprofit. The idea is to build a recovery center for athletes. Realistically, we need a profit engine to support the nonprofit side. People don't care about athletes like they care about veterans, which makes it way harder to raise money. Everyone's like, "why would I give you guys money? You're famous and rich." But the truth is 99% of athletes are broke.

The vision is a center where athletes can get services through donations, but also where ordinary people pay for memberships to get the same treatments and have access to the athletes. Some athletes are still doing okay financially and can pay for the services, too. Either way, we want to give them a private space that's more comfortable and tailored for performance with like-minded people. It’ll be a safe space for savages; that's our tagline.

Professional sports can be pretty conservative when it comes to substances. What's been the response from the fighting community to your advocacy for psychedelics?

When I told the UFC that they don't need to ban psilocybin and LSD because these substances can help their athletes, they were all for it. There's already a ton of athletes using DMT and mushrooms. They understand what's happening, why they're taking it, and how much to take. Microdoses can put you into a flow state. Maybe you can turn up the volume with higher doses for a stronger performative benefit, but that's all debatable.

It’s happening across all sports, too. Golf is a big one. Sporting organizations only seem to care about what shows up on a drug test, and psychedelics generally don’t. If you're not pushing the boundaries of your performance, you're putting yourself at a disadvantage because all your competitors are.

A lot of athletes are conservative though. They want these things structured the way they like it. They’re turned off by the woo-woo, the chakras, and the energetics. I love that stuff personally, but it can be alienating to some people who could seriously benefit. So we're trying to create an ecosystem for athletes to do psychedelics their way. None of these approaches are “wrong.” I just need to make a safe space that fits into my lane, for my people.

Want more from Ian?

Consider donating to support athletes who’ve suffered brain injuries, or apply to become a part of the Athletes Journey Home team.

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DISCLAIMER: This newsletter is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice. The use, possession, and distribution of psychedelic drugs are illegal in most countries and may result in criminal prosecution.