Psymposia x Subliminal Jihad: Rethinking Veteran Suicide and Right Wing Psychedelia
Clip from Psymposia’s November 6, 2025 appearance on the Subliminal Jihad podcast, where the group discusses misconceptions about the veteran suicide crisis and explains how its root causes mirror broader societal drivers of suicide — such as unmet basic needs and social disconnection.
Speakers: Brian Normand (Psymposia), Brian Pace (Psymposia, off camera), Dimitri Poshlost (Subliminal Jihad).
Watch the full interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-69DgEFlVE
Read Psymposia's "Psychedelic Syndicate" Report: https://www.psymposia.com/psychedelic-syndicate-executive-summary-silicon-valley-maps-lykos-mdma-fda-billionaires/
Transcript
This transcript was generated automatically from YouTube's captions, then cleaned up by removing filler words, repeated words and background sounds. It may still contain errors.
[00:00] We have some good quotes. I think we have the YouTube video. I know we have the YouTube video linked in the report and you know Joe Green's you know what he said about at Burning Man what he said about veterans. I see it in a quite cynical way. It's just using veterans. I mean, it's sort of I don't want to make this sound unduly calculating because PTSD patients are a deeply needy population, but it's also veterans are rightly one of the most sympathetic groups in our country. You know, when we've done our polling, we've seen that sort of all the possible groups and we ask about a bunch of different numbers that veterans are the people basically whatever you want for veterans.
[00:45] And so you know the folks who have from the right who have supported I think it's been the biggest 10 peg has been around veterans and this is sort of a tangent but one thing that I always find really fascinating. I was confused for quite a while about you know the psychedelic industry movement or whatever they would like you to think that the veteran suicide you know you always hear this and it changes every year 17 22 veterans suicide a day or whatever. Yeah. And a lot of the people who bring that up, at least in this space, I think they want you to kind of think that that's combat related deaths. And I looked into that and there's a there was a huge report that was conducted by the army.
[01:32] I forget what year, but it looked like it looked at Operation Iraqi Freedom and I think the campaign that was right around that. I forget it was either like four, six or eight million soldiers, military personnel they had looked at, but the actually wasn't combat. Combat wasn't the predictive thing. The thing that predicted suicide in the military the most was something that they called separation from cohort. I forget what the age was. It was something like I don't know 20 to 30, 20 to 34 something. It was people within the first year, right? Yeah. Within the first TW I believe it was within the first TW it was something like this within a year you join the army join the military and then you leave and I thought that was really that predicted suicide.
[02:24] But you got the tattoo. Yeah. Yeah. Like kind of. And so I brought that up. I was talking to a veteran a guy who served in Fallujah and I said and I ran that by him. I was like, "What's your what do you thought? What's your thoughts on this?" And he said, "That makes perfect sense to me." He said, "You got to understand the US Army is the biggest experiment in socialism like ever." Y he's like, "You take in a lot of these kids, they join them, they join the army, they get everything taken care of. They get clothes, food, shelter, community. attention when you rug if you get rugged from that within like a year or so.
[03:13] Yeah. You went from having like a sense of security to losing all of those things. You lose the group that you're in, the community that you're in. Dishonorably discharged. Oh yeah. I think if people kind of framed when they think about veterans and they framed it in that way, it's like no [expletive] this happened. This is the reason for a lot of suicides outside the military, right? Like basic needs are not being met. People are lonely. Social out. We're in this massive loneliness crisis that's ex exacerbated by, you know, all interactions mediated by social media, by communities being dispersed.
[03:58] The older you get, the more your friends are going to live around different parts of the country. You're not going to have those gettogethers as much anymore. Yeah. But this like, you know, this space is it it's just no one really wants to talk about the actual, you know, causes of mental health crisis that we're in. They want to come up with these privatized solutions, right? And it's really disgusted me in this space for so long. And it's just so common. It's just focus on the pill. Focus on the pill. It's a techno solution. It's a solar powered homelessness [expletive] tent without acknowledging that even if such a thing existed, if you put it up anywhere, somebody with a stick and a bunch of authority would show up with bright lights and make you move.
[04:57] Yeah. Genevie Jervson who's such a central player in so much of this she's gone on about how Trump is going to be like do so much for mental transformative mental health care in this country so we'll have a new president in the United States if you haven't heard his name's Donald Trump on Monday and I can't even believe these words are going to escape my mouth or I wouldn't have believed them a few years ago but I think the Trump administration will do more to advance psychedelic therapy and access and healing and thereby advance mental health than any previous administration. And like look what's going on with the snap thing. I think the one maybe the one tiny silver lining on the whole snap thing now is since it's in the conversation, this like people being disabused of this notion of
[05:59] Who's on Snap. We're seeing the numbers of the people who were on stop. Children, elderly, disabled people. Like, so like this is their solution. Like this guy's going to be good for mental health. Meanwhile, you're trying to take away $50, $200 in food stamps. You're gutting programs that offer people mental health like doing everything. Incredible. Sending goon squads around like generally increasing everybody's stress and like uncertainty about everything like and then oh but he's going to like let you like do psilocybin therapy.
