What Three Navy SEALs Found at the Bottom — And How They Came Back

DJ Shipley spent 17 years in the Navy SEAL Teams. He did not plan to leave. When he did, everything fell apart.

"I didn't know who I was anymore," he says in the Netflix documentary In Waves and War. "The mission was gone. The team was gone. The structure that gave me direction disappeared overnight."

The film follows Shipley and two other former SEALs, Marcus Capone and Matty Roberts, as they confront what years of combat did to them. Depression. Rage. Isolation. Traumatic brain injury. Thoughts none of them expected to have. Pain that traditional treatment could not touch.

They tried everything. Therapy. Medications. Sleep clinics. Hormone treatments. Nothing worked. Each of them hit bottom.

Then they found something that did.

Going to Mexico

Because ibogaine and 5-MeO-DMT are not legal for therapeutic use in the U.S., the veterans traveled to a clinic in Mexico. The documentary shows the preparation, the ceremonies, the raw conversations afterward.

Capone went first, years earlier. When Shipley saw him after treatment, something had changed. "He looked completely different," Shipley recalls. "Not just better. At peace."

That convinced him to go. He had tried everything else. Nothing left to lose.

What they found

The ibogaine hit hard. Shipley describes it stripping everything away, forcing him to see patterns he had been stuck in for years. The damage he had caused. The man he used to be versus the one he wanted to become.

"For the first time in years, I felt clear."

Then came 5-MeO-DMT.

"It opened my heart," he says. "I don't say that lightly. I came home lighter, more grounded, more present. Not fixed, not perfect, but ready to rebuild."

His conclusion: "That treatment didn't just save my life. It gave me a new one."

What the documentary cannot show

In Waves and War is honest about what these men went through. The trauma, the broken marriages, the moments when giving up seemed easier than continuing. It shows the ceremonies, the tears, the breakthroughs.

What it can only hint at is what comes after.

The ceremony ends. You fly home. You are back in your life, the same relationships, the same triggers, the same patterns. Except now you have seen something you cannot unsee.

Making sense of that takes work. Translating insight into action. Rebuilding relationships that were already damaged before you sat down with medicine.

Shipley puts it simply: "Not fixed, not perfect, but ready to rebuild."

Ready is the starting line.

Why this matters beyond veterans

The documentary focuses on combat veterans, and their stories are specific. The pattern is familiar to anyone who has worked with powerful psychedelics.

You see something true about yourself. You feel a shift. You come back different.

Then you have to figure out what to do with it.

5-MeO-DMT cracks things open in ways other medicines do not. The experience is intense. People describe ego dissolution, unity, encountering something beyond words. They come back changed. Changed into what? That takes work to answer.

Without support, insights fade. Old patterns reassert themselves.

With support, the rebuild happens.

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If you are in the middle of this

Maybe you have already had a 5-MeO-DMT experience and you are trying to make sense of it. Maybe you are preparing for one. Maybe you watched In Waves and War and recognized something in those stories.

I work with men navigating this territory. Integration is not about having answers. It is about having someone in your corner while you find your own.

Book a session: https://www.adultintraining.us/book-online

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In Waves and War is streaming on Netflix. If you are struggling with thoughts of suicide, the Veterans Crisis Line is available 24/7: call 988, then press 1.