This month’s society luncheon will be held at 11:30 Wednesday, October 12th, at the Saltgrass Steak House located at 10614 Research Blvd. across from Costco. Guest speaker is Ian Benouis ’86 on the subject of healing service trauma with earth medicines including cannabis, ayahuasca, iboga and 5-Meo-DMT including the political, social and spiritual dimensions.
Ian is a former Blackhawk helicopter pilot, US Army officer and combat veteran who participated in Operation Just Cause in the Republic of Panama. This operation was the largest combat operation in US history focused directly on the War on Drugs. He was a pilot-in-command and his aviation brigade flew more night vision goggle hours than any unit in the military except for the Task Force 160 Special Operations which his unit was ultimately rolled up into when the Fort Ord, California military base was shut down.
He grew up in Hawai’i in the 1970s where cannabis was decriminalized and fully integrated into the culture. He has been healing himself of trauma for over 25 years with sacred plants, a spiritual practice, and being a student and practitioner of ethnobotany. Ian was a pharmaceutical representative for Pfizer after he got out of the Army witnessing firsthand the meteoric rise of the SSRI’s and synthetic opioids.
He is a casualty of the drug war having been busted for a friend’s cannabis while in law school. Ian is an intellectual property attorney who has been working in the corporate world for over 20 years in the primary roles of VP of Sales and Marketing and General Counsel. He is a political activist in the cannabis and natural plant medicine space nationally and locally in Texas. Ian is part of a number of non-profit organizations dedicated to healing veterans who have PTSD with cannabis and other sacred plant medicines (Veterans for Entheogenic Therapy and Weed for Warriors Project).
He has also been the Chairman of the Board for a public policy foundation in Texas for over seven years. Ian has taught Continuing Legal Education courses on Cannabis to attorneys. He is member of the team working on the movie From Shock to Awe a feature-length documentary that will chronicle the journeys of military veterans as they seek relief from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder with the help of ayahuasca, MDMA and cannabis.
Ian was featured in the Spike Jonze-produced episode Stoned Vets on Weediquette, the new cannabis-focused series on Viceland on HBO with a number of other veterans protesting the VA’s policy on medical cannabis and trying to end the veteran suicide epidemic. He also recently took six veterans with PTSD to Peru in May for a 10-day plant diet including ayahuasca and other plant medicines with three Shipibo shaman brothers that are third generation plant medicine healers. This experience was captured on video and will be released as a documentary later in 2016 entitled Soldiers of the Vine.
Join us, bring a classmate, and socialize with fellow grads.