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WORK TITLE: Psychedelic Marine
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY: Buckinghamshire, England
STATE:
COUNTRY: United Kingdom
NATIONALITY: British
https://grahamhancock.com/author/alex-seymour/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Married; children.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Technology account director for a global technology company.
MIILITARY:Royal Marines Commandos, served for six years and completed two tours of duty on active service.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
A past member of the Royal Marines Commandos, Alex Seymour writes about using psychotropic plant-based medicines like ayahuasca and psilocybin to relieve post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety. As a teenager, he enlisted in the commandos, serving six years and competing two tours of duty on active service. He returned twenty years later as the oldest front line commando in Helmand Province in Afghanistan. Seymour also works as the technology account director for a global technology company, and he supports related nonprofit organizations like Veterans for Entheogenic Therapy. He lives in Buckinghamshire, England with his family.
In 2016, Seymour published Psychedelic Marine: A Transformational Journey from Afghanistan to the Amazon. Using his experiences in war, he explains that our Western culture lacks rites of passage to help deal with traumatic events. He discusses ways in which the shamanic healing ceremonies associated with the use the hallucinogen ayahuasca can free the consciousness from destructive beliefs, fears, and stress. Seymour explains how ayahuasca can be used to relieve distress from war, PTSD, alcoholism, addiction, and other issues.
In the war in Afghanistan, Seymour lost seven men in his unit and a good friend was critically injured by a Taliban bomb. To cope with these losses, as well as the heat, exhaustion, and extreme boredom of war, he experimented with DMT and psilocybin mushrooms. For him, these entheogens helped release his fears and traumas. Realizing that the psychedelics alone weren’t enough, he wanted to know if adding ceremony and sacred rites would expand their effectiveness.
Seymour traveled to the Amazon to learn from a shaman who taught him about ayahuasca and the songs and rituals to go with it. On his journey were other participants, eight women shamans, and indigenous helpers. Through his experiences with the mind altering substance, visions, and ritual, he learned to draw meaning from his wartime experience, reassess the war and his role in it, and live a stress-free life. He also explains how ayahuasca can help soldiers prepare for war, help combat veterans heal from trauma, and help those struggling with addiction to recover. The book brings Seymour’s discoveries to others in the First World seeking wisdom and redemptive experience.
Writing in MBR Bookwatch, Michael Dunford called the book “a consistently compelling read from beginning to end.” A reviewer in Publishers Weekly noted that “the writing sometimes fails to capture what he is trying to explain.” Nevertheless, Seymour provides an interesting firsthand account of his experiences, which are far removed from ordinary people’s lives, according to the reviewer.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
MBR Bookwatch, November, 2016. Michael Dunford, review of Psychedelic Marine: A Transformational Journey from Afghanistan to the Amazon.
Publishers Weekly, July 11, 2016, review of Psychedelic Marine, p. 63.*
About Alex Seymour
Alex Seymour enlisted in the Royal Marines Commandos as a teenager, serving for 6 years and completing 2 tours of duty on active service. Twenty years later he returned to the service as the oldest front line commando in Helmand Province in Afghanistan.
He is currently the Technology Account Director for a global technology company and lives with his wife and children in Buckinghamshire, England.
Alex Seymour
Alex Seymour enlisted in the Royal Marines Commandos as a teenager, serving for 6 years and completing 2 tours of duty on active service. Twenty years later he returned to the service as the oldest front line commando in Helmand Province in Afghanistan. He is currently the Technology Account Director for a global technology company and lives with his wife and children in Buckinghamshire, England.
Interested in the exploration of using psychotropic plant-based medicines like ayahuasca and psilocybin to ease the suffering of people who have experienced trauma, addictions and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
I support related nonprofit organisations like ‘VETS’ (veterans for entheogenic therapy)
I work in the computing industry as a client director for a global computer company. Served in the Royal Marines for 6 years and completed 3 tours of duty on active service. I returned to serve as a reservist (and a sucker for punishment) 20 years later as the oldest front line marine in Helmand, Afghanistan.
I can thank the Marines for giving me a high tolerance to mud and so in the summer you will find me with my family and oldest friends camping at Glastonbury Festival, where I’ll be feeling like I've won the lottery for a few precious days.
Psychedelic Marine
Michael Dunford
MBR Bookwatch. (Nov. 2016):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com
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Psychedelic Marine
Alex Seymour
Park Street Press
c/o Inner Traditions International, Ltd.
One Park Street, Rochester, VT 05767
www.innertraditions.com
9781620555798, $16.95, PB, 240pp, www.amazon.com
Synopsis: After returning from a tour of duty during the war in Afghanistan, Alex Seymour needed a way to cope with the extremes he experienced as a member of the Royal Marine Commandos, losing 7 men in his unit, and having his best friend critically injured by a Taliban bomb. Drawing upon his pre-deployment experiences with DMT and psilocybin mushrooms, Alex knew that entheogens could help him release his fears and traumas. But he also knew that simply taking psychedelics wasn't enough--he needed ceremony, something sacred to draw meaning from his experiences, to help him reassess not only the war and his role in it, but his entire life. So he set out for the Amazon in search of the hallucinogenic brew known as ayahuasca and a shaman to guide him.
He draws upon his experience in writing "Psychedelic Marine: A Transformational Journey from Afghanistan to the Amazon", riveting account of his journeys deep into the jungle and himself as we went deep into the jungle on an incredible adventure, sailing on the Amazon river with an ayahuasca shaman and his troop of 8 female shamanas, whose ethereal songs help guide participants during the nightly ayahuasca ceremonies.
Accompanied by others seeking wisdom and a redemptive experience from their First World professional lives, Alex finds his core beliefs fundamentally challenged, replaced by the power of direct experience of the sacred, which allows him to release his fears from the war and set an inspiring path for the future.
Critique: Alex Seymour enlisted in the Royal Marines Commandos as a teenager, serving for 6 years and completing 2 tours of duty on active service. Twenty years later he returned to the service as the oldest front line commando in Helmand Province in Afghanistan. He is currently the Technology Account Director for a global technology company. Exceptionally well written, "Psychedelic Marine: A Transformational Journey from Afghanistan to the Amazon" is a consistently compelling read from beginning to end and very highly recommended for personal reading lists and community library collections. It should be noted that "Psychedelic Marine" is also available in a Kindle format ($9.99).
Michael Dunford
Reviewer
Psychedelic Marine
Publishers Weekly. 263.28 (July 11, 2016): p63.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
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Psychedelic Marine
Alex Seymour. Park Street, $16.95 trade paper (240p) ISBN 978-1-62055-579-8
Seymour takes readers through two very distinct, extreme experiences in this memoir: modern warfare and psychotropic drugs. Twenty years after his first enlistment, Seymour signs up for the Royal Marine reserves and volunteers for a six-month tour in Afghanistan, leaving his wife and children behind. He mostly recounts the trials of heat, exhaustion, and extreme boredom rather than the more gruesome details. Immediately following this deployment, he heads to the Amazon to engage in two guided experiences with the hallucinogen ayahuasca. He describes in detail the other participants (including a cult-like leader and indigenous helpers), the experience of visions, and his profound insights from the psychedelic trips. Asserting that his psychoactive experience deepened his spirituality, he lauds the drug for its ability to heal and permanently change one's outlook. Though he suggests briefly that ayahuasca could solve many psychological war traumas, he personally does not admit to being too shaken by his service, and therefore the need for his healing is unclear. The writing sometimes fails to capture what he is trying to explain, but the work does offer an interesting firsthand account of encounters far removed from many readers' calm and orderly lives. (Sept.)