Triggered by the sound of his children laughing, Robert Gallery knew something was desperately wrong.
A 6-foot 7, 325-pound guard in an NFL career that battered his body, Gallery was struggling with life after the game. Sure, 10 surgeries would take their toll on anyone, but there were deeper fears swallowing him up.
Gallery was convinced he was losing his mind.
Irrational rage and fury would fill his days. He’d wake up with a brain fog he couldn’t escape. Sometimes, he’d forget where he was or the names of his three kids. He would fantasize about suicide and told his wife she would be better off without him.
‘I remember saying I don’t know if I’m bipolar because this extreme rage, these emotional highs and lows, are not normal,’ Gallery told Daily Mail. ‘Anger and rage and depression… I knew it was cognitive, something in my brain.’
Gallery felt terrified of talking to his wife, Becca, about the depth of his feelings. ‘If I tell her these things,’ he thought, ‘she’s going to be scared, or scared for the kids, and leave me.’
Robert Gallery says his life was saved by a powerful hallucinogenic drug called Ibogaine
Gallery believes he sustained ‘hundreds’ of concussions playing football throughout his life
Doctors would later tell him he almost certainly has CTE, the brain disease caused by repetitive traumatic brain injuries that can only be officially diagnosed after death. It’s rife among ex-football players. Gallery had played since the seventh grade and hits to the head soon became part of being in the line of fire. He is certain he has had ‘hundreds’ of concussions.
‘Getting your bell rung, seeing stars, that was just part of the game,’ he said. ‘You get a massive block on someone, knock the dust out of your head – to us it was exciting. As I went to college and then the NFL, hits got harder.’
In the final years of his career, there were warning signs Gallery didn’t know how to interpret.
‘I do things I’ve done hundreds, if not thousands of times over the years and I’m dizzy, my vision is blurred from these tiny little hits,’ he said. ‘Your mood changes. I thought it was ups and downs of being a professional, the pressure you put on yourself.’
In retirement at just 32, the symptoms morphed into episodes that were ruining his life. He had no idea how to stop it. He’d drive his motorbike around at ferocious speeds, daring death to take him, or he’d drink huge amounts of tequila to dull the edges. Nothing worked.
But then he heard a radio show in his car with former Navy SEAL Marcus Capone, describing how psychedelic medicine Ibogaine helped heal veterans with PTSD and traumatic brain injuries.
‘I thought it was me,’ Gallery said. He reached out immediately and three weeks later, was at a treatment clinic in Tijuana, Mexico.
‘I was at the point, I think they could tell, that I had tried a lot of other things, everything else I could,’ Gallery explained.
Gallery was an offensive lineman who came in at 6-foot 7 and 325-pounds during his NFL career
He had 10 surgeries through his playing days but it was his brain that took the most damage
Ibogaine is the most powerful hallucinogenic known to man. It currently has no accepted medical use in the United States but is used in Canada and Mexico. It’s taken from the root bark of a shrub native to west Africa and it’s more powerful than ayahuasca, the hallucinogenic Aaron Rodgers endorses.
Crucially, a Stanford study with veterans saw an average 88 per cent reduction in PTSD symptoms and 87 per cent reduction in depression. Other studies have shown Ibogaine promotes the growth of brain matter and encourages repair.
‘They put it in a capsule, the dosage depends on your size,’ Gallery explains. ‘They hook you to an EKG (electrocardiogram), it can be hard on your heart, and monitor your vitals. Once you take it you lay down and pull an eye mask over – it helps keep you in the trip.’
Gallery had never taken a psychedelic drug before. He was coached on what to expect when it kicked in. It started with a tingling feeling and hearing humming.
‘But then I was floating up in the universe, around the stars,’ Gallery said. ‘In the distance, I could see almost like a movie playing on an old TV set.
‘As I’m up there, floating by me, are all these different things that happened in my life. There were things that brought immense joy. I remember reaching into the sky, out to these movies and grabbing those things and throwing them at my heart because I want to keep that.
‘And there’s other things I would grab and toss out into the universe I wanted to get rid of. Certain things I relived in the past over and over I couldn’t let go of and it was as simple as “no, it’s time to be done with that”.
‘It was very, very long, reliving things that had happened I thought were failures, and things that brought joy.’
Ibogaine is a stronger halluncinogenic than ayahuasca and comes from a plant in Africa
By the time Gallery discovered it, he says he had tried almost everything else to help himself
The following day is what experts call a ‘gray day’ where patients rest. Then treatment continues with a psychedelic called ‘5-MeO-DMT’, found in plants and even the glands of a toad. That trip lasts 20 to 30 minutes.
‘I felt myself dying,’ Gallery recalls. ‘I was going up to what I thought was death, up to the white light. It was very peaceful. I get to the white light and God is there. I’m talking to God. The long white robe with the long hair and the beard. I was born and raised Catholic, I saw what God was to me.
‘I’m going to enter heaven and I got super angry, yelling at him, telling him to send me to hell. I was a failure and a terrible father, all these negative things. I just kept screaming to send me to hell, I don’t deserve to be here.
‘I remember him looking at me. He said “you need to talk to her”. I look behind him and there my wife was.
‘She’s like “none of that is true”. And I remember this lift, this weight being lifted off. I remember something leaving my body. And I realized all this hatred and this ego left. I remember feeling this overwhelming joy that I deserve to be there and be around them.
‘I came out of it, back to Earth and I was crying, hugging the therapist and everything was so vibrant. I looked up at the sky, it was so blue and the clouds were so white. I could hear everything. I could hear my senses.
‘I was laying in the grass, and I could feel the blades of grass, and I could hear them blowing the wind, I could hear the ocean in the distance. I was just so happy to be alive.’
On his trip, Gallery said he spoke to God and his wife assured him he wasn’t a terrible father
Now, Gallery has founded the Athletes For Care’ organization to help ex-sports stars
In the weeks that followed, Gallery was blown away by how his life had improved.
‘Ringing in my ears, brain fog, suicide nightmares, hatred of myself, it was all gone,’ he explains. ‘I was so energized. I felt like I was back as a human. It saved my life, my marriage, a lot of things.’
Gallery has taken Ibogaine three times, overall, and has co-founded the ‘Athletes For Care’ organization, helping ex-sports stars find resources for traumatic brain injuries and chronic pain management.
‘I want to share this because I don’t want that guy or girl sat at home like I was, suffering by myself and not knowing what was going on,’ Gallery explained.
‘This medicine, we can see it in these studies, is creating new neural pathways. It is creating new white brain matter… helping fix the damage we athletes have done to our brains.
‘Now, is it the magic pill and automatically, everything is 100 per cent restored back to where it was? No, that is not the case, but is it drastically improving damaged areas of your brain? 100 per cent.’
