Our Story
We exist because the game doesn’t prepare you for what comes after.
Every athlete deserves a way home.
“A Safe Place for Savages”
Athletes don't talk about what happens when the game ends. The identity loss. The brain injuries no one can see. The systems that weren't built for them. AJH exists because someone finally decided to do something about it.
The Fighter Who Couldn’t Find His Way Home
Ian McCall spent over a decade as one of the most respected fighters in professional MMA, competing at the highest levels of the sport and earning a reputation for grit, technical skill, and an unrelenting competitive drive. Fighting was more than his career — it was his identity.
Then it ended.
What came after wasn't a graceful transition. It was a free fall. Years of repeated head trauma had taken a toll Ian couldn't see from inside the cage — chronic headaches, memory loss, emotional volatility, and a depression that settled in like a fog and wouldn't lift. The structure that sport had provided — training schedules, competition dates, a team around him — was gone overnight. And in its place: nothing.
Ian did what most athletes do — sought help through traditional channels, saw doctors, tried conventional treatment programs. And like millions of athletes before him, he found a system that treated symptoms but never touched the root cause. Programs that ended too soon. Providers who didn't understand what it meant to lose the thing that defined you.
“The system told me to manage my symptoms. I needed something that could give me my brain back.”
The Breakthrough
Ian found a different path. Through legal, medically supervised entheogenic therapy — conducted in jurisdictions where these compounds are fully legal — he experienced something the traditional system had never offered: measurable, lasting change.
For the first time in years, Ian wasn't just surviving after sport. He was healing.
And this wasn't based on how he felt. It was based on what the data showed. Depression scores dropped by 81%. Anxiety was cut nearly in half. Post-concussion symptoms decreased by 35%. Cognitive function improved significantly. EEG brain scans taken before and after treatment revealed increased brain activity, improved neural connectivity, and a stronger brain response to stimuli. Frontal alpha asymmetry — a measure of balance between brain hemispheres — shifted toward symmetry, a marker of improved emotional regulation.
EEG brain scans showing increased neural activity and improved connectivity after treatment. Warmer colors indicate greater brain activation.
From Personal Recovery to Global Mission
Ian’s experience raised an obvious question: if this worked for him, how many other athletes were suffering in silence, cycling through programs that weren’t designed for them?
The answer was too many. And the infrastructure to help them didn’t exist.
That's why Ian founded Athletes Journey Home — the first global organization dedicated to providing athletes with safe, legal, research-backed access to alternative recovery pathways. Not a treatment clinic. Not a retreat company. A research-driven organization built to generate the clinical evidence needed to change how athletes recover — and connect them with the providers and support systems to make it happen.
AJH assembled a global network — leading research universities, clinical facilities, and a Scientific Advisory Board of experts in psychiatry, psychopharmacology, and clinical research psychology — to build the evidence base this field has been missing.
Click Here: Meet our partners and team
The goal was never just to help individual athletes. It was to shift the entire landscape — from stigma to science, from anecdote to data, from margins to mainstream.
What Year 1 Proved
In its first year, AJH moved from concept to clinical evidence — building the foundation for the largest dataset of its kind on entheogenic therapy for athlete recovery.
Key Milestones
- Secured the first U.S. and ethics approval for a multi-site, multi-compound study from the University of Lima
- First cohort ran successfully at Experience Onward (Oregon) — featured on Fox News — and Beōnd (Mexico), breaking through into a UK Rugby concussion cohort
- Fast-tracked no-fee access for pioneering psilocybin use in TBI treatment
- Built significant awareness across the U.S., UK, Australia, and Canada with key industry figures in sports medicine and psychopharmacology
- Pilot study produced encouraging results across nearly every measured clinical domain
Pilot Study Results
EEG neuroimaging confirmed what participants reported: their brains were changing.
Scans showed increased brain activity pre and post dosage session, correlating with improved cognitive function and wellbeing. Frontal alpha asymmetry shifted toward symmetry — a marker of improved emotional regulation.
Where We're Going
AJH is building toward a 200-athlete study over five years — the largest dataset of its kind on entheogenic therapy for athlete recovery. We are currently the best-placed organization globally to develop a bespoke athlete recovery program involving alternative entheogenic treatment. Experience in this area can't be fast-tracked.
- Minimum 4 cohorts
- Establish global research framework
- Launch AJH Canada
- 1 documentary in production
- 1 major magazine feature
- UK expansion
- 12 cohorts
- Data at scale
- Launch AJH Australia
- European expansion
- Mainstream news coverage
- First brand partnerships
- Governing body involvement
- Governments review regulatory change
- Growing mainstream acceptance
- Regulatory change in select countries for neurological conditions
- AJH clinics
- AI-driven wellness platform
- Market leader
We believe it will be 'when' — not 'if' — that regulations around these compounds change, particularly in Australia, Canada, the US, and the UK.
AJH intends to be the organization that helped make that happen.
Every athlete deserves a way home.
Whether you’re an athlete seeking support, a provider ready to partner, or someone who believes in this mission — there’s a place for you here.