My Nightmare Initiation Into The Mankind Project

A Hero's Journey

Note: This article features explicit descriptions of emotional distress, suicidal ideation, and violence from my past.

5/7/25 update: In the final section, I suggested that MKP have a thorough follow-up process. I have received a follow-up survey. While I think it can be improved, I’m glad to have received it.

5/12/25 update: I originally estimated in this article that I got 3 hours of sleep on the first night. After some dialogue with MKP leadership, I now know that I personally got 4.5-5.5 hours of sleep. The next night was likely closer to 8. This means that the following statement at the end of part V. is false:

Psychiatrist Pau Pérez-Sales argues for the 6/24 rule: that any detention center or political party that deprives a human of a minimum of six hours of continuous sleep per 24 hours for three days in a row is potentially committing torture. I am not accusing the NWTA of torturing its participants. I am saying that by the end of the weekend, I was personally two-thirds of the way there.

If anything, I believe that these facts strengthen my arguments about the effects of sleep deprivation on Bipolar disorder, even though the sleep deprivation was not as severe as I originally believed. Even moderate sleep deprivation is enough to destabilize a bipolar brain. It is also important that I not let hyperbole or false information infect this article and that I correct the record when I get access to new information. I was convinced of everything I wrote in this article when I wrote it, and I am happy to stand corrected.

I.

On April 24, 2025, the night before I left for my initiation in the New Warrior Training Adventure, I had dinner with my parents. After we finished a huge meal, my father said, “I want to give you something.”

He handed me a white sash emblazoned with a blood-red arrow, embroidered in a South Korean style. “This is the sash I earned after my own initiation in the Order of the Arrow,” he told me. “To celebrate your own initiation, I want you to have it.”

I turned the garment in my hands. It was beautiful. The blood-red embroidery gleamed fiercely in the light.

“I was given a loincloth, a raw egg, three matches, and a knife, and I had to survive for two nights in a forest in South Korea,” my father said. “It was also an active combat zone — there were North Korean guerrillas in the area, and American and South Korean soldiers were told not to shoot anyone wearing a loincloth and this sash. I spent the entire night cold, naked, alone, hungry, and listening to gunfire.”

We laughed over this harrowing memory, mellowed by the passage of 60 years.

“Hopefully, your initiation won’t be as bad as mine,” my father said.

“I’m sure it won’t be,” I reassured him.

I was wrong.

II.

The New Warrior Training Adventure, or NWTA, is an intense weekend retreat for men. Modeled on the Hero’s Journey established by Joseph Campbell and inspired by initiation rituals around the globe, it promises that it “can transform your world as a man.”

As the website states,

The New Warrior Training Adventure is a modern male initiation and self-examination. We believe that this is crucial to the development of a healthy and mature male self, no matter how old a man is. It is the “hero’s journey” of classical literature and myth that has nearly disappeared in modern culture. We ask men to stop living vicariously through movies, television, addictions and distractions and step up into their own adventure – in real time and surrounded by other men.

The NWTA is run by The Mankind Project, an international organization dedicated to the well-being of men and the planet. According to their website:

We believe that emotionally mature, powerful, compassionate, and purpose-driven men will help heal some of our society’s deepest wounds. We support the powerful brilliance of men and we are willing to look at, and take full responsibility for, the pain we are also capable of creating – and suffering. We care deeply about men, our families, communities, and the planet.

I didn’t arrive on MKP’s doorstep with the intention of writing a story about it. I came to the organization because I needed—and still need—support.

I started attending my local MKP group (what are called Integration Groups, or “iGroups” for short) at the prompting of a friend and mentor. He saw that I was suffering, adrift, and lonely. He encouraged me, gently and insistently, to consider attending.

Around the same time, I was texting with Kapro, my combat veteran friend, who is not associated with MKP. I told him what I was going through, and that the only relief I could find from the hell came in the form of writing and exercise. He said:

“That’s exactly what I did. I wrote a public blog under a pseudonym for 10 years before I spoke a word out loud. The blog was practice and eventually led to verbalizing. The thing about verbalizing is I never actually felt like I was “ready.” No amount of waiting is going to make it easier; it makes it harder. We just need to find the courage to say the words out loud. Opening the mouth is like opening a cage door and letting the prisoners free, brother.”

This was the wisdom I needed. I’d been waiting to feel "ready" to use my voice. Surely, I thought, there would come a point when I had spilled enough ink, meditated enough, that I could finally feel free to speak. But Kapro helped me realize I will never feel ready. There is no such thing as ready.

I woke up on a Monday morning knowing that I couldn't keep living this way. I was going to bed wanting to die and waking up feeling crushed by loneliness. When I opened my eyes that morning, I knew that I needed to do the impossible—I had to use my voice. I decided to attend the iGroup that night.

In that circle of men, I used my voice. I told these strangers that I was in so much pain that I wanted to die, and that I was so tired of feeling isolated. I told them that I felt dangerously close to seriously hurting myself, and that I was so exhausted from cycling through heaven and hell. I said, "It's a loneliness so deep that it fucking poisons you."

The facilitator — an old man with a cane — firmly stopped me. "Who?" he asked, demanding that I not give myself a single inch to depersonalize my words.

"Me," I said, “it poisons me."

I couldn't make eye contact with any of the men in the circle as I said it. My body revolted against the entire process. I've done a lot of physically hard things in life — performed hour-long solo recitals as a classical musician, run races, and worked long hours at physically demanding jobs. Somehow, this was all of that and more. My throat fought to catch every word. I was shaking like a leaf. I was sweating, my heart was racing. Everything in me resisted letting those words escape.

The men received every word in silence, and then they did what men do best — they talked me through strategies to get better. They gave me their numbers, promising support if I needed it. Each one hugged me as if I were a little brother they had known for years.

I woke up the next morning feeling as if construction workers had carefully dismantled the wall at my back. I could breathe. Kapro was right.

Since then, sitting in that circle week after week, learning to share my feelings with men I trust, has changed my life. These men, never forcefully and with the tenderest love, helped me take off my emotional armor, bloodied and rotten from years of fighting. When the armor finally came off, they were there to hold me as I wept.

Brothers, I know you are reading this, and you know who you are. Thank you. Because of my work in the igroup, I can now be more present to my husband, make new friends, take better care of myself, and more fully express my love to friends and family. This is work that will stay with me for the rest of my life.¹

III.

The local community also sounded a relentless drumbeat to attend the NWTA. It was an experience like none other, they promised. Completing it would fully initiate me into this circle of men. After all the love, camaraderie, and support I had received, I desperately wanted that.

There were concerns from the very beginning. I live with Bipolar II disorder, and my mind had been on rotten ice for over a year. I was rapid cycling through escalating depression and hypomania. “I have some worries about you attending the weekend,” one leader told me. Leadership was concerned, and I was concerned, that the NWTA would be a destabilizing experience.

I did my due diligence, or I thought I did. I scoured the internet for stories of the event, which featured some alarming tales. I decided to take these stories with a grain of salt. Many of them were from over a decade ago, and I know MKP to be a responsive, evolving organization that takes criticism seriously. Having been a leader in a controversial organization myself, I understood how journalists and disgruntled former members can play fast and loose with hyperbole and emphasis. I focused, instead, on what I could learn from the internal culture and material from the organization. I read all the public-facing material on the website. After I applied, I was interviewed by their mental health team. I discussed the NWTA with my therapist. I read the waivers and readiness forms closely.

But there was a barrier early on that confounded my duty to protect my health: the NWTA is shrouded in secrecy. The processes and schedule are a fiercely protected ritual. In my judgment, this is to protect the sacredness and novelty of the weekend so that men can be fully immersed in the experience. As someone with a history and deep love of cathartic ritual, I could respect this choice.

The secrecy, however, shrouded a crucial ingredient for my health: sleep. The bipolar mind is particularly vulnerable to sleep deprivation, and a single night of poor sleep is enough to spark a serious episode. The organization, and everyone I spoke to, seemed cagey about disclosing how much sleep I would get.

As the website states,

We go to great lengths to create a cutting edge and challenging experience. You will probably get less sleep than usual. You will probably eat a little less than usual. In no way do we practice sleep or food deprivation. Injuring men does not help them improve their lives.

That sounds reasonable, I thought. I decided to take the free-fall and trust the process. This proved to be my near undoing.

Throughout this article, I will not reveal specific details of the NWTA, because I am bound by contract. This means I will not disclose the schedule, including the sleep schedule. I will only report my personal, subjective experience of sleep over the weekend. It is enough, in my mind, for leadership and other initiated men to know the details.

Other processes will also be shrouded in mystery. This is not to make them sound sinister or to be evasive, but rather because I agreed, both in person and in writing, not to disclose this information, and I keep my word. I will also center this narrative on my own subjective experience and not include any description of the other men or their experiences.

The result of this commitment is frustration for both reader and writer, as I cannot convey the fullness, good and bad, of the experience. Many important clarifying details must be kept from the public eye. What remains is a patchwork at best, but nothing is fictionalized, and no one is a composite character.

IV.

For the first 24 hours of the NWTA, I thrived. I loved the rigor; I loved being in nature; I loved the schedule; I loved the physical activity. Most of all, I loved being among men. I felt life pouring into me.

Yes, it was intense and frequently uncomfortable, but I’d already done a huge number of uncomfortable, intense things in life, and I found the rigor reassuring. I’ve been a missionary in China and India; I’ve attended a brutal military-style school. I didn’t find the discomfort challenging, I found it comforting. “I could be here for the next 6 months,” I thought to myself. It felt like a vacation.

I realized, at one point as I was journaling, that this wasn’t my NWTA. The past 16 months were. My life has been brutal. The horrors of the world, the travails of my mental health, the nightmare of Hurricane Helene, the grief and loss of shattered communities, friendships, career, and hopes had all taken a terrible toll. The NWTA took me out of all that, and for what felt like the first time in over a year, I could breathe.

There was a fly in the ointment, however. I estimate that, on that first night, I personally got about 3 hours of sleep.

V.

Living with Bipolar is to exist in a constant tension between the greatest extremes of heaven and hell. It vacillates between periods of a week to months of crushing immobility, despair, self-hatred, and darkness (depression) and periods of dangerous euphoria, grandiosity, energy, sleeplessness, creativity, and sexual impulsivity (mania). Some unfortunates like me experience mixed episodes: the ultimate horrific alchemy which combines the despair of depression with the energy of mania. Mixed episodes are particularly dangerous because they combine suicidal despair with the energy and drive to do lasting harm to oneself.

My particular diagnosis is Bipolar II with psychotic features. The “II” means that I experience hypomania — literally “below mania” — which is less severe and/or briefer in duration than the full-blown mania of Bipolar I. Hypomania is often manageable and easily masked until I get reckless, start staying up till five AM, or get delusional and grandiose. The “psychotic features” part means that, when I am pushed to the extremes of heaven or hell, I become psychotic. I become convinced that I am going to die in my sleep, that someone is poisoning the drinking water, that the ceiling fan is a monster, or that the FBI is after me. Fortunately, these psychotic episodes have occurred only a few times in my life.

Bipolar is a progressive condition. If left untreated, it becomes more volatile and severe as one ages, and Bipolar II can develop into Bipolar I.

The bipolar brain is exquisitely sensitive to any amount of sleep deprivation. A single night of poor sleep is sometimes (though not always) enough to send me spiraling into a hypomanic bender for days, which is then often followed by a devastating plunge into the abyss. Multiple nights of poor sleep in a row for a week or more can have life-shattering consequences for months. Protecting my sleep is the number one priority for my health and sanity. Apart from stabilizing meds, good sleep is often the first line of treatment for people with Bipolar.

Other conditions are also exacerbated by sleep deprivation. Poor sleep can spark psychotic episodes in people with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder, and people with autism can suffer tremendously from the effects of poor sleep, as it disrupts their already challenging connection to their sensory worlds.

But poor sleep is not only a scythe to the minds and bodies of the neurodiverse; it is also a sword of Damocles to the well-being of the neurotypical.

As Matthew Walker, a foremost expert on sleep, writes in his book Why We Sleep: The Power of Sleep and Dreams,

A balanced diet and exercise are of vital importance, yes. But we now see sleep as the preeminent force in this health trinity. The physical and mental impairments caused by one night of bad sleep dwarf those caused by an equivalent absence of food or exercise. It is difficult to imagine any other state—natural or medically manipulated—that affords a more powerful redressing of physical and mental health at every level of analysis.

In his TED talk², Walker explains how poor sleep causes havoc on men’s testicles and endocrine systems; how a single all-nighter for college students reduces their memory capacity by 40%, and how it increases the risk of heart attack and stroke.

A single night of poor sleep compromises a devastating array of systems in the body. As Walker explains in the TED talk:

We’ve already spoken about sleep loss and your reproductive system, or I could tell you about sleep loss and your cardiovascular system, and that all it takes is one hour. Because there is a global experiment performed on 1.6 billion people across 70 countries twice a year, and it’s called daylight savings time. Now, in the spring when we lose one hour of sleep, we see a subsequent 24% increase in heart attacks that following day. In the autumn, when we gain an hour of sleep we see a 21% reduction in heart attacks. Isn’t that incredible? And you see exactly the same profile for car crashes, road traffic accidents, even suicide rates.

According to the NIH, about 1/3 of Americans are chronically sleep deprived. To spell it out, this means that 1/3 of men are already arriving at the NWTA as ticking time bombs, vulnerable to injury, emotional dysregulation, memory loss, and poor impulse control.

And then there is the alarming field of international law, which has declared good sleep a human right and the stripping away of sleep a grave violation. Psychiatrist Pau Pérez-Sales argues for the 6/24 rule: that any detention center or political party that deprives a human of a minimum of six hours of continuous sleep per 24 hours for three days in a row is potentially committing torture. I am not accusing the NWTA of torturing its participants. I am saying that by the end of the weekend, I was personally two-thirds of the way there.

I, as a human with bipolar, do not feel that I could give informed consent to the amount of sleep I would personally receive at the NWTA, and I consider this a grave violation of my autonomy.

VI.

The tides turned about halfway through the weekend when, in an extraordinarily intense process, I touched the deepest trauma in my life. When I was 19 years old, I survived a mass shooting in which two of my friends were murdered and two others were gravely injured. I was the only one in the hallway unharmed.

It was my choice to go there, and if I had been more sober-minded, I wouldn’t have. It was, in retrospect, an extremely reckless choice. But here’s the thing about choice: it’s contingent, often on the amount of sleep we have, in much the same way one’s choices are contingent on how much alcohol one has had. I made a bad choice for myself. I was also hungry, hot, physically exhausted, and critically sleep deprived.

To his credit, the facilitator suggested that I not address the trauma itself — to approach it sideways, as it were. This precaution was not enough. I had already touched the pain, and I was there. I saw it all, felt it all.

I saw my friend Phil bleeding out, already white as a corpse, staring at the ceiling with a look of blank terror on his face as his life drained away. I saw Tiffany down the hall, a crumpled and mangled doll in a spreading pool of blood. I saw Charlie, shot in both legs, hobbling down the hallway to the phone to call the police. I saw Tiffany’s boyfriend lying next to her, shot through the throat. I was in the bathroom again, behind a door that wouldn’t lock, certain that the gunman was going to come find me and kill me. Worst of all, I heard the anguished cries of Phil’s friend, who had just discovered him in the hallway — sounds like a tortured dog howling — sounds that, for as long as I live, I will never unhear.

I saw it all, felt it all, in all its screaming, visceral horror.

“It should have been me,” I told the facilitator, “it should have been me who died, not them.” And there it was: the lie that had tortured me all through my 20s; the poison seed that had sprouted into a hideous tree.

I thought I had put this all to bed — that I had made peace with the memories, that I had embraced life. But here they were, like Frankenstein’s monster: dead flesh lanced with new, undead life.

I was encouraged to let the scream out. I did. But this wasn’t merely a scream; it was a lifetime of trauma bundled up in a single roar. I started shaking and couldn’t stop.

After the scream, I went through a challenging, intense physical experience to move through the lie I had believed. Because I was jacked from adrenaline and cortisol, because I was in that hallway where I witnessed the murder of my friends, I did an extraordinary feat of strength that left audible gasps and jaws agape. My heart was pounding; I felt numb; I was in a dazed, altered state.

It was shortly after this intense experience, perhaps 45 minutes, that the seismic shock waves began. Heaving sobs racked me. I called my safe word, and men led me outside as I convulsed and sobbed. They soothed me, but by then the fuse had already been lit. I was decompensating rapidly.

I was told, again and again through the rest of the weekend, how inspiring my work had been, how courageous, how beautiful, how powerful. But was it, I ask myself? Was it any of those things? Was it courageous, or was it recklessness from sleep deprivation and physical exhaustion? Was it beautiful, or merely self-injury? Was it powerful, or merely needless rawness? It didn’t feel like healing; it felt like a vivisection.

I provoked a dragon of immense anguish inside of me that had largely lost its power over me through years of therapy and healing. It had been asleep, and now it is awake. After the NWTA, I find my mind returning, again and again, to that moment of touching those memories of violence and death, and they distress me. At odd moments through the day — driving to work, lying in bed, trying to focus on my job — I relive those terrible moments in the hallway in a way I haven’t in years. The shaking returns; the blank staring into the abyss of violence returns. The nightmares, too, have returned, and I wake my husband with terrified cries in my sleep.

I don’t have anything against extreme experiences in principle. They can be valuable and life-changing. I’ve done some wild things in my life, sometimes deliberately, sometimes not. I was also a minister for three years in a religious subculture that embraces extreme body modification and kink. I believe in radical, informed bodily autonomy within reason. If someone wants to sleep deprive themselves for a dangerous shamanistic journey to confront their worst traumas in the forest, by all means do so.

What horrifies and angers me is that I did not know what was coming for me, and I therefore could not make an informed medical decision for myself. By the time the horrors set in, the reasoning and mood-distorting consequences of sleep deprivation had taken root. This means that, although I was technically given ample opportunity to consent in the moment, I was dangerously susceptible. My vulnerability nullified my ability to truly consent.

I wanted to kill myself that night after that harrowing experience, and I was preparing to check myself into a mental hospital when I got home. I tried to hurt myself as I lay nearly naked in my bunk, not to kill myself, but just to make the pain stop. The anguish even crept into my sleep, when I could finally sleep, and I woke my entire cabin screaming from night terrors.

The rest of the weekend was an endurance test the likes of which I’ve never experienced in many years, except in the deepest pits of bipolar. What good I could have gained from the experience bounced off me, because I had reached my threshold and then far exceeded it.

I know it’s tempting to imagine the staff as callous drill sergeants who turned a deaf ear to my cries. This was not the case. They held me as I sobbed, listened to my experience, and regularly checked in with me to ensure my safety. They have checked in routinely after the weekend. They weren’t cruel, malicious, or hard. They are gentle, sensitive, and responsive.

This isn’t what many of my readers want to read, I know — they want condemnation, fire, perhaps even retaliation. Yes, I am extremely angry, but this pain is not so simple. Villains rarely exist in the truest stories we tell. Love and torment can exist in the same breath, and it is often people who care about us who deal out the deadliest hurt.

Intention matters to me because, as a writer by calling and a modern Stoic by practice, I serve the virtues, including justice. This organization has the best of intentions, and I do not afford myself the luxury of judging the outcome without also evaluating the human heart. Anything less is not justice. Examining the heart doesn’t take away the pain — it transmutes the suffering into something productive, redemptive, and world changing.

VII

When I finally crash-landed at home, I made a deliberate choice: I decided to cope ugly and reach for my darkest skills. I pulled out a razor, and I cut myself again and again. I overate fast food. I chain-smoked a pack of cigarettes a day. I watched lots of porn. I numbed out with intoxicants.

My purpose, in those days following my NWTA, was not to be a saint or some enlightened being, but to survive. It’s polite and acceptable to say that these coping methods didn’t help, but that would be a lie. They reduced the pain, which is what I needed. I was in so much pain, and all I knew to do was cope. I did what I had to do, and these shadow tools are there to aid me when I need them. I feel no shame over this choice because extreme situations call for extreme measures.

This wasn’t for lack of love or support. The love and support were abundant, but by then, it didn’t feel enough to manage the overwhelm I was experiencing. I was broken, exhausted, and vulnerable.

Since that weekend, my mood has been unstable, and I’m showing all the signs of hypomania, which has aided me in the writing of this article. This is often a portent of a coming crash. My new psychiatrist has put me on a new antipsychotic to help knock the hypomania down a peg. The sleep deprivation has taken its toll. Fortunately, I don’t think I will have to check myself into the hospital. I have a lifetime of sailing these waters, and I am drawing on all my resources to survive. It’s notable, however, that many men like me do not have such support systems and skills in place. I know my mind well, and I have the skills to cope with disaster when it comes. Many men do not.

In addition to coping ugly, I have been kept afloat by a righteous fury that feels powerful enough to push planets off their orbit, the compassionate response from MKP leadership, the support of my igroup brothers, and the writing of this article. As always, the pen has been my greatest sword, salve, and comfort.

I feel a particular gratitude to my Igroup. They received me with love just as they did when I first arrived like a stray dog on their doorstep. They wrapped their arms around me, loved me, and heard all my pain and complaints. They validated my anger. To you, my brothers, I will be forever grateful.

VIII

I’ve spent a lot of time in the aftermath of the NWTA soul searching about why it felt so necessary for me to attend despite the risk. What was it inside of me that made this feel urgent and mandatory? What was missing from my life? I should have vouched harder for my needs in the weeks leading up to event, and that’s on me. Why didn’t I? When I inspect this question with full sincerity, I see the ingredients of a widespread masculine condition.

In late 2023, I lost my primary religious community, which resulted in a crisis of meaning and connection. I was desperate for community, for another sanctuary to surround me and nurture me. When the NWTA landed on my horizon, it was a powerful invitation to be initiated into a community with shared values and experiences. That invitation bypassed my mind and landed directly in my heart. I needed that. I, a man in my mid-thirties approaching middle age, was living like a nerve without a tooth, exposed to the raw elements with no community or guiding structure to contain me. I reached for the NWTA as instinctively as an infant reaches for a breast, because we are communal creatures who perish in isolation.

But the drives that landed me sleep deprived, afraid, and vulnerable on that carpet confronting my worst traumas were also more masculine in nature. I felt — have always felt — an aching need for the company of men.

“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers,” writes Shakespeare in King Henry V. The love between men, between a band of brothers, is fierce, necessary, and one of life’s greatest rewards. How many of us yearn to say King Henry’s words to our closest male friends, a circle of brothers? Too many men go without ever uttering any variation of those words in their lives, and this creates a corrosive void in the hearts of mankind. If a man has no brothers, the drive to find those happy few can lead him to radicalization, despair, addiction, numb complacency, or the darkest corners of the internet. It isn’t arbitrary, it isn’t optional, no more than food or water, or fathers or mothers are optional. Men need brothers; I need brothers. I was, and still am, willing to go to extreme lengths to find my band of brothers. All of this means that I was intensely vulnerable and willing to take enormous risks to find the nourishment I need.

Most of all, I attended the NWTA because I trusted these men.

They had been so kind, generous, and supportive. I trusted that I wouldn’t get severely hurt over the weekend because I was confident in their expertise, vetting process, and care. I had shared my life, vulnerabilities, and medical needs with them. No experience is ever safe — safety is an illusion at the best of times — but I expected men I trusted to know me well enough to warn me, clearly, of obvious hurdles they could see that I, by design, could not. I don’t know if I trust them anymore, and that breaks my heart.

There is one star in this hideously black night, and it is my initiated brothers. There were moments of sweetness and intimacy. I feel close to my brothers, and we have promised each other to stay in touch. The fondness I feel for them is deep.

After it all, as I sit here in my living room typing these words, I’m left with a searing compassion for men searching for meaning and brotherhood, not because I stand above this hunger, but because I have it, too.

IX

I have five suggestions for MKP. These are not demands, but invitations. They range from the most actionable to the most challenging. I ask you, brothers, to consider each one carefully.

First, include unambiguous informed consent for sleep during the intake process for the NWTA. If I had known how little sleep I would personally get on my weekend, I would not have attended.

The website clearly states, “in no way do we sleep deprive men.” I disagree. I was unable to make an informed choice for my own medical needs because I do not feel that the documentation, intake interviews, waiver, or public-facing material gave clear information about sleep that could inform my choice. This is the barest minimum and easiest hurdle: allow men to make an informed choice about their own bodies and minds when they enter the NWTA. I support men if they choose to deprive themselves for the weekend in the service of an intense, cathartic experience. Allow them to fully opt in.

Second, do a rigorous follow-up at three months after the NWTA. My suspicion is that you do not truly know all the lasting consequences — both positive and negative — of the NWTA because few men are as bold (or stupid) as I am to write it all down in naked detail for the entire world to read. This lack of rigorous follow-up makes you susceptible to your own biases and expectations. The most positive stories stick, and the negative or neutral stories slink away.

In-person or phone follow up is not sufficient due to the human psyche’s resistance to conflict and innate desire to not displease an authority figure. Instead, create a thorough and anonymous follow up form that allows men to share, without fear of identification or retaliation, their true experiences of the event and its aftermath. This will give you a much more accurate picture and will allow you to enact long-term change for the better.

Third, create a more robust culture of igroups. Men reach for mental health services much less than women, and yet account for 75% of suicides. While The Mankind Project is not therapy or mental healthcare, research shows that men’s support groups and shared activities can play a crucial role in men’s well-being. If my experience is any indication, igroups allows men to do real, meaningful, gentle, and lasting work weekly at their own pace.

My local MKP culture regularly signals that the mountain top intensity of the NWTA is where the most important and impactful work happens. I am skeptical of this claim, especially when it comes to men who live with precarious minds. In my judgment, the most important work in a man’s life is not what he does in the 1% of his life at the mountain top, but the 99% which is the valley, because that is where we all live our lives. While mountain tops are important, they are also (paradoxically) easy. The best work is sustainable work in the presence of loving support over the course of years.

As the NWTA currently stands, I should probably never have attended and never would. Many men are in a similar position but still deserve to do the meaningful work that MKP offers. Not everyone should run a marathon, but everyone should still exercise. Not everyone should attend a month-long silent meditation retreat, but everyone should have a spiritual practice. And not every man should attend the NWTA, but every man should do men’s work. Give them the option to do so. I invite you to invest your limited time, resources, and skills into creating a more robust community outside of the NWTA for men who never will, and never can, attend the weekend.

Fourth, run an experimental NWTA that prioritizes at least 8 hours of sleep. This could be done in the rigorous spirit that NWTA embraces, because sleep and silence are also challenging disciplines.

Granting men a full night of sleep will be a net positive, but I want to emphasize two components in particular. First, a full night’s rest will grant men access to deep non-REM sleep, during which the brain consolidates memory. This means men will be able to more fully absorb the experiences from the day, learn from their experiences, and integrate what they learned into their lives outside of the NWTA. Sleep is the pillar of integration. Without adequate sleep, men will remember a mere portion of the fullness of their experience.

Second, and perhaps more powerfully, a full night’s rest will unlock that crucial ingredient for any hero’s journey: the shamanistic power of dreams.

As Matthew Walker explains in Why We Sleep,

We are even beginning to understand the most impervious and controversial of all conscious experiences: the dream. Dreaming provides a unique suite of benefits to all species fortunate enough to experience it, humans included. Among these gifts are a consoling neurochemical bath that mollifies painful memories and a virtual reality space in which the brain melds past and present knowledge, inspiring creativity.

REM sleep is when the mind does some of its deepest emotional and spiritual work. I recommend directly incorporating a discussion or journaling about men’s dreams each morning. Mighty revelations might come to the surface. The NWTA is currently leaving one of the most powerful tools for growth on the table.

Men are already sleep deprived in their daily lives. The NWTA ushers men out of the mundane and into a hero’s journey. Unfortunately, for many men, sleep deprivation is a hallmark of the mundane, and more of it is hardly heroic. You have the opportunity to introduce healing sleep into this hero’s journey. There will be fewer injuries, less emotional volatility, fewer dropouts, deeper emotional healing, greater resilience, better integration upon arriving home, and men will be able to remember and learn from what they experienced. It will also make the weekend many times safer for those who live with mental illness. I dare you to run this experiment, and I promise you it will transform the entire organization for the better.

Fifth, do some soul searching over the enormous potential harms of the intense, overwhelming emotional work men are encouraged to do at the NWTA. There can be great catharsis, but also enormous cost, as my story shows, especially in the context of sleep deprivation. I know you have likely already done some self-examination over this issue. Do more.

Your mission statement reads, in part, “…we are willing to look at, and take full responsibility for, the pain we are also capable of creating – and suffering.”

Now is the time to live up to your words. I offer you a fearless moral inventory of your actions.

I give you these invitations because here is the deepest truth of this letter: I love you, and I want you to succeed. I love you despite the pain, the enraged horror of my friends and family, the bewilderment of my readers, and perhaps even against my better judgment. The people closest to me have told me that you have betrayed me and that I should never trust you again. It’s hard not to agree — I feel betrayed, and it is difficult to trust this organization again. Despite all this, I love you.

I also love men, and I have a particular tenderness for men like myself who live with minds that differ from the norm. If my nightmare initiation into The Mankind Project means that other men like me don’t have to suffer in the way I have, then it will be worth it. Please, I ask you, receive this letter with the love with which it was written.

I invite everyone — MKP leaders, participants, observers, disgruntled haters and loyalists alike, and everyone in between — to share their thoughts in the comments below. The floor is yours.

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1. Parts of this segment are reproduced from a previous article.

2. Because this article is going to a general audience, I have opted for popular resources on sleep that are easy to digest. However, the research on sleep deprivation is wide and deep, and I encourage everyone, particularly MKP leaders, to do a thorough analysis of the research.