Smuggling Afghani Hindu Kush

The former 1st Recon Combat Field Medic’s discharge papers list R. Gage Amsler, but his friends call him “Doc.” Thanks to being in the right place at exactly the right time, coupled with his high security specialist privileges, Doc Gage managed to smuggle some really special seeds home to the states. A “landrace cultivar of Afghani Hindu Kush from the mouth of the Taliban Trail.” It wasn’t easy.

Mythical strain of Kush

Doc Gage begins his autobiography noting that a “soldier going to war knows to expect the unexpected.” He found his fair share of unexpected trauma in Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan with the special forces.

He never dreamed that a walk along a sunny mountain trail used by the Taliban between Pakistan and Afghanistan would change his life. Growing along the path was a strain of Kush “he thought may have only existed in folklore.”

While working the area as a medic, he “heard plenty about this mystical strain of cannabis.” He took the glowing reports with a grain of salt but wondered, could “this strain of Hindu Kush be the salvation for PTSD for my fellow Vets?”

Like most veterans, Doc knows all about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, with it’s “flashbacks, nightmares, anxiety, a sense of detachment from loved ones and difficulty functioning in everyday life.”

Stumbling on mythical marijuana took him by surprise and he only had a split instant to decide his future fate. It was an intense situation, he recalls.

“The end of November with a light snow on the ground and buds loaded with seeds.” He picked the right place to take a leak. “I wasn’t looking for this mythical strain of landrace cannabis rumored to be hidden somewhere along the 800 kilometer Hindu Kush range.” But he found it.

How to bring them back

“I wasn’t looking for it when I found it — I was on a routine mission with my special operations team Task Force Dragon Slayer, scouting locations to build another base for the Afghan Army, in the middle of a modern-day war. But there they were.” Those magic Kush seeds prompted a life changing decision.

“They were dropping seeds as I pulled them from the ground and brought them back to my hooch on base and took a photo of them on the floor with a soda can for reference,” he describes. “I spent two weeks pulling the seeds from the drying plants, then another four months trying to figure out how to bring them back home.”

Momma Maryjane can trace her roots all the way back to this strain as the mother Eve of all cannabis.

“The history of cannabis is directly linked to its existence and namesake as a landrace found in the Hindu Kush mountain ranges of Afghanistan, Northern Pakistan, and North-Western India, first known to be brought to the U.S. in the late 1970s.”

Doc’s not giving up his smuggling secrets but he couldn’t have done it without his special clearance. Today, his landrace Kush strains are helping folks with PTSD just like he hoped.

“It has been my sole mission to release a cultivar that I believe might have been a life saving alternative” to his close friend’s unfortunate death following a medicine reaction.