I'm extremely excited to announce a brand new sponsor for the Behind the Shield podcast
that is Transcend.
Now for many of you listening, you are probably working the same brutal shifts that I did
for 14 years.
Suffering from sleep deprivation, body composition challenges, mental health challenges, libido,
hair loss, etc.
Now when it comes to the world of hormone replacement and peptide therapy, what I have
seen is a shift from doctors telling us that we were within normal limits, which was definitely
incorrect all the way to the other way now where men's clinics are popping up left, right
and center.
So I myself wanted to find a reputable company that would do an analysis of my physiology
and then offer supplementations without ramming, for example, hormone replacement therapy down
my throat.
Now I came across Transcend because they have an altruistic arm and they were a big reason
why the 7X project I was a part of was able to proceed because of their generous donations.
They also have the Transcend foundations where they are actually putting military and first
responders through some of their therapies at no cost to the individual.
So my own personal journey so far filled in the online form, went to Quest, got blood
drawn and a few days later I'm talking to one of their wellness professionals as they
guide me through my results and the supplementation that they suggest.
In my case specifically, because I transitioned out the fire service five years ago and been
very diligent with my health, my testosterone was actually in a good place.
So I went down the peptide route and some other supplements to try and maximize my physiology
knowing full well the damage that 14 years of shift work has done.
Now I also want to underline because I think this is very important that each of the therapies
they offer, they will talk about the pros and cons.
So for example, a lot of first responders in shift work, our testosterone will be low,
but sometimes nutrition, exercise and sleep can offset that on its own.
So this company is not going to try and push you down a path, especially if it's one that
you can't come back from.
So whether it's libido, brain fog, inflammation, gut health, performance, sleep, this is definitely
one of the most powerful tools in the toolbox.
So to learn more, go to transcendcompany.com or listen to episode 808 of the Behind the
Shield podcast with founder Ernie Colling.
This episode is sponsored by New Calm.
And as many of you know, I only bring sponsors onto this show whose products I truly swear
by.
Now we are an overworked and under slept population, especially those of us that wear uniform for
a living and trying to reclaim some of the lost rest and recovery is imperative.
Now the application of this product is as simple as putting on headphones and a sleep
mask.
As you listen to music on each of the programs, there is neuroacoustic software beneath that
is tapping into the actual frequencies of your brain, whether to up-regulate your nervous
system or down-regulate.
Now for most of us that come off shift, we are A, exhausted and B, do not want to bring
what we've had to see and do back home to our loved ones.
So one powerful application is using the program Powernap, a 20 minute session that will not
only feel like you've had two hours of sleep, but also down-regulate from a hypervigilant
state back into the role of mother or father, husband or wife.
Now there are so many other applications and benefits from this software.
So I urge you to go and listen to episode 806 with CEO Jim Poole, then download New
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software.
And you can find even more information on newcalm.com.
Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast.
As always, my name is James Gearing and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome on
the show veteran volunteer and career firefighter Chris Moore.
Now in this conversation, we discuss a host of topics from his journey into the fire service,
some career calls, his powerful mental health story, save a warrior, brothers helping brothers,
leadership and so much more.
Now before we get to this incredible conversation, as I say every week, please just take a moment
to go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback
and leave a rating.
Every single five star rating truly does elevate this podcast, therefore making it easier for
others to find.
And this is a free library of almost 900 episodes now.
So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories so
I can get them to every single person on planet earth who needs to hear them.
So with that being said, I introduce to you Chris Moore.
Enjoy.
Well, Chris, I want to start firstly to say thank you to Jim for bringing us together
in Ohio for the Brothers Helping Brothers Conference and secondly, I want to welcome
you personally to the Behind the Shield podcast today.
Thank you for having me.
Amazing conference where we finally got to have our paths crossed in Ohio.
And it was a pleasure meeting you and spending a few days together with you and getting to
see the man behind the podcast and everything that you're doing.
So that was such an honor and it's a huge honor to be a part of your podcast right now.
Thank you.
Yeah, well, I mean, it was it was such a powerful conference too.
I mean, there was a lot of people I interviewed that I haven't met some local guys that I
already had.
So for example, interviewing Rowell and Jeff and their perspective on the the Pulse shoot
in live was was incredible.
So powerful.
But then also me and Ben and some of the other guys that had on the show and watching their
presentations and, you know, the the love in that conference space was incredible.
It was the people that really understood vulnerability, but also that brotherhood and sisterhood piece.
So it it reignited my fire and a belief that that's what the fire service really is.
Yeah, me too.
So amazing conference for anybody who hasn't been out there to the Brothers Helping Brothers
Conference and what do they call it, Exotic Beaver Creek, Ohio.
If you ever get a chance, it's every year in October.
Definitely get out there and check them out.
They're doing great things.
Those guys that put that on truly have that servant's heart and they want to give back
to the brother and sisterhood of the fire service and public safety.
Absolutely.
Well, I know you're not in Ohio now.
So where are we finding you today?
Virginia Beach, Virginia.
So probably takes me about 17 minutes to do the math to get from my door to the beach.
I was just there earlier today.
That's my happy place.
It's cold here.
Not as warm as where you're at down in Florida.
But I think today we're right around 40 degrees.
So a little nippy down at the ocean front.
But regardless, it's still my happy place.
I like to go there and do self-care, meditation, any chance that I get to partake in that.
So many of the people that have come on the show that have been attached to Virginia Beach
are wearing a trident.
So obviously there's a strong SEAL community there and even DevGru.
So with you working in the fire service, have you had any interaction with that community
in general and or your local law enforcement agency?
Oh, yeah.
Lots of interactions.
It's kind of hard to go anywhere in this area, even as a civilian, without interacting with
somebody in the military or law enforcement and even the SEAL teams and DevGru.
But yeah, we have lots of positive interactions all around.
Just a fellowship and the brotherhood, the camaraderie with them as well.
Well, this would be a good question to ask you.
I was blown away as I started, you know, on what's the right word, accumulating episodes
and getting more and more conversations with people.
How high the special operations, special forces communities hold us, the first responders.
And it makes perfect sense.
While they're deployed, we are protecting their loved ones.
But you literally are living side by side with some of these.
So have you had any of those kind of conversations or perceptions?
Because the reason why I think it's so important is not for us to be our chest, but to then
parallel resources, you know, training, fitness requirements, etc. with those men in this
case, who hold us to the same position as themselves.
Yeah, absolutely.
You hit the nail on the head.
Those guys, as badass as they are, super, super humble in what they do.
And I can't thank the I put the military up here.
And I can't thank them enough for everything that they do.
But the the military that I've interacted with across the board, but since we're talking
about special forces, the the seals that I've interacted with and everything.
They do hold us in very high standards for the exact reasons that you said, because we're
holding the fort down here, while they're taking care of business overseas, whether
it be Africa or the Middle East or Afghanistan, whatever.
But to me, my response always to these guys is they afford us the luxury to do what we
do here, by them doing what they're doing over there.
They're securing, defending and securing our freedom.
And without that, we couldn't be on this podcast right now, we couldn't be on the rigs or the
patrol cars or whatever it may be.
So to me, they're they're well above.
But they they they don't accept that from me.
Because like I said, they're they're so humble, even as as badass as they are.
And for those of you out there who have never met our any of our elite special forces.
It seems like a lot of people think that they're kind of like us.
People think we're superheroes, that we have an S on our chest or whatever.
And that's that's just not the case.
I mean, we are all just everyday men and women who are doing an exceptional job at what we
do, providing a service to our communities and our country.
So it's it's really cool, man, just to to sit down and have a regular conversation with
these guys.
What I found is that they because again, it's it's like I said, it's not apples to apples.
Each of us do our profession and we're always in awe of other professions that do it at
such a high level.
And I think the the closest comparison I can think of is wildland and structural like the
wildland firefighters.
You guys are crazy running into a burning building.
Why would you do that?
We're like you you stand in the middle of burning mountains with a shovel.
So I think there is that admiration, but where the value is, apart from that mutual respect,
is OK, which of these organizations are doing it best?
OK, the SEALs and some of the other communities, they get good training, everything from the
mental health and the resilience to the fitness training, nutrition to the the knowledge sharing
with special forces from other countries.
And then you side by side compare the thing that I know, which is the fire service.
There are some departments that do that very well, but there's a lot where we're asking
men and women to do so much with so little, which is absolutely the polar opposite of
how a lot of the special operations communities are treated.
Yeah, that's very spot on analogy of that right there.
There's so many organizations and departments that are ahead of their time.
They are they're cutting edge and they're they're doing all the right things.
Then you have another tier of organizations and departments that they say the right thing,
but they don't always do the right thing.
And then you have that bottom tier that just they don't put all of the pieces of the puzzle
together and put out the I guess the best possible product if you want to call us a
product, but the best possible scenario for success in the field, but at home also for
their members.
We always talk about ourselves in within this community as being a family, family oriented,
family geared and everything.
And kudos to the departments that truly follow through with that.
But the ones that don't, Godspeed to them.
I hope that they pick it up and elevate their game and start putting that total package
together to take care of their members, not only while they're on that 24 hour shift or
getting back to our military as well while they're deployed and everything, but when
everybody is back at home and you're off shift with your family, we need departments to take
care of those members at that time as well.
Which workweek schedule do you guys have where you work?
Oh man, that's a bad question.
I'm going to confuse the hell out of you and everybody out there listening.
So 56 hour workweek, but we're on, it's called a 21 day cycle.
Everywhere I go, people ask me that question when I start explaining it, their mind is
just blown.
So they're 24 hour shifts, it starts on a Tuesday.
So we go Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Monday.
So it's every other day for roughly a week.
Then we get off that Tuesday morning, we're off Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
We come back and work Friday and then we work Sunday.
We're off for two days.
We work Wednesday and then we have a five day break and that'll bring us back to a Tuesday
again and it starts all over.
Well, the most important thing you said was 56 hour workweek.
Because Anaheim was one on one off for four shifts and then it was a four or six after.
So that's the closest thing that I've heard to what you're doing.
But that 24 on 24 off was brutal for that tour.
And I've done a call to action to the fire service in general.
And the preface is this, we have so much courage operationally.
I can't even recall really an event where someone refused to go into a fire or whatever
because they were scared.
I won't use the word coward, but they were scared, they were ill prepared, whatever it
was.
So we're a pretty courageous bunch overall operationally.
But the number of times I've heard, oh, you'll never change that.
You'll never change that.
Oh, they'll never go for that.
And I realized that we're courageous in uniform, but absolutely cowards when it comes to advocating
for our own health, mental health, physical health and relationships at home.
So this is something that I'm asking now, not just with the workweek, because I've talked
that subject to death.
We all know now that the 24 72 is probably what should be ultimately the industry standard
to give our men and women the rest and recovery.
And so now it's not, oh, what's the best?
We know what the best is.
Now it's like, how do we make that happen?
The money is there because it's a false economy.
The way that we work, save money if you actually have a healthier department.
It's now a case of everyone from members to unions to chiefs to counties and cities to
all have the courage to stand up and say, it's not working anymore.
We need to change the way we're doing it.
Yeah.
We actually, you and I had a good portion of that conversation.
And that that's definitely the best thing for the departments.
Like you said, we have our one week of 24 on 24 off and that's, that's tough.
And there are still departments that do 24 48 and even those departments that that's
tough when you only have two days because the reality is nobody's doing this job to
get rich.
But we do need the money and it doesn't necessarily support us with a, in all municipalities where
when we have a family or whatever.
So you know, most of us, we have part time jobs.
So it's not like you can get off from your 24 hour shift in the morning where you just
got your butt handed to you and you get to go home and catch up on the sleep.
Most of the time people get off, they might go home and see their significant other or
whoever for a few minutes.
But then you got to get back off to work a second job doing landscaping or painting or
whatever it may be.
So you're, we're already behind the eight ball.
Then we're coming home and we're just, we're, we're beating ourselves up more and more
because of these schedules like that.
So yeah, the most ideal is to have that 72 hour break between shifts, do those, the four
shifts an A, B, C and D shift and give your, your companies the, I don't even want to call
it a luxury, but more of, I guess the necessity of having that 72 hours off to recover.
And sometimes some of us are our own worst enemies though, when it comes to this, we
could give guys and girls that 72 hours, but what are they going to do?
They're going to sign up and they're going to work overtime half of that time or work
a part time job all of that time or whatever.
So we really got to, if we're afforded that benefit of going to a schedule like that,
we got to utilize it to our best ability or our mental health.
Was education and it's also the organizational side as well as staffing the department properly.
So one of the things that I've realized a lot of people and you've, you've been on longer
than I have, but when I tested about 20 years ago, I was testing against a thousand certified
candidates with resumes, the size of a fricking yellow pages in California, for example, that's
how the fire service should look.
It's a job where you just want to take the top 10%.
I'm not saying I was a top, but you vie to be that candidate that's worthy of that uniform.
And then that ethos stays through your department.
And now we're on the other side, where we've devolved as far as the work week and the amount
of calls and the amount of things that we ask our responders to do now that we don't
have that line outside the front anymore.
So I, you know, my whole thing is if you put back the things that need to be there, and
this is the irony is that we, we do believe that a 24 72 would be a luxury.
That's a 42 hour work week.
Most civilians work 40 and they go to bed every night.
There's nothing luxurious about it.
You're trying to get back to at least their baseline.
That's all you're asking.
But I, you know, I think then you would have people vying for the apartment.
All the seats would be full.
So then you can take that out.
There won't be the overtime to drag people into in the first, but there'd be an occasional
overtime fine.
You know, you work a shift once in a while.
No one's going to have an issue with that.
But then you want the extra money.
As you touched on earlier, you hang drywall, you landscape, you paint walls, you do, you
know, whatever you start your, you have a side business, which is beautiful because
then you can transition when you retire as well.
Those are all great, but educating the people to understand that whatever you do on the
side, make sure you're asleep in your own bed every night.
That's the secret sauce.
Yeah.
And one of the terms I've heard many years ago, I can't remember who it was to credit
them properly.
I'm sure they're probably a follower and listener of James Gearing in your podcast, but is addicted
to awake.
And that's another thing also, even if we go with the proper days off that we could
better help ourselves, we still need to educate ourselves better and our members as a whole.
Just about any firehouse you go into, any time of the day or night, there's a pot of
coffee that's going in the kitchen.
I'm sure the same for police precincts and sheriff's offices, dispatch call centers,
EMS.
Hell, one of the fire stations that I was assigned to for quite a while, we had our
own refrigerator designated.
It was just monster energy drinks that we would sell.
And we're hurting.
We're our own best friend, but we're also our own worst enemy when it comes to a lot
of the stuff.
And just like you said, the education, our administration educating them to implement
a lot of the things in our city councils, but it's got to trickle down and we got to
educate the members and do the best things for ourselves.
If we have people willing to work with us and help us out and accommodate us, we need
to work on all of the other things.
A couple of years ago, I completely cut caffeine out of my life.
I stay away from caffeine and I thought that was going to be a super hard task to do.
It really wasn't.
And I tell you, just from doing that in the beginning, my sleep improved tremendously
from cutting that out.
Once then I have learned and done other things to assist with my sleep as well.
But that's one of the key things right there is just cutting a lot of that stuff out.
Well, I'm sitting here drinking a cup of coffee, so I'm not completely caffeine free.
But what I've noticed is I've again abstained from alcohol since the 29th or 30th, I think
it was.
And so I'm in another period now of not drinking because for me, I mean, there's so many negatives,
as I've said on here before.
I've never woken up wishing I had drank the night before, but the converse is very true.
So I've not been drinking, I'm not trying to drown out memories, anything like that.
It's more habitual, cultural, et cetera.
But I would lean into it as a really awful decompressor.
It's not, it does the opposite.
But what I found is when I don't drink, I don't drink as much coffee because the coffee
for me was trying to offset the fogginess from the drinking the night before.
Yeah, yeah, me too.
And that's another thing that we haven't until recently at the Ohio conference back in October,
the first time that I've ever seen a presenter actually speak out about alcohol and its effects
on people and how we accept it as part of our culture.
You go to a funeral.
Oh, let's raise a glass to so-and-so.
And you go to a union meeting.
You're like, hey, after the meeting, let's have some beers or whatever, a charity fundraiser,
golf tournament or whatever.
We tend to center it all around drinking.
It's become a major part.
And we need to get away from that.
And who it was who said that?
I know you probably know, but since you were there.
But it was it was Brendan, Brendan McDonough, Donut.
And I applaud him 1000% for being the first person.
I'm not saying people haven't done that before, but he's the first one at all the conferences
I've ever been a part of and attended.
He's the first person I've ever seen speak out about that.
And I think we need more awareness and attention.
And I'm not trying to be just like I'm sure you're not.
Maybe downer and say, no, don't ever drink or whatever.
But we just need to try and make it where we don't rely on it or have it be as much
of the culture.
It shouldn't be a cultural culturally significant thing for us.
It can be part of events and things like that, but it shouldn't be relied on and depended
on.
I had a guest on here who was recommended by a friend of mine, and he wrote a book called
The Introvert's Edge.
And it was fascinating because immediately it kind of resonated with me.
The definition of an introvert or an extrovert is basically where you get your energy from.
So you can be totally comfortable in a crowded room, but you level up by, you know, then
when you go home to your family, your dog, whatever it is, the intimate settings, then
you're probably an introvert.
If you get your power, if you level up in a crowd, which I think is very, very few people
to be honest, then you're truly an extrovert.
And I was like, oh shit, because I've always been okay in groups, but I'm the guy that
you'll turn around and go, you know, where the fuck did James go?
So I just, you know, all right, peace, I'm out.
I just hit that level.
And then, you know, I'm going to want to go to a busy party and I'll be sitting out the
back on the garden wall or something.
Not because of any other reason than that's just, I'm happier out there.
But then what it made me realize, if so many of us are introverts, alcohol is the social
lubricant because we have this facade that everyone else is the center of the party.
And we're the one that's like, what's wrong with me?
So this is, you think about pregame, how many times did you go out and you drank before
you even went out to feel comfortable being out?
I mean, it's lunacy when you think about it, but when you start deconstructing that before
we ever even became firefighters for us to got in a little bit later, you know, that
that's the other thing that we're fighting is this, this, like I said, this fallacy that
other people can just slip into this social space and be fine.
And most of us can't, most of us drink so that we can even get to that point where we're
comfortable in crowds.
Yeah, yeah, that's definitely a great way to look at it.
I never thought about the introvert extrovert and everything where it pertains to alcohol.
And many of us feel like we, we need that to that liquid courage to get up and be more
social or whatever.
And I still partake, but I partake responsibly and it's very kind of few and far between.
As in the past, I did do a lot of drinking where I felt like I had to be social.
I had to get, as you described it, that social lubricant and pregame and I felt like it was
a need, but since I have cut back and everything and just being more in the present and in
tune with who I'm self, who I am myself, I feel I really, I don't need it anymore to
be able to carry on a good conversation, a well-educated conversation.
I can just be me.
I'm not trying to, or no longer am I trying to impress other people.
I don't need to.
If somebody just feels like they need to do this to impress people or do that to impress
somebody, then they're, they're doing things for the wrong reason.
All I have to do, I want to serve other people, but at the end of the day is I need to take
care of Chris Moore and do what serves Chris Moore the best and properly.
And I'm happy with that if I do something that pisses James Gehring off or any of his
listeners or just people in general.
Hey, I'm sorry, but I'm living my best life now and it doesn't always have to include
that social lubricant.
So what you're saying is you wouldn't do a keg stand pussy.
Am I getting that right?
I'm not saying that.
All right.
Well, speaking of Chris Moore, let's start at the very beginning of your timeline so
we can learn about your journey into the fire service.
So tell me where you were born and tell me a little bit about your family dynamic, what
your parents did, how many siblings?
Yeah.
So I was born and raised right here in the Virginia beach area.
And it'll be almost 51 years ago I was born here.
My father, he was a Vietnam veteran in the Marine Corps and went over and I believe he
did two tours in Vietnam.
And he came back and he joined the local police department in the neighboring city of Norfolk,
Virginia.
And he served honorably there for over 20 years until he retired.
He had, looking back on things now, a lot of post-traumatic stress.
Didn't know anything about it at that timeframe, the 80s and everything when I was a young
terror growing up.
But now that I'm more educated about it and I guess globally we're more educated and have
understanding of it, I see where a lot of that really affected my dad, not just the
police department, but coming back from Vietnam and everything, issues that he had.
He was a great man, but coming from that older generation and especially I guess the older
military generation and Marine Corps.
He went to boot camp at Parris Island, South Carolina.
And back in those days, they could physically abuse you in boot camp.
And he would occasionally talk about all that and he became a, he was a strict disciplinarian.
And it was tough at times.
I had a good childhood, but had some issues related to a lot of that.
My mother, she was a working class family.
She worked over 40 hours a week and I had a, or still have an older brother.
He's a couple of years older than me.
So it was just him and I and our folks growing up.
I remember my dad, he would take me to work with him.
If he, I was home, we were out of school or whatever, he had to go to court.
I remember him taking me to court.
I remember days when he had to patrol and he didn't have court.
He would pick me up in his patrol car and take me around with him.
We'd go to the firehouses and police precincts, everything like that.
It was, it was a really cool experience for a kid.
You figure a lot of kids, at least back in that time period, you would just idolize the
firefighters, the law enforcement, everything like that.
And I would just, I was in awe of my old man, but then all of his friends at the police
precinct and firehouses and everything.
So initially, even though I was in awe of all of that, I wanted to be, I think I was
like six years old.
I wanted to be a damn trash man.
So I wanted to ride on, instead of riding on the tailboard of a fire engine like they
did back then, I wanted to ride on a tailboard of a trash truck and do that.
But as I got older and everything, not much older than that, probably about eight years
old.
I just knew I wanted to be a first responder.
I wanted to emulate my old man and I wanted to give back to the community.
I remember every morning or when he worked mornings, but at night, same thing every day
when he was getting ready to go into work and just seeing the pride that he had putting
that uniform on, polishing his shoes.
At that point had the big thick patent leather belt and everything and having that, his utility
belt all polished and shiny and just looking as square in a way as could be.
I was like, man, that's my dad.
That's my old man right there.
And I was just so proud of all that.
And I knew I wanted to do it.
Fortunately, as I graduated high school and when I hit 20 years old, I scored high enough
on the test where I didn't have to be a cop.
I was able to be a firefighter.
So that's why I got into firefighting instead of law enforcement.
In all seriousness, I just I wanted to do more of the fire side just because I think
we all know that both jobs are inherently dangerous.
I didn't want to be shot at, although firefighters nowadays can get shot at, stabbed like Ben
or any other forms of assault.
They were just as dangerous.
But I just wanted to do more positive stuff with the fire side and EMS.
And at 20 years old, I started out as a volunteer in the city of Virginia Beach, and I volunteered
here for seven years until I got hired by the neighboring city of Chesapeake and the
fire department there.
And that's where I currently serve now.
And currently a captain.
I've risen up through the ranks and started as a firefighter, got my paramedic and made
lieutenant, and now I'm a captain.
And I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoy that.
The public safety was in my blood from day one.
And I wouldn't trade it for the world, although I wish I knew then a lot of the stuff that
I know now and that we're finding out about the, not just the fire service, but the public
safety sector and how things affect our mental health.
So I would have done things.
I still would have went with the career, but I would have done things a lot different.
And it's the whole, we don't know what we don't know.
My dad didn't know it.
I didn't know it.
So I currently, I have a son who just graduated high school last summer and he's a young man
now 18 years old, trying to find his way in life.
And I've never once tried to push anything on him and say, Hey, you got to go into public
safety and carry on our family legacy or anything like that.
But if he decides to go that route, dad's definitely going to have a little sit down
talk with him.
And he's seen the effects that it's had on not just myself, but the whole family dynamic
because it doesn't just affect the first responder.
It affects the entire family dynamic.
Well, speaking of that, I want to go all the way back to your dad.
I've had a few guests now that were Vietnam veterans and so conversely to the ticker tape
parades of world war II that we romanticize about, even though now I just interviewed
two world war II veterans the other day, that is a fallacy that they just rolled up their
sleeves and went to work and were fine because they weren't.
A lot of them were not fine.
And you hear this now, granddad was often drinking, abusive, that kind of thing.
And there's no disrespect to the individual.
That's what happens when you come from the horrors of war with no real mental health
conversations and you just thrust back into rebuilding your country.
But when it comes to the Vietnam era, which I think is somewhat, it's not the same, but
it's now parlaying a little bit more for our Afghan vets that suddenly we withdrew and
they were left with that kind of legs from being cut under them.
But the world, excuse me, the Vietnam veterans were literally spit on, pissed on.
All these horrific stories that I've heard.
What was his homecoming story?
Did he ever talk to you about how he was received and how that impacted him?
Exactly what you just said.
What we hear about how everybody from that was perceived just negative and it affected
him tremendously.
And from, I think that was probably, it might've started a little bit with Korea, but Vietnam
definitely.
And then Iraq and Afghanistan now, everything has just been, and I'm not trying to transition
all of this, but everything just gets politicized.
It seems like Vietnam was like the turning point where things were starting to get politicized
now and everything.
We don't think about our men and women who are over there doing the things.
We just want to choose sides and right and wrong and everything like that.
And regardless of which side that you're on, we need to, we didn't do it then and we're
still not doing it now.
We need to take care of our people.
And he definitely, none of them were taken care of.
And it affected him tremendously.
And even going back to how you spoke about World War II and we have this fallacy that,
like you said, the ticker tape prades and all that, did they have those?
Sure, they did.
But still it wasn't things to necessarily fix their mental health and their wellbeing
and everything because they got back.
Maybe they had some kind of a parade.
They rolled their sleeves up.
They went to work.
The alcohol and everything was still there.
But if we rewind even before that, and this is where it's starting to show a pattern of
almost like a, well, not almost, but of a generational type trauma, because you figure
our vets that came back from World War II, what were their fathers possibly in World
War I?
And it's just what people learn and people experience.
And they were very young men, probably a lot of them in World War I and World War II and
even partially in Vietnam were going in before they were even 18 and putting their lives
on the line and defending our country and everything.
So they come back from that.
Well, they're passing it on to the next generation, their children.
And so when those children grow up, that's all they've ever known.
So they're doing the same thing to their children.
So eventually we need to figure out and learn more about the generational trauma and we
need to stop it with us.
And I know I just took that completely around the room right there.
You were just asking me one question about my dad coming back from Vietnam.
But like I said, his father was World War II.
And so it's definitely a difference in the way they came back and were perceived, but
it's not too far off of a difference.
We tend to think that everything was glorified after World War II, but that just necessarily
wasn't the case there.
And Vietnam was just from stories that I've been told from my dad, it was a horrible,
horrible time to be coming back from horrible conditions and fighting and just we'll just
say war.
It was war.
It was a conflict or war, whatever you want to call it.
It was war.
And he was already like just about probably everybody else that was over there traumatized
by a lot of the stuff that he was seen, was exposed to and seen and did.
And then you come back to that and it just, it doesn't help.
You're set up for, I don't necessarily want to say failure, but you're just not set up
for success.
And there were a lot of stories.
I didn't experience much of it, but I heard a lot in my prior to me being born in early
years of life, like my entire life, my dad never, he never ate rice after coming back
from Vietnam.
He did leading up to that, but just through marching through the rice paddies there in
Vietnam, he wouldn't eat rice.
And the post-traumatic stress, and I guess that's probably a form of it right there,
but this is kind of ironic because he ended up becoming a police officer with sirens and
everything, but he would hear sirens when he first got back.
I remember my mother sharing this with me and he would just like go into almost like
a catatonic state or drop down and just thinking that something is happening there, having
flashbacks.
But there wasn't places, the VA wasn't set up to help those guys.
Hell, it's really not set up to help our current guys that well right now, but I wasn't set
up for them back in the day or anything like that.
So, very sad, very tragic and kind of disgusting that stuff like that happened to our men and
women who were over there doing something for us.
Yeah.
Especially as so many were drafted as well, whether you signed up or not, you know, I
mean, you were over there doing something, wearing the uniform with your nation's flag
on the shoulder.
And this is why when I ask the members of the military, I always say, regardless of
the politics that sent you there, let's talk about the atrocities and let's talk about
the kindness and compassion because we don't get the soldier's perspective a lot of the
time.
Like, let's talk about what you actually did for this country.
And that was what was lost.
And I think one of the, if I remember rightly, Vietnam, I think was the first conflict where
they actually had it embedded videographer.
So they were actually getting news feeds back of what was really going on.
It's all of a sudden, and it's obviously worse now, like every man and his dog had an opinion.
But if you want our boys to come home and men and women to come home, then bring them
home.
But, you know, they're not the ones at fault for this.
You know, it was, you know, the, the, uh, North Vietnamese initiating these atrocities
and then a decision for us to go, whether it was altruistic or more, you know, politically
minded, as far as, um, one of my guests was talking about, I forget which city it was
now.
I don't know if it was Saigon, but anyway, that was like the, the jewel in Southeast
Asia politically.
If you, if you own that, then you own all the shipping routes and all those kinds of
things.
So whatever the reason that they found themselves there, they were there wearing our flag.
So we have to support them, whether it's Afghanistan or Vietnam or Somalia, wherever they're, you
know, they're trying to do good.
Those men and women in uniform, apart from the anomalies are out there trying to serve.
So as you said, we owe it to them to support them, especially when they come home.
Yeah, right on.
So you talked, you touched on, you know, that your dad struggled.
The multi-generational story is actually something I'm trying to write in my second book.
Um, just trying to find the writer that exists somewhere in this tiny brain of mine.
I'm struggling with it at the moment, but it's so important.
And Jake, I will, I will credit Jake from Savor Warrior, which we'll get to in a minute
for opening my eyes on the element of childhood trauma in PTSD or mental health challenges
in uniform professionals.
So when you look back now, you know, as we all are starting to realize that before we
ever put the uniform on as a big part of our mental health journey, when you look back
now with the environment that you grew up in, are there elements that contributed to
trauma that you found later in life?
Yeah, and I know you said we're going to touch on it a little bit later when you referenced
Jake and the generational trauma, but things that I never realized, because a lot of times
things happen to us, even still as adults, but most notably as children, we push things
down.
We just, uh, suppress things so deep.
We think that they're, they're gone, but until, and I know this is so cliche, we start peeling
back the proverbial layers of the onion.
You got to peel more than the first couple layers.
And with, with Jake, one of the things that we've done and really helped me out was we
pulled every fricking layer back until there was no onion left and exposed everything.
And I thought that my childhood initially was perfect until we peeled that, that onion,
that onion all the way to the core.
And the, the ACEs, the adverse childhood experiences score, it's the 10 questions, yes or no, when
you don't justify it.
I ended up finding out that I did have a lot of childhood trauma and issues.
I accepted them.
I suppressed them, but I accepted that if I was in, by no means does this mean that
I'm speaking disparaging words about my, my parents or anything like that, because they
didn't know.
They didn't know either, because that's why it's called generational.
The same shit happened to them and they did it to me and it stops here because now I know
about it.
I'm aware of it, but I just felt, okay, I did wrong.
That's why I got hit.
I justified everything when I was a kid.
And like I said, I suppressed it.
And I truly believe I haven't seen any legit, actually not even legit, I haven't seen any
true studies right now to support this other than just, I guess, more smaller, smaller
studies or questionnaires or whatever.
But many of our first responders and our military are going to have a higher ACEs score.
And that's what led us to where we are right now, because we did have these adverse childhood
experiences when we were young and we felt like there was nobody there that could help
us.
And we wanted to be the rescuer, the saver of people when we got old enough, we wanted
to get out of that bad, like I said, my environment wasn't the worst.
I still had a good childhood, but we wanted to get to better.
And we didn't want what happened to us in certain instances and occasions to happen
to other people.
So that's why we turn 18, we joined the military, we joined the police department or the fire
department or EMS.
I know there is a correlation around that.
And I just want to see a very, maybe your book, I want to see a very large scale study.
I've seen some smaller ones.
And I'm pretty sure that this number is right.
And you've probably heard it from Jake.
I believe he said the average prison population, their score is a six.
And from what I'm finding with those first responders, just in small conversations and
little things like that, the average score I'm finding on a first responder is right
around a six also.
And it's eye opening.
And I had never until I met Jake Clark, I've never heard of ACEs.
And I think that's something we really need to start looking into a lot more and addressing.
You can address if you have the courage, because that's another thing we'll have to talk about
is having the courage to address our issues that we have from running these calls and
seeing what we see and everything like that.
You can address stuff like that all day long.
And you can say that a lot of that causes you to self-medicate with alcohol, prescription
drugs, porn, whatever your internal drug store for dopamine desires.
And you utilize to find that and open up that drug store.
You can blame it on that all day long.
But I think we truly need to go back to the beginning, the first 18 years of life.
And once you start addressing that, and not just addressing it and acknowledging it, but
getting the help, the clinical help for it, then you can start moving on and doing other
things for the rest of your life and your career and everything like that.
And that's one thing that I've done with therapy is I started doing that.
I've gotten away from therapy in the past, but I'm right back to it now.
And I'll never stop going to therapy and just addressing anything.
If I go to therapy, I do it every other week.
I just went this morning.
And if I don't have anything to talk about, by all means, I'll still get there.
I'll pay my copay.
And we'll just sit down and we'll talk for an hour about the weather, sports, whatever
it may be.
But yeah, I think it's very important that we address the generational aspect of it and
what happened, potentially happened to members of the first responder community in their
childhood, their first 18 years of life, without justifying anything.
Either the shit happened to you or it didn't.
Don't take blame or anything like that.
Don't say, well, my dad did it to me because I was a little asshole or whatever.
If it happened, it happened.
Well, I couldn't agree more.
Firstly, it was interesting before I get into, I think some of the reasons why there is a
higher density of us with this element.
How many times do you hear, I grew up in an environment and I knew it was either the military
or prison.
You know what I mean?
They're side by side in conversations, especially if you grew up in a poorer area or just out
rurally somewhere and you did find yourself with a bunch of friends, it's like, I was
either going to end up the military prison or dead.
That's what you hear all the time.
So therefore there's a commonality and trauma there.
But what I also realized, because after talking to Jake, I would open the door wider for the
first part, the zero to putting uniform on.
And I started realizing, oh my God, there's so much there.
Never pushing someone in, just saying, when you look back, what do you see now?
And so many.
So observationally, almost 900 interviews now, I can tell you hands down, because I'm
not picking people because of trauma for this show.
Every man and his dog from models and dancers through the Navy SEALs and firefighters.
But even some people have come on to talk about strength and conditioning or some completely
non-mental health conversation.
We find ourselves there.
Dan John's a perfect example, strength and conditioning guru.
His multi-generational trauma with his dad and his brother, World War II in Vietnam took
up more than half of the conversation, before we even talked about barbells.
But what really makes me understand it is like you said, there's that victim element
that you want to be the protector.
But then there's also the busyness, which is why I think a lot of responders start to
struggle around the 10 year mark when the job just isn't as exciting anymore because
you've seen so much.
There's that tribal element being part of something.
So there's a lot of reasons why a lot of us find ourselves going into uniform because
it is somewhat the antidote to some of the struggles that we had.
But the problem is, if you address it, it becomes a superpower.
I truly believe that trauma becomes resilience.
If unaddressed and pushed down, it becomes a cracked foundation that you're trying to
build a house on.
Yeah, absolutely.
And one of the hardest things, like you said, addressing it makes you a superhero.
It's hard to do.
We still, no matter how far we've come through mental health warriors like yourself that
have the podcast and give everybody the platform to discuss it and bring it up openly.
It's still a taboo subject in many first responder communities and veteran communities.
Nobody wants to hear about it.
Nobody wants to talk about it.
We are having, and this isn't to be confused with the one that was several years ago with
all the women and politics and everything, but we're having in the first responder community
a Me Too movement that's starting to come out now.
When I speak at conferences and I share my story, I have so many people come up to me
afterwards and they say the whole Me Too.
They thought they were all alone and that they were the only ones.
They were suffering in silence until they hear my story or your story or Ben Vernon's
story, something like that.
We need to get more open and have these tough candid conversations and let others know that,
hey, we're going to see a lot of stuff and we're going to hurt.
This job isn't easy.
It's a fun job, but it can be very painful at times, not necessarily physically, but
mentally it can be painful.
It takes its toll on you, like you said, usually about that 10-year mark is when people start
having the effects of it.
We need to start implementing more programs where we get a good baseline of these members
coming into our departments.
We need to do these checks, the checkup from the neck up on our members when they first
start and yearly, if not probably quarterly, all the way through to the end of their, what
should hopefully be a healthy career.
I know we're going to have issues, the common stuff where people have bad knees from crawling
around as firefighters and backs, neck issues, things like that.
As far as the brain goes and taking care of that mental health, that's something that
to me, I think it can be easily fixed, easily done.
We just need to normalize it.
We need to get to these departments and the higher ups and we need to just sit around
the table and discuss it and tell them, this is how you should do it, this, this, this
and this.
It's going to cost X amount of money, but just like you were talking about with the
sleep at the beginning of this, it's going to cost some money, but it's going to save
you in the long term because the health insurance claims and workers comp and all that, you're
not going to have nowhere near as much as you do right now if you just take care of
those aspects of our men and women.
Absolutely.
Well, one thing that I've talked about recently having worked for so many different departments
because it took me to the West coast and then back to the East coast was realizing that
we waste money even in the hiring process.
I did three polygraphs of four departments, which anyone who researched polygraphs is
complete smoke and mirrors bullshit.
Did the Minnesota interview personality, I can never remember the bloody name of it,
but anyway, it's also never ever meant to be a standalone test.
Maybe not to decide if someone's worthy of being a firefighter or not.
Those two right there, you could literally scrap and now that gives you a budget.
Just talking about hiring the new recruits, take that money and now put it into four,
six sessions with a therapist, with a counselor, like you said.
Now you open the door for people to talk about the life prior to your department and start
dealing with that.
You've normalized the mental health conversation at the front door and you've removed the barrier
to entry to finding a counselor because initially this would be your person.
I heard you talking on, I think it was a beneath the helmet podcast, which I love as well.
Then have that and then open the door to finding a counselor that works for you specifically
because I think that that's the danger of the single person is it not being the right
fit.
You're normalizing at the front door saying this is what it is to be a firefighter.
We're going to do PT and we're going to do PT for your mind as well.
That I think is how you change it and you don't even come up with extra money.
We have it built in in these bullshit hiring processes.
Do your written, do your physical, do a solid background check and you'll be able to figure
out if it's a good candidate or a bad candidate.
Yeah.
It seems like more and more you touched on it earlier the whole back in the day when
you and I were trying to get in the fire service, it was, we're going up against a couple thousand
people and now it's probably a few hundred.
So for whatever reason, we're struggling with the numbers to actually sit for the process.
We're trying to beef those numbers up and get more people, get more candidates to apply.
But to me, I think we're to an extent, we're sugarcoating it.
We're not letting people know exactly what they're going to see and what they're going
to be exposed to.
And I'm not telling you we need to scare them away, but we need to be open and honest with
them instead of just, oh, you're only going to work 10 days a month and you're going to
get to ride the fire truck and do this and do that.
Okay.
So tell them that, but also tell them the other things that they're going to see and
that they're going to be exposed to.
And I just think we need that complete transparency on the good and the bad.
Absolutely.
And even with the branding and like you said, the wording, this is the one thing, oh, we
work a dream schedule.
I don't know anyone in the civilian space that works 56 hours a week and doesn't sleep
every third day.
So where we came up with that, I don't know.
And I'm sure a hundred years ago, petting the Dalmatian playing cards, actually waiting
for a fire.
Yeah.
It was probably a cake gig, but that's not 20, 23.
So we don't work 10 days a month.
We work three days crammed together into a 24 hour period.
So it's three days on one day off if you work a 24 48 or 30 days a month.
Doesn't sound so good now.
So it wouldn't be a dream, you know, a luxury to go to a 24 72, for example.
But I think this is, I agree with you a hundred percent.
We've done such a horrible job at branding ourselves.
Why is there a fire engine on my medical call?
It's 20, 23.
You and I will enter the fire service where EMS was already apart.
I had to pass EMT school to become a firefighter.
So the fact that 20 plus 30 plus years ago, the public still asking that shows us that
we, the fire service in general need to do a much better job of educating the people
and what we actually do.
Yeah.
Exactly.
So you talked about first entering the volunteer fire service.
So I know it's a very unique position compared to, to career as far as living and working
pretty much in the same place.
So what were, what were some of the acute, acute kind of career events that you ran during
that time?
And then let's also bring in the contrast of the volunteer world versus the career world
that you entered after.
So to volunteer at that time in the city of Virginia beach, they had a, they had a full
Academy.
So I had to go through an Academy, but it was, since most people were working regular
jobs, they did it like a few nights during the week and then it was on the weekend.
So I went through the Academy, graduated.
And like I said, I was doing this to, to give back to the community, but also looked at
it as getting my foot in the door and it was a good start.
So every chance I got, I was going up to the firehouse and volunteering.
I was riding with the guys and I wasn't like what we call sometimes or used to call.
I think it still happens today.
I wasn't a blister.
That's the, they don't come out until the work's done.
I was there doing the work and helping the paid guys out.
Anything that they were doing, I was doing also.
I just wanted to just soak up as much as I could about that career and profession and
everything.
Even though I was a volunteer, I still wanted to master the skills as a young man.
And like I said, in, in hopes of, of getting hired.
And it took me seven years because like you said, it was, it was thousands of people that
were going for, for these positions and everything.
And I would run the calls with them.
I would on weekends, I would work nights and our work 24 hour shift and spend the night
at the firehouse and anything that they ran, I ran.
And that was when I was first exposed to, to death outside of, I guess, normal environments
as a young man, as a volunteer in the fire service.
I saw my first dead body of somebody that I didn't know and ran some, a few, I guess,
troubling, horrific motor vehicle accidents.
And looking back on that, we just, we never came back and we never talked about it.
There was no, um, sizzle or anything.
We just got back to the firehouse and went off to doing whatever we were doing prior
to the call coming out.
And we never discussed any of it.
And like I said, that happened for seven years until I got hired by the neighboring fire
department.
And it was a contrast in styles.
The Virginia Beach fire department was, gosh, they're probably, it was an all paid department
and they just had some volunteers that would come in there and just help supplement.
And that's, that's where I was.
So they still had the camaraderie.
Those guys were always the same group of guys on each shift.
So they, they got to, to sit around and still solve the world's problems around the kitchen
table.
But as a volunteer, um, I didn't always have that luxury.
I would come back with them and we would bullshit or, or whatever.
But like I said, they didn't talk about the, the horrific.
At least they didn't know around me and I would go home and wouldn't talk about anything.
When I became career, um, we, and that was 2000, we did start, uh, we had in Chesapeake,
we have a, um, at that point it was SISM.
And during, um, trying times and troubling calls, we would have the SISM team would come
to the firehouse afterwards or come to the scene of need be, and we would discuss things.
Um, it was, um, by some people, a mockery, they would just call it the, the need a hug
club.
Oh, we got the need a hug club is coming out to the station to talk to us about this or
that.
And um, that was, was awkward.
We would, um, I did notice, like I said, with Chesapeake when I became career, we would
sit around the kitchen table.
We would talk vaguely about things, but it most notably was that, um, that dark sense
of humor is what we would use to just air out our feelings, what we saw and everything
like that.
Um, I never once either volunteer or as career would talk about any of the stuff outside
of those, uh, those walls of the fire station.
Um, you would think as my life did progress and I got married in, um, 2003, you would
think that, um, coming home, you're gone for 24 hours at a time and you haven't seen your
significant other, uh, that you would have a lot of stuff to talk about when you got
home.
But my normal response to my wife at the time, when she asked how my shift was, I was just
always be like, Oh, it was okay.
Or it was the norm.
I didn't tell her that I had a baby pass away in my arms or somebody's daughter.
I couldn't save in a car accident or somebody's grandfather was in cardiac arrest.
I never talked about any of that stuff and how it affected me.
And it's, I did exactly what I, we talked about earlier with the childhood traumas and
everything.
I just kept suppressing everything down and, um, that's, that's never a good thing.
And I didn't really see a whole lot of, um, uh, difference between the guys that were
career when I was a volunteer working with them and then moving to departments where
it was all career with really no volunteers other than we would sit around and we had
more of a dark sense of humor, um, at that time.
So it could have been the careers where I started as a volunteer, those guys were just
trying to shield and protect me a little bit, or, um, maybe they just didn't talk about
anything at all.
But once I became career, it was when that dark sense of humor started kind of coming
out where I hear the difference between career and volunteer is more often than not volunteers
will live and work in the city that they're also volunteering in.
So they'll have people they know a lot of times that they run on.
They'll be reminded on every street and corner that they live.
I mean, if I drive to Orlando, there's, I mean, we could go all over the place.
I can tell you, oh yeah, this, you know, this dead prostitute at dumpster here, pedestrian
versus taxi here, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
But where I live, I don't have any of that.
I did volunteer when I was, I ran, when I was in paramedic school with the local department
and volunteered briefly.
But, um, apart from a few deaths that we had on the ambulance, even then they weren't close
to where I live.
I don't have that, you know, Cala, which is awesome, but I just went and visited Anaheim.
Um, it was a couple of years ago now and I was like, oh shit.
Yeah.
That person was cream there and that guy's head split open there.
So when you look back now, I mean, you live and work in different places.
Now what was that element for you while he was still volunteering in your own city?
Uh, looking at it like that, very, very similar to what you just said.
Um, and where I'm at now, it's so close.
I still drive through there to go places and everything.
So I experienced that as well currently as, as a career, even though I don't technically
live in that city, but it's like I said, it's so close and so neighboring.
I still go through that city for different things, to see friends or do different things.
And, um, it's between seven years as a volunteer here and then, um, 23 going on 24 now, um,
it's kind of tough.
No matter where I drive, um, there's going to be memories that, that come up or stories
that I could tell of things that happened at various intersections or houses or parts
of the area.
And that used to be tough.
I would avoid certain, certain areas, um, because I was, um, for the longest time by
certain calls haunted by experiences and things that happened on calls.
And I would always do my best, but sometimes it was inevitable and I could not, um, avoid
going by a certain area.
And I would feel my anxiety, my pulse rate, I would start sweating and things like that.
And that was just, that was really, really tough until I learned to, um, get that help
and navigate those borders through, um, EMDR really helped me process some of the tougher
calls and driving by certain areas and everything like that.
So, um, luckily things are, are just memories now and they don't affect me like they did
in the past.
I got them, uh, refiled from, from right here to the back of the filing box, but, um, kind
of just another thing I'd like to point out about the volunteers.
It wasn't, this wasn't me.
Um, but so many are, are volunteers now.
Um, they don't always have the luxury and the more remote volunteers and everything.
They'll have a pager, they could be at work, they could be at a ball game with their children
or whatever.
That pager goes off, they have to drop what they're doing and go respond on a call.
It could be a traumatic event, could be a cardiac arrest, fatality, whatever it may
be.
And once they're done running that call, they don't have the luxury like we do a lot of
times when we clear the scene, we're all on that rig together.
And you know, a lot of times the, the processing does start on the rig.
We start talking about it just over our headsets while we're driving back to the firehouse.
And then we get back to the firehouse and, um, maybe we'll wash the rig and while we're
out there scrubbing it or whatever, we'll just start bullshitting or making a few comments
here and there about the call or we'll go to the kitchen table.
Well, the volunteers, they clear up from the call.
They don't have that.
They don't have the camaraderie on the rig.
They don't have the, the kitchen table.
They can always go back to, they're going back to their, their kids ball game, um, their
full-time job, whatever it may be.
And that's, that's a tough position for them to be in.
Um, and I think so many times, uh, a lot of us don't think about that.
And a lot of people are just uneducated as to how big our volunteer system is in this
country and that's, that's the main portion of the U S fire services volunteers.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, firstly, it blows me away when you hear there are volunteer organizations
in suburban areas that obviously have a good tax base.
So me, to me, that's insanity.
That should be a career department.
I get it.
If you're rural Idaho somewhere, of course, and that's a different dynamic completely,
but I actually got a, an interesting perspective having worked in the fire service for 14 years
transitioned out five years ago, um, to do this, to try and be a voice from the outside.
And I had a cardiac arrest on a flight and we hadn't taken off from London yet.
I ended up and ironically, I just saw a fucking article about two weeks later, lady has, I
think she had more like chest pain.
I think she went to a rest and 15 cardiologists were on the plane and they gave her some,
who knows what nitro or whatever it was.
And you know, she was fine.
Well, no.
And in this flight, no one but me seemed to have any emergency medical experience whatsoever.
There was a nurse who was a sweetheart, but I don't think she was an emergency nurse by
any means.
Um, so, you know, let this code and did CPR on this poor guy.
And I've been, you know, talked about this a lot in the podcast.
I'm the Reaper as a medic.
Like if you go into cardiac arrest, I have not had a single save as an EMT and or a paramedic
in my whole career.
So just, you know, that's, that's why I don't gamble.
But um, you know, and it's, it's obviously because these are hearts that don't want to
come back.
These are, you know, AAAs and brain bleeds and all the things, but, um, work this code,
you know, ended up working it with the local fire department and ultimately the paramedics
from London finally begins to switch off compressions.
And you know, and then I said, do you need me at the moment?
It was super crowded back here now.
Um, and they were like, no, no.
So I went to the bathroom in the plane, wash the blood off my hands and take a seat.
And it was jarring and I, and I, and I was funny.
I did a video about a couple of days after I got back, cause I was talking to the, um,
the flight attendants too, cause they were obviously shaken.
Some of them went home and kudos to them for having the, the courage to ask for help that
way.
And then the rest of them cleaned up and then we flew and they served everyone, which was
so admirable.
But I was, um, they ended up upgrading me.
So I ended up right by the, by the cabin.
So I got to talk to all the, all the stewards and stewardesses or flight attendants.
But the whole point was it shook me for a couple of days.
And at first I'm like, fuck, you know, did I, did I lose my mojo?
And then I realized like, Oh, this is what it's supposed to feel like when someone dies.
But when we're, especially in career, like literally we will, you know, we'll get back
to the station, the engine, you know, if I'm on the rescue that day has already put all
the EMS stuff that we use aside.
We load up and then boom, off we go again.
Sometimes I'm gonna have my super bad last day at Orange County where three people died,
three different calls.
One guy was on fire.
One was rotting in the woods and the first one was a GI bleed cardiac arrest.
But you just clean your shit and then you go back into service.
And so I think for, for the career people, we don't realize that when, you know, we're
not feeling what we're supposed to feel because we can't, but that again gets compartmentalized.
But conversely, imagining that that's how the volunteers feel the moment they go back
to their garage or their home or whatever it is that they do, that's a lot not to process
as well.
So both those two fields, you know, have challenges in two different ways.
And I was kind of, you know, gifted this, this kind of insight into this one moment
five years after taking the uniform off myself.
Yeah, that's definitely true.
And it's almost to the point where the military, when people retire from the military, we do
or they do a transitioning period, things to try and help them transition better into
civilian life.
And I know this is kind of going a little bit around or still tying into what you're
talking about, but it's almost like we should start doing, we need to do more for us while
we're, we're in there.
But also when our members start getting to that point to transition out, do something
like that and let them know.
It's like, Hey, you're going to have the time on your hands when you do see things like
this.
It's going to affect you because you're not in the job anymore.
You didn't arrive on that.
And I know you and I, we talked about it briefly after that, that happened, but it's different
when you show up to that person in cardiac arrest and you have at least three other partners
or at least one other partner there with you, depending on what piece of equipment you arrive
on first.
But when you're there yourself, it's like, Holy shit.
And you don't have any of your equipment or anything like that.
And people are looking at you.
Hey, what's James going to do?
Come on, do something, James.
You're like, shit, I'm by myself.
I ain't got anything.
But then like you said, when it's, it's done, it's over.
There's those firefighters, they took control of it.
They don't need you anymore.
You can step aside.
And I mean, all I could do when I first heard that story from you, and then I reached out
to you was just feel for you.
And just imagine, I just imagine myself in that spot, just getting away from everything
and just stepping aside from everybody and going into the bathroom and throwing some
water on my face.
And I mean, first of all, cleaning up, like you said, we've got bodily fluids on us and
everything like that.
But just kind of processing everything that you've just went through and how it's affecting
you now as opposed to five years prior.
And those guys, they just, they don't get that the guys that were on the plane with
you that took over the first responders there.
Just like you said, they're, they'll restock right after that.
And the tones go off, they run the next one.
It could be another cardiac arrest could be somebody had just fallen and hurt their ankle
or something.
We don't know.
But they have very little time to process the volunteers.
They don't have any time really to process because they're going back to their full time
job or their family or whatever else is going on in the community.
And it's tough.
Absolutely.
Well, I think the transition as well, as we were talking about the reasons that we get
into the uniform, when we take that uniform off, the reverse happens.
Now all those coping mechanisms, all that healthy environment that you've built is now
stripped from you.
So I think that's another reason why we need to do a better job transitioning our retirees
or if someone gets hurt or if they're, as we'll get into taking off a mental health
or whatever it is, is that was your purpose.
That was your tribe.
That was your, obviously, as we talked about your adrenaline, all the things.
And now one day your ID doesn't work and the bay doors go down and that's it.
You're done.
And that is so jarring for first responders, military, especially.
And even if you watch the documentary, like the weight of gold, these Olympians, they
stand on that podium and then they're like, all right, that's it.
You aged out for the next one.
Here's your clap.
You're on the front of a Wheaties box for a couple of weeks and then you're done.
So I think we need to do a much better job because unlike the military as well, where
they have the VA, there's no VA.
And again, our military are blown away.
There's no VA for first responders.
It's like a year of Cobra for a thousand dollars a month and then go fuck yourself.
Basically is what it is for most of us.
So you've had everything stripped and now all the mental and physical trauma that you
took out of the job, you're left with nothing to deal with it.
No health insurance, no mental health resources.
So that's another area.
I think we've got to do a much better job on top of the fact that statistically, if
I had a brain bleed and my head exploded right in front of you now, I wouldn't be a firefighter
statistic even though my whole career is that's what I did because I ceased to exist on the
spreadsheet of the fire service.
So when you look at that, what is our real mental health death toll?
What is our real cancer death toll, cardiac, et cetera, et cetera.
It's probably 10, that's being conservative times the numbers that we publish every year.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
And getting back to the difference between the military and the first responder community,
how we pointed out they have the VA, which isn't necessarily the greatest right now,
but at least it's a start.
I mean, it needs a lot of work.
But there's also for them, which this could be a good thing or a bad thing, depends on
how we want to look at it.
We already talked about alcohol, but they have the VFW, the American Legion, different
things like that when they transition out, they can still go to and sit around and break
bread or have a beer or whatever it may be with other like-minded people that are veterans.
Our community, when we retire, we don't necessarily have that.
We don't have VFW for firefighters or American Legion for firefighters or anything like that.
We have union halls if you retire and you stay on as an alumni or whatever.
And that's not everywhere.
Not every department has a local or even has their own union hall or whatever.
So it's important that we build up a retirement platform and camaraderie amongst our retirees
and include them into this.
My department does a pretty good job with that.
And it's building, they're doing a lot better, keep improving it on a regular basis, but
keeping the volunteers, excuse me, the retirees involved with events that are going on.
We have quarterly breakfasts we'll host at different firehouses where all the retirees
will come in and have breakfast so they're among all of the new people.
And they just feel like they still belong within our department, within our community
and everything.
So that's pretty good.
We just did cancer screenings for all of the members of our department, but we also opened
it up and included all of our retirees that wanted to get screened as well.
That's beautiful.
Yeah, we just, for the longest time, the fire service or first responder communities, it
just seemed like when members would retire and there was no real transition, like you
said, they just swipe out, clock out or whatever you want to call it for the last time and
they walk out that door and they're just stripped of their identity.
And one other thing that we can, one of many things that we can start teaching and instilling,
and this is Chris Moore's belief, not everybody might not agree with this, but the job can't
define us.
I know my job as a firefighter, it's been my entire adult life.
I've been a firefighter.
I'm a big part of me, but that's all it is.
It's a part of me.
It doesn't define me.
It's not who Chris Moore is as a human being and as a person.
When I walk away from here, whenever that may be, will I miss it?
Absolutely.
I'm going to miss it, but there's still going to be other things that serve me.
I'll find other ways that I can still serve the community because there are other ways
and other things that I can do.
Be it like you pointed out for yourself five years ago, when you transitioned out, you
got into this.
So you're tied in with the first responder community.
You are the first responder community and you're giving back through this.
There are lots of other ways and that's where that whole transitioning platform that we
should strive to try and establish within departments, just like the military has, they
help their members try and find jobs out in the private sector.
Let's try and find the next host of the biggest podcast for first responders ever.
Let's try and find something like that or where first responders can help startups and
peer support or mental health and wellness or whatever it may be.
This might not necessarily be one of the best things because when we talk about first responders,
a lot of times people forget about our dispatchers and our communications.
To me, they are the first responders.
If we have a police officer or firefighter that is retiring, if they're eligible to,
who else would be better than them at being a call taker or dispatcher?
They know all the lingo and they have the street smarts and everything.
Might not be the best for their mental health and wellness, but if it's something that they're
stable and they're willing and able to do, that might be a great transition for them.
Go do that for a little while or to help out or to give back.
Some kind of teaching programs, recruitment and retention.
Who would be better unless you get the old salty crusty guy who just hates everything
about where the fire service has gone to or whatever.
If you have the good positive guys that had a very good and positive productive career,
transition them to a recruitment and retention position.
Let them be the ones who go out.
We talked about we need transparency and honesty when we do the recruitments now.
Utilize them for that.
They have the proper skills and everything.
But I'm really seeing now more and more where a lot of people are transitioning into this
is by their choice and they're doing.
It's not like an organization that's helping with the transition, but getting more into
the health and wellness aspect of it.
They'll leave this career where they've been helping the community and they'll go back
into a career where they are helping other first responders.
And that's pretty impressive, pretty amazing to give to your local community for so long.
And now you're transitioning out and you're able to give back to your other family that
you gave 20, 30, even 40 plus years of your life to.
Yeah.
Well, I think that purpose is so important.
And I think the one of the areas again that we don't do a very good job is even ourselves
understanding that the skill set that you develop being an American firefighter, for
example, especially if you do in the EMS as well, I mean, you're a damn Swiss army knife
of skills.
And so to then go, oh, I'm going to go teach in the academy then is very short-sighted.
You know, yes, absolutely.
If that's what you're burning desire, you're that, you know, forceful entry guru, knock
yourself out, but understand that the teamwork, the problem solving, the cool under stress,
all these elements, you can apply in a thousand different ways.
But if you can find something that also infuses giving, infuses service, because that's what
led you into the uniform.
I think that's again, the kind of magic recipe for a healthy transition, you know, rest,
recover, take some time off, do it on your terms.
But how, how can you serve in a different way, whether it's, you know, a local animal
shelter or whether it's mentorship programs or something completely different, writing
a book, whatever it is that allows you to, to take what you learned from the fire service
and do something different because, you know, same as the cops that become security guards,
you know, a police officer has the same kind of gamut of skills.
They could do so many things that selling themselves short where they simply just put
on a different uniform.
Yeah.
And, um, there, there's so many other things that we can do to give back.
Like you said, an animal shelter or whatever.
I got a, um, a friend of mine up in Ohio and he's actually utilizing his skill set and
he's gotten onto city council and now he's running for an actual state office now.
And I mean, hell, what better way to give back than to have a, uh, ally of the fire
department be part of the, uh, the city council that can help get assets for their fire department,
help change the schedule to give them the 72 hours off or whatever it may, may be somebody
who understands it understands the importance of the health and wellness of all the members.
Um, that's a, uh, one additional way to make a change that my friend is doing up there.
Um, and now he's trying to go for the state level as well.
And um, I just think there's, there's so many ways that we can, we can give back.
Absolutely.
Well, I want to lead you through to March, 2022 and then, you know, the, the post-traumatic
growth, what the tools that you found that work, but you, you, you talked about your
childhood, you had seven years in the volunteer fire service.
Then you went to the career.
Obviously you're accumulating traumatic experiences.
You've got sleep deprivation, et cetera, et cetera.
So walk me through now, as you look back, this kind of downward spiral and where was
that dark place you found yourself in March last year or two years ago now?
Yeah.
So, um, I, like I touched on earlier, would never discuss anything, um, being gone for
24 hours at a time, wouldn't discuss any calls or hurts or hangups habits, anything with
my family.
I just pushed everything aside.
Um, I don't know where it started and I know I'm not the only one that's good.
It goes back to the, the me too stuff, but, um, some reason we think at times that we
have an S on our chest and we're the, the superhero and we got to protect our family
and our loved ones.
And by sharing any of the stuff that we see here that we exposed ourselves to that it's
going to hurt them.
And boy, was I wrong with that in, um, 2017 is, um, I ran it.
It was the beginning of, of the year.
It was, um, January, well, it was the first week of January.
I don't want to give out a whole lot of specifics cause people can kind of figure things out.
Um, if I do that and I don't want to violate any laws or anything, but we had a, a pediatric
call and we didn't get this child back.
Um, I thought I pushed that down, but, um, like we said earlier, right after that, that
call, uh, cleaned up everything and it was a busy shift.
We ran several more.
Well, that evening, um, getting in my bunk at the firehouse, um, I closed my eyes and
it was very soon after that was like that call that I ran early that morning was just
like coming at me a hundred miles an hour.
Um, that little boy's face and just everything.
And then I would like open my eyes up and, um, like you in the airplane, I went to the
restroom at the firehouse and splashed water on my face and just looked at myself in the
mirror and just trying to figure out what was going on and just kind of wrote it off.
Went back to bed and, um, closed my eyes again.
Well, now another call that happened 10 years earlier popped up into my head and it was
the same thing.
Like it was just coming at me like that.
No, it was a call that I never thought twice about.
Um, and I kept having these, I had, it was probably six other calls throughout my, at
that point, I think I was at a 27 years in and, um, just these calls that I never thought
twice about were just coming right back at me a hundred miles an hour.
Every time I closed my eyes that night, um, I got off shift the next morning and went
home, didn't say anything to anybody that night in my own bed and my own surroundings.
Um, same thing happened.
And this turned into a regular, um, thing.
It was just happening.
I thought I was losing my mind and going crazy.
Um, I had a leader in the department in, um, 2017, um, four months later knew that something
was going wrong with me.
He didn't know what, but reached out to me.
Um, we had lunch together, talked to him, told him what was going on.
He gave me some advice.
I thought that I was good.
Um, everything was, was fine and dandy.
I started talking to my, my family about issues that I was having.
I started exploring my faith.
Um, a year later in 2018 had another traumatic event and it started spiraling me down.
I started doing a lot of heavy drinking.
Um, I was telling myself I wasn't doing it to get drunk.
I was doing it to just suppress things and to help get myself to sleep.
Um, I liken it to the, uh, the old nightmare in Elm street movies where the kids were afraid
to go to sleep because of the nightmares.
That's where I was.
Um, I, I didn't know what was going on.
I didn't know what was up, what was down, what was real, what was a dream.
Finally in 2018, I got a number of a therapist from one of my mentors in the department.
And, uh, it was not just a therapist, but a therapist that works with first responders
and, um, getting the number and using it were two different things.
I sat on that number for a few more months before I finally made the phone call.
And that's where, like we, we said earlier, um, it was like 20 or 30 seconds after I dialed
that number and the person answered before I could get the words, help me out of my mouth.
And I finally got those out.
Um, this guy said he could help me.
He started going to therapy, um, saw him for quite a while before he had to shut down his,
his practice due to unforeseen circumstances.
And he didn't refer me.
He just left me kind of high and dry.
I had to find another therapist.
Um, I finally, after that was probably about two months was able to find another therapist
and started getting help with, with her and was doing really good.
She introduced me to EMDR and I was doing very good with that reprocessing everything
and started not having any issues.
We started backing off from weekly to biweekly to once a month.
And then, um, she recommended to me how I, she wanted to know how I felt about going,
um, just on an as needed basis.
And I agreed to that, which to me was the dumbest thing that I've ever done.
And I've done a lot of dumb shit in my life, as hard as it was to get into therapy and
make that phone call and go to appointments.
Um, I was going to get myself right back into that spot where it was difficult to, um, make
that phone call again.
So, um, 2021, it was, um, March of 2021 had a really bad call pediatric again.
Most of my calls have always been pediatrics that really bothered me the most.
And I did remember to reach out to her then got some help, processed everything and then
just kind of, we figured everything was good.
I was away from that as we were coming up on the one year anniversary of that call in
March of 22.
I just started getting more and more anxious.
I started having flashbacks about that call with the, the anniversary of it coming up.
And it was, um, it was very painful.
I was drinking, started drinking a lot more than just to try and suppress those feelings
and everything that was going on.
Um, throughout all of this, I was spending a lot of money that I didn't have in running
up debt.
Um, not proud of any of this stuff, but, um, um, extramarital issues.
I was looking for that quick release outside of my marriage.
Long story short, I was on shift to March 15th of 2022 and, um, just decided I didn't
want to deal with this with life and these flashbacks and everything anymore.
I was, it was out of therapy.
It was on an as needed basis.
I didn't want to make that tough phone call again.
I laid in my bunk that night in between calls.
I had, um, I sent a lot of people text messages, nothing to tip my head or show my cards, but
it was just my way of saying goodbye to friends.
And I wrote a letter, um, I composed on my phone to my, my wife at the time that I wasn't
going to do it at work.
I thought about it, but I thought about how, um, I knew regardless, it was going to hurt
my coworkers, but I didn't want to do it at the firehouse.
I was going to wait until the next morning.
I was like, maybe we'll get a fire tonight or get something where something could happen
tonight, but I don't know.
But I just wanted to go home next morning.
My relief came in early.
Um, normally I'll sit around the station, have a cup of coffee with, uh, my crew getting
off and the crew coming in to shoot the shit with everybody for quite a while.
But that morning I gave a quick turnover to the other officer coming in to relieve me.
And um, I just walked past everybody, went out to my car and started heading home and
about less than a mile from my house.
I pulled over and looked at my ring doorbell, just pulled that up to see if my wife or son
were still there.
And once I saw they were gone, I continued home and said, I already had everything planned.
I didn't want anything messy because I knew my son would be coming home from school later
that day.
And um, like I said, regardless, people are going to be traumatized.
People that I love are going to be traumatized.
I just wasn't thinking in the right mind, but I just wanted to look like dad went to
sleep and he couldn't wake me up.
So um, I had a, um, a bottle of, um, it was probably close to about 50 Xanax.
That was the prescription.
That was probably about 42 Xanax were still in this bottle.
And I took the whole bottle and rinsed it down with a fifth of bourbon.
I sent one more text out and I sent the letter to my wife.
And um, the, I have a couple of memories of, I know, I guess a neighbor got contacted and
came over.
Um, one of the members of the, my department came over and the next thing I know, I'm waking
up in the hospital, um, connected to machines and um, looked to my side and my wife and
my son were at my side at that moment.
And it was then, and I know when we think things are so tough and so hard, we're just
not thinking right.
That we, there was no way out or we're going crazy or whatever it may be that we just got
to end our life.
Well, it was when I woke up and I saw them beside me that it truly struck me that, um,
I wasn't just ending my life.
I wasn't stopping the pain.
That's what I wanted to do.
I wanted to stop the pain and everything that I was feeling and experiencing and going through.
Um, I was passing, I was stopping my life and I was just passing the pain and the hurt
and everything along to my wife and my son that were right there at my bedside in the
hospital.
I saw that on their face, um, the hurt and everything.
Um, but I saw the love, um, from both of them also.
And I just, I told myself never again, never again.
And um, I spent several days close to a week, it was five days in the hospital before I
was able to get released.
And um, when I got out of the hospital, um, I had a lot of guilt and shame.
A lot of people, friends wanted to come and visit me.
And um, I just, I didn't want to, I didn't want to see people.
Um, cause like I said, I just felt so ashamed of what I did and so guilty.
But one of my, my good friends, he lives out in California.
He's a retired police officer.
He told me about a program that he had been through and that's where I learned about Jake
Clark and Save a Warrior.
And it's for veterans that have, um, post-traumatic stress and or suicidal ideations and for first
responders as well.
And he told me, he said, man, all you gotta do, you just go to their website and you just
put your information in and somebody will reach out to you and they'll have a phone
call.
It's just a conversation and they'll determine if it's the right program for you.
And it's a nonprofit.
If you get accepted, they're out in Ohio.
They originally started out in Malibu, California, but he's like, if you get accepted, all you
have to do is get there.
He said they, they take care of the rest.
So I did that.
Um, submitted all my information online.
Somebody contacted me fairly quickly and had a, um, amazing, but tough conversation.
And I was just open and honest for probably the first time ever with anything.
And I realized that that's where it at, where it's at.
If we can't be open and honest about things that we're feeling and struggling with and
dealing with, then, um, we're not going to get anything out of it.
You get out of things, what you put into it.
And they accepted me into the program and came up with a date.
It was the, um, the last days of April and the first couple of days of May that I got
accepted, um, attended Sable Warrior in Hillsborough, Ohio.
So flew into Cincinnati.
They picked me up and it was myself and, um, seven other first responders from all across
the country at that point were, um, were there.
And I met Jake Clark, the founder of Sable Warrior, Adam Carr, um, another, uh, another
great man.
The somebody that I've met affiliated with this program has just been top notch, just
amazing.
Um, their only skin in the game is that they want to help others.
And um, I learned about ACEs.
This was a, a 72 hour program.
They literally have a clock that they put in the room.
When it starts, they, it's set at 72 hours and they hit the button and starts the countdown
from 72 hours.
And they asked all of us, um, who has doubts?
And um, I wasn't being an asshole or anything like that.
And just being where I want it to be for, for now on the rest of my life, I wanted to
be open and honest and candid.
I raised my hand and I told them and they wanted to know why.
And I was like, I've been in therapy off and on for, um, five years and it hasn't done
a whole lot for me.
I just had a suicide attempt a month ago and you think you're going to be able to help
me in 72 hours and make a difference.
And they said that was fair, but they just wanted me to promise them that I would lean
in and play the game, be open, be honest.
And I was like, you got it.
Cause I, I want it to be fixed.
And I did that.
And brother at the end of that 72 hours, all of the, the, the crying and the, uh, just
the emotions and everything that I went through during that time period with these seven
other first responders, it, it fixed me.
And it's not just those 72 hours and you're done.
It's every day of my life.
After that, there's things that, that I'm doing and it's a community, um, that I believe
they just started today.
I think it was class 224 or cohort number 224 that they've done.
And it's just, it's amazing.
The community that we have of alumni that have been through that, um, me and those seven
guys, we still keep in touch every day to this day.
And we've been out over a year and a half now.
And, um, we talk about our fire academies and police academies and all that, and the
bonds that we make when we go through the police or fire academy, how strong those are.
The bond I made with these seven guys and 72 hours is a stronger bond than anybody I
went through the academy with.
And those are some pretty strong bonds that I have with those guys too.
But I'm just everything we opened up, it was a safe place for us and they're safe men that
we were able to share things with and experiences and talk about the childhood experiences and
everything else that we've seen and we dealt with.
And a lot of it is just about being in the present and getting unstuck when, when things
get you stuck in everything.
And there's so many analogies and, um, things that we like to utilize and they utilized
in that.
But when you, you kind of sit back and you hear a lot of this stuff, it's just like,
holy shit.
And when you started looking at it, they like, like, we like to use the term our, our soil
goggles and the, these glasses, the way we see life now and look at things in a different
perspective and when you slow things down and you're not worried about things that happened
in the past, because that shit's already done, it's already over with.
That's just our memories playing tricks with us or fucking with us or whatever you want
to want to call it.
And the future is something, it's our imagination stuff that's never even happened yet.
And we don't even know if it's going to happen.
Nobody can predict the future or anything like that.
So it's all about just being in the present and doing more things internally for our mental
health.
They introduced me to warrior meditation and they, they want us to do at least one 20 minute
meditation a day, if not two.
And to this day, I can count on one finger in a year and a half now, how many times I've
missed a day of meditation.
Usually I get at least my two meditations in a day, but if not, it's always at least
one except for one time I, I've missed it.
And I didn't think that meditation was for me when they first started talking about it
there during the program.
And I was like, I can't do that shit.
I was like, that's what the, we had a couple of guys that were there from California.
I was like, that's for these California assholes here.
The tree huggers and granola people and all that.
I'm just as a first responder, we're always on guard and hyper vigilant and on point.
I was like, I can't get comfortable enough to just get myself in a state to clear my
mind and just free it of everything.
And Adam Carr told me, he said, man, he goes, there is no such thing as a bad meditation.
He goes, just keep at it.
He's like, usually he said it could take up to two weeks before you, you finally start
loosening up enough.
He's like just 20 minutes once a day, preferably twice.
And he goes, if you just sit there and you're still tense the whole time, oh, well, he goes,
that was still your body doing nothing for 20 minutes.
So it literally took me close to the two weeks.
I think it was about 10 days.
And on that day, I just fell into it.
My whole body just kind of was able to sit down and just relax and get into it.
And I'm still to that point today at the conference in Ohio.
They actually had meditation in the mornings leading up to the conference.
And it was really, really cool to see so many people get introduced to it and to go on.
But my mental health and wellness, just from doing that, I reflect on if I'm doing one
in the evening, reflect on things that have happened throughout the day.
And then even in the morning when I do those, I kind of think about the past day, anything
that I feel is unresolved or issues like that.
I've done the self-help, the meditation when I get back from a troubling call.
I'll just take myself aside and I'll just process the call in my head, just think about
it.
And then I'll just turn the lights down and I'll do my meditation for 20 minutes and just
kind of, it helps me just clear the call and just process it.
And dude, I'm telling you, I am living just from, I mean, there's a lot of other things
that we do.
Like I said, every day it's something, you've got to do the work.
But I'm living my best life ever right now.
I know you and I discussed it.
I almost made my entire career as a firefighter without getting a divorce.
That is one of the unfortunate things about my 2022 was all of that.
It was just too much to really save my marriage.
And that's not a knock on my ex-wife or anything like that.
She was an angel throughout everything.
We knew that I had issues and stuff going on.
And once I started talking about it, she had always stood by my side and was always there
for me, always encouraged me, helped me, got me help that I needed.
Anything that I could have ever asked for, she was always there.
But when I talked about the internal drug store and trying to get those quick dopamine
releases, one of those releases for me was the extramarital stuff.
And that was the thing that got to be too much when that came to light for the marriage.
And it was just, I mean, I know it was a hard thing to accept either way, but it was a trust
thing was the main thing.
She'd be able to move on past stuff, but she would never have been able to move on past
the whole trust.
And we know trust, you don't have trust in any kind of relationship, be it a work relationship
or personal relationship or whatever.
You're kind of screwed from the get go.
So once we lost that, we realized that we needed to just kind of dissolve the relationship
in our marriage.
And for what it is, we left on as good of terms as could be.
And like I said, I'll never speak bad of her because she has a great understanding of being
a first responder spouse and how it affects the whole family dynamic.
Since then, I've met another beautiful woman inside and out.
She's an alumni of Save a Warrior also.
So we have a lot in common and the whole accountability thing that I have with my cohort brothers
that I went through, her and I, we hold each other to the same standards as well.
And we recognize things and call each other out and call bullshit out or whatever.
And it's like, hey, I noticed you weren't meditating the other day.
What's up with that?
And we just put a foot in each other's ass and be sure that we're on the straight and
narrow.
But the main thing, like I said, dude, it's just the whole open and honest transparency
with everything.
There is nothing at all that is off limits.
There's nothing I'm afraid to talk about except for the possibility of marriage in the future.
So that gets kind of scary thinking or talking about that.
But all seriousness, there's nothing.
And I think when you can live clear and free like that, I just think it's a good place
to be.
It's a good place to start.
And I love it.
I share that with so many people.
I know at the conference in Ohio, since that's where Sable Warrior is, I know there was a
lot of Sable Warrior alumni that was there.
I got to connect with a lot of them.
Jim is actually Sable Warrior alumni as well.
And it's just a brother and sisterhood.
And we do the whole, they say it takes a tribe to help people and all that.
Well, that's our tribe is the Sable Warrior.
And we spread it on to other first responders and organizations and our military and stuff
like that.
And I'm just forever grateful and thankful to that organization and Jay Clark for him
starting it out of his trunk in California years ago with just, he just wanted to save
one person.
That's it.
Just save one is one of the mantras there.
And shit, he saved a lot more than one.
He saved this one.
He came back for me.
That's another thing he said, we came back for you.
And I text Jake, he's on a group text with me and my cohort brothers.
And I thank him often.
And when we come up on our anniversary, I'll let him know that also.
I still living in Virginia, it's kind of hard to get back to Ohio, but I want to go out
there and volunteer and help with a future cohort as well.
Beautiful.
Well, I mean, firstly, thank you for sharing that because this is the mental health conversation
needs to happen.
It's not the doom and gloom.
Oh, it's so sad.
You know, I'll live with it for the rest of my life.
I don't think that's the reality of 99% of these stories is it's that there's this post
traumatic growth.
And I think that we talk about stigma.
I think we're past the stigma.
I think most of us talking about, even as you said, if some people don't accept it,
it's out there now, whether you like it or not.
But what we need to infuse now is hope.
Like the solutions, the giant toolbox that is available from EMDR and save a warrior
to psychedelics and equine therapy and everything in between.
I wanted to circle back to your realization, though, when you woke up, because I think
this is an important part that you hardly ever hear when it comes to suicide.
And you know, it's not on the posters, not on most of the conversations.
When a lot of us was thinking about suicide, let's say 20 years ago, when I say thinking
about other people struggling with it, you're like, oh, how cowardly, how could they, you
know, you know, you think about your kids, all these things.
And then you actually hear hundreds of conversations just like this of people that have been there.
And there's people that survived the attempt like you, like Kevin Hines, who jumped off
the Golden Gate Bridge.
I've had a few people, Emma Benoit, who shot herself and survived.
Immediately there's regret.
You know, and then they're kind of snapped out of what led them there before.
And I think the shame and this judgment is coming from a somewhat healthy mind.
How could they?
And yet what I'm realizing now is that there's that wanting the suffering to stop, which,
of course, is a real part.
But almost all of them also reported a feeling of burdensome, which basically suggests that
the brain through trauma had become miswired.
So it was not a healthy brain anymore.
So you cannot understand how that person's thinking because they're not thinking the
way that they were supposed to think.
It's been miswired, misprogrammed.
And so when you tell someone who's in crisis, think about your kids, think about your wife,
they were like, I am.
I'm the problem.
That's why I'm going to go and do this thing.
You know, so it's actually an act of courage in a way, not cowardice.
So in that state, or when you look back now, was there an element of you truly in your
heart believing that the world would be better off without you?
That was that whole thought of that was for me, it was it was there, but it was minimal.
Mine, like I said, I just I couldn't get that shit to stop.
I was just like I literally and I know the term crazy isn't a good word to use for mental
health or whatever.
But I literally thought that something had snapped in my head with all this stuff that
was just coming on these flashbacks, being right back in that moment and everything.
But I would think about the bad things that I was doing and how it was affecting my family.
And I did think about being a burden to them and the hurt because at that point, it was
leading right up to that is when the whole thing with extra metal issues came to light.
And I knew that I had betrayed somebody who's been by my side that entire time and was doing
things to help me and truly wanted me to get better and to succeed and get the help that
I needed.
And I betrayed that.
So yeah, I did have those those thoughts and everything. And how could my son look up to
me when I did what I did to his mother? And they they would talk about at times, even
before I started getting help or knowing what was going on.
They would come home walking on eggshells because they didn't know what dad or what
husband was going to be there. Was I going to be the happy go lucky guy or was I going
to be the asshole who didn't get any sleep that night or had a bad call or whatever?
So yeah, I was worried about how I was a burden and I was no no good to them and that they
would be better off.
I would say tongue in cheek quite a bit, but I I meant it when I I would make comments
to my wife that she'd be better off without me. And I like I said, I would just play it
off as I'm joking. And I was like, oh, you you'll miss me until you get that first check,
that insurance check or whatever. I would just make stupid little remarks like that.
But my psyche, that was truly how I felt. And I knew if I was saying that, like without
saying it in a joking manner that the authorities or whatever would would come and get me or
or whatnot. But so I would I would make comments like that in a joking way. But it was it was
all seriousness. I didn't did feel like I was a big part of the problem. I said I knew
the debt was in my name. So I hope that when I took care of myself or off myself that it
would take care of that. Like insurance checks would come in, does everything. So but like
said, I realized that was that wasn't me thinking properly. Yeah. Well, I think that's that's
what we need to understand is when people are in crisis, they you know, it's no different
than you know, I have a failed skydive and I shatter my legs and my you know, my pelvis.
That's an you know, reaction to an acute event. Now it could be cumulative. Maybe you know,
I'm a freaking coal miner somewhere and I'm crouched over with weight, you know, and it
took me 10 years to get to that point. But it's it's a malfunction by that point. But
so when we hear this this conversation about suicide and how could they and everything,
I mean, sadly, there's a perfect example of of this. We had a law enforcement couple in
Florida later last year. The boyfriend, the father took his own life first. I think it
was not even a week before the girlfriend had the mother and they left behind an infant.
Now how could they you know, well, exactly. A healthy mind wouldn't do that, especially
you know, the mother when she's left the only parent now. But when you look at it a completely
different way, it's it's a miswired mind. Now all of a sudden you realize, oh, we need
to be compassionate. We can't add more guilt and shame to someone who's struggling. Now
we're just going to speed up the process of them taking their own lives. We need to try
and interact and be like, look, I know you're hurting. You know, you probably feel like
a burden. You are not a burden. And that that that to me is a is one of the red flags. Of
course, the suffering is the suffering. And that's a big part of it. But this, you know,
think of your family. Don't be a coward. Don't be so you know, all this stuff that's so fucking
wrong. And now seven years for me doing this, I'm realizing that we have to completely reframe
and ultimately just put it back into that kindness and compassion element that we really
we need to find refined in all areas of life. But with this as well, when our men and women
are hurting, they're not thinking with a clear mind. And that's why sleep deprivation is
so fucking dangerous for mental health, because you're destroying the mind. Then you throw
in some alcohol, which numbs our self preservation reflexes. And now you've got the perfect storm
for a suicide. Yeah, exactly. And I was all of the above on on that, the sleep deprivation,
the alcohol, and just the mind not being wired right in that moment. So yeah, just it was
the perfect recipe for disaster, perfect storm, like you said. So but we need to need to look
at the big picture. And it's not always about having anything to say to somebody. I know
we talked about right and wrong things to say. But sometimes you have that person that's
struggling. One of the best things we can do is just I mean, obviously, if they're struggling,
we know they want to take their their life or whether we need to, to act on that. But
sometimes somebody that's just struggling, the best thing we can do is just that that
active listening and empathy. And a lot of times people they just need their feelings,
they need to know that they're honestly and openly being heard, and that their feelings
are valid. They're entitled to hurt and struggle. And everything everybody does. But sometimes
just just listening to somebody, we don't have to have the answers that we don't, we
don't always have the answers. But us as first responders, a lot of times we're some of the
worst for that when it comes to reaching out and helping somebody, because we in our profession
are to an extent control freaks. Think about it, what when when somebody dials 911, something
is out of control in their life. And they're calling us, it's our job to get there and
take control of it and fix it. We're used to that for 24 hours at a time, we're going
away from our families and we're fixing shit all of the time. We are pros at fixing other
people's shit. But we can't fix our own. We choose for whatever reason, we choose not
to. We don't want to talk to our partner at the firehouse or whatever about all that
to get things fixed if we're struggling or we're hurting. But we'll go and we'll talk
to Joe citizen who we don't even know to fix their problem. Because we we can control that.
We can control our stuff too. By just reaching out, we can control who we we want and how
we want things to to to go to the best of our ability. I know there is still a lot of
stuff that's out of our our hands and out of our control. But just by making that that
gesture and reaching out the act of listening, being empathetic, and not judgmental, I mean,
we were pretty cutthroat at times within our our community. And it's like we jokingly say
that there first there is the telegraph and there's telefriend and there's telephone and
telefire fighter. So we can't have these these forms of communication to telefire fighter.
I told James that hey, man, I'm hurting I'm thinking about hurting myself or whatever.
I talked to you in confidence. And then the next thing I know, I'm getting a phone call
from one of the other stations. Hey, man, would you okay? James just told me no, it's
not supposed to be like that. We got to have the confidentiality and and everything. So
but yeah, it's there's there's just so much and the whole wiring thing and stuff like
that is that's the the God's honest truth. No, but I don't think anybody nobody in their
right mind is going to want to take their life. Nobody.
It goes against our literal biology was supposed to reproduce and was supposed to protect our
offspring. Yeah. So I mean, obviously, we know that we get we got something going on
there. And so let's let's figure out what that underlying issue is. And let's let's
resolve it. Let's not let that person self medicate with the alcohol or whatever it may
be. Let's get that that ball rolling and get that definitive care and normalize it. And
let's fix this shit.
Absolutely. I want to hit one more area before we close out, which is an important thing.
After the suicide attempt, talk to me about and this isn't, you know, talking negatively
about your department because again, doing the best of what they know. But talk to me
about the position you were put in and if that was helpful tribally or if it became
a challenge tribally for you personally.
Yeah. And thanks for kind of setting the stage there about it not being negative about my
department. And let me get my disclaimer now should have gave this at the beginning. All
views are the views of Chris Moore and do not reflect or anything positive or negative
on my department. They're all my views. So it was the whole we don't know. We don't know.
Since this I'm going to touch base on it. But I did start doing some some research after
the fact. And a lot of departments we have things in place and this is nationwide and
actually extends across the border into Canada. I've talked to people. If a member completes
suicide, we have policies, directives, guidelines in place of how to handle it as a department.
We have things for line of duty deaths, whatever you want to and I know that's a discussion
for another day, whether or not a suicide of a member should be a line of duty death
or not. But we don't have I have yet to find a department with a policy in place or what
you do or how you treat a member who has a suicide attempt. So there is excuse me, NFPA
182 has a recommendation or a guideline because NFPA's guidelines that you can keep a member
out for up to a year with a suicide attempt. So with no policy in place, my department
never having experienced anything like this chose to follow the NFPA 1582 kept me offline
for just about a year. But they they they did give me they gave me a desk job and how
we talked about earlier that the job does not define me. Well, I found out in that moment,
I felt like it really did. I'm I'm a grunt. I I want to go and I want to do my 24 hour
shifts. I want to get on the rig and ride the calls and do the work and everything.
I want station life. And I just felt like my identity was stripped from me when I got
put on a desk job. And it really hurt a lot of people that I thought that I was really
close to had very little communication with with a lot of people. Some I never heard from
and I'm still to this day and heard anything from people that worked for me worked with
me. I had relationships from other parts within my department. And it's just I felt like I
was shunned. Like I told you with my friends. I had that whole I felt like I was a I was
embarrassed. I was ashamed of everything that I did. And I was made. Let me see. Let me
rephrase that. I felt even more so through my department because of all that. However,
looking back on it now, I have during all of that wrote some policy. It's nothing has
been implemented within my organization yet. But I think each person I don't think there
should be a cookie cutter policy for anything yet alone something as serious as this. I
think we should treat people as human beings. And everybody's different. It should be case
by case basis. I jumped through. I don't want to say I jumped through hoops. That's what
I was about to say. I went through a lot of steps and processes. And each time I thought
that, okay, I went through this step, I just got to get through this next step. And that's
the goal line. Well, then the goal line just when I'm about to extend and score, it gets
moved on me. And it felt like that kept happening on numerous times. I went through to different
doctors that they required and things like that. And looking at medical records, the
doctors pretty much cleared me. They thought that it would be good to get back to that
camaraderie that we had in the firehouse. But getting back to this, long story short,
I have been working with some departments on making policies to help their members because
I feel like it's not a matter of when or if this is going to happen. It's a matter of
when it might happen within another organization. I have by doing that been able to reflect
more on how my department handled the situation and the issue. And are there things they could
have done better? Absolutely. But I think they did a pretty damn good job looking back
at it now. I didn't understand it or like it that much in the very beginning. But the
whole like I said, they didn't know what they didn't know. A lot of times people don't know
how to talk to somebody who's tried to take their life. And I didn't necessarily need
somebody to come and talk about that experience. People that I thought I was closer with or
friends or whatever. It's like hell, just come over to my house and sit down and watch
a ball game or something. We don't have to discuss it. If it comes up, it comes up. Just
be my friend. Be there for me. It's the whole act of listening and empathy. But going to
the desk job, that was the right thing. Looking at hindsight right now. You got to do what's
best for the member who had the event. But also we got to think about the team as a whole.
And if I think a little bit of me and I think there's a lot of give and take on both sides.
A little bit of me was kind of selfish. Where I was like, you know what, if I want to go
back and doctors say I can go back and I can go back, but those people there don't want
me back because of what I did. I was just thinking in my head, you know what, fuck them.
And their feelings and their emotions shouldn't affect me and my livelihood. And that's where
the give and take has to be. And that was me being selfish. Because my event and what
I did, even though I wasn't, my brain wasn't wired right, I wasn't in my right mind at
that time, it affected the whole team. And I wasn't looking at it like that. And that's
why, like I said, policies now for getting people back. I think it should be a case by
case, but you involve the doctors, you involve the family. And we have to be very, very mindful
of HIPAA, what gets released out there to certain people and individuals and stuff like
that. We also know we have the gossip tree and the fire service that he said, she said
and everything. But I think you need to include in a comfortable fashion for all as many people,
you need to build that circle and try and include people in there that are trusted,
respected and have the best interest of that individual in mind. Even though the best interest
was for me, there still has to be a little bit of interest, like I said, left for the
entire team as well. And that's one thing I let people know is now of all times, the
world is watching. People are watching now how things like this are being handled, how
they're going to be handled in the future. What are we going to do? If they see is like,
you know what Captain Moore said in the end, they ended up handling his stuff better. They
did a good job. They're going to be more accepting and willing to reach out and get help. If
they completely shit on their member and they don't do what's right for that member and
let him come back accordingly, when ready, people are watching that too. And somebody
that might have been on the fence about reaching out and getting help might not reach out for
that help because they might say, you know what, the department just shit on him because
of his mental health episode or episode is probably not even a good word. It's his mental
health. Why am I going to do it? They might shit on me too. So a lot of people still to
this day are having these conversations like you and I are having because like cancer really
became the hot topic. 15 years ago, 10, 15 years ago, whatever people were talking about
that. Well, the hot topic now is mental health. They're talking about it because it's the
hot topic, but there's a big difference between Saturday night and Sunday morning already
in and then going to church the next day. There's a big difference also between talking
the talk and walking the walk. When one of your members goes through a crisis like this
and has an event, are you actually going to be there? And are you going to walk the walk
that you've been talking with your member? Are you going to take care of them? Are you
going to do the right thing? But more importantly, we shouldn't even be at that point. Let's
do it. Let's be proactive. Let's not be reactive and just walk the walk with them after the
fact. Let's walk the walk with them as a whole from the get go. Like, I mean, right back
to what we talked about at the very beginning of careers, we're already saving departments
money by changing the process of things and stuff like that. So let's do that mental health
background check in the beginning and then start doing these quarterly checks all throughout
the duration of their career. There's a lot of checks and balances that we can set up
by being proactive where we don't even get to this point, but still let's implement a
plan for how we will handle it if something does slip by and happens.
Absolutely. Yeah, I've always said the fire department, the fire service is great at burying
their own, but terrible at stopping them dying in the first place. And I think that's it.
We need to stop having these pomp and circumstance funerals and maybe take that energy and focus
it on how do we stop so many happening? We can't set and stop them all. And even just
to touch on is suicide line of duty death. If cardiac arrest or stroke during a shift
is then absolutely suicide is as well. Because again, it's partly what happened before. It's
partly what's happening outside of work hours, but obviously being exposed to what we do
is job related. So how do we stop that? And so many of these line of duty deaths happening
through suicide and overdose and the other mental health related deaths. Well, again,
it's all about the pro the proactive side as well. So I'm sure people listening would
love to learn more about you would love to reach out. I know that you like to put your
number out there as well. So what are the best avenues to contact you if people want
to?
And I give everybody I'm on Facebook, Chris, more, I'm easy to find out there. I'm not
on any of the other stuff. I'm just on the old man social media. They took away my my
space. So I got haven't gotten into the Instagram and Twitter or X or whatever it is now. But
just on Facebook is my only social media. But I blasted out there. My personal cell
phone number. People have seen me speak at conferences. Also, I put my number out there
at conferences. It's 7575363373. That's not a business number or anything like that. That
is my personal cell phone number. You can text me, you can call me. People thought I
was crazy when I started doing this almost three years ago. And they're like, you're
going to get all sorts of terrible phone calls or whatever. And if I have what what can be
worse, I'm already getting like everybody else the calls about my car's extended warranty
and shit like that. It's like somebody calls me was the whole Jake Clark thing. And this
was even before I knew Jake, I was like, if just one person calls me, and can use some
help or whatever, and I can point them in the right direction, or just do the act of
listening, then I'm making a difference. So I put that out there. Everywhere I go, I try
and plaster my number. And I am just shy of 2000 people have reached out to me to this
day. I give my disclaimer that I am not a clinician, not a therapist, I am sure as hell
I'm not a doctor. But what I am a fellow first responder that has post traumatic stress,
a suicide attempt, I have lived experiences and I can relate and a lot of people can relate
to me. And sometimes, like I said, that's all we we need. And I point people in the
right direction. I listen to people. Sometimes they just want to ask me about peer support
or behavioral health, or call and get me to come in to speak at their department or whatever.
So anything that I can help with. That's the best way to reach me. Like I said, find me
on Facebook, or you got my personal number right now. Call me. I do the do buddy checks
out of those almost like is it 2000 people that have reached out to me, I'll randomly
go through that. And of course, I at the end of our conversation, I asked them as a can
I reach out to you? Can we stay in touch? And I haven't had anybody yet tell me no.
So I'll randomly just reach out weekly, and just send out some messages. Hey, just thinking
of you, you matter. Or how you doing today? Just little things like that. And that's,
to me, that that makes a huge difference. And that's what people have told me when just
get a random text, they might be having a shitty day. And then just get a random text
from somebody they've never met before, other than seeing me on podcasts or at a conference
or social media. And this guy cares about me. So that's me, man.
Beautiful. Well, again, thank you for that. And one thing that I'm hoping that we'll see
down the road is almost like the Israeli military system where their philosophy is that you
protect your buddy. That's how they that's that's the kind of principle I believe in
that particular military. And I think that's what needs to happen is that rather than ultimately
down the road rather than Chris Moore or Dustin Hawkins or Brendan McDonald fielding hundreds
of calls that we actually wrap around our arms around, you know, our nearest and dearest.
So that way, we're all taking care of our circle now, you know, because one of us is
going to have a great day, one of us gonna have a shit day. It's just the way it works.
So, you know, I hope that not only you put in your phone call out and thank you so much
for that your phone number, but also that we could be reminded to just check in on on
our loved ones, whether it's outside of the uniform or inside the uniform, because checking
in on 10 people that you adore is much easier than a handful of people checking in on 2000.
So that's a kind of call to action for everyone listening as well.
Right on, man. Right on. Well, Chris, I want to say thank you so much. We've been chatting
for over two and a half hours and it's been an amazing conversation. As you said, you
not only have the firefighter career path, but you have the lived experience. And, you
know, I always thank people that have been courageously vulnerable because this is what
we need. I mean, you're a firefighter and we met in person. You're a big lad too, as
we'd say in England. So back 20 years ago, you'd be quote unquote, the last person that
we thought would be struggling. But this is what we need is the, you know, the alpha professions
and I mean that with compassion to stand up and talk about the struggles because that's
how you debunk the myth that boys don't cry, rub some dirt in it. You know, this bullshit
that we were raised on when we were younger, that we're all human beings. And no matter
whether you're a Navy SEAL or you work in a cake shop, you're going to have highs and
you're going to have lows. So I want to thank you so, so much for being so generous and
so vulnerable today and coming on the Behind the Shield podcast.
Thank you for having me, James. I really appreciate it. So keep doing what you're doing, man.
You are making a world of difference to a lot of people. So I appreciate you, your friendship
and your platform and everything, man. So keep it up, brother.