1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:02,280
This episode is sponsored by InsideTracker.

2
00:00:02,280 --> 00:00:07,000
And what makes me smile is before I even started my podcast seven years ago,

3
00:00:07,400 --> 00:00:10,960
when listening to other wellness conversations, InsideTracker

4
00:00:10,960 --> 00:00:14,360
was always the company they recommended for comprehensive blood work.

5
00:00:14,800 --> 00:00:20,720
Well, now in 2024, they have begun to offer a brand new first responder panel,

6
00:00:21,040 --> 00:00:25,360
which will cover nine biomarkers hitting several of the pillars of health

7
00:00:25,360 --> 00:00:27,600
that affect us in uniform.

8
00:00:27,600 --> 00:00:31,800
Stress, heart health, metabolism and gut health.

9
00:00:32,240 --> 00:00:35,800
Now, after a very simple intake form, a blood draw,

10
00:00:35,960 --> 00:00:39,960
you will get the results sent to your computer, smartwatch, phone,

11
00:00:40,440 --> 00:00:44,400
not only detailing where you are on the scale from poor to optimized,

12
00:00:44,600 --> 00:00:48,120
but also tips on how you can improve each of these markers.

13
00:00:48,760 --> 00:00:51,280
Now, this panel is usually three hundred and ten dollars,

14
00:00:51,280 --> 00:00:54,760
but they are also offering first responders 30 percent off

15
00:00:54,800 --> 00:00:56,800
any of their blood panels.

16
00:00:56,800 --> 00:01:01,040
So that brings this specific panel down to only two hundred and seventeen dollars.

17
00:01:01,560 --> 00:01:05,880
Now, I myself went through their ultimate, which is their comprehensive blood work,

18
00:01:06,000 --> 00:01:10,960
which also includes micronutrients, hormones and other areas of overall health.

19
00:01:11,320 --> 00:01:15,520
And I have to say, I was absolutely amazed at firstly, how easy it was.

20
00:01:15,520 --> 00:01:18,520
But secondly, the comprehensive information I got

21
00:01:18,800 --> 00:01:23,320
and the actionable information on how to improve each of my own biomarkers.

22
00:01:23,760 --> 00:01:26,360
Now, as with all my sponsors, if you want to hear more

23
00:01:26,360 --> 00:01:30,120
about inside tracker, you can hear my conversation with senior sales

24
00:01:30,120 --> 00:01:34,520
executive Jonathan Levitt on episode eight hundred and eighty seven

25
00:01:34,520 --> 00:01:36,360
of the Behind the Shield podcast.

26
00:01:36,360 --> 00:01:40,680
So to sign up or simply learn more, go to inside tracker dot com.

27
00:01:41,080 --> 00:01:44,240
And for the first responder panel, the easiest way is to Google

28
00:01:44,240 --> 00:01:46,960
inside tracker first responder panel.

29
00:01:48,360 --> 00:01:52,120
This episode is sponsored by a company I've used for well over a decade,

30
00:01:52,120 --> 00:01:54,240
and that is five eleven.

31
00:01:54,240 --> 00:01:57,080
I wore their uniforms back in Anaheim, California,

32
00:01:57,080 --> 00:01:59,520
and I've used their products ever since.

33
00:01:59,520 --> 00:02:04,240
From their incredibly strong, yet light footwear to their cut uniforms

34
00:02:04,240 --> 00:02:06,560
for both male and female responders.

35
00:02:06,800 --> 00:02:11,480
I found them hands down the best workwear in all the departments that I've worked for.

36
00:02:11,840 --> 00:02:15,440
Outside of the fire service, I use their luggage for everything

37
00:02:15,440 --> 00:02:19,600
and I travel a lot, and they are also now sponsoring the seven X team

38
00:02:19,760 --> 00:02:23,400
as we embark around the world on the human performance project.

39
00:02:23,400 --> 00:02:25,440
We have Murph coming up in May.

40
00:02:25,440 --> 00:02:27,720
And again, I bought their plate carrier.

41
00:02:27,720 --> 00:02:31,760
I ended up buying real ballistic plates rather than the fake weight plates.

42
00:02:32,080 --> 00:02:35,800
And that has been my ride or die through Murph the last few years as well.

43
00:02:36,320 --> 00:02:39,440
But one area I want to talk about that I haven't in previous sponsorship

44
00:02:39,440 --> 00:02:41,840
spots is their brick and mortar element.

45
00:02:42,240 --> 00:02:45,560
They were predominantly an online company up till more recently,

46
00:02:45,680 --> 00:02:49,280
but now they are approaching 100 stores all over the U.S.

47
00:02:49,640 --> 00:02:52,040
My local store is here in Gainesville, Florida,

48
00:02:52,040 --> 00:02:55,680
and I've been multiple times and the discounts you see online

49
00:02:55,680 --> 00:02:57,720
are applied also in the stores.

50
00:02:57,920 --> 00:03:04,200
So as I mentioned, 511 is offering you 15% of every purchase that you make.

51
00:03:04,440 --> 00:03:08,760
But I do want to say more often than not, they have an even deeper discount,

52
00:03:08,760 --> 00:03:10,800
especially around holiday times.

53
00:03:11,280 --> 00:03:17,080
But if you use the code SHIELD15, that's S-H-I-E-L-D-1-5,

54
00:03:17,400 --> 00:03:20,960
you will get 15% off your order or in the stores

55
00:03:20,960 --> 00:03:22,560
every time you make a purchase.

56
00:03:22,880 --> 00:03:27,800
And if you want to hear more about 511, who they stand for and who works with them,

57
00:03:28,080 --> 00:03:35,200
listen to episode 580 of Behind the Shield podcast with 511 Regional Director Will Ayers.

58
00:03:36,280 --> 00:03:38,000
Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast.

59
00:03:38,000 --> 00:03:40,880
As always, my name is James Gearing, and this week it is my absolute honor

60
00:03:40,880 --> 00:03:44,960
to welcome on the show former Navy SEAL and member of the

61
00:03:44,960 --> 00:03:49,360
Veteran Mental Health Leadership Coalition, Tommy Aceto.

62
00:03:49,360 --> 00:03:53,840
Now, in this conversation, we discuss a host of topics from his early life,

63
00:03:54,080 --> 00:03:58,160
his journey into the Navy, entering the world of special operations,

64
00:03:58,480 --> 00:04:04,320
his perspective on war, his transition story, the healing power of psychedelics,

65
00:04:04,320 --> 00:04:05,760
and so much more.

66
00:04:05,760 --> 00:04:09,280
Now, before we get to this incredibly powerful and important conversation,

67
00:04:09,280 --> 00:04:14,720
as I say every week, please just take a moment, go to whichever app you listen to this on,

68
00:04:14,720 --> 00:04:19,520
subscribe to the show, leave feedback and leave a rating.

69
00:04:19,520 --> 00:04:23,760
Every single five star rating truly does elevate this podcast,

70
00:04:23,760 --> 00:04:26,240
therefore making it easier for others to find.

71
00:04:26,240 --> 00:04:31,440
And this is a free library of almost 900 episodes now.

72
00:04:31,440 --> 00:04:37,280
So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories

73
00:04:37,280 --> 00:04:42,480
so I can get them to every single person on planet Earth who needs to hear them.

74
00:04:42,480 --> 00:04:48,640
So with that being said, I introduce to you Tommy Aceto. Enjoy.

75
00:05:07,200 --> 00:05:11,280
Well, Tommy, I want to start by saying thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

76
00:05:11,280 --> 00:05:14,480
Thank you so much for coming on the Behind the Shield podcast today.

77
00:05:14,480 --> 00:05:18,080
No, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

78
00:05:18,080 --> 00:05:21,520
So where on planet Earth are we finding you this afternoon?

79
00:05:21,520 --> 00:05:26,240
Well, Flow State is now over Zay. I live in Nashville area.

80
00:05:26,960 --> 00:05:28,640
Beautiful. Now, what took you over there?

81
00:05:30,240 --> 00:05:38,080
Oh, man, just fate. I needed to get out of California and I just got out of the Navy

82
00:05:38,080 --> 00:05:42,240
a few years ago and I needed to start my life over really.

83
00:05:42,240 --> 00:05:51,280
And I met a beautiful gal who's now my bride and we ended up getting married in my Buds

84
00:05:51,280 --> 00:05:56,960
instructor's backyard on the 4th of July as I was coming across the country in an airstream.

85
00:05:57,760 --> 00:06:05,920
So it's kind of definitely a good story. And she had a job in Houston and I was living in

86
00:06:05,920 --> 00:06:14,880
California at the time. So I basically went to New York City. I went from California,

87
00:06:15,520 --> 00:06:23,040
picked her up in Houston, went to Nashville, got married. And then I kept going on to a program

88
00:06:23,040 --> 00:06:29,920
called Virginia High Performance. It's where they basically rehab special forces operators.

89
00:06:29,920 --> 00:06:35,760
It's a beautiful program run by a friend of mine. And after that, I went and swam around Statue of

90
00:06:35,760 --> 00:06:42,400
Liberty. So I was living on an airstream at the time and that's how we ended up here. And we love

91
00:06:42,400 --> 00:06:49,280
it. We absolutely love Nashville. I believe it's the heartbeat of America. It's got these big guns

92
00:06:49,280 --> 00:06:55,840
called the music industry. And it's funny because I always thought everybody was going west and now

93
00:06:55,840 --> 00:07:03,200
everybody's coming back. With Virginia High Performance, was Jeff Nichols still coaching

94
00:07:03,200 --> 00:07:11,120
them when you were going over there? The name sounds familiar, but mine was Tim. I had a guy

95
00:07:11,120 --> 00:07:19,600
named Tim. He was a hell of an instructor. Okay. Yeah. Jeff was a former dev guru guy turned like

96
00:07:19,600 --> 00:07:23,200
strength and conditioning guru in the tactical space. So I know he was there for a while and then

97
00:07:23,200 --> 00:07:33,440
he ended up forming his own gym. Okay. Yeah. Alex runs it. And yeah, it's an incredible program.

98
00:07:33,440 --> 00:07:41,680
If you're an athlete or a veteran that seems to have lost their way, I would really recommend

99
00:07:41,680 --> 00:07:47,920
checking out that because they don't just hit it from an exercise perspective. It's more,

100
00:07:47,920 --> 00:07:55,920
they have massage, they have sound bowls, sound therapy, they have cognitive instruction,

101
00:07:55,920 --> 00:08:03,440
they have a dietitian and basically all your meals are put together for you. And it's a four week

102
00:08:03,440 --> 00:08:08,880
course. So sometimes it's hard to get people to step away from their life for that long, but I

103
00:08:08,880 --> 00:08:13,760
think it's a hell of a tune up. Absolutely. I think the physical side is something that's missed a

104
00:08:13,760 --> 00:08:19,040
lot. We're going to get into obviously the spiritual side, the emotional side, but when you

105
00:08:19,040 --> 00:08:24,800
combine, for example, psychedelics with the physicality, whether it's hiking or diving or

106
00:08:24,800 --> 00:08:31,920
surfing or just simply unfucking your body through therapies and exercise, that to me is the kind of

107
00:08:31,920 --> 00:08:38,000
whole holistic approach. Yeah. Mind, body and spirit, man. We've got three of them. If you're

108
00:08:38,000 --> 00:08:44,160
only operating two, then you're only a 2D creature. Absolutely. Well, before we get into

109
00:08:44,160 --> 00:08:49,440
your journey and into the mental health space, let's start at the very beginning of your timeline.

110
00:08:49,440 --> 00:08:53,680
So tell me where you were born and tell me a little bit about your family dynamic, what your

111
00:08:53,680 --> 00:09:02,480
parents did, how many siblings? I was born in Gross Point, Michigan. My dad actually was a football

112
00:09:02,480 --> 00:09:09,520
wrestling coach at Gross Point North, which is the movie, John Cusack's movie, Gross Point Blank.

113
00:09:09,520 --> 00:09:15,520
If you see, it's an 80s movie. And I was first house, I was born in St. Clair Shores and then

114
00:09:15,520 --> 00:09:25,040
we moved around the Metro Detroit area, ended up on a lake in Chesterfield, Michigan, Lake St. Clair.

115
00:09:25,040 --> 00:09:34,800
And I grew up the son of two athletes. So I used to say I was a musician trapped in an athlete's

116
00:09:34,800 --> 00:09:44,000
body or an athlete's home. And so in Detroit, you jock a musician or a lawyer or whatever,

117
00:09:44,000 --> 00:09:54,080
something professional. And I found success in sports. I was a two-time all-state athlete

118
00:09:54,080 --> 00:10:00,720
in two different sports, soccer and wrestling. And I ended up winning the state title in wrestling

119
00:10:00,720 --> 00:10:08,160
in Michigan in 1999. And then I ended up playing soccer in college.

120
00:10:08,160 --> 00:10:13,840
Basically, because I didn't want to cut weight in college again. So I thought I'd go out on a high

121
00:10:13,840 --> 00:10:19,840
and I enjoyed playing soccer in college. I had the opportunity to play with my older brother,

122
00:10:19,840 --> 00:10:28,160
Paul Cito, who he's a chef in Miami. And we went real far in the NCAA playoffs my freshman year.

123
00:10:28,160 --> 00:10:36,240
I started and we had a coach, his name was Scott Fowler, and he was a great guy. And he was a

124
00:10:36,240 --> 00:10:42,400
great guy. We had a coach, his name was Scott Fry, and he left our program after we went to the

125
00:10:42,400 --> 00:10:50,160
semifinals in the NCAA tournament to coach at Messiah College in Pennsylvania. And he went on

126
00:10:50,160 --> 00:10:56,240
to win six national titles with the women's soccer program there. And it was sad because I was the

127
00:10:56,240 --> 00:11:04,160
one that my coach told that he was leaving in his office the day that he told the team. But he said

128
00:11:04,160 --> 00:11:10,560
secret for four hours. I couldn't tell the players. And so I'm like, I don't keep good secrets.

129
00:11:12,800 --> 00:11:18,400
And so he told the team, and I just remember my older brother who was going to be a senior that

130
00:11:18,400 --> 00:11:26,800
year, that his whole class was just sobbing. Because this guy, I had few coaches in my life

131
00:11:26,800 --> 00:11:32,480
that I would run through a wall for. And this was one of them, Scott Fry. He'll go down as one of

132
00:11:32,480 --> 00:11:40,480
the best collegiate coaches of all time. And then after I played soccer in college, I went to Elmah

133
00:11:40,480 --> 00:11:45,840
College and I thought I was going to be a pediatrician since I was six. And so I was pre-med.

134
00:11:46,560 --> 00:11:53,280
I took all my classes and I just got burnt out. I really did. It was something not right and I wasn't

135
00:11:54,480 --> 00:11:59,840
prepared to do the work, I think. And I think God had other plans for me. So I became a seal medic.

136
00:11:59,840 --> 00:12:06,080
And the interesting thing of how I jumped from being a pediatric, wanting to be a pediatrician

137
00:12:06,080 --> 00:12:13,600
to a seal medic was an athlete, a teammate of mine. His name was Jake Olson and he became a

138
00:12:13,600 --> 00:12:21,440
Huey pilot in the Marines. And I remember him coming back to a game and he was just yoked and

139
00:12:21,440 --> 00:12:30,800
just stud. And I just remember that feeling of like, it was more than being an athlete.

140
00:12:31,760 --> 00:12:38,480
And so I talked to him after my senior year and he's like, I'm going to enlist in the Navy so I

141
00:12:38,480 --> 00:12:45,280
can go to be a pediatrician and they'll pay back my college loans. And he's like, Tommy, he's like,

142
00:12:45,280 --> 00:12:49,360
you do not want to enlist in the Navy. He's like, you do not want to be a shoe. And I was like,

143
00:12:49,360 --> 00:12:55,200
what's that? And he's like, you need to be a seal. And I was like, a Navy seal? And he's like, yeah.

144
00:12:55,200 --> 00:13:00,640
And that's crazy. You can't. And he goes, you're crazy. And I said, you're right. And that was it.

145
00:13:00,640 --> 00:13:11,280
I watched one discovery video. There was nothing in 2003. And I just needed to start my hero's

146
00:13:11,280 --> 00:13:19,280
journey. So you have to get away from home. And the beautiful part was, I was like,

147
00:13:19,280 --> 00:13:28,080
I never in a million years would I be able to say that this would be what I'm doing right now,

148
00:13:28,080 --> 00:13:36,400
which is healing trauma of the mind and bringing awareness to people that the best medicine

149
00:13:36,400 --> 00:13:41,840
for the mind is not what they're selling. Well, I want to go pull a few things out of that.

150
00:13:41,840 --> 00:13:46,240
Firstly, you said you were a son of two athletes. Your dad was coaching wrestling and soccer. What

151
00:13:46,240 --> 00:13:53,840
about your mom? What was she doing? Yeah, she was an all state swimmer. She played basketball,

152
00:13:53,840 --> 00:14:01,520
volleyball, everything, but her sport was diving. She was a diver. And you mentioned Scott Fry.

153
00:14:02,400 --> 00:14:07,520
So you progressed through all your school and collegiate athletics. And then obviously you get

154
00:14:07,520 --> 00:14:14,080
into a tactical profession where again, leadership is extremely important. When you look back now,

155
00:14:14,080 --> 00:14:18,800
what was it about Scott that made him such a great leader, even through your perspective today?

156
00:14:24,720 --> 00:14:28,480
When someone walks in the room, it doesn't matter. He was five foot one, maybe,

157
00:14:29,040 --> 00:14:39,040
maybe five foot two Scottish, just, you know, ginger. And he would walk in that room and

158
00:14:39,040 --> 00:14:44,880
he'd get that little tear in his eye and that little thing, like it's energy. And when,

159
00:14:44,880 --> 00:14:50,080
when he would say something and he would be on the verge of, you know, losing it with the tears,

160
00:14:51,360 --> 00:14:56,080
it speaks volumes. And you're seeing that with another guy that just started making a lot of

161
00:14:56,080 --> 00:15:02,400
news, coach Dan Campbell from the Detroit Lions. He's a big dude, but he wears his emotions on his

162
00:15:02,400 --> 00:15:10,400
sleeve. And I'm telling you the human version of energy is emotions and good leaders. They understand

163
00:15:10,400 --> 00:15:18,080
that. Isn't it ironic that when you and I were young, we were told that men didn't cry,

164
00:15:18,800 --> 00:15:26,000
that men had this two dimensional, you know, pseudo stoic element to them. And now what we're

165
00:15:26,000 --> 00:15:32,640
realizing, you know, I mean, it's common sense when you just kind of debunk the myths, that real

166
00:15:32,640 --> 00:15:37,760
passion, whether it's in combat, whether it's in first responder professions, or even just mentoring

167
00:15:37,760 --> 00:15:46,000
young men to become an incredibly cohesive team should move you to tears. Yeah. Well, I'm in the

168
00:15:46,000 --> 00:15:58,400
business of teaching warriors how to surrender. And, you know, we're not taught that it's a

169
00:15:59,200 --> 00:16:07,520
defense mechanism. My, both my grandparents served in the Navy. My dad's father was the champion of

170
00:16:07,520 --> 00:16:13,600
the Pacific fleet. Back when boxing was a big deal in the ships. He got his lung ripped out from

171
00:16:13,600 --> 00:16:21,040
shrapnel in the Japanese theater. And, you know, my dad didn't get taught how to cry.

172
00:16:22,720 --> 00:16:31,120
Never, you know, he had an anger issue. He was a good, he was a good man, but his drug was anger.

173
00:16:31,840 --> 00:16:40,320
And he, I was a middle child, right? So it's, I always ask people, I can spot out middle children.

174
00:16:40,320 --> 00:16:45,680
I'm like, you're a middle kid, aren't you? And they're like, yep. But, you know, middle ones

175
00:16:45,680 --> 00:16:52,160
just doing this thing the whole time. And usually tougher too. I was the fighter. My brother was a

176
00:16:52,160 --> 00:16:59,600
hell of an athlete. He was all state soccer player twice and wrestling twice too. But he,

177
00:17:00,880 --> 00:17:06,720
he wasn't a fighter. And I would fight his fights and I would fight my younger sister's fights,

178
00:17:06,720 --> 00:17:18,880
you know, and I was just, that was me. So, the thing about emotions is when we are in a safe place

179
00:17:18,880 --> 00:17:24,000
and we can let go as a man, it's not a lot of it's like for me, it was driving in a car. I can drive

180
00:17:24,000 --> 00:17:31,600
in a car, hear a song, and I can just wail. And what we're studying now is this release of energy

181
00:17:31,600 --> 00:17:39,200
and what it does in the endorphins that it can create the neurochemistry that it can reroute.

182
00:17:40,160 --> 00:17:45,680
And it's like the book I'm writing right now is called Feel to Heal and it's about feeling your

183
00:17:45,680 --> 00:17:56,800
emotions. Another interesting perspective when it comes to early life and, you know, moving forward,

184
00:17:56,800 --> 00:18:01,200
you did wrestling, which arguably, even though it's a team sport, you are alone on the mat

185
00:18:01,200 --> 00:18:07,280
at that point. And then you did soccer, football, which now you're one of 11 and it's, you know,

186
00:18:07,280 --> 00:18:13,840
the other side of the spectrum. When you look back now, how did each of those roles factor into your

187
00:18:13,840 --> 00:18:18,640
success going through buds and beyond? Oh, man, this is gonna be longer than two hours.

188
00:18:20,800 --> 00:18:27,360
Yeah, man, I, soccer is a beautiful game, the football, right? It should be called football.

189
00:18:27,360 --> 00:18:36,480
But it's the beautiful game. It's problem solving and, you know, the ability to rely on your

190
00:18:36,480 --> 00:18:43,840
teammates and figure things out. There's no timeouts. It's just, you know, it's tough. It's

191
00:18:43,840 --> 00:18:47,840
tough to score a goal. I think that's why Americans don't like it because, you know, they should make

192
00:18:47,840 --> 00:18:56,320
a goal like four points or something. Fly tackle should be like one. But, yeah, exactly. So, yeah,

193
00:18:56,320 --> 00:19:02,160
I got a lot. I mean, to be honest with you, for the buds aspect of it, soccer was the reason why I

194
00:19:02,160 --> 00:19:14,160
could run. I was, I'm 6'2", trying to get down to 210 pounds. But my first day of soccer camp,

195
00:19:14,160 --> 00:19:22,000
my coach, Scott Fry, this is what a terry was. He used the women's national soccer team pre-season

196
00:19:22,000 --> 00:19:30,080
workout, which was a five-minute mile. And it was a four-month conditioning program that you would

197
00:19:30,080 --> 00:19:36,400
do intervals, long runs, challenge days. And then it would just make you, if you did it, you would

198
00:19:36,400 --> 00:19:43,600
run a five-minute mile. So every year, first day of camp, there's only a couple of people on campus.

199
00:19:43,600 --> 00:19:48,560
And my campus was like 1,400 people in the middle of cornfield. So it's like, it was like smaller

200
00:19:48,560 --> 00:19:53,280
than my high school. But we would show up to the track and there'd be the football players, which

201
00:19:53,280 --> 00:20:00,720
I'll come back to that. But I lived in a fraternity, all football players. I was the head guy in my

202
00:20:00,720 --> 00:20:05,760
fraternity, but I was a soccer player. But I could bench press more than the football alignment in

203
00:20:05,760 --> 00:20:13,040
college. So we would walk out to the field and they would be all in the middle of the field,

204
00:20:13,040 --> 00:20:20,640
all in the middle of the field, coking and joking, talking about the summers and stuff.

205
00:20:20,640 --> 00:20:24,560
And we would walk out and the football players knew what we were going to do. And we'd get on

206
00:20:24,560 --> 00:20:30,880
that track and there was three heats and we would bust our ass doing that five-minute mile. And

207
00:20:31,600 --> 00:20:39,760
I swear to you, running four 75-second splits as a big dude is not fun. The third lap is a gut check.

208
00:20:39,760 --> 00:20:46,640
And if you have anything left after that, it's just put out. And that's why my coach did that

209
00:20:46,640 --> 00:20:52,480
every year to see who came to camp prepared. And if you didn't make the five-minute mile,

210
00:20:52,480 --> 00:20:59,760
every five seconds you were over, you had to run three to five miles at 6.30 AM, which added on

211
00:20:59,760 --> 00:21:05,120
another session to three a days. So you're doing four a days. And by the third day, if so, if you

212
00:21:05,120 --> 00:21:13,920
were 6.15 or older with the fat boys or slower with the fat boys, you were miserable because those

213
00:21:13,920 --> 00:21:18,640
guys were sleeping and going to get breakfast and you can't move your legs and you're going to run.

214
00:21:19,200 --> 00:21:27,040
So my best I ever got was five or seven. I never did it. But yeah, wrestling, soccer was

215
00:21:27,040 --> 00:21:33,040
incredible for the compression on the joints and the bones to make it through buds, which we see

216
00:21:33,040 --> 00:21:37,840
guys fail out because they can't run. They don't have the compression. Football players are big

217
00:21:37,840 --> 00:21:50,160
guys. Wrestling was the other side of my formula for buds. There was a difference, and we'd say in

218
00:21:50,160 --> 00:21:58,080
buds, there's a difference between being cold and tired and cold, wet and tired. There's a huge

219
00:21:58,080 --> 00:22:05,120
difference. And when you're in that state, a mental state, there's not many sports out there that can

220
00:22:05,840 --> 00:22:10,320
do what wrestling can do for you because we're hungry and tired.

221
00:22:14,640 --> 00:22:20,960
I would always see, you'd see in training, there would be the water polo players, the football

222
00:22:20,960 --> 00:22:25,440
players, the basketball players, soccer players, and then there was the wrestlers.

223
00:22:25,440 --> 00:22:28,640
And they usually did better than the rest of the sports.

224
00:22:30,720 --> 00:22:35,440
Interesting. Yeah, it's funny, wrestling over and over again seems to be one of the sports that a

225
00:22:35,440 --> 00:22:40,160
lot of the SEALs and special operations guys did. And then obviously in your community, water polo

226
00:22:40,160 --> 00:22:43,360
was another one that you just mentioned. A lot of the guys came from that background too.

227
00:22:44,400 --> 00:22:49,600
The other advantage I was from Michigan. So when people were cold in the water, I was like,

228
00:22:49,600 --> 00:22:54,640
it's not like Superior. Yeah, same in England. When you go to the beach as an English boy,

229
00:22:54,640 --> 00:23:00,480
you're basically doing a Wim Hof workout just to go swimming. Yeah, fall through the ice a couple

230
00:23:00,480 --> 00:23:06,880
of times and you'll learn what self-preservation is all about. Yeah, exactly. Well, then one more

231
00:23:06,880 --> 00:23:09,760
thing when we stay on charter and then we'll progress through into the military side.

232
00:23:11,680 --> 00:23:17,600
As I progress through this podcast and I'm this perpetual student, I'm hearing this

233
00:23:17,600 --> 00:23:22,640
stories and seeing these common denominators really surface. One of the areas that I don't

234
00:23:22,640 --> 00:23:28,160
think gets enough attention when it comes to first responder in military mental health is the impact

235
00:23:28,160 --> 00:23:34,960
of childhood trauma. And so we look at Afghanistan, we look at 9-11, whatever our big trauma is.

236
00:23:35,760 --> 00:23:40,400
When you look back now and you have this kind of multi-generational element, your grandfather was

237
00:23:40,400 --> 00:23:44,720
World War II veteran, arguably probably brought some trauma back with him and your father and now

238
00:23:44,720 --> 00:23:50,560
you. When you look back, were there elements of your childhood that contributed to struggles later

239
00:23:50,560 --> 00:24:00,000
in life? No. Yes, absolutely. Like I said, my father, God bless him, he was a good man.

240
00:24:00,000 --> 00:24:07,840
He just had a lot of anger and man, there's so many, I think there's so many stories that resonate

241
00:24:07,840 --> 00:24:18,080
with this. I study trauma, I study the nervous system and I study under Dr. Joe Dispenza, this

242
00:24:18,080 --> 00:24:24,720
thing called epigenetics, which is the energy of an environment or the energy of an experience,

243
00:24:24,720 --> 00:24:31,680
call it trauma, and how it affects your genetics. And there are studies being done right now, Dr.

244
00:24:31,680 --> 00:24:38,800
Joe does them all the time where they gather all this information, 1500 people out of 2200 people

245
00:24:38,800 --> 00:24:43,600
in his week-long seminars. So you have a controlled environment and they're studying the gene

246
00:24:43,600 --> 00:24:50,720
expression, they're taking every fluid out of the body. I mean, they take spit, sweat,

247
00:24:51,600 --> 00:24:58,880
urine, blood, feces, some were given breast milk at these retreats, I mean, EEGs, everything.

248
00:24:58,880 --> 00:25:05,520
And they're finding that after seven days, you could basically start to develop the same gene

249
00:25:05,520 --> 00:25:11,520
expressions, which create the same proteins, which create the same genes. And so if you could do that

250
00:25:11,520 --> 00:25:17,200
in seven days, then we have to look at this thing called epigenetics. And that's what I think this

251
00:25:17,200 --> 00:25:26,800
country is suffering from is the generational trauma of war and conflict, abuse, drugs, and

252
00:25:26,800 --> 00:25:34,080
all these things that are, you say, well, my dad was an alcoholic, his dad was an alcoholic. I'm like, no,

253
00:25:34,080 --> 00:25:38,880
yeah, but his dad had trauma, his dad had trauma, and his dad had trauma. And if you look at our

254
00:25:38,880 --> 00:25:47,360
history, all the wars, that's literally just repeating the cycle of shit. And we call it living.

255
00:25:47,360 --> 00:25:56,160
It's our reality. And that's accepted. That's it. You come, you serve, you die. And I think we need

256
00:25:56,160 --> 00:26:04,160
to change the narrative on this thing called genetic disease or childhood trauma is the core

257
00:26:04,160 --> 00:26:11,040
trauma of all traumas. And even if you come, and this is so funny that you brought this up, because

258
00:26:11,040 --> 00:26:19,920
I've worked with a lot of people on a socioeconomic scale, sons and daughters of billionaires,

259
00:26:19,920 --> 00:26:26,480
millionaires, or orphans, don't know my dad, don't know my father, don't know my mother.

260
00:26:27,600 --> 00:26:34,160
And you get these identity issues. One says, I like the right or the wealthy. I don't deserve

261
00:26:34,160 --> 00:26:39,920
this. I don't even give my permission to feel this way. And so now they have the access to do

262
00:26:39,920 --> 00:26:44,160
to do a lifestyle of destruction, and they have enough leash to hang themselves with.

263
00:26:44,160 --> 00:26:49,920
And the other side, yeah, you get raped, you don't know your dad, you don't know these things.

264
00:26:50,640 --> 00:26:59,440
It's a real easy one to pinpoint the neglect, the abuse. And so the thing is, is we all had,

265
00:27:00,160 --> 00:27:06,080
I believe we all have micro traumas somewhere along the line. And it's really just how we dealt

266
00:27:06,080 --> 00:27:12,640
with them. And if you come from a good environment, you might have less trauma, but life has its way of,

267
00:27:12,640 --> 00:27:18,800
you know, influence or infecting you with some sort of trauma. It's just part of it.

268
00:27:19,440 --> 00:27:29,360
But I do believe that childhood trauma is the core cause root of our addictions, of our PTS,

269
00:27:30,640 --> 00:27:38,640
and maybe even our cancers and other lifestyle choices that eventually lead to health issues.

270
00:27:38,640 --> 00:27:45,520
Absolutely. It's funny, when you're talking about that spectrum of people, I worked on a summer camp

271
00:27:45,520 --> 00:27:51,120
for seven, six years, excuse me. And it was a, it was a quite a wealthy camps as a performing arts

272
00:27:51,120 --> 00:27:57,200
camp, a lot of wealthy Jewish families would send their kids there. And when I worked there,

273
00:27:58,320 --> 00:28:02,240
there was one year I worked with a guy called Ty, who sadly, years later, I discovered a

274
00:28:02,240 --> 00:28:06,800
past away. I don't know what from to this day, but I ended up kind of naming my son after him,

275
00:28:06,800 --> 00:28:12,000
just because we just had this amazing friendship while we were there. But he'd always worked in

276
00:28:12,000 --> 00:28:17,040
the inner city camps. And he was a real like hip hop dude, you know, always wore all the camo and

277
00:28:17,040 --> 00:28:23,440
all that stuff. But we would compare notes. And it was the same thing, whether it was like you said,

278
00:28:23,440 --> 00:28:29,920
possibly, you know, fatherless kid that was on a sponsorship program from Brooklyn somewhere,

279
00:28:29,920 --> 00:28:35,200
or one of these wealthy kids that lived in Manhattan, you've got an absent father from

280
00:28:35,200 --> 00:28:42,240
whatever issue it is in the inner city dynamic, and then you've got a parent who's physically

281
00:28:42,240 --> 00:28:46,800
present, but maybe is absent. And the kids always in boarding school, and they never really see

282
00:28:46,800 --> 00:28:53,120
their parent, two different bank accounts, same kind of trauma, you know, so you know, as you said,

283
00:28:53,120 --> 00:28:58,960
it's not socio economic, it's a human experience. And then with the epigenetic side, I couldn't

284
00:28:58,960 --> 00:29:04,000
agree more. And it's something that I, you know, there's, there's no absolute, I'm sure there are

285
00:29:04,000 --> 00:29:09,360
some people that are drawn to addiction a little bit stronger. And I've heard that. However,

286
00:29:10,240 --> 00:29:16,960
when you look back, you know, is it, is it a gene and alcoholism gene? Or is it granddad,

287
00:29:16,960 --> 00:29:21,280
you know, was grazed around violence and great granddad was raised around violence. So it's this

288
00:29:21,280 --> 00:29:26,720
thing where, by the time you reach adulthood, you've been groomed the same way as your alcoholic

289
00:29:26,720 --> 00:29:33,360
parent, your alcoholic grandparent. So is nature and nurture, but to discard the ability to reverse

290
00:29:33,360 --> 00:29:38,640
that through changing your environment through post-traumatic growth is the same as saying,

291
00:29:38,640 --> 00:29:42,160
Oh, you'll never fix cancer. Here's your chemo. You know, we've got to do better. We've got to

292
00:29:42,160 --> 00:29:47,440
look at what causes cancer the same way. They're making money on it. Oh, yeah. That's the X

293
00:29:47,440 --> 00:29:52,240
conversation that well that we have to go there because the reality is it's not enough just to

294
00:29:52,240 --> 00:29:56,880
have the right intentions. It's not enough just to have it because they're still in a system.

295
00:29:56,880 --> 00:30:04,000
And this is where I get a little angry because I didn't serve to live in a system that is as

296
00:30:04,000 --> 00:30:10,640
broken as ours. And it's still the best country in my opinion on the planet, but it can be much

297
00:30:10,640 --> 00:30:18,000
better. And I don't, and that's, you know, that's part of my, you know, like we talked earlier,

298
00:30:18,000 --> 00:30:28,000
my programming, I did a very elite program and I don't aim low. I don't think we're designed to

299
00:30:28,000 --> 00:30:35,120
aim low. And if we, if we can, you know, this cliche, but if you can heal just one more person,

300
00:30:35,680 --> 00:30:39,760
it's a good, it's a win, but it's not one more person. This is millions of people were talking

301
00:30:39,760 --> 00:30:46,640
about here and you rep, you, you, you, you drop that ripple in the water and guess what happens?

302
00:30:46,640 --> 00:30:53,440
We create a better world and better families. And it's funny cause I, I've been watching this for

303
00:30:53,440 --> 00:31:00,880
five years. I've been healing. I've been helping show warriors how to heal themselves. And when

304
00:31:00,880 --> 00:31:07,680
you do that, you see the family heal and then you see the community heal and then you see the

305
00:31:07,680 --> 00:31:19,920
country heal. So it's a, it's time. That's a good place to segue. We're jumping ahead a little bit,

306
00:31:19,920 --> 00:31:26,640
but I know that you are, you know, a huge fan of one of the candidates that will be on the ballot

307
00:31:27,520 --> 00:31:33,280
later this year. I have said the same thing over and over again, again, I'm coming from another

308
00:31:33,280 --> 00:31:40,640
country. I'm an American citizen. Now my country, the way we chose people, there wasn't the financial

309
00:31:40,640 --> 00:31:46,480
element, but you still end up with the same kind of idiot over and over and over again, because of

310
00:31:46,480 --> 00:31:52,320
the broken system that we use there in America. You know, if you're a millionaire and you have no

311
00:31:52,320 --> 00:31:58,400
ethics, man, you're on the fucking, you know, super fast train to becoming the next president

312
00:31:58,400 --> 00:32:04,000
because our system is so fucked up that all the good leaders of the world can't or won't participate.

313
00:32:04,560 --> 00:32:09,200
So talk to me about your perspective. Cause the reason I asked that is I believe completely that

314
00:32:09,200 --> 00:32:15,360
community is the, is the answer to this trauma. But let's be honest, the last two administrations

315
00:32:15,360 --> 00:32:20,960
which span both sides of the aisle, I've done nothing but divide this country and set groups

316
00:32:20,960 --> 00:32:27,120
against each other. So what is your perspective at the top as far as, you know, some people that

317
00:32:27,120 --> 00:32:30,400
you're excited about that maybe will start pulling us back together again?

318
00:32:30,960 --> 00:32:36,720
Yeah. Let me first explain my mindset and what you just said. If you're in a system,

319
00:32:38,480 --> 00:32:41,840
there's this thing in the intelligence world called being handled.

320
00:32:43,600 --> 00:32:48,880
There's a reason why every actor has an agent and every network in Hollywood has three letters.

321
00:32:50,240 --> 00:32:56,080
And so when you see the world, like I see the world, which is, I would say slightly different

322
00:32:56,080 --> 00:33:05,200
than most people. It's, it's because I'm aware of the system. And if I want to fix the system,

323
00:33:05,200 --> 00:33:11,840
I have to get outside of the system. And so my goal in my life is to never be handled by money

324
00:33:12,400 --> 00:33:19,920
or by anything. I want to be a free man. I am a free man. And so we're, again, it goes back to

325
00:33:19,920 --> 00:33:27,760
my programming of being a problem solver. So I see the corruption in big pharma. We see the

326
00:33:27,760 --> 00:33:33,120
corruption. The big pharma doesn't just corrupt. It's not just big pharma and the drugs. It's the

327
00:33:33,120 --> 00:33:38,960
fact that big pharma owns the medical schools that programs our healers into a system that's

328
00:33:38,960 --> 00:33:45,680
controlled by our insurance. Absolutely. And that's just one pillar, but you got to look at the

329
00:33:45,680 --> 00:33:54,240
military industrial complex, which causes this cycle of trauma, addictions, brokenness.

330
00:33:56,000 --> 00:34:01,120
People want to look at the movies and say, thank you for your service and say, man, what a

331
00:34:01,120 --> 00:34:07,280
honorable thing. They don't see the destructive families in the shit we leave for our kids.

332
00:34:08,560 --> 00:34:13,200
And so there's the military industrial complex, there's the big pharma, and there's a banking

333
00:34:13,200 --> 00:34:21,120
system, which is controlled by Black Rock, State Street, and Vanguard. If this sounds familiar,

334
00:34:21,120 --> 00:34:26,320
you've probably been listening to a guy named Mr. Bobby Kennedy Jr. because he's the only one

335
00:34:26,320 --> 00:34:32,320
that's talking about it. And I also have an experience in the intelligence world of doing

336
00:34:32,320 --> 00:34:38,000
asset validation. If you want to find out who someone is, you look at their trauma.

337
00:34:38,000 --> 00:34:47,120
And you see that he has seen behind the curtain the whole time, and they killed his dad, and they

338
00:34:47,120 --> 00:34:53,200
killed his uncle. And I say they, we know who you're talking about. The gig is up. So it's like,

339
00:34:54,320 --> 00:35:00,560
how do you fix the system? You get behind a champion that's aiming dead center, center mass

340
00:35:00,560 --> 00:35:09,360
to unify this country. And it's going to take a miracle, but I believe in miracles. And I believe

341
00:35:09,360 --> 00:35:17,040
in someone that's willing to risk their own safety of their life for the betterment of our children

342
00:35:17,040 --> 00:35:20,640
in our country. So I'm going with Bobby on this one.

343
00:35:20,640 --> 00:35:27,440
When I listened to him on Joe Rogan, I was really impressed. When I listened to Tulsi,

344
00:35:27,440 --> 00:35:30,800
who's supposed to be coming on at some point, I've been waiting for a while now, but it's

345
00:35:30,800 --> 00:35:34,560
going to happen eventually. But I don't think she's going to be running, if I'm not mistaken.

346
00:35:34,560 --> 00:35:39,760
But again, it seemed like a person who understands fitness, who had been in the military, who,

347
00:35:40,640 --> 00:35:45,280
again, was someone who was pulling people together rather than driving it apart, them apart.

348
00:35:45,280 --> 00:35:51,600
But this is what we need. It really is. And these truths are apparent to us. I think that's what

349
00:35:51,600 --> 00:35:57,040
made people so scared about even podcasts. Joe Rogan's done an amazing job, whether people love

350
00:35:57,040 --> 00:36:04,160
him or hate him, of really pulling uncomfortable situations out into the light. But when it comes

351
00:36:04,160 --> 00:36:11,280
to the big farmer and all these monsters that are coming out of the country, it's really

352
00:36:11,280 --> 00:36:19,120
the big farmer and all these monster corporations that are behind a lot of this. Something that I

353
00:36:19,120 --> 00:36:24,080
kind of had an aha moment on recently is we talk about the mental health crisis. Well, you and I

354
00:36:25,280 --> 00:36:30,080
wouldn't be able to sleep at night if we made products that kill people, the devastated

355
00:36:30,080 --> 00:36:36,960
families in West Virginia or Ohio, or we're sending our young men and women off to war

356
00:36:36,960 --> 00:36:43,280
simply because then we could sell more uniforms and whatever it was. And then I realized, well,

357
00:36:43,280 --> 00:36:48,880
that's also the mental health crisis. The reason that you can own a fast food chain knowing that

358
00:36:48,880 --> 00:36:54,160
obesity and diabetes is partly your fault and sleep at night or cigarettes or whatever it is,

359
00:36:54,160 --> 00:36:59,360
is because you yourself have become a sociopath. It's the only way that you'd be able to sleep

360
00:36:59,360 --> 00:37:04,400
knowing that your products are killing people. So this is, I think, another part of the conversation

361
00:37:04,400 --> 00:37:10,640
is we got to switch it back to the politicians, the frivolous lawsuit lawyers, all these people

362
00:37:10,640 --> 00:37:17,360
that profit out of greed, that they are sick. That's the only way to put it. They are mentally

363
00:37:17,360 --> 00:37:21,680
sick. So when we're trying to understand why they don't change, because they haven't faced

364
00:37:21,680 --> 00:37:27,040
their own trauma. Yeah. And I understand what you're saying about the sociopath.

365
00:37:27,040 --> 00:37:39,360
For me, it's about being a predator. And I was a predator. I was trained to be the best predator

366
00:37:39,360 --> 00:37:45,760
on the damn planet. And we'll be writing about the people that I was a predator with for a long time.

367
00:37:47,280 --> 00:37:54,640
But if you want to look at psychological, like a good psychological analysis,

368
00:37:54,640 --> 00:38:02,160
a predator, we call that the sympathetic state, which is flight, fight, procreate, or freeze.

369
00:38:02,800 --> 00:38:10,800
Most people freeze. And so that's acting in an animal state. Now, if you do that long enough,

370
00:38:10,800 --> 00:38:17,280
you are programming your neurological system, which is the computer, that runs the whole damn

371
00:38:17,280 --> 00:38:25,680
thing into a primal survival state, which drives up cortisol and does a whole bunch of bad things.

372
00:38:26,240 --> 00:38:33,280
And here's the other side, all the addictions, the porn addictions, the alcohol, the abuse,

373
00:38:33,280 --> 00:38:43,680
all this crap, literally it's run off the program. So I believe, and I think theology hijacks this,

374
00:38:43,680 --> 00:38:49,600
too, because we're taught if you're raised as a Christian or a spiritual or any kind of religion

375
00:38:49,600 --> 00:38:58,640
that you're above all the animals, that you're human. We just happen to born naked with Victorian

376
00:38:58,640 --> 00:39:06,800
bodies and eat this apple and everything goes to shit. Well, I'm like, no, we're still freaking

377
00:39:06,800 --> 00:39:12,000
human. We're still animals. We still have fangs. We still can kill people. We still have that

378
00:39:12,000 --> 00:39:18,000
ability to destroy and to do things that are inhumane. And I think it's the cognizance of

379
00:39:18,000 --> 00:39:26,000
diffidence that you can justify your actions by making millions of dollars by selling poison

380
00:39:26,000 --> 00:39:33,040
to people. And you can sleep at night. And the funny thing is you can't fake the funk on a nasty

381
00:39:33,040 --> 00:39:37,600
dunk. Those people are the ones that have the corruption and they're the ones that have all the

382
00:39:37,600 --> 00:39:45,120
addictions. Here's a perfect example of a beautiful Ark. I love Arks. I'm a writer, so I like stories

383
00:39:45,120 --> 00:39:51,600
with Arks. The Wolf of Wall Street guy, I forgot his name. He just did a podcast with my friends

384
00:39:51,600 --> 00:39:58,720
down in Cancun who run an Ibogaine addiction center called Beyond. And my friend Talia,

385
00:39:58,720 --> 00:40:06,800
she's just a wonderful human being and she's pregnant right now and she's a heavyweight

386
00:40:06,800 --> 00:40:15,120
and she beat her heroin addiction. And so I've gotten to speak with her and she has a lot of

387
00:40:15,120 --> 00:40:21,040
celebrities down there in her clinic. And this guy from the Wolf of Wall Street, just a horrible

388
00:40:21,040 --> 00:40:28,080
person, right? Just nasty, nasty, nasty, nasty stuff. The guy does these psychedelics and he

389
00:40:28,080 --> 00:40:35,600
has this Ark and now he's talking about how to become a better human being. So you don't have to

390
00:40:35,600 --> 00:40:41,520
look further than the Bible to look for characters that have good Arks and say that these guys were,

391
00:40:41,520 --> 00:40:49,680
you know, one guy killed a Christian, you know, Saul, you know, and the Paul. And so you have these

392
00:40:49,680 --> 00:40:59,840
Arks. And here's where I get a little crazy and I start looking at this religious text now with

393
00:40:59,840 --> 00:41:05,840
the archaeological supported data that there might've been psychedelics involved back then.

394
00:41:07,440 --> 00:41:12,640
I mean, was the burning bush, was it really burning? Maybe in the eye of the beholder,

395
00:41:13,600 --> 00:41:20,560
you know, was that bush maybe an Ibogaine brush? Maybe. I don't know. You know, it's like I,

396
00:41:22,320 --> 00:41:26,880
I just think there's more to the story. Yeah. Well, I mean, this is the thing and we'll get into it,

397
00:41:26,880 --> 00:41:32,560
but this is the arrogance of modern medicine. And again, let me preface elements of modern medicine

398
00:41:32,560 --> 00:41:39,920
are phenomenal. I mean, you know, the horrors of war also brought out the incredible trauma surgery,

399
00:41:39,920 --> 00:41:44,400
prosthesis, you know, I would not want to have surgery with that anesthetic. You know, some of

400
00:41:44,400 --> 00:41:49,280
the emergency medicine drugs that I used as a paramedic, you know, were phenomenal, literally

401
00:41:49,280 --> 00:41:54,800
saved lives Narcan and D50 and Epi and some of these other ones, even though a lot of them are

402
00:41:54,800 --> 00:42:02,000
actually naturally occurring, they just synthesize them. But, you know, when it comes to, you know,

403
00:42:02,000 --> 00:42:11,360
the disease management and the psychiatric meds, there's become this forced snobbery and, you know,

404
00:42:11,360 --> 00:42:18,400
ridicule of medicine that had lasted for not just centuries, millennia. And we are finally having

405
00:42:18,400 --> 00:42:22,800
this awakening of something that's only been thrust upon us for a few decades, which is

406
00:42:22,800 --> 00:42:28,080
most of the chronic disease medicine doesn't work. Arguably even chemo, the old chemo, at least,

407
00:42:28,080 --> 00:42:32,800
you know, let's just scorch earth, the body and fingers crossed that it survives. It doesn't seem

408
00:42:32,800 --> 00:42:37,840
to be great medicine to me, but now we're looking at whether it's chiropractic and acupuncture or,

409
00:42:38,480 --> 00:42:41,120
you know, Ibogaine or, you know, THC. Rick Simpson oil.

410
00:42:41,120 --> 00:42:46,160
Yeah, I mean, all of the things. Yeah, Rick Simpson oil, they're saying it's shrinking tumors.

411
00:42:46,160 --> 00:42:53,360
If you go watch the documentary Dose 2, and it talks about this high concentration of THC

412
00:42:54,480 --> 00:42:59,360
that comes in this little tar and you take a little teeny dab of it and

413
00:43:00,720 --> 00:43:02,960
there's no money in healing. I'm just going to say that.

414
00:43:04,240 --> 00:43:10,320
Well, I had Paige Figge on the show. Her daughter, Charlotte, is the Charlotte's web story,

415
00:43:10,320 --> 00:43:16,560
the little girl with these basically fatal seizures. She sees for like 29 minutes,

416
00:43:16,560 --> 00:43:20,480
was post-ictal for a minute and then went to a seizure again, like every 30 minutes.

417
00:43:21,040 --> 00:43:27,520
And it was just CBD. That's all they put into her stomach tube. And then she stopped seizing almost

418
00:43:27,520 --> 00:43:30,960
immediately. It diminished, diminished, diminished. And she lived for nine years,

419
00:43:30,960 --> 00:43:37,040
ended up having a febrile seizure in the night from COVID that killed her. But she got nine years.

420
00:43:37,040 --> 00:43:43,040
She was on the hospital before and that was simply CBD. So this is what, you know, that they don't

421
00:43:43,040 --> 00:43:48,640
want you to hear is the, if these incredible success of something that you don't need to have

422
00:43:48,640 --> 00:43:52,560
insurance and a prescription for, you can literally buy it in your health food store.

423
00:43:52,560 --> 00:43:57,760
So, yeah. And so this is where I get into the gray area, because if I was to wait for someone

424
00:43:57,760 --> 00:44:03,120
to say it was legal before I started to do this work, then we will be waiting for a long time.

425
00:44:03,120 --> 00:44:10,320
And I don't believe, again, I don't believe we were meant to survive. And I also believe in this

426
00:44:10,320 --> 00:44:15,280
concept called paying it forward. I only got this healing treatment because I was a SEAL.

427
00:44:16,480 --> 00:44:23,040
And I know that. And so it's my duty, which gives me purpose, because I'm a service guy.

428
00:44:23,040 --> 00:44:29,520
So in SEALs we're like, find the next job, find another job. This gives me my passion and my

429
00:44:29,520 --> 00:44:39,040
purpose. And I don't need anything else in this life. And so we are waking up a lot of things.

430
00:44:39,040 --> 00:44:47,040
I think it's a 5,000 year gap on humanity that we're reaching right now. The other thing is

431
00:44:49,520 --> 00:44:53,520
when you start to, okay, so let's just talk about the nervous system for a second, right?

432
00:44:53,520 --> 00:45:01,600
Most of science, most of medicine is going to treat the physical manifestation of the body,

433
00:45:02,320 --> 00:45:10,880
the mechanisms. Why? Because that's how science works. You study a hypothesis and then you try to

434
00:45:10,880 --> 00:45:16,960
support it by your data. And even that's hijacked because we know who owns the medical journals.

435
00:45:18,480 --> 00:45:23,440
So there's all these things that you have to look at if you're really going to try to figure

436
00:45:23,440 --> 00:45:30,160
this thing out. And the thing that kills me is that we're not focusing on the nervous system.

437
00:45:30,160 --> 00:45:35,600
And that nervous system is an energetic system. And it's okay for people to say, you have a

438
00:45:37,600 --> 00:45:48,000
NA node or SA node in your heart that generates an electrical impulse that you don't need any

439
00:45:48,000 --> 00:45:53,360
connection for. And that's okay. We can say that. We've been saying that for 50, 60 years probably.

440
00:45:54,400 --> 00:45:57,120
But if I start talking about the nervous system being an energetic

441
00:45:58,960 --> 00:46:04,560
system, people go, you're crazy. That's woo woo talk. And I'm looking at people like Einstein,

442
00:46:04,560 --> 00:46:10,800
who was a psychonaut, who did LSD with Albert Hoffman, the one that found it in 1938. And they

443
00:46:10,800 --> 00:46:15,920
actually made LSD because they were trying to cauterize blood vessels. That was the whole

444
00:46:15,920 --> 00:46:21,360
purpose. And they were synthesizing this molecule from a fungus called ergot, which they're now

445
00:46:21,360 --> 00:46:30,240
finding on the teeth of the molars next to the chalices in ancient Greece in the years 2500 BC

446
00:46:30,240 --> 00:46:40,480
to 392 AD. Come on. It's fungus. It grows on trees. It grows on barley. We have mushrooms all over

447
00:46:40,480 --> 00:46:44,560
the world. And you're telling me over the last millions of years that man was a hunter and

448
00:46:44,560 --> 00:46:49,040
gatherer, that they didn't come across this and all these ancient civilizations didn't have some

449
00:46:49,040 --> 00:46:56,960
other intelligence. And I'm not buying it. And I'm proof that in five years, my brain has gotten

450
00:46:56,960 --> 00:47:04,640
smarter. I've gotten healthier. And I've beaten all my addictions to include alcohol, porn, and

451
00:47:04,640 --> 00:47:09,200
pills. And the middle one was the hardest because I started that when I was a kid to deal with my

452
00:47:09,200 --> 00:47:14,960
parents. See, we're always programming ourselves. We're always trying to find the dopamine.

453
00:47:15,520 --> 00:47:20,880
We're always trying to self-heal. And it's just because we weren't taught the right way to do

454
00:47:20,880 --> 00:47:27,600
things that we're here. And so we need to bring awareness to what's a medicine, what's a drug,

455
00:47:28,320 --> 00:47:33,280
and know that the things that they're telling you could kill you because then they give you an SSRI.

456
00:47:33,280 --> 00:47:41,360
They say, you know, side effects, suicidal thoughts. They tell you and yet we still take it.

457
00:47:41,360 --> 00:47:46,160
Why? Because we're programmed because the person with the white coat comes in and we're in pain.

458
00:47:46,160 --> 00:47:52,240
Guess what? Give me, give me what I need because this is, I'm not feeling good. And this is,

459
00:47:52,240 --> 00:47:57,120
you're the, you're the one with the white coat. Bullshit. It's bullshit.

460
00:47:57,120 --> 00:48:04,640
I mean, those, those drug side effects, some of them, you know, it's literally like having a

461
00:48:04,640 --> 00:48:10,480
femoral bleed and then someone handing you a tourniquet that says, Oh, my cause severe bleeding.

462
00:48:10,480 --> 00:48:14,880
Like you don't want to see that on a tourniquet. You want to see this will stop the bleeding. And

463
00:48:14,880 --> 00:48:20,160
the same, you know, with a mental health product, you know, it's gotta, it's gotta be an improvement.

464
00:48:20,160 --> 00:48:26,480
But how many times have we heard whether it was suicide or homicide that psychiatric meds are

465
00:48:26,480 --> 00:48:34,960
involved? 93% as I'm sorry, as you're on board of 93% of our suicide. And that's just the ones that

466
00:48:34,960 --> 00:48:41,200
we know that were suicide. That's probably, I don't know, maybe a third of them because most

467
00:48:41,200 --> 00:48:46,640
of them are accidents. Here's the other thing. So we're talking about the energy system, the nervous

468
00:48:46,640 --> 00:48:57,280
system, right? If I reset the energy, learn how to surrender, learn how to let go in a safe space,

469
00:48:57,280 --> 00:49:01,280
using my breath and the energy of my comrades around me.

470
00:49:04,320 --> 00:49:09,760
Do you, do you think that's a better model here? Heal the nervous system to reset and then rebuild.

471
00:49:09,760 --> 00:49:14,880
And the rebuild part is your integration tools. And that's the one that we need more awareness

472
00:49:14,880 --> 00:49:19,040
on because not everyone's going to do the psychedelics. It's not for everybody. Okay.

473
00:49:19,040 --> 00:49:22,960
And I'm not trying to say that if you take psychedelics, your world is going to get

474
00:49:23,840 --> 00:49:30,160
better again. It's about the intention and the awareness that creates all this stuff. And it's

475
00:49:30,160 --> 00:49:36,400
about the belief system. So it starts with an intention. You have the right environment

476
00:49:37,200 --> 00:49:42,960
and you develop a belief system off of an experience and then a series of experiences.

477
00:49:42,960 --> 00:49:49,760
That's what fires and rewires the nervous system. So can you use cold water to learn

478
00:49:50,320 --> 00:49:54,320
that you are not your nervous system and you learn how to surrender and you learn how to

479
00:49:54,640 --> 00:49:59,520
slip into the parasympathetic holding on to the exhale and the fake vagal response.

480
00:49:59,520 --> 00:50:04,400
You can do these things to support the psychedelic work or you can just do

481
00:50:04,400 --> 00:50:09,200
this without the psychedelic work and do holotropic breath work, which this book

482
00:50:09,200 --> 00:50:18,800
is the real version of psychology. This takes in consideration the non-ordinary states of

483
00:50:18,800 --> 00:50:32,800
consciousness and the Freudian analysis and the animal research or whatever, like lab rat shit.

484
00:50:32,800 --> 00:50:41,680
But this book is written by Stan Goff, who had over 4,500 LSD sessions in Europe.

485
00:50:45,120 --> 00:50:51,600
You can do a lot with just a breath, but again, these are major concepts. These are big woo-woo

486
00:50:51,600 --> 00:50:55,600
terms for people that are just like, they're probably listening to this going, like, who is

487
00:50:55,600 --> 00:51:03,520
this nutcase? But I don't want to do the normal thing. That's sick to me. I don't want to ever

488
00:51:03,520 --> 00:51:11,920
do that ever again. I want to be free. I want to help others heal and speak truth. That's it.

489
00:51:12,880 --> 00:51:17,040
Well, I want to hear your healing journey and then we'll actually get into some of the things

490
00:51:17,040 --> 00:51:23,200
that you're doing now. You talked about the decision to enter the Navy as a SEAL. Walk me

491
00:51:23,200 --> 00:51:30,560
through your journey, what allowed you to succeed when you went through BUDS and beyond, and then

492
00:51:30,560 --> 00:51:38,240
how you found yourself as a medic specifically. Oh man. So I had a passion for medicine my whole

493
00:51:38,240 --> 00:51:46,800
life. That's really why I came into SEAL Teams. It was to be a healer. I thought I was trying to be

494
00:51:46,800 --> 00:51:59,840
a killer, but it was to be that guy when my friends got shot. That was what was driving me.

495
00:52:02,400 --> 00:52:06,240
And the affirmation of making it through training, right? Man camp, they call it.

496
00:52:07,680 --> 00:52:14,000
But I did real well in BUDS. I graduated top of my class. I think I was second in the rankings

497
00:52:14,000 --> 00:52:26,640
for honor man, but we had a great class, class 252. And I felt like life just prepared me so

498
00:52:26,640 --> 00:52:36,800
much for BUDS. I was a good runner. I was a great PT guy. I had to do some work in swimming just

499
00:52:36,800 --> 00:52:43,840
because I wasn't a disciplined swimmer, but you put fins on me, then I turned into a motorboat.

500
00:52:43,840 --> 00:52:57,680
So I could swim with the fins. And it got through first time. I only failed. I never failed any

501
00:52:57,680 --> 00:53:04,640
physical evolutions in BUDS. I only failed a swim, a dive test. And it was because instructor kicked

502
00:53:04,640 --> 00:53:10,320
me in the back of the head on my free ascent and I thought he'd tap me, but he kicked me. So I came

503
00:53:10,320 --> 00:53:17,680
up and they failed me for it. That was it. That's the only thing I failed. I went after BUDS, we went

504
00:53:17,680 --> 00:53:24,160
to SQT, which is another six months. It's where you really learn the skills after you beat the

505
00:53:24,160 --> 00:53:31,040
hell out of you for six months. And then after that, I went to SOT diver school. So I learned

506
00:53:31,040 --> 00:53:38,880
some dive medicine as a, cause I was already a corpsman. And after SOT, I went to jump school

507
00:53:38,880 --> 00:53:43,440
at Fort Benning, which is like three weeks to show you how to jump out of a plane. It's like,

508
00:53:43,440 --> 00:53:50,240
you only need like three days to do that. And then after that, I went to 18 Delta, which is the,

509
00:53:50,240 --> 00:53:57,360
well, it was actually special operation medic course in Fort Bragg. And I did graduate top

510
00:53:57,360 --> 00:54:05,440
my class in that program. And I wanted to do the long course, but then I was like, after seven

511
00:54:05,440 --> 00:54:09,600
months, I think of being at Bragg, I was like, get me the hell out of here. Plus my buddies were all

512
00:54:09,600 --> 00:54:16,160
going down range and I was like, I need to get back to the team. So I got back to the team.

513
00:54:16,160 --> 00:54:21,760
I went to team two, met up with a couple of BUDS instructors that were chiefs of platoons. And I

514
00:54:21,760 --> 00:54:29,440
just walked in to this little restaurant and I saw them on the table and I said, what can I do to get

515
00:54:29,440 --> 00:54:36,800
me, for you to get me in your platoon? And I said, I want to be an asset. And so I got into a

516
00:54:36,800 --> 00:54:43,600
platoon. They traded for me, which is cool. And got in a great platoon at SEAL team two. We ended

517
00:54:43,600 --> 00:54:50,240
up going to Abani and Fallujah. We had sister platoons, so we just did both sets. But before

518
00:54:50,240 --> 00:54:58,800
that, I got to go to Al-Assad on that deployment in 2006 to work in the cache with our head surgeon

519
00:54:58,800 --> 00:55:08,000
for the Naval Special Warfare unit. So I got to go up to him and work on surgeries, do chest tubes

520
00:55:08,000 --> 00:55:15,280
and do all that. And it was there when I remembered I had some words with a Colonel who was running

521
00:55:15,280 --> 00:55:21,680
the ER there. And we were talking about innovating in a field and criking. And I was like, I don't

522
00:55:21,680 --> 00:55:27,680
carry an innovation kit in the field. And they're like, why not? Why would you not? Because it

523
00:55:27,680 --> 00:55:33,920
doesn't make any sense. If I can get the thing in, get him air right away, I can preserve his brain.

524
00:55:34,800 --> 00:55:40,880
And by the way, we're getting shot at. This isn't like raise the table and pick your blade and do

525
00:55:40,880 --> 00:55:48,960
that. So it kind of showed me my mindset into trauma medicine. I was going to be against the

526
00:55:49,680 --> 00:55:57,440
narrative or what they thought was good medicine. And I learned after 16 years as a SEAL medic and

527
00:55:57,440 --> 00:56:04,560
helped write some of the curriculum for TCCC and started the SEAL medic course that we broke away

528
00:56:04,560 --> 00:56:12,960
from BRAG and did our own SEAL medic course in Mississippi. I started to see like, man, this is

529
00:56:12,960 --> 00:56:18,640
cool because we're using our experience to drive medicine forward, especially trauma medicine.

530
00:56:20,400 --> 00:56:25,600
And you're right. There's two things that come out of war. Well, three, oil.

531
00:56:25,600 --> 00:56:31,840
Medicine and weapons. Right? So medicine and weapons are what comes out of war. And we're seeing

532
00:56:31,840 --> 00:56:36,640
that now. I mean, we saw it with the amputations. We did more amputations in this last war than all

533
00:56:36,640 --> 00:56:43,200
wars combined. And partially it's because we had the ability to do them successfully. The awareness

534
00:56:43,200 --> 00:56:52,800
of a tourniquet. I mean, I remember in 2005, 2006, we'd be partying and somebody would get cut and

535
00:56:52,800 --> 00:56:57,840
the guy would put a tourniquet on his leg and the ER or the EMS guys would get here and they would

536
00:56:57,840 --> 00:57:05,760
start yelling at us for putting tourniquets on them. And we're like, gotta preserve that shit.

537
00:57:05,760 --> 00:57:12,480
You only got so much in the body. And it's just that mentality. So yeah, so the trauma medicine

538
00:57:12,480 --> 00:57:18,240
was my background. And then I got into intelligence and I didn't want to do intelligence. I was

539
00:57:18,240 --> 00:57:22,960
already paranoid. I was already like, I cared what people thought. And that's probably why

540
00:57:23,440 --> 00:57:32,880
I had some of the issues I had with addictions is that I was just subconsciously, I didn't feel,

541
00:57:33,680 --> 00:57:39,280
I guess I felt undervalued and it probably comes from my childhood traumas of my father kind of,

542
00:57:39,280 --> 00:57:47,600
you know, digging into me a little bit or a lot. And so, yeah, so it was my identity. And so we

543
00:57:47,600 --> 00:57:55,040
were the shield and we had this trident and you look good jawlines and all that, you know, and so

544
00:57:55,040 --> 00:58:00,880
we're like showing this front and we're and when we get to the medicine at the end, when everything's

545
00:58:00,880 --> 00:58:06,480
gone to shit and everybody's got the same symptoms and they've mostly guys had a gun in their mouth

546
00:58:06,480 --> 00:58:12,240
or, you know, all these women, the families are dissolved and this just, this despair,

547
00:58:12,640 --> 00:58:20,400
he's broken down soldiers and warriors and they're just, they don't got anywhere else to go.

548
00:58:21,360 --> 00:58:25,600
And I think that's part of the success is that when they come in like that,

549
00:58:27,360 --> 00:58:33,600
it's easier to surrender. And when you do, you see it, you see it when they come out of the medicine,

550
00:58:33,600 --> 00:58:39,520
the five MEO DMT, the protocol that I've been studying the most out of all the psychedelics

551
00:58:39,520 --> 00:58:45,520
is Ibogaine with the five MEO DMT a day off in between. And this is what we've been used.

552
00:58:45,520 --> 00:58:50,640
The Stanford's been studying this, the University of Texas at Austin's been studying this protocol,

553
00:58:50,640 --> 00:58:58,720
which was developed by Dr. Martin Polanco from the Mission Within. And I want people to know

554
00:58:58,720 --> 00:59:05,040
that it's this gentleman, Mr. Dr. Martin Polanco, who is going to be the doctor to go down as the

555
00:59:05,040 --> 00:59:14,720
one to heal the seals. And he's a dear friend of mine. And when I did the five MEO a second time,

556
00:59:16,080 --> 00:59:22,480
first time I had no clue what I was doing. They blindfolded me and took me to a mansion in Rancho,

557
00:59:22,480 --> 00:59:29,040
Santa Fe, where there was an MD and his wife, who was kind of like a shaman healer,

558
00:59:31,040 --> 00:59:36,480
and this Vietnam seal who was a friend of mine. And they blindfolded me to get to the house because

559
00:59:36,480 --> 00:59:46,320
I was still active at the time. And I reached my rock bottom and they just said, you know,

560
00:59:46,320 --> 00:59:52,560
just do this and whatever work you got to do, just surrender to it. And so I didn't know what that

561
00:59:52,560 --> 00:59:59,680
meant. And so I fought it and locked up and it felt like eternity and it hurt like hell. And at that

562
00:59:59,680 --> 01:00:08,320
time, I just lost an approved medical retirement that was stripped from me in 10 days. My ex-wife

563
01:00:08,320 --> 01:00:15,280
put a restraining order on me. It was erroneous. I lost my four kids on Father's Day. And I was

564
01:00:15,280 --> 01:00:22,560
on Father's Day. Last time I talked to them was Father's Day 2019. So I lost all of these things

565
01:00:22,560 --> 01:00:28,960
in like, it was 10 days and that's how I showed up to the medicine. And so I didn't really want to

566
01:00:28,960 --> 01:00:38,880
live anymore. It was just, it was so heavy. And I remember in that state, I thought, you know,

567
01:00:38,880 --> 01:00:47,120
this is the CIA. This is my ex-wife who had some big time connections that they were euthanizing

568
01:00:47,120 --> 01:00:52,640
me. And I was like, I came out of it. And so they say, if you're not done with the work,

569
01:00:52,640 --> 01:01:00,880
you can ask for more. So I sat back up and I took another inhale of this toad and went back down

570
01:01:00,880 --> 01:01:06,240
and did it again the third time. I said, okay, this is it. I surrender. I'm okay to leave.

571
01:01:06,240 --> 01:01:15,840
And at that time it was like, wham. And I saw this glow and these little glows and something

572
01:01:15,840 --> 01:01:21,520
happened. And now I know what that is. It's the brain is tricked on this medicine. And if you

573
01:01:21,520 --> 01:01:27,680
surrender, it blasts you off into this near death experience, which sounds crazy. But again, it's

574
01:01:27,680 --> 01:01:31,680
about the experience. It doesn't matter if it's real or not. The body doesn't know the difference.

575
01:01:31,680 --> 01:01:36,720
The body doesn't know the difference. And so with that, you get a reset, you get a rebirth,

576
01:01:37,360 --> 01:01:45,600
and you get this new life. And I swear to God, the people that do it, they know this. When you come

577
01:01:45,600 --> 01:01:52,480
out of this medicine, it's like you've de-aged 10 years. All the stress, all the anxiety for the

578
01:01:52,480 --> 01:01:57,920
first time in most people's lives, they've never experienced anything like this. And this is why

579
01:01:57,920 --> 01:02:05,520
I'm like, this has to be from God because there's nothing on the planet that can do that. But it

580
01:02:06,080 --> 01:02:12,000
can't be done for you. You got to do the surrender. And that's why I say it's not for everybody. But

581
01:02:12,000 --> 01:02:18,080
for those that have been hijacked or massively programmed like we were in the SEAL teams,

582
01:02:19,600 --> 01:02:22,800
this is the best shot we got. It's the best medicine we got.

583
01:02:22,800 --> 01:02:30,400
I've heard this story over and over again. I had Marcus Capone on the show who obviously has been

584
01:02:31,600 --> 01:02:37,760
one of the voices from your community talking about this therapy. And I think I should get

585
01:02:37,760 --> 01:02:39,760
Dr. Blanco on the show. I think that would be a fun one.

586
01:02:39,760 --> 01:02:44,800
Oh, yeah. He doesn't like to talk too much. He's pretty humble. It'd be tough.

587
01:02:47,040 --> 01:02:48,800
Maybe. We can try.

588
01:02:48,800 --> 01:02:55,280
I'll try. But I mean, literally, I've had a lot of your community on the show. Some of my,

589
01:02:55,280 --> 01:03:00,800
some of our come dear friends, Ryan Parrott, for example. And over and over and over again,

590
01:03:00,800 --> 01:03:05,600
I hear the same story. And with them, a lot of time it's Ibogaine. And you listen to them and

591
01:03:05,600 --> 01:03:10,400
there's alcoholism, there's a drug addiction, there's all these things. And then they walk out

592
01:03:10,960 --> 01:03:16,400
not wanting it anymore. And again, like you said, it's not a magic pill one and done, but it's

593
01:03:16,400 --> 01:03:19,760
helped them process that. And then you've obviously got to keep doing the work after. But

594
01:03:20,480 --> 01:03:25,280
the number of lives that have been saved, the number of voices that I've heard on this podcast

595
01:03:25,280 --> 01:03:32,320
because that worked is absolutely incredible. Yeah, it is. I was at Marcus's house filming a

596
01:03:32,320 --> 01:03:41,120
little thing when he was about to go down there and I got to meet his wife, Melanie, I think her

597
01:03:41,120 --> 01:03:48,960
name is in. And that's Amber Capone, you're probably thinking of. That's Marcus. Oh, you said

598
01:03:48,960 --> 01:03:55,200
Marcus Capone. Yes. Oh, I thought you said Marcus Luttrell. I'm sorry. Oh, no, but that's that's

599
01:03:55,200 --> 01:03:59,360
someone I'd love to get on the show. Yeah, I was at Luttrell's house when he was about to go down

600
01:03:59,360 --> 01:04:03,280
and do it. And his brother was there. So I got to talk to them and his brother Morgan is actually

601
01:04:03,280 --> 01:04:13,120
a politician out of Texas. And he's been essential actually in moving this thing called the Breakthrough

602
01:04:13,120 --> 01:04:19,840
Therapies Act forward. But yeah, Marcus Capone actually was healed at the Mission Within

603
01:04:20,560 --> 01:04:25,840
under Dr. Martin Polanco. And so, yeah, I mean, I've known Marcus for a long time.

604
01:04:27,520 --> 01:04:32,960
You do, you see the same stories over and you're like, you know, it's all based on my perspective.

605
01:04:32,960 --> 01:04:39,280
Our reality is based off our perspective. So for me, I'm like, what the hell is going on here? But

606
01:04:39,280 --> 01:04:47,680
for someone that has no idea that this even exists, it's different. One is it's the same facade that

607
01:04:47,680 --> 01:04:53,440
my community struggles with, that law enforcement struggles with, you know, is, and I heard this

608
01:04:53,440 --> 01:04:59,680
from so many of you, you know, you look at each other and you're going, why am I such a pussy?

609
01:04:59,680 --> 01:05:04,080
Why is everyone else okay? And I'm going through this shit. And the irony is they're looking at

610
01:05:04,080 --> 01:05:08,640
you thinking the same thing, because you need a mask to do what you do. I need a mask to do what

611
01:05:08,640 --> 01:05:12,800
I do. As I always tell people, I can't go on the scene of a crumpled car with people bleeding

612
01:05:12,800 --> 01:05:18,240
everywhere and start queening out, oh my God, so much blood. You have to put on a mask, you know,

613
01:05:18,240 --> 01:05:23,680
but then at the end of it, God forbid, you know, the children killed, you have to process that too.

614
01:05:23,680 --> 01:05:29,840
So the more of the voices like yours that we hear these, these real alphas, and I use that term,

615
01:05:29,840 --> 01:05:37,120
you know, uh, affectionately that of being vulnerable now about their struggles and bringing

616
01:05:37,120 --> 01:05:43,280
hope into the conversation, saying, here's some of the tools that I use to heal. That then debunks

617
01:05:43,280 --> 01:05:48,240
so many, especially men that tell themselves, oh, you know, I'm a, you know, only a pussy would,

618
01:05:48,240 --> 01:05:52,560
would have to go through that shit. Well, yeah, I don't think you're tougher than an SAS member

619
01:05:52,560 --> 01:05:58,800
or Navy seal or an elite firefighter or a SWAT operator. So, you know, look in the mirror,

620
01:05:58,800 --> 01:06:02,480
have some humility and realize that we all are going to struggle at some point.

621
01:06:02,480 --> 01:06:07,200
Yeah. I think that the hardest thing to do sometimes in life is learning how to let go.

622
01:06:08,960 --> 01:06:14,320
It comes down to your want. And if the want is outweighs,

623
01:06:14,320 --> 01:06:21,440
you know, the fear, and then you can do it, but not everyone is strong enough to do it. And they're

624
01:06:21,440 --> 01:06:28,320
not all we're not, look, we're not going to save everybody. I know that, but there's a shit load

625
01:06:28,320 --> 01:06:35,280
of people we can save. And, you know, it's, it's not even about the medicine really. I mean, it is,

626
01:06:35,280 --> 01:06:44,240
it's, it's a key, it's a tool, but it's more about the belief system. And I think that's

627
01:06:44,240 --> 01:06:50,640
the biggest thing about the belief system. And you're, you can change your belief systems by

628
01:06:50,640 --> 01:06:56,240
changing your experience. It takes energy. And that's why we're studying this stuff as an energy

629
01:06:56,240 --> 01:07:02,720
system, because whatever is in those plants, if it comes from, you know, whether you believe it

630
01:07:02,720 --> 01:07:09,200
comes from God or it just comes from nature, there's something in those molecules that interacts

631
01:07:09,200 --> 01:07:19,920
with our nervous system. And the biggest crime against humanity, in my opinion, is the inability

632
01:07:19,920 --> 01:07:26,720
to do the research because they were placed in a box called the Controlled Substance Act, 1970,

633
01:07:26,720 --> 01:07:36,320
by Dick Nixon and the CIA and the FDA and the DOJ and all the other agencies. I don't call Dick,

634
01:07:36,320 --> 01:07:45,280
call him President Nixon because he was a fascist dictator being used in our country. So I don't,

635
01:07:45,280 --> 01:07:52,160
he doesn't get the respect to call him a president. He's killed more people because of this

636
01:07:52,800 --> 01:07:59,440
Controlled Substance Act, which leads right into the war on drugs. And it wasn't a war on drugs.

637
01:07:59,440 --> 01:08:06,000
It was the business of drugs because people don't understand that the trade of opium that existed

638
01:08:06,000 --> 01:08:13,040
for thousands of years is one of the fuels that fuels our economy. And that under that trading of

639
01:08:13,040 --> 01:08:17,680
opium, which by the way, why do you think there were so many DA guys on our freaking missions

640
01:08:17,680 --> 01:08:25,440
in Afghanistan? Well, tell me about it. So just to jump in for a second, because in the seven years

641
01:08:25,440 --> 01:08:30,400
that I had the podcast, when I asked the question about, because I've talked about this a lot,

642
01:08:30,400 --> 01:08:35,440
you know, the illicit drug trade as a paramedic, as a firefighter, we're the ones that pull the

643
01:08:35,440 --> 01:08:42,000
drugs, excuse me, pull the sheets over the teens, the children that are killed in these wars on our

644
01:08:42,000 --> 01:08:47,280
streets over drugs. We're the ones that find the deceased overdoses. We're the ones that

645
01:08:47,280 --> 01:08:50,720
run on the homeless people that have been, you know, forced into the shadows because

646
01:08:50,720 --> 01:08:56,480
of their addiction, the prostitutes, et cetera, et cetera. So with this clear perspective,

647
01:08:56,480 --> 01:09:01,200
the war on drugs is a complete failure. And then I get people like Johann Hari on the show,

648
01:09:01,200 --> 01:09:08,960
who educates me through his book, Chasing the Scream, and Lost Addiction, Lost Connections.

649
01:09:09,760 --> 01:09:14,480
And you learn about the origin of the prohibition, which actually goes back to the 30s and Harry

650
01:09:14,480 --> 01:09:20,720
Anslinger when it came to marijuana, and then it just kind of snowballed from there. But that's

651
01:09:20,720 --> 01:09:25,120
what's created so many problems. Why are we having problems at the border with Mexico? It's not

652
01:09:25,120 --> 01:09:29,520
because they hate tacos. You know what I mean? They're not running in here because we make

653
01:09:29,520 --> 01:09:37,520
delicious donuts. There's a backstory of Colombia. But I asked my Afghan veterans about that element

654
01:09:37,520 --> 01:09:43,760
and what they see in Afghanistan. Very tight-lipped the first two or three years. But now they're

655
01:09:43,760 --> 01:09:50,240
talking about it. So talk to me about that when you're overseas. So about that border issue,

656
01:09:50,880 --> 01:09:56,400
put a pin in, go check out what Kennedy's saying about fixing the borders. It makes a hell of a

657
01:09:56,400 --> 01:10:04,080
lot more sense. And what we got right now in Texas with Biden threatening the state of Texas,

658
01:10:04,080 --> 01:10:10,320
that won't work out real well for anyone. And they know that. It's just a bluff. It's all part of the

659
01:10:10,320 --> 01:10:17,520
bullshit narrative that they're playing for this election year. But to back, yeah, the Afghanistan

660
01:10:17,520 --> 01:10:25,280
peace and the DEA involvement, none of us were aware of it at the time. We didn't understand.

661
01:10:25,280 --> 01:10:32,320
We just thought, oh, these terrorists that we're going after, selling opium and selling it to

662
01:10:32,320 --> 01:10:37,280
whoever, which they are, they're selling it to Russia. They're selling it to whoever is the buyer.

663
01:10:38,800 --> 01:10:47,120
But make no mistake, when you declare war on anyone, there's no more rules. There's no more

664
01:10:47,120 --> 01:10:54,160
like this thing where we're coming in and just taking kids and freeing them and doing it. It's

665
01:10:54,160 --> 01:11:02,640
not like that at all. I live on a Civil War battlefield. I'm from Detroit. I'm studying

666
01:11:02,640 --> 01:11:10,240
both sides of this war. And you know what I'm saying? Yes, they need a narrative to build a war.

667
01:11:11,120 --> 01:11:16,080
We will free the slaves. But what they didn't say is we're going to take all their freaking land

668
01:11:17,520 --> 01:11:21,920
and we're going to make sure that no one rises up again. You know why? Because we're going to drug

669
01:11:21,920 --> 01:11:26,800
the shit out of them. And we're going to pump alcohol and opioids down their throats.

670
01:11:27,440 --> 01:11:30,560
And we're going to distract them so that they can never do that.

671
01:11:31,840 --> 01:11:39,920
In fact, you know how much money the VA makes on polypharmacia, 12 prescriptions for mental health,

672
01:11:39,920 --> 01:11:47,280
opioids? They're the fuel that drives this economy. And that's what people don't get.

673
01:11:47,280 --> 01:11:53,760
The opioids that come into our country, the ones that were under the medicinal value box in Schedule

674
01:11:53,760 --> 01:12:02,800
2, right? So all the psychedelics, hemp, cannabis, CBD, that's all in Schedule 1. To include any

675
01:12:02,800 --> 01:12:08,960
other psychedelic compound that we might discover, that box in Schedule 1 says no medicinal value.

676
01:12:10,000 --> 01:12:12,160
And so in Schedule 2 is all their money makers.

677
01:12:12,160 --> 01:12:22,240
Opium, people don't understand that heroin, morphine, fentanyl, cocaine, all these drugs

678
01:12:22,240 --> 01:12:30,640
are in that box. And when you allow for drugs to come into your country, you are putting money

679
01:12:30,640 --> 01:12:35,520
into the economy and creating a vortex. And you're making money this way and you're making money

680
01:12:35,520 --> 01:12:42,640
this way. And we know that they start addictions. They knew this when Purdue Pharma,

681
01:12:43,440 --> 01:12:49,600
if you haven't got a chance, check out Painkillers by Peter Berg and that podcast by Peter Berg and

682
01:12:50,240 --> 01:12:58,960
Joe Rogan is really what people need to understand how the government and how we allowed to make so

683
01:12:58,960 --> 01:13:06,480
much money on opioids because they weren't going after people in the war on drugs with psychedelics

684
01:13:06,480 --> 01:13:17,200
or acid. It was rubbish. And so now we have this drug called Ibogaine that blocks the receptor sites

685
01:13:17,680 --> 01:13:27,040
in a heroin patient, no withdrawal symptoms. I know several heroin addicts who have been

686
01:13:27,040 --> 01:13:34,400
on heroin for a long time. I knew a lot that didn't make it. But what I've heard every single time

687
01:13:34,960 --> 01:13:43,840
is the pain that someone goes through on a withdrawal from heroin is so horrible that if

688
01:13:43,840 --> 01:13:48,640
they can't make it the first time, they don't ever want to go back to that again. So they overdose.

689
01:13:48,640 --> 01:13:56,000
And so with this medicine, which is literally an antidote for opioid addiction,

690
01:13:56,960 --> 01:14:05,600
addictions in general, but really opioid addiction, a couple of thousand spec ops guys can't be wrong.

691
01:14:05,600 --> 01:14:11,760
Right? Yeah. You talked about Painkillers. Have you ever seen Dope Sick? It was the one that was on

692
01:14:11,760 --> 01:14:16,960
Hulu. Yeah. That to me, I think it's the one that was on the internet. I think it's the one that was

693
01:14:16,960 --> 01:14:22,080
on the internet. Yeah. I think Painkillers, it was entertaining, but it wasn't as raw as Dope Sick.

694
01:14:22,080 --> 01:14:29,040
Dope Sick really told that insidious nature that a lot of us saw. And even, God, who was the guy

695
01:14:29,040 --> 01:14:36,160
that played the physician? Michael Keaton. Him just being a countryside physician, initially doing

696
01:14:36,160 --> 01:14:40,560
it for all the right reasons, kind of questioning the reps coming in at first and then ultimately

697
01:14:40,560 --> 01:14:47,520
becoming hooked himself. I mean, they told that story so beautifully. And I had another guy on Sam

698
01:14:47,520 --> 01:14:54,320
Quinones who wrote Dreamland about Ohio, Portsmouth, Ohio, and how the cartels are bringing pure

699
01:14:54,320 --> 01:15:00,720
black tar heroin once the pill mills were shut down here in South Florida. So, you know, I mean,

700
01:15:00,720 --> 01:15:06,240
you hear all these voices and it's that Venn diagram and that line intersects and the war on drugs.

701
01:15:06,240 --> 01:15:09,840
And what's beautiful is I'm getting a lot of law enforcement now saying the same thing.

702
01:15:09,840 --> 01:15:14,880
It's a fucking epic failure. And the only way that we can fix it. And I've seen it. I've sat

703
01:15:14,880 --> 01:15:21,040
with a guy in Portugal who decriminalized, spearheaded the decriminalization of addiction.

704
01:15:21,040 --> 01:15:24,720
That doesn't mean you can go to your grocery store and buy meth. It means that you're not arrested

705
01:15:24,720 --> 01:15:30,880
as an addict. And they put all their money into mental health counseling and addiction counseling

706
01:15:30,880 --> 01:15:37,600
and job creation and put them back as a functioning member of society. They had an incredible response.

707
01:15:37,600 --> 01:15:43,440
And again, proactive versus reactive. But as long as we buy this bullshit, this is your brain on

708
01:15:43,440 --> 01:15:49,600
drugs, war on drugs narrative that only feeds certain deep pockets. We're going to keep losing

709
01:15:49,600 --> 01:15:53,600
people left, right and center, regardless of wealth, color or sexual orientation.

710
01:15:54,160 --> 01:15:57,920
I got this. You're going to really like this. This is kind of the stuff that most people don't

711
01:15:57,920 --> 01:16:03,120
get to hear because of the fact that I'm a part of a man. I tell you, it's like,

712
01:16:03,120 --> 01:16:12,000
I never felt tip of the spear in my military service, but I do now. And being a part of the

713
01:16:12,000 --> 01:16:17,120
Veteran Mental Health Leadership Coalition has been an incredible experience because

714
01:16:17,120 --> 01:16:22,240
we're bringing together under this coalition, which was started by Brett Waters, the lawyer

715
01:16:22,240 --> 01:16:27,600
who wrote the Breakthrough Therapies Act, which is in Congress right now, him and General Steel.

716
01:16:27,600 --> 01:16:34,000
Now, General Steel is one of those guys that he's like, he's probably one of the best leaders I

717
01:16:34,000 --> 01:16:42,240
ever been around. He went from an E1 Marine 17, first deployment to Vietnam at 20 years old. He

718
01:16:42,240 --> 01:16:49,040
was commissioned and served again as officer in Vietnam. He was the youngest Marine officer of

719
01:16:49,040 --> 01:16:59,760
all time. He went through a three-star Lieutenant General and helped run the FBI investigation of

720
01:16:59,760 --> 01:17:06,560
9-11 because he was in charge of the aircraft carrier in New York City where he hosted the FBI.

721
01:17:06,560 --> 01:17:10,880
And so I was like, man, you probably wanted in on it, didn't you? He's like, you're damn right.

722
01:17:11,840 --> 01:17:18,720
They had him in there and this guy knows so many world leaders and for him to come out of retirement

723
01:17:18,720 --> 01:17:24,640
at 77 years old to see this through, this guy had never done no psychedelics. He's never done,

724
01:17:24,640 --> 01:17:31,200
he never smoked weed or anything like that. But he understands that the system is corrupt and he

725
01:17:31,200 --> 01:17:37,680
turned down to run the VA twice by Trump, Trump's appointment. And he told Trump, he said, I won't

726
01:17:37,680 --> 01:17:44,400
be caught dead running that system in which you're making money and you're killing our veterans.

727
01:17:44,400 --> 01:17:52,960
And so right now we have the VA about to release, we're setting up the members of this coalition,

728
01:17:52,960 --> 01:17:59,360
like Dr. Lynette Averell from Baylor School of Medicine. She's the head of psychedelics in Texas

729
01:17:59,360 --> 01:18:07,760
down there. We got Dr. Susie Sisley, who is one of the only persons to sue and win against the DOJ

730
01:18:07,760 --> 01:18:15,680
and the FDA for cannabis. And she's, I believe, the only person to, she can manufacture, she's

731
01:18:15,680 --> 01:18:22,080
licensed to manufacture psilocybin cannabis and I believe LSD for the government. She works with us.

732
01:18:22,080 --> 01:18:28,880
She's awesome. She's actually starting a American Legion post. And if anybody is a veteran, she's

733
01:18:28,880 --> 01:18:36,480
going to pay for your American Legion membership to sign up in this post in Montana, which she's

734
01:18:36,480 --> 01:18:43,920
literally getting them to pass all this legislation through the American Legion. And we have full

735
01:18:43,920 --> 01:18:50,480
support from the American Legion. We have full support from the VFW and the Disabled Veterans

736
01:18:50,480 --> 01:18:56,080
Association. So this is how we're attacking this thing on the state level. It's fascinating. I mean,

737
01:18:56,080 --> 01:19:03,040
this whole thing is, like I said, I'm like part of history. But what's even cooler is when we went to

738
01:19:03,040 --> 01:19:10,560
DC, we got an Airbnb and we got people like the author of The Immortality Key, Brian Merzekiou.

739
01:19:10,560 --> 01:19:16,800
He shows up to the house. We got these, you know, some are liberal, some are conservative,

740
01:19:17,440 --> 01:19:22,640
most of our independents like myself that are just patriots. And we're sitting in this house and

741
01:19:23,600 --> 01:19:30,480
we conducted 95 fly-in missions or meetings in DC last year and we're going back next month to do

742
01:19:30,480 --> 01:19:39,200
it again. I've gotten to come back to my home state, talk about a hero's journey. Last year,

743
01:19:39,200 --> 01:19:47,680
I got to go back with a dear friend, Jesse McLaughlin, who started his political career in

744
01:19:49,280 --> 01:19:55,040
Connecticut. And he's responsible for a lot of this legislative paperwork on the state level to

745
01:19:55,600 --> 01:19:59,760
basically, we'll design something and then we'll give it to the state. Another state will call us

746
01:19:59,760 --> 01:20:07,360
and we'll work with them to set this up exponentially or faster. So I got to go back

747
01:20:07,360 --> 01:20:12,880
to Michigan and we raised $1.3 million for psilocybin research in my home state. And

748
01:20:14,720 --> 01:20:20,240
just because I get to tell my testimony and how we plan to, you know, heal our veterans.

749
01:20:20,240 --> 01:20:30,400
In Kentucky, I spoke twice there, three times there. And Kentucky was the first state to set

750
01:20:30,400 --> 01:20:38,880
forth an opioid abatement commission, first state, where they were going to take their settlement

751
01:20:38,880 --> 01:20:44,880
from the Johnson and Johnson opioid settlement, which is $27 billion right now. It'll probably be

752
01:20:44,880 --> 01:20:51,200
more. And each state gets a portion of that. So Kentucky got $900 million. And out of that $900

753
01:20:51,200 --> 01:20:59,120
million, this chairman, his name is Mr. Brian Hubbard. He's a lawyer and he's just ruthless.

754
01:20:59,120 --> 01:21:06,640
I mean, he looks like Hale Billy Jim, long red hair, Johnny Rebel. And he is like, he is pissed

755
01:21:06,640 --> 01:21:14,560
because Kentucky is the second highest opioid abuse rate in the country next to West Virginia.

756
01:21:15,360 --> 01:21:21,920
And I think Ohio is like number one in suicide opioid deaths or something. But anyway, so

757
01:21:23,920 --> 01:21:30,240
Brian is the commissioner and we worked with him and we were working under the former attorney

758
01:21:30,240 --> 01:21:36,880
general, Daniel J. Cameron, an African-American Republican football player, awesome guy.

759
01:21:38,400 --> 01:21:43,360
We had this, all this thing going, right? We had all these things that were going. What happens?

760
01:21:43,360 --> 01:21:49,200
They get a new attorney general. They put a former DEA guy in charge of the opioid abatement

761
01:21:49,200 --> 01:21:55,840
commission. They kick Brian out, but we knew this was going to happen. So Brian goes up to,

762
01:21:55,840 --> 01:22:00,880
he's going up to Ohio where we're going to announce this, I think like in a couple of weeks,

763
01:22:00,880 --> 01:22:06,080
but they have $3 million in their budget from the Johnson and Johnson settlement and they got Ohio

764
01:22:06,080 --> 01:22:12,400
state. So we're working right now to go up there as a coalition to move this forward in Ohio.

765
01:22:13,120 --> 01:22:20,560
And we did $5 million in Illinois for the development of how we're going to allow for

766
01:22:20,560 --> 01:22:25,840
our providers to use this medicine. So now there's so many things that we need to do

767
01:22:25,840 --> 01:22:31,280
because this ball is moving and what the biggest fear is that they're not going to be set up. And

768
01:22:31,280 --> 01:22:37,760
so we have to do, we have to have money allocated for the training, which isn't that hard because

769
01:22:37,760 --> 01:22:42,960
the medicine does the work. It's more about setting up the space and using this in conjunction. And

770
01:22:42,960 --> 01:22:50,880
I'm telling you the providers, I have the top neurosurgeons, heart doctors, people are looking

771
01:22:50,880 --> 01:22:55,360
and they're going, you guys can heal more people than we can. And I'm like, what? And they're like,

772
01:22:55,360 --> 01:23:02,160
yeah, we fix them, but you guys are healing them. And I'm like, oh my gosh, this is crazy

773
01:23:02,160 --> 01:23:08,320
that this is actually happening. So there's a lot of educating and training that has to happen

774
01:23:08,320 --> 01:23:14,560
in the system, but the VA really, this is the model right now. The VA is, we're hoping

775
01:23:15,280 --> 01:23:21,600
if this all passes, the VA will do the research. And so why is this important is

776
01:23:22,400 --> 01:23:29,280
if we can have clinical trials run, that means we can start treating people under

777
01:23:29,760 --> 01:23:36,240
the clinical trial umbrella. And so it's a race to build awareness so that we can

778
01:23:36,240 --> 01:23:41,040
do the research and we need to get these drugs out of the schedule one box, which we're working

779
01:23:41,040 --> 01:23:47,280
on that and getting them rescheduled to schedule three. But none of this happens until they know

780
01:23:47,280 --> 01:23:53,280
they can make their money. And that's just the way it is. It's a, we live in a kingdom, you know,

781
01:23:54,320 --> 01:23:58,800
and here's the other side. You don't have to wait. You can do it yourself if you're smart

782
01:23:58,800 --> 01:24:05,360
and you do it with intention. And, you know, there's another thing that I want to talk about

783
01:24:05,360 --> 01:24:11,440
there's another thing too. I see a lot of psychiatrists because they're kind of handcuffed.

784
01:24:11,440 --> 01:24:15,840
If someone says they're psychiatrists, hey, I don't want to be on these medicines anymore.

785
01:24:15,840 --> 01:24:21,920
Well, if you have a moral doctor, which now you're about 50%, right? That person might,

786
01:24:22,960 --> 01:24:28,480
they're not going to want to tell you to go do this things because it's not good for them.

787
01:24:28,480 --> 01:24:33,520
It's not good for their business. They're going to lose clients. And if they do, if you do get

788
01:24:33,520 --> 01:24:39,600
in trouble or get, you could sue them because now they know you told them. So like there's a lot of

789
01:24:39,600 --> 01:24:49,280
things that have to happen in for this to work. But always the first step is to bring awareness

790
01:24:49,280 --> 01:24:55,280
to the problem. Absolutely. Well, it's extremely exciting. And I think that there's a really a

791
01:24:55,280 --> 01:25:01,840
revolution even here now. I've, I know of several firefighter friends that I personally, in some,

792
01:25:01,840 --> 01:25:08,800
some of these cases have connected with ayahuasca retreats. So my community is starting to kind of

793
01:25:09,440 --> 01:25:13,360
be educated about this and understand that there are far more tools in the toolbox than they

794
01:25:13,360 --> 01:25:19,440
realize. Because it's one thing if you've actually had the courage to ask for help,

795
01:25:19,440 --> 01:25:22,960
and now you've been put in front of a counselor and say they were even a culturally competent

796
01:25:22,960 --> 01:25:28,480
clinician, which is a hard task in itself. And you've done the talk therapy and you've done some

797
01:25:28,480 --> 01:25:34,480
EMDR, but you're still not right. Because again, it's way deeper than that. You know, some of us

798
01:25:34,480 --> 01:25:39,680
in the acute event might, you know, EMDR might help process, but most of us is death by a thousand

799
01:25:39,680 --> 01:25:44,880
cuts psychologically, physiologically through shift work. And, you know, then you add in some

800
01:25:44,880 --> 01:25:49,840
organizational betrayal and you know, you've got this kind of toxic perfect storm that you're not

801
01:25:49,840 --> 01:25:55,440
going to be able to talk your way out. I'm a firm believer in that it takes energy to change your

802
01:25:55,440 --> 01:26:01,120
reality. I stole that from Dr. Joe Espenza and he stole it from someone else. So it's all fair in

803
01:26:01,120 --> 01:26:09,600
the world of writing. If you change your energy, you change your reality. What is energy? It's an

804
01:26:09,600 --> 01:26:14,960
experience. So if you give someone an experience, it can change their reality by changing their

805
01:26:14,960 --> 01:26:25,360
belief system. And my, you know, I've, because of this work, I've had, I've gotten to, you know,

806
01:26:25,360 --> 01:26:31,680
I can text Dr. Andrew Huberman from Stanford and he'll get back to me in a day because he

807
01:26:31,680 --> 01:26:40,960
understands what we're doing from a neurological perspective. And I'm looking at my own path and

808
01:26:40,960 --> 01:26:47,280
I'm going, okay, I've been microdosing for five years. I haven't taken an NSAID or an anti-inflammatory

809
01:26:47,280 --> 01:26:57,120
in four years. I take my Omegas. Momentum is a company that Dr. Huberman sponsors. So I take,

810
01:26:57,840 --> 01:27:05,360
you know, all the supplements. I take supplements, but I don't take any kind of medicine besides

811
01:27:05,360 --> 01:27:15,360
THC, psilocybin. And I've been microdosing Ibogaine, which is incredible because you only need

812
01:27:15,360 --> 01:27:22,560
seven milligrams. And to put that in perspective, my size, 210 pounds, the dosage for Ibogaine on a

813
01:27:22,560 --> 01:27:29,200
therapeutic dose is about 11 milligrams per kilogram and the ceiling about 1100 milligrams.

814
01:27:29,200 --> 01:27:38,320
You can go a little over that. So for me, it's like 1100 milligrams for Ibogaine session. I take seven

815
01:27:38,320 --> 01:27:48,240
milligrams and I feel incredible. I don't feel like a danger to anything. I don't, you know,

816
01:27:48,240 --> 01:27:53,200
it's about the awareness of the environment. You can't just take something and go to your cubicle

817
01:27:53,200 --> 01:27:58,160
and expect everything to be better. You have to use it with intention. So like I'll go out to the

818
01:27:58,160 --> 01:28:06,240
waterfalls and I'll sit in the cold water and I'll have my Ibogaine on board. And that experience

819
01:28:06,240 --> 01:28:16,320
is incredible. Like I feel like a million bucks and that's how I heal myself is I'm proactively

820
01:28:16,320 --> 01:28:23,360
putting this in my life. I'm not waiting to, I lose, you know, or I'm acting like an asshole or,

821
01:28:23,360 --> 01:28:29,920
you know, starting an addiction again. Like I don't wait. I'm proactive on my suffering.

822
01:28:31,440 --> 01:28:35,680
And it's again, it's like, it's just, it's really, it's dopamine fasting and it's

823
01:28:36,240 --> 01:28:42,800
creating the change by sustaining growth. And it's not rocket science. It just takes intention.

824
01:28:42,800 --> 01:28:49,360
It takes hard work. It takes ability to feel both the good and the bad and knowing that it's okay

825
01:28:49,360 --> 01:28:56,560
to not be okay. But just don't sit in it too long. Like that's, that's the freeze part. You see that's

826
01:28:57,360 --> 01:29:03,520
people just freeze and it takes energy to get up and go to the gym when you don't feel like it.

827
01:29:03,520 --> 01:29:10,800
It takes energy to do the things. And I think there's medicine that can help us do that with intention.

828
01:29:12,160 --> 01:29:19,200
Absolutely. I want to ask you a couple of questions about your time overseas and then kind of walk

829
01:29:19,200 --> 01:29:25,760
through your own personal kind of mental health story. The way I like to ask it is, well, the

830
01:29:25,760 --> 01:29:31,200
reason I'll ask this question the way I do is we have a very polarized view of war, the civilians

831
01:29:31,200 --> 01:29:35,680
of, especially here in the U S you either got the one side, kill them all. Like God saw them out.

832
01:29:35,680 --> 01:29:40,320
You got the other side. They're all baby killers and the middle, you know, you have a men and women,

833
01:29:40,320 --> 01:29:44,800
sometimes children that we send overseas with our flag on their shoulder to do the things that we

834
01:29:44,800 --> 01:29:51,440
ask them to do. So it's a two part question. The first part, regardless of the politics that sent

835
01:29:51,440 --> 01:29:57,040
you to these combat zones, was there a moment where you witnessed, you realized that there

836
01:29:57,040 --> 01:30:06,160
were some horrific people that did need to be taken care of? Yeah, absolutely. Um, it's real easy.

837
01:30:06,160 --> 01:30:15,520
And it, I can understand both perspectives of this, of, of war. I don't, I didn't have the same

838
01:30:15,520 --> 01:30:23,920
perspective as I did when I was 23 years old and I decided to do this. I was pissed off. I reacted.

839
01:30:23,920 --> 01:30:32,480
We got hit. I was in college when I watched that plane hit and I was angry. I told you I was a

840
01:30:32,480 --> 01:30:42,800
fighter. So it was logical for me to, to go do something. Um, that would give me affirmation

841
01:30:43,600 --> 01:30:54,560
that I felt was doing a service and, um, yeah, I wanted to be around brothers and do that thing.

842
01:30:54,560 --> 01:31:03,520
So that was my intention for signing up when I got to Iraq first time and I got to work in the field

843
01:31:03,520 --> 01:31:09,040
because of my skillset as a medic and an intelligence guy, I could go, I've got to go out

844
01:31:09,040 --> 01:31:13,280
more than some of my guys in my platoon that were more seasoned because I had the skills

845
01:31:13,920 --> 01:31:20,800
and, you know, no one can pull Intel better than a medic because, because it's about,

846
01:31:20,800 --> 01:31:26,880
we know, we know this from the psychological stuff that if you feel safe, you get trust.

847
01:31:26,880 --> 01:31:31,520
And when you get trust, you get vulnerability and you get information. And so if I go in there and

848
01:31:31,520 --> 01:31:41,120
I heal a kid or treat a goat or whatever, then they're going to open up to me more. And the fact

849
01:31:41,120 --> 01:31:46,640
is, here's a perfect example. When I went to a school, we were doing these things, which none

850
01:31:46,640 --> 01:31:51,760
of the guys wanted to go do. We call them hearts and mind missions. And you would go to these

851
01:31:51,760 --> 01:31:57,040
schools and we would get intelligence, but we would give them soccer balls and backpacks and

852
01:31:57,040 --> 01:32:04,640
do med checks. And I would start handing out, um, backpacks and I gave this little girl soccer ball

853
01:32:04,640 --> 01:32:09,760
and I never forget her face. She looked at the ball and she looked at me and she just kind of

854
01:32:09,760 --> 01:32:16,320
cried. And I was like, what the hell's wrong with her? And the interpreter goes, you can't give her

855
01:32:16,320 --> 01:32:22,560
a ball. She, she's not allowed to play soccer. They're not allowed to do that. And they weren't

856
01:32:22,560 --> 01:32:26,400
even, they would, because some of the girls, I think they would go up to fifth grade and then

857
01:32:26,400 --> 01:32:33,040
they weren't allowed to go to school anymore. And they were treated like slaves, uh, just used for,

858
01:32:33,040 --> 01:32:39,600
to have kids. And I did see some nasty things that, uh, you know, it's in the Bible. So

859
01:32:39,600 --> 01:32:46,480
it, nothing's new in the sun. There's bestiality over there. There's, um, you know, they say,

860
01:32:46,480 --> 01:32:52,960
this isn't for everyone. Like I'm not trying to make, you know, stereotype Iraqis because there

861
01:32:52,960 --> 01:32:58,400
were some incredible, uh, people over there that I met, but there was a lot of asshole guys that

862
01:32:58,400 --> 01:33:05,600
were treating their women like shit and, um, having sex with men. Like, I mean, I don't know

863
01:33:05,600 --> 01:33:10,640
else to tell you that that's what I saw and it wasn't everyone, but there was so much things.

864
01:33:10,640 --> 01:33:16,640
And I remember reading the old Testament going, Oh my God, like what has changed? There's so many

865
01:33:16,640 --> 01:33:24,080
things there. And I feel like without getting into someone's, you know, culture and trying to change

866
01:33:24,080 --> 01:33:32,000
that, man, I just felt like my perspective of life was, it was more than that. And I, and you know,

867
01:33:32,000 --> 01:33:36,240
I was like, why aren't these people, why aren't they aware? Like, why aren't they trying to get

868
01:33:36,240 --> 01:33:41,680
changes because they're programmed. That's their reality. That's it. That's all it is. And when

869
01:33:41,680 --> 01:33:48,160
you're paying, when you, when you kill one of their kids or whether, uh, somebody gets like

870
01:33:48,160 --> 01:33:55,200
killed in combat, you can give them $1,200 or $1,400 for their troubles, you know, but if you kill

871
01:33:55,200 --> 01:34:00,880
their goat or their animal, you give them more money because they're, they're like, the kid's not

872
01:34:00,880 --> 01:34:06,640
making me money. The goat is, or the cow is, and it's like crazy. Like you're just trying to think

873
01:34:06,640 --> 01:34:13,360
about in your head, you're just trying to put it all together. Um, and it's, it's just, it's, it's,

874
01:34:13,360 --> 01:34:19,760
it's crazy. My trauma, my biggest trauma, and I'm blessed in this is, and I don't want to say this,

875
01:34:19,760 --> 01:34:24,080
I haven't really talked about this too much, but it's, it's, I look back and I go,

876
01:34:24,080 --> 01:34:30,880
I, I never had to take someone's life with my hands. I watched people take lives. I've,

877
01:34:30,880 --> 01:34:36,800
I've watched people die. I've treated people, but I never had to do that. And

878
01:34:37,840 --> 01:34:45,680
for so long in the teams, that was your standard. And I would beat myself up

879
01:34:46,240 --> 01:34:49,840
and judge myself for not meeting that standard.

880
01:34:49,840 --> 01:34:55,840
And I look back and I go, thank you God, because some of those guys that took life when they

881
01:34:55,840 --> 01:35:03,360
didn't need to, they're not here anymore because they couldn't stand it. And it's the moral injury

882
01:35:03,360 --> 01:35:09,520
that we see is being the culprit for a lot of PTSD. It's the things the guys were doing on the road

883
01:35:09,520 --> 01:35:14,480
away from their wives, the things they can't forgive themselves for it's trapped them there.

884
01:35:14,480 --> 01:35:20,720
And I know that the lowest, most destructive energy and emotions is shame because it attacks

885
01:35:20,720 --> 01:35:26,800
your noun, which is your IM statement. And even if you know about it and you try to forgive yourself,

886
01:35:27,360 --> 01:35:32,960
sometimes we're neurologically hijacked by that shame, even though we know it's the reason we

887
01:35:32,960 --> 01:35:38,640
still can't get away from it because we're operating in the same energy, the same neurochemistry.

888
01:35:38,640 --> 01:35:42,640
And if you change that with an experience, you're going to be able to change that.

889
01:35:42,640 --> 01:35:47,120
If you change that with an experience, you can learn how to forgive yourself. And you can do this

890
01:35:47,120 --> 01:35:55,040
thing called let go, which is so hard to do on the nervous system. So it's not as easy as just having

891
01:35:55,040 --> 01:35:59,680
the willpower to say, I'm going to stop drinking. It's not as easy just to say, I'm going to stop

892
01:35:59,680 --> 01:36:04,400
looking at porn. It's not. If it was that easy, people would do it and we wouldn't be here, but

893
01:36:04,400 --> 01:36:12,240
we are. And so you have to look at changing and what this means to change. And so with, besides

894
01:36:12,240 --> 01:36:17,680
the medicine and all that, that's the reset part. And I believe that that medicine, no one should

895
01:36:17,680 --> 01:36:23,280
judge someone if they're using cannabis, if they're using psilocybin. I tell people all the time when

896
01:36:23,280 --> 01:36:30,000
I'm coaching them, this is not about what they think. It's about how you feel and how you use it

897
01:36:30,000 --> 01:36:36,800
with your own intention. And Dr. Martin Polanco had a wonderful quote. He said, we're teaching

898
01:36:36,800 --> 01:36:43,920
veterans how to create a safe container to heal themselves. And that's what like really, like

899
01:36:43,920 --> 01:36:50,560
that's it right there. And that involves change. So I got hooked up with Dr. Joe Dispenza. We were

900
01:36:50,560 --> 01:36:59,440
so fortunate to get sponsored. This lady bought 25 tickets to an event, which was $2,300 per person.

901
01:36:59,440 --> 01:37:06,480
She bought 25 tickets and we were recipients. And my wife and I got to go and experience this Joe

902
01:37:06,480 --> 01:37:14,000
Dispenza stuff, this meditation, seven days of like black belt training. Like you did two

903
01:37:15,040 --> 01:37:23,600
meditations a day and you do breath work and he educates you on the mind. And so I'm like, this is

904
01:37:23,600 --> 01:37:30,320
it. Like I need to get into this because we need to teach this to veterans and service men and women

905
01:37:30,320 --> 01:37:35,040
because it's not enough just to do the medicine. You can't rely on something outside of yourself.

906
01:37:35,040 --> 01:37:41,280
If you really have to get to a place where the healing comes from within. And Joe Dispenza says

907
01:37:41,280 --> 01:37:47,680
a lot, you have an internal pharmacy that you can restructure and you can create these neuro

908
01:37:47,680 --> 01:37:53,920
chemicals and you can heal yourself. And that's what he did when he got hit by a bike on a bike,

909
01:37:53,920 --> 01:37:59,120
on a road bike and they wanted to fuse his back and he healed himself. So I'm thinking this is crazy,

910
01:37:59,120 --> 01:38:03,040
you know, and I'm watching these people, this one lady sat next to, she goes, I've been doing

911
01:38:03,040 --> 01:38:09,840
this work for four years, two years ago, I healed myself and my cancer. And she was a doctor and she

912
01:38:09,840 --> 01:38:16,240
went there and one kid was 15 years old and he had some trauma growing up and he had a brain injury

913
01:38:16,240 --> 01:38:22,080
and he had some trauma growing up and he couldn't hear on his ear and that was healed. And so it's

914
01:38:22,080 --> 01:38:28,000
like, we have to look at belief systems. We have to look at changing your belief systems and it

915
01:38:28,000 --> 01:38:34,240
takes work and it takes the awareness that if you're in a wrong environment, it's going to be

916
01:38:34,240 --> 01:38:39,440
really hard for you to sustain growth. And that's where we're at now. It's like, okay, they go to

917
01:38:39,440 --> 01:38:45,360
the, they do the medicine. Some guys can't even last. They're so scared to go back to the world

918
01:38:45,360 --> 01:38:51,280
that they created after the reset that they'll start drinking in the airport, not even hours

919
01:38:51,280 --> 01:38:58,000
after they just were like, kumbaya, I'm, you know, re-healed. They're already back drinking because

920
01:38:58,800 --> 01:39:05,600
the fear is that they can't go back into that environment. And we have to bring more awareness

921
01:39:05,600 --> 01:39:12,240
to what the environment is and these 12 cranial nerves in this computer system that is constantly

922
01:39:12,240 --> 01:39:18,640
downloading stuff and programming us. And if you don't change your environment, it's going to be

923
01:39:18,640 --> 01:39:26,800
really hard, really hard to sustain growth. I've got another part to that two-part question,

924
01:39:26,800 --> 01:39:32,960
but before I do with you being a medic specifically and having not taken the life yourself,

925
01:39:33,840 --> 01:39:37,440
one of the things I wouldn't say even struggle with is that's not the right way of putting it,

926
01:39:37,440 --> 01:39:43,760
but when I look back now, I would identify as the biggest weight wasn't all the horrible things

927
01:39:43,760 --> 01:39:49,920
that I saw in 14 years, but it was the fact that when I went to school, they said, all right,

928
01:39:49,920 --> 01:39:56,800
if you do intervention, a add drug B and, you know, use the monitor cardiovert or defibrillate C,

929
01:39:56,800 --> 01:40:00,960
you will have outcome D and the person will, you know, come around and they'll give you a hug and

930
01:40:00,960 --> 01:40:05,760
they'll bring a cake to the station a week later. And in 14 years, I never brought a single person

931
01:40:05,760 --> 01:40:11,440
back from a cardiac arrest had of course, pre-code saves and lots of, you know, many, many calls where

932
01:40:11,440 --> 01:40:15,200
you absolutely didn't save a life, whether it was just simply from the compassion of your words or

933
01:40:15,200 --> 01:40:22,320
your medical interventions, but I'd never had that, you know, returned to spontaneous. And so

934
01:40:23,040 --> 01:40:27,760
that inability to save being that black cloud, having death after death after death,

935
01:40:28,640 --> 01:40:34,720
I identify it as a weight. Now, you know, you talk about, you know, criking in the field and some of

936
01:40:34,720 --> 01:40:39,920
these interventions that you have to do that are ultimately somewhat futile based on the injury or

937
01:40:39,920 --> 01:40:45,360
the wounds of the person that you're dealing with. When you look back now, was there an element of

938
01:40:45,360 --> 01:40:49,680
that contributing to your trauma? Did you have times where you felt helpless, where you just

939
01:40:49,680 --> 01:40:58,000
couldn't bring someone back? Yeah. I mean, there was a lot of the times, you know, I lost a lot of

940
01:40:58,000 --> 01:41:04,960
friends in the 16 years. We just lost two seals. I think I put one of them through training in

941
01:41:04,960 --> 01:41:15,280
Somalia. They drowned. I lost a roommate on extortion 17. I lost a couple of guys on that one.

942
01:41:16,240 --> 01:41:21,120
And just over time, you would lose friends. I was friends with Mikey Mansoor, who was a

943
01:41:21,120 --> 01:41:29,120
Medal of Honor winner. He graduated 250 and I was 252. Ryan Job was in 251. He had a crazy story.

944
01:41:29,120 --> 01:41:37,040
He got, he was the one that got hit, which made it, he got hit by AK-47, went through his head,

945
01:41:37,040 --> 01:41:42,480
took his eye out and they got him back. And then he went back out. And that's when they set up to hit

946
01:41:43,360 --> 01:41:48,720
Mark Lee, which was the first seal that died in Iraq. And he was in 251. So we were all together

947
01:41:48,720 --> 01:41:54,640
in the same Bud's era. And so I guess over time, like, you know, you lose a friend and you're like,

948
01:41:55,760 --> 01:41:59,600
man, if I was there, I could have did this. I could have died. Why wasn't I there?

949
01:42:00,160 --> 01:42:10,000
You kind of beat yourself up and you see a lot of survivor guilt in this trauma stuff. For me, it was

950
01:42:10,000 --> 01:42:19,360
when we blew a door in, I was a breacher and we blew a door in and there was a kid sleeping on

951
01:42:19,360 --> 01:42:28,720
the other side of the door and he was messed up really bad. And I remember my OIC going, Tommy,

952
01:42:28,720 --> 01:42:40,800
fix him. And I, it was probably the first time I ever really kind of froze because I was so, oh man,

953
01:42:40,800 --> 01:42:48,080
I was, I was like, I fucking did that, you know? And, you know, like bedside manner, you know,

954
01:42:48,080 --> 01:42:53,200
is important. It's like, Hey, stay with me and all that. And I just, it struggled so hard to find that

955
01:42:53,200 --> 01:43:02,160
aggressive medic approach, you know, where I'm in my flow state. And I did a lot of drugs after that.

956
01:43:03,120 --> 01:43:07,680
I did a lot of drugs to numb that. And I, you know, the nightmares would,

957
01:43:09,280 --> 01:43:15,600
you would see, I would see, you know, my kids faces on them in my sleep for years.

958
01:43:15,600 --> 01:43:20,400
So it was, it's always, it tends to be the children that really bring out the trauma,

959
01:43:20,960 --> 01:43:31,840
I think as a, as a, someone that's a service member. And for, you said that like lack of ability to do

960
01:43:31,840 --> 01:43:41,840
something. I think, I think I was, I was so beating myself up for not going to,

961
01:43:41,840 --> 01:43:49,520
uh, seal team six, that, that kind of really started an avalanche to, which was, I was,

962
01:43:50,400 --> 01:43:58,000
I was groomed pretty well at seal team two. I was, I got like the highest, uh, evals as a new guy

963
01:43:58,000 --> 01:44:04,560
there. And after our first combat deployment and I had my friends there, they were all, you're coming

964
01:44:04,560 --> 01:44:09,040
to gold, you're coming to this and that, and I live right across from Chick-Soy's, so I was like,

965
01:44:09,040 --> 01:44:13,040
what's the difference between this and that? And I live right across from Chick-Soy's,

966
01:44:13,040 --> 01:44:16,400
so I was bar in Virginia beach, which is like a huge team guy hangout.

967
01:44:17,200 --> 01:44:21,280
And so when I told my friends that I wasn't going to scream, they kind of,

968
01:44:22,960 --> 01:44:29,680
they kind of read me the riot act. And soon after I did that, I realized I was starting to break away

969
01:44:29,680 --> 01:44:38,960
from this need to, um, be accepted. And I started to stop chasing that. And it got really hard after

970
01:44:38,960 --> 01:44:44,000
that. And I was still in the seal teams and I was writing the fence. I was trying to raise a family

971
01:44:44,960 --> 01:44:52,640
and do this job. Um, and it, it was just, everything was deteriorating. I wasn't,

972
01:44:52,640 --> 01:44:58,160
my heart wasn't in it anymore. I went to the West coast and I didn't feel like there's a difference

973
01:44:58,160 --> 01:45:03,440
between mentalities on the coast. Not that one's better than the other. It's just,

974
01:45:03,440 --> 01:45:08,160
when you're on the East coast, you're kind of, you're not the creme de la creme because you got

975
01:45:08,160 --> 01:45:14,800
neck there. And when you're on the West coast, you're kind of our city. And so I felt like

976
01:45:14,800 --> 01:45:21,120
going from the East coast to the West coast, I was like, and then I got into the intelligence

977
01:45:21,120 --> 01:45:30,480
thing and yeah, just kind of fizzled out. Um, so I didn't have like this war hero, uh, career as a

978
01:45:30,480 --> 01:45:38,000
seal. It wasn't like that. Um, but the saddest part was, and I didn't really get into this, but

979
01:45:38,880 --> 01:45:46,720
I met my, my first wife, uh, at the Naval Academy. They told me to go there and do a dog and pony

980
01:45:46,720 --> 01:45:56,240
show. She was the director that was rebranding the Naval Academy. I hooked up with her. She said that

981
01:45:56,240 --> 01:46:01,680
I got her pregnant. I didn't know if I did or not. And then I actually got married to her, um,

982
01:46:03,200 --> 01:46:10,080
out of wedlock. And it was on my first or second workup. I was training in Chaffee,

983
01:46:10,640 --> 01:46:16,000
Arkansas, doing land warfare. Got a call. She said she lost the baby. I still didn't know if it was

984
01:46:16,000 --> 01:46:25,200
mine or not and went out there, um, flew out to California and she gave me the option to leave

985
01:46:25,200 --> 01:46:33,440
her and I didn't. And that was probably a big mistake, but I stayed with her and she had four

986
01:46:33,440 --> 01:46:40,480
kids in vitro. And it turns out that she wasn't who she said she was to me. She lied about her age.

987
01:46:41,120 --> 01:46:46,560
She lied about her background. She basically used me to have kids. And the whole time,

988
01:46:47,280 --> 01:46:54,320
I was so stupid that I couldn't look at it. Even though people were telling me something was wrong,

989
01:46:54,320 --> 01:46:58,960
I wouldn't look at it. And then I learned this kind of through my medicine journey was

990
01:46:59,920 --> 01:47:06,560
it was my fear of failure that was really hijacking me to seeing clearly. And I know

991
01:47:06,560 --> 01:47:13,040
that was a product of my training of being a SEAL was we were programmed not to fail.

992
01:47:13,680 --> 01:47:21,520
And if you failed, you got so much shame and so much pain from failing that it does program you.

993
01:47:21,520 --> 01:47:28,480
In fact, a good friend of mine, Dr. Dan Luna, a SEAL Team Six guy, and he got his PhD in education.

994
01:47:28,480 --> 01:47:34,960
He just wrote a 70, 750 page paper, a senior thesis on the fear of failure

995
01:47:35,920 --> 01:47:45,680
and how that's a contributing factor to PTSD. And so, yeah, so I, um, I ended up having four kids

996
01:47:45,680 --> 01:47:52,720
with this lady. I was never in love with her. I was only in love with the fact that I was trying

997
01:47:52,720 --> 01:48:00,480
to do a right thing by changing my life. And she might've kept me from dying over at SEAL Team Six,

998
01:48:00,480 --> 01:48:10,400
maybe. I don't know. But what happened was after 11 years, she basically had a plan to

999
01:48:10,400 --> 01:48:16,960
steal my kids. And she did that. She went to the command, told them I was drug addict. And I was,

1000
01:48:18,000 --> 01:48:24,640
I wasn't, I was, I think at the time I was only using cannabis sparingly to, I was off all my,

1001
01:48:24,640 --> 01:48:29,680
all the meds and everything, but I was using cannabis for my mental health and I was keeping

1002
01:48:29,680 --> 01:48:37,200
it from the command. And she told on me. And at the time I went to Mighty Oaks, which was a Christian

1003
01:48:37,200 --> 01:48:44,160
PTSD center run by Chad Robichard, which is incredible story. He was a police officer and

1004
01:48:44,160 --> 01:48:50,080
a Marine Special Forces guy, world champion MMA fighter, found himself with a gun in his mouth.

1005
01:48:50,080 --> 01:48:59,120
And he healed himself with his faith. And so at that thing, I quit smoking weed and I told her

1006
01:48:59,120 --> 01:49:05,120
and she told the command. So I told the command on myself that I was doing this and they came in

1007
01:49:05,120 --> 01:49:12,240
and I took a piss test. I pissed negative and they still threw the book at me. And it was right on

1008
01:49:12,240 --> 01:49:19,200
the heels of another friend of mine, Ed Gallagher, who you saw the news about the seal that was,

1009
01:49:19,840 --> 01:49:26,240
he was my roommate and a classmate. And so at that time we said, you know, it never pays to be the

1010
01:49:26,240 --> 01:49:33,680
second guy to get in trouble. And so I, they, they threw the book at me and I thought, well,

1011
01:49:33,680 --> 01:49:41,200
I'm going to be the second guy to get in trouble. And so they took the book at me and I told them,

1012
01:49:41,200 --> 01:49:47,040
I'm in the middle of a medical retirement procedure or process, and that it's by law that you have to

1013
01:49:47,760 --> 01:49:54,160
let me finish this because if you have a alcohol related incident or a drug incident and you have

1014
01:49:54,160 --> 01:50:00,800
PTSD, then they have to allow you to, to, to finish. So they did, took like a year and a half where

1015
01:50:00,800 --> 01:50:08,640
I was doing my ATC, my clearances, my Trident, everything. And I was basically a janitor for a

1016
01:50:08,640 --> 01:50:14,880
year at ATC, Advanced Training Command. It was, it was horrible. We call it the mushroom treatment.

1017
01:50:14,880 --> 01:50:23,520
You put someone in a box and you feed them shit. And it, and yeah. And so I, it was crazy. I was

1018
01:50:23,520 --> 01:50:29,920
waiting to get my, my information back from PSD and I was trying to figure out what, you know,

1019
01:50:29,920 --> 01:50:36,880
anything. So I walked over to the personal department and on the base in Coronado and I got

1020
01:50:36,880 --> 01:50:43,120
this message that said, you're retired. You're going to be medically retired in January, 2019.

1021
01:50:43,120 --> 01:50:48,480
I brought it back to my command and they took it to the JAG and they did something. And it went all

1022
01:50:48,480 --> 01:50:55,360
the way to the top of the Navy where this guy basically overwritten it. And they said, you're

1023
01:50:55,360 --> 01:51:01,760
out in 10 days. And by the way, you got a restraining order against you. And that was the last time I

1024
01:51:01,760 --> 01:51:13,680
talked to my kids five years ago. And so I always say, I'm so grateful for even that in my life to

1025
01:51:13,680 --> 01:51:19,520
lose poor kids, because if those things didn't happen, I wouldn't be able to do what I'm doing

1026
01:51:19,520 --> 01:51:27,680
right now. And I believe in life sometimes the final step of loving something is letting go. And

1027
01:51:27,680 --> 01:51:36,160
you'll be amazed when you do that, how it had a tendency to come back to you. So that's it.

1028
01:51:38,000 --> 01:51:42,400
Well, I'm, I'm so firstly, so sorry to hear about your kids. I mean, you mentioned it before, but

1029
01:51:44,240 --> 01:51:48,400
I mean, that, that to me, that was the only plus thing about my divorce is there wasn't

1030
01:51:48,400 --> 01:51:53,680
an attempt to pull my child from him. It was funny. I mean, there was, there was infidelity on,

1031
01:51:53,680 --> 01:51:58,160
on her side, not to talk shit now and way past it, but just to lay the facts out there.

1032
01:51:58,720 --> 01:52:05,120
And my lawyer said, oh, great news. And there'd be some other stuff going on. You get 50 50. And

1033
01:52:05,120 --> 01:52:10,800
I'm like, okay, that's great news that we're going to do car wheels because of the situation dictate

1034
01:52:10,800 --> 01:52:17,440
at that point that maybe it should have been full cost at least temporarily, but it is what it is.

1035
01:52:17,440 --> 01:52:22,720
But that was my worst case story, which is, you know, a fricking, you know, dream compared to

1036
01:52:22,720 --> 01:52:28,480
yours, but I've got, I've got friends who again, after a divorce, um, you know, their kids didn't

1037
01:52:28,480 --> 01:52:33,120
speak to them for years, but just like you said, and then one day they did again, you know, one day

1038
01:52:33,120 --> 01:52:37,520
they came back and I've got numerous stories of that. So, you know, I hope that's the case,

1039
01:52:37,520 --> 01:52:41,200
you know, I hope that when they get to the age where they ask more questions, that they'll find

1040
01:52:41,200 --> 01:52:45,840
their way back in your life again. Yeah, thank you. And, and you know, I'm, like I said, I,

1041
01:52:45,840 --> 01:52:52,640
I try not to talk about too much. Um, but I want people to be aware that even in our family court

1042
01:52:52,640 --> 01:52:57,760
system has been very corrupted. This was in California and I can tell you just from crossing

1043
01:52:57,760 --> 01:53:05,360
the border and Tijuana taking guys down to Mexico for the treatment. Um, and every time I have to go

1044
01:53:05,360 --> 01:53:10,720
back, I have to go through security cause I have this, uh, restraining order, which I just got,

1045
01:53:10,720 --> 01:53:18,640
I dropped. This is crazy because of my work I'm doing to promote this, you know, this stuff, uh,

1046
01:53:18,640 --> 01:53:25,040
this medicine it's given me connections to people that can make one call. And this happened in

1047
01:53:25,040 --> 01:53:30,960
November. I was going to go back to California to the court to fight this, which I lost. I've spent

1048
01:53:30,960 --> 01:53:38,240
like $50,000 doing this. So I had no more money. She had a trust again. She's the heir of Francisco

1049
01:53:38,240 --> 01:53:47,680
Franco, the fascist dictator. So she's, she's connected. And, um, and so, um, in one call,

1050
01:53:48,560 --> 01:53:55,280
one of the guys I work with, can't say his name, but he knows who he is. He made one call and in

1051
01:53:55,280 --> 01:54:01,440
three hours, my lawyer calls me and goes, I don't know what happened, but, um, uh, their lawyer,

1052
01:54:01,440 --> 01:54:05,920
her lawyer's not taken this to court and he thinks it can be really bad for her.

1053
01:54:05,920 --> 01:54:13,680
And I was like, what? So I got the two restraining orders dropped off my kids or I got the restraining

1054
01:54:13,680 --> 01:54:20,880
drawers, uh, restraining orders dropped off my kids. She, I guess she keeps hers, but the big

1055
01:54:20,880 --> 01:54:26,640
thing is they allowed me to use a gun again, which I couldn't own a gun. I still can't, but I can use

1056
01:54:26,640 --> 01:54:33,280
a gun to train people and make money. If I was going to train someone, um, with a gun, which is

1057
01:54:33,280 --> 01:54:40,720
retarded, but it's, um, it's just part of this, this thing. And I, it's my cross that I bear, but,

1058
01:54:40,720 --> 01:54:48,240
um, I, it's not about me. It's about the kids and they were stripped from having a really good

1059
01:54:48,240 --> 01:54:54,640
father that they're never going to get back in those years. And that's the hardest thing for me is

1060
01:54:54,640 --> 01:55:04,720
just knowing that the trauma that one day I know I'm going to have to take on. Um, but I think

1061
01:55:04,720 --> 01:55:11,520
they're, they're going to be smart enough to see who their dad is and what he's done. And, uh,

1062
01:55:12,560 --> 01:55:17,760
you know, I used, my biggest fear was that I would leave this world and they would never know.

1063
01:55:17,760 --> 01:55:25,280
I would leave this world and they would never know. And I think that's why I started to do this

1064
01:55:25,280 --> 01:55:30,000
stuff and to start to tell my stories so that they would know one day.

1065
01:55:31,840 --> 01:55:37,200
So let's unpack that for a second. Then you, you mentioned about, um, you know, after that call,

1066
01:55:37,200 --> 01:55:42,800
taking more drugs, um, you mentioned about drinking. So where was the lowest place that

1067
01:55:42,800 --> 01:55:50,080
you found yourself and then what was that corner? However gentle that turn that led you towards this

1068
01:55:50,080 --> 01:55:54,800
healing journey that now you're not only a part of, but you're actually spearheading.

1069
01:55:55,360 --> 01:56:05,280
Yeah, I, well, the all lost moment was that was, was when I knew was, was I was sitting in the

1070
01:56:05,280 --> 01:56:14,400
courtroom and my ex-wife was staring into my eyes as she lied. And I don't know how this happened,

1071
01:56:14,400 --> 01:56:23,840
but I had a rosary in my pocket and I was on the stand and I, I just held this thing. And I remember

1072
01:56:23,840 --> 01:56:29,520
looking at her going, I don't know what it was, but like, God was just like, forgive her, forgive

1073
01:56:29,520 --> 01:56:35,520
her, forgive her, forgive her. And I just kept saying it in my head and like, I could feel my chest, like

1074
01:56:35,520 --> 01:56:42,720
as they were, the judge was, you know, tell me that this is going to be my reality in my sentence.

1075
01:56:43,440 --> 01:56:47,280
Um, I remember walking out of that courtroom

1076
01:56:50,320 --> 01:56:57,440
and I got in my car and I started driving and I just lost it. Like I had like just

1077
01:56:57,440 --> 01:57:02,960
snot bubbles, just like everything was just coming out and I could, I had a

1078
01:57:02,960 --> 01:57:07,440
nervous breakdown for sure. I've had a couple of my life, but that was a bad one. And,

1079
01:57:12,240 --> 01:57:18,320
and then, and then it was like, really it was like, I think two days and I got on a phone

1080
01:57:18,320 --> 01:57:24,000
call with Dr. Martin Polanco and he set up the treatment. And that's how I showed up to the

1081
01:57:24,000 --> 01:57:33,680
medicine. Well, basically with losing everything, I lost my identity, like family, kids, um, you know,

1082
01:57:33,680 --> 01:57:39,760
career of retirement. I had to go through, I got honorable discharge, which is crazy because

1083
01:57:40,400 --> 01:57:45,440
I had to fight for it. And one of the officers said if he doesn't get honorable discharge,

1084
01:57:45,440 --> 01:57:52,240
that it will be a crime. And so they gave me that, but, which was great because it allowed me to get

1085
01:57:52,240 --> 01:58:00,160
the GI bill and, and my disabilities. Um, but yeah, I mean, I've been paying $3,500 a month

1086
01:58:00,160 --> 01:58:04,720
since nine, since 2019 and I haven't had a word of information about my kids.

1087
01:58:06,240 --> 01:58:12,400
Do you even know which state they're in? Yeah, there's in California. Okay. Yeah. There's four

1088
01:58:12,400 --> 01:58:23,280
of them. Thomas is 13, Kayden is 11 and there's twin Max and Becca. Yeah. So it's, it's, you know,

1089
01:58:23,280 --> 01:58:30,960
I, I always say I'm the most blessed man in the world. I like to do what I get to do. Um,

1090
01:58:32,240 --> 01:58:39,600
I have an incredible wife. She's just, she's like a unicorn for sure. A horse whisperer. She's a

1091
01:58:39,600 --> 01:58:47,760
horse gal from, from Houston area and, um, our corpus Christi she would say, she would say, um,

1092
01:58:47,760 --> 01:58:57,120
but you know, I just, I try, I try to take, you know, the good and the bad and, and know that,

1093
01:58:57,120 --> 01:59:11,040
um, it's part of my story. Um, and it's all about contrast. So wherever there is, you know,

1094
01:59:12,480 --> 01:59:20,000
injustice or trauma, if you allow yourself, you can turn your pain into passion.

1095
01:59:20,000 --> 01:59:27,680
And that's one hell of a drug. Well, you mentioned about your wife being into the horse side. I

1096
01:59:27,680 --> 01:59:31,120
actually had an incredible man on this a little while ago, but I'm actually going to repost it

1097
01:59:31,120 --> 01:59:35,360
because it was such an incredibly powerful conversation, but his name is Buck Branham.

1098
01:59:35,360 --> 01:59:40,720
And I don't know if that name rings a bell, but he's, that's my wife's mentor. Like, oh,

1099
01:59:40,720 --> 01:59:46,080
there we go. She loves, but I, yeah, I started, I, that's the one thing I didn't really get to

1100
01:59:46,080 --> 01:59:54,240
learn in my life was this wonderful, uh, experience of the Western culture. Um, I live in Nashville,

1101
01:59:54,240 --> 01:59:59,600
so it's sort of like it, but she's from Texas and she, like, this ain't the same, you know,

1102
02:00:00,720 --> 02:00:09,200
this is rhinestone stuff. But so, um, but yeah, I think from, from a therapeutic perspective,

1103
02:00:09,200 --> 02:00:19,360
equine therapy is about probably the second most effective therapy that I can see. You know, we can

1104
02:00:19,360 --> 02:00:26,000
expect any kind of dog training or animal, they get oxytocin, right? You get that thing. Um,

1105
02:00:26,000 --> 02:00:33,200
you get the companionship, but a horse is different because a horse and, and what Buck teaches is a

1106
02:00:33,200 --> 02:00:40,160
thing called natural horsemanship. It's where you're not dominating. You're just working with

1107
02:00:40,160 --> 02:00:48,720
and reading their energy. And I love this saying, um, that when a horse is a prey animal

1108
02:00:49,440 --> 02:00:55,040
and they let you strap a carcass of their cousin on his back, and then they let the thing that can

1109
02:00:56,160 --> 02:01:01,680
take, take it out by grab, jumping on his back and getting on his neck, they let you do that.

1110
02:01:01,680 --> 02:01:07,680
And then, you know, they teach you about yourself. They can, they're like a mirror of your energy.

1111
02:01:09,840 --> 02:01:16,960
And I think that's so valuable for, uh, for so many reasons, but for someone that's trying to

1112
02:01:16,960 --> 02:01:23,120
build awareness to their own energy, uh, I don't think there's anything more powerful than that,

1113
02:01:23,120 --> 02:01:29,600
than that relationship. Yeah, that was amazing. I watched him, I was in Georgia, drove up there,

1114
02:01:29,600 --> 02:01:35,600
um, watched him do like half, half a day of his clinic. Um, you know, and again, and I'm,

1115
02:01:35,600 --> 02:01:40,320
I grew up around horses. My dad's an equestrian vet. So, um, he, you know, I grew up around

1116
02:01:41,200 --> 02:01:46,160
all, you know, the spectrum from the, you know, extended Royal family with their polo horses,

1117
02:01:46,160 --> 02:01:50,080
all the way through the gypsies with, you know, their car horses and my dad would treat all of

1118
02:01:50,080 --> 02:01:55,520
them. Um, and so, you know, I know what the horse world is like. Most of them are lovely. Some of

1119
02:01:55,520 --> 02:02:01,040
them are obnoxious. Um, and you could see the personalities on the horses as Buck is teaching

1120
02:02:01,040 --> 02:02:05,600
them and the ones that are using, you know, the kicking too much. And, you know, you can just see

1121
02:02:05,600 --> 02:02:10,320
their kind of frustrated energy. And then he comes along and he, you know, he chastised the rider,

1122
02:02:10,320 --> 02:02:14,880
not the horse, you know, and tells them the change it. And, you know, it was amazing. So then we went

1123
02:02:14,880 --> 02:02:21,200
to the trailer, did like about 45 minutes of conversation, and then he had a dinner appointment

1124
02:02:21,200 --> 02:02:24,720
to go to. So then I think it was a month later, we carried on like we're doing now. We did the

1125
02:02:24,720 --> 02:02:31,520
rest over zoom. But I mean, that man's backstory of being, you got him on your show. Yes. Yeah.

1126
02:02:31,520 --> 02:02:36,800
So I'll send you the episode, but yeah, incredible. And it was a really raw, like from early life,

1127
02:02:36,800 --> 02:02:42,640
all the trauma that he endured all the way through. So yeah, it's like, that's why I said,

1128
02:02:42,640 --> 02:02:49,280
if you really want to know someone, just learn about their trauma and what they do with it.

1129
02:02:49,280 --> 02:02:55,440
And it's bucks a perfect example of how he created a, he literally changed the whole industry

1130
02:02:56,720 --> 02:03:02,800
on his technique. And when I'm out there with my wife and she's got like eight or nine clients

1131
02:03:02,800 --> 02:03:10,640
out here, and I get to go out and start to, I got on one of her horses, bareback, it was a Tennessee

1132
02:03:10,640 --> 02:03:19,840
Walker. And I got on bareback. I have probably rode a horse five times in my life. So like,

1133
02:03:19,840 --> 02:03:26,640
it's amazing what you can do when you build that relationship with an animal and they can feel that

1134
02:03:26,640 --> 02:03:32,080
safety and trust in you. And you know, like there's, when you're aware of that energy, it's,

1135
02:03:33,440 --> 02:03:39,120
well, you're operating in another dimension, I think. I'd never thought about this until a few

1136
02:03:39,120 --> 02:03:44,880
minutes ago, but I'm laughing now because that matching of energy, whenever I got on the horse,

1137
02:03:44,880 --> 02:03:48,960
we never had our own horses. We would ride the client's horses when they were, you know,

1138
02:03:48,960 --> 02:03:54,960
boarding or if they were in the rehab process. And there was a couple and when I get on them,

1139
02:03:54,960 --> 02:03:59,200
they would just fucking take off. And I would be, that's probably why I became a stunt man as well,

1140
02:03:59,200 --> 02:04:05,040
because I would just hang on. I did a parallel to my fire service career. And so, you know,

1141
02:04:05,040 --> 02:04:09,600
my parents would be like, you had the worst technique for a rider, but the biggest balls

1142
02:04:09,600 --> 02:04:15,440
of any of them. And they'd jump ditches and stuff. But looking back now, I had shit going on when I

1143
02:04:15,440 --> 02:04:20,640
was young. And again, it was probably that energy. It was that kind of chaos that was probably inside

1144
02:04:20,640 --> 02:04:25,280
my mind. And the horse is probably picking up and I go, oh, you want me to go crazy? All right,

1145
02:04:25,280 --> 02:04:29,680
we'll go crazy. I didn't realize I was eight, but you know, I'm sure even then there was that

1146
02:04:29,680 --> 02:04:36,160
projection. So it's funny. I'd never thought of it that way before. Yeah, she, she, my wife,

1147
02:04:36,160 --> 02:04:44,240
her name is MJ. She, she always says, I can tell way more about a horse owner than the horse with,

1148
02:04:44,240 --> 02:04:49,280
you know, in the first five minutes. And, you know, you look at the horse and you can tell,

1149
02:04:49,280 --> 02:04:55,600
you can tell, you know, about the owner. And they, and it's funny because like most people in general,

1150
02:04:55,600 --> 02:04:59,840
they're just like, what's wrong with my horse? You know, they're always looking at something else

1151
02:04:59,840 --> 02:05:05,200
outside of them. And you're, and you're like, well, you know, maybe you should figure some shit out.

1152
02:05:05,200 --> 02:05:11,360
And I, again, the biggest takeaway from it is it gives you awareness. And that's what people,

1153
02:05:11,360 --> 02:05:16,800
human beings are lacking. They're lacking their emotional quotient, which is your ability to feel

1154
02:05:16,800 --> 02:05:24,880
emotions and their awareness. Like that, that's where you start. The other thing that's really

1155
02:05:24,880 --> 02:05:29,840
cool in this whole thing of healing trauma or healing the mind is that when you start looking

1156
02:05:29,840 --> 02:05:37,440
at creative art therapies and these other, uh, integrated skill sets that we are trying to push

1157
02:05:37,440 --> 02:05:44,560
is that if you're an animal state mind, your energy is back into the stem cell or the brain stem.

1158
02:05:45,120 --> 02:05:50,720
And so we're seeing this because you can see it on the 3d MRIs is that if you push that energy

1159
02:05:50,720 --> 02:05:58,720
up towards the frontal motor cortex over here, you start to access things like empathy and, um,

1160
02:05:58,720 --> 02:06:09,120
these higher functioning, um, programs that make us human and creativity helps develop neuroplasticity,

1161
02:06:10,480 --> 02:06:14,800
which falls in line with the psychedelics. It's like, okay, you look at our music and our arts

1162
02:06:14,800 --> 02:06:22,240
and it's like, it's all over there. It's all over it, you know? And so, um, I work with, uh,

1163
02:06:23,200 --> 02:06:29,600
several nonprofits and try to help, um, this whole thing. And one of them is creative vets,

1164
02:06:29,600 --> 02:06:33,680
which is a wonderful organization here in Nashville. They're actually in 40,

1165
02:06:34,240 --> 02:06:40,320
I think 45 states and they'll do things like have veterans write songs with, uh,

1166
02:06:40,320 --> 02:06:47,040
a singer songwriters in the rhyme in and do these really cool events that right now I'm taking a

1167
02:06:47,040 --> 02:06:54,720
songwriting class at Vanderbilt and two incredible songwriting coaches, teachers, um, there's like

1168
02:06:54,720 --> 02:07:00,480
eight veterans and we're, we're, I was on it last night and it's just incredible. Like telling

1169
02:07:00,480 --> 02:07:08,000
stories, making music, and you see like what lights up. It's that frontal motor cortex.

1170
02:07:08,000 --> 02:07:14,960
And the power of storytelling. I think a lot of people have trauma if they can find an expressive

1171
02:07:14,960 --> 02:07:23,200
way to express some of this stuff, you don't keep it inside and you can actually create something

1172
02:07:23,200 --> 02:07:30,400
out of the trauma that resonates with other people. Yeah, absolutely. Well, we were talking

1173
02:07:30,400 --> 02:07:35,920
before hit record. Um, my second book now that I'm writing is a fiction and the goal is to

1174
02:07:35,920 --> 02:07:41,840
have a powerful, powerful book for people that love to read. But I think arguably in 2024,

1175
02:07:41,840 --> 02:07:46,960
most people consume stories through the screen now. Um, so I would love to not would love,

1176
02:07:46,960 --> 02:07:52,240
I am going to make this into come hell or high water a series. I think, I think it would be

1177
02:07:52,960 --> 02:07:58,160
compelling captivating and, you know, it's something that people need to see at this time.

1178
02:07:58,160 --> 02:08:03,840
So talk to me about your journey into storytelling and how you've been able to

1179
02:08:03,840 --> 02:08:08,000
get your journey into storytelling and your kind of filmmaking side.

1180
02:08:09,040 --> 02:08:17,360
So, um, I, I like to start, I usually start by saying, remember that feather from Forrest Gump?

1181
02:08:17,360 --> 02:08:26,800
I try to model my life after that feather and just, just go and do and feel and experience,

1182
02:08:26,800 --> 02:08:33,200
right? And, um, I was kind of like that with the seals and this whole thing. It's just been

1183
02:08:33,200 --> 02:08:39,920
one experience after another. And when I was, when COVID happened and I was, I just got out

1184
02:08:39,920 --> 02:08:45,920
of the military, I had some really great friends in Southern California, my men's group. It was

1185
02:08:45,920 --> 02:08:52,960
like Philip Rivers, Mike Sweeney from the Kansas city Royals. He's one of my biggest role models

1186
02:08:52,960 --> 02:08:59,840
and brother. Um, Mike is just incredible, man. Jim Caviezel, all these other guys that I started

1187
02:08:59,840 --> 02:09:10,400
out with in this really transformative part of my life. Um, and, uh, I was like, I need some money.

1188
02:09:10,400 --> 02:09:15,440
So I was like, I need to use this GI bill. And I'm like, what the hell am I going to do?

1189
02:09:15,440 --> 02:09:20,240
I don't know where I don't want to go back to school. And so I, I found the highest BH

1190
02:09:20,240 --> 02:09:26,160
places in the country for the GI bill. And then San Francisco was like way higher than everywhere

1191
02:09:26,160 --> 02:09:30,640
else. So I'm like, I guess I'm going to San Francisco. And at the time they were allowing

1192
02:09:30,640 --> 02:09:38,800
veterans to take classes remotely because of COVID. So I, um, I got in and I just said,

1193
02:09:41,600 --> 02:09:48,320
something in my head is saying, learn how to tell a story. It seals. I take a little bit of

1194
02:09:48,320 --> 02:09:57,200
the bragging rights and say, we have pretty good stories. They're C stories. And there was always

1195
02:09:57,200 --> 02:10:02,160
a joke, like there was a difference between Navy humor and army humor. And I was like, yeah,

1196
02:10:02,160 --> 02:10:09,760
the difference is we have, we have it. They have none. It was a joke, you know, but we,

1197
02:10:09,760 --> 02:10:18,720
I feel like there was a, it's a very, um, warrior type thing that you need to be able to tell a damn

1198
02:10:18,720 --> 02:10:27,280
good story if you want your brothers to listen to you. And so that culture, uh, really was something

1199
02:10:27,280 --> 02:10:34,240
that kind of drive me to, to get a master's of fine arts and storytelling, which is, uh,

1200
02:10:34,240 --> 02:10:43,360
directing and writing. Um, but I was a storyteller. I was a writer as a kid. See, I, I, I pushed

1201
02:10:43,360 --> 02:10:48,240
everything into science because I thought that's what I was going to do. And I was a big science

1202
02:10:48,240 --> 02:10:54,320
guy, math and science. But if I look in my, my baby's box, which my mom just sent me, I'll see

1203
02:10:54,320 --> 02:11:00,080
books that I wrote in second grade with, you know, Detroit Pistons player, Isaiah Thomas, like my

1204
02:11:00,080 --> 02:11:07,280
first book, my day with Isaiah and he signed it, you know, I had all this writing and so it was

1205
02:11:07,280 --> 02:11:13,040
always in me. I just never cultivated it. I was probably afraid because that wasn't my identity.

1206
02:11:13,040 --> 02:11:21,040
And then I had this transform transformative period where I was like, and this I'm saying is

1207
02:11:21,040 --> 02:11:26,960
I'm blessed because I lost everything. Not many people can say that. And I got that opportunity

1208
02:11:26,960 --> 02:11:32,560
to just be like, clean slate. What do you want to do? I don't know. Let's just do this. And so that

1209
02:11:33,280 --> 02:11:41,200
curiosity got me into the program and I started to really dive into character, you know, fundamental

1210
02:11:41,200 --> 02:11:47,360
character writing. What is a 3d character and how do you make them likable and relatable? And it's,

1211
02:11:48,160 --> 02:11:52,800
you got to give them contrast. You got to give them, you can't make them all good and you can't

1212
02:11:52,800 --> 02:11:58,480
make them all bad. Even the antagonist you see in all the films, like they try to make them likable

1213
02:11:58,480 --> 02:12:03,120
so that you can relate to them from their perspective. So I learned all these things and

1214
02:12:03,120 --> 02:12:10,320
I was like, oh my gosh, all this stuff I'm learning about storytelling is helping me tell the story in

1215
02:12:10,320 --> 02:12:18,400
my mind of what happened and how I got here. It's okay. And so I was like, oh wow, this is like

1216
02:12:18,400 --> 02:12:25,920
therapeutic. It's therapeutic for me to learn how to tell my story and to learn story in general

1217
02:12:25,920 --> 02:12:31,280
because I believe that story is how the brain works. I mean, there's a reason why Jesus taught

1218
02:12:31,280 --> 02:12:38,800
in parables. There's a reason why story is the only thing we leave behind. And so I was like,

1219
02:12:38,800 --> 02:12:44,880
I want to get really good at telling stories and learning how to create story. And now like you

1220
02:12:44,880 --> 02:12:54,000
said, like the whole media platform is shifting to this short form storytelling and your ability

1221
02:12:54,000 --> 02:13:00,400
to do that. And I think with the work I'm doing with kind of changing the narrative on what a

1222
02:13:00,400 --> 02:13:06,240
drug is and what a medicine is and what trauma is and what emotional energy is and all this stuff,

1223
02:13:06,240 --> 02:13:09,760
it's like, how do you do that? Well, you better tell a damn good story.

1224
02:13:09,760 --> 02:13:14,560
So this kind of segues nicely into some of the closing questions that I ask. I want to make sure

1225
02:13:14,560 --> 02:13:18,320
everyone knows where to find all the things that you do now. But before we do, while we're talking

1226
02:13:18,320 --> 02:13:23,120
about storytelling, are there any books that you love to recommend? It can be related to our

1227
02:13:23,120 --> 02:13:33,120
discussion today or completely unrelated. Yeah, I'm more of an audio book guy. I would say the

1228
02:13:33,120 --> 02:13:40,880
immortality key is a deep dive into this relationship between human beings and psychedelic

1229
02:13:40,880 --> 02:13:48,560
compounds. And I think if you're interested in this, then it's a deep one, but it goes back

1230
02:13:49,120 --> 02:14:01,360
a long time and it's got really good anecdotal, I can't say it, good evidence of what it is.

1231
02:14:01,360 --> 02:14:09,040
Yeah, good evidence. And he's got a really interesting story. He got to go in the basement

1232
02:14:09,040 --> 02:14:14,320
of the Vatican and do two years of research in the archives with this Franciscan, see the eyebrows?

1233
02:14:15,920 --> 02:14:23,120
Did he find anything else when he was down there? Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm sure. But so that's one that

1234
02:14:23,120 --> 02:14:31,520
I think is important or interesting. This book here, this holotropic breathwork, this is by Stan

1235
02:14:31,520 --> 02:14:38,320
Goff and his wife. And Stan is a pioneer, is a psychiatrist with over 60 years experience of

1236
02:14:38,320 --> 02:14:45,760
research in non-ordinary states of consciousness. And one of the founders and chief, he's a chief

1237
02:14:45,760 --> 02:14:52,880
developer of transpersonal psychology. So I think if you really end up trying to heal your mind,

1238
02:14:52,880 --> 02:14:57,680
you got to understand what the mind is. And I think that book can help do that.

1239
02:15:00,640 --> 02:15:09,840
Oh man. And then I would say a couple of the books that we would actually issue out when they're

1240
02:15:09,840 --> 02:15:17,520
starting the mission within protocol, we would have them read The Untethered Soul. I think that's

1241
02:15:17,520 --> 02:15:26,320
Michael Singer, How to Change Your Mind, Michael Pollan, which is a Netflix series. Michael Pollan

1242
02:15:26,320 --> 02:15:32,800
actually is in charge of the new psychedelic society that integrates in Harvard. It integrates

1243
02:15:32,800 --> 02:15:38,560
Harvard's School of Law, School of Medicine, and School of Divinity, which I'm trying to get into.

1244
02:15:38,560 --> 02:15:50,720
And he's in charge of that. And the book Breathe, which was recommended to me by Laird Hamilton.

1245
02:15:53,600 --> 02:15:59,040
Breathe is a great book because it talks about actual our society,

1246
02:15:59,040 --> 02:16:07,840
the lack of awareness on the breath. And you see so many kids literally having birth,

1247
02:16:10,640 --> 02:16:15,680
their facial structures don't develop right because they're not breathing right. And

1248
02:16:16,240 --> 02:16:22,880
if you have stress breathing, you're breathing in the chest, which that, and so you have less

1249
02:16:22,880 --> 02:16:30,400
surface area, those intercostal muscles that are firing to do that. That's like what you're using

1250
02:16:30,400 --> 02:16:36,560
to get away from a lion. So like our lack of breathing into our diaphragm and pulling the

1251
02:16:36,560 --> 02:16:44,560
belly out when you inhale and then squeezing it back, like doing that is a game changer.

1252
02:16:45,920 --> 02:16:51,440
So breath is a good book too. Is that James Nestor? Is that the one? Yes. Yeah, okay.

1253
02:16:51,440 --> 02:16:58,080
And you mentioned about how to change your mind. Any other films or documentaries that you love?

1254
02:16:58,080 --> 02:17:05,920
Oh man, that's all we watch is documentaries. I love documentaries because it's more real. It's

1255
02:17:05,920 --> 02:17:12,400
still scripted, but it's more real. And I think it's a great way to get information about things

1256
02:17:12,400 --> 02:17:21,440
of people. Documentaries, well, I mean, Fantastic Fungi, I'm kind of sticking on the psychedelic theme.

1257
02:17:25,360 --> 02:17:32,160
My favorite movies growing up was Vision Quest, the wrestling movie kind of helped shape my life.

1258
02:17:32,160 --> 02:17:43,920
And The Natural, those are like kind of my two. I say like in Rudy, those are my three.

1259
02:17:43,920 --> 02:17:48,800
All right. Well, then the next question, is there a person you'd recommend to come on this podcast

1260
02:17:48,800 --> 02:17:53,280
as a guest to speak to the first responders, military and associated professions of the world?

1261
02:17:54,320 --> 02:18:00,400
Andrew Huberman. He was actually supposed to be coming on. And then I got a message saying he

1262
02:18:00,400 --> 02:18:07,440
wasn't going to be coming on anymore. So I did try and then I got rebuked. So maybe one day down

1263
02:18:07,440 --> 02:18:15,520
the road. But yeah, that's, you know. Then Bobby Kennedy.

1264
02:18:16,480 --> 02:18:22,640
Yeah. I would love if you're able to help in any way, shape or form. That'd be amazing. I think

1265
02:18:22,640 --> 02:18:28,000
this is who we need to hear. And I'm looking for the leaders, as we said earlier, I'm looking for

1266
02:18:28,000 --> 02:18:32,400
the people who unite this country, the people that are proactive, not reactive or going to be

1267
02:18:32,400 --> 02:18:38,720
selling some, you know, narrative that ultimately is not going to benefit the nation. So he seems

1268
02:18:38,720 --> 02:18:44,960
like just someone who through his whole career has actually cared about people. So yeah, I think

1269
02:18:44,960 --> 02:18:53,360
he'd be amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Him. And then I hoist Gracie and or Laird Hamilton. Those guys are just

1270
02:18:53,360 --> 02:19:00,160
really cool guys. I had hoist on. I just reposted it not too long ago, but Laird has been on my radar.

1271
02:19:00,160 --> 02:19:04,160
I became friends with Josh Brolin. We did an interview years ago and they ended up writing the

1272
02:19:04,160 --> 02:19:10,160
forward for my first book. And he's very, very good friends with Laird. So I've been fully aware of,

1273
02:19:10,160 --> 02:19:14,480
you know, of him and obviously Gabby as well. So I need to reach out. I've never reached out before.

1274
02:19:14,480 --> 02:19:17,680
So I've never even tried to actually get them on, but I think they'd both be phenomenal.

1275
02:19:17,680 --> 02:19:24,080
Luke is a good one too. Luca lives with them. He's kind of Laird's protege. He's the youngest

1276
02:19:24,080 --> 02:19:34,160
surfer to ever surf the Maverick. And he's a basic really good friends with Christian McCaffrey,

1277
02:19:34,160 --> 02:19:42,800
running back for the 49ers. So Luca is a great guy. He's really wise behind his years. He's only 21,

1278
02:19:42,800 --> 02:19:51,440
I think, but he's just around really good people. And I'm a big believer in stacking your boat crew.

1279
02:19:51,440 --> 02:19:56,640
Like I'm a big believer in your environment and the people that you're around. Like if you don't

1280
02:19:56,640 --> 02:20:02,160
seek people that you want to emulate to be like, then you're not programming yourself the most

1281
02:20:02,160 --> 02:20:09,520
effective way. So I always say I never had a lot of money and I don't care if I do or don't get it.

1282
02:20:09,520 --> 02:20:16,880
But what I do care about is my true currency is like my friendships in my network because

1283
02:20:19,920 --> 02:20:28,240
it helps. 100%. I've watched it more over the last seven years. And then the people that were

1284
02:20:28,240 --> 02:20:33,840
my friends before are still my friends after. But that next layer, now I just have these incredible

1285
02:20:33,840 --> 02:20:38,480
conversations with people, whether it's recording like this or just a simple phone call. And when

1286
02:20:38,480 --> 02:20:42,160
you're surrounded by incredible people, it's not that you're networking and oh, this person could

1287
02:20:42,160 --> 02:20:48,000
do something for me now. It's not. It's just that the conversation, I always leave these conversations

1288
02:20:48,000 --> 02:20:53,520
better than I started versus let's say just talking two-dimensionally about politics or

1289
02:20:54,080 --> 02:20:58,800
sports or whatever it was. You've talked for an hour, but did you really gain anything?

1290
02:20:58,800 --> 02:21:04,000
So I love this immersion that I found myself in now. It's so rewarding.

1291
02:21:04,000 --> 02:21:11,440
For this work. Yeah. There's a reason why Bobby Kennedy is attacking the podcast

1292
02:21:11,440 --> 02:21:17,920
because he's leading with voters 45 years and under, and this is the future. So

1293
02:21:19,680 --> 02:21:26,000
now thank you for doing what you do. It's so important. And again, it goes back to like the

1294
02:21:26,000 --> 02:21:33,120
first thing we learned in SEAL school and Bud's was pass the word and it has to happen. If you

1295
02:21:33,120 --> 02:21:38,560
want to help people, we need to pass the word. Absolutely. Well, one more closing question before

1296
02:21:38,560 --> 02:21:42,480
we make sure everyone knows where to find you and the things that you offer. What do you do to

1297
02:21:42,480 --> 02:21:53,680
decompress these days? I go to nature. I find healthy suffering and things that are uncomfortable.

1298
02:21:53,680 --> 02:22:09,520
And I give myself permission to feel and to be curious, but nature is a way to escape the

1299
02:22:09,520 --> 02:22:21,600
environment of society that we can get manipulated by and we need to get outside of that system. So

1300
02:22:21,600 --> 02:22:31,280
when I go into nature, I always have resistance. I don't want to go like getting a cold waterfall

1301
02:22:31,280 --> 02:22:39,200
or do this, but I know like I'm trained now to where when I sit in that and I feel that resistance,

1302
02:22:39,200 --> 02:22:46,240
it's like my awareness goes, okay, there it is. And here's the interesting, if my name on Instagram

1303
02:22:46,240 --> 02:22:53,040
is flow state frog man, and I don't know exactly why I picked that name. I just felt like in that

1304
02:22:53,040 --> 02:23:01,520
time I was like flow state is like energy. And I think now as we study this thing called energy,

1305
02:23:01,520 --> 02:23:09,520
everything has a wave and in that wave, you cannot get to your next high point unless you go through

1306
02:23:09,520 --> 02:23:16,720
a low point, it's an energy thing. And so when you're at a low point, the fastest way to get to that

1307
02:23:17,520 --> 02:23:24,640
top peak or that next wave is by going through the low. And I think what people do is they

1308
02:23:24,640 --> 02:23:31,840
resist that low and they stay there for a long time. It's like the buffalo and the cow, the cows

1309
02:23:31,840 --> 02:23:37,040
run away from the storm and they're in it forever. But the buffalo goes through the storm because he

1310
02:23:37,040 --> 02:23:42,720
knows he'll be at last time. Well, speaking of highs and lows, I just want to slide the other

1311
02:23:42,720 --> 02:23:49,920
part of that question. I realized I never asked you. So we hear about, you know, again, the dark

1312
02:23:49,920 --> 02:23:55,360
side of war, what we don't hear are the stories of kindness and compassion that you guys encountered

1313
02:23:55,360 --> 02:24:00,160
when you were seeing combat, whether it was by the men and or women to your left and right,

1314
02:24:00,160 --> 02:24:03,760
or the indigenous populations that you were trying to protect while you were over there.

1315
02:24:03,760 --> 02:24:12,000
Yeah, that's when you're over there. It's all about the guys to the left and the right and

1316
02:24:12,880 --> 02:24:20,320
the beautiful thing. And I'm biased. I know, like people look at seals and whatever they

1317
02:24:20,320 --> 02:24:29,200
think of us as superheroes or this or that. And it's not true. Or we're broken boys,

1318
02:24:29,200 --> 02:24:42,800
but we're badass warriors. And I think through the training and the adversity, you build these

1319
02:24:42,800 --> 02:24:50,080
incredible relationships. And you know that the guys to your left and right is going to be there

1320
02:24:50,080 --> 02:25:00,160
backing you up. That part of it, like, you know, I'm beyond blessed to experience that camaraderie.

1321
02:25:00,880 --> 02:25:06,640
But I've also been on the other side of the good old boy club getting thrown off into a ditch and,

1322
02:25:06,640 --> 02:25:13,600
you know, kind of losing that. And I can look back and I'm not scarred by the betrayals or the,

1323
02:25:13,600 --> 02:25:19,840
you know, the bullshit toxic masculinity that some guys still make tons of money by fabricating

1324
02:25:19,840 --> 02:25:28,240
these hell weeks and people pay $15,000 to get their ass kicked for this toxic shit that

1325
02:25:29,040 --> 02:25:37,840
I'm trying to heal. So I'm pretty authentic in how I feel about even my own community.

1326
02:25:37,840 --> 02:25:42,960
But I think the thing that I take away from any kind of combat experience

1327
02:25:44,400 --> 02:25:54,560
is there's a divine need across the whole globe to believe in these things called freedom, liberty,

1328
02:25:56,400 --> 02:26:02,720
and truth. And John Locke, the author that inspired our constitution,

1329
02:26:02,720 --> 02:26:10,640
wrote, it is our God given birthright to be free. And those morals and those ideas that

1330
02:26:11,520 --> 02:26:17,760
Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin wrote our constitution are very under attack. And

1331
02:26:21,920 --> 02:26:27,600
I know going over there and seeing those kids faces, whether Iraq, Afghanistan,

1332
02:26:27,600 --> 02:26:36,960
Africa, Europe, Thailand, and any other place I've been, there is one thing. They want to believe

1333
02:26:36,960 --> 02:26:46,720
that America has the ability to represent those core values. They want it. People want that.

1334
02:26:46,720 --> 02:26:53,200
And I just don't, I don't think we're doing it. I think it needs to be done. I think it needs to be

1335
02:26:53,200 --> 02:26:59,760
done. I think we need to change. I couldn't agree more. I think we can. This is the thing.

1336
02:26:59,760 --> 02:27:04,400
It's not about, oh, America sucks because it doesn't. America is one of the most beautiful

1337
02:27:04,400 --> 02:27:09,040
countries in the world. I don't think it's a competition. I don't think we need to say

1338
02:27:09,040 --> 02:27:14,240
we're the best and be our chest. I think we have the humility to go, we do these things really

1339
02:27:14,240 --> 02:27:18,800
well, but hey, other countries, can we borrow your ideas because you're doing those really well.

1340
02:27:18,800 --> 02:27:24,160
I think, as I've said on here many times now, the rising tide lifts all ships, but what we do

1341
02:27:24,160 --> 02:27:30,560
extremely well is what I would argue the original American dream, the ability that you can come

1342
02:27:30,560 --> 02:27:36,160
from here, from a country and go from nothing to something. And hopefully that's not driven by

1343
02:27:36,160 --> 02:27:41,440
money and material items. I just watched Steve Aoki's documentary and his dad was the founder

1344
02:27:41,440 --> 02:27:46,720
of Benihana. Amazing story, but it was chasing wealth the whole time. And I think that's the

1345
02:27:46,720 --> 02:27:50,640
story, but it was chasing wealth the whole time and arguably at the expense of his family.

1346
02:27:51,600 --> 02:27:59,920
But the immigrant stories that you hear in the US are incredible and that is the American value.

1347
02:27:59,920 --> 02:28:06,160
But when you allow us to be fragmented and set upon each other, we're still the same people.

1348
02:28:06,160 --> 02:28:10,720
We just need to change who we're looking at for inspiration and remind ourselves that it's our

1349
02:28:10,720 --> 02:28:16,960
own home and then outside our front door that we can actually impact with our own hands. And if we

1350
02:28:16,960 --> 02:28:23,760
all do that, we'll shift back to the America that we really deserve to be. Yeah, America lost its

1351
02:28:23,760 --> 02:28:29,600
innocence when they murdered John F. Kennedy and they shot him in the head from this way,

1352
02:28:29,600 --> 02:28:40,640
not from the back. And when that happened, we lost our innocence in that idea. And again,

1353
02:28:41,520 --> 02:28:50,320
Mr. Kennedy Jr. is the one that understands how to get back there. And it's not going to be easy.

1354
02:28:50,320 --> 02:28:59,440
It will take divine intervention just to get him on the ballot. And when he's underfunded

1355
02:28:59,440 --> 02:29:04,320
by maybe a billion dollars, if you want to look at the numbers between the Democrat

1356
02:29:05,040 --> 02:29:12,560
campaign funds and the Republicans and what Bobby's been able to do on minimal funds is absolutely

1357
02:29:15,360 --> 02:29:20,960
something that you just know that there's something else going on here that you can't really say.

1358
02:29:20,960 --> 02:29:32,240
But he said it too. He's like, there's more roads, more buildings and more bridges named after John

1359
02:29:32,240 --> 02:29:39,840
F. Kennedy than any or all presidents in the United States combined in the world. I mean,

1360
02:29:39,840 --> 02:29:45,680
in the world, there's more bridges, you know what I'm saying? And so there's something there. I think

1361
02:29:45,680 --> 02:29:55,200
we're idealistic creatures and we do have belief systems. And I think psychologically, we want to

1362
02:29:55,200 --> 02:30:05,840
feel safe. We want to feel connected to other humans. And I think the problem is fear. People

1363
02:30:05,840 --> 02:30:11,280
remember fear more than they do love sometimes because fear leaves a sting. You always remember

1364
02:30:11,280 --> 02:30:20,640
a bad haircut over a good haircut. You remember punching a face over a hug. And these narratives

1365
02:30:20,640 --> 02:30:29,120
that we see designed to keep the wealthy wealthy and the rich still suffering and basically distracted

1366
02:30:29,120 --> 02:30:38,720
by their own survival is easily manipulated. And it takes people to go out there and go against the

1367
02:30:38,720 --> 02:30:47,920
tide and become a champion. And I love that. Like, it's been me, you know? 100%. Well, I'm sure

1368
02:30:47,920 --> 02:30:51,920
people listening are fascinated. Obviously, we've been all over the place in this conversation and

1369
02:30:51,920 --> 02:30:57,840
rightly so. But where are the best places to find your work and the things that you offer now

1370
02:30:57,840 --> 02:31:08,480
and on social media as well? My flow state frog man on Instagram. And I would say follow

1371
02:31:08,480 --> 02:31:13,360
the work that the veteran mental health leadership is doing because you'll see me with them.

1372
02:31:16,080 --> 02:31:25,360
And that's it really, really right now. I don't have anything like formal. I kind of stay in the

1373
02:31:25,360 --> 02:31:32,160
gray area. I'm up, they see me, I'm down. Beautiful. Well, Tommy, I want to thank you.

1374
02:31:32,160 --> 02:31:35,600
Please thank your wife as well. I've been talking for two and a half hours in the end.

1375
02:31:35,600 --> 02:31:40,320
So even longer than we anticipated. But it's been such an incredible conversation and, you know,

1376
02:31:40,320 --> 02:31:45,360
a different perspective again, coming from your community. And so many have been through the

1377
02:31:45,360 --> 02:31:50,240
healing journey. But few of them actually then took the gauntlet and became part of that, that

1378
02:31:51,120 --> 02:31:55,520
healing family on the other end to bring, you know, their brothers in after that. So I want

1379
02:31:55,520 --> 02:32:00,400
to thank you so much for being so generous and being courageously vulnerable and coming on the

1380
02:32:00,400 --> 02:32:07,440
behind the shield podcast today. Oh, it's been a pleasure and an honor. And like I said earlier,

1381
02:32:07,440 --> 02:32:14,160
there's two things that come out of war, it's weapons and medicine and it is anything I can do

1382
02:32:14,160 --> 02:32:22,000
to help get this to our police officers and our firefighters and our medical providers. They need

1383
02:32:22,000 --> 02:32:28,960
this more than most people are aware of. And I'm an open book, whatever I got is yours. And I look

1384
02:32:28,960 --> 02:32:32,400
forward to floating down this river of change with you.