This episode is sponsored by a company I've used for well over a decade and that is 511.
I wore their uniforms back in Anaheim, California and have used their products ever since.
From their incredibly strong yet light footwear to their cut uniforms for both male and female
responders, I found them hands down the best workwear in all the departments that I've worked for.
Outside of the fire service, I use their luggage for everything and I travel a lot and they are
also now sponsoring the 7X team as we embark around the world on the Human Performance Project.
We have Murph coming up in May and again I bought their plate carrier. I ended up buying real
ballistic plates rather than the fake weight plates and that has been my ride or die through
Murph the last few years as well. But one area I want to talk about that I haven't in previous
sponsorship spots is their brick and mortar element. They were predominantly an online
company up till more recently but now they are approaching 100 stores all over the US.
My local store is here in Gainesville Florida and I've been multiple times and the discounts you see
online are applied also in the stores. So as I mentioned 511 is offering you 15% off every
purchase that you make but I do want to say more often than not they have an even deeper discount
especially around holiday times. But if you use the code SHIELD15 you will get 15% off your order
or in the stores every time you make a purchase. And if you want to hear more about 511, who they
stand for and who works with them, listen to episode 580 of Behind the Shield podcast with
511 regional director Will Ayers. Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast as always my name is
James Gearing and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome on the show former firefighter
and co-founder of the SIREN project Angela Graham Howling. Now in this conversation we discuss a
host of topics from Angela's journey into the fire service, the power of mentorship, diversity,
some career calls, her powerful mental health journey, how psychedelic therapy helped pull her
from her darkness, using her own experience to create a non-profit that ultimately connects
other first responders with this kind of treatment and so much more. Now before we get to this
incredible conversation as I say every week please just take a moment, go to whichever app you listen
to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback and leave a rating. Every single five-star rating
truly does elevate this podcast therefore making it easier for others to find and this is a free
library of well over 900 episodes now so all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible
men and women stories so I can get them to every single person on planet earth who needs to hear
them. So with that being said I introduce to you Angela Graham Howling. Enjoy!
Well Angela I want to start by saying thank you so much for taking the time and coming on the
Behind the Shield podcast today. Thank you so much for for providing this platform and having us.
So we're on planet earth we find ourselves in a place where we can't find our way around
the planet earth. So we're on planet earth and we're going to be talking about the power of
mentorship and the power of mentorship and the power of mentorship and the power of mentorship
and the power of mentoring in the future. So we're on planet earth to be finding you this
afternoon. I am in Carmel Valley California the one near Monterey not the one near San Diego
apparently there's two. All right beautiful well I want to start at the very beginning of your
timeline so tell me where you were born and tell me a little bit about your family dynamic what
your parents did how many siblings? Oh I'm born and raised in california and in Concord actually
and my father was a mechanic till I was 10 and then he went to work for Chevron
oil refinery as an operator. My mom is an RDA, registered dental assistant,
now she's an office manager for dental offices. I have one brother called my
little brother, six years younger, but he's about six eight, probably three
bells. He's a big boy. It's a big boy. Yeah, that's a little bit of where I come
from. What did your dad's work week look like or work a year look like on the
refinery? So there's a reason why I'm asking that. It was rough. My mom had the
schedule memorized. I never got it. It was something like four on three off, three
on four off. Then it was always a 12-hour shift so he would do like four days and
then have three days off and then four nights and then have three days off. It
was a really hard schedule to follow. So I think by the time I was 10 I was used
to somebody working graveyards overnight. Yeah, because the reason I asked, I
actually put a post up recently and it was just I'm really trying to push for
the 2472 to be a national industry standard for us. Get the firefighters
working a normal work week that actually creates health rather than
disease. I put a post and it just said that, what did it say, administrators that
work 40 hours continuously vote against firefighters working less than 56.
One guy chimed in and it was actually hidden by Instagram funny enough and he
was like, I work 83 hours a week on the refinery. Stop bitching. You signed
up for it. I'm like, because that obviously always fixes things. We
just say shut up and don't address it. But for me when I think of the oil rigs, a
lot of times I think about working a few months at time and then going
off for a few months. Then obviously doing the same thing for 10, 20, 30
years on ending is very different than doing seasons on a rig or a crab
fishing boat, for example. Yeah, he wasn't in the seasons. He was at the refinery so
he wasn't off on a rig where they were drilling for it. I just
remember thinking it'd be so much easier on their bodies if they just did all
night shifts for a month and then switched to all day shifts for a
month or something to give them a chance to get into a rhythm because
just doing four nights and then off for three days and then right into four days
and almost every week you're changing graveyard to day shifts. It's not
like us. Sometimes we sleep at night on our 24s. When they're up at night
and working, they're actually working, doing stuff. It's hard. It's hard on
the body, lack of sleep. Sleep is not overrated. No. For sure. Absolutely.
What about sports? What were you playing when you were young? I started
softball really young. I want to say I was four or five and I played all the
way through college on scholarship, division one, and then I had the
opportunity to play professionally overseas in Italy. We got to play against
US Olympic teams. Pretty awesome. I played a little volleyball in high
school and in college and it was just it's too hard to play two sports in
college and that was just my fun sport. Yeah, now I'm more into horses. It's a
little more therapeutic. I wouldn't say it's easier on the body at all but
there's definitely a mindfulness to working with horses. Just like in
softball, I was a pitcher so you had to be very in tune with your body and you
had to have those moments of focus and they didn't realize how cathartic
pitching had been. Even though it was my job and towards the end of my career, I
didn't really love it anymore. There's days where you go out there and you just
throwing the ball around and you're just focused on you and you kind of get a
chance to forget about everything else. I'm glad I have horses now. I grew up
with horses and was not a great rider. It probably sent me on a good path to
being a stuntman which I did alongside fire service but yeah I was terrible but
that meant I was always getting thrown from over ditches and over fences
and anywhere the horse decided to suddenly stop and I kept going. You
learned how to tuck and roll for sure. What about career aspirations? What were you
dreaming of becoming while you were in the school age? Oh I wanted to be a
helicopter pilot and I just went to college to get a degree.
Didn't matter what it was in because then you could join the military as an
officer or a warrant officer and then you could fly and then I actually
fractured two vertebrae, the processes of two vertebrae on a dirt bike.
I actually joined the army, signed in, sworn in and everything and then before I
got shipped out I fractured two vertebrae and I was medically disqualified to
fly. So they're like you can still join the army you just can't fly.
I'm like yeah that's alright. I didn't do my second swear in and actually ship off
and I think I landed on my feet. I did alright. Absolutely. Well then
so walk me through that. You play professionally for a moment in
Italy. What was that experience like as far as a softball first and
especially playing against your national side? Oh it was amazing. That was awesome.
I'm pretty sure every girl who plays softball or any sport would love to play
with or against the Olympic team the best of the best and I did pretty well.
I struck out Crystal Bustos all three times I faced her. I struck out
Lisa Fernandez so I just have to brag about that for a moment. She's kind of
like the Babe Ruth of softball so that was amazing and then just getting to
live in another country and learn another language. I truly experienced
culture shock and what it's like to just by the end of the day I was like don't
talk to me in Italian anymore. I was just mentally exhausted but I was
comfortable in conversations in two or three months in and just learning a
whole other way of life and I remember thinking these people just truly enjoy
every day. They're so present. They don't have that rat race competition that we
have competitiveness in America. It was just it was a really nice energy to be
around for a year and softball was fun. My teammates were awesome. They all had
other jobs. This was just what they did for fun so it wasn't super super serious
but we had cadet teams. I got to work with little kids and believe it or not
off-topic a little bit the kids were the best teachers of Italian because when
you ask an adult a question on a word or grammar they get all complicated with
conjugation all this stuff. When you ask a child how do you say this they're just
very simple with it. Like I just need nouns and verbs to get by and so I think
coaching the cadets and the little girls was where I learned the most Italian
because we're all talking about body parts and how to move them doing the
mechanics of pitching or hitting and you you get to know these little people even
though you don't really understand everything they're saying you get to
know who they are based on the mannerisms and and you you find you're
more in tune with people when you don't understand what they're saying.
Absolutely. It was great. Well it's interesting you say about the the kind of
presence I find the same in Portugal I'm actually about to go back there my
couple of my family members moved there about 20 years ago and it's such a slow
country and I mean that affectionately like everything is just at a much lower
pace but they're actually very progressive like for example they
decriminalize addiction which we got no we're gonna get into later so you know
a lesser-known fact about that somewhere that's kind of kind of looked down its
nose a little bit from other kind of snooty air countries but when I think of
Italy I also think about I think it's one of the blue zones is there so some
of the healthiest people come from parts of Italy what was your experience as far
as kind of exercise or movement more importantly and then the food that was
there? Well I was living in Parma and that was pretty flat but most of my
teammates came from all over the country and it was just known like your midday
siesta you're you're gonna go for a walk you're after a meal you're gonna go for
a walk and they they have little town center parks where people are just out
there doing kind of like swinging their arms around and just moving their bodies
all the time and there was definitely a mentality of moderation in the sense of
we can have wine and we can have prosciutto we can have all the stuff that's
not good for us but we don't eat ourselves till we're fat we just enjoy
little bits of stuff so it was it was a good habit I think it was built in some
good habits to observe that hey I can have a little bit of all this stuff
you're not supposed to have you just don't go all in and they're big on you
know olive oil not butter and and seafood and believe it or not and when
you talk about the blue zones it's not just about the food you eat and your
exercise it's about community a lot of those blue zones talk about how you
have your family and your network and your people and Italians are very social
every meal is in order like every meal is family style and it's a whole two hour
ordeal you don't just quick eat in 20 minutes and get going they really take
the time to not only enjoy their food but to enjoy each other and I know
that's one of the qualities of the blue zone and that was definitely prevalent
when I was there beautiful I'm glad I asked that one more thing I kind of
skipped over with your early life obviously we're gonna get into mental
health and struggles one of the massive realizations that really kind of showed
its face as I started doing hundreds of these interviews was the impact on our
early life on our resilience or maybe some struggles when we put the uniform
on when you reflect now this kind of wise lens that you have were there any
elements of your upbringing you think that contributed to some of the
struggles later oh absolutely my parents bless their hearts they were not
compatible probably from the beginning they split up many times before they
finally divorced when I was 25 I think they just they stayed together because
they thought it was best for me and my brother so they stuck it out and as
miserable as they were it created a toxic hostile environment where you're
always tense just waiting for the next fight for someone to blow their top and
I I'm certain I developed unhealthy coping mechanisms so I didn't I didn't
know how to adapt or how to communicate and while you're stressed in a
constructive manner I just learned to yell or get mad or explode because if I
get mad and I explode it pushes you back on your heels and now you're no longer
coming at me so problem solved it's not healthy but in in the immediacy right
now if I can say the harshest meanest thing I can think of it hurts her
feelings you walk away crying well now I feel guilty but that's a lot better
than feeling enraged so I did not I wouldn't I love my parents and they love
us dearly and they did the best they could and they thought staying together
was the best for us and it absolutely contributed to probably some mental
health issues as well as not healthy coping mechanisms now I think it's an
important conversation I mean you know when you talk about the fire service at
the front door we have a ridiculous psychological test that now having
interviewed many many people in that field have all said that it was never
meant to be a standalone assessment for your ability to be a first responder
it's it's you know it's supposed to be part of a gamut of tests for forensic
psychology and that's the only discussion at the front door that we
have now in 2024 I've kind of put to people rather than a polygraph and a
psych test which I did numerous times to different departments how about you just
take that money and from the front door you give six counseling sessions in your
probationary year and now you've not only you know created a bond with a
counselor you've removed any of the barrier to entry but you've given them
an opportunity to start offloading some of the things and processing them before
they start seeing all the horrible shit that we see and I think that there's to
piggyback on that not only offer therapy at the beginning we do want to clear
people to make sure that they're mentally stable there's no schizophrenia
there's no catastrophic mental health issues that are prevalent from the
beginning for sure but we only get tested at the beginning how often did you
get fit tested how many times were you tested on push-ups or pull-ups or
something physical I was tested every single year but never again
psychologically and not in the mindset of oh you're on fit let's pull you off
the line but how about a check-in we did blood work might do I have cancer am I
getting my cluster like we check in on our health physically but nowhere in the
fire department was there ever a standard to check in mentally they're
just completely relying on us to step up and say I'm not okay I need help and as
firefighters we're not very good at that we we suck at that so it would be
interesting to see maybe not just the money on to go towards therapy in the
beginning but maybe find a way to check in periodically even if it's not every
year every other year maybe every three years just something so you don't go
through a 30-year career having no professionals check in on you and maybe
you're really great at coping and hiding it and no none of your crew members
check in on you either and then you retire out and all the other horrible
things that happen we don't we'll get into that later but also in the
beginning not just okay let's let's do a test let's see where you sit mentally
emotionally and having the therapy to help you work through that how about
developing tools I mean Benjamin Franklin said an ounce of perp ounce of
prevention is worth a pound of cure why are we waiting until people are
drowning and committing suicide or attempting suicide or going through
divorces or becoming alcoholics before we're like hey let's go help these
people why are we not teaching them an Academy proper coping mechanisms that
you could learn with those six therapy sessions or you could learn as a group
the same way you're learning how to work out and eat right as firefighters most
of us have a pretty good idea on how to work out and eat right but just like
physical health how many of us know how to take care of ourselves mentally with
breath work and meditation and mindfulness practices and I I would
really like to see that become a part of the Academy to be honest mm-hmm yeah I
know I was actually part of initiative here in Florida that was supposed to be
putting that in I don't even know what happened to it the chief that was
heading it ended up leaving the Academy and going somewhere else but you know
using the sleep thing I think one of the problems that we have is that people
don't want to talk about sleep too much when they know damn well that they're
the reason that their firefighters aren't sleeping you know the schedule was so
terrible so that's always kind of footed around it's always like oh well they
need to they need to have good high sleep hygiene on the days off oh that's
your solution that's it you know what I mean so these are all such important
pieces of the puzzle but I agree completely you know there should be you
know a normal conversation about the mental health and tools and the tricks
and this did the understanding that sleep hygiene what that looks like how
to wind down at the end of day how to remove things that are gonna keep you
awake whether you realize it or not but then also simultaneously having those
check-in sessions it's not just the first year I mean I'm talking about
throughout the year but that's how you really initiate is you know at the front
door talk to me about that what was your kind of road to the fire service and
what were the kind of physical and mental health discussions when you
entered well when I was floating around after dropping out of the army for
flying I just leaned back on really the only skill I had which was softball so
I was just coaching and one of the dads was a was a fire captain and he told me
I should look into this and so I looked into it and decided yeah that sounds
that sounds awesome so got my EMT and got hired pretty quickly got picked up
out here and went through the whole hiring process the psych background it
was interesting because I laugh when they did this site can you answer the
questions you know it's really only five questions they ask you 200 times in
different ways to make sure do you see yourself as a librarian would you like
to be you know all these abstract things and I remember the the therapist and the
interview afterwards saying so it looks here like you're an alcoholic and I
just excuse me because well you drank to excess to the point of throwing up it
said here you did that and I just laughed I was like well it did go to college
there may have been a time when I had a little too much to drink and I got sick and I just
kind of laughed it off and looking back I don't think he was I think he was
trying to trigger me to see if it was a button to see if I'd get defensive so it
was it was a game I'm like okay so in no way shape or form was this individual
trying to help me or see if I needed help he was actually trying to trigger
me so this is interesting and yeah Academy sucks I I played Division one
and professional softball and I don't think I've ever been as stressed in my
life as I was in Academy which is good because you want to know if you're gonna
freak out and crumble under pressure I'd rather I'd rather find out in Academy
then when I'm in a house on fire and I'm having to drag my buddy out or doing CPR
and a two-year-old I'd rather know this about myself that I'm not good under
pressure now but it was it was hard it was stressful the other woman in my
Academy didn't make it I was the only one and at one point in my department I
remember and we had we have about 200 220 online people 15 stations so we have
a pretty good size apartment and I had almost reached my 10-year mark and I was
still our most junior female none of the other none of the other females behind
me had made it through Academy or probation they had all failed out and
part of me was kind of like sorry for getting off topic no no there is no I
just remember thinking well on the one hand that's a good thing because we
don't want people pushed through just to make a quota we don't we don't want to
push people through just to say look we have we're diverse look what we have we
want to know that hey everyone has made it through has genuinely made it through
then the other hand I was just kind of like well why not where did they all go
and I'm realizing is it because women don't think they can do it or do they
not want to do it because I can absolutely see why you would not want to
do it I mean the cancer rate the suicide the lack of sleep trying to be pregnant
I was pregnant I stayed online until I was like seven months pregnant there was
a not fun it's just it's physically harder on women we're generally not as
big we're not as strong we don't have the testosterone so we can't recover
from injuries as well it's it's a lot harder on us and I remember women the
part like we need to keep pushing until we're 50 50 like we are never gonna be
50% of the fire department we're just we're just not 50% of the women in the
world don't want to do it so yeah yeah I mean it's like saying that I think 50%
of hairdressers should be men you know just because you want to check a box you
want to make the equation perfectly balanced this bullshit there are certain
jobs that seem to lean into certain areas you know and it then the thing is
there are equal and opposite of those jobs you know there are people that are
incredibly artistic people that are so mathematically astute that they can
figure out how to send a rocket into the you know to the space none of us are
made equal now if there's a bring it yeah exactly hopefully you know but yeah
there's a deliberate opposition to someone being and then that's a whole
different conversation one of the another real truth that's come out of
this this podcast is the answer to diversity is mentorship and I've got a
friend who's got a great mentor program here in in Ocala Florida where they
pretty much removed all the barriers to entry so essentially located they meet
the downtown station which you know more often than not tends to be closer to
some of the poorer areas as well they provide free training all the gear there
are scholarships available for fire Academy and then there are departments
screaming for people on the back end of that the beautiful thing about that my
stepson did it my bonus boy and he discovered that he didn't want to be a
firefighter equally as important but I think what it does is rather than go in
and scoop up we need you know 12 English women go find them you know what I mean
and the 12 there and a summer shit and some are amazing you get them all
instead you go into an area and you challenge the underserved population to
rise up and see if they can reach that bar and of course lots of them do and
those are the candidates that don't just fall out of the Academy or orientation
those are the ones that become great firefighters I think that's great they
need to know what it entails so they know if they want to do it and there's
I'm sure there's tons of people out there that would love to do the job and
just in the back of their mind oh I can't do that they just don't think they
can achieve it so when you open the door like that and give them the opportunity
that's awesome absolutely well what about recruitment when did you come on I
was a hired officially in 2006 okay I came on in oh four so right around the
same time this is an important conversation I think because we are now
in 2024 sitting in a recruitment crisis and we'll definitely get into that too
but how many people you testing against back then oh my gosh when I took my
written there was 3,500 people yeah 3,500 people and we out of that written I
don't know how many passed I want to say maybe 1200 but there was still you know
over a thousand people to get drawn for two different academies that had about
15 people each I had the exact same experience not quite the same I tested
against a thousand for Anaheim for 30 spots and everyone in that room this is
obviously they've been filtered out to even be invited to test they were all
firefighter EMTs or paramedics a lot of them had ambulance experience wildland
experience they've been explorers I mean they live a fat fat resume that's who I
was competing against and they ended up taking you know whatever 5% of that
entire room and so I think this is an important kind of perspective when I have
people you know from my generation or further back even is that's where we were
that's how far we've strayed and now people are recruiting and they're taking
everyone that tests and they're missing the fact that just because you got a
body in the rig doesn't mean you've got the right body in the rig and we used to
be able to take that top 10 20 25 percent and then if people were lower
than they would test and get better and better and they'd fight their way up to
the top and be worthy candidates but right now kind of like we were saying
the diversity conversation if you just go in and scoop everyone up that
potentially could be a terrible engineer captain battalion chief or chief one day
we like to promote people like that we just get them off the line away from us
and just sure promote just get off the line get away what's possibly could go
wrong exactly just get out of here yeah no I I'm aware that there's much fewer
applicants trying to take tests now there's a crisis and I think that that
started honestly if you look at Santa Clara County for the number of applicants
for paramedic just plain paramedic not even firefighter just for the county I
want to say in 2018 2019 it was whatever the number was let's just say 20,000 and
then it dropped down to like 2,000 by the year 2020 and my theory is COVID was
rough all politics aside for pro vaccine anti vaccine whatever your view is aside
COVID was rough on everyone for a lot of reasons I just remember at one point
thinking I can't have a life outside of work because as soon as someone was
exposed that entire shift was quarantined and I was at a specialty
station so they didn't have a big pool of people to fill those spots you'd go
into work you know for your 48 and you didn't know if you were gonna go home
for a week or you know five days or a week they would just hold you there
because they didn't have anybody else to work and I'm like I can't make dentist
appointments like I can't I can't have a life I can't oh go to that concert I
don't know I might be getting forced back because I was getting forced back
every single four day and as a single mother with my little boy and my my mom
watches him but she also works I remember one day I was forced back the
night before for a shift I luckily someone stepped up and took it for me
and I should have just kept my mouth shut I told the chief hey this person's
covering it for me well someone called in sick the very next morning and I was
forced back again for the exact same day luckily someone stepped up and covered
it for me but I really don't want to be at the mercy of kindness of others to
step up and take a shift because I had no child care you're forcing me back for
a shift and I didn't know what I was gonna do yes that's my fault that's my
drama that's my bad life choices that put me in this situation that I didn't
have child care but the fact that I had to find two people to cover for me for
the exact same day because I was forced back you just feel like this department
doesn't care about me they don't give a shit about me they don't give a shit
about my family my health like I'm doing the best I can here but I literally
can't have a life I can't make dentist appointments I can't do anything and I
think the stress that comes with that is it's not worth it I'm upping my risk of
of cardiovascular disease of cancer all the other known health side effects of
the job and you clearly don't give a shit about me so what am I doing here
and I think the younger generations are aware of that like why would we want
that job when we know it's probably gonna kill us it's definitely gonna ruin
our marriage so what's the point I couldn't agree more and to turn it into
a positive conversation I mean it is you know to end I say with it with the
positivity I think this is the critical mass and this is the opportunity for us
to finally fix it because now we can look back at the absolute shit show
behind us and go see I told you it was fucking us up you know what I mean and
all the frickin you know names on the memorial walls but I mean I had a
similar experience it wasn't COVID but back in when would it have been 2013
2012 yeah 2013 I was a single dad you know and through and it wasn't bad life
choices it was the fact that my ex decided that she wanted to bring someone
else in the house when I was at the station so it wasn't even like I'd
screwed up and you know destroy the marriage and again you know that I get
that there's always you know two sides and an input as it were but I was a
single father and the same thing was happening I was a medic and a firefighter
and you know I would get called hey you're gonna be you me for some like you
don't understand I as a tiny human being that needs me to come home at 8 o'clock
who has school has to be picked up as be fed you know he's got a bit late in the
house those kind of things three-year-olds aren't super independent so
and it ended up forcing me to change departments to a place that was you
know down the road that I gave up any chance of a fighting any fire anymore
and didn't understand at the time the complacency that was in that department
until a mental health that was probably the biggest mental ill health stressor I
had in my career but that was all because that previous department had
refused to address the issues that was slowly affecting their recruitment and
so who did it fall on everyone who's still wearing uniform well you can't go
home well you can't go home without actually acknowledging what that looks
like for that individual family and the appointments and the promises that
parents have made to their children and I get it I mean I remember when I first
I first hit the line Christmas Day and I displaced some 32-year veterans of
really old-school guys had been around for 32 years we actually had four on the
engine and five on the truck and there wasn't enough room for me to sleep in
the dorm so I had to take a mattress and sleep in the weight room and as the only
girl so I didn't get to sleep in the dorm but the mentality I grew up with as
well this is the job you signed up for this you your job is to help people and
to be there and sometimes you get forced back and suck it up and get tough kind
of mentality but looking back I walked in I hit the line with zero force backs
and everyone else there had about five because I remember getting forced back
every Sunday for like a month until I caught up we were the last class to walk
in with zero the the academies after us were grandfathered in with like an
average they had to figure out a mathematical equation because the career
force backs were getting higher and higher that's just how we did force
backs at the beginning and I remember it like okay you have 32 years on you have
been forced back six times you have been forced back six times in 32 years and
I've just been forced back four times in a month and by the time I left I can't
tell you how many force backs I had with my 17 years on and so the point I'm
trying to make is you have all these old-school people are like suck it up
and get tough and and this is the job and this is what you signed up for and I
it's not the job you signed up for you didn't sign up to get forced back every
four day and we have plenty people signing up for overtime so it's not like
a well you know we just took the overtime every time it came because we
didn't know when it was gonna come no we know it's there it's always there we're
short people people are bidding getting put on quarantine so I I'm just trying
to speak to the older people because I know they're out there listening and I
know they're like well you know this is what you signed up for well it's not
because you had 30 years on with five force backs and I got four in a month so
that's how I was in Anaheim that same system and the poor guys ahead of us
were getting murdered and then when we hit six months of probation it was our
turn and I think my talk about this before I think my base was either side
of like 60 grand and I didn't sign up maybe I signed up for like one or two
over times that was it but basically didn't I wasn't that guy I wanted to go
home and by the end of the year I cleared a hundred thousand dollars in
mandatory overtime you know what I mean almost half my almost my salary again
so I mean this is the problem and again it comes to the old guys I remember in
Orange County in Florida they the old guys are like I was riding the rescue
well they never transported they just went to the call waiting for the private
ambulance and then they went back to the station so Apple is not apples to apples
and somebody some of these guys were absolutely in the meat grinder and they
probably you know the Compton fire medics were probably doing just as many
if not more than the guys today but you know most of the country yeah it's it's
slowly got worse and worse and worse and that's why excitedly I think we have an
opportunity to now turn the ship around but we've got to identify the things
that have spiraled down otherwise you won't have a fire service anymore it's
just that simple I think that we need to recognize that the fire service is not
what it was 30 years ago well I have 17 years so 50 years ago people I got
hired with that are in the retirement now barking how we're we're getting soft
I think we need to recognize that it's just a different fire service we we
aren't running the same calls we aren't running the same number of calls and
we're faced with different obstacles I don't think we started I don't think we
had medics I think we don't think we did medical stuff until like the 60s right
do you know that style I say was like 60 something when we brought in our first
paramedics yeah they actually run medical calls the 60s in Pittsburgh
which people dispute but I'm actually getting the original guy and they were
black guys which this can kind of scrub from history so apparently Miami Dade in
LA started the medic program but they didn't but uh but yeah so but in the
70s I think was when it really started get gathering steam yeah so we have
people who who've been around it were the old-school guys and really they
didn't run many many medicals I remember them telling me stories about how they
were driving around telling people hey if you have an emergency like still
teaching people about 9-1-1 it wasn't well known to even call 9-1-1 so I don't
think it's fair that you have these old-school guys that are judging the
fire service now because we run so many medical calls we are dealing with
electrical vehicles we are there's just there's just social media there's just
more stress out there you have to be careful everything you do and say when
you're out there because everyone's got a camera and they're watching you it's
just it's just I don't want to say it's harder it's just different it's hard
differently yeah absolutely yeah it's so much my son and I were watching Masters
of the Air and he turned to me and goes who do you think were the better pilots
the World War two pilots or the fighter jets of today and I was like well
technically the fighter jets of today they have the most amazing training and
technology but as far as courage and combat the World War two boys hands down
I mean there's no question because they were doing so much was so little and
it's the same thing both are admirable but they're also very different yeah I
think you probably had to have more technical skill right because there
wasn't all these automated computers to do so much stuff for you have more to
keep track of because you have computers and you have radar there's more to keep
track of but on the other hand those computers are doing a lot for you in the
jet whereas the old-school guys that was all manual yeah big old metal tube and
your fingers yeah everything was pretty manual so it's hard in a different way
and I joke about this with parenting well I think parenting is was hard back
in the days when you're actually worried about feeding your child you know back
in the early 1900s and before all the way up to the 1900s you you worried in
America if you had enough food you're gonna starve to death where you're gonna
live like you could actually die you could actually get smallpox and die and
we don't really have those fears nowadays but I have to worry about social
media and my child being bullied 24-7 and school shootings and all the other
stuff so it's it's hard in a different way and I think we all generations need
to take a step back and recognize we all have our battles we're doing the best we
can absolutely I couldn't agree more I think they are that the the universal
push towards change is the important thing and most of us are having human
experiences so if you kind of belittle each other's struggles then you're not
gonna get anywhere but if you actually stand side by side then you know out one
profession can impact others in a positive way and the inverse is true as
well to not just stand back and judge others but to not emotional window-shop
well I'm okay because I'm not as bad as that person that person is divorced
and they lost a child and and and I'm just sitting here as a single mom you
should an emotional window shop if you have a stress it's valid if you're
depressed about something it's valid you just have to learn how to get through
it absolutely well what about your career as you
kind of walk through from probation onwards what were some of the career
calls that you responded to career calls like actual calls not just what stations
I worked out in what I did yeah I mean yeah it doesn't have to be like I'm not
saying the you know the thing that we dread oh it's the worst thing that you
seen but what are some of the memorable rescues or you know incidents you
responded to well I remember one time so my first station I was at was a pretty
quiet station I was I learned early to bid a crew not a station and I had a
very very seasoned captain a very seasoned medic who kind of helped guide
me because I was so green and at one point I remember there's a little
arsonist in the area so I at our quiet little station that doesn't do anything
Angela got to pump for structure fires in about a month which was wonderful
because the time you really want to get run is early right if you don't get
those calls early in your career to learn things it's okay to make mistakes
and to ask questions when you have less than five years on if you have ten years
on and you haven't run a lot of calls to make the mistakes or to learn the
questions you need to ask now it almost feels like it's too late like well I
can't ask that now because I have ten years on I should know that so I was
really grateful for for that we were kind of in the middle of the department
so we always were at work like first or second in to most of the fires or in the
first or second alarm in unfortunately the really memorable car calls are the
horrible ones I don't want to go too far into that but like I've said I've said
before another interview I actually I enjoy stationed visits we had a stage
that first station was kind of in a neighborhood and I used to put on angel
wings and stand out front with the rig and all the lights on and a bowl of
candy on Halloween like I just I love the holidays and no one goes by the fire
station to trick-or-treat so I was like recruiting trick-or-treat
with my lights on they're like across the street and I was like hey
trick-or-treat little because I had to have something I could take off quickly if we got a
call so these little angel wings on and just standing out there with my bowl of
candy trying to recruit trick-or-treat and then you hear these little kids hey we're
gonna trick-or-treat it like they were super excited to come and get candy at
the fire station and I only got like four of them so they got a lot of candy so I
think I more than the calls I I really loved the social aspect and getting to
know the people I love the station visits I like going to the schools and
getting to know the little kids because they're just they're just so cute they're
just so darn cute trying to think oh we did have one call a guy was still kid
was playing hide-and-seek with his brother and he got stuck in the washing
machine and it was an emergent everything's okay we're trying to get
him out and where the captain going over the radio to cancel the ambulance
because we didn't need it it's like oh it's okay he's like he's just a little
agitated I thought was hilarious freaking out I'm just trying not to not
to laugh but yeah I can't I can't say I have a ton of memorable calls other than
the bad ones if that's where we're gonna go we can obviously well we'll see you
know where that leads us but just going back to the the Halloween thing for a
moment it's amazing you know I guess perception is everything if it was a
male firefighter in his civilian clothes not next to a fire station he'd look
like a pedo yes for sure for sure and that's the advantage to being a female
right I mean every single possible delivery call hey EMT skill and you're
up and I was happy to do it I mean putting the 12 leads on like I get it
women are more comfortable with other women women are people are more
comfortable with women around their kids in general so we have a place we have a
strength yeah well I mean it's back to that diversity conversation if someone's
been sexually assaulted by a man a female has you know who's the best
person to put in the patient compartment obviously a female firefighter so you
know there's you know that's what diversity should be you know the broad
spectrum of strengths and personalities that you have on a crew that could be an
asset in that moment culturally too we have we have a lot of culture in Santa
Clara County and if you had a woman having some sort of a female issue or
even put in the 12 leads on they would be highly uncomfortable with another
male in those general in those situations they just would rather have a
female mm-hmm I literally just hugged one of my wife's Muslim friends at her
one of her school functions she's in med school at the moment and the moment I
did I was like oh fuck you're not supposed to do this to a woman you know
in that culture and luckily she was okay and I actually found her later and
apologize for my ignorance but that will be the perfect example like in the
moment you go in or even before that your Muslim Muslim crew member has
already kind of given you the spiel on you know what is deemed acceptable and
not in certain cultures so I think that's another kind of layer to what we
do this invaluable mm-hmm you're respecting culture but also kind of on
that note is understanding the message right like you didn't hug her to offend
her and I think I think a lot of that is lost nowadays we simply look at the act
and deem the act good or bad based on the act rather than on the intention of
the person and like when someone says something and oh that they shouldn't
said that because of X Y & Z but what is their intent are they trying to insult
you are they trying to hurt your feelings are they genuinely good good
intention goodwill goodwill and what they're saying and it just doesn't quite
land right and I wish that we could find a way to get everyone to take a step
back and not be so triggered and offended by everything just take a step
back and go is that person trying trying to be because I can tell you I how often
I hear oh you're a fire person and they're trying so hard to find the right
word and and and that their intent is to be polite and they don't know the right
word or they say fireman man person they clearly like are uncomfortable and you
know what you can call me a fireman I don't care my paycheck stays the same
and you're not trying to stick it to me you're not trying to make a point
however there are plenty of people that I worked with when they introduced
themselves they would say I'm a fireman and they said it with the intent of
making a point and while they may have referred to me as a firefighter and they
were polite about it the intent behind the way they said is they were making a
differentiation on purpose and and I think we've really lost that in our
society of look at the intent of what someone is saying versus the word if
you're a nice older person and that's the only word you've ever known you call
me a fireman I don't care if you are my age and you're calling yourself a
fireman and referring to me as a firefighter with a derogatory tone I'm
gonna pick up on that we really should take a step back and focus more on the
intent of what people are saying rather than the actual content I think we need
to go even a step further now and say I am predominantly in the EMS system and
occasionally I'll visit a fire really transparent yeah how many fires my good
I think the statistics now for my department are like 72 to 78 percent
medical and like three fire and that includes car fires not just structure
fires it's not yeah an emergency responder I'm kind of a potpourri of
calls jack-of-all-trades the Swiss Army knife all right well then walk me
through the kind of journey that you had as far as your own mental health
obviously we're gonna get to Mexico so kind of what did those years and and
decades look like well I would say even before I had my son I was just really
struggling with I had a temper and that probably started from when I was younger
but it's one of those things like the straw that broke the camel's back I
could have been fine going about my life and then you throw in the stresses of
the job and the lack of sleep and everything that comes with it and I was
really starting to have issues where I would find myself hiding in the storage
room because I was I could just feel myself for no reason at all like I'm
just losing it and I would start to cry so I'd have to go in the storage room
because God forbid someone finds me and I wouldn't know why I would I would just
I would just break down and I never did on a call I was always able to hold it
together but clearly that's not a good way to live you I knew something was off
so went to therapy on my own and we tried cognitive behavioral therapy
cognitive processing therapy EMDR which is the go-to for PTSD I was officially
diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder which I'm hoping we could all
come together and recognize it's an injury not a disorder and nothing was
working I tried medication I tried group therapy talk therapy nothing seemed to
work and I just remember thinking well this is I just got to suck it up like
they've done my whole life you just got to suck it up and get through and luckily
I met my husband I had my son about my husband and through the canine world
because he's a dog handler he knows a lot of other dog handlers and many of
them are veterans now the veteran community has been helping their people
with plant medicines and the oedics for about a decade they're they're quite a
bit further along than us with the whole operator syndrome TBI is and everything
from being over with the war on terror so through them I was able to connect
with a place called the mission within and I flew myself down to Mexico or flew
myself down to San Diego hopped in a van with a bunch of people I'd never met
smuggled myself across the border to go do drugs but people had never met and
keep in mind I've never done drugs in my life I think I have tried pot twice and
I don't like it so I'm not like a drug seeker trying to find the next high but
I was desperate I had hit the point where I realized I was not I was not a
good mom I was not being there for my son the way a mother should I was
definitely having problems with my temper and my patience and I just
couldn't do it anymore I absolutely had suicide ideations never had a plan but
there was days I was so far gone and just so down I remember thinking it would
just be nice I called it mental swearing sometimes where you just fuck I'm just
gonna off myself because in that moment all the stuff that's stressing you out
or causing you to be depressed doesn't matter anymore cool I'm just gonna do it
and all of a sudden you get this moment of relief all that stuff that you feel
like it's pressure weighing on you is gone for a moment if you're like I'm
just gonna do it but then I started thinking well I can't leave my son
behind so what am I gonna do do I take him with me and instantly like that you
just lose it like as a parent you can never hurt your child I would never hurt
my child but walking through the steps of my head of how bad am I today yep
that sounds like a good idea that feels like it's relieving some pressure if I
just say I'm gonna do it but then I can't leave my son so what do I do and
it's a whole I never had a plan it's just a whole system I had developed to
kind of snap myself out of it it's not healthy I don't recommend it it's a
horrible coping mechanism but then I was like well nope that all still sounds like
a bad idea so I must be okay I must be good to go into work today because
killing myself and taking my son with me still sounds like a bad idea yep we're
good to go let's suck it up and keep going so yeah went down to Mexico and
did the plant medicine and I have to say it was anticlimactic it wasn't what I
expected and that was the problem I had expectations going into it and you know
my great-grandmother is gonna come and give me all this wisdom and it's gonna
be magical nope that's not what happened at all it takes a lot of work on the
front end I probably didn't put as much work in at the beginning as I should
have and it takes a shit ton of work on the back end to maintain the work
however when I came home nothing irritated me nothing pissed me off
everything was just so present and so right now and nothing more than it was
if that makes sense if something happens a lot of times when you have stress we
have depression or anxiety you instantly make that incident out to be more than
it is and it was so nice to just be able to sit there and have something done or
said and it was like it's like this thing I heard when when you're upset
think of think of your you're the pond and your emotions are the fish be the
pond not the fish and that's exactly how I felt like all of these emotions and
things that were going on were just sort of happening and I was just able to
observe them and not get drawn into it emotionally like that's that's offensive
or that's triggering me or that's whatever it is it was it was an amazing
place to be and I stayed there for about a week and a half or two weeks so I know
the drugs were out of my system I wasn't still high it was an amazing and it it
let me know hey this is how you can feel all the time when you learn to control
your emotions and I turned to my husband and I told him we we need to do
something about this because one not everyone knows the Special Forces
operator to to get access to these medicines and two it was like two or
three thousand dollars not everyone has that much spare cash sitting around but
when I had done this it was about a year after we had lost a friend of ours on a
task force he had committed suicide he died by suicide leaving behind two
little boys and I've lost several people to suicide over the past 10 15 years or
so and for some reason that one that one hit me it just it was so it was so close
to home that I just we just can't we can't lose anymore and I have a graph
that I'll send you but it's amazing when you look the statistics for firefighter
suicide it starts the graph that I have starts in 2000 and it doesn't bounce
around up and down it's a pretty linear climb up until today and I want to say
the numbers for today or this year last year are about four times as high as
they were in 2000 and again it doesn't bounce around it's a pretty nice steady
climb to the point that you're more not likely not a die of suicide than by on
duty activities so clearly we have an epidemic clearly there's an issue with
mental health and clearly all the modalities that are available are not
enough because I had access to more therapy modalities and more free
sessions than any firefighter has in history my department's very progressive
when it comes to mental health and yet I was still walking myself through
potential suicide because I just couldn't anymore
going back to your own darkness first one thing that I've heard over and over
again and maybe this wasn't the case because of the way you described you
know thinking about your son that moment but I literally just did a post about
this today the old-school way again going back to the old guys was suicide
is cowardly and selfish and how could you you left your kids behind you know
and I get that we all basically thought that until you know some of us were
forced into this awakening by burying our friends but as I've kind of listened
to so many stories now from people that were so so close some literally holding
the gun you know some actually went through with the attempt and they
survived it there was you know obviously the wanting the suffering to end was was
it was a resounding common denominator but the other one that I really heard no
one discuss was the feeling of burdensome the feeling of my family will
be better off if I'm not here I'm the reason that they're hurting so much and
then when you look at it through that lens and understand that the brain is
literally broken by that point and I say broken empathetically that their reality
has been distorted now in that moment suicide becomes courageous and selfless
because they truly believe that they are the problem and then you add in the fact
that they've joined a profession where they're willing to risk their lives for
strangers taking a life for their own loved ones you know as I think to that
that way did you have that burdensome at all as you were getting through that
absolutely part of my biggest burden was knowing my mental health issues were
potentially damaging to my son I knew that if I was to go through with it that
would obviously have a significant negative impact on my son and I didn't
want to impact him like that but I also didn't know how to stop I didn't know how
to be better and I just felt like I remember in sorry don't apologize please
I remember there was times I just thought I am ruining this beautiful
human being and I just didn't know what to do because I just didn't know how to
get better I was trying everything that was given to me and and you do you think
this is just this precious little human being and I'm ruining him of course
obviously killing yourself is not better but what do you do what do you do when
you're trying everything and you still feel like a shitty mom and you still
feel like you are ruining this precious little being what do you do and that's
where I was and I think so my friend Troy Troy Bizzell captain Bizzell I know
he had a back injury and I think he was looking down the barrel of getting
retired out which by the way workman's comp is a whole other another issue we
need to work on how much stress they add and how difficult they are to work with
and I know I think he was in that process of maybe getting retired out
what do you do if you're in pain all the time which causes depression you're
looking down the barrel of maybe getting retired out so you're gonna be losing a
significant portion of your income and you have a family to take care of what
are you gonna do and you know that you're a burden on them because you hurt
and you know that you're depressed and you know that you're probably maybe
having angry outbursts and you're taking down your family and you're watching
these precious little kids in tears because you've lost your shit again or
you're fighting with your wife because of whatever and you're watching your
family you are the cancer you are this toxic thing that is ruining your family
oh and you're in pain and you're not gonna be able to provide for them well
at least if I kill myself I won't be hurting them anymore like I am now I
won't be causing them to cry because I'm angry at them and I've lashed out with
them for no reason and I'm gonna give them a nice bulk sum of life insurance
so that they will be taken care of and people don't see that they just think
it's cowardly they honestly believe their family is better off without them
yeah I think it's so important I think you know when we talk about if you're
struggling just just call me and this is one of the comments I got in the post
this morning oh you know the brains not broken people just need to ask for help
and like it's not that simple it's like saying you know all people fat people
need to do is stop eating cake if that was the case we wouldn't have obesity in
America would we they just stop eating cake but the environment creates it you
know is set up where people are far more likely to eat shitty food and in our
profession the environment is set up that the access to a lot of these
therapies especially the ones that we're gonna talk about the psychedelics you
know we have frickin out prohibition laws that are literally stopping our
first responders and military and civilians from accessing things that are
working incredibly well so I think that what should be on the post is if you are
feeling like you are a burden to your family that is a huge red flag and
enough people even talk about that around the kitchen table that that would
be a great sign to if you can find them alone for a moment have that conversation
with them you know open the door be vulnerable yourself first don't fold
your arms and look down your nose at them but actually say look you know I
was kind of feeling this myself I you know let me tell you about the dark
place I was let me tell you about the drinking that's increased in my life you
know but you mentioned about being a burden mate you're not a burden talk to
me you know what I mean because I think that that has to be you know front and
center now because I've heard it so much and I'm just a frickin lowly firefighter
with a microphone no lowly firefighter you're doing a good thing here so thank
you for that but I do I think when I first started on our peer support team
we were using the critical incident stress debriefing type program and where
people come to us we were resources and we were able to facilitate these
meetings about calls and and defense or and diffuse afterwards but I think now
with the IFF peer support program we're trained to be more proactive to look for
people that have certain symptoms or signs that we think that they might be
having an issue and to go and out and ask them because like I said we suck at
asking for help and not only do we suck at asking for help when we need it even
when it's offered to us our first reaction is usually going to be no fine
to push back so if you really do see someone having symptoms like they think
they're a burden they're drinking more they're just overall becoming more
negative you may have to push a little more and get them one-on-one to get them
to open up and talk the flip side of that is if if you're like me where I was
going out and getting help on my own not through the department and paying for it
myself what happens when everything legally available isn't working that
creates a whole other dynamic when it's not just I have these problems and I'm
gonna fix it on my own I'm gonna suck it up and be tough because that's what we
do what if they've already realized they can't fix it on their own they've
reached out for help they've tried everything out there and yet they're
still having these dramatic ups and downs what happens and I think that's
where we come in absolutely well I've heard so many EAP horror stories where
you talk about women's comp you know tying that all in together and then again
if you're being forced out talking about that you know that one example you're
being forced out because of an injury now you're not just losing you know your
pain and the other things it's it's you've lost your tribe you've lost your
purpose you know and then there might even be a feeling of organizational
betrayal which is huge and another under discussed element of mental ill health
circling back to the graph what also saddens me is that that's not including
a single retiree so you wouldn't be on those stats now I wouldn't be on those
stats now so you know when is that most likely gonna manifest when they're
sitting in that apartment on their own maybe their kids are grown up or maybe
they didn't speak to him after the outburst they had five years ago and now
you know they're really alone with their thoughts so I would argue in the cancers
and the heart attacks and certainly in the mental health side that that's
probably an absolute fraction of who we're actually losing you know as far as
people that aren't actually wearing the uniform anymore but the last 10 20 30
years they did well I got all my statistics from the firefighter
behavioral health Alliance which is a non-profit so they they do need donations
and they it takes them sometimes three to five years to receive the reports of
suicide and then to verify that they did die by suicide and that they were first
responders I don't actually know if any of the stats that I have are for active
duty or retired but I do know that they believe the stats they have are only
about 60% of what's actually out there so they're they're grossly under
reported and I think they have their numbers go back as far as like 1880
something and what's interesting is when they go and I don't know how accurate
they can be that far back it'd be I'm sure it's difficult to get the numbers
accurately but based on the numbers they have 96% of the suicides from 1880 till
today 96% are in the last 20 years mm-hmm so clearly there's something
going on yeah absolutely well speaking of that I was on someone else's podcast
a while ago and I had just helped a friend get connected to a psychedelic
experience or you know psychedelic therapy in Texas and then she said to me
oh I've got a friend a firefighter who had like yourself he tried several
different things was at the end of his rope he kind of got off alcohol fallen
back in again and was truly you know very very close taking his own life she
connected with me with him and I connected him to Sergio from Agape Church
who I just had on not too long ago and the first day kind of like yourself he
was like this is bullshit it's not working the second day and he told me
this you know a few days after when they and they've been through the retreat and
he processed everything he's like James over and above the birth of my child the
wedding to my wife and getting hired as a firefighter this was the most powerful
experience of my entire life and he went from suicidal back to I think he's kind
of blazing a trail trying to do the same thing that you're doing as far as you
know just locally connecting more firefighters to plant therapy plant
medicine excuse me so I've watched it firsthand those two men specifically I
know were suicidal and now they're doing better than they ever had before so talk
to me about you know you went through that yourself what was the creation how
did you find your own facility in all the facility that you use now in Texas
to keep it stateside and then let's kind of talk about some of the success stories
you've had so we've also had several people come through and say top three
experiences of their life for sure we've had several atheists come through and
and say nope not atheist anymore there is a higher power it is out there we're
all connected and that's a great feeling we we no longer use a local facility
because we found through advice of a lawyer that going through a church
doesn't necessarily protect our active duty participants because you have to
have a devout belief and then okay they're gonna pick the church apart do
you they have a developed belief who's the congregation how like they go down
the list of how they're gonna pick it apart so we decided to protect our
active duty people by hosting ours in Mexico because by doing these medicines
in Mexico we are not breaking any federal laws I'm pretty sure at any
point someone could go to Amsterdam when pot was still illegal here and you can
go to Amsterdam smoke pot and you're probably not gonna lose your job
because it's legal there it's not necessarily legal in Mexico but by doing
it there and not here you're not breaking federal laws and that's how we
protect our active duty people that and you know animosity and keeping
everything quiet we don't we don't tell them sorry and an enemy not animosity
that's the Freudian slip I have some animosity we'll get to that later so we
through my retreat through mission within I the the medicine woman if you would
she's uh she's amazing she's from Chile she grew up with curanderas she's not a
medicine woman but she is the one that administered the medicine her
grandparents were curanderas but she lived and worked in America for 30 years
in mental health and she's a doctor dr. Andrea Lucy and she worked for the
Nikon Center of Excellence and did a bunch of work with military guys and she
has this really deep Western medicine background and then just one day it
decided to go back to her roots and she started holding retreats so we use her
and she she rents a house and we provide medical screening with a doctor or
nurse practitioner beforehand to make sure everyone is medically cleared
because there are some medical situations where you shouldn't be taking
the medicine or we need to take severe precautions for you and she does all our
pre-work and well we're bringing in more people because we want to make sure that
people are getting enough sessions for pre-work and post-work but then they go
to Mexico for I say it's four or five days and you do psilocybin the first day
and you do the toad the second day and they incorporate a lot of a lot of yoga
and breath work meditation so it's not just about the entheogenics and we say
that because obviously the toad is not a plant medicine but entheogenics is all
encompassing of all of them so we we're trying to keep it as culturally
respectful as possible the people that found these medicines thousands of years
ago have used them safely and successfully for thousands of years and
we want to respect that the cultures that discover these medicines believe in
the spirit the spirit of the plants and the spirit of the animals and that's
part of the healing process you're healing your spirit because if you think
about it everything on the planet is made up of molecules we're all made up of
carbon and hydrogen and oxygen and all these little molecules that kind of
vibrate and we just happen to get put together in the right combinations that
we can think and feel and we are connected to everything we're all made
at the same stuff so there is something to the vibrations and and the energy the
energy in your body physically versus the energy and everything that's around
you and we like to respect that we believe it creates a better setting it
creates a healthier more constructive setting because you'll hear people in
this world of plant medicine entheogenics psychedelics talk about set
and setting what is the difference between taking a bunch of mushrooms in
the forest with your buddies versus doing it medicinally to heal your mind
the difference is a set and setting the mindset you have going into it which
takes a lot of work if you're doing it for healing and this setting are you
safe where are you physically so we try to create not only a physically safe
environment but a spiritually aware one if you will to be aware of the energy
of everything around you and we do think it adds for a more in-depth and richer
experience what is your perspective then on the prohibition laws at the
moment I think people fear what they don't know and I think that the
government did a great job with the war on drugs into scaring people away from
anything deemed a drug at the time which is amazing to me that people are afraid
to take something natural like a mushroom but yet you'll pop those man-made
pills like nobody's business and all the side effects of you know nausea death
liver secretion issues anal leakage erectile dysfunction like the list is
ridiculous with some of the side effects from these medicines why is it okay to
take a drug that is man-made and synthetic with copious amounts of side
effects and not something natural that God just put on this earth why why is
that okay it's a cultural mindset we've been trained to believe that drugs
given by doctors are good and drugs that grow out of the ground are bad and I
think it's a cultural shift that we need to we need to change and I think the
only way to do that is to we have studies there's studies right now for
Stanford and Harvard and Johns Hopkins and they're all doing studies they're
showing these medicines are working as good if not better than everything that's
out there and I think that proof when you throw someone in an MRI machine or
whatever the machine is it scans the brain for activity and you can see all
these parts of the brain light up when you're on plant medicines and how it's
helping with neuroplasticity and helping create new neural pathways and that's
that is how you get better because why are you depressed why are you anxious
because you have a thought process that is unhealthy you have a habitual thought
process that is unhealthy when one thing happens or one thing is done or said you
go through a certain mindset we call it we call it the neurons that fire
together wire together kind of like the muscle memory of your body you do some
when you walk you don't think about it it's a muscle memory it's the same thing
when you think it's super effective for keeping you alive and being energy
efficient it really sucks when you have to change it to get healthy and the
plant medicines helps that they call it shaking the snow globe you know all
these tracks in the snow but those tracks are unhealthy and it's really
easy to slide back into those habitual thought patterns and the plant medicines
kind of shake the snow globe globe give you a nice layer of snow to make a new
set of tracks in that's why it takes so much work before and after because you
want to make sure once you have this pliable soft putty in your brain that
you are set up to to rewire it in a better way I've said it before but I joke
that imagine your brain has like a Charles Barkley golf swing it's gonna
take a lot of work and effort to get that back on track to be to be healthy
and the best way to do that honestly even if you're not into mushrooms
gratitude the second you hear yourself judging somebody or having a negative
thought stop focus on your breath and think of something positive that is
actively rewiring your brain to be more positive because depression means you're
focused on the past anxiety means you're worried about the future you're not
focused on you right here right now and and you have to learn how to listen to
your body most people are sitting around especially firefighters I guarantee you
most of the day they have their shoulders in their ears and they're
unaware of it they have tension in their body that they're completely unaware of
until you start to get an acre in pain once you're at a seven in pain now
you're gonna listen to that part of your body the key for meditation and
breath work and yoga and walking out nature is to check into your body when
when it's earlier you want to be able to know why I have fireworks on the screen
I don't know what I did to make that happen but that's awesome that was
perfect timing yes the whole point of the plant medicine and incorporating all
the tools and work you're putting in before and after is to wire your brain
to be more aware of yourself you want to catch your negative thought your
depression your anxiety when you're out of two you don't want to catch it when
you're spiraling out of control because now your tools aren't going to work you
need to be able to use those tools to reground yourself to find gratitude to
find your breath when you're at a two or three and that's what the plant medicine
does is it helps rewire your brain one to be more aware of your body when you're
starting to spin and to have the muscle memory to bring you back on track and
find something positive that was a really long wordy way of explaining it
but I feel like there's just so many technical details it's it's hard to get
together in a short sound pipe no that is perfect I just want to figure out how
do you make the fireworks happen that's something else I learned in Italy actually
saw a guy step out of a phone booth because he's trying to use his hands and
there wasn't enough room in there well you mentioned about new you know
neuroplasticity and you know regeneration I've heard some really
exciting things about psilocybin specifically when it comes to the TBI
side but also I think you know growing up in an era where I was taught you know
once once the brain is damaged is irreversible damage you know and you know
a lot of the kind of leaning into alcoholism obesity well that's just
genetics nothing I can do and now we're relieved thank God we're actually kind
of discovering like that's absolutely bullshit it's you know much more likely
to be the environment that you were raised in if you were if you were given
KFC five times a week that's probably you know more of an impact on your
obesity than your genetics but it's you know family to family you know that's
how their their parents taught them to eat etc etc and depression like honestly
depression like that makes you gain weight because my food does love me I
get instant gratification when I eat that donut that's hard to untrain 100% so
then you know what's so beautiful though is the the converse occurs as well so if
we're able to kind of reset shake the snow globe as you said your brain has
the ability to rewire even if you have three generations of alcoholism before
you doesn't mean that you and your children are destined to follow the same
path so hearing about the epigenetics now how they're realizing that DNA can
literally be reprogrammed the sinuses can literally reform I just a perfect
example of the miracle of the human body I just had a crossfit athlete on the
show and she had a blockage in her arm which was chronic and her body had
actually created another blood vessel around the blockage and she ended up
having you know the the the clock got worse and during a competition so she
finally discovered it but when they went in they were like you literally have an
entire blood vessel that shouldn't be there that is the miracle of the human
body if you give it the chance to actually heal and you but and on top of
that you have to give it everything it needs to heal right the right nutrition
the right micronutrients I'm actually getting us I'm in a certification
program through UCSD for integrative nutrition it's awesome we're learning
about the science of all that and how it affects the body and I say that
because for someone who's been in our position police fire high chronic stress
lack of sleep sometimes you damage the vessel right sometimes your cortisol is
just off the charts or you've burned out your adrenal glands and it's not high
enough and your testosterone is low and there's all these other hormonal issues
and it's important to have the good nutrition to help make sure the vessel
your body is able to repair itself because you can do all this work with
plant medicine and you can do all the meditation and the breath work and try
to rewire your brain it's still going to be really hard to have energy and be
happy if hormonally your body is just jacked up from lack of sleep and poor
diet and all those other physical factors so we have to treat the body as
a whole it's not just about your mind and your mental health practices it's
also about your sleep and your diet and all the other aspects it all comes
together to make you function in the right way so you can heal and I forgot
where I was going with that we're gonna leave it there well speaking of helping
then so you mentioned about you know finding the the retreat in Mexico talk
to me about your actual nonprofit and then let's talk about some of the
success stories that you've seen so our actual nonprofit we are the siren
project and it stands for supporting initial responders with entheogenic
networking basically so we raise the money and we pay Andrea and she
basically facilitates everything for us it's kind of how we keep ourselves out
of it we aren't buying the drugs we don't grow the drugs the medicine we
don't do any of that she hires a legit shaman he actually grows the mushrooms
he harvests is the toad venom and all these medicines so we know where it
comes from we know who's handled it we know that it's safe and I feel like
that's one of the dangers in this world is you have all these people who are
gonna step out on the underground and say they're serving medicine one do they
know what they're doing and two what are they actually giving you where did it
come from and what is it so it makes us feel comfortable to know that we know
the person who's growing it and where it comes from so we pay for everything all
we ask people to cover is their airfare we found if people don't have some skin
in the game they may bail last minute so if they paid for their own plane ticket
but we cover everything else including the house the food I've got a thumbs up
this is awesome I've got to figure out how I make all these things pop up on
the screen so yes we raised the money of course we always need more funds we are
funded through 2024 and part of 2025 but right now I have a wait list of about
50 people and each retreat is is we do seven at a time you know that's a good
comfortable number to get everyone through so yeah we fund the retreats she
runs the house we have a doctor and a nurse practitioner present during the
medicine case there's a medical issue we have IVs for people to take after the
the mushrooms just to help them recover faster let me see what else oh we have
several individual and group therapy sessions before and after because part
of the medicine isn't just the work you're putting in and the medicine you're
taking it's the community you're building and we firmly believe that the
medicine works best when you're in a group of people of like-minded people so
everyone that goes to his retreats are either first responders first responders
dispatchers or spouses we do fun spouses as well because we've found I'm sure
everyone knows that sometimes they your wife or husband might take a beating
from their first responder who's been going through post-traumatic stress or
just the job itself and they're the support network and then when their
first responder gets healed and they're fixed now all of a sudden the spouses
have time to focus on themselves rather than trying to make sure that everything's
okay so that their loved one isn't stimulated they have a time to focus on
themselves and they realize there's a huge void and they themselves need
healing and we want to heal the whole unit not just the first responder love
it what about success stories I know you got some testimonials on the site
we have some testimonials my favorite is of course the atheists who walk in there
and they leave like nope not an atheist anymore we've had several people who
said this was basically their last last ditch effort if this didn't work they
were probably gonna off themselves and to see them thriving like happy
individuals one guy's getting back together with his wife like they were
divorced and now they're getting back together and that's just always good to
hear looks not only not only we helping these people heal themselves so that
they don't die by suicide we're who we're helping heal their families there
you know marriages are being brought back together people are believing in a
higher power of course I can't name anybody to get too specific but it's it
has been an amazing it's only been two years and it has been overwhelming and
scary and stressful and and yet amazing at the same time and I'm just hoping we
can continue keep going we just need more donations well that being said then
where can people find you and donate so our website is the siren project org no
dots no dashes and on the website there's PayPal there's Zell our mailing
address if you wanted to mail a paper check again each participant cost us
about $2,000 which that's the other benefit to doing it in Mexico is things
are more affordable we're keeping it culturally respectful we're respecting
the culture of the medicine and it's significantly more affordable the place
in Texas we used to use in several other places in the states are running about
five to seven thousand dollars per person and I just feel like everything's
so expensive nowadays if if someone's gonna be willing to donate their money I
have to be a good steward and if I can save three people by sending them to
Mexico that's what we're gonna do so we are keeping it as as economically sound
as possible so the siren project org brilliant all right well I want to go
to some quick closing questions before we let you go if that's okay okay yes
first one I love to ask is there a book or are there books that you love to
recommend it can be related to our discussion today or completely
unrelated yes the first one I always tell people about is how to change your
mind by Michael Pollan it's a great intro into psychedelics he was just like
me he'd never done drugs in his life and then just decided to go out and try them
all and write a book about it so it really breaks down the silent science of
the default mode network which is that hardwired highway between your lizard
brain and your prefrontal cortex that's the one that's messed up or corrupt and
that's causes a lot of anxiety and depression and talks about how plant
medicines help you circumvent that so it's a great intro fantastic fungi is a
net is a show on Netflix it's not a book but I love it because it talks about the
intelligence and the science behind mushrooms and fungus and this one guy is
just self-taught and he figured out how to kill termites with a fungus it's it's
pretty amazing and then the other book I like is the body keeps the score I think
it's an interesting read for people who I don't I think everyone has trauma
that's my personal belief we've all been through something and it leaves its
mark on you and it can have severe long-term effects if you don't deal with
it and I think this book goes into research and science to prove that hey
these kids who were abused as children are the that we had so much sympathy for
are the ones who grew up and they're doing drugs and they're homeless they're
having all these other issues and now we're not as sympathetic for them because
why can't they just get it together politics aside it's just the science
behind the psychology and how damaging trauma can be especially when you're a
child and you don't have any of those coping mechanisms in place or at least
not healthy ones how damaging they can be I think that's important for everyone
to to be aware of when we're dealing with other people in our society to be
well aware for themself like you have these aches and pains physically where
is that coming from I've said this quite a few times in interviews recently I
think what's missing in the first responder mental health conversation is
hope and I think that when you hear the stories of post-traumatic growth that is
so inspiring to then really try and find solutions because the only difference
between someone who's my age that you know is suicidal at this point and myself
is just the you know the Russian roulette that was our lives leading up
and I've talked about you know some of my traumas early on nearly dying in a
house fire when I was four and my parents divorced and some other things
but equally there was growing up on a farm my dad was a veterinary surgeon so
I watched him heal animals I was in nature you know I mean we ate around a
family table and we were a big family just kind of like the Italian thing so
there were those natural elements as well so by pure chance I kind of had
post-traumatic growth from some of the shitty things like ongoing that then
fosters resilience that makes you a better military member first responder
doctor nurse whatever it is and so as you said we all have trauma was one of
the I had Eric Potter out on the show he's the chief psychologist for the
Navy SEALs and he refers to them as struggles he's trying to get away from
trauma specifically but if left unaddressed you know there's a Mexican
proverb they they try to bury us they didn't know we were seeds you know if
you push it down it will come out eventually but if you address it then it
becomes that kind of Japanese philosophy you know where they use the gold glue to
fix the ceramics now it's a strength you're even better than you were before
so rather than saying oh we've got to smash the stigma we were fucking there
we're already there now let's talk about the hope that's on the other side of
people's struggles and give them the entire smorgasbord of tools so it might
be psilocybin and a therapy dog it might be EMDR and a hiking retreat whatever
works for that person they are fully aware they're not only will that tool
help them get there but the other side is somewhere extremely exciting for them
I do think that these entheogenics are hope I think they they were hope for me
when I tried everything but just to step back a little bit about the retirees and
people who have to retire out because of injury I think in our line of work and
in military and several others there's that whole who am I now aspect when we
talk about the hope like what hope do I have if I am a firefighter this is what I
am not just what I do and you define yourself by this title and now it's gone
either because you retired out and now who are you or like Troy you might have
been forced to retire out he killed himself in his class B uniform so
clearly he defined himself by the job and he was looking down the barrel of
not only am I gonna lose my income and not be able to support my family he was
losing his identity and I think that's where that hope comes in we need to find
a way to help our brothers and sisters find the hope in anything what who are
you outside of this get a hobby that is not related to the fire service define
yourself as something that is healthy and constructive and that's never gonna
go away I'm a mom and I'm a pretty good mom right now that's never gonna go away
and I think that that's part of the hope aspect you need to have something to
look forward to that isn't the job don't define yourself by this and hopefully
these medicines can open a door not only to a new self-definition but to just a
better future in mental health for everyone I think it would I'm assuming it
would also help with creativity and this is this is one of the things that's
going back to the work week for a moment one of the push backs I get as well if
we just give them more time off they'll just you know work overtime you know
any of you know they're isolated so just reverse engineer if you staff your fire
department properly and recruitment is good and people are vying for those
spots over time then we'll come a few and far between and they'll have more
days off what that then does from the identity piece is it really creates
space for someone to be creative and actually go you know what I love woodworking
I think I'm gonna start installing cabinets or landscaping or painting or
coaching you know whatever it is and now you're adding another layer of
identity to that individual and then they're far less likely to go all I am
as a firefighter no I'm a firefighter and I'm a football coach or I'm you know
whatever it is personal trainer so I think by giving our responders more time
off and then giving them the mental space to be creative again maybe through
psychedelics now you're setting these people up whether it's they get fired
whether they get hurt or whether they retire they have something healthy to
transition into absolutely when you're starting to say more time off I was
thinking like time off from work as far as like offer workman's comp with mental
health issues and I was like I don't know if that's a good idea because those
people tend to isolate and that might make it worse yeah no the opposite give
a given time to actually fill it with something else that's exciting right and
make friends outside the fire service I learned once I got retired out that wow
after 17 years most of my social interactions were at work and once that
was gone I was like wow I don't have much of a social life do I I'm not a
super social person anyways but wow so it's it's harder to make friends as an
adult outside of work just random moms at school but try to I would say
definitely find a hobby that's outside with other people to make friends that
aren't firefighters yeah absolutely cops say the same thing you know you got to
get outside them all right well then another closing question for you
mentioned fighting fungi which is obviously a show is there a person that
you recommend to come on this podcast as a guest to speak to the first
responders military and associated professions of the world Andrea Lucy she
just has such a rich background in both the culture and in Western medicine she
can speak both languages and she's just I she's an empath she just has a great
read on people like instantly and just such a pure individual I would highly
recommend and I'm pretty sure she'll do it she's done it before but she's just
she has so much more knowledge when it comes to the medicine than I do I don't
have the depth of knowledge as far as the spirit side for sure or the science
side I would absolutely recommend her and then maybe my husband when he
retires he's very well-spoken he just can't be public yet until he's retired
because his department's kind of conservative is he a you saw dog
handler then he is he's a fire captain and he that's actually how we met on a
FEMA task force team so he does search and I did hazmat so we have we have four
dogs I joke we have two that find you if you're alive and two that find you if
you're not brilliant all right well then the last question before you know I would
let you go what do you do to decompress these days I ride my horse oh my gosh
you have to be so present and so aware of your body because animals in general
like they communicate just fine and they don't speak a single word they use you
know an ear flick or a tail swish or the body position and you have to really be
aware of your body and what you're doing and how you're breathing because they
pick up on all of it and it's it's almost like a form of meditation because
I could honestly get killed on that horse he could spook we could have a bad
communication something could happen and I could really get hurt so that is what
I do to diffuse I go out with my horse and equine therapy is a thing and is it
is my absolute sanctuary to go out there and be with him and just kind of feel
and breathe and and to work with him and my other go-to is walks in nature that
kind of incorporates a little bit of the EMDR part the left and the right and the
left and the right and just enjoying the nature even if it's raining and being
present those are those are my go-to's for when I'm really stressed and what
we're trying to teach our son every night we do three things we're grateful
for even if we're mad even if we're upset you you should always be able to
find three things you're grateful for create that habit at the end of the day
one of our guys we work with has a board up on the wall so as they go by and they
think of things are grateful for they write it up on the board for the day so
I would say gratitude practice and getting out in nature beautiful have you
ever heard of a horseman Buck Braneman yes yes I have I had him on the show I
watched one of the back end of one of his clinics and then we did part of the
interview face to face and then we actually had to finish it off remotely
because of time but I mean what a beautiful insight into you know trauma
and then how that connection can be a mirror to the rider same same with a
canine it's absolutely a mirror and you if you don't deal with your stuff that
animal is gonna make you deal with it because it's not it's not gonna work it
will absolutely come out in the horse and what's so amazing about him is he is
the picture of every little motion he does he is intentional he's so aware of
his body and his breathing and everything he does and that it is
communicating something to that animal it's it's a beautiful partnership
absolutely well Angela I want to say thank you so much it's been such an
amazing conversation you know again I have so much respect for anyone who
comes on here and is vulnerable I think we need that vulnerability and I truly
believe that is courage that is strength actually opening up but also what you and
your husband have done as far as taking that experience and then applying it to
help others so I want to thank you so so much for being so generous with your
time and coming on the behind the shield podcast today thank you so much for
having us