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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 Merchant Marine, Navy SEAL veteran and the Chief Executive Officer of Guardian
Revival Alex Othmer.
Now in this conversation, we discuss a host of topics from Alex's early life, his unique
journey into the SEAL teams, the healing power of plant medicine, canine therapy, music 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.
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And this is a free library of almost 1000 episodes now.
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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 Alex Othmer.
Enjoy.
Well Alex, I want to start by saying two things.
Firstly, thank you to Joe McCulloch from O2X for connecting us initially and secondly to
welcome you onto the Behind the Shield podcast today.
Thanks James, I really appreciate you having me on.
So where on planet earth we finding you this afternoon?
That's a great way to ask that question.
I'm in New York.
I live about an hour north of New York City and hometown I grew up in and built a house
next to my parents, so my backyard.
Fantastic.
Well that perfect segue to the next question then.
So let's start the very beginning of that timeline.
So tell me exactly where you grew up and tell me a little bit about your family dynamic,
what your parents did, how many siblings?
So I grew up in a small town, again about an hour north of New York City and kind of
in a rural woodsy environment, grew up playing in the woods, shooting guns, really just like
a country boy upbringing.
My father was a New York City firefighter and my whole family was military first responders
so I really grew up into my time in service naturally.
My childhood was, you know, we were middle class and pretty easy going.
I had a hard father but the good type of hard that put me to challenge and no major trauma
or to least to my knowledge that I had growing up, just a fairly normal childhood, was an
athlete, played sports my whole life and was a wild man.
How long was your father a firefighter for?
So he was a firefighter for like 23 years and he was also a Marine and was also in the
Navy too so he was a veteran and then transitioned to the New York City Fire Department after
that.
With this mature mental health lens that you have post-service as well, when you look back,
were there any elements of his service that you realize now were causing some issues?
Absolutely.
So he was a firefighter during 9-11 which had an obvious impact on him and my whole
family and our community.
He just by crazy stand, he was actually, he got injured about two weeks before 9-11 happened
and the towers went down.
He was on a boat on the Hudson River and he was trying to fix a boat engine and his leg
got caught in the motor and ripped his whole knee up and he actually got life flighted
off the boat to West Point for emergency service, or emergency surgery.
So when 9-11 happened he was in crutches and he couldn't go down, he couldn't do anything
so he was just had this tremendous survivor's guilt and the only thing he could do was volunteer
to run all the funerals for all the firefighters and their families that were lost that day.
So it probably hit him harder than it might have if he was down there that day or was
actually able to get his hands dirty.
So it's a really interesting dynamic and that really affected me and my family unit all
through growing up which I'm sure we'll talk about but he was an alcoholic and suffered
from severe PTSD and he didn't really know what it was at that time.
This is the problem I think, if you were at the towers you'd be like, okay well you're
struggling because you were there, you were on ground zero, you were digging with your
hands, whatever it was.
But that's 1% of all first responders, 1% of all military were in some Mogadishu fight
for your life combat and everyone else was doing the daily grind.
And I think this is the problem, it's the death by a thousand cuts conversation that
we don't really have and just because your dad wasn't physically at the towers doesn't
mean that the cumulative effect of his military service and then in the firefighter's uniform
didn't compound and then obviously at the end that inability to say that survivor's
guilt just kind of crushing load on top of everything.
I mean you sound like a professional because you are James but that's exactly it.
One way I look at it is it's a bit of a mirage because for two things, one you might have
survivor's guilt and the second is you feel like you're not good enough or you didn't
do your part so you might live the rest of your life trying to prove yourself or accommodate
for those perceived shortcomings and I could see that throughout his life and how he struggled
with that.
That imposter syndrome is crazy and I had, I was just telling my son this the other day,
one of my Delta friends said that he's never seen such imposter syndrome as inside the
Delta team room.
Some of the most elite war fighters on the planet so we all, all of us suffer from it
and we wear this mask that we're okay and we look across and everyone else has got their
mask on we're like well they're all fine what's wrong with me behind this mask and the reality
is we all struggle with it.
We all do, it's all imprinted in somewhere in our brain whether we recognize it or not.
So going back to your childhood what about athletics and sports what were you playing
and doing?
Yeah so I played almost every sport under the sun but I rounded out with football and
wrestling and I boxed on high school as well and then I carried those with me.
I ran track as well and when I went to the Merchant Marine Academy which is a federal
service academy out in Long Island and I played football there for four years and I ran track
so I carried football with me but I really enjoyed wrestling the most.
Wrestling is like one of the most gut-wrenching sports you could participate in.
I don't know if you if you roll BJJ or if you do some type of combative sport but those
have always been the hardest for me because it's just you out there on the mat by yourself.
So that shaped most of my childhood intense sports, hot summer double sessions and triple
session practices which kind of shaped my work ethic and my mindset moving on later
into life.
I've had this conversation a lot with people that did teen sports and individual sports
and obviously the team element you know that carries over to the fire service or the Navy
SEALs but there's nothing more humbling than being on the mat on your own.
I fought I do taekwondo, excuse me I do jujitsu now but my first one was taekwondo that I
did a lot and there's no excuses like you know if you leave it to the hands of the judges
then you haven't done well enough you know what I mean.
Your only real way of winning is to win convincingly and so I found it such an interesting thing
dynamic because there's no better way to forge ownership than to put yourself in a sport
where it's just you and someone else so you can't blame anyone except yourself.
Yeah it's yes and I remember some of the most nerve-racking times of my life growing up
being waiting to start the match you know whether it's a boxing match or a wrestling
match and just seeing my opponent on the other side and that's like psychological warfare
right there and having that exposure as a young kid like as a teenager as I slowly becoming
a man I think is so important it prepares you for life in so many ways especially as
a man like women and men you know are just so fundamentally different I believe and I
think that I think especially for young men if they don't get that type of exposure then
I see them having struggles throughout the rest of their life trying to find that or
get that fulfillment of being exposed to that level of psychological pressure and stress
and I'm just grateful that I had that opportunity and things like wrestling and other combative
sports give you that taste.
I grew up on a farm as well and that was a vet a horse vet and a small animal vet and
so I grew up you know taking care of lambs at three in the morning and then getting chastised
at school at nine in the morning they assumed I was watching television but it was it was
that amazing element of suffering and this is in England so it's cold and wet and gloomy
as well and then you look at myself included how we all collectively live in 2024 and so
many of these discomforts have been curbed now what is your perspective of the kind of
lack of suffering in 2024 no fault of anyone's just these creature comforts that we have
on forging good firefighters and sailors for example.
Yeah that's a great question I do have one question for you James before I jump into
that is the living on the farm so do you have a lot of memories as like a young kid seeing
like your father work on animals like the gore and the trauma of like animal veterinary
care and like did that have an imprint on your mind.
I always said that my childhood prepared me for a life as a firefighter we had the big
dining room or kitchen table that everyone would sit around we'd had all kinds of people
walk through the door literally from extended royalty to gypsies and homeless people and
that's not a you know up down scale that's a horizontal scale in my mind but yeah I mean
I would issue be operate on a horse and we'd stop and we'd have sandwiches you know staring
at these cuts and then we'd you know wash our hands and then get back to it again and
I obviously wasn't doing you know most of the surgical stuff he was but I was helping
him and passing tools and so yeah when I look at the blood and gore element I did grow up
around that.
Super fascinating so sorry I digress to answer your question we are trending towards a sicker
society.
I think the nation at large especially the United States is sick mentally and physically
on so many levels and I believe it's because that I believe it's because we have grown
to be more and more comfortable and we're not growing and evolving as a species in order
to grow and evolve you have to be uncomfortable and you have to be exposed to the elements
to pressure to whatever stimuli in your environment and we're just not receiving that we're getting
softer physically and mentally as a society and I think that the declining health trends
we're seeing right now is symptomatic of that overarching societal trend.
You know I think three quarters of the United States is considered clinically overweight
and over a third is clinically obese one in five Americans suffer from some type of diagnosable
mental illness.
People are more sedentary than they've ever been roughly 90 percent of the US population
spends most of their time indoors it's just crazy it's sick it's causing us all to be
sick and it's a problem it's a huge problem that we have to address.
I just saw a really interesting video I forget exactly I think she was a lecturer at Harvard
I believe but she was talking about and obviously this is a certain group of people but how
is it that we've got children that have the access to therapy and these conversations
and they're not getting better and she said because it's the parents that need the counseling
and I've always said the same thing you know people roll their eyes and they'll go kids
today it's like well you fucking raise kids today my generation raised their generation
so that means that we're doing something wrong and so it's okay for us to go hey clearly
we're not doing it right but we have to put a stop on all the things that are doing exactly
what you you talked about and when COVID happened I was like oh thank god we got a collective
you know captive audience now we can finally make a dent on this but as I'm sure you saw
everything that needed to happen people were told not to do and everything that was making
things worse they were told to do in spades so there was no lesson learned and as we progress
through people are getting fatter and sicker.
Yeah it's so so true and I was thinking the same thing when COVID hit I was like to your
point we have a captive audience and I think people might start paying attention I think
some people did I think there was some good that came out of it and people had an opportunity
to rebound but for some it just dug them deeper into a hole.
Absolutely well what about the career aspirations obviously we're going to talk about the SEAL
teams and beyond but when you were in the school age what were you dreaming of becoming?
I always knew I wanted to be in the military but I didn't really know about being a SEAL
the wars were kicking off and I was just eager to like go out and serve and then you know
I think subconsciously seeking some type of revenge from the psychological effects that
9-11 had on my family and my father so I was always eager to get out and go find bad guys
and that's kind of what kicked off that aggression to go serve.
What was your actual experience you had your dad he's you know served in so many different
uniforms now he starts struggling like so many of our people do what did that look like
through the sun's eyes?
Yeah great question a lot of anger and resentment you know he like straight up just drank you
know he just became it was a functioning alcoholic he was such a hard worker and he was a mason
you know how most firefighters have a second job so he was a mason and I would work 12
hour days in the summer with him laying brick and block and stone and he was just a hard
worker he built our whole house but he would drink excessively and kind of drink away those
negative thoughts and feelings and emotions and it was mostly reflected in anger he always
cared about us as a family but you could tell he was he was struggling and what was most
apparent for me once like I did recognize is when I got older that it was like a big
problem was just like his habits and like how unhealthy he became the drinking led to
just poor eating and the poor eating just led to just like a more weaker lifestyle he
just was making the wrong decisions like obviously because alcohol prevents you from making the
best decisions you can and it just started to deteriorate everything about him led to
arguments and fights in the family things like that.
Did you lose your dad?
No he's still alive he's sober now he's five years sober so I left for college and
you know like just real quick like going back like he would always tell he would always
share share some stuff with the family when he came home like especially to me and my
older brother he wouldn't really share this to my mom and sister but he would make comments
like yeah I just got back from a you know a 24 and you know some guy got like ran over
by a train and like half of his body was like 100 yards down the track and he was still
talking to me and like you know as a kid I'm just like oh that's cool or like oh wow you
know and I didn't really think much of it or he would make comments like yeah I just
shoveled some guy with a flat shovel off the highway from getting a motorcycle accident
right or or like you know I remember him saying like a minivan killed you know a whole family
like just those types of things these like unbelievably traumatic events that the average
person might only see a couple times in their life at most meanwhile you guys as firefighters
see them on the daily basis and he would always bring those things up I just never recognized
it and then when I got to college and I got older and I was coming home periodically during
during like break I would see like the lawn wasn't mowed and like things just weren't
taken care of and like he was losing his purpose in life because his kids were out of the house
and he was getting older so he was just kind of running out of things to do and that's
when I think it took a really bad turn so I came home from one of my deployments and
my mom said it got really bad so I flew home and like went and got him to rehab and a couple
times took him to rehab and just like my last couple years in the military I was like coming
home and trying to get him in a better place and then finally like the fourth or fifth
time he was sober and never looked back and you know just a success story but it took
a lot of effort on like the whole family units part to get him the help he needed that's
amazing to hear I mean really especially I think the number of times that you went to
rehab I think this is a big misnomer as well it's like well you know why why aren't you
there you went to rehab didn't it work and what I've heard is usually it's a number of
times before people actually there's just something because it's again death by a thousand
cuts I'm sure it's healing by a thousand cuts too you just don't walk in and 30 days later
you're you're healed it's gonna be attempt after attempt and so when you have that you
know perfect storm of all the healthy coping mechanisms and the penny finally drops through
the insane fog of you know addiction that you first walk in that you can finally start
healing so I think that's great to hear that it took a number of times I think a lot of
people need to hear that and you're rewiring your entire brain you know he's been drinking
all his life a lot of us have right alcohol is like so baked into our lifestyle and our
culture like I'm so I've been sober for three years now and like I'm finally like just getting
over some of those weird feelings when I go somewhere and I don't have a drink and all
the social aspects surrounding it and the cultural aspects and like people like like
giving you weird looks and like I don't care anymore but when I started it was hard you're
changing everything about you when you stop drinking alcohol because it's how we've been
raised you know I looked up to my dad and I drank and I mean God I started drinking
when I was like 12 or 13 years old in the woods because I looked up to my dad and I
looked up to his friends and my uncles and my grandfathers and they would drink and like
it would be this manly thing to do to like go just crush a bunch of beers and like going
into high school I was just like ass backwards because I thought that was like cool you know
so instead of focusing on being a man I was focusing on trying to be the man which I thought
was drinking alcohol and being a part you know like a party rock star just totally fucking
wrong ass backwards it is I'm just about two months into a year with no no drink and I'm
you know hoping that's then gonna lead to more but it was a guest I had on recently
I'm like he talked about changing your relationship with alcohol and I've talked about this for
many years it's the only real vice I had and it wasn't binge drinking but it was if I let
it it would be you know two or three every single night and I'm disrupting my sleep every
single night and I'm on here talking about how important sleep is but it's it's funny
when you stop you realize every film every commercial every social interaction you know
some of the best food that I sit down with my wife is in a winery it's really hard not
to drink in a winery but you know but but that's what you have to do but the moment
you shift that perspective which is really really hard to do when you first you know
initiate this and you realize that you'll have exactly the same interactions with those
people with a non-alcoholic drink than you will with an alcoholic drink all of a sudden
for me the penny dropped and I was like oh and I've even enjoyed like the alcohol-free
IPA's that they have now it's just enough to kind of that you know like the smoker they
go do something with their hands but you realize that you don't need the alcohol and that that's
a beautiful a beautiful awakening for me I'm two months in and already feeling a lot better
wow wow that's great I mean hey keep keep going it's it's uh it's that's a lot when
you your whole life have been part of you you know I don't know what the culture was
like in England versus America I heard that like in America we just like we just are way
too sloppy and we just go overboard like my wife's from Argentina and she's like when
she came here she was like I don't know why you Americans all of a sudden just like shot
shot shot shot she's like just have a drink and like that's all you need so it's that
absolutely it's the the crazy backwards way that we hold back alcohol in America I think
you know introducing it when you're younger obviously is still introducing it you know
that's not a not a question but if you grew up in Europe you know I had wine with Sunday
roast you know like or watered down glass you know when I was you know early like 11
12 whatever it was and so it's not super taboo so when you start drinking like you're not
going to see keg stands and beer pong all that stuff in England and that's the difference
here they're like oh you can go join the military but you can't have a drink and then at 21
they're like all right off to it and you just pulled this bow back so hard that when you
let go it's you know it's it's I don't know it is it's a completely different culture
and it's about getting shitfaced rather than the social interaction with a drink and that's
I think the difference leave it leave it to us Americans right there's so many things
we do well but I think yeah that that facade of you know yeah holding it back and some
of these age limits but then we let people drive cars at 16 I think we got that backwards
yeah it's yeah or you know yeah it's who knows but the the defining question that really
set me for drinking was like I'm more reliable to the people I like love and truly matter
to me when I don't drink alcohol and it that's very personal to me right because I just you
know some people can just have one single drink right but I'm just more reliable and
people around me that I love can count on me better and have the best version of me
and that's the only way I can look at it so it made it easy for me to stop before it got
bad beautiful I'm so glad to hear about you dad that's amazing and that puts hope in other
people I mean that kind of career especially in FDNY which is a very busy you know fire
department to have those struggles and now be five years sober he should be really bloody
proud of himself thanks all right well then back to your journey so you you want to go
into the military you had an unusual path though ultimately into the SEAL team so let's
walk through where you first found yourself so I went to the Merchant Marine Academy
that's a federal service academy like I was saying before and you know there's like the
major service academies like West Point the Naval Academy the Air Force Academy and then
you have like the Coast Guard Academy and then the Merchant Marine Academy is kind of
like this hidden little gem and I'll share why in a second but it was built after World
War or during World War II to to produce merchant ship officers to drive the ships that were
going overseas to both the Pacific and the European theater during World War II to move
you know bullets bullets and you know supplies whatever it may be and they created the Merchant
Marine Academy so when you're there you you can go one of two ways you can be an engineer
on a ship or you can be a like a ship's captain and learn navigation and nautical science
and how to drive a ship and that's the direction that I went so during your time there you
go to sea for a full year so you go on a bunch of different merchant ships and naval vessels
out for a year and just learn what it's like being out at sea and then it culminates into
your Coast Guard licensing at the end of your senior year and then you graduate with your
unlimited tonnage Coast Guard license so you can essentially pilot any size vessel in the
world you're commissioned as an officer into any branch of the service and you leave with
your bachelor's degree so it's a really good deal and not a lot of people know about it
and so I commissioned but I chose going into the Navy and I can I commissioned with a naval
special warfare billet so I had to go through a couple screening and selection processes
as a junior in college out in San Diego and then they tell you if you get a billet to
go to Bud's which is the beginning of SEAL training and I got that and I graduated and
like two weeks later drove cross-country to Coronado California to start the journey.
When you look back now knowing how high the attrition rate is what was it physically and
mentally that allowed you to progress through the selection process when so many rang the
bell?
I would say it's my purpose and like my reasoning for going you know I think that if you truly
if you're going for the right reasons and you want to be something like a SEAL for the
right reasons you have a much better shot than like going just because you want to prove
yourself or you want to prove for somebody else or you know what I mean like some people
would go because they just thought they liked the idea of being a SEAL but they didn't really
realize how difficult it really was going to be and that it's really not that sexy when
you're in it.
It's pretty brutal and it's painfully exhausting and it's a grind and yeah it's an incredible
experience but it's extremely hard and people I think just get focused on the like the sex
appeal of it rather than the actual like hard work and what it truly means and those people
would disappear very quickly from training.
So I think it was just like I had a very important reason to go and I think that's what allowed
me to just kind of push myself through all of it.
I've never thought about this until just now but we're in the middle of a recruitment crisis
and all the branches the military, first responder professions and one thing that I've said about
the fire service because obviously that's the environment that I know is some agencies
like where we can still hire we're still getting numbers and I said yeah but that's all well
and good but you're getting the entire list now.
You used to be able to choose the top 10 or 20 before and I think this is a key element.
If it's very competitive you end up with men and women who have a burning desire to be
a firefighter or a seal whatever the thing is.
If you then lower standards continuously you lose those people and it's that burning why
that is going to make you compassionate when you're exhausted and also it's going to be
that one that's going to push you through that hallway looking for that kid when you're
fucking terrified.
Yes and that unfortunately without getting too political but like that ideology is plaguing
so many different institutions across the world right now and I think people get confused
between equal opportunity versus equal outcome and like you're never going to be able to
defeat the hierarchy right.
Some people or the bell curve however you want to say it some people are just going
to be better fit for the job than others and diversity is very important but when you are
in a high performance position or if you're a firefighter I don't care what color skin
you're skin you have I don't care what religion you follow I don't care if you're a man or
woman all I care about is that you can drag my big ass out of a burning building and that's
what it's about.
So line everybody up and whoever can consistently drag somebody out of a burning building and
do it in a in a team environment and not lose their shit those are the people that we have
to pick and it just the same concept applies everywhere else in the world and if we lose
that lose touch with that especially as first responders in military we're in a big we're
deteriorating our ourselves as you know we're just like lowering this it's it's a sad situation
and I think to your point when you first brought this up like that's why we're seeing attrition
in numbers and recruiters are having an issue bringing people in it's like people are now
looking at the military I mean I'm saying this maybe this is a generalization but a
lot of people look at the military and it's not as prestige as they once thought it might
be you know that's they're getting a lot of like negative press because they're trying
all these weird things you know something smart is like you don't want to have a transvestite
promote military and you don't want like you don't want those types of people being the
face of the military right and that's what they were trying to do and they saw a tremendous
backlash right it's just like don't do that right like you're recruiting for a performance
and you're recruiting to bring the right people in and they're just seem to be getting it
wrong I think the other the other issue is that people are seeing the support the rest
and recovery that is or is not there in these professions so for example you know you're
in the military and I hear this over and over again this is third hand because I'm not a
military member myself but the number of people that say you know then they got into the VA
them and then they got pills thrown at them and then they almost took their own life and
then we have an amazing conversation about their thank God healing journey and what they're
doing now and it's the same in my profession you know when I went in I went in blindly
going I'm gonna go help people this is what I want to do totally unaware of what mandatory
overtime was and marriages and cancers and suicides and overdoses and all the things
and so now a young candidate looks at that and they get everything says 2024 when you
do your research everything pops up and so and then they look at the pay and they look
at you know the work week all these things and they're like I don't think I want to do
that it doesn't sound very good I want to serve I'll find a different way of serving
the beautiful thing is that all you have to do is fix those things like don't withdraw
from Afghanistan in a day while Marines get you know blown up to death you know so so
we lose Marines to explosions and we suddenly leave that's not telling everyone that served
everyone that lost limbs everyone that brought home traumatic memories and and brought home
their friends in caskets covered in flags that we're there to support you and we believe
in the mission so the we have the opportunity to fix all these things but like you said
shiny objects like you know the the PC elements that are front page on whatever newspaper
is not what it's about supporting men and women warfighters regardless of gender and
all the other things but people that are supposed to be there and if you give a selfless you
know service that we will take care of you that is how we fix recruiting but if you say
oh I need 20 percent of this color and this religion and this sexuality you're completely
missing the fucking point you will have people lining up around the door of all those different
you know backgrounds if you just show them that you actually give a shit yep yeah I 100
percent and I think it it doesn't do it doesn't do people minorities it doesn't do them a
service either because now we talked about imposter syndrome right now they might be
asking themselves like did I get here just because I am this color or I in this religion
or you know what I mean and like there's some like I believe that there's smart there's
smart ways to do it right like I would understand if you're if you're in a predominantly black
neighborhood right and you wanted to have more diversity in your police officers in
the neighborhood like that's a reasonable thing right like there's a reason behind that
like a performance-based technically a reason but you can't but at the same time you can't
jeopardize the performance right like you have to find the people that can first do
the job that can carry a weapon that can you know sprint a hundred meters to take down
a perpetrator whatever it is right or somebody the way the african-americans are going to
be a lot better than us white guys on that part let's be honest when it comes to sprinting
they're going to be kicking our ass right yep and yeah so I think we just need to do
a smarter job and it's a it's a very it's a turbulent world right now out there you
know so I don't I don't get much involved with it I just hope that we can hold hold
hold the standard high for our guardian communities and make sure that people don't fail to recognize
that at the end of the day there's a job to be done and we need to pick the best people
that can do that job and that's a good starting point to me the mentorship programs are the
answer to that there's clearly history of certain groups not being brought in or just
simply the barrier to entry you know like for example most of the fire departments in
America you've got to pay to go to fire school and EMT school and then you test well if you
haven't got right you know four or five thousand dollars that's a barrier to entry one of my
friends here started a mentorship program for firefighters and they go into the underserved
populations and they let them know and it's free training and then there's scholarships
that can be awarded for fire academy and then you get the people from these different backgrounds
and allow them to rise up and within that group that are going to be some like no you
would have been a terrible firefighter just you know I think accounting is the right thing
for you but you're going to find like you said the best candidates because it's not
about oh I need these people that look this way it's this group is not being represented
as well like you said there's some populations where speaking Spanish or being from certain
backgrounds is absolutely going to be an asset so go into that community and find the best
candidates and give them the training so they can rise up to that bar you don't just go
in and scoop a bunch of them up and say you're all coming with me right of which some are
going to be rock stars and some are going to be problem children exactly yeah like
I am all for equal opportunity like I we need more organizations like that that can go into
minority compute communities and underserved communities and give them a better opportunity
like I love that that's that's I would put put my money into that and I'm a firm believer
of that it's just there's only so far you can go once you know like to meet a standard
so I'm glad to hear that that there are organizations like that I think it's really important yeah
well this is the irony is that for all these problems there are such easy solutions but
they're in the middle and no one wants to look in the middle these days yep all right
well then you mentioned about going through buds so talk to me about deployments I know
you didn't find yourself in the Middle East specifically so where on planet earth did
you find yourself serving yeah so I you know I have I've I've been to the Middle East
but my I didn't really experience combat in the Middle East my combat experiences were
in Africa and Somalia so that's where I really had the opportunity to like do seal
stuff you know I at the time you know I was probably it was probably 2016 2017 like the
war was dying down in the Middle East and there was this weird uptick of that terrorist
group called Al Shabab if you're familiar with them yeah and they were just the ones
wreaking havoc on all the the resorts and stuff all in like East Africa and West Africa
and you know I that's what really my counterterrorism career was you know I don't have a crazy I
don't have this crazy history of sustained combat operations like a lot of guys do that
you know got in in the early 2000s and just rode rode the whole war for 20 years I'm not
saying I wish I had that because a lot of those guys are hurting real hard now are no
longer with us but you know I just timing wise I just never ended up deploying to a
combat zone in the Middle East it was just in Africa what was the the element what did
it look like so I know for example my wife's half Filipina and you know you look at the
Philippines they actually have a lot of you know extremism there a lot of violence when
it comes to the areas that you worked in obviously I think of the the mall shooting in Kenya
and the one I forget the one I asked the S guy that went in and helped mitigate that
with some of the guys he was teaching but um what were you seeing as far as the level
of extremism and and where was the root cause of that in that particular part of the continent
yeah so it was very different from like you know like at the same time my buddies that
I you know we're went through training right some of us some of us went to the East Coast
some of us went to the West Coast and my guys that went to the West Coast they would go
to Iraq and they were you know in the second taking a Mosul they were in cities and like
very urban environments and they would talk to me about like kind of the warfare that
was going on there very different than what we were seeing in East Africa it was like
open desert and small villages right very like rural areas probably what you would more
see in like Afghanistan and you know it was I would say your garden variety brutal terrorism
you know bombs children just like really cheap low blows to communities like we would you
know go from one village to the next and we would see like some of the atrocities that
they would commit you know they were just cutthroat they would at that time they were
using a lot of like IEDs and their tactics were pretty much like shoot shoot at you and
run away type thing and draw you in so I don't think it was like anything far off from what
you were seeing in the Middle East just more spread out there was like this big valley
called the Juba River Valley and we were part of like this Juba River offensive and we were
working with like some of the foreign nationals and we would take them out to target try to
have them fight for their own country and go out there and kind of move them up to a
target and then let them go into the house and you know if the house gets hot then we
would figure out a way to help them if we can but at the same time we're not going to
have Americans die on African soil for another country even though there's like a grander
a grander play for the whole continent of Africa which is a whole other thing right
now but yeah like America very much didn't want to show that we were really getting involved
over there and like I think the camp next to me a couple I don't know maybe 100 miles
away at another outpost like in I was like out in this place called Kiss Mayo that was
like in the middle of nowhere and there was one other outpost that was nearby and then
our next closest was like Mogadishu a seal was killed and that like sparked a big up
uprising and they're like why are we doing stuff you know over in East Africa and people
are like wondering what are we doing over there so wasn't like the best press and I
think we've really toned things down kind of operating out of that area now.
What about root causes I know one thing I heard I saw on a documentary and it was talking
about the overfishing of Somalian seas and that causing more poverty because the fishermen
weren't able to make a living anymore in their own their own shores.
What did you see as far as the contributing factors to allowing this kind of extremism
to grow in Somalia specifically?
Money and corruption I'd say just money and like the form of extremism like it's a combination
of a really strong ideology plus like just money hungry just being like a rotten human
being at its core bringing out all the worst of human nature but I think mostly you know
religion plus power and money hungry and probably just fear of poverty just like riding the
wave of avoiding what probably generations and generations of their predecessors dealt
with which is like poverty you know like I don't want to say I feel bad for terrorists
but you know they there's a reason why they're a terrorist right and it's not because they
woke up one day and they're just like I want to kill it's like because they were raised
that way you know and no one no one likes to say that you ever you know Jordan Peterson
is yes he he wrote a book called Maps of Meaning and one of the one of his big pushes was like
if you were born if I was born in Nazi Germany I'm probably get harassed for this but if
I was born in Nazi Germany right like right at the start of World War II I would probably
be you know in the SS or I probably would have jumped into right like who's like I can't
say for sure that I would have had this moral objection to joining an entire you know the
Third Reich like I can't say that I could only assume like maybe I would realize what
was going on but but most people at that time were just fed into this movement and this
ideology and they believed every bit of it so the idea is that if you were born in Nazi
Germany there's a chance you might be at a concentration camp doing horrific atrocious
activities right and for you to say not like that's just a geek you know just making assumptions
yeah well I think that's why it's so important to talk about environment and talk about the
root cause of things you know as you mentioned 70 percent of the US is obese or overweight
and a third is obese which is terrifying because that's a significant you know level of being
overweight and you know there's a lot of that well if they just woke up at four and you
know took an ice bath and they went for a 10 mile run they could be slim like me bullshit
that's like yeah but also if they grew up in Manhattan and the only source of food was
the bodega and all the the freaking you know playing areas are kind of riddled with gangs
can I compare as an English farm boy that had an orchard the same with that kid in
in Brooklyn you know no I can't it's not fair so it's environment as well so but when you
actually take that into account or immigration from Mexico drug prohibition has caused a
lot of the issues so that's one of the root causes you know so if we're not having that
conversation then we're just building walls to keep the Mexicans out we're missing the
fucking point why all these people are fleeing their country so I think it's so important
to kind of reverse engineer some of these yes yes environment you said it best it's
such an important thing and again like I grew up I grew up as a you know middle class I
I had access to sports I had a strong family unit right and I I'm blessed in how I grew
up and it's not the case for others so always considering that environment and how do you
modify the environment modify the information environment is especially nowadays to give
people number one the benefit of the doubt and give them as many resources resources
as you can because a lot of it is people just don't know right if you're a if you're a you
know single mom with three kids and you work you know 50 60 hours a week and your kids
go to school and they come home and all you can do is grab fast food because you don't
have time to cook like like how do you how do you crack that you know education but at
the same time you can't there's no more time in the day for that mother to cook for her
kids and stuff so it's I just it's such a big problem I don't know how to I don't know
how to like address it but I think you can start by changing like you can start by changing
institutions you know and yeah it's it's a long road yeah well I think again it's you
know it's getting people educated of angry getting to understand first and if you look
at you know for example the origin story of drug prohibition it's on racism and job justification
harry anslinger that's how it all started and we've had a you know 90 plus year longitudinal
study of its effectiveness and it's a fucking disaster and now we've got you know streets
riddled with gangs and homelessness and overdoses and sex workers and a large part of that is
this ridiculous law they put in in the 30s so if we actually have the guts to address
that and then as we sit here now recording MDMA was just refused as a psychedelic therapy
by the FDA the same FDA that approved Oxycontin which caused the fucking opioid crisis this
is a problem if we just sit back and allow these people that work for us to negatively
impact our environment we are going to get fatter and sicker but if we get educated and
angry and push the fuck back we can actually turn it around that was a hard hit I don't
know how how you know what your stance or how much into the world of psychedelics you
are but I was really that was really disheartening yeah it was disgusting and again this whole
prohibition conversation I talk about this all the time I know so many people now I mean
I've obviously found myself immersed in the SEAL community from from a firefighter's perspective
so many of my SEAL friends it's psychedelics that save their lives a lot of my first responder
friends the same and so these men and women that serve within this country or serve to
protect it from overseas then go have to have to go to another country to get the therapy
for it it makes no sense whatsoever no it's it's messed up I went down to Mexico you have
your vets yeah I had Marcus on the show oh you had Marcus on the show that's right yeah
so I I went down back in 2020 down to Mexico and and went through that program I met I
met Marcus in San Diego and you know the the organization was kind of I don't want to say
in its infant stages but it was still pretty small and then now it's grown so much and
they've done so much good work but that that changed the course of my life being introduced
to psychedelics in that professional setting that they offer and now I look on how many
people I've been able to help based on my experience it's it's more powerful than I
would argue any other medication and any other modality of healing to this day and if I were
to put all my all my put all my bets on something for actually being able to turn the tide of
this mental illness crisis we're dealing with it would be psychedelics period no offense
robots well I want to get to your transition story and then we'll talk about the downward
spiral and then and then getting yourself out again but just before we do when I talk
to anyone who's been deployed and actually seen combat you've kind of answered one side
like you said some of the atrocities that you saw but when it comes to our perspective
through the TV it's either one of two perspectives to see the you know the kind of tactical kill
them all like God saw them out stacking bodies on one side or it's the they're all baby killers
on the other and the middle are our men and women in uniform that are actually over there
you know they're the ones you should be asking you talked about the kind of you know justification
of why we were there in certain situations the other side the coin I like to ask as well
though is kindness and compassion people don't hear that on the news at all what our actual
men and women in military do whether it's in their role the weather is above and beyond
so when you think back to service what were moments of kindness and compassion you remember
yeah so I I would say the the first like real dead body that like the first like real like
traumatic injury I've seen on somebody was a like a younger boy who was probably I don't
know 15 or 16 years old and he just started like he he was like in the militia and he
like both he got both his legs blown off he was he died but his he had both his legs blown
off and like part of his torso was gone and I remember I was next to a medic who was working
on him we were I think we just hit him with some ketamine just to kind of let him ride
it out and there was one of his one of his buddies was next to him and was holding him
and I you know I don't know what they were saying but I don't know what they were saying
but it was so genuine and so pure and the his buddy was so like just pure and saying
he probably was saying something like I'm gonna tell your parents something or like
I'm gonna carry some information onto your family and he put like this level of comfort
in the kids eyes that you know I could just feel and see and it was like very saddening
and disheartening but at the same time you could tell that they they were they were fighting
for something that was deeply meaningful to them and like from a spiritual level he was
able to like kind of pass them off in the heaven type thing and I remember like very
vividly that memory so I think there was just like I just had a whole lot another level
of compassion for people that are in war zones in like third world countries and like their
fight is so much bigger than ours we as Americans I keep shitting on Americans but like we the
smaller you define your world the bigger your problems seem and we like to define our small
our world very tiny day to day and oh I don't have Wi-Fi in the airplane or whatever maybe
it's raining out and I can't go out now and these people are dealing with life or death
situations and those are big problems to have right we deal with small problems mostly on
a daily basis so that that was probably like a very meaningful impactful way to just have
more compassion for people that are not here in the United States that are going through
a lot more than we are suck it up buttercup one of the things this is an absolute utopian
pipe dream but you know there's that term team America world police and one of the best
films ever made I think but you know that kind of idea that we're out policing the world
and I think that I love the fact that we have the potential for really doing good in the
world but it's not through policing and don't get me wrong there's times where we have to
send you know military members over there and you know if you got to do what we got
to do but imagine if we took the time to fix some of the issues in our own country though
good that we could do then outside of our own borders because we do have things we need
to fix I mean our children get murdered in the schools and you know the lifespan of the
70 percent that's overweight or obese is significantly shorter than it should be so these are very
very important issues to address but imagine then if we reversed you know drug prohibition
and we started taking some power away from the cartels and you know there's there's so
many good things that we could do that then through diplomacy we could actually start
positively affecting some of these other countries I mean Haiti is a perfect example yeah it's
my neighbor here in Florida and the fact that there's a war zone across the water when it
could be the most affluent tourist destination and the Haitian people could be flourishing
is an absolute travesty to me so I think if we actually they say you want to change the
world start a home if we all look within our four walls made a difference and step outside
our front door and then help our community collectively that would extend to the entire
world yes well said James you're a bit of a philosopher huh I had almost a thousand
conversations it's made me it's made me think about a lot of stuff put it that way yeah
I can't I can't wrap my head around that stuff honestly it's so it's so complex like how
do you like you know drugs and you know the fentanyl like all these different things like
I I don't know where to start like you look at the health you look at the health care
system you look at poverty you look at prison systems you look at our political narrative
overseas and why we're there it's just so complex and everything's so connected that
I don't know where to begin yeah well I think firstly you got to turn the pyramid upside
down remind the people that they're at the top that's where there you go but if we keep
getting divided and told that you know the other really fucking awful leader is your
enemy and you not be being dissuaded from the fact that the awful leader that you hold
as your Messiah is also terrible if we can debunk that myth and that you know no good
leaders are making it to that position in the first place that's how we start and if
we allow ourselves to be divided and fight for people that should never have been in
that position in the first place then we're gonna we're gonna reap what we sow so we need
an awakening for us yep well said all right well then you mentioned obviously Iber Gaines
so let's kind of reverse engineer a lot of the people I've had on the show the transition
is where people really start to struggle there's some that have a great transition but you've
gone from this tight-knit tribe this this really you know laser focus purpose you know
this identity as a seal or a firefighter and then one day your ID doesn't work you know
the doors are closed behind you and you find yourself on the other side and I know for
a lot of people that can be very jarring so what was your transition story and then talk
to me about the the slide downwards first yeah so you know you you you brought up a
couple of the areas where we fall on our faces as military and really first responders after
transition and for me personally it was mostly identity crisis and like they're they're of
lack of mission and purpose in life and then two is like TBI traumatic brain injury stuff
and like you know my whole life I played sports combat sports and like in the military I got
my bell rung so many times being around explosions and gunfire and I I like the I remember hitting
my head really hard once before I got out and anyway so that is what I believe caused
a lot of my like mental health issues so those two things the TBI stuff that just carried
through my whole life military career and then the transition out of being in like such
a high-performing job and then leaving that environment and going into like the corporate
world it's like so foreign and so confusing because like everyone just cares about money
and like they'll stab you right in the back if it accomplishes their agenda so that was
like a big slap in the face for me and I always like to say that like I don't I truly don't
like the doctor tells me I have PTSD but like I truly do not believe that I have PTSD but
they say I do I really don't like I don't have like at least I don't think I probably
have like the what do they call it like hyper vigilance we all have that right like you
have that like you're always on high alert but like so what like that's who I am as a
person but I don't like have like I don't have this like deep state of depression anxiety
necessarily that caused like my mental illness it's more so stuff that like is so deeply
rooted in my brain I think again from partly from TBI stuff and then just that loss of
identity and the rug being pulled from underneath me that really put me in that dark dark place
and I digress what I was saying before is just because you have trauma doesn't mean
that you are going to have mental illness trauma I think has been around for thousands
of years since the inception of mankind and I think it's how we handle trauma and all
the other things in the 21st century that exacerbate trauma like I believe we should
be able to go to war and and see dead bodies and kill people and lose friends and come
back and still be healthy I believe that's that should be a thing but society is so twisted
and and there's so many pitfalls that we fall into those pitfalls that society just creates
and then all of our shit that we carry with us just exacerbates all of it and we just
fall into this cascading cycle so that's what I believe happened to me most importantly
I can't speak for other people but I would I would throw a I would throw a highly educated
guess out there that that's a big cause of it and I started just like drinking excessively
like the substance abuse just abusing everything just abusing everything and that is what spun
me into a dark dark place.
When I spoke to Sebastian Junger he's been on the show a few times now and the one book
tribe one of the big things he talks about is story and obviously this is what this whole
podcast is about but when you look at older you know tribe tribal communities when the
warriors came home there would be a ceremony and they would tell what they did you know
and it would be celebrated and you know there'd be a way of kind of offloading it and there
would be I'm sure an appreciation from the village whether it was hunting whether it
was actually war and so you know you you have that kind of healing element and I think this
is so clearly underlined if you look at the Vietnam era veterans of which I've had several
on you know they were spat on or pissed on all kinds of stories I've heard and they weren't
received well and I believe if I'm not mistaken that a large percentage of our suicide you
know military members are Vietnam era veterans because they're coming out of whatever job
they flung themselves into to try and forget and now they're retiring and now we're seeing
a lot from that point too but that ability to tell the world and I love Sebastian's things
because the veterans town hall which you literally allow your veterans in your community tell
them what they did were they you know they pro-military were they anti-military whatever
it is give them a voice but coming home and then being told to shut up you know that's
so detrimental in modern-day society.
Yes yes tribe what was it some Indian would you remember what it was what tribe it was
they talked about it a lot.
Iroquois yep yep yeah exactly I remember that that was such a good book I read that a while
ago but that's such a good book he really hit some some salient points in that yeah
yeah I think trauma is part of it's part of life.
100% well you talked about coming back and then drinking so where was the lowest point
that you found yourself so many people on here got to that suicide ideation did you
find yourself there?
Yep so two two situations that ring ring true to me one is one morning I well backtrack
related to alcohol I went out this was like um this was St. Patty's day leading into covid
and I went out and I got so drunk blackout drunk and long story short I ended up I was
I ended up at like a deli at like four in the morning and there was like just to make
the story short there was some there was like a girl fight going on and like I was trying
to you know the the protector I am I was trying to break it up and like like say you like
stop fighting girls and there was like a group of four or five guys there and more or less
they jumped me and one of them sucker punched me and I started fighting them and one of
them just like punted me booted me in the face when I was on the ground with one of
them and knocked me out cold into a pool of blood and my friend was in the car waiting
for me to like get a sandwich and like saw everyone run out because they thought I was
probably dead and I was laying there in a pool of my own blood you know it like I don't
know 29 30 years old and uh you know I woke up the next day and my jaw was all jacked
up and you know like my inside of my mouth was cut up and I was living at my parents
house because I moved home like I don't know a couple months before and I was building
a house next door to my parents and I remember like I came home and my mom looked at me and
she started crying and I was just like what am I doing with my life and that's when
I was just like really in a bad place and I was just like I you know I just was walking
around with just just just insane amount of anger and energy and um like a couple days
after that I um woke up one morning and I literally was like why am I even awake I like
was like I have no reason to be alive and I start and I had to you know I don't I don't
know if you have or other people on your show I'm sure had sure have it's like comparable
to like a panic attack but your thoughts start cycling down into a really dark place and
I had that moment and it scared the shit out of me because I was headed down this suicidal
ideating pathway and my thoughts started going down to well maybe I could just not be here
anymore more or less and that's when I hit a really bad point and I think what what pulled
me out of it that morning was the fact that I still had a choice I don't know if that
sounds like a little I had a choice which to me is like the most powerful thing in the
whole world is like if you have choice you have free will to choose to do something whether
or not that's killing yourself or sucking it up and moving forward I had a choice and
there was something in me I don't know what it was you can call it God you could call
it the universe but I had this like just jolt of energy of like no I have a choice here
and like like if I have a choice there is a choice and I I have one of two things I
can I can I can go down that dark path or I can just like step up and move and that's
what I did and I just started moving and the first thing I did was I got a dog I drove
out to Missouri and I picked up a dog because they've been a part of my life and I hadn't
have one when I was in the military because I couldn't take care of a dog I went and
picked up a dog and that just gave me an anchor and I held on to that I woke up I could feed
the dog I trained the dog I walked the dog and that gave me that first bit of release
and like connecting me back to reality when I first started this podcast and I'm one of
my friends Dustin Hawkins is probably the first person that really like bore his soul
on the show and that was you know God seven years ago now I started seeing this commonality
come out because after a thousand interviews you know the kind of proverbial Venn diagram
is spitting out some pretty you know truth bombs if you like but one of the ones that
I never heard anyone really discussing when it comes to mental health and certainly not
on the posters and all that kind of thing was this feeling of burdensome almost everyone
that had been at that point there was such a miswiring through all the things childhood
trauma unaddressed childhood trauma the things that we see in uniform you know the organizational
betrayal the side effects of alcohol and psych meds and all the other things the perfect
storm that the brain was miswired the reality was distorted and you have these men and women
who are wearing a uniform that they swore they would die for a complete stranger and
now there's this intrinsic belief this true belief that I am the cause for my family's
pain and if I just take myself out then which ironically makes suicide a very selfless kind
and compassionate act in that moment in their truth even though from a healthy mind looking
in it's obviously distorted completely did you have any of those voices start to creep
in when you were at that point?
No because I was so no because I was a bachelor I was single I was like at my parents so like
nobody was counting on me so if I had a family then I think that would probably be some of
my thought if I was hurting people around me or I would have that burdensome feeling
and I appreciate you bringing light to what goes on in the mind of somebody that is suicidal
and like people are like oh that's selfish and you know they're getting the easy way
out it's like no their brain is so contorted that they think up is down and left is right
so I appreciate you bringing that up because you get a lot of that and I think it's just
the wrong way to look at it.
Yeah no it is and this is the problem and I'll give you a perfect example I think it
was about a year ago now in Florida we had a young couple they were both law enforcement
officers the boyfriend took his own life first and they had a not quite a newborn but an
infant child and then the girlfriend took her life I think it was a week later so from
the outside looking in you're like selfish you know all the things but then at that you
know when you kind of look at how distorted a mind can get through all of these you know
negative impacts again there must have been a truth that this kid is doomed if I keep
doing what I'm going to do so I'm going to take myself out of the picture.
So hard to understand especially now because that child has neither parent and this is
why we have to bring this up to the front I think that when that mind is miswired and
I say that you know broken compassionately that needs to be a big red flag to hold their
hand and pull them out of that psychosis back into reality again because reality is obviously
you're going to leave all the pain with that person you leave behind but at that moment
they're the cause of the pain that suicide must be fucking terrifying for them and they
do it anyway yeah right yes well said James well said so let's talk about the beautiful
hope that is healing because as you talked about you know this trauma at war we've had
trauma since the beginning you know the dawn of time and the birth of man where I think
there's so much hope in this conversation is understanding that if you do the work the
other side of that is a better version of yourself another thing that we don't really
hear in the mental health conversation so what were the tools that you started finding
you mentioned a dog and I've got one right outside my office door here I couldn't agree
more with that all of a sudden you've got purpose there's another being that relies
on you getting outside and moving you mentioned as well Ibergain so walk me through your healing
journey and then what was that metamorphosis for you yeah so I got a dog and then I probably
had a month with month or two with the dog and it really again just anchored me down
and then I found out about vets and I well I had a buddy that actually went through and
I was talking to him he's like you should go here so he called up I think Marcus and
and Amber and got me a spot so I went down again this was during covid so I went down
to Mexico and you know really ripped the band-aid off with the ibogaine 5-me-o DMT experience
which was designed for that very reason for people that have hard heads and are stubborn
you know former special operators so that was you know short of the birth of my children
the most powerful meaningful experience of my life that rewired my brain and sat me back
down and put me in a much better place and then I started getting to work like really
getting to work spending a tremendous amount of time outside in nature and hiking and being
outdoors and just getting myself out of the car and out of the office and also listening
to music I started playing a little bit of music but I never really were was able to
pick it up in a meaningful habitual way but listening to music and using music as as not
just an outlet but as a way to process my emotions was a really powerful thing and you
know what the feeling that you get turning on the radio and listening to like your favorite
song like that's an incredible dopamine rush like where other than like hard hard drugs
like where else can you get that feeling of like listening to like your favorite song
on the radio it's incredible it just shakes you to your core so clearly there's some real
value and magic with music that I think we need to do a better job studying but the music
the nature the dog and I would say the biggest one was connecting with other people that
were struggling similarly and just having that peer companionship with others and those
things all combined gave me you know there's things like exercise and diet that were important
as well but I got to work I worked hard there's no other way to put it I brought people into
my life I started changing my habits I started getting rid of the bad stuff you know I was
I I'd work hard to get myself back in a better place there's no shortcut so many people that
have been through you know their their journey of suffering and then they come out the other
end also find themselves as a beacon of light and people that they thought were absolutely
fine are coming to them saying I'm not fine did you have that as you started kind of coming
out the other side yeah absolutely I mean there's one thing I'm good at is bringing
light to people that are in the dark that's who I am as a person and I've helped a lot
of people that were in very dark places some close friends I lost some friends to suicide
and people close to me yeah can't can't grab everybody but there is hope and there's light
and if you can just give somebody a little taste of it that's like the first step and
that's the first start and it could be something something as simple as like me sitting down
with you face to face in person putting my hand on your shoulder and saying it's going
to be okay there's there it's it's good out there I promise you like all this bad
stuff you're dealing with like yeah it's hard it's heavy I know I've been there but I promise
you I promise you that there's actually something some really good stuff out there you just got
to find it and you got to work hard to find it and once you get there it's the most amazing
place in the world you know it takes that sometimes sometimes it's just some some people
have their own their own what do they call them yeah you know the spiritual experience
with or without psychedelics where they have this this moment this moment of clarity where
they're just like they see the light you know and they see that little glimmer of hope or
that little clearing in the trees it's there and once you get there it's so good it's so
good well I think this is where the real resilience conversation comes in my in my arena there
are some people friends of mine that put on you know resilience building exercises and
I'll do firefighter you know scenarios and I'll have you know music playing really loud
and strobes and all that stuff but and I think that they're there it's kind of like you know
overcoming stress but I think the real resilience conversation is the shit that bothers you
now when you work through it that becomes you know a positive scar that becomes a badge
of honor it becomes strength I think and so you know when you've gone through this for
example and now you get to story tell about how you got the other end that's a superpower
it really is and you really are a better version of yourself so giving getting people inspired
and excited to do the work because it's not and I'm so wet it's a lot I feel like some
of the conversations in the mental health space are like well I just live with my PTSD
you know I've got my dog and it becomes like an identity and you and you get stuck in that
point rather than yeah take your dog all the way through to when you're you know you don't
have to have the labels over anymore you're just out there enjoying being with your dog
but you you are a better version of yourself and I don't know if I can overstate that enough
if you can show someone that you 2.0 is waiting in the other side of the work that you've
got to do whatever that looks like that is going to drag people especially that are you
know mission driven people like first responders and military that's going to drive them through
but if it's just a message of well I live with then they'll be like well then what's
the point of living if I'm just going to be living waking up feeling the same fucking
way every morning but if you're now out there creating nonprofits and leading you know retreats
and doing all the things now all of a sudden that's exciting so I think that has to be
put forefront is that post-traumatic growth conversation
yes yes yes the only way is up the only way is up and something is better than nothing
like if you're just sitting there and eating it or you find yourself just to your point
just just being in that mental health conversation where you're like well this is how it's going
to be I'm going to be miserable for the rest of my life now that's a victim mindset get
off the couch and start moving and doing stuff and I say that because I know how hard it
can be getting off the couch and I've been there but you got to move you can't stop and
you have to do something even if it's one little step at a time like it's if you stop
moving that's where it gets real bad when I sorry when I say stop moving I don't mean
I mean more like when you stop trying when you don't make that conscious choice to get
better that's when it gets bad absolutely well obviously to take those first few steps
having people around you is a massive part so talk to me about what made you start Guardian
Revival and let's unpack the pillars of your organization yeah so once I got myself in
a really good place just knowing my father and his experience and knowing other first
responders and how challenging it is for them my uncles my cousins I wanted to do something
and animals music nature and peer support were so powerful and they work so well for
me and they have such a sturdy history of research both anecdotally and clinically of
their success as healing modalities that I was like I have to scale this and we have
to do something we have to build programs and services that can help other people and
that's really the birth of Guardian Revival the organization that I run today we give
people hope and help them heal through those elements and starting a nonprofit and running
a business is a whole thing in of itself it causes its own stresses but hey that's the
sacrifice you make right staying up at night and work in the late hours and not and worrying
about if money is going to come in and like you know at the end of the day I'm I'm sacrificing
because I know how much these things can help other people so that's the world I live in
now I grind Guardian Revival to try to scale these things so other people can benefit
one of the kind of forgotten groups of first responder or military is our families you
know I think this is a you know an important part of the conversation because we are doing
the thing but they're either holding down the fort while we're doing the thing or we
come back home still carrying the thing and they have to deal with us so talk to me about
the home front element yeah so our our newest program is called Guardian Home Front which
is for the families of our guardians and this was a long time coming and to your point our
families are the direct recipients of the trauma that we experience day in and day out
and they're never at the forefront right military families are always moving because they're
you know military family member is the one that's getting pushed all around the country
and they're kind of left to the wayside so it goes both ways too if you have a family
that's healthy and supportive like you know this with your wife if your wife's good you're
that much better you know like if she's in a bad place then it makes it harder for you
so like you have a sturdy family the unit the family unit is in harmony that Guardian
is going to be much better off so they complement each other so what about the music element
when you talked about that I mean I've been just finished writing my second book and I
want to make it into a TV show which again lofty goals but you know if tiger can't get
made anything can get made so but you know but the music is so important when I'm writing
these chapters I'm like this would be what was playing in the background this would be
for this scene and it does it emotes you know I mean it adds so much to a you know a scene
on film as well so talk to me about using music to help you know these first responders
and military heal because that's not an area that I usually hear when it comes to these
non-profits right so at Guardian we we have three different pillars of that program one
is jams so it's like a community-based music session once a week where veterans and first
responders get together and just play music we also do retreats so there's are like multi-day
fully immersive music experiences and then we do something called tracks which is like
the professional music experience where we take a guardian and get them trained up on
vocals and instrumentals and bring them into our studio and record them professionally
and put them on our label on Spotify Apple Music and Amazon Music so those are like the
three ways that we leverage music to help heal others and like if we really want to
help a population of 20 50 million guardians however much it adds up to with military and
first responders you need something that's like very scalable and accessible and has
a low barrier to entry anybody can pick up a pair of headphones everyone has a phone
and you can pick up a pair of headphones and listen to music and then maybe have a debrief
with somebody or talk about it or write about it right I mean we've played music walking
into battle right we've played music after battle to reconcile with the horrors of what
we saw like music has been around forever like there's in crazy without getting too
much into the spirit world there's this crazy like synchronous vibrations with like geometric
shapes that we have in our body and the way our brain works based on like different chords
of music and different vibrations and and there's just so much connected with music
in the human body and I think we've just started to explore that what about Hawaii I see that
you mentioned that on the site quite a bit too Hawaii yes so we we stood up a hub we're
experimenting with expanding around the country and Hawaii was a great place to start because
it's literally the most isolated place in the United States and about like 10% of the
population is military active duty or veterans so we stood up a hub out there and started
providing programs and services out there as well to kind of as a testing ground for
expansion over the next couple years beautiful well I want to get to where people can find
that but before we do want to throw some closing questions at you so the 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 conversation today or completely unrelated man search for meaning and atomic habits brilliant
I got man search for meaning sitting in front of me right now lots of good things about
atomic habits all right what about films and documentaries any of those that you love brave
heart last no heagans gladiator the patriot and interstellar just my favorite movies you
like movies about australians helping scotland and america yeah gilipoli right can't forget
about that one one of mel gipson's original ones yeah yes I like related to mental health
or just in general anything yeah I um I mean I just grew up on like those war movies like
brave heart was like like my hero um so yeah like I don't get inspiration from movies so
much as I would like uh movies are tricky right because they can inspire the hell out
of you and give you these crazy expect set these crazy expectations on who you should
be and who you want to be like are they really there to truly inspire they're there just
to like stimulate um emotion and invoke you know some passion and something so I think
I would look at like the average of all the movies I've ever watched and the themes and
it's really like the hero's journey right like just struggling with something being
resilient and coming out on top and you know setting setting into the sunset with the things
that value that you value the most which usually ends up with your family right at the end
of the day so all right well the next question 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 yes Aaron Leonard he is my uh he he is a retired army lieutenant colonel
served you know for 35 years um he is our executive director of another summit the outdoor
adventure program um a wealth of knowledge is like the expert in outdoor adventure therapy
for veterans and first responders and has a very unique way of looking at the world
and has been around the block for quite some time so I would probably recommend him he's
a pretty interesting guy beautiful well if you're able to help me there's probably I'd
love to get him on for sure and there's probably some more that I can I can drum up beautiful
well speaking of which um Joe McCullough we talked about earlier what about o2x this is
a quick tangent because you work for them for a little bit yeah yep and I still do occasional
uh side work with them my mostly do leadership can uh leadership like work with them so I
used to run their some of the workshops and uh I love o2x um they're just they're on a
mission to do some real good stuff and they're growing at a tremendous rate have an excellent
mission and their people are top-notch um so I still do some work with them on occasion
I went to two of the four days um with the an o2x I think it was Fort Lauderdale they
were doing it with and Adam was actually down there so we talked he's been on the show as
well and twice now um but yeah it was I was really impressed with what I saw I mean you
obviously get you know exposed to not only the strength conditioning side but also nutrition
and mental health and understanding sleep and all these other elements too so I think
of the things that are out there they're definitely doing a lot of these things right they are
a powerhouse and they're on their way to do tremendous good they already are but but they
have a really really incredible mission and good people absolutely all right well then
the last question before we make sure where everyone can find you and the non-profit what
do you do to decompress what do I do to decompress I would say I go on walks walking I walk I
move and I walk that's what I do above all else if I'm having a hard time I'll just go
walk and it usually solves everything not solves everything but gets me into a better
place to solve my problems going back to when we're talking about COVID this is the irony
is that you know when people needed it the most the parks the gyms the beaches were all
closed you know community was kept from people and these are the very answers I get over
and over again time outside time in my family time with my friends you know movement I mean
all the things that you know we were told not to do in 2020 so you know I guess they
say with a bad leader you know you learn what not to do I think it's the same thing if you
look at how that was handled do the polar opposite will fix the mental and physical
health crisis right right yep well said all right well then for people listening where
can they find Guardian Revival and then where can they find you online yeah so I don't have
I have a LinkedIn I don't have a like an Instagram but guardianrevival.org is our website and
Instagram our handle is at guardian revival so you'll be able to pull us up or you can
Google us it's pretty easy to find us on Google now and then keep in mind we have our one
mile challenge coming up which is starting in September which is suicide awareness and
prevention month so you'll see that placard all over our website as well so if you want
to get involved and join a really awesome 30 day challenge you should check it out so
what does that involve it's you walk one mile a day for 30 days and it's $50 to sign up
you get a participant completion kit at the end of the month with a shirt bracelet stickers
magnets things like that and the idea is that you're raising awareness on mental health
and suicide prevention and you're actually getting the opportunity to do something consistently
for 30 days to start your wellness journey or to refresh it for those that have been
on it for a long time beautiful well Alex I want to say thank you so much it's been
such an amazing conversation I mean we've been all over the place and from your father's
own service and then struggles and his sobriety to you know not only your service and sobriety
but also the you know the nonprofit that bloomed out of that so I want to thank you so so much
for being so generous with your time and coming on behind the shield podcast today thank you
so much I appreciate your time James