This episode is sponsored by Transcend, a veteran owned and operated performance optimization company that I introduced recently as a sponsor on this show.
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And if you want to hear more about Transcend and their story, listen to episode 808 with the founder Ernie Colling or go to TranscendCompany.com.
Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast. As always, my name is James Gearing and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome on the show veteran firefighter and the man behind the Phoenix Group of the Brotherhood, Jason Blasi.
Now in this conversation, we discuss a host of topics from his journey into the fire service, some notable career calls, his extremely powerful addiction story,
discovering that the missing piece of his healing journey was community 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 over 1000 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 Jason Blasi. Enjoy.
Well, Jason, I want to start by saying two things. Firstly, thank you to Gil Velasquez for connecting us in the first place.
And secondly, to welcome you onto the Behind the Shield podcast today.
Well, it's an honor to be here. And yeah, my brother Gil, I mean, he's been such a great addition to my life.
You know, it just there's no coincidence that I wind up switching firehouses last year and he is one of the members of Station 21 that I'm in now.
And we're both, you know, working in peer capacities on the department.
And we're able to really have a just a great connection.
Got to give him a shout out for sure. Thanks, Gil.
100 percent. Where is Station 21 in Miami-Dade?
Station 21 Miami-Dade Fire Rescue is in Hallover Park, which is right on the border of Bell Harbor and Sunny Isles.
OK, so it is nice, nice area. Very nice area. High rise, mainly high rise district.
There's there's big single family homes there. Huge waterfront, active inlet.
Just a great territory, beautiful territory, challenging, has a lot of different.
It's got a lot of complexity to it. You know, old construction, high rise, new construction, high rise.
Some of the latest, greatest and then some of the not so greatest that if if we did have something go down, it's going to be a real bad day.
Was Sunny Isles anywhere near Surfside? I don't know why those two.
Yeah, we're we're about two a mile and a half from Surfside.
OK, that's what I thought. All right. Well, we'll get to that incident when we get into the conversation.
OK, so I would love to start then 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?
OK, I was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and I am a twin.
I have a twin brother. I have an older sister.
She's six years older. I have two loving parents.
They they got married very young.
They had my sister at 19 and us at 25.
My dad was working multiple jobs to make it happen, and my mother was a was a housewife in my early childhood.
And we lived in New Jersey till I was seven.
My dad worked on the boardwalk in Atlantic City as a fine arts and jewelry auctioneer.
And they had a sister auction that, funny enough, was located in Sunny Isles, Florida.
And he would summer in Atlantic City, and then he would work the winter down in Sunny Isles.
And as he started to become a bigger player in that industry for that company, he moved us down.
He saw the future and moved us down to Florida when I was seven years old.
So that was in the in the middle, latter portion of the 70s.
Do you remember that move clearly? Were you old enough to actually recall that?
I don't remember the exact move. I remember living in the Golden Nugget Hotel.
And then I was running medical calls in the Golden Nugget Hotel, you know, 40 years later.
Really crazy. But I just remember I just remember a lot of love and a lot of good dinners and a lot of lights.
You know, that was a real happening spot, Sunny Isles back in the 70s, especially in the wintertime.
And then I remember us getting to a single family home in Hollywood and then moving to North Miami Beach.
You know, my dad, my dad was a was a hustler.
He he just kept growing in that industry of jewelry and fine arts and appraising fine arts and jewelry.
He had a he had a stint selling insurance.
I just know that he did whatever he needed to do to keep three kids clothed, homed, fed, housed, fed.
And I didn't know that it was such a struggle for my parents.
You know, we definitely I didn't feel it. You know, they kept us busy.
Like I said, there was a lot of love. We were brought into a, you know, a great community in North Miami Beach.
Growing up there in the late 70s was just awesome, really awesome.
And my dad got got my brother and I into the sportsman's lifestyle really early.
You know, one of my fondest memories is walking across the street to the lake.
And and starting my bass fishing career.
And, you know, that's since grown into offshore offshore saltwater fishing.
But my main my main passion is is shallow water kayak fishing on the in the Everglades.
I mean, that's I make a lot of time to do that now.
That's a huge part of of the life that lifestyle that I live now.
But, you know, he he coached all our baseball teams, football teams, basketball teams, boy scouts.
You know, he was he was an involved dad.
And my mother was a great homemaker and a really special lady.
But my mom was an alcoholic.
And there was a lot of love in our family, but there was also those
those mixed messages, you know, that we needed to appear something outside the doors of our home
and something different on the inside or not that someone was directing me to do that.
I felt I could feel that I could feel that.
And that definitely, you know, there's childhood trauma brought on by that,
by those experiences that, you know, I had growing up in fear of my mother at times.
You know, my mom didn't put her hands on you, but she didn't have to.
All she had to do was look at you and talk to you in a certain way.
And she could make you feel really small, very critical.
But in the same breath, I mean, she was an awesome lady and and gave us a great life.
You know, you love your mom. I love my mom and my dad dearly.
But, you know, I moved on to being a teenager, you know, in that in that athletic lifestyle.
School was important. You know, you had to get your grades.
But being on teams and everything was what I really looked forward to.
My dad turned me on to golf when I was about 11 years old
and I lived across the street from a golf course in North Miami Beach.
And I found myself, you know, wandering over the driving range there all the time.
And I became obsessed with golf.
I became obsessed with fishing and golf.
Those were like the two big sports in my life in my early childhood.
And, you know, I played golf every chance I could.
My dad, you know, he got us memberships at different clubs.
And it was wonderful. It was something we could do together.
My grandparents came down and retired here in the early 80s.
And we all had a relationship, my grandfather, my father, my brother and myself on the golf course.
And it was just awesome.
And just a side note, anybody that knows about golf courses, they have some of the best bass fishing, too.
So I got to do both things at the same time.
You'd have a rod sticking out the top of your clubs in.
At a certain point in my golfing career, I absolutely did.
Yeah, I had to have my own cart because I had rods and stuff in the way.
So what you mentioned about your mother, the book that I just wrote,
there's an element of multi-generational trauma in there.
And I think it was a very deliberate one because I wanted to show people
that there's a domino effect of pain and suffering, you know, and if they don't identify it,
you're not able to stop that domino. It just keeps falling and falling and falling.
Were you ever able to kind of understand the family that your mother grew up in that maybe led to her alcoholism?
Absolutely. My mother came from an alcoholic family and a rageaholic family.
And again, she was taught those messages of looking good on the outside.
But, you know, some of the stuff that was going on behind closed doors was not so sumptuous and beautiful, I'm sure.
I've only come to understand that in the last few years now.
And I haven't we haven't had conversations about it.
I've just when I start to piece together my childhood and I had a lot of interactions with my mother's parents and they were great people.
You know, they they they showed us a lot of culture and a lot of a lot of love and a lot of a lot of good times.
You know, I traveled back and forth to New Jersey a lot in my all throughout my early life into my 20s.
And I spent a lot of time with them until they passed.
But now I can make sense of it, you know, and I totally subscribe to what you're saying.
And one of the you know, about the multi-generational trauma and man, the shame, you know, the shame messages that were sent in my home that I don't believe it was with a malicious intent.
But I now that I've come to, you know, understand that very basic definition of shame that I'm wrong, you know, guilt, my behavior is wrong, shame.
I'm wrong. Like fundamentally, I'm wrong.
I think that as a, you know, as a young adult adolescent, getting those critical messages from from my mother who was struggling with her alcoholism,
I felt there was something that I needed to change about me in order to make my mom.
OK, so I internalized all of that.
And it was I'm wrong and I'm just now starting to heal, you know, really heal from that.
And those messages are they're so strong.
It's it's it's incredible.
So I yes, you know, when I hear you talk about multi-generational trauma, you know, just I could feel the temperature rise in my body.
I could feel my my anxiety ramp up as I looked out the window and saw my mother's car coming around the driveway.
And I thought, oh, my God, the dishwasher is not empty.
You know, there's dishes in the sink.
My room's not correct. Clean properly.
I'm going to hear it. You know, and and I became that hyper vigilant guy that like wanted to have everything.
Packaged up nice and neat where I wouldn't hear anything because I didn't have a voice that could respond.
To take the heat off of me or, you know, or to have any kind of any kind of meaningful dialogue,
you know, between a child and a parent about what's really going on here was just all, you know, you need to do this.
And when you do this, then things are going to be OK.
I don't know. I'm still trying to make sense of it, you know, today.
But those are my initial thoughts when I think about that.
And, you know, it almost brings me like it does like get me a little bit emotional because.
It doesn't have to be that way.
But it is. You know, and only by God's grace and mercy did I start to recognize my alcoholism,
hopefully at an age where I didn't traumatize my daughter too much.
You know, but I can at least now have the conversations.
And I do have a relationship with my mother today, but we don't get completely into it all.
You know, I've made my amends and she's made some basic amends with me.
But it's amazing when you don't have that connection, when you can't really have that voice as a child.
I'm only speaking from my own experience.
It definitely affects your relationship with your parent.
You know, I my wife is a wonderful lady and she has such an open relationship with her parents.
And they're super close.
And I see that I have more of a superficial relationship.
I'm craving a deeper one with my with my parents at times.
But the roots that we have set from that, those interactions as a kid and not everybody healing together, it's challenging.
But I'm grateful to at least have the awareness of what what was going on there, you know, that I'm I am not wrong.
There's not something wrong with me.
That message affected that message has been in my in my mind my whole life.
It's still there. I just I have a different way of of entertaining and listening to it.
I can I can challenge it with with different thoughts.
When I hear people talking about it, I mean, I've seen more obvious example when the parent or both parents have left, it's an adoption, it's a foster, whatever it is,
or left with aunties or grandparents.
But even in people, you know, in alcoholism, in opiates, the child is still left thinking, why am I not good enough for you to not pick up the bottle?
Why am I not good enough for you to not pick up the hypodermic?
And this is the same kind of thing that that sense of abandonment, I think, is in the addiction conversation, too.
That's the word. That's the word that I didn't use.
You know, if I don't have this right, if my room isn't clean enough, if I don't present properly, then you're going to leave me.
I guess that's the feeling. I never said that out of my mouth.
I don't even know if I really ran that sentence through my consciousness.
I think that's a subconscious reaction, you know, that I'm just now starting to understand as I hear you say that I can totally relate.
OK, that's what the real fear was, is like it's kind of like if you're in a tribe, you know, in the indigenous area,
if you're not pulling your weight, you know, you're going to be excommunicated.
You're not going to eat, you know, and you're going to die.
And I think that that's that's, you know, that's just the essence of a human being.
And as a kid, like thinking, and if I'm not if I'm not satisfying the expectations of my parent,
they're they're not going to they're not going to food, clothes and shelter me.
You know, I didn't again, you know, I'm just now starting to understand this stuff.
Incredible. But in spite of all that, still had an amazing upbringing.
I mean, South Florida in the late 70s and early 80s is just an incredible, safe, beautiful place to grow up.
You know, I became a waterman, you know, in my early and middle teenage years surfer.
I started to bring my fishing out into the saltwater.
You know, I became a lifeguard in my late teens and early 20s.
You know, I finished high school. I was on.
I lettered in golf in high school and I had a lot of, you know, a lot of, you know, surfer friends in high school, golfing friends, not many scholastic friends.
I was, you know, I got decent grades.
But, you know, I the conversations of what college were you going to go to and stuff that was not really on my radar.
I just did the obligatory taking of the standardized tests.
And, you know, I'm going to go to college because that's the thing you have to do. But I had no real.
Vision for myself beyond enjoying my life, you know, and my parents.
Now I start to understand more like, you know, my mom was deep into her alcoholism, you know, in my middle teens.
And she got sober just when I was graduating high school.
But now she's busy in her own recovery at that time.
So we just didn't have a lot of direction, you know, in that in that phase of our life.
But, you know, they gave us a great work ethic.
You know, you had to hold a job in your in your late teens in my home, which I'm I'm grateful for that.
And so I knew employment was important. I knew that I wanted to go on and get a little more education.
I tried to do it and play golf at the same time.
So I moved around. I tried to get into FSU and play golf there.
It didn't work out. I transferred down to Brevard.
Then I finished up at Miami Dade and I looked at, you know, my grade point average at that point in my I was about to finish my associates.
And it wasn't high enough for me to transfer anywhere.
It's pretty amazing that, you know, I wound up just turning it up a notch and I got straight A's the last two semesters and I was able to transfer into Barry University.
And that's when I, you know, I started my fitness career because I I had become a triathlete from being on the on the beach patrol.
I was a professional lifeguard for Dade County.
Funny enough, at all over when I was 19, 19 through 22 years old and I started to become a pretty competitive triathlete.
And I'm like, man, I love exercise. So I went and I got a degree in exercise physiology.
And, you know, I got straight A's all the way through.
I graduated cum laude and I went right into a master's program of physical therapy that after a year of being in it, it was.
It lost its credentials from the.
American Physical Therapy Association, and I was left with a choice.
Am I going to go to Nova Southeastern or to a California institution?
And I started talking about the financial aid possibilities and.
It looks so expensive, and this is where the relationship with my parents and stuff came in, where.
I didn't really feel safe, like bouncing everything off of them, and they were very busy in their lives.
And I just formulated my own opinion like this is too much money.
And maybe it was a proper instinct, I don't know, but.
You know, I look at it now and I just think I have a very fear based way of looking at things.
And it needed to be challenged and it would have been great if.
You know, I had some adults in my life that would have been able to help me, you know, but but they did.
And I held on in the beginning, that was like a resentment against my parents.
But now I understand, like, you know, it is what it is.
They just we just didn't have that relationship.
I didn't know what I didn't know, but I chose not to go on.
And I went into the I went into the fitness field, but, you know, prior to prior to going into university,
when I was in my last years of working on the beach patrol was when I was first introduced to marijuana and opiates.
You know, I had training partners in my triathlon training.
Group that were using pain pills all the time, and it was like a training enhancer for them and I and they turned me on to it.
And and I loved it immediately, you know, but I couldn't afford to to stay on them.
And, you know, it kind of just went by the wayside.
But my mind never forgot that feeling, you know, because they will definitely revisit my life later on.
You know, I'd always I'd always equate like bringing my my experience to the next level with adding opiates and marijuana and and then alcohol and cocaine into the equation,
you know, as my life would advance. And that's, you know, something that, you know,
just played itself out until I was forty seven years old and finally got clean and sober.
But, you know, that's where the seeds were really planted, you know, was in my in my late teens and early 20s.
You know, experiencing that.
So I went on to have a, you know, a budding career in fitness right at the time that spinning was coming out,
which was an indoor cycling group exercise program.
And I wound up hooking up with a guy in South Broward and he was a phenomenal instructor and he strapped a heart rate monitor on me.
And he brought all the theory that I had learned in the classroom in my undergraduate.
He brought it all to life. And I just was on fire and I was on fire for training.
And he brought out the real elite athlete in me.
And, you know, I had this triathlon background, but I would swim till I was tired.
I would run till I was tired. I would bike till I was tired.
I didn't understand, you know, different thresholds that come with anaerobic metabolism and aerobic metabolism and being able to manipulate that.
And this guy showed me those things and just opened my world up and and he showed me a great method of personal training people.
And he showed me how to command a room full of people. And it was great.
It was a great learning experience. But that community that I was in, especially my relationship with that gentleman, was covered in alcohol,
marijuana, opiates, cocaine. And it was a very boundaryless relationship.
You know, I can see now as I've really looked at my life through a, you know, a different awareness, you know,
in recovery of the real true, true realities of the relationships that I had with some people.
And, you know, this guy was giving me a lot of things, but he was asking a lot of me, too.
And I did not know how to say no. I was working 15 hour days, five days a week and making myself available all weekend if I had to.
And I had to, because if I didn't, I was going to hear about it.
I was in fear of scheduling maneuvers that would go on that would hit my pocket, you know,
and out of fear of, again, the abandonment, I guess, you know, those same issues.
Like if I really voiced my opinion and enforce my boundaries, then the job's going to end and I really love it.
And I just did things that, you know, I accepted things that weren't, you know, in my best interest.
You know, I made what does that remind you of? My profession does that remind you of my mother?
But also what profession does that remind you of? A group of people who's working to conditions that constantly got worse and worse,
but they're too afraid to stand up against it.
Sure. The culture that we're in right now, there's higher service.
The most courageous men and women, arguably in a community or some of them.
But that underlying fear creates the it will never happen here.
They'll never go for it. You know, yeah.
But that's what we did in my day. All these frickin what I call rhetoric of the coward.
All these bullshit excuses to standing up and saying enough is enough.
You know, I know Miami Davis is a well sought after department.
There are little areas that aren't struggling as much at the moment, but the recruitment crisis is crippling a lot of our men and women.
So it's funny that that same fear of losing a job air quotes, you know, as you said, aligns to your mother.
But it's literally what we see in the fire service. I can't.
Oh, well, as my story is here, as my story goes on, it continues.
You know, that that behavior continues that same feeling.
But so working with that that guy, we started to have a lot of firefighters.
Miami Dade firefighters were coming into our facility and I'm interacting with them
and I'm seeing their lifestyle that they're leading and they're telling me, man, you would be perfect,
you know, for this, you really should consider, you know, coming onto the job.
And, you know, I.
Molded over in my mind and.
As God would have it, you know, that's the way I see it.
I don't believe there's any coincidences.
I caught a really bad injury in a mountain bike race and I had to use my insurance from my job.
And I found it extremely insufficient for what my medical needs were.
And I just started looking at, you know, the lifestyle I was leading and the lifestyle these people were leading.
And I just started to draw the conclusions like, yeah, you know, I.
I could definitely see myself, you know, as as a fireman and everything that that job brings to it.
That I was understanding through them, you know, the time.
You know, the 24 hour shift schedule, because I was going to the station and hanging out with them and,
you know, and I was hanging out with them off duty and I was watching the station life and.
You know, I was like, I could totally see myself in that role, you know, and I love helping people.
You know, that's when I look at it, I was already a lifeguard.
I became, you know, a fitness professional.
My whole everything about me was about helping people and enhancing their life.
I'm like, this is just the natural progression for me to go to the next level.
And when I caught this injury and I started to see like, man, I can't train anybody.
I'm making no money. My insurance sucks.
You know, my relationship with my boss is totally unhealthy.
Yeah, there's there's no coincidence that this is happening.
So, you know, I signed up and, you know, in my first try, I was picked up.
What year was this? This was 1998.
So talk to me about the level of competition, because I think it's important to contrast with how it is at the moment.
What were the numbers that you were competing against for?
I heard I was competing with up to 10,000 other applicants at that time.
I didn't see that because I just showed up at the armory at Miami Dade College and I filled out my application.
You know, and and and and I was so like I knew it was a big deal, but.
I really see that more in the rearview mirror, but I remember driving to it to it that day,
and it was just another appointment that I was keeping for that day.
You know, I really I couldn't see how the hand of God was all over me walking me into that armory and and filling out that application.
You know, and he had such great things in mind for me that I couldn't see for myself.
And, you know, the next thing I know, it's like six months later, I get a phone call and I'm at the gym of all places.
And hey, it's so and so from Miami Dade Fire Rescue.
Are you interested in the job? And I was like.
As I went around the corner, I was like, yes, I'm absolutely interested in, you know,
and the next thing you know, I was, you know, at the Mahi Shrine.
Auditorium taking a. Taking a civil service exam, you know, and a couple of months later, I get a call.
Hey, would you go? You know, you got to start getting ready for a physical ability test.
And then I started going to the stations and having personnel there that were that I was friendly with.
They were taking me through what?
What the physical ability test was, you know, and I practiced my ass off and I went and smoked that thing.
And then the next thing I went to an oral interview and I remember sitting there in Carol City High School looking around.
You know, I sat on the bleachers and I looked around and I was like, man, I am definitely a candidate for this job.
You know, like I. This this is going to happen.
I could feel it in my bones, you know, and I went in there and I felt like I did well on the interview.
And and then they compiled all that and I had to go down to headquarters.
And the next thing you know, I was I was asked, you know, do you want to start recruit school on such and such a date?
You know, March 6th, 1999. And, you know, here I am 25 years later.
You know, March 6th of 2025, you know, will be 25 years.
And it's been one hell of a career, you know, but it started.
You know, it just started with that intuition of, you know, like, yeah, this is this is the next thing for me.
You know, how did your fitness factor into your success in the academy and ultimately orientation?
Yeah, that's so funny that you ask me that.
I loved P.T. I loved it.
I absolutely loved it. And we had to qualify every Friday with a mile and a half.
And you had to do it in 12 minutes or less.
And I loved running that thing and I love lapping people.
You know, and.
But I also found out, you know, you started to see the contradictions immediately of,
you know, what they say the qualifications are and what the real truth is.
You know, there were not not everybody was held to that 12 minute standard.
You know, there were a certain amount of demerits that if you got your can, you know.
And we were told that you had to perform at a certain way physically or you were canned.
And, you know, that. That didn't happen, you know, but that I really love P.T.
I loved I loved that part and it it made my ability to go through those grueling days,
all those drill days, just the, you know, the mental toughness that I had from training
in those high anaerobic threshold levels for hours, you know,
you know, the elite races that we used to do mountain biking and, you know,
when the adventure racing series first came out with high tech, you know,
before all this Spartan phenomenon, everything, you know, doing four hour races,
it it it made the Academy life a lot more tolerable.
We're staying on that for a second, then.
What is your philosophy on the absence of mandatory fitness testing every year?
And the reason why I'm asking you and this is so important is I was a lifeguard to open
water, never beach, so so pools and, you know, water parks and then lakes.
But every year, every couple of years, like if you didn't pass your lifeguarding
certs, then you're not a lifeguard anymore.
So you are held to that job specific fitness standard.
When I entered the fire service, I've worked for four different departments.
None of them had a fitness standard, not anything that was punitive.
So now I'm not saying that this should be implemented in anyone who can't hit it
immediately as fired. You would obviously would have to have an on ramp to get people
back to where they should be.
But for me, the fact that one of the very few careers that exist where lives are
truly in your hands, that we have fought fitness standards, unions are for it,
administrations are for it.
James Gearing thinks that's absolutely fucking disgusting personally.
But with you having the background that you have, what is your kind of observation,
having entered at such a high and ready state, the lack of bar when you enter
the profession?
That's an interesting question.
I could see the union's point of view, you know, to protect its members.
But just to jump in there, do you think it actually presents protecting its
members, though, because ultimately you're encouraging ill health and
therefore protecting the members employment?
Yeah. But if that's held as a standard from day one, then that doesn't even come
to the conversation.
You see what I'm saying? All right. So we're falling short.
When you when you state it that way, when I just look at the course of a career,
it only going to enhance your life and your capability of being, you know,
the best fireman that you can be, you know, if we had it, I think everybody
would conform to it.
But because we don't have it, we open up we open up ourselves to a whole range of
fitness capabilities that, you know, I think that my department throws so many
units at a at a working fire that we're not exposed for some of the deficiencies
that we may have in that realm.
You know, truth be told, but, you know, it's incumbent.
It's got to come from from the individual.
You know, you are you would think it would come from the individual.
I get I get what you're saying.
You know, I think it's a definitely something to be explored.
But like everything else, we're not going to we're not going to change until
something really bad happens and we would dig into it enough to attribute it to,
you know, the fitness of the responding personnel was so substandard that,
you know, this catastrophic event happened.
And I just don't see that happening.
Well, I mean, the tens and tens and tens of heart attacks that we have every year,
the cardiovascular deaths that we have in the fire service, that would be one place
to look and the strokes seem to be getting worse and worse and worse.
There's two stats right there.
Yeah, I mean, I it it comes natural to me to be able to draw the parallels
between having a fitness level that enables me to do my job.
You know, to the standards that I need to perform it, but it also enhances
my whole life and keeps me, you know, in less of a risk of cardiovascular events,
cerebral vascular events, you know, all of that.
And what I've come to understand how it helps my psyche and my my spirit.
I mean, there's just so many added benefits.
And we've tried fitness initiatives on the job.
But as we'll get into our conversations about
handling mental health issues with our personnel, it's the same thing about fitness.
They don't want to be told by another individual how they should train,
when they should train, how they should eat.
You know, it's it's met with a lot of opposition.
And then when you bring the union stance into it, that they're protecting the,
you know, the livelihoods of the members.
You know, where where where we're at, we're stalled.
What we what standards were you held as as an ocean lifeguard?
What were you expected to do as far as you had to do?
It was 300 yards to the beat to the water line, 500 in the water,
300 back out to the finish line.
And I think you had to do that in less than 10 minutes.
And that was every every how many years?
No, you had to do that every six months.
There we go. And then if the person who was your officer
as a lifeguard told you we're training today, was there grumbling?
Or did you just grab your shit in the water?
There was there was, but but guys didn't
you know, guys didn't want to lose their job.
But again, I don't know if it's
I'm sure it's not unique to just Dade County,
but there were there were members of my beach patrol
that couldn't meet the standard either, and they were given a pass.
Yeah, I know.
I mean, there's a lot of places, a lot of beaches that doesn't happen.
You know, like Southern California, Hawaii, even New Jersey, funny enough.
There's a lot of beaches there and the standards are hell high.
And I think this is just a good conversation.
But two lifeguards are also firefighters is, you know,
when I found myself in the middle, it was all they're trying to take our jobs.
And you're just like, what the fuck?
And especially with the exercise physiology background, which I have to.
You're like, what are you talking about?
This is only going to make you a better firefighter.
It's going to improve your physical health.
It's going to improve your mental health.
It's going to improve your libido newsflash.
And it's going to improve your longevity at the end of the career.
So to sit in a union position and go, thank you for mentioning that.
Yeah, but it's true.
You know, I mean, look at how many people that's something that's on my radar.
Sorry to speak over you.
That's something that's on my radar now that I'm there.
You know, for me, my attitude.
I mean, I had a crazy attitude for years on the job, but my attitude
now is, you know, I want to get out of this thing healthy and whole.
You know, and and, you know, eating right, exercising,
staying hydrated, sleeping properly, you know, trying to control
some of the less controllable aspects, you know, with the sleep and whatnot.
Because I want to live.
You know, it's crazy to think not so many years ago,
I had an attitude of, well, it's not if I get cancer on this job,
it's when and what type and, you know, I'll deal with it when it comes.
And while I have a cigar hanging out of my mouth,
it's also a self-fulfilling prophecy.
And you believe that whole thing all of a sudden, you know, especially
then you're not fighting it because you believe and I thought at that time,
like I thought at that time, you know, I had the bravado of, man,
if I was looking down the bottom of my head, I would be like,
if I'm looking down the barrel of a cancer diagnosis, you know, I'll deal with it.
And.
Bullshit, man, I don't want that to happen.
You know, I want to live, I want to see my daughter get married.
I want to enjoy my retirement.
So, you know, awareness is the beginning.
I was a fool.
Some of the things that I said and did, but.
So, you know, to keep going with the timelines, I get on the job,
I get out into the field.
I did use opiates through my recruit experience.
You know, I was was a budding drug addict and alcoholic at that time.
I was 29 years old, but I was super high functioning physically and, you know,
and I loved what I was learning and I couldn't wait to get out into the field
and put it into action.
So I got out into the field in 2000 and.
We immediately had 9-11.
You know, and I went right back to my, I went right back to my job
in the fitness industry and I was working shift.
So I'll be on duty.
And then right when I got off duty, I went and I opened up the gym and I,
and I was working in the fitness industry.
And I'll never forget 9-11, you know, and I was working in the gym.
I'll never forget 9-11, you know, I was teaching a class we had just finished.
You know, it was a little bit after nine o'clock or something.
And somebody's like, you have to turn the TV on.
You're not going to believe it, you know.
And I turned the TV on and I couldn't believe it.
And I'll tell you, when I saw that gaping hole, you know, in the towers,
it immediately flashed in my mind what we were taught in rookie school
that, you know, at a thousand degrees, you know, steel members are going to,
are going to disfigure.
And I'm like, these things, I looked at the size of the hole and I go,
these things are, I go, I told my, my wife, I go, this, there's going to be a collapse.
You know, and sure enough, it did.
And, you know, that was very traumatic to watch that.
You know, that was super traumatic to watch that and think about all the guys
that died that day.
And, you know, and I, I just, you know, went on and moved into the career
and it drove me to try to become even better at the job, you know,
to understand it more and to do it right.
And, you know, I'll talk openly and honestly about the fact that, you know,
I believe I have a feeling inside me that, that there is a God, you know,
and, you know, he's worked such miracles in my life.
And in my early career, he put somebody in my, you know, in my path
that steered me to a certain battalion, you know, and it changed my whole career,
you know.
And I know that, that day and the way it went down was absolutely not
by any coincidence or mistake or good luck or anything.
It was, it was the hand of God knowing that inside I wanted to be working
with the best, you know.
And this relationship that I had with this guy, that was very just business-like,
but he saw something in me enough to, he cared enough to tell me, hey,
this is where you need to be.
And he pulled the strings to get me into the fifth battalion in Dade County
fire rescue.
And, and that's when my career really started, you know.
Which, which area is that in Dade County?
What is that, sir?
That is, that's West Little River, Liberty City, Opelaka.
I was at Hialeah.
Hialeah was my first town.
Right about you, Hialeah.
Yeah, yeah.
But I think you guys, I think it was Miami-Dade, not in my city of Miami.
You had a, like a, I don't even know if it was a square mile annex right in the
middle of Hialeah.
So you'd have to drive through like two of our first Jews to get there.
And I think vice versa, there was somewhere that we had that was kind of in your...
We definitely, you know, our territories overlapped.
We overlapped with the city of Miami.
But so I get into that battalion and those guys are, you know, really
passionate and I was just so fortunate to have time there, you know, and they
trained me up and I had a guy take me under his wing and show me how to, how to
handle the apparatus, you know, and there's just so many guys there were so
influential in my career, you know, just wonderful, hardworking, you know, love
the job, living it in and out every day.
And, you know, station two is where, where I wound up working for quite a while.
And they had, you know, we had 11 personnel in that station and it was just
awesome.
It was just awesome.
And, you know, I became an engineer out of that station and, you know, really
just the rubber met the road for that career.
It's like everything you learn in theory, you're actually doing, you know, you
were doing all the different hose stretches, you're, you're employing it on,
you know, real life structure fires, you know, all the stuff that you talk about
in your EMS classes about trauma and whatnot, you're encountering it, you know,
with shooting victims and, you know, stabbing victims and just, but in the
same breath, you're seeing just the absolute, you know, worst of the worst too,
you know, and you're in a very, you know, challenged area of, of the county, you
know, just it's, you know, the cultural norms there of violence and poverty and,
you know, there was just, it was very, at the time it was exciting, but now I look
at, you know, what it does to you.
It takes a toll on you when you're seeing that continuously.
You know, my outlook on life was not positive.
Was Liberty City bad when you were there?
I know when I, by the time I got to Hialeah, so you're talking, you know,
04, 05, that there was that, if I'm not mistaken, it was like Haitian gangs and
some of those, cause Hialeah, I don't remember seeing a lot of violent crime
in Hialeah.
I got there in 03 and yeah, there was, there was all different kinds of
gangs there, but I mean, you know, that was the, you know, you're, you're really
starting to see the AK getting used.
You know, you're responding to battleground injuries, you know, on, on
human beings, you know, hanging out in front of a liquor store, you know, I had
never seen anything like that before.
I'd seen a few traumas in my first three years on the job, but you know, starting
to see those kinds of war wounds on people.
That was, that was incredible.
You know, I remember walking into a bar called the new frontier on 22nd
Avenue, the gunpowder was still floating in the air from the shootout that they
just had there and there were people all over the place wounded, you know, and,
um, you know, and it was just like the quick packaging of patients and triaging
them and getting them off to the, to the trauma center, you know, and then just the
screams and that, you know, the, the terror on the people, you know, and to
you, you, you finished that up and you're going right back to the, you know, to the
dining, to the dining room table.
And, um, you know, we never, uh, it, I didn't think it was really taking any
kind of a toll on me while I was going through it, you know, again, I see this
stuff in the rear view mirror and I see where, you know, as my career progressed
and my, my addiction and alcoholism progress, you know, I see that I was
using the substances and the behaviors as a coping mechanism for, you know, a
lot of the unprocessed, uh, traumas and things that I was enduring on the job,
just the lifestyle, you know, of continuous performance, you know, running
20 calls a day, it takes a toll on you, getting no sleep after midnight
takes a toll on you, leaving from there in that heightened state.
And then going right to my next career, you know, at the fitness center
and performing more and feeling, you know, in, in that, uh, in that high
performance state continuously, I loved it, but now I can appreciate the
fact of what it, what it does to you, you know, and that, uh, you know, the
strategies that I was employing with, you know, working hard and then playing
harder that, uh, that wasn't the healthiest option, you know,
it was interesting.
I had, um, I've had many strength and conditioning coaches on the show, but
one of them was talking about how exhausting it was to be a coach.
And it wasn't like, poor me.
It was just like, it takes a lot because you are there, you know, laser
focus on this and I only coach once in a while, um, never been like a full-time
PT or anything, but, um, it does like you, you're, everyone is looking at you.
If it's a group class or obviously if it's one-on-one and so you have to be on,
you have to be energizer bunny for them.
You have to be focused on their form and everything.
So I can see how coming off a 24 in a place like Hialeah or Liberty city,
where I, I mean, again, I know exactly what you're talking about.
Their call load there was horrendous and they were paid about half what you
guys were paid, the poor guys in Hialeah.
That makes it even tougher because you can rationalize a lot out with the money.
Yeah, exactly.
Then they didn't and they didn't have, you know, state insurance or it's going
to be state pension or any of that stuff, but then to go and do a high, um, energy
job, you've had no way of down regulating.
You know, I can see how by the end of that, you must've just been shot.
You know, I was so fortunate to be working at some of the best facilities.
I mean, with, with great, great personnel, you know, um, in my, in my fitness career.
And at the end of my fitness career, I was working at Canyon ranch, which
you can't get any finer than that.
And, and, and the qualifications to be there, the standards were extremely high.
So, and the expectations were really high.
So, you know, you had to always be on and I loved being on it came natural to me.
Till I started to think I had to manipulate that too, you know, and take
it to a different level, or I didn't know how to, I couldn't come down from it.
You know, and I wanted to come down from it.
You know, I needed that, that relief valve, you know, and then, and that's
where the, you know, the negative coping strategies with the, with the, with
the alcohol and the, and the drugs, you know, really started to, to take a,
take a toll on me, but, um, yeah, just that, that high performance lifestyle.
I was all about it.
You know, I loved it.
I'm so grateful for my time in battalion five and at station two, because I'm a
functional member of the fire service because of it, you know, and I'm
a functional member of the fire service, you know, and the things that I've
learned there and the imprint that those guys made in my mind is, you know,
it's still there.
It's great, you know, but, um, so I'm living this lifestyle of, you know,
high performance on the job and in my second career, it was just go, go, go,
go, go, go, go.
But I really wanted to have my own time to enjoy as well.
And I found that getting high and, uh, was, was the way that I could do it.
You know, and I just like to mix in drugs and alcohol and every, in
everything that I was doing.
And, um, wow, I can't really like, think of like a specific moment, right?
As I'm speaking, you know, it was just, it's everything that they say, um, in
12 step recovery about the progression of, of the disease process, you know,
it starts out as fun, it's fun with consequences and then it's just
consequences, you know, and I really, I live that out, you know, it was fun.
It was an additive, you know, you go to retirement parties, you go to
people's birthdays and everybody's drinking.
Well, I like to bring a little bit of cocaine and some, and have a few pop,
a few pills before I go to, you know, it was the pre party before the party.
You know, that I would do, um, you know, and I do, you know, if I'm going out to
dinner, you know, I'm going to drink the finest bourbon, you know, or I'm going to
match the right wine with, with the steak or the fish that we're eating and enhance
the experience, you know, all sexual activity would be needed to be taken to
the next level.
You know, everything was extreme.
Like just the, just to have things peaceful and normal, quote unquote,
which is what I crave today was like, that's for wimps, man, you know?
So I didn't see that this thing was, was, was getting, was getting me, you know,
you know, until it was, I really started facing some serious consequences, you know?
Um, you know, at this time I'm married.
I have a child, you know, we're talking, we're in the, we're in the middle,
middle, late two thousands, you know, um, my daughter was born in 2007 and I'm
married to a wonderful lady.
I'm still married to her today.
Thank God.
And, uh, you know, I was, I was facing consequences in my relationship with my
wife, you know, because of my drinking, I would, I'd overshoot the mark and I
would just, you know, become, you know, inappropriate or, you know, I'd be
driving drunk, um, you know, I wasn't, I just wasn't the most attentive father.
I wasn't the most attentive husband.
I was extremely selfish and self-centered, you know?
And I couldn't see that because I just thought I was so hardworking, you know?
And I thought that really gave me a pass, uh, for, for a lot of my behavior.
And, you know, I, I really subscribed also to, well, if you saw and experienced
what I just saw and experienced, if you worked the workday that I did, you would
have to do what I have to do too, you know?
And I really, man, I played that card as often and I really believed it.
I don't even say it's a card.
It was a lie.
It was part of the persona.
It was part of the lifestyle at that time.
I was just delusional.
I, I, you know, I really believed that I was entitled to do whatever I wanted
because I was a fireman and, and a hardworking fitness professional, you know?
And that if somebody else had to pick up my slack along the way, then that's
just what they had to do, you know?
And I'm talking about the parenting at home and it was, it was spilling
over into my work life too.
One of my, uh, friends who again battled alcoholism has a, an amazing recovery
story now leads a kind of recovery fitness group here in central Florida.
But one thing that was interesting when we kind of unpacked his story is he,
he had sexual abuse as a child, started drinking very young, like still as a,
you know, I think it was either side of teens basically.
Um, and then drank all the way through, got into the military, ended up going
through green beret selection.
Um, I believe he was successful, but then the moment the testing period stopped,
he, you know, and he was off, the eyeballs went watching him again.
He was back drinking and then he ended up getting discharged and then was, um,
you know, all over the place for a while, found the fire service.
And for about 10 years, he maintained his sobriety, but around the 10 year
mark is when it started slipping again.
And what was interesting is a lot of people that have had stuff in their past.
We know that we're attracted to this profession.
I think arguably there's a lot of kindness and compassion of that.
You don't want other people to experience what you did, you know, the suffering,
you want to be the healer, you want to be there to be there to help on their worst
day, but there's another element of it where it's busy-ness and it's excitement.
So if you're at work, you're not thinking about the thing you take an overtime
shift, you're still not thinking about the thing.
And, but the newness of the job starts to wear off.
And then if you had this for me, it was about 10 years where, unless the whole
damn house is on fire, I wouldn't call it a fire, you know, if it was a room and
content, so that's not a real fire, is it?
Whereas when you're a rookie, it could be a, you know, a flip-flop on fire and you
you'll be telling everyone, you know, that you just slayed the dragon, you
know what I mean?
So when that newness wears off, I think is when some of these demons start poking
their head out again.
Was there any element of that for you?
Oh goodness.
I'm so, so glad you mentioned it.
You know, we call it the shine starts to wear off the apple, you know, I'm like
that spoiled kid who gets the bike that he always wanted, but it's the wrong color.
You know, um, I'm almost like embarrassed to say it.
I mean, that's how I lived my life.
You know, once I got the combination and I knew what was expected of me, I was
always looking to be able to stretch the limits of what I could get away with.
Um, or not, not get away with, but how I could do it my way, you know, as long as
I was meeting those benchmarks, then I would do what I wanted to do, you know?
Um, and that really doesn't, you know, people that are started, that are living
with you every third day for 24 hours at a time, and they start to recognize
that quality about you, you know, that you're not as into the job as they are.
That you don't appreciate it as much as they do.
You say it out your mouth, but your actions are not living up to that.
You know, that, uh, that inconsistency, you know, it, it challenges the
relationship with your coworkers, you know?
And I had, there's one guy in particular that, you know, I, I just respected
him so much and wanted his, I wanted his approval so much, you know, and, and
he called me out on it and, uh, that was one of the toughest days of my life, you
know, and then I would double up my efforts to try to make it, to make it
better, but little did I know I already had that label on me, you know, and I
was just working extra to try to, you know, reestablish myself back to a place
of, um, you know, being another, you know, a good standing member in the house.
You know, and so, you know, I got into station two in 2003 and then by 2005,
uh, my addiction was, was so bad that one of the, one of the officers
there was, was totally onto me.
You know, and, um, you know, he, he was, he was trying to get me, you know,
with the paperwork, you know, for a reasonable suspicion.
And, uh, you know, I just happened to, because I already had a couple years of,
of, you know, being a good member in the house and, uh, you know, a lot of
guys that loved me, you know, we had great relationships.
They were telling me, listen, so-and-so is, you know, he, he's got it out for
you, you better watch your ass, you know?
So I would be very careful, but in the same breath, you know, I was
doing what I wanted to do, you know, when, when, when those withdrawals
would come in or whatever, I had to, I had to take care of the lifestyle, you
know, that my addiction had put me in, you know, so I, I just couldn't completely
stop and, um, you know, at that time I was such a bad opioid addict, I was
already in a methadone program, you know, my first time in 2005.
So, you know, I'm strung out on methadone.
I'm coming to work at a firehouse running 20 calls a day, you know, and
then I'm leaving and I'm going and working in a fitness facility.
I'm teaching, you know, three spinning classes and training five people a day.
You know, all of this while doing, you know, uh, you know, tons of opiates
and drinking alcohol and, you know, and then I'm trying to be on a methadone
program to quit.
I mean, it was just such a shit show and this guy could see it, you know?
So one night they intervened on me at the station and I went away to my
first treatment in 2005, you know, and I would draw from methadone for the
first time in my life.
And, and that, you know, was life changing.
I thought I was going to die.
I had never felt that way before.
You know, um, uh, I was 30, what I think I was like 35, 36 years old, you know?
And I felt like a decrepit old man, you know, when I was coming off of that.
And, uh, I swore I'd never go back on it.
And, you know, I come out of treatment with a firm resolve to, you know, my,
I hadn't had a child yet, but I remember telling my therapist in treatment, my
daughter, my child that I'm going to have will never see his dad, you know, drunk or high.
You know, and I'm going to fix my relationships all, you know, we're
learning about the 12 steps and everything in the beginning, in the beginning of
treatment, but I hadn't even taken step one, you know, but I was already going to
fix all my relationships when I got out of treatment and, um, sure enough, I,
you know, I'm good for like a year and a half and then I, I started all over and
take it to the next level of low.
When you look back, what was it that caused you to stumble again?
I hadn't really conceded to my innermost self that I was an addict.
You know, I could not accept the fact that I couldn't overcome this.
You know, I couldn't accept the fact that I didn't know that I didn't have the coping
strategies that I needed.
So of course I jumped right back into the same lifestyle that I had before.
And I'm trying to do it now.
I'm trying to run all the calls, go and work my fitness job off duty
without drinking and drugging.
And I'm half-assing my 12 step work.
You know, that is what introduces you to this recovery lifestyle.
That's one of the ways that it could happen.
I'm not doing that earnestly.
So I'm just, I'm not participating in what someone who is really an addict has to do
in order to live happily and usefully whole as a fireman and a fitness
professional.
So I just, I was just going around in a circle bound to repeat the same thing
again with, but the bottom is going to be even worse this next time.
I didn't even know it, but they were telling me, you know, so it was just, you
know, it went on for years.
I would do well for a couple of years and I'd have some incidents where, you
know, I'm not doing well.
It becomes abundant to my coworkers.
And they start to tell me again, so then I would put myself into treatment again.
You know, and then I come out again with a firm resolve to, you know, get it, get
it all together.
And I do it for even more for another stretch of years.
And then, but really not do the work.
Yeah.
I do a little bit of therapy with a therapist and talk about my family of
origin, but I do it for a couple of years.
I do it for my family of origin, but not to deprecate anything that a therapist
and you know, that the therapist that I worked with tried to do for me.
But the truth is no one ever did what the fourth step in a 12 step program did for
me, which was make me look at what my part and where my life was and how I got there.
And I'm all trying to unpack my childhood and make sense of it.
And I have to tell you that understanding what I understand about my upbringing
does not make everything go away.
You know, they were not teaching me, those therapists were not teaching me the
resiliency lifestyle that I'm leave that I'm living today.
I could not begin that resiliency lifestyle until I first started to
understand that I was an addict and alcoholic and I'm working as a first
responder, experiencing a traumatic lifestyle, living in this heightened
state of awareness and performance continuously and overstimulated.
And I don't know how to come down from that.
And I don't know how to live normally without manipulating those feelings.
I can't live through them and process them.
I just want them to go away.
You know, and I want the results instantly.
And I stayed in that, in that trap, that delusion, that space for, for quite a
long time until the universe aligned and put me in a place where, you know, you
were talking about not, not appreciating the career, you know, I think you were
speaking about that before, you know, I really thought it was my right to drink
beer and go to work, you know, because I had to, you know,
you know, what about the family side?
You talked about, you know, slowly, uh, you know, events slowly happening where
you weren't being the best husband.
You weren't being the best father.
Right.
So that's all happening everywhere.
So what were you seeing through your, through your children?
I wasn't appreciating, I wasn't appreciating my marriage.
I didn't, I didn't appreciate my responsibilities as a father.
Um, you know, everything was about me in the way that I felt, you know, and I was
constantly feeling, you know, just unsettled and uneasy, you know, they talk
about a restless, irritable and discontented spirit, you know, in the
first step of, of, of recovery.
That's exactly what I had, you know, like I had the greatest job in the best
station in Miami-Dade County, but something wasn't right.
You know, I had a beautiful wife and a gorgeous little baby girl and
something just wasn't right.
I can't really put my finger on it.
You know, um, I have a great side career.
I'm working in the, in the premier fitness facility in the country and
something just isn't right.
Well, the something that wasn't right was my spirit and I did not know how to,
how to get at that and work on it.
So I had to keep experiencing the consequences of my behavior, you know,
and there's a component that I subscribe to in addiction of there's that restless,
irritable, discontented spirit, and there's that self-centered, self-centered
nature, whether that came from my hyper-vigilant upbringing and traumatic
upbringing that made me think about myself, you know, as to what the
consequences were going to be, you know, in my family, if I didn't, you know, like
I told you, if I didn't have my room clean enough, you know, I'm going to hear
it from mom, did that get me so obsessed with myself or is it really just organic?
It's, you know, this is what separates me from other people, you know, that what
makes me an addict and an alcoholic.
To me, it doesn't matter.
I realize what it is now, but I had no idea that that feeling that everything
really is as good as it could be, but something's just missing, you know, and
I'm filling that hole with drugs and alcohol and it's making my outside
world even more complicated and chaotic and traumatic and it's just, I'm caught
in that, you know, in that circle and it was just, it was God awful and, you
know, the thing is my wife wasn't having it at home.
I couldn't drink at home anymore and so I would be, I lived the complete
opposite lifestyle of what a fireman does, you know, I would be drinking
and using drugs on duty and I would be sober at home and I was absolutely
miserable.
When you're talking about the chasing, you know, the achieving all these things
and still feeling like it's not enough, that to me again, and it's funny because
we would talk about early life.
I like the phrase, reasons, not excuses.
You have to be able to see how you became who you are.
It doesn't mean that you become a victim of that.
It just, you have to see it before you can process it.
And I see this a lot, you know, it's SEALS, SAS, Delta, you know, firefighters,
SWAT officers.
That we get to this high, high level, but for some of us, we're chasing being
enough and it probably is rooted in when we were kids.
But a thing, a career, you know, a car, a mansion, a bank account, you know, the
prettiest girl on your arm, that doesn't, that's not enough.
Like being enough is feeling the love of a parent, feeling the love of a partner
or a child.
So I think that's another thing is that you see this a lot, even with, you know,
the very, very wealthy. I've had, I've heard trainers say that, you know, they,
they know some of the wealthiest people on the planet and they're among some of
the most unhappy people on the planet.
Yeah, I'm so grateful you mentioned that, you know, the worthiness piece.
You know, that, that's okay.
I, I, I describe it as a restless, irritable and discontented spirit, but yeah,
it's, I'm not enough.
I'm not good enough.
You know, I'm a fraud.
People are going to figure it out.
You know, and then they're going to abandon me or I'm going to be shamed.
So I'm living in fear continuously.
And when I'm in that state, I need relief.
I don't know how to process this with the therapist that I'm spending a lot of
money to sit on a comfortable chair and talk it out with.
So I'm running these substances through my body to try to lessen the feelings.
You know, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm
not leaving my rock
and straight reason, I did it.
I became the
mark again at work and it was absolutely noticeable to my co-workers and the jig was up.
You know, they had seen me go away to treatment, come back, behave, start, you know, living that
lifestyle that, you know, wasn't working again, using and drinking, you know, performance not
being the same, abusing leave time, you know, just not being the co-worker that I could be,
and it was happening again and, you know, they just intervened right there and I was in so much
trouble so fast that there was nothing, there was nothing I could do. You know, there was no way I
was going to manipulate my way out of that situation. You know, this one went on paper
and, you know, little did I know that was the worst day of my life up to that point,
that that would be the greatest thing, the best thing that ever happened to me,
you know, because that finally forced me into my last treatment center where, you know, they really
impressed upon you that you must partake in the 12 steps if you, you know, if you use alcohol and
alcohol and drugs the way that I do, or you're doomed to do it again, you know, and that's what
got me on this journey of self-awareness and resiliency and, you know, and that's what my
life is about today. Before we jump into the journey out of that, because obviously there's a
lot of a lot we're going to discuss there, but you just kind of spurred something on my mind.
My first book that I wrote, One More Light, I talked about an analogy that popped into my mind
and it was hearing someone on a podcast, but they just kind of mentioned the bucket, I feel like the
bucket being full or something, but so often in the mental health conversation in the first
responders, you hear your backpacks, you know, overflowing, the cup is overflowing, and so I was
applying that to addiction. I'm like that doesn't fit, that analogy doesn't fit for addiction.
So if you flip it around and imagine that you have a bucket and the body, you know, the mind,
the spirit, the soul needs that bucket to be full, not empty, and so you start off as a kid, you know,
you spill a little bit, you get spanked as a child, you know, you graze your knee, your dog dies,
but then, you know, good food and playing with your friends and sunshine and nature,
it fills it back up again, and then as you start going through life, and it might be that when you
were young, you were unlucky and you had some sexual abuse or some other things and it begins
to overwhelm and it starts to drain a bit. So basically, holes are being plugged in this bucket
and the fluid is starting to leak out. Well, as you progress into adulthood and you're exposed
to some of these unhealthy coping mechanisms, your soul is saying, just fill the fucking bucket,
and so you're like, well, there's gambling and there's porn, will that work? Yeah, fuck it,
just put it in, you know what I mean? And then there's, you know, opiates and then there's alcohol
and the bucket is yearning to be full, but as you know, those come with consequences and now more
holes are being punched, your relationship deteriorating, you're losing money, you know,
your children don't want to talk to you anymore, whatever it is, and now you're bleeding even more
and there's this greater need then for anything just to fill the bucket, but then if you flip
that around, now you have an aha moment, you know, and you start doing mindfulness, you start,
you know, meeting with a group of peers and talking about what you're doing. Some of these
holes start being patched up and the less the bleeding, the more strength you have to go,
you know what, I'm going to eat a healthy meal today, I'm not, you know, I'm going to skip coffee,
I'm going to have water or whatever it is, and now that fluid starts being replaced with healthy
things again. So I think that's a good analogy for addiction is that there's a void, there's a leak
and your mind is saying, just fill it, just fucking fill it, which is why it's so hard for some of our
men and women that are struggling with whatever the addiction, it might be social media, narcissism,
whatever it is, but this need to fill and once you can start shifting them, you know, baby steps
towards the healthier coping mechanisms and start plugging those holes, then that, you know, desperate
need to pour anything in there is slowed down and then they start gaining the strength to regain
the healthy fluid within that bucket. Yeah, excellent. I believe it. I lived it. Yeah,
yeah, there was just, yeah, I, everything that you said, I can relate to
until, you know, until I hit that place where I was forced to look at myself, I just couldn't even
conceptualize what you were saying. You know, awareness is the beginning of everything,
you know, and I had to become aware that, you know, my coping strategies weren't right and then that
led me to understand that I have these holes, you know, and that led me to understand that I have
these, you know, and that, like you said, you know, before it used to be, you know, enough playtime
could heal those wounds or enough, you know, the enough overtime on my paycheck made it worth
running the calls for, you know, enough accolades on the job made me feel like I was enough of a
fireman or, you know, enough accolades at the fitness facility made me feel like I really was
the, you know, one of the best instructors and capable of, you know, leading, you know, classes.
You know, but I didn't know how to fill those holes on my own, you know, I just didn't,
I didn't know until I started to learn. So then walk me through that journey,
you know, you're in 2017 now, you're faced with losing your dream career. At the very end of my
addiction, you know, I so desperately did not want to use opiates that I had been on Suboxone,
okay, and, you know, a medication that is supposed to stop the cravings and allow you to live without
taking opiates. And at the same time, you know, from being in that, that, you know, high performance
lifestyle, I had a lot of anxiety and I was constantly in withdrawal from this medication,
you know, unless you take it perfectly on time. And even with that, you know, it's just that
anxiety of what if I don't have my prescription? So now I'm taking Klonopin for anxiety, right?
One of the highest powered benzos that you could take and I'm drinking alcohol and doing the
occasional cocaine too, right? So, you know, this cocktail that I'm living on was just deteriorating
me, you know, you talk about losing, you know, losing your lifestyle. I wasn't racing anymore.
I was teaching my classes, you know, but I wasn't teaching as well as I used to. I was showing up
to work, but I was just making it through the tour. You know, I was 40 pounds heavier than I am now.
I was bloated like a toad. You know, I was overeating. So, you know, there were so many
things that needed to change. So when I, you know, had that moment where they intervened on me,
you know, I had so many things in my system that had to come out, you know, that the beginning of
my recovery was just, was god awful. The physical debilitation that I was in, the state that I was
in when I was separated from all these substances was devastating, you know, it was absolutely
devastating. But that Suboxone and the Clonopin themselves, that combination of those two drugs,
that was just incredible. To get off of that was one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life.
You know, I wanted to get off of Suboxone earlier, but I just couldn't, I could get myself down to
the lowest dose, but I could not step off out of the fear of the withdrawals to come. You know,
I had no idea what the benzo withdrawal was going to be like. And to be truthful, I can't delineate
between the two because I went through them both at the same time. It was horrific. I mean, it was
absolutely horrific. So the physical debilitation at the end, when I was separated from all these
drugs, because I went to a detox, I was there for nine days, and then the treatment center that
my union had an agreement with, you know, you had to be completely detoxed from all drugs before you
came in there. And they weren't going to give you any kind of narcotics to soothe you at all. So now
I'm in for it, you know, and I know it. So I'm like super anxious. I mean, my blood pressure when I
checked into treatment after nine days of detox was 190 over 110. They immediately put me on some
anti-seizure meds, but the rest I just had to gut it out. I didn't sleep for like, I didn't sleep
for 90 days. You know, I didn't have a solid bowel movement for 90 days. You know, I had diarrhea
every day for 90 days. You know, I didn't sleep for 90 days. I would sit there on my back, then on my
side, then on my other side. It was absolutely horrific, the beginning of this journey. And that
got my attention. You know, I couldn't believe that such a high functioning guy was reduced to
just a blithering mess. And I totally understood that it was because of the lifestyle that I was
leading, you know, that I became completely, totally dependent on these medications, you know,
and now I don't have them anymore. And this is the result. And I so desperately wanted to get back to
the guy that I knew, but that was not going to come easy. You know, this has been a long, long,
long journey, but that was the beginning. And at the same time, I'm not sure if I have a job.
You know, I'm in the disciplinary process at work. I'm talking to my union rep, but they can't
guarantee me what's going to happen because the charges against me were really severe. You know,
I mean, what I had done being, you know, drunken on all these substances on duty, even though they
were prescribed, I mean, you know, to see that written out on a disciplinary action report is
pretty overwhelming and humbling, you know. So they made it abundantly clear, like, listen,
there's no guarantee you're going to have your job. So now I'm, you know, in fear of that,
and I'm relaying that to my wife and she's letting me know, do you have any idea that,
you know, if we lose your, if you lose your career and you lose your, you lose your insurance,
you know, our medical insurance, do you know that our daughter's asthma medication,
if we had to pay full price, it will just, just about bankrupt us in a month?
Like I had no idea, like what the consequences of the lifestyle that I was leading was, you know,
I could, I could feel the shame of, you know, just totally letting down my coworkers in the fire
service, you know, I could feel the shame of disappearing from my second job in the fitness
facility, writing some, you know, bullshit email that my mom was dying of cancer and I need a leave
of absence. I, I, I wasn't courageous enough in the beginning to tell the truth about, you know,
why I had to leave my second career, you know, so I'm just gonna, I was in a really, really rough spot and
I, I finally get out of treatment. I'm still, you know, that, that was at about the 75th day mark,
you know, I come back, I'm riding a desk in the north division on the same grounds of station two
that I screwed up so royally in. And when I want to go to get a cup of coffee, I've got to walk right
into the same firehouse. I'm seeing the same guys. All I can think in my head is they think I'm a
total piece of shit and a loser, you know, and what the fuck is this guy even doing here? And,
you know, then I'm back in the north division office and, and all day long battalion chiefs
are coming in to charge their CO monitors and I'm just saying, Hey, and they're like, Blasey,
what are you doing here? You know, or some of them knew what I was doing there and they're like,
you okay, man? So like the guilt, the shame that I was feeling here, it is again, boom, you know,
I am wrong. I am a defective human being. I'm not even worthy of this career. I shouldn't even be
here. Like I'm a total piece of shit. I've let my wife down. I've let my coworkers down. I've let
myself down, my parents, my extended family. You know, these things are starting to, it's starting
to come, the waves are just coming in the ripple effect of, you know, my, my lifestyle up to that
point is starting to come home. And man, it was overwhelming. And, you know, the only respite that
I could get was that schedule of being on, you know, five eights had me out of that office at
about four o'clock in the afternoon. And I made a five 30 a meeting every single day.
And I just started to hear those early messages of recovery. And, you know, these people had seen,
I had made very many, you know, I went to my first day meeting in 2003. I didn't, I didn't get the,
you know, the first step until 2017. So people knew me in the meetings and, you know, they, they were,
I was met with a lot of love and compassion, but I had none for myself.
Now, what about the sleep element? You go to this obviously horrendous withdrawal. And it's
interesting because I wonder how much of that, the bowel movement problems and the sleeplessness,
if you just, if you even remove the withdrawal, if that was just the sheer anxiety, the burnout
that was existing under the coping mechanism of the drugs and the alcohol too. But the one,
you know, the elephant in the room and the mental health conversation and the cancer conversation
and the hormonal disruption conversation is sleep deprivation, which is why I'm so dogmatic about
making the 24 72 an industry standard. I think if we want to actually make a difference in firefighter
health, this has to be a big part of the conversation. So what about simply being in your
own bed every night and the element of that on your healing?
It was nice. It was definitely nice. I found a very culturally competent psychiatrist in the
addiction field who put me on a low dose of some sleep medication, and he put me on a very low
dose of some SSRI to just try to re-stabilize, try to put my brain back together. My neurophysiology
was so out of whack. Now granted, I was manipulating that with substances, but you want to talk about
the lifestyle of a first responder and the 24 48 with overtime in between the sleep deprivation,
the continuous hypervigilant state, all of that. That totally changes your physiology. So what
came first, the chicken or the egg? Is it because I was on all these substances and separated from
them? Yeah, but yes, as what you're alluding to, true with all of the unintended consequences of
the career choice. Yeah, it made a difference being able to sleep again. You know, it took a
while to get there. Once I got there, it was definitely a relief. Just being on that five day
work week and not, you know, I wasn't ready to go back to shift, but that would come. That would
come and I'd go right back to station two, driving engine two. And I would come to find out that a
lot of that narrative that was in my head that these guys think I'm a total piece of shit, they
hate me that that wasn't true. But they definitely felt differently about me, you know, and, you
know, I was I was asked to, I was asked to move on, you know, to bid another firehouse, you know,
the same captain that had embraced me into his crew and wanted me to be, you know, his engineer,
he so lovingly put his arm around me and told me, Jason, listen, I think it's in your best
interest and everybody's here that that you find a new home. You know, and that was really
difficult to hear and feel and, and accept. But that was that was another thing where the hand of
God was on me again, and I couldn't see it, that I really couldn't get into this resiliency
lifestyle. If I was going to hop right back into the same mode of living that I was in,
sans drugs and alcohol, it wasn't going to be enough. Well, that's an important point, too,
because that that loss of tribe, you know, when when you are again, we talked about indigenous
people earlier, you are Steve the Inca, you know, and all of a sudden you're thrown out of your
tribe in the Amazon, you know, you are physiologically and psychologically vulnerable,
you know, then that's that's the same feeling. So where there's like, downright organizational
betrayal and first responder professions where people, you know, have literally been hurt on the
job, and then are excommunicated, that's so, so detrimental. But even as a crew, and I get it, I
mean, as you said, there's been several times now. So I know, I understand that there's a line for a
lot of people. But if you look at addiction, and you climb inside the head of everyone in that
firehouse, how many are actually dealing with their own addiction to, and that maybe just maybe
you're actually a reminder of what's going on in their head. And that's why they want you somewhere
else, you know what I mean? So we have to really be courageous and ask ourselves, you know,
this is this person just going through something because I am too. And you know, we've all heard
that, you know, I looked across the room, and everyone else seemed fine. Why am I the only
weak one? Why am I a piece of shit? But you climb inside everyone's head, they're thinking the exact
same thing. So a big paradigm shift in the fire service will be when we will be able to see the
fire service will be when we all pull our fucking masks on and say, I've been going through some
stuff, there'll be different degrees, of course, some will be crippled by alcoholism or opiate
addiction, some will just be lonely, whatever it is, but we've all got our own shit. And so the more
courageous we are about our own struggles, the more of a safe space, and I use that word deliberately,
because it's what it's supposed to be, that we can create around a firehouse table for everyone to
talk. So we don't have any of these, he's the last person I thought would have done that conversations
after one of our own passed away. Yeah. Yes. Yes. You know, again, it was all about, you know, the
shame and what I was feeling at that time. And you know, that that just takes a process to,
to heal from and become, you know, aware where where I can agree with everything that you just said.
You know, where where were we going with I lost my train of thought. So you talked about the 12 steps, so I'll add a segue then.
So talk to me about the realization of the importance of a group of peers. I'm not talking
about a peer support team, but having more than a single counselor, for example, or a meeting of
people that maybe don't understand your profession, and you know that obviously the creation of your
Phoenix group, but that that element I know is so, so important for your healing, which is why
obviously we're talking about it today. Yeah. So up to that point, you know, I had been participating
in my recovery, I did all 12 steps, I started to get everything that they said that I would in,
you know, in in the fellowship that I was participating in. But I knew that there was
another layer that comes with the first responder. You know, there was, you know, something that
I just felt inside that I needed to be with other people that wear the uniform that are that have
struggled with addiction and alcoholism. I just needed to reconcile that from inside.
You know, I wanted to talk to other people. I know I wasn't completely unique. You know, I knew I was
not the only guy. We've had multiple people die on my job because of their addiction. We have multiple
people in my 25 years that I've worked that have been fired because of their addiction and their
alcohol abuse. So I knew I wasn't unique. We had multiple people that have killed themselves in my
department. And I'm sure if we get to the all the circumstances involved, there's definitely substance
abuse somewhere in there. I knew I all of this was becoming so evident to me. And I wanted to,
I knew the therapeutic value of being in a community that identified as having issues with
this, I needed to have it in the fire service to I needed to have a I needed to speak with other
people that did the same job as me, because it makes us feel so unique. I needed to know that I
wasn't so unique. And and that's why I started to seek out other people on the job that I knew had
substance abuse issues and see if they'd be willing to get together and talk. You know, one of these
people I saw at a meeting, that's how that's how I knew to call them. You know, I saw I saw him at a
Narcotics Anonymous meeting and I sought that person out and then they led me to another person
and they led me to another person. And we decided to create this group. You know, and I felt so
strongly about it that I went to some people that I knew were in the Brotherhood Initiative for
for that works through the union. And I had a had a nice long cup of coffee with this guy. And we
started talking. And he was like, we absolutely need that. We need to start this group. So they
got involved. And they gave us a place where we could meet. And that's how it all started. You know,
a little over five years ago, we had our first meeting in the union hall in an office.
And we you know, we've since grown in membership. And you know, this journey of healing has been
taken to the next level. Because all of the things that that came to me from being in a 12 step
fellowship, I've taken to the next level by creating a fellowship of first responders.
You know, there's nothing more powerful than the connection of people that have the you know,
whatever the mental health issue is, that you're identifying with somebody that has it too. And
you don't have you're talking about pulling the mask off. I pull the mask off, I take the armor
off. And I sit there relaxed and I can be myself. You know, I've heard it expressed that we,
we come into whatever recovery we're coming into with an opinionated head, with a closed down heart
and a defended body. You know, where that's coming from, pride, ego, ignorance, whatever,
doesn't matter. I totally subscribe to that. I believe it's true. And I'm not going to lie.
I believe it's true. The disarming of all of that comes when you can be amongst your people.
You know, you talk about the tribe. Now I've got a tribe of, of a fireman that also identifies having
the negative coping mechanisms that I have, the negative strategies that happened in their life,
and now how they've turned it around and fixed their work life, their home life. You know,
they're participating in their community. They enjoy all the skills and talents and creativity
that they once had that they were putting aside for the job and, you know, and for their addiction
and you know, their inability to be able to cope positively. And we celebrate our victories and we
express our challenges. But like you said, the biggest, the biggest thing is I don't have to be
a bullshit artist. I don't have to be anybody but who I really am. Somebody that has fallen publicly
on the job. Not everybody has to do that to qualify for this. That's my story. And I think it
bring, it brought a lot with it. You know, it brought a lot with it for this guy. I needed
somebody else that I could say that to that could understand, that knows the feeling, the peer
pressure that we're under in the fire service, the expectations that we're under, the just somebody
that got it. Only another firefighter can get it. And I have that. And it's huge.
What's interesting about when you get us in a room, it makes me think about, there's a documentary,
it was the History Channel, I think that did it originally, or the National Burn Foundation,
I think before that. But it was called Into the Fire. And it followed some volunteers, some paid
on call, some career firefighters. A great, great documentary. And I'll never forget there was a
volunteer, you know, they were doing the like the chicken dinners to raise money to buy a fire engine
in their little township. But this guy said, I forget how he phrased it, but paraphrasing, he said,
every single day, firefighters, you know, will make entry over a threshold of a home or a building,
over and over again, he said, once in a while, they'll find a baby or a person and they'll,
you know, be on the front of the paper. He said, but every single time you make entry in a fire,
you are taking the same exact risk than all the other, you know, thousands that day, you know,
tens of thousands. And so I think when you put us in a room, and because I see obviously on
Instagram, a lot of these guys that, you know, have their leather helmets and mustaches and,
you know, leaning on their pike pole in front of a burned out house, you know, like I am a firefighter,
and let me remind you a 911. But when you say it to another firefighter, it's like, well, who
fucking cares? I'm a firefighter too. You know, so it does take away that level of, you know, that
facade of this is my identity, because like, you're not, mate, because I am too. And I'm totally
unimpressed by my own career. So if you sit around with a group of firefighters, none of them are
impressed by you being a firefighter. So it's almost like it's the Trump card, you know what I
mean? It negates that whole thing. If you go to a 12 step program, a bunch of civilians, they may,
Oh God, you must have seen some horrible stuff. But if you're with a group of peers, it literally,
you can't use that card anymore. Yeah, it's what you do. And we all understand what comes with the
job, but you can't behind hide behind that leather mask and the stuff. And so I think
that's what's interesting is really what we've done by creating peers, peer support teams,
is you've removed, you've pulled away the very thing that you are hiding behind, because
everyone else is that thing.
Yeah, you can be authentic. You know, and that's really what we want. And then you get the love and
the belonging, you know, which is, which is what we're all craving.
That's not just a touchy feely statement. That's just truth. I, you know, that's, that's
inherent in everybody. You know, why are we, why do we, you know, gravitate to the battalions that
we gravitate to? Why do we stay in certain firehouses for long segments in the career?
Because we find the love and belonging that we need. You know, I need to be with like minded
people that are, you know, thinking and behaving the way that I am. Well, that's how the resiliency
lifestyle has to be, you know, played out. We have to be around other people that are living it too,
so that we can, you know, get real about it and help each other participate in it. Because this
is life and death. You know, for me to go back to the lifestyle that I was leading before,
it's only going to take me to three places, you know, jail, another, another, another,
treatment center, or death, you know, and, and as I tried to express earlier, what I felt physically
this last time I was separated from drugs and alcohol, like I, now I get it. I get how people die.
You know, it's the, the compassion that I didn't use to have for that addict on the street.
I totally understand now, you know, that desperate addict, you know, that I used to say was just a
piece of shit, an impediment to my day. Why do we have to, you know, Narcan him and bring him back
again? Now I realize like, there's no difference between that guy and me. He's just further into it
without someone taking them and bringing them into the light. You know, now granted, there could be,
there could be, you know, total mental illness issues that, you know, untreated, that doesn't
allow them to participate in the recovery lifestyle, you know, that I'm not going to get
into all of that, but just where I can draw that parallel. And that, you know, but you know, we go
back to just the power of the group, what we're able to do together, I can't do by myself. It's
the same thing on a fire scene, you know, somebody cannot drive the truck up, put it in pump, stretch
the line, force the door, you know, advance in, find the fire, put it out, overhaul, you know,
we need a, we need a crew, you know, and that's what I found is I've got to, I have a resiliency
lifestyle crew now that I don't do anything alone anymore. You know, I'm not just left with
what Jason Blasey thinks about every last aspect of his life. I have to be able to do that.
Every last aspect of his life, I have, I have friends and mentors and people that love me and
I love them that, that I bounce, you know, a lot of the things that are going on in my life.
This may come natural to other people, but for me, it didn't, you know, and I don't think we really
support that in our, in our culture. You know, we use that as a, as a sign of weakness or,
you know, you're, you're, you're getting soft on me, you know, but I know it's not true.
You know, I know it's not true. I'm living the benefits of being vulnerable. I'm living the
benefits of, of taking the mask off, taking the armor off. You know, the Phoenix group has allowed
me to do that in the presence of other firefighters. And, you know, the, the myths of, well, I worked
in this battalion and we ran this many fires and this many calls. So you don't know, you know,
we think that we're better than the battalions across town. And, but really we all do the same
thing. And we're all, we're all not, we're all the same, but we have, like I said, love and belonging
is an irreducible need of everybody, you know? And when you add the layer of, I've come to the
understanding that some of the unintended consequences of this career choice are, are
changing my life for the worse and I better get on them before my life gets really bad. Or I want to
put a gun in my mouth or thinking that that's, that's an option. You know, I need to find my
tribe and get together with them and get real. And in doing that, I've dispelled that whole myth,
you know, and, and I've gained humility. That's one of the greatest things too is it's wonderful
that I experienced the 20 runs a day and the intense training and trying to be ready for every
scenario and a lot of pride on the job. I'm, I am so grateful for that. I have the humility now that
that doesn't make me any better than the guy across town that's only running two calls a day
and, you know, doesn't have his own website and, you know, doesn't have his own monogram halogen.
And it doesn't make me any better. We're just, we're both human beings on that chose this career
path and we should support each other regardless. You know, and I never thought that would come out
of my mouth. I was the first guy to sit and character assassinate and talk shit about people
at the, at the dinner table. I was the ringleader of those conversations because that made me feel
superior. I wanted to feel like I was better. I needed that I, for whatever reason, you know,
and, you know, part of it was that was, it was like the gang mentality in the firehouse.
You know, who's the new, who's the new guy that screwed up? Well, you know what?
Then eventually I became the guy that screwed up that they were all saying that guy's a piece
of shit. Can you believe that fucking idiot did this? You know, and he was no good anyway.
Whatever the hell they were, you know, that we, I, I saw that I was not exempt from, from that
conversation. So that humility that I gained just, that totally changed my perspective and to,
to see other accomplished, hardworking, well-meaning firefighters in my department and other
departments that have gone through the same thing and to talk openly and honestly about that,
there's nothing more powerful than that. There's nothing more healing than that. That gets me to
that place where life is, life is good. Life is okay. You know, I, and, and, and it's just been,
it's been incredible. You talked about, you know, say that guy's a piece of shit. I used to hate
the word bum as well. I wrote about it in my first book when I first got the hi alia. Shit bird is a
big one that we use, but here's the thing. So I would argue if you are that person, take a look
in the mirror and ask yourself why you're having such an extreme reaction. And I'll give you an
example. How many outwardly anti-gay, you know, homophobic leaders have been out there that we
discovered they themselves were, were homosexual. You know what I mean? Is there something in your
past that's making you have such a, an unempathetic, you know, uh, aggressive reaction to a homeless
person, an addict, whatever it is, because this is what's, what's even more fucking ironic slash
nauseating as a lot of these people come out of holy buildings on certain days of the week
after being told about love and inclusion and community and compassion. And then they treat
people like that. So if you are, you know, having these kinds of reactions, if you look at someone
whose life has taken them to living under a bridge and the best you can do is roll your eyes. Cause
they've inconvenienced your Jerry Springer binge watching and you had to run a call on them.
Maybe just maybe you need to look in the fucking mirror because you've got some shit going on
between your own ears. Yeah. I mean, you know, that whole spot it, you got it kind of thing.
I get it. Um, someone said this the other day and I think it's very profound. Uh, the ego is the
loudest voice and it's the first one to talk, you know, and that it's that protective mechanism that
stops me from having to feel compassion, empathy, any kind of self reflection that I identify with
what I'm looking at. That's very uncomfortable to look at, hear about, you know, it's a defense
mechanism. Um, until you actually go out there and do it, it's all uncharted territory. That's met
again with the egos coming up and trying to answer that question without having to experience it.
And, um, our, our culture's full of that, you know, it's,
and the fear of being met with the, the fear of being in those conversations and then being
uncomfortable, whether it's fear or a lack of interest, uh, doesn't think it's important.
Then we have a suicide of a really accomplished guy on our job. And then we all start saying,
wow, you know what, maybe these conversations are the ones we should be having.
And we get passionate about that for a while. And then it starts to dissipate,
you know, and that's where we are present day right now in my, in my fire department.
And it's going to take us getting into uncomfortable positions and conversations and
following through with what we discover in those conversations to get to know each other.
And that's what we discover in those conversations to get to change the culture in our fire service,
which is not going to make us less of a fire service. It's only going to make us a better
fire service. You know, it's not going to change your ability to handle anything. It's just going
to give you a more complete, um, a more complete firefighter, you know, more complete human being.
They're a firefighter. This is, this is the thing that I don't hear a lot of the, you know,
the halogen thumpers out there is this needs to be part of the conversation. Your favorite
sports athletes have sports psychologists because you cannot get close to the flow state.
If your mind is, is a fucking tornado. So, you know, whether it's navigate in the rig to the
call, whether it's doing a right-hand search and, you know, a fricking interior, this confusing the
shit out of you, you know, you've got to have that clear mind. So if you are the leather helmet,
mustache wearing Instagram, you know, narcissist for lack of a better word, then this also needs
to be part of your culture. If you want to be the world's best firefighter, which you're clearly
trying to convince us all that you are, where is the mental side? This needs to be parallel.
Every other high performer includes psychology in their performance, but the fire service is like,
well, we'll, we'll just let you sleep three nights, excuse me, three nights a week. Don't worry about
psychology. Don't worry about breath control, even though the only air on the planet earth you've got
access to is strapped to your back. Just take a big breath, you know, in you go, get the job done
and come out. It's absolute fucking bullshit. So if you really want to be the best version of yourself
as a firefighter, as a police officer, as a paramedic, then your mental health is absolutely
part of that pie chart. So if we start to make these normalize these conversations like you and
I are having, and then the right personalities come out and, and openly speak about it,
and we can normalize this, then, then we can start to change it. You know, it just,
this is the beginning, you know, this is the beginning, having people come out and speak
openly about it, that, you know, you're going to need, you're going to need guys and gals that have
street cred, you know, on the job that can come out and say, you know, once I started to
investigate my, my emotional well being, I started to see the, the benefits of my
the benefits of my physical and work life getting better. You know, once I started to deal with my
spiritual well being, I could see the benefits on the job. Once I started to handle my mental
health challenges, you know, I saw this benefit in my job and the way I handle my job and the
way I handle my family and all the relationships in my life. And it's just, it's about getting
the resilient people that have been through it already to come out and speak openly. And then
the ones that are on the fence about whether they should or not, maybe they'll get inspired.
And the ones that are starting to see that they, they qualify for the help, because they're hearing
what the symptoms are, you know, from a live person, they're not just reading it off of a
a sheet, you know, you know, they, they identify with story, you know, when you, you know, somebody's
going to hear my story and identify, yes, I know what it's like to drink beer and go into work.
I know what it's like to be strung out on opiates and go to work, you know, they're going to hear
that and wow, this guy actually came back from that. You know, I know what it's like to be let go,
you know, be told I need to leave my station and go somewhere else. You know, I know what it's like
to feel like I think everybody thinks I'm a piece of shit, but you know, I know that I'm not. And
it's, that's what it's going to take, you know, it's going to, what did they say? We, you know,
we can only change a culture by a single act of defiance over and over, you know, it's going to
take multiple single acts of defiance against the cultural norm of shouting it down, denying it,
you know, it's going to take a courageous individual to go, no, man, what, what's really
the harm in talking honestly and openly about how you feel, you know, and, and I'll just use this
example that the, the, you know, the guy who just killed himself on our job, you know, though I
didn't know him personally, knowing the, the bureau that he was involved in, okay. And hearing the
stories of how much pride he had in his performance on the job. Okay. I can imagine that if he had
found the same people that were doing high performance, I want to say this so intelligently
before I even say it, sorry, cause it's a, I really feel strongly about this.
If this person had found his people that he could have taken his mask off with and unloaded his
armor at the door and sat down and talked honestly and openly about what he was feeling, whatever was
bothering him about his personal life, his work life, and he could get honest and open and authentic
about it. I believe that man would be here today. That's what I truly honestly believe. I think the
therapeutic value of one alike is without parallel. That is the thing that turns the, that turns the
lock and opens the door for all the healing, you know, and then all the other modalities that go
along for whichever mental health struggle you're having. I totally say that's part of the resiliency
lifestyle in participating in it, but a huge piece of it is to have that community that you can be
yourself, you know, that you can create that connection, that you can create that belonging,
that you can experience that love, you know, that is the difference maker. That's been the
difference maker for me, you know, and though I didn't have a plan to carry out a suicide,
I thought about it. I totally thought my family would be way better off if I wasn't here,
and how am I ever going to face these guys at work again? I'm never going to re-, I will never ever
be able to make myself worthy of some of the things that I already experienced because of what I did,
you know, and I could imagine that message becoming the dominating message in my narrative
and that becoming overwhelming and the pain of that, having nowhere to let that out,
having no one that I think could really understand how, how awful that could be, how, how, how that
makes you want to just end it all. So, whether it comes through a culturally competent therapist
in the beginning or you wind up creating your own group, you find somebody, a co-worker,
that you can unload with, however it starts, I know that that therapeutic value of one alike
is without parallel. There's nothing that matches it. I'm living proof. I'm experiencing it,
and that's, you know, that's the message. I want to just throw one thing at you and then we'll talk
about where people can find the group and reach out to you if they want to, you know,
if they want to create their own. But someone asked me today, it was somebody who works in
law enforcement predominantly in the mental health side, and they were asking about the stigma.
And she said she was at a, I forget, it was actually a class or, or at a conference, but,
you know, how many people, you know, have struggled with their mental health and only,
only 25% went up. How many people know someone else who is in like 100% of the hands went up?
And she was saying, is there still a lot of stigma? I'm like, I don't think there's stigma
about the mental health conversation, apart from pockets, of course, tend to be older dudes,
and women as well. But what I said, where there's really stigma still is the addiction
conversation. I don't know why that's separated, but I've lost three firefighters to opioids alone,
overdoses. That's just, you know, locally, people I work with, you know, that's not to mention all
the, you know, the alcohol related deaths. And so, you know, I think there's the stigma, we've got
to really look and expand our lens to addiction as a whole. So mental health, you know, obviously,
the suicide element, but also the addiction side too. But where we've got stuck is stigma.
We've smashed the stigma air quotes, but what next? You know what I mean? And even like you said,
with the group, that's a peer group, that's an incredible next step. But then as you mentioned,
then that leads to the healing modalities. You know, what was going to work for you is it's
taught therapy, you're going to need a little, you know, prescription meds to kind of help create a
bridge to your healing. You know, is it going to be psychedelic? Yeah, I mean, all these different
things. Yeah. So, but what I wanted to underline was though, and you're living proof of this now,
you don't hear the post-traumatic growth message. And you will use the word resilience many times.
To me, that is resilience. It's not about doing a fire maze while they're playing loud music at you
and banging on the wood, saying the baby's dying. You process your struggles, that becomes resilience.
So when you hear people like yourself and so many other people that come on the show,
that are now a beacon of light for others. And it's not to say that it's not a struggle still,
of course, but you've come out the other end. And I would argue that you are a better version of
yourself now than you were before. So just talk to me about that concept. Because I think that's the
hope. That's the excitement of going through the crucible of treatment is the other side.
Maybe you're able, you know, your marriage has actually come together again. You're starting
to gain trust with your children, your coworkers. Maybe you transition out the fire service and you
do something else that you also love. So talk to me about the hope of post-traumatic growth and
resilience. Oh, my goodness. So much there. And everything you said is true. All that is happening.
But the first thing is, what if we looked at people having substance abuse issues on the job
as a negative coping mechanism? What if that was the definition of it? That we were speaking out
loud instead of it's a moral failing, they don't have enough character, they're a scumbag, they're
fucking lazy, they're a piece of shit. No, this guy's dealing with the unintended consequences of
this job that we all face of sleep deprivation, moral injury, like you said, organizational
betrayal, just the resentments that come with working for a department. And they're not getting
us the right equipment or the administration doesn't understand the line, all of that,
like dealing with that. What if all those unintended consequences that come with the career
choice, that we looked at someone who winds up having a substance abuse issue, that this is a
negative coping mechanism to those things. He doesn't love the job enough, he's not fit for duty,
all those things. If that became one of the options that how we could describe this person
and the situation, that would be a great start. I think that would change things huge.
And then you're talking about the post-traumatic growth. I mean,
it starts with the awareness of that certain things need to be changed.
And then it just opens up a whole world to that person. But
bring me back, I kind of got lost in it.
That's okay. So as you sit here now,
It's so much more back there, but bring me back into it because I have a lot to say, I'm sure.
No problem. As you sit here now versus the Jason that was struggling 10, 15 years ago,
talk to me about the version of yourself. I mean, you mentioned, for example, 40 pounds heavier,
I'm looking at you now, I'm assuming you're not carrying that weight anymore.
The fact that you're still married to your beautiful wife, that. So talk to me about
the growth, the resilience, the better version of yourself and your life now having done the work
and finally found that perfect, or the perfect is the wrong word, that right combination of
treatment modalities that work for you specifically. Okay. So I had said this earlier,
one of the greatest things that happened for me from going through 12 step work was it was able,
it got me to a place where I was able to take responsibility for my life, all of it,
and not just default to the shameful message or the ego response of trying to
absolve myself of the responsibility. It disarmed me and that changed the way that I handle my
relationships with other people. I was able to see the way that I was not treating the people that
I say I love and that I want to have a good solid relationship with, I could see where I wasn't
capable of doing that, where I was falling short and that awareness wanting to really follow through
with having those real relationships in my life, which I think we all want again, we want connection,
we want love, we want belonging. Well, there were changes that I had to be made
and it just showed me the changes that needed to be made to just follow the path that I was taking
to just follow through with what I, to be congruent, to follow through with it with what it is that I say
I'm going to do and do it. Treat the people in my world the way I would want to be treated.
That was one of the beginning things. It also helped me get to a level of acceptance of things
that I never had before. I had no acceptance in my life. If I wasn't happy, satisfied with something,
I had to really come out against it or I had to try to influence the environment around me to
shape things back to something that I could understand and deal with and accept. There's
been a component of having a power greater than myself in my life that allows me to accept that
everything is exactly the way that it's supposed to be and that I can allow people, places,
and things to be just what they are. It's given me boundaries. I have boundaries in my relationships
today at work, at home, and I allow people to have boundaries with me and enforce them like gentle
men and gentle women. That's the thing is I can have these boundaries in my life, but how do I
enforce them? That's been a huge piece. I grew up in a family of no boundaries.
So these are new skills that I'm employing. The acceptance, the having boundaries, the humility,
that I'm no greater than, I'm no less than, I'm just another guy who wears the uniform,
who loves the job. I'm another man who has children. I'm another husband. I'm another guy
in the community and everybody doesn't need to know all the stuff that I bring out into the world.
It's just I can accept you for who you are and me for who I am and if we're going to have a
relationship, we're going to treat each other like real human beings and try to have something
that has boundaries and respect. I don't have to do that with every last person that I meet.
It's the ones that I want to have close to me. Then it's the mental, physical, and spiritual life.
I have to treat certain emotional deformities that I have with a therapist, with a therapist,
with my group of people that I identify as having those issues that I found in the Phoenix group,
our addiction piece that we were able to talk about honestly and openly.
For me, I'm off of all of my medications, but when medication was suggested, I took it.
If that's part of the post-traumatic growth lifestyle, we do it. I started with that and
then I was able to, with the help of an addiction psychiatrist, work my way off of all of that stuff.
At the same time, I was going to a culturally competent therapist and all three of us were
talking. We had an open, honest relationship about where Jason was in his journey. Now, today,
I take nothing, maybe a little melatonin to go to bed. The spiritual component was huge.
I needed to grab on to something greater than myself, and I've come to understand that that's
a loving God for me, whether it's the universe for somebody, chi, whatever it is, but I cannot
be the center of my own universe. I don't make the sunset arise. I don't make the tide come in
and go out. I used to think that everything, again, when I had no acceptance, I had to make
everything happen or influence what was going on to make sure that it would fit into what was
acceptable to me. What a horrible struggle that is. When you're trying to hammer your reality,
when you're trying to hammer life into the reality that you can accept, you wind up stepping on the
toes of people all around you and they're retaliating and now I'm in drama and chaos
and resentment. What I've come to understand is I crave peace. My soul can't be at peace.
My soul craves peace. My resiliency lifestyle, I employ things like boundaries and
acceptance and humility so that I can achieve peace. Then there's a physical component. For
me to be peaceful, I can't be morbidly obese. I can't be working myself into type 2 diabetes,
eating myself into that way. I can't be a four-cigar-a-day smoker like I was.
I need that endorphin rush of exercise. I want the flexibility component because I'm still doing
the job today in my 25th year at 54 years old and things hurt. I need to protect this body.
I want to enjoy my retirement. The physical part is huge. It's my diet. It's my exercise load.
At 54 years old, embracing the realities of some of my limitations and accepting that
and being kind to myself through those changes. Then the component of creativity and interests.
I can't tell you over the course of my life how many times I picked up the guitar and put it down,
but now I've had a consistent practice regimen and I've got some results there.
I work in the mental health field now as a peer advocate and a group facilitator.
That's become an interest. Whereas I had my fitness career on the side,
now I have my mental health career on the side. Like I said way earlier in the podcast,
I'm back into fishing, doing better things than I've ever done, having adventures like I've never
had before. One of the sports that I, besides enjoying golf, I became a competitive long distance
surf ski paddler. At the age of 51 years old, three years ago, I was able to enter and win
the East Coast Championships for my age group. Those are just some of the benefits that I've
gotten from this lifestyle that started on my worst day, June 17th, 2017. I was in so much trouble.
I was finally forced to look at myself. I had no idea I was starting to embark on this journey of
self-discovery that was going to bring me that reckoning, brought me to a place of awareness where
the journey of recovery was brought to me, which in turn brought me into the post-traumatic growth
and resiliency lifestyle that I'm living today, which is that body, mind, spirit connection,
sustaining those three areas of my life, which enables the relationships in my life to be way
more functional and enjoyable. I'm the dad that I always was supposed to be, the son that I was
always supposed to be, the brother, the coworker that I was always supposed to be. All the things
that I wanted inside, I have, but I have to work on it on a daily basis. This isn't like I check
that off the list and now I'm suddenly perfect in that area. We're humans. We're not meant to be
perfect. We've got to keep working on this. I just think that the mental health struggles that come
from this job, especially when we're talking about PTSD, suicide ideation, the traumas of our life
before the fire service, bleeding into our life in the fire service and accumulating them,
it's a lifestyle to live with that. I thought that I would arrive at some day that
the spiritual aspect of what I've come to understand addiction is, that it would go away,
that restless, irritable and discontented spirit, that selfish, self-centered nature that I could have,
that fear-based thinker that that's just going to go away because I don't use drugs and alcohol anymore.
Well, sorry, that hasn't been my experience. I have to actually do certain things and little did I know
that that would accumulate to a lifestyle that is not only far better than the one that I was leading
before, it's made my life so full. The fact that I'm on Behind the Shield podcast today,
talking with another person about the mental health challenges in the fire service,
that that's even on my radar, it's just opened up a whole world of possibilities, whereas
I said this earlier, my world was getting so small. If I didn't think of it, it wasn't even really happening.
And now my world is growing and growing and growing and I feel childlike at times.
My curiosity, my spontaneity, the excitement that I get and I was denying myself that
when I was angry, resentful, hungover, in withdrawal, lying, cheating, stealing, manipulating,
all the things that were coming with my former life. And it's just amazing.
It's amazing where you can go. And I know this is available to anybody that has the willingness
to be courageous and start to deal with your issues. And those of us that have dealt with our
issues, for us to be courageous enough to come out and speak openly,
and I'm so grateful for people like you that are giving us a forum to do it.
Well, I mean, I'm grateful for you as well for telling your story. Speaking of boundaries,
my son came home, so I need to wrap this up so I can go be a present dad for a little bit before I
go off and coach. But I mean, it's so important, everything you said I couldn't agree more with
and hearing the excitement, all these things that have got better now. So before I let you go,
tell me where people can find the Phoenix group if they're actually in your fire department,
and then how can they reach out to you if they want to try and create something similar in theirs?
Sure. They can find the Phoenix group at phoenixgroupatlocalf1403.org.
That's phoenixgroupatlocalf1403.org.
Brilliant. And then you can reach me. I will respond to any emails at jasonblaziatcomcast.net.
Beautiful. Well, Jason, I want to thank you so much. I want to say thank you to Gil again,
but this has been such an important conversation. Like I said, I see this all the time.
Vulnerability is a superpower. That's what a real man is, the yin and the yang. And we've become
these white circles, these terminator Rambo bullshit facades of masculinity that we were sold
as children. So I want to thank you so, so much for being so generous with your time and being so
courageous with your story. Yeah, I just want to finish by saying
vulnerability is my superpower. You know, for sure dispelling the myth of that has been one of the
greatest experiences in my life. I highly encourage that to anybody. And I believe that as we do that,
we will change the culture in this fire service and make this world a better place.
I know it. I'm living it. So I can't thank you enough for having me on. Appreciate you.