This episode is sponsored by a company I've used for well over a decade and that is 511.
I wore their uniforms back in Anaheim California and have used their products ever since.
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Welcome to the behind the shield podcast as always my name is James Gearing and this
week it is my absolute honor to welcome on the show Kagan Gill. Now I met Kagan when he joined
us in Dubai on the human performance project 7x as we circumnavigated the entire globe in one week.
So we discuss a host of topics from his journey into the world of aviation joining the military,
the crucible that is becoming a fighter pilot, his near-death experience after rejecting at
the speed of sound, his physical rehabilitation journey, his extremely powerful mental health
story, psychedelics and so much more. Now before we get to this incredibly powerful conversation
as I say every week please just take a moment go to whichever app you listen to this on,
subscribe to the show, leave feedback and leave a rating. Every single five-star rating truly does
elevate this podcast therefore making it easier for others to find and this is a free library of
well over 700 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 Kagan Gill enjoy.
Okay again I want to start by thanking you for coming on. We are sitting in a hotel in the outskirts
of Dallas Texas. We have just been around the world in an airplane. You just finished your second
marathon so we were going to kind of unwrap your entire story but I don't know a huge amount about
your story because we just met two days ago so I'm super excited so I just want to say thank you
for us for joining me today. Thank you for having me I'm glad we're able to make this work. Absolutely
we connected on this. So weird for everyone listening we are holding a microphone so hopefully
there's not going to be too much banging around it's not the normal setup but that's what happens
when your studio is in a in a suitcase. All right well I would love to start at the very beginning
of your story so tell me where you were born and tell me a little bit about your family dynamic,
what your parents did and how many siblings. So I was born in Tulsa Oklahoma and my mom was completing
her medical residency for medical school and I don't remember a whole lot from Tulsa other than
ticks and softball size hail. When I was three years old we moved to Alamosa Colorado.
By the time I was five I was bombing down black diamonds on my skis you know a little 30 pounds
of inertia and fluffy white powder and I always kind of had a an attraction to extreme sports and
and doing fun stuff like that. I then continued my childhood up in northern Michigan. So my mom had
completed a scholarship program through the National Health Service which is what brought
us to Alamosa. She served in a rural community and basically got all of her medical school paid for
by doing that. She became an obstetrician gynecologist and once she completed her duties
in Alamosa we moved to Traverse City Michigan which is where I primarily grew up in northern Michigan.
There growing up I kind of had an unconventional childhood. My parents were sort of out of the box.
My dad's a very outdoorsy kind of guy. I mean he carves his own bows. He you know he'll patch his
old clothes together. He refuses to ever buy anything. He's always been an endurance athlete.
He's completed Ironman triathlons. He's done Pike's Peak marathon. He used to run around pushing me
in in a stroller doing triathlons. He ran one of his fastest triathlons when he got to push me
on the run. He used to load me up in a backpack and take me out into the mountains when we were in
Colorado and went backcountry skiing. He was a big telemark skier. So I kind of always had adventurous
parents and an unconventional upbringing. You know we didn't have a lot of fancy stuff.
We kind of had old beater vehicles and they like to spend their money on travel and we got to explore
the national parks and do a lot of adventuring growing up. When I was about 12 years old my
parents had a friend that took me up flying in a little Cessna 152 and I absolutely fell in love
with you know being up above the world and flying like Peter Pan. So when I graduated high school
there was a little flight program at the community college in Traverse City called Northwestern
Michigan College and I still kind of had a passion for flying and I didn't really know what I wanted
to do with my life but I remember that I really enjoyed that. So I figured being a pilot was going
to be a good balance of a professional career and adventure and the last thing I wanted to be was
you know trapped in an office filling out worksheets under fluorescent lighting. So I ended up going
there. I became a certified flight instructor while I was in college completing my bachelor's degree.
I became an aerobatics instructor primarily because I was the smallest flight instructor
and we only had this little Cessna aerobat as our aerobatics aircraft. So they could fit me in there
with my parachute and a full-size grown-up and get up and fly around in this thing.
Did the full-size grown-up have a parachute as well? Yeah yeah. That would be unnerving if you
were the passenger and only the pilot had a parachute. We had to wear these little
pair. I never had to use it but in case of emergency there were these little poles on
the doors of the aerobat. You pop the door open and you can jump out. Unfortunately never had to
do that but it was a good gig. Once I graduated college with my bachelor's degree I got hired by
Poneman Institute which is a privacy research and think tank out of northern Michigan and I
became their company pilot essentially and I flew all over the world or all over the country
with them which was a great experience. I got a lot of single pilot experience flying the aircraft
and instructing the owner on occasion as he rode with me on a lot of the flights.
I had a great experience with them but kind of still had an itch to do something more
and my friend was applying to go to Navy OCS for a pilot slot, my friend Mark. At the time I thought
you had to go to the Naval Academy and your dad had to be an admiral to do that but he filled me
in and said no you can apply to OCS. You have flight experience. You have a bachelor's degree.
You're fully qualified to do that. I did a bunch of research on a website called Air Warriors
which is an online form that I highly recommend for anybody who's interested in getting into the
world of military aviation and I learned about what tests I needed to take, how to prepare
and I took the test to get in. I did well on the test after studying and with my background in
aviation already it made for a pretty strong package and I got picked up for a pilot slot
for the Navy. Now how many people that apply have the kind of flight experience that you do already?
Because the Navy must have been loving the fact that you had that resume. Yeah you don't have to
have any flight experience to apply. It definitely helped but it was completely unnecessary. I
probably had more flight experience than most going in which was good in some ways but also
at disadvantages I had to relearn to do everything the Navy way but it certainly helped with the
application process for sure. I went to Navy OCS out of Newport, Rhode Island, graduated through
there and then headed down to Pensacola, Florida where I went to aviation pre-flight indoctrination
which was basically a month of ground school as well as some survival training. We got to do
things like swim a mile in our flight suits and then do the helo dunker where they flip you upside
down in this body of a helicopter in a pool and unclip yourself and escape blindfolded
which was a good time. Once I finished there I headed to Corpus Christi, Texas where I completed
primary flight training and the T-34 Charlie the turbo mentor which is a pretty high performance
single engine prop plane with a turbine engine on it fully aerobatic and it was actually a
pretty surprising to see that that's the first aircraft the Navy uses for training because it's
a pretty powerful aircraft but that's the way naval training works. They cram a lot into a very
condensed syllabus and get the most out of the time and money that they put into it. My previous
flight experience definitely helped with the flying part of that. I already had the stick and rudder
skills to help me excel and graduate towards the top of my class and I was able to select jets
coming out of that. I then headed to Kingsville, Texas with VT-22 and I was trained in the T-45
Charlie Goss Hawk which is a single engine jet and I did my intermediate training and once I
completed intermediate training I went to an interview process and that's where you can
either select the F-18 route or you can select the E-2 C-2 route which is a carrier based
airborne radar system aircraft. It's got like a huge disc on the top big prop plane and then the
C-2 is basically the cod. They basically are like the mailman and they deliver people and everything
onto the aircraft carrier. I wanted the F-18 slot and went to the interview process and it went well
and I got selected for the F-18 training program. Then I headed to VFA-106 which is in Virginia
Beach, Virginia at NAS Oceania and I spent a year completing the F-18 training program there which
was extremely intense. It's not as physically demanding as what the special operations guys
go through but it's certainly the mental version of that as far as having to perform at a very high
level absorb a massive amount of information. It's kind of the expression as trying to drink out of a
fire hose. There's so much that comes at you and so much you have to learn just to get the baseline
of information and then being able to actually perform in the jet. Everything is graded, the
standards are extremely high and it was intense but made it through that training. Initially did
the transition syllabus where you learn the aircraft systems, emergency procedures, a lot of
the basic flight ops, navigation of the aircraft and you quickly get into operating the radar
system, doing intercepts with the radar on other aircraft and then you do the strike syllabus which
is where you learn how to basically use the aircraft to drop bombs in a bunch of different
scenarios including close air support. Completed that and then moved to the air to air syllabus
or the fighter syllabus. The F-18 is sort of the jack of all trades, master of none so we have to
be able to do a wide variety of roles in the aircraft which always keeps it interesting but
you never feel like you know what the hell you're doing because of it. It's just not the fire service.
Yeah but did the fighter syllabus learning air combat maneuvering or BFM which is fighting the
jet in the visual arena all the way out to long range air to air intercepts and tactics which gets
extremely complex and difficult and then the last part of the syllabus you do carrier qualifications
which is basically the most difficult thing you can do in an aircraft is try to land on the back
of a moving aircraft carrier in the dark in bad weather. Actually my first time out to the aircraft
carrier I disqualified at the boat which is semi-common for that phase just because it's so
demanding but I was fortunate to get a second chance and I went back and my second time I
qualified and I graduated VFA 106 and was picked up by VFA 143 the Pukin Dogs out of Virginia Beach.
It's a good name. Yeah there's actually there was a lot of controversy behind their name
and I think back in the 90s they had to switch it. They were originally the Griffins back in the 1950s
when the squadron was established. There was a party at the officer's club at one point and
somebody had made a papier-mache statue of the Griffin this winged lion that was the
the mascot of the squadron and one of the you know everybody's drinking having a good time and one of
the wives of one of the pilots was from New Orleans she had a real thick accent she said
oh that looks like a pukin dog and everybody cracked up and thought it was the perfect name
and it stuck with the squadron until the political correct police came in and made
them switch it back for a while but because the dogs with nausea were offended or I guess I guess
yeah they were they were offended and but fortunately now it's a good name.
And but fortunately now it's again the pukin dogs despite all the political correct nonsense
that's going on in the world these days. But yeah I was there for about eight months.
I wasn't the new guy anymore there were maybe four or five newer guys in the squadron.
I was finally starting to feel like I was getting the swing of things and on January 15 2014
I was heading out on a flight to do some air to air refueling and then on the back side of that
with extra fuel and a little bit of time I was going to go do BFM basic fighter maneuvering which
despite having the word basic in it there's not much basic about it's you know dog fighting is
very dynamic some people describe it as a knife fight in a phone booth so you're you're within
visual range of another jet and you're trying to shoot each other down in this case for training
it's a very perishable skill so anytime we get the chance to practice it we we go out and practice.
A lot of the training that's done in the F-18 is intense we you know we train harder than
hopefully we ever have to do in real life and that's certainly the case with the with BFM
you know it's it's dynamic but it was it was my favorite thing to do in the jet you know I'm a
fairly short guy at the time I was pretty pretty stocky build so I did well with the G's and and I
it was just the most exciting thing ripping around the jet pulling G's trying to shoot the other guy
down you're operating weapon systems defensive systems radar it's kind of like playing chess
jazz piano being in a wrestling match and and driving in heavy traffic with screaming kids in
the back of your car talking on the phone so there's a lot going on but it's it's a good time
anyways getting ready for the flight my buddy Fisty who joined the squadron about the same time
as I was standing duty officer that day which means he's the pilots take turns rotating through
that position each day and you basically answer the phone the radio coordinate the flight schedule
and anyways as a joke we're always doing stuff to keep things light because it's a pretty high
stress job and you can easily let that overwhelm me if you don't laugh at it and Tom Fisty is an
expert at keeping things light and making it fun he's kind of like Chris Pratt and Chris Farley all
in one guy just awesome human being and and anyways he on the whiteboard behind the SDO desk he had
put up basically a big picture of the working area the airspace that we were going to utilize
that day over the Atlantic Ocean and for fun below it he had marked all the locations of these GPS
tagged sharks off of the shark tracker app and just so happened that that day there was a 16 foot
3500 pound white shark named Mary Lee directly underneath the area I was going to go out to
and Tom joked hey it'd be a bad day to eject because there's this freaking white shark right
under you at the time I had had the small mouth big ears was my primary tactic going into a
fighter squadron as a new guy so I had been you know kept my head down I hadn't stuck out really
and and that because of that I didn't earn a call sign yet you normally get a call sign because of
something stupid you do or something that is embarrassing and right before the flight another
one of the more senior junior officers in the squadron another pilot Basil had come up to me
and he said hey you know you just haven't done anything stupid enough to earn a call sign yet
they had another whiteboard in the squadron and all the new guys on it and and most of the other
new guys had you know already earned a call sign or had a whole laundry listed call signs for
potential or potential call signs give me some examples because in Top Gun everyone's just got
very complimentary name Maverick Iceman so what a call sign that is
Maverick Iceman so what a call sign that is actually how it works so so well Basil so
he's gonna hate me for telling this story but he he his was Basil which was an acronym for
Bang's a sister-in-law because he had allegedly had sexual relationships with his sister-in-law
which is probably not true at all but it's stuck anyway yeah and then Fisty he had earned his
because he had gone out on a flight one day a jet had just come out of maintenance and they needed
somebody to just go fly the jet around and make sure everything was good on it and he basically
just got to go out for a joyride in F-18 we have a moving map in the jet and it depicts some of the
airspace and things on it but unfortunately those are oftentimes out of date and don't include all
the restricted areas and things in them like the old garments that you had to update every time
and so he went out on a flight and he was just having a good time flying right right where he
thought was no issue and he ended up accidentally flying through a restricted area and there were a
bunch of marines that were live firing a stinger missile which is a like a heat seeking shoulder
mounted missile system intended to shoot down aircraft and they had test fired it like within
seconds of him flying through this restricted area so he got Fisty because it was flu and
distinger territory but yeah he almost got shot down by friendly marines by accident
so here in that one and in a trip to the to the base skipper i love that in the fire service
there's some of the best names just to give you one quickly we had a guy one of the nicest most
chill fire captains i ever worked on his name was Joel but and we've just been exposed to acute sleep
deprivation so you'll understand this at night time when we got the calls he turned he just just
always super super angry so they called him by Jola that's great yeah yeah so it's it's
normally something embarrassing or something you hate or something goofy about you but it's not
normally very flattering anyways i got ready for the flight the buoy temperature that of the water
that day in january we'd had a really cold winter and the water temperature that i was going to be
operating over was 37 degrees fahrenheit so after the brief got on my dry suit along with the g suit
and all the other normal gear we wear and walked out to the jet i had just gotten qualified with
my jehemix helmet which is a joint helmet mounted queuing system it's this big bulgy visor but
wherever you turn your head the the weapon systems in your display will all come with you and all
your flight information a very cool system but i was still kind of getting used to this new piece
of gear which became a factor in the flight that i'll get into anyways took off with my flight lead
and we got out to the working area and did some air to air refueling another junior officer buddy
call sign hipster was was flying the tanker jet that day this air ars refueling pod aerial refueling
system had just come out of maintenance so they needed us to test and make sure that it was working
properly so i got a few practice plugs that air to air refueling you basically extend a little probe
out of the nose of the jet fly behind a basket and get fuel and and that all went great and so we had
extra time and and airspace so me and my flight lead headed out and we we set up for some bfm
which was awesome we did uh like four or five rounds of it which is kind of like a round of
martial arts or wrestling or whatever you kind of fight until somebody has a clear clear win and
you knock it off and you reset and uh being that i was fighting my commanding officer that day
someone who had been a top gun graduate you know a master of the craft who'd been doing it for 15
plus years you know he it was like stepping in the ring with mike tyson and he kicked my ass but
that's that's how you learn to do that is is you get in over your head in the navy and and you
figure it out uh anyways we had done several iterations and we were on our last set of the day
uh we had hit joker fuel which means we were almost out of fuel for the day and we were
kind of heading back towards oceania uh we set up for one last set a little bit lower and a little
bit faster than we normally would uh no big deal though he called the fights on and we pitched in
off of what's called the beam set i pitched the jet towards him we were kind of in a dive towards
each other um and as we merged i was partially inverted i was getting used to this jahemmick's
helmet and there's a bunch of hotas which is like the the controls you use on the stick and throttle
to operate that system i was focused on that and trying to use the radar and get used to that and
it distracted me just for a moment i didn't realize how fast i had gotten at that merge
and i was already about 30 degrees nose low and partially inverted i opted to roll the jet fully
inverted and pull the jet down towards the ocean in what's called a split s maneuver
which is basically a big loop down towards the ocean and then come back up was my plan
i would have been okay but as i hit bullseye nose low so pointed straight down at the ocean
the aircraft hit a transonic mock which is right before you break the speed of sound
and at that speed it enacted this feature of the f-18 called the g bucket it uh it basically the
aircraft thought there were bombs on the wings that weren't actually there and because of that
at that transonic region parasitic drag so the the force of the air acting on the aircraft when
you're pulling g's gets really extreme at that point it's actually once you break the sound
barrier that force actually decreases a little bit but that's back uh back when they were trying
to initially break the sound barrier all the engineers thought you can't get through that
that drag because it's like a wall the sound barrier you can't break through that which of
course the pilots were like well watch us we're going to break through it anyways
uh but that's basically where i was at with the aircraft and because of hitting that speed
the aircraft reduced the g available to me on the jet so i went from a seven and a half g pull which
you know you can feel on your body the jehemix helmet in my head together weighed approximately
20 pounds so at almost eight times that it's like having a 150 pound person on your head
and you can feel that through your body but especially in your head trying to look around and
and keep sight of the other aircraft and so all of a sudden i you know i had the stick in my lap
i'm blasting through the sky and all of a sudden i just felt that force lift off down to about four
and a half g's and you know this all just happens in a few seconds and before i know it i'm just
stuck in a dive at the ocean and uh you know i'm pulling the stick all the way in my lap but it was
like going around a sharp corner in a sports car and then having the steering wheel kick back halfway
but instead of skidding off the side of the road i was now stuck diving at the ocean so what would
have been an acute curve became a lot longer curve so you never would have made that turn it
drastically increased the turn radius of the jet uh and and you know the aircraft was trying to
protect itself from a minor overstress potentially but the result was that the aircraft
was trying to protect itself from a minor overstress potentially but the result of it
outsmarting me was it put us in a catastrophic situation which in part was my fault for maneuvering
the jet so aggressively but this g bucket has you know caused mishaps near mishaps and killed
people prior to me and and unfortunately it is i know at least one guy who has died because of it
but i'm diving at the ocean and i can sense the ground rush of the ocean coming up at me rapidly
and there was no other option at that point to where i'd gotten i'd pulled the throttle to idle
i'd put out a speed break but it was too little too late in the few seconds i had to figure out
what was going on and i was at 51 degrees nose low going 695 miles per hour which is 0.95 indicated
mach at 2000 feet above the ocean so essentially at the speed of sound and two seconds before
impacting the ocean i pulled the ejection handle and a normal ejection is is pretty violent it
compresses your spine you're sitting on a rocket on the seat and when that rocket ignites you get an
instantaneous 50 g's of force which will permanently compress your spine and that eases up into about
12 to 14 sustained g's which is still a very high g load to get you out of the aircraft in less than
half a second when i pulled the ejection handle i was two seconds from impacting the water by the
time the ejection seat cleared the aircraft i was about a second and a half from impacting the water
and hitting the airflow at that speed was like hitting the force of an explosion
if you've ever stuck your arm out a car window going about 70 miles per hour down the highway
you felt about one one hundredth of the force that was acting on me at almost 700 miles per hour that
that parasitic drag force is exponentially stronger with airspeed so
you know it was so powerful just the force of the air it had ripped my helmet off my head
pain in my right arm tore through my brachial artery causing a
it smashed my head giving me a brain injury it had just pummeled my face i mean my face looked like
i had just lost in the 15 rounds of boxing it was all black and blue my eyes were swollen
i broke my neck i broke my left scapula in my shoulder broke both my upper arms
internal bleeding my left forearm shattered in multiple places destroying the radius and ulna
i severed my median nerve i had a brachial plexus injury which is the nerve that innovates most of
your upper body coming out of your c5 and your spine both my lower legs were flailing so violently
with steel-toed boots on them the steel-toed boots essentially became like a mace and smashed my lower
legs open so i had both my lower tibia tibia tibia and fibulas were shattered open chunks of
my bone were falling out with open fractures more nerve damage to my legs and i had ejected so fast
that it had shredded majority of the survival gear off of my vest and it had also ripped open
my dry suit and miraculously the parachute opened enough to slow me so that i didn't die on impact
in that second and a half that i had to slow and landed in the open atlantic ocean at 37 degrees
fahrenheit and if you ever felt that kind of cold water if you're into cold plunges you know that
it's like needles on your skin if you put your head under it it feels like brain freeze quickly
my dry suit filled up with the ice water and the parachute that just saved my life was pulled under
by the ocean currents and started to drag me underneath we have a system on our harness
called the sewers which is a salt water activated explosive device and what that does is when it
detects salt water it's supposed to set off a little explosive that disconnects your parachute
from you automatically because in high-speed jet ejections it's so common for you to have arm
injuries flail injuries that you can't reach up and disconnect manually you know unfortunately
a lot of our gear is pretty antiquated one of one of the sewers fired but didn't disconnect and the
other one didn't even fire off at all so i was trapped in my parachute with no ability to
disconnect or swim fortunately my lpu my life preserver unit automatically inflated around
my neck giving me a little bit of buoyancy but i spent the next hour and a half being drug under
the ocean by that parachute and if you've ever been held under by a big wave when you need a
breath of air you know that feeling of dread and and how awful is that i was inhaling a lot of salt
water i was in and out of consciousness i coughed up i'd get up get a little bit of float up to the
surface get a quick breath of air cough out what water i had and then i would immediately drug back
under and i was completely helpless at the mercy of the ocean fortunately my uh my flight lead my
skipper saw my parachute open and he was able to drop a mark on my location a gps position
he dialed up maritime guard when he spotted a fishing vessel that was about a mile from
my position and tried to get their attention they weren't initially answering so he got down really
low and really fast and at this point he's essentially on fumes at bingo fuel and buzzed
over the bow of their boat getting their attention by doing what's called thumping them you know a
fighter jet flying over your bow real close real fast they quickly realized something was going on
they switched up and were able to get in communication with him on maritime guard
they eventually got over to my position and were able to throw out a rope i was unable to grab it
uh and it ended up getting tangled in lines and around my neck which uh was fortunate that they
ended up not pulling me onto the ship under their boat as that trauma of just getting me out of the
water would have likely killed me at that point um with what fuel my skipper had left he was able
to coordinate as the on-scene commander with air traffic control get out of aircraft and they had
two helicopters coming in my position as well as a coast guard vessel the first helicopter that
arrived had been operating off of a nearby aircraft carrier they had been instructed to take me out of
the water and bring me back to the aircraft carrier not realizing the extent of my injuries
their rescue swimmer dove in and he thought i was on the fishing vessel still
which i wasn't but at least the fishing vessel gave a rough location because i was just a little
dark head bobbing around out in the open ocean and getting drug under so that the fishing vessel was
at least a rough location of where i was at um another thing that had malfunctioned was the
beacon so there was no beacon but again my skipper's quick thinking getting that fishing vessel over
at least got my rough location for people but the first helicopter thought i was on the boat
jumped in swam right by me and uh didn't find me which ended up again being a wild twist of fate
because had they gotten me and brought me back to the aircraft carrier i would have died on the
aircraft carrier because they didn't have the the ability to save me how bad i was and the other
rescue helicopter was actually uh they're guys from hsc 28 which is a navy squadron out in norfolk
they were gearing up to go do a weapons exercise with some of the seal teams uh and had gotten the
call and so they quickly switched their mission the rescue swimmer that was with them uh call
sign cheech the week prior there had been a navy h-53 c dragon one of these big heavy lift
helicopters uh had a fire and had to ditch in the ocean nearby right where i was at that day
the week prior and at the time the navy policy was anybody who's involved in an aircraft accident
and the water has to be put on a backboard to be lifted into the aircraft and because of that it
took them a long time to get everybody that had survived the crash onto the backboard and into
the helicopter and unfortunately several of the people that day perished because of hypothermia
cheech recognized that he was coming off the worst week of his career essentially after
witnessing all these people die you know and he didn't get any time off he was back at it
and he showed up to my rescue and in the back of his mind was you know this dude is gonna be
hypothermic and i don't care about the backboard if he has a back injury that's unfortunate which
i did but he's like if if we take all this time to put him on a backboard
he's gonna die from hypothermia so screw it um the the pilot of their helicopter was the first
one to actually spot my location in all the chaos of this rescue effort um they spotted
they spotted me and got over to my position cheech jumped in and he said he got down to me and he
was able to clip into my titanium d-ring on my harness and he said as soon as he clipped in that
parachute pulled both of us underwater and he had done training in in the pools and been helped
pulled under and he said you know in the pool you see the bottom of the pool but when we got
drug under by that parachute that day he said it was just this dark blue abyss and tangled
paracord and parachute below us he said it was you know pretty pretty incredible to see pretty
scary you know but his training kicked in he was able to get down and disconnect with his knife to
cut me loose of all the paracord and quickly got me riding up the line to the helicopter you know
we were going up the line just spinning around like crazy getting blasted with prop wash from
the h-60s uh helicopter got me into the helicopter uh one of the other crew members uh had started to
eat his lunch right before they had gotten the call and so he had this meatball sandwich and then
when they got the call he had to kind of like toss it back and what he had left of these shreds of
the wrapper and threw it in the corner of the helicopter and by the time i had gotten up there
his meatball sub had kind of rolled all over the floor of the helicopter and so they they kind of
had me in it and and i was covered in like marinara sauce and meatballs and uh you know on the
ride to the to norfolk general uh it was only like a 40-ish minute ride 45 minute ride but they said
it seemed like it lasted five hours because the whole time i was in and out of consciousness you
know so near death they they kept trying to resuscitate me doing sternum rubs everything
they could to get me to come back um by the time we got to norfolk general i was just covered in
meatballs and marinara sauce so it looked like a bloody mess so as the the hospital staff came out
they had to explain to him hey this is all meat he's in bad shape but that's all just meatballs
his wounds take delicious but you know at this point i'm i'm really out of it i'm like sitting
up occasionally screaming for help still just completely out of it uh they wheeled me in and
got me into treatment uh they took my core body temperature and my core body temperature was at
87 degrees fahrenheit so i should have been dead from hypothermia but they said had i not had this
severe hypothermia i would have bled to death way before anybody got there so it was again another
miraculous twist in it um they treated me for hypothermia i had kidney failure just my body was
so overwhelmed processing all the the the damage to my muscles um i had to have blood transfusions
once they got me semi-stable they induced a coma and rushed me into surgery and i spent the next
week undergoing over a dozen surgeries um they rebuilt my skeleton with uh these they call them
a titanium nail which is a rod that they put inside the bone uh they hold in place with screws so i
had titanium rods in both my upper arms a big steel plate with a bunch of screws in my left forearm
both my tibia uh were rebuilt with these titanium not uh rods or nails the surgeon called
intermediate uh rods i think they call them something like that uh they treated me for
compartment syndrome because of all the damage to the extremities uh the muscles were just so swollen
it cuts off the circulation and in just a few decades ago that would have resulted in me being
a quadriplegic uh best case scenario they would have just cut off all my extremities to save them
fortunately they had the surgical dream team on that day at norfolk general and they were able to
do limb salvages on all four of my uh my limbs uh with fasciotomies uh and save the limbs but uh by
doing that they had to open up these huge uh huge incisions on my arms and legs um after a week of
that you know i had a now i look my skeleton looks like freaking wolverine uh and a bunch of scars
from all the surgeries they had to do a brachial artery bypass they they nearly amputated my right
hand because of the artery while it was so damaged did they put a tourniquet on are they aware of
that or was it hidden i'm not sure if they put a tourniquet or not i think it i think they didn't
initially recognize that because it was internal but uh when they saw that the circulation was so
bad where they almost amputated luckily again they called in this uh this vascular surgeon that was
able to fix it last second but i was very close to losing that limb even despite the fasciotomies
um after that week of surgeries uh you know at this point my family and squadron mates are at
the er just wondering if i'm going to live they were trying to get me out of the coma at that
point but i spent another week in a non-induced coma where it was just kind of up in the air
what was going to happen to me everybody in my squad a bunch of the guys in my squadron were
all sitting around waiting to hear you know some good news and uh basal said you know he's a
scrappy motherfucker he'll be fine and so that became my call sign smurf uh they had to can
sit condense it down into a makeshift acronym with the politically correct call sign that i'm smurf
because i'm a short guy that turned blue from hypothermia but uh but the real reasons uh they
called me a scrappy motherfucker my friends in college i was a kiteboard instructor and they
always called me scrappy and my friend matt i had put on when something bad happens uh when you join
a squadron you fill out a this piece of paperwork and you put people that you want to have contacted
if something bad were to happen and my friend matt who ran uh bronia kiteboarding uh was a good
friend of mine and so i had put his name on that letter that i thought nobody would ever have to
use so my skipper when everything happened had called him and told him what was going on and
he's like scrappy are you talking about scrappy so that's how the squadron got word of my old
nickname scrappy and then it turned into scrappy motherfucker but anyways they were waiting for me
to come too and after two weeks slowly the lights started coming back on i remember everything was
dark initially but i could hear familiar voices and when i came to it was like waking up out of
a dream i had no idea how i'd gotten there i recognized everybody but i was really out of it
between the trauma and the brain injury and the drugs they had me loaded up on i remembered the
the blanket over me it was just this little thin wool blanket i thought it was made out of lead
or something i couldn't budge it but it was because i was paralyzed all my extremities were
vacuum sealed in this plastic wrap to prevent its infection i had nearly 200 sutures and staples
in all of my open fasciotomy wounds i looked like frankenstein you know with all the all the scar
or all the incisions and once you know my family had come in and given me hugs and and been so
they were so happy to see me that the medical staff came in and were we're kind of like hey
you're just to give you realistic expectations you're you're proud you're never going to walk
again you're not going to use your arms again and your flying career is over and in the back of my
mind i was just kind of like i'm going to prove you wrong you know and that became my driving
force is i'm going to get back and fly and uh after a couple weeks in the icu i was eventually
transferred down to richmond virginia's polytrauma center at the va hospital there in richmond
virginia uh and every day most every just became uh doing therapy of every kind i had to do
vision therapy speech therapy occupational therapy physical therapy kinesia therapy aqua therapy
recreational therapy all this stuff all day every day and for a long while you know i i could barely
move i couldn't use my arms i couldn't use my legs but little by little keeping at it things started
turn back on uh you know the staff at the hospital there the va hospital was really incredible
everybody that worked on that floor was there because they were passionate and really wanted
to be there and help um there were certainly some shortcomings of the va hospital the the biggest
one i would say is the nutrition aspect you know they have all this equipment they have this this
sort of facade of the facility being very nice because it had just been renovated every room had
these big screen tvs in it fresh paint nice art uh and all this equipment but the most foundational
piece of your healing is the nutrition that you take in and unfortunately the food that they were
giving us uh for example my favorite one i jokingly called the holiday feast which was um
um kind of like a thanksgiving dinner but it was the turkey was this sliced slimy deli meat that
looked like it was near rancid that had come off the half off rack at the deli uh the mashed potatoes
were clearly from a box as there were still like dried chunks of powdery stuff in them
on top was this can shaped gelatinous brown uh disc of what was supposed to be the gravy but it
looked like it had just come out of a can of dog food and then on the side was a white generic
jelly packet that just said cranberry and you open it up and it was basically purple jello made out
of high fructose corn syrup and artificial color so you know your body wasn't getting
decent nutrition and i saw a lot of guys there not make progress despite all the therapy and
everything i was fortunate that i had friends and family start to bring me food from the outside so
i actually got some nutrition um but you know they're they're driving this food because it was
probably the lowest bidder for the contract they're they're they're making the stuff all the way out
on hampton roads like an hour and a half away putting it into metal boxes and then driving
it to richmond virginia so by the time it gets to you it's well one it's already very nutrient
lacking food but it's been reheated stuck in a hot box and it's like so it's like airplane food
garbage bad airplane food bad airplane food yeah yeah actually our airplane food on this trip was
way better and it wasn't great so that's a lot but after three months uh i had regained the ability
to get around on a walker and i was released into outpatient therapy i moved back to virginia beach
and continued therapy um i had several more surgeries and i had at that point been put on
a massive amount of pain pain medications i was on an over a dozen medications plus all the
medications the counter-effect the side effects of those medications and uh you know i was in a
pretty bad spot but the guys in my squadron my buddy fisty from the squadron my buddy vinnie
uh and guys from the squadron and the strike fighter community kind of kept me at it that you
know they were taking me out taking me out to chick's oyster bar going out and having drinks we
they had me out wake surfing and they got me out doing things again otherwise i would have probably
you know just been down in oxycodone and whiskey and melted into a chair for the rest of my life
but well just to interject for a second you're told that you'll never walk again use your arms
use your arms etc now you're talking about wake surfing so walk me through before we get past that
the journey from that incredibly inspiring speech you got for the medical stuff to
to how you were able to stand up behind a boat yeah i mean i i just little by little i had kept
pushing myself uh especially getting out wake surfing you know i could barely walk onto the
boat but they got me back behind the boat and and i got standing up on the surfboard and
and it was just like all these little things were reinvigorating my soul and getting me back at it
and it was very slow um a few of my buddies took me down to the outer banks uh i could barely put
on my wetsuit because my arms were still so weak and we went out into this pretty heavy like 10 to
12 foot swell and i just got annihilated by these waves but i popped back up and i had a smile on
my face and it was just it was that sort of thing that really kept me going my friends uh my buddy
erin callsign spicoli he he took me uh to bryce which is a a downhill mountain bike park
a few hours from virginia beach and took me out downhill mountain biking i i had done some trail
riding before but i'd never done the downhill stuff but you know i had all the armor and
everything on and a full face helmet and i'm out there my my left hand was so weak at this point
i could barely still use the the front brake and but i miraculously made it down you know without
dying now what about the war just to go back for a second you had a pretty traumatic event in the
ocean was there a mental kind of journey getting back into the ocean to or back into the water
to get behind the boat you know i i thought that there might be problems being held under by that
wave but i was it did the opposite it wasn't terror it was like it reinvigorated me and it made me
excited to get back on the horse and face those demons and and uh yeah when we initially were
going down there i was like i don't know how this is going to go being if i get held under by a wave
but then it happened and it was like oh i'm fine i can survive that i survived all that other
craziness this is nothing now uh so it really it really helped inspire me a lot actually refacing
those fears um after two years uh of pretty intense rehabilitation my actually one of the
guys in my squadron smuggler his wife amanda was a physical therapist she took me under her wing
uh outside of the clinical setting uh and the first day she showed up with an algin bottle and on the
side of it it said patients tears uh so she had you know this dark sense of humor and she proceeded
to kick my ass uh when i first started working with her i was still walking on a cane and uh she
kind of snatched it away from me and i tossed it and it's like i never want to see you use that again
but uh she proceeded to kick my ass you know in more of like a crossfit style workout and
workout and um really intense training which i really liked because i was into that kind of
stuff before and so despite you know having a fraction of the ability that i did before
it helped uh just trying to do it um after two years i had gone through a fienab which is a
field naval aviator evaluation board i had crashed uh in 2014 it would have been 89 million dollar jet
adjusted for inflation today that's about 106 million dollars and so there was uh you know a
lot of questions to be answered about that and i went through a full investigation uh at the end
of the investigation uh i eventually went in to see an admiral uh and had to get in my dress whites
and stand at the end of this big long wooden table with aviators on either side of it um
um and i explained my side of what had happened and you know i largely took fault for what had happened
i had made a mistake i had overly aggressively maneuvered this aircraft and and
largely took it upon myself for what happened uh and the admiral walked in and everybody
rose at the table as he sat and told us all to sit down and he looked across the table at me
and the only question he asked me is he said lieutenant gil are you fearless and i kind of
thought for a moment and and responded and i don't know if it was what came over me but the answer
that came out is uh i don't remember some of the things from the ejection but i'm certain
what little cushion there is on an ejection seat was puckered up inside me real good
real good and he didn't smile he just stood up and left the room and i was thinking oh god that
didn't go very well but uh eventually another one of the the higher ranking officers there pulled
me into his room and sat me down and he handed me a lifesaver a little mint and i put it in my mouth
and he put one in his mouth and he said congratulations you're gonna go back and fly
and shook my hand so um i'd gotten the opportunity to go back to fly assuming i could
physically get better and at this point i was still pretty bad shape physically
but it gave me a huge amount of motivation and after two years after struggling with
prescription drug addiction i weaned myself off of all the medications they had me on
uh including oxycodone oxycontin amitriptyline tramadol trazodone and massive doses of neratin
or gabapentin which was supposed to be a safer non-addictive alternative pain medication but
that one actually ended up being the most difficult for me to get off of uh and again against the
advice of all the pain management clinic and the doctors they wanted me to just stay on all that
stuff and i went against their advice and slowly weaned myself off it which was miserable
i continued to do pt and little by little i got back a lot of my physical abilities and after two
years i could max out the navy's physical fitness test again and i was crushing it and i felt good
again and the commodore where i was stationed through my recovery at the strike fighter wing
on oceania he saw me and he just couldn't believe that i was doing this again i was literally running
circles around the majority of the command at command pt uh and so before i knew it i got in
i got a date to class back up for retraining in the f-18 and i went back through retraining
and i had an immense amount of support from the instructors there like they were ecstatic to see
me come back from that and the strike fighter community really welcomed me with open arms
and i had been back flying uh i did a i did the refresher training syllabus in the f-18
went really well and uh ended up graduating at the top of my class and getting the top stick award
granted i had you know already done it so it was kind of like cheating but but you had also been
smashed to pieces yeah so but i was i was stoked to be back i ended up getting stationed with vfa
136 the night hawks out of uh nas lamor in california is that previously the the pooping cats
they were the night hawks uh so not nearly as controversial of a name but uh uh still flying
f-18 echoes super hornets again and uh it started off good i felt solid and uh
uh you know i was back and we were out on a detachment at uh what's called in wessup which
is a weapons exercise down in tindall air force base run by the air force and i got to go out and
do a live fire exercise with an aim 9 mike sidewinder heat seeking missile and uh went out
shot the missile at a drone and uh after i i did that i i joined up with an f-22 raptor there were
some guys there from the hawaiian raptor squadron uh based out of a wahoo which is probably got to
be the the best flying gig ever flying raptors out of a wahoo uh anyways uh after i did the
missile shoot i got to join up with the raptor another junior officer you know so two young guys
in their 20s out flying fighter jets uh with each other was pretty rad and i remember you know seeing
that aircraft maneuver and you know it's got directional thrust on it and it just moves like
a spaceship came back from the flight and i was watching my tapes for the missile shoot portion
and i realized i didn't remember a majority of what happened with the missile shoot i remember the
fighting the raptor but i was pretty concerned with not being able to remember so much of firing
a real missile uh so i went back that night to the hotel and i was having trouble sleeping and i
didn't really feel that great um the next day fortunately i was just on duty so i was running
the radios and coordinating the flight schedule and the further the day went on i just got feeling
worse and worse and worse and just kind of toughed it out went back to the hotel that night could not
sleep i i sat down on the end of the bed and it felt like the room was tumbling around me i got
really bad vertigo and i started just feeling extremely anxious and in the back of my mind i
thought this could be decompression sickness there was uh for a long while we had some issues with
the pressurization system on the hornets and super hornets malfunctioning uh and it would cause rapid
and rapid cabin fluctuations uh pressure the pressure would rapidly fluctuate and if you're
a scuba diver you're familiar with decompression sickness when you come back up from the depths of
the ocean too quickly the nitrogen in your blood can can basically come out of solution and cause
these little bubbles and if you get it in your joints type 1 dcs it's very painful but if you
get those little bubbles forming in your brain that's called type 2 decompression sickness and
it can give you all sorts of mental impairments it can be like having an aneurysm it can even kill you
so that was the first thing that came to mind maybe i have decompression sickness so i contacted the
squadron safety officer squeezer and very quickly they got me to mayport dive base which was about
20 minutes from where we were staying uh they put me in a hyperbaric chamber overnight at the dive
center there um and i felt a little bit better the next day but i was certainly still out of it and
the the the wise doc there said hey you know maybe this was decompression sickness but considering
your medical history we really need you to go in and see medical when you get back to lamor
which was the last thing i wanted to have to do after going through the process of getting all
these medical waivers and and all the the fighting and battle and struggle i had to get back in the
jet but i didn't want to injure somebody and i knew something was seriously wrong
i continued to have a real trouble concentrating my memory was was not working the way it normally
did and i started to have really bad insomnia which was leading to paranoia and hypervigilance
where i was just constantly on guard and i started to feel like i was maybe in the truman show where
everybody was watching me and recording me and this wasn't real life and everybody was actors
um anyways that led me to go see the psychology department and before i knew i had to go see a
psychiatrist and they largely focused on the psychological component of it retrospectively
i was having very uh very obvious symptoms of traumatic brain injury i was gonna say i mean you
the the force that you hit out that would be a pretty you know giant red flag as well so it was
either you know this the residual effects of an unresolved brain injury from the ejection
or because of the brain injury that causes from dcs from getting those bubbles in your brain can
cause essentially a tbi or maybe a combination of those it's it's unclear for sure which but
um you know hindsight being 2020 i can i can i'm not judging the medical staff that worked on me
or the psychiatrist but the approach they took was largely pharmaceutical based and focused on my
behavior and the fact that my behavior had changed and that i was getting depressed
and that i was having these problems with insomnia and and mood issues and anyways before i knew it
they had me on a bunch of prescription drugs again uh including eventually it progressed to the point
they put me on one called seroquel or quetiapine which is an anti-psychotic medication that can be
used in low dosage to it to help with insomnia and it did help with the insomnia initial initially
you know it would knock me out made me just feel very drained all the time though well you also
you're not sleeping you're unconscious yeah very different i was not getting restful sleep and
in meanwhile the underlying brain injury was being on it was unresolved and and it was actually
exacerbating the brain injury and little by little uh it got to the point where i was going in and
out of psychoses um i was fully disconnected from reality one minute i thought i was a superhero or
a secret agent or in the next minute i thought i was in the depths of hell i mean it got really
weird um fortunately i eventually uh made it through a medical board which uh was a nightmare
in itself uh it's it took almost two years to go through the medical board process and the whole
way through you kind of get treated like uh your injuries are fake and that you're lying about it
and uh it's i kind of jokingly call it's like the uh the bureaucratic version of the temple of doom
you know it's riddled with these booby traps to to to derail you from the process and and kick you
out of the military without any benefit but fortunately with the support of my command and
the medical staff my wife i eventually got through that i actually had to go appeal my case down in
washington dc stand in front of these three military members and explain my case firsthand
because the whole thing had gotten screwed up to where they weren't going to give me the
up to where they weren't going to give me any medical retirement but uh fortunately i one of
the guys on the board saw what had happened and he you know kind of cut off the other two guys that
were debating you know if blah blah blah are you just trying to get out so you can go fly for the
airlines like they didn't even they hadn't even read my case they hadn't looked at my records
or anything they just deliberately like nosedive into the ocean just so you could one day yeah
yeah right exactly that was my dream to go drive a school bus we know your game uh but fortunately
one of the guys there he was a marine colonel and he stood up or lieutenant colonel maybe he stood
up and he's like listen you you experienced devastating injuries you served your country
and now your country's going to take care of you thank you for your service and they uh they gave
me a medical retirement out of the military but a lot of guys get in that situation they don't get
that and now they're homeless living under a bridge in washington dc or wherever and feeling
betrayed by the very tribe they're a part of and unfortunately it's extremely common with guys with
very legitimate injuries and guys that did a lot more than i did in the military war heroes with
multiple purple hearts decorated heroes that are now homeless struggling drug addicted thrown out
on the streets losing the medical care addicted to all sorts of crap and their result is they
typically get street drugs and crushes their life suicide i was fortunate to again get that lifeline
i moved back to northern michigan with my wife and at this point i had a newborn son
i struggled very badly with suicide one night you know i felt my life had just collapsed and that
i was a failure and i kept a glock 19 in my my end table of my by the bed and i got the glock out
and i was wondering what the barrel was going to taste like in my mouth feel like on my teeth what
the the gun oil was going to taste like in my mouth and i looked over and i saw my little boy
and my wife sleeping beside me and the only thing that kept me from putting the pistol in my mouth
is i didn't want them to wake up and i put the pistol back away and i went to bed um
not long after that i had continued my treatment with quetiapine through the va hospital
and the psychiatrist had just continued to up my dose and i had gone from 50 milligrams a night to
300 milligrams a night eventually and then at this point he recommended i try 450 milligrams per night
and when i up my dose to 450 milligrams per night within a few days my wife heard me rustling around
she came in to find me i had for some reason shaved off my hair in chunks with some clippers
i'd shaved off my eyebrows i had shaved off what facial hair i had at that point and i had nothing
i was completely naked except i had a plastic black garbage bag tied around my neck like a cape
and i thought i was going to go out into the northern michigan cold snowy weather and fight
crime like a superhero. You start beating up raccoons. So my wife uh you know she called the va
the va said hey we're hanging up and we're calling the police there's going to be an uh
a squad car arriving there soon and the the police car showed up this sort of dazed and confused
looking uh law enforcement officer got out of the vehicle and my wife's like there's no way in hell
you're going to put my my husband in the back of a police car in his current state and so she loaded
up our little boy and my mom was fortunately visiting at that point and so she came with us
as we were getting ready my my wife was an ER nurse so she kind of knew how this was going to go
she's and she said before you go um and i you know i'm pretty out of it really out of it i mean i was
a moments ago i thought i was a superhero uh but she got me dressed in clothes uh that were acceptable
and she told me to take the shoelaces out of my shoes because they were going to take them anyways
and as she was getting ready and scrambling to put together a bag my little boy had come out to me
where i was taking the shoelaces off and for some reason i had tied one of the shoelaces into a noose
and i put it around my son's neck and when my wife came out i had this noose around my little
boy's neck and in in my mind i was trying to show her that i was just i would never hurt our son
but as a mother seeing that i mean i can't imagine how concerning that would be
anyway she compartmentalized that loaded me into the car and on our way to the hospital which was
about an hour drive i had intense hallucinations that a nuclear explosion had gone off behind us
as i looked into the rear view mirror i saw this mushroom cloud there were you know trees and
vehicles and and animals flying through the sky from the blast uh it was stormy and
it was a wild ride to the hospital all in my imagination you know but they got me to the
hospital as i got out um i decided it was a good idea to pee in one of the bushes in the lobby
and the security guard came out and saw me peeing in this bush and was not so impressed
uh he was about to take me to jail and fortunately uh my wife and my mom talked him down and explained
the situation he was kind of like well i've seen worse and and almost proceeded to arrest me
but fortunately with the tenacity of my wife and my mom standing up for me got me into the er and
admitted um i then spent two nights in the er and had an out-of-body experience uh from the intense
hallucination i was in i had left my body and i had traveled through time and space and and
and just had a wild experience while in there my mom came in to visit me and she said i was sitting
in the chair with the remote control for the little tv in the room and the tv was on nothing
but just static just going and i had the remote and as i clicked it i looked over her with my
with like an eerie grin and i was speaking in this very fast-paced tocado speech which
i almost didn't even sound like the same person but i just kept saying do you see that do you see
that do you see that do you see that do you see that and in my mind as i clicked the remote
i was able to go either forward in time or back in time so as i clicked back i could see back to
the age of the dinosaurs and as i clicked forward i went into this apocalyptic world where jeff
bezos had basically taken over the world everybody was addicted to his stuff there was garbage
everywhere and everybody was completely out of their minds from pharmaceutical drugs and the
and the uh the toxic environment that we had created anyways it was uh in my mind it was wild
but again for my mom to see it from the outside her once thriving son was now completely out of his
completely out of his mind once semi-stable they put me into an ambulance and they drove me down
to battle creek michigan where i spent a while living in a va inpatient psych facility which was
a an absolute nightmare in itself you're largely treated like a prisoner there your the primary
tool there is more pharmaceutical drugs again the food was abysmal no nutritional value uh you're
constantly sleep deprived because they wake you up every 15 minutes with a flashlight in your face to
make sure you're okay um and the combination of being confined harassed throughout the night
the the mandatory drugs lack of nutrition uh you're lucky to go outside maybe once or twice a week
into a concrete yard between the buildings that's surrounded by fences and concrete walls
um you know if you took a an elite military member and and you can find them in those
situations like if they had gone to seer school or something it was almost like the
the same conditions that you would provide if you had an enemy combatant that you were trying to
break well that's that's how you create more mental illness sleep deprivation loss of autonomy
you know poor nutrition it was everything that you could do to exacerbate mental health seemed
to be going on there and the only remedy was pharmaceutical drugs it was all to drive you
into taking more of these drugs and i was very frustrated to the point that uh i planned an
escape when they wouldn't let me out um i pulled the fire uh the the fire alarm one night to try
to think and they would take us outside but apparently somebody had already tried that trick
and because i had tried to do that they um forced me with an injection of held all which is uh
basically to supposedly help you come out of a psychotic state but what i experienced on the
held all was it felt like there were insects underneath my skin trying to crawl through my
skin and rip off all i wanted to do was rip my skin off uh it made me extremely restless it was
like no matter what i did all i wanted to do was run up and down the hallways and scream
um and that in itself was you know felt like torture um eventually they had me in this
just drug-induced state where i was just drooling on myself um despite being voluntarily admitted
they ended up committing me because of the condition i had gotten into um while i was
basically drooling on myself this soulless lawyer came into the room and she had me sign this
paperwork uh that ended up making me considered legally uh mentally defective uh i spent a while
longer in there before my family eventually got me out you know my mom's a physician my dad worked
in medical world my my wife was an er trauma nurse and with their support and advocacy they said hey
we'll take him home and we'll take care of him he doesn't need to be here and they really fought
them on doing that but they eventually got me out and back home where i spent time uh with my son
outside eating good food getting some exercise and it took about six more months for me to
to start to come out of that psychosis um but when i had come out i realized that i had been
declared mentally legally defective which meant uh anytime i get pulled over i am uh basically on the
the law enforcement network the lean network that shows that uh essentially like i had committed a
felony yeah i can't legally purchase firearms anymore uh so i went as an american veteran to
try to get mental health and instead uh had all that happen and had my constitutional rights to
bear arms stripped from me um anyways i spent years after that struggling with mental health
and again the answer was always more drugs and i continued to get very sick of that approach
and and i had gotten to the point where i could barely read i could barely do the dishes
um all of my emotions were cut off and all i was was just this empty shell and i had found myself
you know yelling at my little boy over nothing and i was i was miserable to be around and we were
basically on the verge of being divorced and then i struggled my way through a few books on health
including uh i read rich roll's book uh finding ultra where he went from you know struggling with
you know struggling with alcohol in the corporate world and and obese and and out of shape but
through a plant-based diet was able to get back into shape and do these ultra marathons
i had read michael pullen's um in defense of food and realize how broken our food system is
i largely went plant-based i was also a hunter so i eat a lot of venison from uh from deer in the
area but that change a big change in my diet getting rid of all the crap started to help and
then i read michael pullen's how to change your mind and again these books i struggled through
because i could you know i could only do about a paragraph at a time uh but i got through them
eventually and that led me to uh contact vet solutions yeah and and i reached out to them and
i i you know i told them my story in their program you know that their situation is kind of like
shindler's list you know they're trying to help as many people as they can but they only have so many
resources and not being of the special operations community i didn't have two combat deployments
they weren't able to take me into their program but they put me in contact with
warrior angel foundation which is run by um andrew and adam mar uh andrew is a former green beret
that went through some very similar struggles and his brother adam is a former army attack helicopter
pilot and uh they working with dr mark gordon uh helped to get veterans on a nutraceutical protocol
to help regenerate brains that have been damaged through tbi more holistically and they were doing
an event called the four by four by 48 challenge which was based off of david goggans uh run four
miles every four hours for 48 hours straight i saw that they were doing a fundraiser so i put together
a fundraiser page uh telling a little bit about my story and my struggles and uh it ended up very
quickly raising a bunch of money for their their cause and before i knew adam had called me up on
the phone and said hey you want to come down to texas we'll fly you down for the event and and you
know at this point uh i i had uh i had done one psilocybin retreat that uh that had allowed me to
correlate uh the the trend of these increasing medications causing worse and worse problems
and it you know to use michael poland sort of analogy that he uses in how to change your mind
it was like this this fresh snowfall over these ruts of negative emotions that i had been trapped
in and i was able to take new paths in my behavior and in my in my day-to-day life um but again that
that led me to getting in touch with them uh at warrior angel foundation getting invited down
and at this point my va psychiatrist is very against the the route i'm going he you know he
really wants me to take the drugs well obviously i mean it's worked so far it's so well up to this
point why not yeah right it's working great you know even my family was very skeptical of
of me trying to get off the medications but i in my heart i knew this had to be the option and so i
got down to the the event in texas and was doing these four mile legs and on each leg i was with
another incredible veteran it was largely uh you know marcus and amber were down or yeah marcus and
amber were both down there doing that uh so i met marcus and amber and i met all these largely with
special forces community guys green berets seals um marsok marines uh there were some guys that
were you know they couldn't talk about what their job was but you could tell they did some pretty
high level stuff in the military and on each of these legs i talked to different guys and we all
had this very common theme which was we had these struggles with brain injury and we had been put on
these psychic psych meds and had been made way worse but it was like this this flame of hope that
it gave me that i was on the right path and it was finally you know at that at that event i saw that
okay there's this whole world of alternative modalities out there they're just not accessible
especially through the va but uh i left that event with this newfound spark of hope
i started doing a bunch of podcasts and sharing my story and i was welcomed into this community
of non-profit organizations largely veteran run that are picking up the slack for the massive
gaps that are in our mental health system especially through the va and i started to
get real treatment um you know i i was invited to be part of a peyote ceremony with a native
american group i left that experience with a newfound sense of purpose in life to share my message
and and help give other people this little spark of hope that i got when i heard that there was a
different way ahead you don't have to be a drug addicted empty soul the rest of your life you
don't have to feel like you want to kill yourself every day and through this past year and a half now
you know i've done a number of different podcasts i was invited by heroic hearts project jesse
gould who runs that was at the warrior angel foundation event in march that i had attended
and he invited me down to peru and i got to go down there and do an ayahuasca ceremony
which was largely healing of my soul and and and very eye-opening and and again
healed me in ways that just could not be healed in other ways so i've had a lot of success with these
psychedelic medications and defenders of freedom run by donna kranz and invited me to
dallas texas this past summer and i did a two-week tbi clinic there and and did a bunch of these
modalities that were very simple really i mean balancing and these supplement protocols they do
a very extensive blood panel and they really find out at a physiological level where you're off
so that they can address hormone imbalances which are very common with brain injury
and after two weeks i had drastic improvements in my cognitive functioning and and was exposed to all
of these modalities that are out there that had they implemented those when i started to have my
struggles i would i would still be flying f-18s for the navy so this is not only this would be a
huge benefit if if we could get the military and the va to implement these these these modalities
but uh you know talking to a lot of people in this community i've learned that the pharmaceutical
industry has a huge interest in making a lot of these things unavailable which we were talking
about this morning the Hippocratic oath first do no harm and here we are in a profit-based system
where pharmaceuticals are you know forcing meds that don't even work on communities including
yours absolutely and yeah it's everybody it's it's the whole mental health system and
and it's they're a business they want to do their primary responsibility is to their shareholders
and to make profit and unfortunately the ethical things that are going on are crushing beneficial
treatments either through purchasing those modalities and disappearing them threatening
the people that are producing those or using their sway at the fda to make a lot of these
modalities illegal for no good reason but they can do those things they have that power or even cbd
which i've advocated for for the longest time the guy that um dr smith gregory smith um we had one
of his products was thc free so the first responder you know anyone who drug tests for for their
career like look this is third party tested you can get this it was easily accessible online they
shut down that so now you cannot buy it online you have to you can call them and still order it
through the phone number but they've made it impossible to just do a simple online order for
something that's hemp you know yeah it's it's a plant it's absurd it really is and even while i
was at that brain clinic uh they they used a um a very beneficial peptide that that was helping
people recover from physical injuries and while i was there the pharmacy said they could no longer
write prescriptions for it because it had been made illegal again you know the pharmaceutical
sway at the fda is very powerful the oxycontin is still legal yeah yeah we'll give you all the
stuff you want even though you know how much corruption was behind that oh yeah uh even even
gabapentin the that nerve pain medication that i was on uh the pharmaceutical industry had to pay
a huge fine because they illegally marketed that product for off-label usage uh and these claims
that it was less harmful um which were simply true untrue completely untrue and and they're able to
manipulate pharmaceutical studies these these studies are done with these double blind placebo
tests and they create a massive amount of data but the way it works in reality is they get to
they get to selectively do these data analyses and then the data analysis that the pharmaceutical
funds that's what gets submitted for peer review so the peer reviewer you know we have this gold
standard of a peer review article and a medical journal that whole system has been corrupted
there's a great book called sickening how big pharma broke american health care and how we can
fix it that goes into detail on a lot of that and and that whole process has been corrupted
and it's led to a lot of the things we're seeing now with these medications that are out there that
are doing a lot more harm than good and that's what we're seeing now with these medications that
we're seeing and anyways i've been very fortunate to get on a new path with the support of all these
veteran nonprofits and actually the reason i joined the 7x project a couple days late is
an organization called no fallen heroes which is run by matthew whiz buckley a former navy f18
pilot himself invited me down to costa rica with some other military pilots and we did a week long
iboga retreat in costa rica and iboga is a root out of a tree from africa that's used by the bwiti for
spiritual purposes and rites of passages it's uh it's the most intense psychedelic it's actually
what they make ibogaine out of um but when you take the actually boga root which we were
literally taking spoonfuls of what looked like wood chips because it is wood chips that you're
eating of this root uh it has a variety of alkaloids and it's about 60 ibogaine and a variety
of these other alkaloids that are the psychoactive chemicals that affect your change in your nervous
system and i had an incredible experience on it it was very challenging i mean very i was very
physically sick the first night of ceremony um i was puking purging in every way possible from
shaking to sweating to crying to laughing to things coming out both ends uh
but it was incredibly powerful i worked with uh troy who who was one of the guides there and he's
actually a psychotherapist and he worked with me through everything from childhood traumas through
my traumas in the military and care after and through it we were able to get out of my system
all of these repressed emotions that i had been holding on to um and i came out the other side of
that and it felt like there was just so much evil that had just been purged from my body
all the stuff that had been trapped in my heart all these negative emotions that i had been holding
down that were result you know you can't just cut off the bad stuff when you cut off the bad stuff
you also cut out all your good emotions and it makes you this sort of shell of yourself
um and then the second night i i took the aboga and i had you know a couple hours of just fun
hallucinations and traveling through space and and these and kind of a good time i didn't feel sick
at all that night it was like whatever sickness had gotten out of me and then i fell asleep and
so that medication worked in my that medicine worked in my subconscious as i slept and i woke
up the next morning and i was just in the state of gratitude peace and love and i felt so connected
to the world again and um there's no doubt that these uh plant technologies are are one of the
most powerful tools for healing on so many levels from the emotional uh the emotional side of it the
trauma and the spiritual side of it as well you know reconnecting you to whatever you want to call
that however you want to explain it there is there is a connection between all of us and when you get
cut off from that you end up very alone and it's very debilitating in our current medical system
with no regard from that aspect is is almost soul draining and cuts you off and it puts you it
isolates you into a very dark place that very frequently leads to suicide and i spent a long
time in that dark place and i am so grateful to be reconnected and you know there's we have five
senses that can detect a little bit about what's going on around us but there's so much more going
on around us that we cannot perceive or really even explain in human language or with the logic
and our abilities but there's so much more going on and i caught a glimpse of that through these
medications and and now i can feel it i can feel the results of it um but i came and joined the
7x project now with you guys coming out of just that amazing experience into this other amazing
experience to raise awareness for veteran suicide prevention um and over the past week we
traveled continent to continent and uh everything from skydiving uh to running marathons and just
doing awesome things with this incredible group of humans uh like yourself you know to to spread
awareness of this and and help give other people hope that our our our our our our our our our
our lost in this time of kind of darkness i feel in our society um but it's been incredible i mean
uh showed up in dubai to join you guys i only got to run a 10 mile or there uh and then egypt got
to go into the pyramids skydived over the pyramids which is out of what out of a freaking russian
helicopter i think is that what are they called the m-117 i think it is uh very cool uh jumping
out of the helicopter really gives you a cool sensation with the skydiving and then to be
gliding down over the great pyramids below you and the sphinx and all that i mean that was unreal
and i keep pinching myself you know i can't believe this just happened uh i ran a marathon
once uh we got to london i found out about this trip like two weeks ahead of the time
my buddy's over at jet hq my buddy vinnie who actually took me in during my recovery uh works
with jet hq the garrett and rebecca who joined us on this trip um they did a fundraiser for me
telling a little bit about my story to to fundraise to fill one of these vip slots
uh and they were able to raise a hundred grand in like two weeks to put me in one of the vip slots
so that was that was awesome that it raised money for this cause and then i got to join in
on the adventure but uh anyways like two weeks out i found out about this so i didn't really train
at all and just started running uh ran i i ran pretty much the whole marathon other than a few
times i slowed down with a few walks but i i knocked out the marathon in london uh and then the next day
we ended up in columbia and uh because some of us didn't have our covid vaccine cards 11 of us got
held up in detention uh in the airport and we got put into this windowless white room for the day
you literally weren't allowed into the country while we all went in and did the stuff that we did
we did but i mean you know at the time it was it was kind of disappointing but we made the
best of it in there uh you know we had pretty good spirits going on uh and they were able to get
treadmills in there so two of the athletes that are doing the seven the full seven marathons on
each place uh george and alex each ran a full marathon in detention in columbia these weren't
exactly i mean all they have was the budget to find the treadmill from somewhere so these were
pretty like oh they were home real janky i mean they were the smallest things and and i was we
were surprised they held up for a full marathon but they knocked out a full marathon while we were
there uh and after 20 hours in detention uh you know not eating the greatest food laying on a
tile floor for the most part uh they released us and luckily we were able to join back in with the
trip initially they said we were going to be stuck in there until sunday which would have been five
days in that room having to ask permission to be escorted to the bathroom that you know it would
have been pretty awful but uh joined back up and then uh yesterday we had our final day here in
dallas and and went out and ran another marathon which was probably a bad idea on my part i ran
the first half marathon and then largely walked the second half of it but uh got it done and man
i i think i was the straggler of the group i was the last guy coming through the finish line but
there was a huge gang of support when i got back so i was incredibly grateful everybody waited up
for me to to welcome me back and uh yeah it's been it's been an awesome journey man it's been
an adventure and uh so grateful to be here and i hope this this mission really helps helps people
out there that that find out about it and i know that the money that's being raised through this
is going to help a lot of non-profit organizations and and hopefully the documentary comes together
telling this incredible story and helps to continue to raise some of that awareness and
and support well firstly i mean it was amazing watching you cross that finish line because i
didn't know much about your story i heard someone on the bus from the airport to dallas talking
about the ejection i know ryan told me about someone you know close to when we left so then
when i retroactively saw you crossing the finish line we were kind of rammed with you at the very
i mean like what 100 meters at the end yeah yeah um you know now when i hear about the extent of
your injuries in your mental health journey it just you know magnifies the achievement of of that
that marathon so i mean firstly it's an honor honor having you here but i want to pull a couple of
things from yeah journey absolutely firstly um one of the the the issues that i see and i've
saw it within myself years and years ago is when we talk about suicide there's kind of like two
camps now i think people that understand crisis and you know mental health and then probably a
majority of the people that are still think suicide is selfish and cowardly and all these things
through all these stories that i've heard and you know the number of people who told a story that
have been you know similar to yours now not to the extent of the other side but certainly the
kind of suicide ideation element a lot of them that i didn't realize part of the the thought
process was they felt like they were a burden to the world to their family and so when you
take someone who is in a profession where they would risk their lives for a stranger whether
it's fire military etc and then the brain is so miswired by trauma you know medications sleep
deprivation etc etc at that point what i'm seeing now is the brain has tricked that person
into feeling like removing themselves from the world is what their family wants if life will be
better for everyone else if i'm not here you're lying next to your son and your wife holding a
holding a pistol i don't want to load the question but was there an element of that
toxic self-taught going on at that point yeah i mean at that point i
i was so depressed and so lost i mean i was losing everything i had worked for you know i had spent
my whole professional life working to be this fighter pilot and i felt like a massive failure
and a disappointment to to the f-18 community that i wasn't able to continue on you know and
i just kept running through my mind you know that they'd put all this money and their faith in me
and got me back flying and then here i am letting them all down because i'm struggling with this
silly in my mind it's just like why am i like this this is my fault you know now i know it
you're with brain injury you're from what i've learned from you know dr mark gordon and dr
michael lewis that i worked with and and the folks at these brain clinics at resiliency brain health
you know all these guys have kind of showed me that when your brain gets injured it gets rewired
and it can put you in this very negative loop i mean you're when your hormone levels get all
jacked up which is extremely common it puts you in this dark place and then on top of that you have
all these running loops in your head of how you screwed up or whatever bad had happened that you
feel guilt or shame depression and you just get trapped in it and you can't escape it and you
start to feel like well one i'm so miserable i want to be out of my misery and two i am this
massive failure and and for my wife i felt like one we have a newborn little boy that she's having
to take care of and now she has to take care of me a full-grown adult who one minute wants to
hide and cower in the corner because i think a government assassin is going to shoot me
through the window uh and the next minute i think i'm a secret agent who's going to go out and try
to save the world or you know i at one point i didn't want to eat or drink any water because
i thought i was being poisoned but i i felt like a burden for sure that she was having to deal with
and that the military was having to deal with and and that's simply not the case you know but it's
the way that you get to feel because of the the physiology in your brain when your brain is jacked
up from brain injury and trauma and it it's just the result of it unfortunately but you don't have
to feel like that there there are ways to get out of it and and for anybody out there that's listening
that is feeling like they're losing that hope you know if you can hold on there's there's a way you
can get out of it you can get back to yourself not only can you get back to where you were you can
get back and be more than you were well with that as well i think that's one thing that almost we're
doing completely wrong like we're doing the opposite of what we should do when people get
in crisis and people that don't understand what we just discussed they say think about your your
family you know yeah think about that and the problem is if you're in crisis and your brain is
rewired to where you're at that point think about saying think about your family is almost pushing
them further towards the suicide attempt well i am i'm thinking about removing myself from my family
because it's gonna and you know and obviously a healthy brian just can't understand that i had a
conversation with with people yesterday but we've got to understand you know it's like if you broke
your femur and then we're going to start hopping contests i mean like why don't you join me in the
hopping contest it's easy just come hop with me well your leg is completely different to my leg
at that moment it's the same with the brain so i really feel like a lot of the suicide awareness
posters one of the things that needs to be said is if you are feeling like a burden to the world
there's your sign that's to pick up the phone what do we say you know i'll reach out to me i'm right
here is my phone number well yeah but you're that's a whole different message if you are feeling like
a burden if you starting to believe the lies that your broken brain is telling you that is a huge
red flag then and if the same with your friends if people around you seeing that saying think of your
family actually isn't the right because of course you're a selfless human being if you thought it
was detrimental to your family you wouldn't be thinking about suicide but you believe that it's
actually going to be a positive impact on your family at that moment in the the the the mist that
you find yourself in yeah there's it's it's very it's very easy to feel that you're a burden and
it's very difficult to want to connect even to close friends you know i didn't want to reach out
because i i felt like such a failure i was like nobody's gonna want to talk to me
nobody nobody wants to deal with me i'm this you know i'm this piece of crap and that's just where
i was at and it couldn't have been more untrue and as soon as i did start reaching out and
reconnecting i realized the incredible incredible amount of love and support you know just from
starting that first fundraiser page that i did with warrior angel foundation you know i start i
sent it to a few people i didn't have any social media at that time but i just text messaged the
fundraiser page that i wrote up to a few people that were close and i was expecting maybe you know
they'd be like oh thanks for sharing and and i wouldn't hear anything i was so you know out of it
but it lit on fire and it went viral and i got so much love and support but one of the hardest
things to do is to reach out when you're in that place and say help please help me you don't want
to you're like i mean i'm i think it's a pretty common mentality for guys and and jobs like yours
and mine that we don't want to have to ask for help we want to be able to just do it ourselves
and deal with it but with this mental health stuff and suicide you can't you can't just do it by
yourself you need to reconnect and if you can reconnect to whoever that may be if you can ask
for help there are so many people out there that want to help you be it your friends be it your
family and if not that there's all of these non-profit organizations that are just
they're they're growing like crazy because there's people like me that get to experience the love and
transformation from getting some of the benefits from these and they go on to create their own
non-profits or do something to help and i think a very common theme of people like myself that have
gotten this flame reignited in us is is we want to be of service again and we want to help and give
people hope however we can and but yeah taking that first step when you're in that dark place
and feeling alone and like a burden to the world know that you are not there's so much love and
support out there and reconnecting is the way to bring you out of it and those connections are what
are going to help save you you know but it sounds to me as well from your story it's it's inspiring
to hear how much your community stuck with you especially earlier on you know and and that that
tribalism and one of the things i think that people struggle with whether it's organizational
betrayal which it sounds like your organization actually you know stood with you for a long long
time is people find us out themselves out of the tribe and i'm sure you probably felt like that
when you're in the psychiatric ward so talk to me about the power of that tribe staying with you
and then the kind of um the the perspective you had when you found yourself out of that tribe on
your mental health so yeah that was a one of the most devastating things of leaving the military
is you've built this close bond with people going through all sorts of crazy stuff you know
a lot of the days you're doing all these death defying things and it really brings you together
and you build this brotherhood so when you get removed from that i mean it's a huge loss and it
leaves this void that can be easily filled with harmful substances and and and just can put you
on a bad path but if you're able to reach out and keep in touch with those people um and then you
know like for example this group you get that back and you get that camaraderie back and it's
it's always there and you just got to reach out though i don't know if that answers your question
i got a little no no no it does well it's funny i actually did a speech two nights ago in cartagena
the whole point of this is to replicate a lot of our you know up tempo service if you like
high up tempo service whether it's the grand fire in london or you know the vegas shooting or
a deployment in afghanistan and i think we've really created this kind of microcosm this petri
dish of what a responder or a military member would endure during a profession during a career
and i had an aha moment that morning so i wanted to talk about this as you said we're we're a tribe
again now this you know 10 days or shorter for you we've come together and as you said at the
finish line of the the race your marathon everyone was there in the cold waiting for each runner to
come because there are people tomorrow we're all getting on planes and we're all going our separate
ways again so it was kind of like a kind of almost like a warning like hey you're going to be outside
again we're still a tribe we're a new tribe now we're gonna we're gonna have some amazing things
in the future but you're gonna find yourself back at home having just shared a plane with people
for days and days and days circumnavigated the globe so realizing that you know like you said
staying engaged with the tribes that you have and then also if you don't have the tribe you just
transition out the military find a running club or a crossfit gym or jiu-jitsu school or a chess
club or whatever it is and and find those those other people you left one but you can have other
tribes just don't find yourself you know sitting in a lonely hotel room with a bottle of jack daniels
yeah for sure i mean getting reconnected to people you know and it can be awesome and if
whatever you're into if you like to surf operation surf one more wave there's there's all these
organizations out there that can take you out and get you an experience and reconnect you and yeah
like you said join a gym get into jiu-jitsu get into whatever you're interested in find something
that's an active healthy experience or whatever you're into and just reconnect that is that's
probably the most powerful medicine out there absolutely i want to get to one more topic and
then go on the positive side the resilience side but just another area that i think needs to be
spoken about and you touched on it in in the story that you told i don't think there's enough
recognition of the human experience prior to putting on the uniform so we don't really talk
about what we brought in you know when we stood on the drill ground through some of these psychedelic
experiences you talked about processing trauma including childhood trauma what was some of the
aha moments that you had about that that was the foundation that he was you know somewhat fragile
before you ever even entered the the navy so one of the big ones was i had quite a bit of anger
i was i was a bit of a runt growing up i got picked up picked on and beat up until i learned
how to fight for myself but a lot of that my way of dealing with anger was i just kind of stuffed
that rage deep down inside of me now a positive of that is i largely use that rage as fuel to propel
me to be pretty successful and to get through some pretty advanced training and you know reach sort
of the the higher levels of military fighter aviation was in part because of that fuel that
i had been burning inside my core so i'm in a way i'm grateful for that but now that i've been able
to to let go of those that rage and get it out of me and rediscovered the sort of love and connection
and gratefulness that's an even more powerful fuel and it's way more sustainable you know rage is like
nitroglycerin it's hard on the engine it works but it takes a toll on you and
anyways yeah that was that was a big lesson that i learned just on this past aboga journey for sure
well speaking of that then so you mentioned about trying quite a few psychedelics and i had
another friend of mine that did a spectrum as well the aboga seemed to be a real kind of breakthrough
thing one of the other i think the the wrong way that we're messaging mental health is almost like
your ptsd is that well you know i'm i'm to the point now where i can deal with it well i disagree
with that messaging i think if you can process trauma same with physical trauma understand
where the you know the the trauma was the weakness however you want to describe it
process it work around it i think that becomes a superpower then i think that you know that's what
really resilience is you go through bad shit you process that bad shit and now you have those
scars as a kind of emotional steps with all these journeys that you've been through
you were in a psychiatric facility you were you know all these traumatic things that you told about
talk to me about the growth and the mindset and where you are now and you know was there
was there a point where that trauma has now become an asset to you it absolutely has i mean it uh it
has been an ultimate character development and it's beautiful i mean looking back at it it's like i
am grateful for all of that because it's made me who i am now it has made me more than i would have
been without it but i mean the process for me with my first when i first was able to find a guide to
do a psilocybin journey with you know at that point i was very broken you know and struggling
on so many levels and near divorce and i was a miserable human being and that energy was
being rubbed off on my family and my little boy just saw this angry guy that was his dad
and i went into that i came out of it with you know this new spark of hope a little bit
in a new way ahead and some of that anger and had been like i said sort of the snowfall had
filled those ruts up a little bit and it put me on a new path and and then to get invited and do the
peyote ceremony with the natives that reconnected me to something i mean after the ceremony i went
and i put my head on a tree that the natives had advised us to do and as i put my head on this tree
i saw a white flash hit my body and and what we were supposed to do was to sort of give that tree
our intentions of what we were and where we wanted to go and and i had thought about those but as i
put my head against the tree there was this instant connection with whatever that force was
and i was reinvigorated with this sense of purpose that i had lost and so that kind of continued and
then got me confident enough to start doing podcasts and speaking publicly about what had
happened to me and sharing and that led to the ayahuasca which was incredibly healing in itself
it you know it really to put it in short i experienced what god is or whatever you want to
call that that there is a lot more going on around us than we can perceive and and it gives you a
glimpse into that world of of the things that we cannot perceive and understand typically
and a new sense of hope and and and again there were some things i got out through that
some darkness that was in me that i think i was able to release through the experience there
and and also built a a strong connection with all the other veterans that were on that you know i
think the in between our three sessions of ayahuasca there we all the veterans that were there we all
hung out and we told stories and we reconnected and we you know the camaraderie like we're getting
on this trip you know we're laughing and telling goofy stories and but you know we were able to
and dirty stories and just all the stuff that you kind of miss and so that was a huge part of it as
well and then another psilocybin ceremony this past September and i got deeper and and more healing
from that and then leading into this just recent iboga where i really ridded some things that were
trapped in there and was fortunate to work with this incredibly talented gentleman Troy that was
able to i mean you know you can go into therapy and you can talk about things but you there's a
lot of these repressed emotions and memories that you can't access and and the psychedelics are a
tool to access memories and things that have happened to you in your life that you can't
maybe access otherwise but not only did i access them i relive these things through firsthand
experience while i was in these journeys and by reliving it addressing it seeing what had happened
like they call it the truth because you really see the truth of what happens and you're able to
to forgive yourself forgive others and to let go of a lot and you you purge it physically either
through shivering sweating crying laughing shitting puking you purge that physically and
that for me it felt like there was this so much of the stuff trapped in my heart and through that
through that experience i was able to let it go to forgive forgive myself forgive others and and out
of that i've i also saw the connection of how everything happened and how beautiful it is in a
way and that that was sort of like my my destiny to get me to be here in the position that i'm in now
to share and help with others other people and help to raise other people out of wherever they're
trapped so yeah i'm i'm incredibly grateful for the traumas and it is despite you know some of
the stuff being pretty horrible i had to go through it's been an incredible adventure and i wouldn't
be who i am now here speaking to you had i not had all that stuff happen so it's uh it's truly
beautiful uh coming out of coming out of all of it and and but you got to hold on and you got to
have some hope and you got to reconnect well i think it's stories like this that give people hope
that this is what i love about these conversations it's funny when you were talking about the aboga
i mean i've had you know obviously the the ibogaine the um you know as you said the ayahuasca the mdma
lead therapy ketamine there's all these different kind of tools in the toolbox that most people
don't know about and to use a firefighter analogy it would be like having one room where the door
was locked in a building and so you're lobbing water all over the fire and you're kind of keeping
under control but those psychedelics would be like an axe and a halogen a force of entry tool that
allows you to open that door that's actually the seat of the fire once you can get in there now
you can address the nucleus of your trauma and then the fire finally will go out absolutely you
really get you get to the core of the whole problem and it and you can fix it but you got to get there
and it's an incredible tool to getting to that place no doubt absolutely well just one more
question i want to make sure everyone knows where to find you but what is next well uh i just finished
writing a book i'm in the process of getting that published so hopefully uh before too long you guys
will start seeing that available i've been doing a lot of podcasts i've been hired to do some
motivational speaking over this past summer so i'm going to continue doing motivational speaking
hopefully getting this book out there you know i'm a father of two beautiful little children
um i'm working on rebuilding my relationship with my wife you know it's taken a massive toll on her
and has been a traumatic experience for her and so um trying to trying to heal the damage that's
been done there and um yeah finding a new path to help others you know i feel that's my purpose now
and i don't know the exact way it's going to go but it seems to just be kind of flowing
flowing uh to me opportunities like this with you uh to reach an audience and and and maybe
inspire hope even if this just reaches one person who's at that point where they just need that spark
i really hope i can continue to do that just give sparks some to people that need it it's needed
it's needed absolutely what's the book going to be called well i've i've had a number of names but
the one that i kind of like the most is just scrappy motherfucker we'll see what the publishing
company thinks about that you know there's the the subtle art of not giving a fuck so there's
been some pretty big books coming out lately with uh with controversial titles but um yeah that's
that's the one i'm leaning for at the moment but uh but i'll keep you updated once uh once it
once it finally comes out and gets edited and through that whole process beautiful one more
question the barfing dog you think it was actually on iboga the whole time the puking dog it might he
might have been purging yeah yeah he was getting the evil out all right well then we will definitely
share the book when when it's when it's ready um for people that want to learn more about you
reach out to you where are the best places online yeah you can uh i recently created an instagram
page after a long time of not being on social media but it's uh at kegan smurf gil and that's
spelled k-e-g-a-n smurf just like the smurf and gil like a fish you can also get a hold of me through
linkedin i'm on there just kegan gil but those are probably the easiest ways to get a hold of me
uh and i'm happy to you know if if you're a genuine human uh has questions on ways to get some healing
and gain access to some of these things or just want to talk about what you're going through
uh please reach out on there dm me send me a message and i'd love to speak with you did that
shark ever find you in the end no luckily luckily mary lee was uh not into me and i i you know at
the time i thought sharks loved human blood but i've since learned that typically sharks when they
smell human blood are actually pretty turned off by it you know we're not there we're not their
first choice in meal not saying a shark that just swam across the open ocean for days and days isn't
going to maybe eat their second favorite meal choice but uh luckily mary lee must have had some
good fish in or something so actually just smoking camels in a trailer somewhere anyway
so just quickly on the nutrition point of view you had a few times where and i've talked about this on
the show you know we're we're in a facility where we're trying to heal people but there's machines
and lights and you know blood pressure checks every 10 10 minutes and then nutrition is terrible so
what were you what were people bringing into you because you obviously you had it had a
healing element from the food what was the kind of food philosophy that you brought to that healing
back then just uh whole foods you know real foods uh be it fruits vegetables healthy meats
preferably if you can get wild game uh that's ideal um i'm not a fan of the industrial meat
process this is pretty unethical and there's a lot of tortured animals and it's pretty shitty not only
for the animals but also for you if you're eating a sick animal i mean i just saw a video of this
industrial pig farm and they're literally taking garbage and dumping it into the machine that
produces the pelleted food and i think it's mixed with corn or some other cheap substance
and the pigs are eating all these plastics mixed in with their food i mean it's got diapers in it
and plastic bags and you can see all the different colors of plastic when that goes into the pig
that goes into their fat and then you eat that fat and all that crap and the phthalates that
are in that plastic become part of you so not only is that bad for you it's bad for the animals
it's bad for a lot of things i mean but really just eating whole foods uh the more local you
can get them if you can go to a farmer's market and get your produce you're getting a lot more
from that than something that's been industrially produced and covered and round up and gmo
and transported across the world for two weeks it loses a massive amount of its
but just little steps i mean drink clean water and you're probably going to want some sort of
water filtration for most places there's a lot of garbage in the water if you're drinking a city tap
but you can get reverse osmosis units that you can put under your sink fairly inexpensive
so just kind of taking the crap out of your diet get rid of if you pick up a loaf of bread and you
read the ingredients and it's got 30 ingredients in it that's not food try to get things that are
you know five to seven ingredients on the in the nutritional label and if there's something on it
that you can't pronounce you probably shouldn't eat it if it's got numbers in it and colors
uh don't eat that uh really if you're going to the grocery store just try to stay on the grocery
store stick to stick to the produce organic if you can afford it is going to do you more good with
the micronutrients that are in the soil it's going to give you a lot more than if you eat something
that's been doused and round up which is for the history lesson of it is was originally a tank
cleaner and the reason they found that it was a effective pesticide herbicide was because it
killed all the grass surrounding the tank so that's why it's called a herbicide and it's
they they marketed it as this as this safer you know pesticide which may be compared to the
pesticides they were using herbicides they're using back then uh ddt and all that arsenic maybe
it was slightly better but there's no doubt that that stuff kills the soil and and it in turn
people kills you behind all the cancers that we see oh no doubt uh you know you need this healthy
thriving gut microbiome you need you need all of these bacteria your body is made of a lot of that
stuff and if you kill it with chlorinated water and round up that's in your food and plastics
that's in your animals you're eating uh you're killing yourself well even them in when you talk
about the industrialized meat market you know the i think this is something like i may have got this
wrong but three quarters of the nation's antibiotics are actually used in meat farming because these
animals are so sick they're just trying to keep them alive long enough to get them to that size
so again you think about stress and all the hormones that are in stressed meat and then you
add you know hormones and antibiotics and all those things that's going into your children it's
going into your family so then those are probably affecting your gut biome and you know then we have
all these gi issues and cancers and autoimmune diseases and all these things which you know
there's a lot of people profiting off all that and it's this big system that loves you to be sick
so you know you want to be a rebel you want to fight the system freaking go to the farmer's market
eat better buy less crap vote with your dollar um eat clean and and that's the foundation of health
you know in a lot of this we can do ourselves but it's not easy you can't just take a pill
and get better you gotta you gotta put in the time you gotta get some exercise if that means
go for a 10-minute walk outside do it you know you don't have to be an elite athlete you don't
have to run ultra marathon but start somewhere start with maybe introducing some vegetables and
fruits to your diet maybe get rid of some of the stuff that's got a bunch of weird ingredients
you can't pronounce maybe start drinking more clean water instead of a soda or you know drink
a little less alcohol you know just take some little steps and and over time that's really
going to be what fixes you make some connections and a lot of this you don't you don't have to have
a fancy retreat to mexico or costa rica and a lot of it you can just do on your own just by little
lifestyle changes and and and that's the foundation of it all is what your what your habits are what
you put in your body who you surround yourself with and the more of that toxicity you can get
rid of the healthier you're going to be the healthier you are the healthier world we're going
to have the more healthy conscious people are going to be doing better things in the world and
you know we have eight billion apex predators on the world right now and if the majority of them are
just feeding the system of wealth and greed and toxicity it's going to make the world a pretty
bad place but if you can make the change yourself to change what your habits are to change your
lifestyle that's what's going to change the world for the better you know we can't we can't change
the top down largely from from these massive systems that are corrupted but but we can change
ourselves and that's how we're going to change the world for the better you know we get get ourselves
healthy i agree 100 it's funny because i was just listening to you when i talk about the pharmaceutical
industry you know i'm trying to be very careful to point out look it's not all and you're the
perfect example trauma medicine saved your life absolutely i mean i am very grateful for western
medicine i'm grateful to have the dilaudid and the oxycodone when i'm in severe pain
and and there's a place for that stuff but it's it's not there to treat chronic conditions it's
not the way to live a life they're a tool but unfortunately that tool is being overused
but yeah i i mean there's definitely a place for that stuff and i don't think i don't think most
the people in the pharmaceutical industry are evil people at all i think i think a lot of them are
out trying to help but and some of their products do no doubt but there needs to be a balance there
for sure absolutely well keegan i want to say thank you so much just for me chatting for
told you it wasn't gonna be 90 minutes just over two hours now so yeah cool but it's it's amazing
and it's these are the these are the stories and i know it's like a double-edged sword every time
someone revisits some of this you know it's gonna peel back the scar a little bit so i want to
acknowledge that but i know that people listening will be empowered because so many of us were
raised in this environment especially i would argue men for what i'm about to say we were taught
you know suck it up rub some dirt in it don't be a pussy and i have some of the you know these most
elite performers on here that have been to these dark places and yours is extremely dark i mean
some of the things that you've described but it gives hope when you hear a these you know elite
war fighters go through the same exact thing as many many other people but more importantly
that there is a way out now that toolbox may maybe emdr or you know equine therapy or it may be
ketamine or ibogaine so or iboga so it's it's been an incredible journey and i just want to thank
you for your courageous storytelling today thank you so much for having me on it's a pleasure